Read Ezra 4:1-5

As we all know from experience, having someone oppose something we are attempting is very discouraging. It causes us to doubt, and even to pause or give up. Sadly, opposition and discouragement is not just a feature of our work, leisure, or hobbies, but of our Christian walk as well. Satan is not a fan of people doing God’s Will rather than his, and he sends opposition to discourage us. The Christian walk is not a park stroll, but a battlefield of sorts.

We see Satan’s opposition and discouragement agenda play out with the returnees from exile to Judah. While things had started mostly well, with the rebuilding of the altar, the resumption of the sacrificial system, and the foundations of the new Temple, opposition came from the surrounding countryside. Discouragement set in. Progress stalled. In our own Christian walk, we must keep faith and trust in Christ as our exalted Saviour and King to deliver ultimate victory.

The opposition in our text took the form of external adversaries. They are described as “adversaries of Judah and Benjamin” (v.1) who heard about the return and the construction programme. They were forced to resettle in the land during the days of “Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here” (v.2), likely meaning they lived in the northern part of what was Israel and became Samaria in Jesus’ day. But they are also described as “the people of the land” (v.5) indicating that they had spread out and lived all over the place.

This made them foreigners to the Jewish people. Further, we understand that their worship was mixed at best, and that they also included worship of other deities. In other words, they were not fellow-worshipers of God, for if they truly were, they would have turned away from other gods and worshiped God according to the Scriptures. This was less about ethnicity (although it played a part) but about the purity of the covenant people – the Old Testament Church, if you will.

These adversaries came to Jerusalem, where chisels shaped stone and saws cut wooden beams, and “approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you…” (v.2). At first this offer appears reasonable. Many hands make light work, right? And they claimed to worship God as well, so why not join forces?

Yet the answer of the Jews will shock you (perhaps that should have been the clickbait title of this devotion). “But 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’” (v.3).

How shocking! How intolerant! Yes, that was the point. The offer made the Jews look that way. But it was not a well meant offer. They did not worship the same God. Working together on building the Temple would disobey God. It would result in religious compromise, and the destruction of the covenant community.

Since that avenue did not work, the people of the land turned to discouragement. They “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” (vv.4-5).

The people of the land intimidated the Jewish people, scaring them through physical and psychological threats. Further, they corrupted the justice and rule of the Persian Empire to turn it against the returnees and their building project. For fourteen years they harassed and intimidated and deployed the state against them, such that the building project stalled completely (v.24).

The returnees were not soldiers. They had spent their years under Babylonian rule, subjected and defeated. Serious opposition and intimidation caused them to buckle, instead of trusting in God and pressing on. Perhaps they thought because God had ordained their return, that it would be a doddle. But Satan does not like it when God’s purposes advance.

Nothing has changed, even today. Paul’s letter to Ephesus warns Christians of a greater spiritual conflict raging today, with Satan on one side and us, aligned to Jesus, on the other. We can and should expect the devil’s schemes, whether through doctrinal chaos, human cunning, or “craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph 4:14). Is that not what he tried with the returnees?

We have been warned. We can expect opposition from the devil, sending attempts at compromise with the world, or if that fails attempting to attack and discourage us through other means including attacking relationships, livelihoods, and sending temptations to draw us away.

But we need not fear. Jesus reigns over all powers in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:20-22). And God has given us his armour to defend ourselves in battle (Eph. 6:10-17). Strengthened by faith, equipped with God’s armour, and watchfully prayerful, we can overcome opposition and discouragement in our Kingdom work.

Read Ezra 3:6-13

At our most recent General Assembly I was excited to participate in a session where we were challenged to consider locations for planting at least twelve new churches in the next fifteen years (40 by 2040). Sometimes I field questions about why I am part of a smaller family of congregations instead of something down the road, but passion for mission and for the purity of preaching the Gospel of Grace are part of the answer (that and you are all fantastic folks to fellowship with that I love dearly). New Zealand needs faithful, multiplying churches preaching the Reformed Faith to all around.

The returnees from exile were also starting something new, rebuilding what had been destroyed and ruined. For them, it was a time of excitement and initial progress. A time of worship of God, who was making it happen and just because he deserves it. But also, for some, a time of mourning for what had been before. This passage encourages us to look forward with anticipation to God’s promises rather than back as we build God’s house, his church, in these days.

