Bible Studies
Opposition to Rebuilding (Ezra 4)
Series: Studies In EzraIntroduction:
1. An imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lived in a Mississippi River town in Missouri. One day he had skipped school and then got in a fight. As punishment his Aunt Polly assigned him the task of whitewashing the fence. Tom pretended to his friends that whitewashing the fence was such a wonderful thing that they volunteered to try it and so clever Tom skipped out on the work. 2. In Ezra 4 there are some individuals that wanted to get in on the work that Zerubbabel and the people of Judah were doing in Jerusalem. 3. Reading Ezra 4:1-3. 4. The people of Judah had been released from exile. They had made the approximately 900-mile journey from Babylon and now they were in the process of rebuilding the house of God in Jerusalem. 5. They had already laid the foundation when some would be helpers came along and volunteered to assist. Who were these people? And why did Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the rest of the leaders reject their help? And what does all this have to do with us?Discussion:
I. These were people who had been settled in the land by the Assyrians when they had conquered the land (2 Kings 17:24ff).A. It was the practice of the Assyrians when they conquered a region to take the people of that region and resettle them in another region mixing them with other peoples.
1. This is what had happened after they conquered the Northern kingdom of Israel with its capital at Samaria.
2. They took many of the citizens of Israel to Assyria and resettled the land with people from other places that they had conquered.
3. These people are referred to in the N.T. as Samaritans.
B. These people often associated their gods with particular geographical regions.
1. They enlisted the help of the king of Assyria who sent them a priest to teach them about the god of the land of Israel.
2. Understand that Israel had been worshiping idols before this time. Note that the priest that came back lived in Bethel. This was one the places where Jeroboam had set up an idol.
C. These people were polytheistic (2 Kings 17:29ff).
1. The god of the land of Israel was just another idol added to their menagerie.
2. They even burned their children in the fire to the gods of the Sepharvaim.
D. The Chronicler gives his assessment of their worship in 2 Kings 17:34ff.
1. They may have said they “feared the Lord” but indeed they did not (33, 34).
2. They were not in covenant relationship with the Lord (35ff).
3. The people of this region had not listened to the Lord before and now these who were resettled into the region were practicing idolatry just like those before them.
4. They taught their children and grandchildren to do the same and so false religion was being perpetuated from one generation to the next.
5. Really theirs was an ecumenical kind of movement. All religions were included and embraced. They might have said, “One is just as good as another.”
II. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the fathers’ households would have no part with them (4:3).A. “But they were reasoning, ‘We, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhadden king of Assyria, who brought us up here.’”
1. That is the same reasoning many use today. “We are serving the same God just in a different way.”
2. Still the leaders in Israel rejected their proposal.
B. “You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God.”
1. O, ladies and gentlemen, I fear that our definitions of “Christianity” are way too broad.
2. The Chronicler defined those who were in covenant relationship with God as the true people of God (2 Kings 17:34ff). Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the leaders of Judah saw it this way too.
a. Those who do not follow the statutes and ordinances, or the commandments of God are not part of the covenant (2 Kings 17:34-35).
b. Yes there are good religious people out there. They do many good deeds, deeds of compassion and mercy, but this does not make them the covenant people of God. It is not about how many good deeds one does, but it is about being in covenant relationship with God and that is about forgiveness.
c. We have just observed the Lord’s Supper, a reminder of the blood of the covenant, the blood shed for the forgiveness of sins.
d. Unless we understand the significance of being the unique and specially chosen people of God we will be pathetic and ineffective in our efforts to build the house(hold)/family of God (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14-18; Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Pet. 2:9-10).
e. We must recognize a distinction between Samaritans and the people of God.
1) Yes, Samaritans can be converted (Jn. 4), but indeed they must be converted.
2) They, like everyone else, must give up their lives for Christ.
3) There can be no compromise with the world. This is a fundamental difference between Christianity and worldly religion. Worldly religion is ecumenical. One is as good as another and all are accepted and embraced. When one becomes a Christian all others are rejected.
4) We need to be tolerant of Samaritans. We need to respect and love Samaritans, but we must recognize that they are Samaritans and not the people of God. We need to communicate our love by sharing with them the hope of the gospel and bring them into the family/house of God. If we cannot distinguish who is in covenant relationship with God from those who are not we will not be hampered from communicating the love of God to those with no covenant relationship with Him.
III. The people of the land and the people of Judah were distinguished by their speech and by their actions (4:4ff).A. Their speech: “We seek your God.”
1. They recognized a difference. They saw themselves as different.
2. They did not say, “We seek our God.”
3. They did not say, “We seek God.”
4. Instead they said, “We seek your God.”
B. They discouraged the people of Judah.
C. They frightened them from building.
D. They hired counselors to frustrate their work.
E. They wrote accusations against them.
F. Their actions bear testimony that they are NOT seeking God.
G. Their actions were on-going from Cyrus to Darius (5). Verses 6-23 describes some of the details between their reigns including their opposition to the rebuilding not only of the temple but of the city and its walls (v. 12).
H. As a result the work on the house of the Lord was stopped.
I. Our speech and our actions are testimony to what is in our hearts (Matt. 7:15-20; 15:18-20). If our devotion is to building the house of God then that is what we will be doing and those who are devoted to this task will be together in that work.
Conclusion:
1. Ezra, Jeshua and Zerubbabel were given to the task of building the temple of the Lord God. 2. They could not ally themselves with those who were opposed to such. 3. They were a special people, holy to the Lord, with a special mission. 4. We too are just such a special people; our mission is special. We cannot ally ourselves with the world, nor allow the world to ally itself with us. 5. To whatever degree we allow this to happen we diminish the effectiveness of our work for the Lord.
