"Enemies of the Cross" Ezra 4 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, what does Ezra chapter 4 have in common with Chick-fil-A?

Ezra 4 · chapter mention

Oh goodness.

And you know the news you've been following, I'm sure, with the uh difficulty with Chick-fil-A, that Chick-fil-A, of course, has been opposed, and uh people have done protests and sit-ins and all kinds of kiss-ins, even a Chick-fil-A, to protest a business that uh is closed on Sundays and gives money to the fellowship of Christian athletes and to the Salvation Army.

That's have been their big crimes in the world.

And so our culture, by and large, and I when I say our culture, I don't mean like some fringe elements in our society, I mean major forces in our culture like the mayors of massive cities, like Boston and Chicago, and well, let me, I mean, you know, Austin and Buffalo, to use some from the news recently, have said that Chick-fil-A doesn't isn't welcome in their communities and can't open there, can't, you know, have contracts there, all that because of their giving to fellowship of Christian athletes and to the Salvation Army, which is a somewhat of a humorous protest because Chick-fil-A makes the best chicken sandwiches in the world.

And so that's just the kind of fact you have to deal with as you start any discussion of Chick-fil-A, is that they are a superior product.

And you're allowed your own opinions on food, of course.

I wouldn't be dogmatic on that, it's a gray area.

And Colossians literally describes food as a gray area.

Nevertheless, there is right and there is wrong, even in gray areas.

And so through the years, Christians have rallied to eat at Chick-fil-A because they cater to churches and they do so so nicely and so well and with such joy.

And that's been a constant obstacle to their growth as a company and as a corporation.

And so you know this last week or two weeks ago they announced they would stop giving to Fellowship of Christian athletes, stop giving to the Salvation Army, and start giving to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a den of villainous thieves.

And I mean that with all due respect to villainous thieves.

And the goal of them giving to an outfit like that, of course, is to reduce the hostility given towards them by elements in our culture.

And by elements in our culture, I don't even mean the majority of people.

Obviously, the majority of people eat at Chick-fil-A.

It's the second largest fast food chain in the United States.

So it's not um a bottom line, it's not a democracy they're trying to appease here.

It's a certain element in our society that controls the narrative of things and namely controls what airports they can open in and whether or not they can open in London, which they tried before they announced this and failed, were run out of London by protesters.

Over again, they're giving to the Fellowship of Christian athletes.

I mean, come on.

Uh, and the Salvation Army, which are, you know, the guys with the Santa Claus and the bells and whatnot.

And so they have decided to stop giving to them as a way to try to get back into the airports they've been kicked out of and back into the cities that they've been barred from going to.

And of course, no compromise will ever be enough to get them back in the good graces because it's not actually about FCA.

Nobody in the entire country, I think, really believes that it's about FCA.

It's not about the Salvation Army and the jingle bells and Santa Claus and all that.

It's obviously about what our country believes about same-sex marriage and about biblical ethics and how that runs against what the Bible teaches about it.

I mean, that's obviously the real issue.

Nobody cares about FCA, and too few people care about the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Clearly, the issue is a clash of world views.

It's an opposition to Chick-fil-A of all things, based upon an opposition to God and his word.

And so some Christians have responded by calling for a boycott to Chick-fil-A.

You know, we'll teach them those compromising liberals, you know, better to just eat at McDonald's and spit it back out when you leave than eat at a company that used to give to fellowship Christian athletes that no longer does.

And if you don't spit out McDonald's after you eat it, I do.

I don't know.

I'm sorry for your soul.

Um I went to McDonald's this morning to back up a coffee for the first time that I can remember.

They've renovated it across the street.

And I, the lady who used to work there back before I got allergic to McDonald's, I think, was still there.

And I was like, Oh, I haven't seen you in so long.

And she said, Yeah, and I said, You renovated the place.

And she said, four years ago.

Oh well, nice to see you still here.

Why do people oppose Chick-fil-A?

And why do Christians feel drawn into either defending them or to protesting their compromise?

And in one sense, we'll wrap up again by talking about Chick-fil-A.

At the end of the night, Chick-fil-A is not the church, and who knows if the people who run it are even Christians.

I have no idea.

They're closed on Sunday, but that's a nice shout-out.

Could be Mormons for all I know.

I really don't care.

Um, again, I care about the chicken sandwich.

But what's interesting is where a conflict about a biblical worldview comes into play.

It's never the presenting issue, it's never about the fellowship of Christian athletes or salvation army.

It's always about one thing: the exclusivity of the gospel, the exclusivity of our worldview.

The fact that God says his word is true and that truth goes into the world, it is always going to be opposed by those who reject the truth.

Of course, truth will be opposed by those who reject it.

They have very circular reasoning.

Christians are often accused of circular reasoning, but it doesn't get more circular than this.

I reject what you're saying is truth because I rejected that truth.

Therefore, I reject it.

I don't even know if that kind of line even counts as a circle, but there you have it.

And this is something the Bible makes clear over and over and over again.

Ever since the very beginning, where God said this is how he will be worshipped, and Abel did it, and Cain didn't, and Cain took his anger out, not on God, but on Abel.

Cain was mad at Abel, and it had nothing to do with their brotherly relations.