After rebuilding an altar and resuming the proper sacrifices and worship of God which the Law of Moses required, the Israelites also resumed the festivals like the Feast of Tabernacles, remembering God’s faithfulness and provision in their ancestors’ wilderness wanderings. It must have been a powerful reminder to them as they tented among ruins, relying on God to provide once again.

While offerings had recommenced, “the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid” (v.6). The needed wood was not easy to find in Jerusalem’s surroundings, but Lebanon produced fine cedars (it’s on Lebanon’s flag today). So using some of King Cyrus’ grant, they gave money to the masons and carpenters and provisions to the Tyrians and Sidonians in exchange for Lebanese Cedar logs (v.7), just as with Solomon’s Temple (2 Chronicles 2:16).

After six months, the timber arrived. Zerubbabel and Jeshua assigned the Levites aged 20 and older to take charge of the building project (v.8). But note that it was “all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity” who joined in their own ways in this work (v.8). This was a task which came with initial enthusiasm and unity, and participation from all the returnees.

This was no DIY project. It required organisation and supervision, and Jeshua the high priest, his family, and the Levites provided that oversight so the builders kept on task (v.9).

The progress brought with it a desire to praise God. “When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the LORD, according to the directions of David king of Israel” (v.10).

Here, God was fulfilling promises spoken through Jeremiah decades before. No wonder they started singing Psalm 100 (v.11, cf.Ps.100:5). They were remembering God’s goodness in the past, and seeing it again in their present day. God’s covenant promises were being fulfilled again so “all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid” (v.11).

But not all. “Many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy” (v.12) because they could remember the older, grander temple, and what had been lost.

While all were making a great noise heard far away (think of a stadium crowd), it was hard to distinguish between the joy and the tears (v.13). In front of the Temple foundations were good and bad remembrance. One that springs to opportunity, the other that sits still to remember what was lost.

Sitting in a nation which can no longer reasonably claim to be Christian and would not do so if pressed, we might be tempted to take the same posture. Especially those of us who remember what felt like better days in the past, when outward practice seemed closer to the Judeo-Christian ethic. We might mourn the loss of denominations that abandoned Biblical faithfulness for cultural acceptance. But that would be a wrong type of remembrance, and not from wisdom (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

Instead, we should look back with thankfulness for God’s past goodness and faithfulness, and step out in faith confidently expecting God to act again today and tomorrow. Has God built and preserved his church? Yes! Will he do so again today and tomorrow? Absolutely! Will God provide the means if we trust in him and ask? If it is his will to bless our labours, of course!

God is building the foundations of his house again today, in faithful churches across the world. He will build his kingdom, and multiply his congregations of praisers and worshipers, because he is a God who keeps his covenant promises.

Read Ezra 3:1-6

For many of us today there are many calls on our time and not as much time to fit it all in. Many parents will know that there are plenty of things between school, sports, instruments, church events, and more to prioritise. Some things have to come first. Some things are more important than others, and have to be treated that way.

For the Israelites who returned to the ruins of the Promised Land, you might think that rebuilding homes, building businesses, planting crops, and repairing public facilities would take top priority. But you would be wrong. Their priority was to restore the public worship of God. They had it right. We are made to bring glory to God, and we bring glory to God by worshiping him. Like the Israelites, prioritising worship over our own interests is a recognition of why we were made, and what really matters – eternity with Jesus.

After Cyrus’ decree allowing the return of the Jews to Judah to rebuild the Temple, tens of thousands of faithful Jews answered the call to return. They did not return to empty buildings, but to charred and blackened ruins. What little was left had spent decades exposed to the elements, and picked over by those who remained. There was no bustling local economy. There were no homes. Many had never lived there, or if they had, they were elderly and looking on lands from a child’s memories.

In that context, we might expect the returnees to focus on the essentials for survival, and then rebuild their lives in a new (old) land. But not long after they arrived, perhaps mere weeks, the seventh month of the year ticked over, and “the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem” from the towns in which they had settled (v.1, cf. 2:70). This seventh month was the most important month in the Hebrew worship calendar, the month of Tishri.

In this month there were several important festivals. It was the Jewish New Year, then the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. All not long after they returned home. What a Godincidence!

But there was nowhere central for them to gather and worship, as generations of faithful Israelites had done before. The Temple was a ruin. It had to be rebuilt. You have to start somewhere. So Jeshua with his fellow priests and Zerubbabel rebuilt an altar to offer burnt offerings, just as God had commanded Moses to do a thousand years earlier (v.2). 

