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.