Ezra 4
Well, let’s read together from
Ezra chapter four, verses one through 24. And I’m going to
give you a heads up as we prepare to read. This chapter is going
to span about a hundred years and The way you know this is
it mentions the leaders of Persia. This section of history covers
a hundred years of opposition to Israel rebuilding Judah and
Jerusalem and the temple and the city and the walls. And so
just take notice of the cues that show this is a different
era. This is a different era. It begins this way, now when
the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned
exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel,
they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of 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 Esarhaddon, king of Assyria,
who brought us here. But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the
rest of the heads of the father’s 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, 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, made them afraid to
build, and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their
purpose all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even till the
reign of Darius, king of Persia. And in the reign of Ahasuerus,
in the beginning of his reign, they wrote the accusation against
the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. In the days of Artaxerxes,
Bishlam and Midrathath and Tebil and the rest of their associates
wrote to Artaxerxes, king of Persia. The letter was written
in Aramaic and translated. Rahim, the commander, and Shemshai,
the scribe, wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes, the
king, as follows. Rahom the commander, Shemshi
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
that 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 books 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. This was why the
city was laid waste. We make known to the king that
if the 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 Rahom, the commander and Shemshi the scribe and the
rest of their associates who live in Samaria and in the rest
of the province beyond the river. Greetings. And now the letter
you sent to us has been plainly read before me. I made a decree
and search has been made and it has been found that this city
from of old has risen against Kings and that rebellion and
sedition have been made in it. 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 deceased and this city not be rebuilt until
a decree is made by me. And take care not to be slack
in this matter. Why should damage grow to the
heart of the king? Then when the copy of King Artaxerxes
letter was read before Rahom and Shemshiah the scribe and
their associates, they went in haste to their Jews at Jerusalem
and by force and power made them cease. Then the work on the house
of God that is in Jerusalem stopped and it ceased until the second
year of the reign of Darius, the king of Persia. If you follow God faithfully,
you better expect opposition from Satan and his associates,
all the other God haters. If you do, as we just sang in
that last hymn, I can’t remember the words exactly, but watch
and pray and obey and serve the living God. And I think this
is gonna become increasingly so in our current culture. You
will meet opposition from God haters. Let me put it another
way. If you seek to be a godly person,
to be perhaps in a godly marriage or a godly family or a godly
church or a godly vocation, you will face opposition, you will
face persecution. And that’s what we wanna see
tonight. We wanna see the deadly power
of the evil one against the work of the people of God. And we
wanna think through how we can be careful, take heart, not to
lose steam, not to get worn down, not to lose heart, not to be
faithless, not to become beat down and forget God’s hand in
human history. One of the reasons we just sang
that 16th or 17th century hymn, if thou would suffer God to guide
thee, those wonderful strong words remind us God is always
working out his purposes and they’re bigger than the purposes
of Satan and the evil forces that are all around us. Well,
we want to think about this section of scripture tonight in four
ways. We want to think first about
the opposition and the opposition we find in the first couple of
verses, the first three verses of Ezra. And as I mentioned,
it’s a hundred years of time. this opposition is going to stop.
It’s going to stop the building of the temple. It’s going to
stop the building of the city or the building of the walls,
and it’s going to span into the times of Ezra and Nehemiah. And
then what we’re going to bump into next week when we get to
chapter five, chapter five is going to tell us that it took
two prophets Haggai and Zechariah to come and rouse the people
of God out of their spiritual stupor and to get them rebuilding
the temple. and to get them serving the Lord.
And then we’re gonna see the ministry of Ezra. I’m sorry,
well, you will see the ministry of Ezra, but then you’ll see
the ministries nearly a hundred years later of Nehemiah and the
rebuilding of the wall with this same opposition described. But
the opposition, where does it come from? Opposition generally
comes to God’s people from within the church. You know, Satan sits
on a beach chair. He doesn’t really have to work
that hard. He just lets us shoot ourselves in the foot. We give
into our own flesh. We give into our own selfish
desires. We listen to the world. We listen to the little whispers
of Satan. Don’t you want to be happy? Don’t you want to have
this? Don’t you want to be like them? Don’t you want to do that?