They carefully placed it in the exact spot its predecessor had stood, demolishing the previous one placed there (cf. Jeremiah 41:5) which helped kindle the annoyance of the older inhabitants of the country who were already indulging in blended worship practices (v.3; these people probably became the Samaritans of Jesus’ day). With the altar properly rebuilt, they offered the morning and evening burnt offerings which God’s Law required. 

These returnees recognised the importance of obedience, and the importance of God’s forgiveness, symbolised in the sacrifices which pointed forward to their coming Messiah. They knew that in the face of opposition, their strength was not in numbers but in God.

After this, they kept the Feast of Booths, and offered all the required sacrifices “as it is written … according to the rule” (v.4). Whatever the day, whatever the festival, whatever the time (v.5). Whatever the cost, the hundreds of animals and kilograms of precious food and oils were sacrificed to God, because God came first. 

They even abandoned their half-rebuilt structures for tents (booths), to remember God’s provision for them in the wilderness. They were just as dependent on God on that day.

“From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. But the foundation of the temple of the LORD was not yet laid” (v.6). Worship of God had been restored, but the work was only beginning. There was more to restore the right place of God in that land.

The faithfulness of the returning Israelites is a reminder to us to prioritise worship. There are plenty of things that could distract us, whether urgent or pleasurable, but we must place worshiping God first. We might even worship while fearing the possible attack of those around us, but worshiping God still comes first. Indeed, the worship of God is the best thing to do in those times.

Secondly this passage reminds us to worship God as he desires. Our worship of God through singing and prayer, the reading of his Word and hearing it taught, and participating in The Lord’s Supper and Baptism, are what God desires of us. We should not add or subtract from it.

When we worship God, when we place God first in priority, and when we worship God as he has asked us to, we bring glory to God which is what we were made to do. We surrender our own aims and strength, to depend on Jesus our Messiah, and to place him in top priority in our lives.

Read Ezra 2

Some parts of the Bible are exciting. Some parts inform or draw us to praise. Some are convicting. Some read like the White Pages we used to have before we abandoned phonelines. Ezra 2 sits very much in that last category. What relevance does it have to a busy modern parent, a stressed worker, a fearful soul?

Ezra 2 is all about God keeping his promises. Yes, it is a long list of names. But they were the faces that went with the fulfilment of God’s promises to bring his people back to the land. Those names, listed one after the other, remind us of how God works to bring about salvation. He does so in the lives of real people, who have names and faces like we do.

In chapter 1 of Ezra, we saw God is in control. God caused Cyrus, the king of Persia, to order the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and provided for the returnees who would go to do this. God also caused Cyrus to return various items taken from the Temple by the Babylonians (who the Persians had in turn conquered) so these could be returned to God’s use.

Chapter 2 provides a long list of returnees to the land of Judah. “These were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried captive to Babylonia. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town” (v.1). While many Jews remained behind, the group listed in chapter 2 are the families who returned to the province to reoccupy it.

The first group listed are the leaders of the returnees. There are eleven names listed (v.2), plus Sheshbazzar at the end of chapter 1. Included in this list is Zerubabbel, who was later a governor of Judah, a descendant of David, and an ancestor of Jesus (Matt. 1:12-13). Twelve returnees. Twelve tribes. Twelve apostles. Here was the core of phase 1 of regathering God’s People.

The second group listed in verses two to thirty-five are the common folk! Some are listed by name and family ties, others by location. Those by location may have been poor, while the named folk are the notable and quotable. Either way, everyone had a place in the return. God called people, rich and poor, to leave behind what they had for the uncertainty and hope of serving God in a new beginning in Judah.

In verses 36 to 39, Ezra’s list turned to the priesthood. Four clans of priests are mentioned, who total 4,289 people. That is ten percent of those who returned. We should not be surprised. The priestly families would be those most likely to want to restore the worship of God as it had been previously, and kept the hoped-for dream alive during long years of exile.

With the priests came a smaller group of Levites (vv.40-42). Without a Temple, they would have had little work to do, and become disillusioned. But a small group returned to take up their God-given role of assisting the priests with keeping the Temple grounds.

With them came a band of temple servants, and servants of Solomon (vv.43-58). Many were originally slaves captured in wars, but their descendants were true believers, who answered God’s call to return. No longer slaves, but servants of the Living God.

Finally were a group who lacked a family record to prove they were Israelites (vv.59-63). Their status was uncertain until God could demonstrate whether they belonged to him, or were attaching themselves for other reasons.

More than 42,000 returned, plus male and female servants (vv.64-67). They faced uncertain times. Jerusalem and the Temple were rubble.

