Ezra 4

Ezra 4: The Adversaries of Judah and the Stopping of the Work

All right, this morning, we'll be in Ezra chapter 4. These are the words of God. Now, when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that their returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the fathers' houses and said to them, let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esharhaddon, king of Assyria, who brought us here.

But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of the fathers' houses in Israel said to them, you have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God, but we alone will build to the Lord, to the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us.

Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia.

And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. In the days of Artaxerxes, Bishlam, and Mithridath, and Tebiel, and the rest of their associates, wrote to Artaxerxes, king of Persia.

The letter was written in Aramaic and translated. Rehum, the commander, and Shimshai, the scribe, wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes, the king, as follows. Rehum, the commander, and Shimshai, the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the governors, the officials, the Persians, the men of Erech, the Babylonians, the men of Susa, that is, the Elamites, and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnapper deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river.

This is a copy of the letter they sent. To Artaxerxes, the king, your servants, the men of the province beyond the river, send greeting. And now be it known to the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem.

They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. Now be it known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired.

Now because we eat the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king in order that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers.

You will find in the book of the records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from of old. That is why this city was laid waste.

We make known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province beyond the river. The king sent an answer to Rehom the commander and Shimshai the scribe and the rest of their associates who live in Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river, greeting.

And now the letter that you sent to us has been plainly read before me, and I make a decree. And I made a decree, and a search has been made, and it has been found that this city from old has risen against kings, and that rebellion and sedition have been made in it.

And mighty kings have been over Jerusalem who ruled over the whole province beyond the river, to whom tribute, custom, and toll were paid. Therefore, make a decree that these men be made to cease and that this city be not rebuilt until a decree is made by me.

And take care not to be slack in this matter. Why should damage grow to the herd of the king? Then, when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letters was read before Rehim and Shimshai the scribe and their associates, they went in haste to the Jews at Jerusalem, and by force and power made them cease.

And the work in the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia. This is the word of the Lord. Lord God, thank you for providing us a record of what happened in the time of Ezra and in the time of this project and this mission.

Lord, thank you that it is accompanied by just so much honest, just recollection of what took place and why it took place. And also, thank you that it's been interpreted by your prophets as well, that we can get much benefit from reading it and applying it to our own circumstances, Lord.

God Works Through Our Enemies

So I ask that you would be speaking to us through this and that through it all that we're made to trust you and have confidence in you even more than we do currently, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so this morning is the first opposition to the Israelites' mission in rebuilding the temple of God.

And I believe that we can really get a lot from this, and this can be really encouraging to us as well, because we've talked about how God works through everybody, essentially. We've talked about how God works through our leaders and our politicians, people with a lot of power.

He accomplishes his purposes through people like that. We've talked about how God uses everyday folks, common folks with no power, and he also works through people like that to accomplish his purposes.

But there's still another class of people that God works through to accomplish his plan. Now, this is a little bit less obvious, but the reality is that God works through them all the same. And this group is our enemies.

Our enemies, God works through our enemies, even in their opposition to our mission. That's kind of weird. Like, God was using these people whose their intention was to frustrate and stop the efforts of the Israelites.

The Israelites wanted to worship him, they wanted to rebuild the temple, and these people are trying to stop them, and God's still working through these people, which is super weird. How can God stop his plan?

How could God use people that are trying to stop his plan from going forward as part of his plan for going forward? That seems sort of contradictory, so let's talk about what's going on here. Right from the beginning of our passage this morning, we see that these are enemies of Israel that are rising up and becoming interested in what they're doing.

They're clearly enemies. Scripture makes no bones about that. It says they're adversaries right at the get-go. They don't want Israel to succeed. They don't want Israel to receive God's blessings. They don't want Israel to be able to do what they set out to do.

They say they believe in God, but I don't know if we can really trust that. They might not even believe in God. But either way, they don't want Israel to be back. They don't want them to thrive. So they're in direct competition with Israel, at least in their own minds.

God's people then had adversaries, just like God's people now have adversaries. And the scripture says that they try a variety of tactics, a variety of strategies to try to stop Israel. And I wanna look at them, because they start off pretty basic and they kind of increase and get more serious as they go.

And we can apply a lot of this stuff to some of the things that we face today. The first strategy that they employ is right in verse two. It's just a simple distraction method. Verse two says that they approach Zerubbabel.

He's the leader of Israel. And he says to them, let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do. And we've been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Ershadah, king of Assyria. So that's pretty simple, right?

They offer Zerubbabel to help build the temple. Now, obviously, at least it's obvious to me that they don't really intend to help, right? They're enemies of God's people. They're trying to distract them.

They're trying to trick them. They're not Israelites. They don't know how to build the temple. They're not Levites, obviously. They don't have the scripture, so they don't even know what they're doing.