And it’s true in our own lives, and it’s very true in the life
of the church. Opposition generally comes from
within. We get dissatisfied. We get disunified. We get… this, that, and the
other, and we do a fine job destroying our own lives, our own church. But sometimes opposition has
to come from the outside. You can get a pretty determined
people, I’m gonna live for the Lord. You can get a pretty determined
church, we’re gonna live for the Lord. And sometimes it takes
a wrecking crew from Satan’s army to come take care of business.
And I think that’s what we have on display here. You’ll remember
that when Israel entered the promised land, remember our studies
from Joshua last year, they entered the promised land with all these
enemies, all the ites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Canaanites,
the Perizzites, and on and on. And Israel was supposed to go
in and under Joshua’s leadership, systematically clean out the
land, by putting to death all the inhabitants because their
sins had risen up to the nostrils of God, and he would use Joshua
and the Israelites to execute justice on them. And so remember,
we went area by area, bit by bit, and all those studies in
Joshua showed us God was faithful to lead Israel in the conquest
of the promised land. and they took their tribal boundary
areas. Now there were some difficult
battles and God was with them. And there’s a real sense where
the tribe of Judah here and the tribe of Benjamin, they’re the
only ones returning. All the other tribes have been
scattered off into Assyria, but this is just Judah, Jerusalem,
tribe of Benjamin. They’re coming back and who are
they bumping into? Well, about 200 years prior,
the Assyrians came and exiled the 11 tribes, the 10 tribes
of Israel. They took all the Northern kingdom
and they hauled them off to Assyria. but they repatriated the land
and they repatriated them with all these foreign people who
became what we know in Jesus’ day as the Samaritans. Remember
the story of the good Samaritan? There was a man who fell among
thieves. He was making his way along the road from Jericho.
They beat him up. have a friend who, um, uh, he’s
a, he’s a black preacher and he says, um, he’s got that good
cadence, uh, from the black culture. He says he was beat up, he was
passed up and he was picked up. Um, that’ll preach on it, but
he was, he was beat up by the robbers. He was passed up by
the priest in Levite, but who picked him up and took care of
him. It was the Samaritan, the hated people. Remember Jesus
at the well, the woman from Samaria. People hated the peoples who
re-inhabited the land. Well, that’s who they bump into.
That’s the opposition here. These are godless people living
godless lives. They have brought into the promised
land the rankest paganism from all the surrounding cultures.
All the things God said, I don’t want in the promised land. Well,
when Israel exited, all that came in. And now this opposition
is coming and saying, let us join with you. Let us help you. We worship the same God that
you do. And we’ll pitch in, we’ll hammer,
we’ll nail, we’ll cut some stone. We’ll mix a little mortar. We’ll
stack some blocks. overlay the gold of the temple,
we’ll do all the things you need us to do. And so opposition comes
to us sometimes in disguise. And I think about this very practically
for the church. I’ve prayed very few times in
my life. Oh dear God, please don’t let
those people come. A good friend of mine that I’ve
known for a long time told me the other year, about two years
ago, he says, you know, my church isn’t doing so well. He was a
Methodist. He said, I think I’m gonna come your way. And this
is not somebody I want in my church. And you know, you’re
not supposed to pray this way. You’re supposed to pray people
into the church. But occasionally, oh me. Well, Sometimes this is
our attitude at church. Well, we need people. We want
people. And so the strategy for the last
50 years in the American church was let’s get people in the door,
whatever it takes. Then let’s give them a job so
that they’ll have to be back next week. You know, let’s put
them in the nursery. you know, let’s make him a greeter, make
him an usher, make him a sound tech, let’s, you know, put them
in the horn section in the orchestra, let’s put them in the praise
band, let’s, whatever we can do, let’s get them in the door,
whatever it takes, give them a job to keep them in the door,
and then we’ll keep them busy. And so then we’ve had a church
full of people who were tricked into coming, tricked into staying,
and then we wonder why we have all these big messes. Who is
church for? It’s for the people of God. One
of the great blessings we have as a denomination is we are required
to interview people for membership and hear their profession of
faith. It’s a wonderful, wonderful, fun exercise, I think, for the
elders to do, but it’s good for the church. It’s the gate, it’s
the door, it’s the standard. And the standard is not ours,
it’s the gospel standard. Tell us about your faith in Jesus
Christ. Well, I’ve taught Sunday school here. I’ve been a deacon
there. I’ve swept the floors there and on and on. You haven’t
yet told us about Jesus Christ. And it helps us only build the
church with followers. If somebody gives a credible
profession of faith, we are to believe it. We are to receive
them. We are to trust that their word
is true. But what do we do in a day and
age where everyone expects to come to church? Everyone expects
to get to put their oar in the water. Everyone expects a seat
at the table. Everyone expects their deposit
into the complaint box or their contribution or here is to be
done. And I think what we see here
in the midst of opposition is a good, strong group of leaders
that say, no thanks, we’re good. We’re following Jesus. We’re
following the 10 commandments. We’re following the law of Moses.
