Facing Opposition

Ezra 4:1-6

¹Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, ²they 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.” ³But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of 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, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” ⁴Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build ⁵and 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. ⁶And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

To suppose that the Jews were going to return to Jerusalem and be allowed to rebuild what was once a great city unhindered would be a mistake. Seventy years would have been more than enough time for other people groups to move into the area and take over every aspect of life. When the Jews arrive to reclaim what was theirs, tensions arose between them and the squatters.

As the worship life of the people is being restored, those who had taken the land came to check out what was going on, knowing full well they weren’t going to like it. In words of appeasement, these people assure the Jews that they had indeed been faithful to making sacrifices to the Yahweh. While this was an interesting interpretation of what they had been doing, it was only true to the extent that these polytheists considered one god just as important as another and made sacrifices to all of them. This would have been unacceptable to the Hebrews, as that practice is tantamount to idolatry. God is not interested in being worshiped along with other gods. Therefore, Zerubbabel and the leaders were correct in seeing through the offer made by the men who approached them. They were making deceptive claims as an attempt to co-opt the temple in Jerusalem and its rites to preserve their political position in Palestine.

Zerubbabel chooses to say, “no thanks.” Had he engaged in the conversation, an appeal may have been made to the Persian court for resolution.  This might have completely doomed the building project, since the Persians would not have understood the strict monotheism of Judeans.

We face the same struggles today. Those who don’t truly understand Christianity may claim that we worship the same God as the Jews or the Muslims. This is not the case. Both deny the deity of Christ and so we must part company in terms of our theology. When the Muslim bows to Allah, they are not bowing to our God. To make those claims draws us into the same problem Zerubbabel faced and there is no reason for such idolatry. There are even groups that claim to be Christian and deny the deity of Christ. There seems to be a true disconnect in that thinking.

While we do indeed face opposition to our faith we must see that this has always been the case. While we don’t know what kind of opposition Adam and Eve may have faced, we do know that Noah stood alone with only his family. That was a very long time ago! So, with Noah, Joseph, Daniel, David, and Zerubbabel we hold onto the Lord with both hands and stay true to what He teaches us in His Word. We hold each other accountable and we hold each other up in prayer. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s enough.