Despite this, there was a sense of optimism. “Some of the heads of families, when they came to the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, made freewill offerings for the house of God, to erect it on its site” (v.68) providing funding and garments to start the work of rebuilding God’s place, amongst God’s people, in the land God gave them (vv.69-70).

This return demonstrated God keeping his promises. Jeremiah (25:11) prophesied that the exile would last 70 years, and now God’s people returned to rebuild. But God’s people had faces and names behind them, they were not just a concept. God works in real time, with real people. Like us.

Further, God uses all sorts of people to achieve his ends. Priests and Levites and leaders make sense in this list. The priests form a massive part of the rebuilding team, as we would expect. But God also called ordinary people, and even those descended from slaves to the high calling of rebuilding his presence. We too, whatever our place in the church, and whatever our role might be, have a part in the worship and witness of God in the world around us.

Ezra 2 could have simply listed numbers, not names. But it doesn’t, because God uses people, not numbers, to serve in his kingdom.

Read Ezra 1

Sometimes things go terribly wrong. Economic uncertainty. Job security. Family strife. Questionable leadership in business, government, and church. When that happens, we start to wonder if God is still in control, and still making things happen according to his plan.

Things had gone terribly wrong for God’s People in the Old Testament. They had lost their independence, been taken into exile, the temple destroyed. There was not much to sing joyfully about. And yet, God was still in control. In Ezra 1, God’s control over all things is shown by the great and small ways in which he caused a remnant to return to the land, and begin rebuilding the temple. God was still working to fulfil his promises to save sinners through Jesus Christ, the Messiah. God was, and is, still in control.

By around 600BC, the Kingdom of Judah was under the sway of the Babylonians, due to their increasing sinfulness and failure to worship God. Finally, the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, ended the monarchy, destroyed the temple and city, and took the remaining people into exile. For decades, just as God said would happen through the prophet Jeremiah, God’s people lived in foreign lands with no say over their destiny.

But “in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia” (v.1). The Persians had defeated the Babylonians and inherited their territory. While themselves worshipers of pagan deities, the Persians were (relatively) religiously tolerant, and Cyrus showed God’s People mercy which the Babylonians had not.

Whatever the motives of Cyrus, God provided a very clear direction to Cyrus: “The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” (v.2).

God was going to have his temple rebuilt in Jerusalem to point forward with hope, again, to the true dwelling of God with his people (John 1:14). God had not forgotten his people. The enforced exile was over, and they were now free to return to the land. So God made Cyrus put the plan in action, which occurred with a royal decree recorded in Ezra (vv.2-4).

God raised up returnees among the exiles to return (v.5), despite their return to a place with no houses, no defenses, just ruins. Among these, God had kept the faith alive. They responded in faith to return and rebuild.

Not everyone wanted to return though. From these, voluntary gifts were given, along with others who lived around the returning Jews (v.6), a massive reversal of fortune and an echo of the Exodus.

In addition, the various tools and implements which King Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the Temple back to Babylon were removed from storage by King Cyrus’ command, and provided to those returning (vv.7-8). These were not just any pots and pans, but thousands of items which were ritually holy and used for the service and worship of God in the temple (vv.9-11). 

Israel did not have images of God to restore (or for the Babylonians to plunder), so the goods had been taken instead. Now God was restoring them to himself, even though, in the scheme of things, this was a relatively minor start to what was an uncertain journey, walked by faith.

No doubt, though, the presence of gifts, and especially the stolen and returned implements from God’s Temple, were a sign of encouragement that God was in control “when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem” (v.11).

Despite every set-back, despite the many long years removed from their homeland and the Temple which served as a centrepiece of their worship of God, God was still in control and fulfilling his plans.

The same is true today. God is in control of all things. Just as God called the shots in the days of Cyrus, so too God calls the shots today. No defeat by the world, or by its idols, is ever truly complete. God always prevails, just as God prevailed over the Babylonian gods when he caused Cyrus to set his people and his goods free.

It does not make life easier, but it does make life more manageable. Nothing that happens can stop God from achieving his plans to save us from our sins and deliver us from the power of death.

Like the returning exiles, we too are on a pilgrimage to God’s holy city. Only it is not a physical one, but “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10).

Those returning pilgrims had no homes to return to, only ruins. We too have no permanent home here, but seek a city which is to come. Like them, we walk daily by faith, trusting in God’s provision to deliver us from evil and bring us safely to enjoy presence with him.

Our faith is not in vain, because God is still in control.