We’re following the standards that God has placed over us. And I think when you see opposition
like this, it comes sometime in subtle ways. Oh, we just love
your church. Oh, pastor, we just love your
preaching. Y’all know, I don’t believe any
of that. Cause I know it’s, I know, I know what’s really going on
in here and all that, but Oh, preacher. And, and, and I remember,
you know, growing up as a preacher’s kid, if people shower you with
gifts, And they’re so effusive, oh preacher,
oh preacher, oh preacher, you better put a piece of armor on
your back. Otherwise there will be a knife in it and they’ll
twist it really well. And I think it, I think it’s
very true. Now I’m not saying, you know, be nice to me. I’m
a needy person. But we really have to be careful
to guard and protect the church of the living God. And that’s
exactly what these leaders are forced to do. We want to build
with you. We worship your God as you do.
We’ve been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon,
the king of Assyria. Well, you’ve been mixing it with
other stuff too. You’ve been sacrificing other things to other
gods. And I love how firm in verse
three, The leaders are, you have nothing to do with us. Can you
imagine? That’s not church growth 101,
is it? It actually is. Because what
happens when you have a healthy, protected church? You have a
healthy, protected church. It can grow in the right ways.
It can grow spiritually and it can grow numerically, but in
a healthy God-centered way. We alone will build to the Lord,
the God of Israel. So there’s the opposition. Verses
four through 16 tell us about the opposition’s tactics. One
of the things that you have to be careful of in the life of
the church is not to believe everything, not to accept everything.
But also I think in particular, this can be the case as a pastor
when you’re weary. You’ve gone through a stretch
where you’ve been laboring in the gospel, laboring in ministry,
you’ve been meeting with people, counseling with people. Maybe
you had a little group of people leave, they got upset about something,
the color of the carpet or the wattage of the bulbs in the sanctuary
chandeliers, how all that goes. And so some new folks come. And
you’re like, oh boy, this is great. Oh boy, this is great.
And the hairs on your neck stand up, right? But you’re like, you
know, we really need to grow. The hairs on your neck stand
up. Oh, but we really need to grow. And I think this little
stretch here, verses four through 16, show us that we need to be
careful about the wiles of Satan. We need to be careful about the
deception and the deceit of the enemy. Look, if you will, at
verses four through 16. Just run through and look at
some of those verbs. The people of the land discouraged
the people of Judah. You know, grammar is important.