So even if they did want to help for real, Zerubbabel is smart enough to know that their help wouldn't be helpful. It would be a distraction. They don't know what they're doing, so why would Zerubbabel allow them to help?

And so he doesn't. He says, no, he's not buying it, and he's not interested in their help. And so you see the next strategy that they employ is they start to lie. They start to lie in a few different ways.

The first way the enemies of Israel lie is they sort of kind of, almost like a gossip almost, right? These are just like normal person to normal person. They're just lying. Verse four, they pay people to discourage the Israelites and to frustrate them.

It doesn't say exactly who these people are. They could be other Israelites. They could be Persians. But either way, they're being paid to give bad advice. They're being paid to discourage Israel with rumors and various untruths.

The second way they lie is a little bit more serious. They also lie politically. In fact, they file false reports against Israel. Verse seven gives us an account of an official grievance that they file with the king, the government of the area.

And it's interesting. We actually have a word-for-word copy of what this grievance said in the text. And what's interesting about this grievance is that even though it was a false accusation, this is a straight-up lie, there is some truth to it, actually.

So it's kind of a lie mixed with a little bit of truth. Those are always the most effective kind of lies. We see that in politics all the time. Verse 12 says, in the official sort of accusation, it says that the Israelites are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city.

They're referring to a specific event when they say that. And Jerusalem did actually really rebel against their kingdom. So there's a seed of truth there. In fact, we even see later the king, Artaxerxes, he searches the history books, he looks at the records, and he confirms that, in fact, Jerusalem did rebel against their kingdom.

And so there's a little bit of truth here, but they mix it with the false accusation. Here's the false accusation. It says, they are finishing the walls, repairing the foundations. And then they say, be it known to the king that if this city is rebuilt, they will not pay tribute, they will not pay custom or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired.

You see, they just made that part up. They have no idea if Israel's planning on paying taxes or not. But that's what they say they're gonna do. And politically, this is a genius move. It really works well.

And I think it's probably because they included that nugget of truth, right? So there's a nugget of truth. Israel did rebel in the past, and so they're saying, okay, well, if the king finds in the record books that we're being truthful about that, then they'll say, well, I guess they must be right about the rest of it.

And so it works. The king believes them. And then he employs the third strategy to stop Israel. The third strategy is just simple, physical, brute force. Verse 23 says that when Artaxerxes finds out about this, he says to them, he says, cease the work by force and by power.

And they do that. It says that they go to Jerusalem and they stop the work. So the enemies of Israel, their three-part plan was very successful. The work had ceased, and the mission of God's people was on hold, at least for a time.

And the question is, what's going on here, right? Like, why would God go through all this trouble to sort of call his people out? You know, if he's sovereign, remember, keep that in mind. We're talking about God's sovereignty in this book.

So he goes through all this trouble. He stirs up Cyrus's heart to make the proclamation, to command Israel to go build this temple. He goes through all this trouble getting all the people of Israel together, all these resources together.

They're coming together as one man. And then all of it's just stopped, just like that. Like, if God was stirring up Cyrus's heart, why didn't he stir up Artaxerxes' heart? Why didn't he just stop the adversaries from opposing Israel?

It's just kind of interesting. What's going on with that? And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we're not 100 sure why God does this. You know, sometimes it's very cut and dry to see why God uses enemies of Israel as part of his plan.

Like, we can read the story about Joseph in Genesis, and it's very easy to see exactly why God allowed Joseph's enemies to hurt him, why he allowed Joseph to be imprisoned falsely. We can very easily see that in that story.

But in this case, it's not quite as clear. And I think that's actually a good thing because often in our own lives, it's not quite as clear either what God is doing. Now, I've looked at this and thought about this, and what I think perhaps God was doing in all this is teaching his people to really trust him.

He was teaching them about faith. Now, obviously, the Israelites did trust God to a certain extent. They did have faith. I mean, after all, they had made this journey, right? They had started the foundation.

They had given their resources to the mission. So clearly, they do have faith in God. But the prophet Haggai, we talked last week how he prophesied about this moment. He interprets really what's going on here.

The prophet Haggai doesn't really mention in his prophecy, he doesn't mention the adversaries of Israel pretty much at all. Even though the prophet talks about this very moment, right after, the prophet Haggai starts preaching after the enemies of God stop the mission from going forward.

But Haggai doesn't mention them. They come in with all these strategies, distraction, lying, political power, military power, all of that, and Haggai just kind of ignores it. It's clear to the prophet that he does not credit all of this stuff, all of these oppositions, all of these strategies of the enemy.

He doesn't credit any of that as a good excuse for why the work on the temple stopped. In fact, the prophet, speaking for God, mind you, because when a prophet speaks in the Old Testament, they're speaking for God.

He focuses on the Israelites' own attitude as for why the work stopped. He seems to focus on the Israelites to explain why the work comes to an end. Look at, this is how his prophecy begins. This is Haggai chapter one.

In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai, the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshaddek, the high priest.

And let me actually set the tone before I continue. In the second year of Darius, this means that this is happening directly after what we just read in Ezra. So after all of this plan, all the adversaries come and they stop the work, this is what Haggai says.

He says, thus says the Lord of hosts. These people say that the time has not yet come to build the house of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai, the prophet. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins?

Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have so much and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.

And he who earns wages does so to put them in a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.

You looked for much and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why, declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.

Therefore, the heavens above you have withheld the dew and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for drought on the lands and the hills on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on beast and man and all their labors.

Do you see what's happened according to the prophet? Do you see what's happened? All of the strategies of Israel's enemies, the distraction, the lying, the brute force, none of these does God accept as a good reason not to obey him.

None of these things does God accept as a good reason not to trust him. Even economic concerns, that's what Haggai focuses on here. He talks about how the Israelites are not doing well in their harvest.

They're not doing well with their own houses. Even that's not a good reason. And so he sends the prophet Haggai and he also sends the prophet Zechariah. And through them, he calls out the Israelites and calls them back to obedience.

See, Haggai and Zechariah, they preach faith and confidence in God to the Israelites. And just a quick spoiler for next week, the Israelites do respond and they respond very well. And so the question is, how can we apply all this today?

Expect Opposition, but Do Not Read Circumstances as God's Will

Well, the first thing that we can apply is we ought to expect opposition. This is pretty much a given. The men are reading a book together in our discipleship group about persecution and opposition. And this is a given, this is a given.

The natural man, the unconverted person does not like to hear about God or the things of God. And so if you're telling them, they're gonna push back. They're going to have a problem with it. So oftentimes, even if you're not telling them, they'll have a problem with it.

Just your very existence. Sometimes a Christian just going about their business doing Christian things bothers people. So we should expect that. It already happens, actually. You know, in the United Kingdom, this is a first world country.

This is a partner with America. It's already illegal to preach certain passages from the Bible in public. Any passage that the government deems unacceptable, it's illegal to do it. You can get arrested for it.

You can get arrested and charged. This already exists. This is already happening in first world countries. People have been arrested and charged with a hate crime. And I think that you'd be very naive to think that that couldn't happen here.

I'm not saying it will happen here, but it clearly could. And so, at least in the UK, opposition has progressed already to the lying stage because if you can be charged with a hate crime for reading the Bible, then that's clearly a lie.

It's not hate to read the Bible. And it's actually even progressed further. It's already to the political force and physical force being applied to stop the work of God. If you can be arrested for reading the Bible, that's physical force.

So we should expect that the adversaries of God will act because they're already doing it. The enemies of God will lie about you, no problem. They will have no problem lying about you. Many of us have been called homophobic, which we're not.

Many of us have been called misogynistic, which we're not. Bigoted, hateful. These are blatant lies and they're not true in every case. I would imagine they're true in some cases. But these are lies. Our enemies have no problem lying about us.

And so we should expect that they wouldn't. Our enemies will petition the government against us. There are plenty of jurisdictions around the country that would seek to have control over Christian families for various reasons.

You know, every time I see an article about homeschooling, I'll always see in the comment section people that hate it so much, irrationally hate it. It's just out of control where they wanna come in and stop Christians from doing it.

It's pretty crazy. We're already at the point where people will attempt to use courts to shut down Christian businesses or organizations or even schools. They'll attempt to do it. Now, sometimes they're not successful and that's a good thing, but they're already petitioning the government to do it.

So you see, these people have no problem using lies. They have no problem using political power to get their way. And it's only a matter of time and circumstance before physical brute force is common and allowed to be employed against Christians.

And so we ought to expect it because it is coming. And in fact, it's already happening around the world. But here's the thing. This is what I think we should learn from Ezra. None of this, regardless of the lies, regardless of the political power or pressure put on you, physical power, anything, none of that is a good excuse to abandon the mission.

It wasn't for the Israelites in Ezra, according to the prophet Haggai, and it's not an excuse for us today. Here's something that I think we really need to remember. Opposition and getting your mission frustrated, these are not signs that the time is not right.

Like even in the prophet Haggai, he says the people are saying, it's not time to build this temple because look at all this opposition. That's what the people were saying. And God's saying, no, that's not correct at all.

You see, even when opposition is extreme, that is not a sign that God is not in the mission. God will teach us to trust him in the midst of opposition. God will act and we should have confidence in his success, even if our adversaries are strong, even if they gain ground against us and they attempt to stop us, we should believe that God will still win this mission.