These are participles and participles are ongoing actions. And how
long did I say this history is? A hundred years. This is a hundred
years of discouragement. Can you imagine And maybe you
won’t have to imagine this in our lifetimes, a hundred years
of persecution for being a Christian, for being in a church. That’s
what they’re facing. The people of the land discouraged
the people of Judah. They made them afraid to build. And then it goes on to give a
third thing. They bribed counselors against
them. I don’t want to be too hokey
or to jump into 2023, But we’ve already seen this,
haven’t we? Was it just several years ago we saw the IRS begin
to target nonprofits? And they quickly pulled back
because a lot of Americans give to a lot of nonprofits. We just
heard, what was it, a week or so ago, that there was an FBI
bulletin. Let’s infiltrate the Catholic
Church. And let’s see what they’re up
to. Let’s watch over these religious people. We’re beginning to see
these sorts of things. And so the church can be discouraged. It can make us afraid to build. It can make us afraid to preach
the truth. Do you remember several years
ago, I think it was in the city of Houston, the city council
or the mayor or somebody, and I don’t recommend this for the
town of Elon, They wanted to see every sermon every preacher
was going to preach in their city. Y’all remember that? You
got to turn in your sermons. Uh, little did these people know
we’re not ready that early, that early, right? We’re, we’re still
freaking out at 1130 in the morning. Um, that’s pretty scary stuff,
isn’t it? I mean, city of Burlington says,
Hey, we want all 200 churches in town to send their sermons
in. No, You can come listen to it, but not going to hand it
over to you in advance. It may not exist. But these are
scary things, and it goes on to say they discouraged them,
they made them afraid to build, and they bribed counselors. You
know, our sermon platform where we put our sermons, sermonaudio.com,
it hosts reformed sermons, reformed Baptists, reformed Presbyterians,
all sorts of stripes. You have to be reformed, gospel-centered.
We pay about 50 bucks a month. They post our sermons. People
can look online and hear them. It’s a really good, great service.
It’s a good advertisement. But about a year ago, Sermon
Audio said, you know what? We want to build our own server.
And so they began to raise about a million dollars for this project
they call The Vault. And so that all these sermons
will be housed, I believe the vault is being built at Bob Jones
University down in Greenville, South Carolina. And so they have
the computer science and IT people that are learning there how to
do this. They’re having them build this
server so that we’re not reliant on the big tech companies. And
it didn’t take much time to see their foresight was really good,
because what have we seen about big tech? Big tech likes to censor. Big tech likes to shut you down.
Big tech doesn’t like you if you say the truth or speak the
truth or preach the truth. And so the opposition’s tactics
can carry on against God’s people just as they did for 100 years,
all the days of Cyrus, And until the reign of Darius, into the
years of Artaxerxes, 100 years of opposition against God’s people
and their tactics, their letter writing, their persistence, their
lies, their bribes. Now, did you catch the irony
in that letter? Oh, King, this is a wicked city. And they’re hearkening back to
the days of David and Solomon, aren’t they? This is a mighty
city. People used to pay them tribute. People used to pay them
taxes and toll. And that’s been a really long
time because God’s people declined because of their wickedness.
but they say just enough true things, just enough historical
things to win. And did you notice when the letter
came back, you can stop the work. They came running, you know,
we got the letter, we got the letter. You’ve got to stop the
work. You’ve got to stop the work. And so the, the, the opposition’s
tactics, and we think of, Genesis 3.15, Genesis chapter three,
when Adam and Eve sinned, God lines up Satan, he lines up Eve,
and he lines up Adam, and he says, Adam, the ground’s gonna
be cursed. Eve, it’s gonna hurt to have babies. Satan, you’re
gonna crawl on your belly. You’re gonna eat the dust. Eve,
it’s gonna be hard to be married. Your desire is to be to rule
your husband, but he’s gonna rule you. And Adam, by thorns
and thistles, you’ll produce a little farm work, and it will
not bear much fruit. But one of the things he says
to Eve and Satan is, your offspring and your offspring are gonna
be in this cosmic battle. And you’re gonna nip at the heels,
Satan, of the humans, but the son of Eve, Jesus, is gonna crush
your head. That’s why it’s so special on
Easter to sing that, sing choirs of New Jerusalem, because it
says that Jesus has crushed the serpent’s head, how wonderful
it is. There’s that little verse in
Romans where Paul just kind of randomly out loud says, one day
Satan is going to be under Jesus foot. It gives us great hope. But the opposition’s tactics
are all through the scriptures. And we read about Satan in the
garden. We read about Joseph’s brothers in the pit and the traitors
and the caravan. We read about Herod wanting to
kill all the babies so perhaps he can get Jesus. We read about
Ahab and Jezebel trying to kill God’s man, Elijah. And on and
on we see in the scripture, if you seek to do the will of God,
Satan and his opposition will come after you with both feet,
both guns blazing with their swords. And so the opposition,
the opposition’s tactics. What about the opposition’s persistence? Verse four and five give those
participles, they discouraged, they made them afraid, they bribed
them. They frustrated their purpose.
Then you jump down to verse six. They did it in the reign of Ahasuerus.
They did it again under Artaxerxes on and on for decades, for years,
for a century long, the people of God were under the tyranny
of evildoers. Have you ever read things like
The Voice of the Martyrs, or maybe you’ve read biographies
of Christians who lived in another time, another area, or perhaps
another nation. We got it pretty good. We can
wake up, we can get dressed, we can eat our Wheaties and drink
our decaf, and we can get in our car, we can drive to church,
we can come in this building publicly, we can speak to one
another and not worry about a monitor like in the Chinese government
watching over churches. We can come without locking the
doors for fear of, you know, some tribal warfare. We can do
all kinds of things because we’re free. How blessed we are, but
could you imagine living under the darkness of persecution,
under the persistence of persecution and doing so for years? I think it’s very valuable for
us to read church history. I think it’s valuable for y’all
in the Sunday school hour to be looking at why the American
church is the way it is, why the Presbyterian church is the
way it is, but why we are where we are in world history. We don’t
want to be, what is the phrase, chronological snobs and think
that only our time, only our era, only our place in history
matters. We want to look at the whole
of history and understand And one of the things you’ll see
is Satan is persistent, nipping, nipping, nipping, nipping at
the heels of God’s people. And so how do we live under that
persistence? We keep worshiping, we keep praying,
we keep reading, we keep trusting, we keep our eyes on heaven, we
keep our eyes on Jesus. And maybe we get snake proof
boots. Maybe we toughen up. Maybe we
pray more. All these things will help us
under the opposition’s persistence. But think about the opposition’s
end. That’s the fourth thing we want
to think about. There’s been opposition. The opposition has
tactics and then has persistence, but there’s also an end to opposition.
And I speak of that in two ways. At the very end of our passage
in verse 24, it says, the work on the house of God that is in
Jerusalem, it stopped, it ceased until the second year of the
reign of Darius, the king of Persia. And then you go on into
five, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, they prophesied to
the Jews and they got them busy rebuilding the house of God.
So there’s an end to this opposition. We know that Nehemiah is gonna
come and he’s gonna say, carry your sword in one hand and work
with your trowel in the other hand, rebuilding the wall. Some
people would watch, some people would work. And there was watching
and working night and day until the wall was rebuilt and Zion
was safe again. But there is always gonna be
an end to opposition. Our prayers are answered. The
vigilance of our leaders pays off. And so we don’t need to
live as if there’s no end in sight in this life. Maybe it’s
a zoning law that’s affected the church. Can’t get a building
built or maybe your denomination, you know, because you want to
leave over fidelity to the gospel says we’re keeping your building.
And so you’d go into a school cafeteria for a couple of years
until you can get another place of worship that is permanent.
Or, you know, during COVID, we had to sit outside for a little
bit. All these sorts of things, they always have an end. But
I want us to really think about the ultimate end. Satan will
one day be put into the pit. Satan will one day end his life. God’s people hating efforts.
Satan will be cast out and to utter darkness and all those
who don’t call on the name of Jesus with him. And so one of
the things we have to hope for, and remember Christian hope is
in something that’s sure, it’s not just, well, I hope, I hope,
I hope, you know, lucky rabbit’s foot and all the rest. Now we
hope in something that is true, and we read the book of Revelation
and we see the end. We see the end of Satan, we see
the end of darkness, we see the end of sin, we see the end of
enemies, and we see that the church, which has been built
up under the duress of persecution, is brought safely into the heavenly
city that has better walls than Nehemiah will build. It has a
better temple than Zerubbabel and all these will build. It
has Christ as its cornerstone, but it has you, each of you who
have persevered under hardship and have kept the faith in Jesus
Christ as the building blocks of that house of God, not built
with human hands, but built by the spirit of the living God.
Let’s do pray together. Our Father, we thank you for
the glimpse into the hardships of your people. May it encourage
us to press on, to keep the faith, to stand firm and to hold fast
all through Jesus’ great strength. Hear us and help us. We pray
your blessings in Christ’s name, amen.