That's what we should count on. It's not always gonna be, so in our mission, it's not always gonna be happy feelings and smooth sailing. That's not a sign of anything. That could be a sign that things are going well, or it could be a sign that things are going really bad.

Chris, you always talk about how the church in America is just kind of smooth sailing along. That's not necessarily meaning that it's a strong church. And so we gotta remember that it's not, we can't count on our feelings.

We can't count on our quote unquote success to know if God's in it. I remember I was leading a mission trip to Africa when we were in New York. And one of the guys who had committed to go on the trip, he had done the initial deposits and everything.

He decided to bail right at the last minute of another deadline. There was another financial deadline or something. And he told me the reason why he was gonna bail, he told me that he didn't feel peace about it.

He told me that he knew God wasn't calling him to Africa because there was all these other things going on in his life, and he was anxious and stressed out about it. And so he wanted his non-refundable deposit back.

I don't think he knew what non-refundable meant. But you know, he had a lot of good reasons, right? He was about to propose to his girlfriend, and there was things going on at work. In my opinion, they were all excuses, but this is what he was saying.

He was saying that all this was going on, so clearly God didn't want him to go because he had this anxiety about going. Basically what he said was God could only be in it if he felt happy about it, if he felt calm about it, peaceful.

And so God clearly didn't want him in it because he didn't feel that. That is not how we decide what God wants. We have to stop trying to read the tea leaves of our personal circumstances to decide if God's calling us somewhere or not.

That's not how it works. We don't look at how successful we've been, quote unquote, to determine what God's desire is. We don't try to somehow interpret how we feel over and against how much opposition's in our way or how much success we've had.

That's not how we figure out what God's secret will is. We'll never figure out exactly how the plan's supposed to go because he doesn't reveal that stuff to us. Instead, what we do is we obey his word.

We figure out what God does reveal in his word, what he commands, and then we decide what to do within the framework of those commands. And so there's a lot of leeway there, right? God says go to all the nations.

So if you want to go to Africa, then great. Then do it. If you want to go to all the nations and what that means to you is go to Canada or even Rutland, we have a lot of wiggle room there. So you figure out what God commands and then you work within those commands and do what you want to do.

We don't have to try to interpret vague signs and feelings and impressions. And we don't have to try to interpret our circumstances when we have a clear revelation in the scriptures and a God-given will to operate within that revelation.

And so what we should learn from this is let's just say we get kicked out of this space, right? Like let's say the city decides that they don't want to grant the zoning exception anymore for whatever reason.

It just could be a whim or maybe they just don't like us. Let's say they kick us out of here. Does that mean that God doesn't want the church to continue in Rutland? I don't think so. Let's just say God never sends another single family here and the only growth we get is when we have more babies, right?

Let's just say that happens. I mean, it's happening a lot, but let's just say that's what God has. Does that mean God's not in the mission? I don't think so. I don't think so. Let's say, I can't think of a circumstance this would happen, but let's just say our church starts getting picketed every Sunday and every Sunday there's people out there and they're yelling at us and things like that.

Does that mean God's not in this mission? I don't think so. You see, that was not an excuse for the people in Ezra's time. I think that's so amazing. In Ezra, we see about everything that happened to stop the work and that's all that Ezra says.

He doesn't try to interpret it. He just says, this is what happened and the work stopped. And then the prophet, the preachers, he goes, I'll interpret this. Here's what's going on. You're not listening to God.

And it's just amazing. We gotta remember that example. It's such a good example. We don't wanna be opposed, right? I don't wanna have people picketing outside the church. But when we are opposed, when the enemies reveal themselves against us, let us remember to have faith in God and to trust God and that he is working through our enemies for the benefit of the church as he has promised to do so.

So let's pray. Lord God, we thank you for the promises that you've given us. We thank you for just the guarantee that all things work for the good of your church. We admit that we don't understand it always, how it happens and how it works.

And we admit, Lord, that sometimes we, in a moment of lack of faith, just wonder, what are you doing, God? But God, I just pray that you would help us to trust you, that we would have supreme confidence in you, that even if we're opposed aggressively like the people in Ezra chapter four, that we would continue to obey you, that we would continue to trust you and do what you've commanded us, Lord.

And I thank you again for this example in Ezra. It's such a good example because the prophet comes, the prophet preaches faith and confidence and repentance and the people respond, Lord. So Lord, help us to always be like that, God, that when we fall off the rails and we don't trust you, when someone calls us to trust you again, that we listen, that we obey.

So God, I just pray that you would give us a clear direction on what to do and how to do it, God. You would give us a clear mission here that we would not try to interpret our feelings and try to interpret our frustration or anything like that as a deciding factor of whether or not you're in this mission, God.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for everything that you've given us and all of your protection and provision in Jesus' name. Amen.