It had nothing to do with who was in charge of whom or who picked up the laundry last or whose turn it was to do the shores.

It was simply an issue of worship.

God said he would be worshiped in this exclusive way.

Abel did it, and Cain could not abide it, and so he killed his brother.

That's at one end of the Bible.

On the other end of the Bible, you see the same thing.

Jesus says in John 15, verse 18, and then repeat it again in verse, uh, John 15, verse 20, if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

John 15:18 John 15:20

The reason some people are opposed to the chicken sandwich is because they're opposed to God.

The reason some people are opposed to things that Christians do is not because they actually care about the things that Christians do.

It's because they're opposed to God.

And Christians get confused if they misread those messages.

If they try to play the game of, well, I'll compromise.

You don't like me giving to this company, I'll give to that company instead, and that'll make the opposition go away.

Well, no, it won't.

No, it won't.

Just like nobody believed it was actually about FCA, nobody also believes that giving to the Southern Poverty Law Center would make Chick-fil-A's problems go away.

Obviously, it will not.

Now, Chick-fil-A is a little, you know, humorous thing about where you eat for lunch.

But I hope you see that same conflict is played out all over the world.

In every place where worldviews collide, it is about that.

It's just better to talk about Chick-fil-A because the chicken sandwich, of course.

Ezra chapter 4 is the same conflict.

Ezra 4 · chapter mention

You can read out Chick-fil-A and read in the rebuilding of the temple.

And I'm obviously moving from trivial to serious here.

Chapter 4 of Ezra, verse 1.

When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building the temple of Yahweh, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the father's houses and said to them, Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we've been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Escheradon, the king of Assyria, who brought us here.

Now, it's a lot packed into that little two verses there.

Notice again that because of the civil war that happened under Rehboam, ten of the tribes of Israel separated from the other twelve, or from the other two.

So Judah and Benjamin stayed in Jerusalem with the king of David's line reigning over them.

The other ten tribes were taken into exile by the Assyrians.

This happened a couple hundred years before Israel finally went into exile, about 200 years apart.

So for 200 years, you just have Judah and just have Benjamin together.

They're the ones that are taken into exile by the Babylonians.

Now the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Assyrians, three different groups, all took people captive differently.

The Persians, which are the most recent group, their approach to taking people captive was to let them live in their lands, let them have their own practices, and by the freedom you give them, they will show respect and most importantly, taxes back to the Persian Empire.

The Babylonians, their approach to taking people captive was to take them out of their land and to re-educate them, rename them, make them learn the Babylonian language and culture, and assimilate them into the Babylonian world.

That was their goal.

The Assyrians had a different approach.

Assyrians, we talked about their approach when we were going through the book of Jonah together.

The Assyrian Empire, when they exiled people, their goal was to breed them out of existence.

They didn't repopulate them in Babylon like the Babylonians did.

The Assyrians would take you captive, split you up, spread you out, and bring other captive people back into where you were from, to occupy your houses and occupy your lands.

And if you tried to go back, you would be forced to just intermarry with some other people.

So the Assyrian approach was to breed you into extinction.

And so chronologically, the ten tribes of Israel, they got ruled by the Assyrians.

They got bred out of existence, and you don't find them anymore in the Bible.

Ever since they get taken to exile, 2 Kings 17, you don't see them again.

They're gone off the pages of history.

Never to return again.

Meanwhile, Judah and Benjamin, which stayed in Jerusalem, they get taken in exile by the Babylonians.

They get, that's Daniel and our study of Daniel last year.

When the Persians conquered the Babylonians, remember their approach is put the people back in their land and let them have their life.

So that's where Ezra 1 begins.

The Jews are sent back.

It's interesting, I tell you all this for chapter 4, verse 1.

The adversaries of Judah and Benjamin.

Do you notice that the author is not even calling them Israel right here?

They are just those two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.

But notice who they're building a temple for.

For Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

Now, when that word Israel is used in the Old Testament, it's not even a reference to the twelve tribes, it's a reference to the God who originally founded the twelve tribes, even though ten of them are gone.

So here you have the leaders of Judah and Benjamin back in Jerusalem trying to build Yahweh's temple again.

They had just founded it at the end of chapter 3.

They founded it with much rejoicing, chapter 3, verse 12.

So the people shouted aloud with joy.

When they saw it, they were so stoked.

They had been going generations without the ability to worship God properly.

They knew to worship God there had to be a sacrifice.

They didn't have a temple.

They knew to worship God you needed priests in the temple.

They couldn't find the priests.

They didn't have a king.

They didn't have anything they needed.

And now they're back.

They have Zerubel, who's going to be from the line of David.

We learned that this morning.

They have him.

They have the priests back.

They've checked the priest's paperwork.

They have the temple back.

They just built the foundation.

And they're so happy and they're worshiping.

And who hears them but these Samaritans taken into captivity.

Ever since the Assyrians took the ten tribes into captivity, here you find some people that broke away from the Assyrian captivity and snuck back into Jerusalem.

This was exactly the Assyrian plan.

They come back into Israel, and there's no other Jews there except the ones that got away, perhaps some widows and some orphans that have been left behind.

And so these escaped people remarry into this group.

Some of them worship Yahweh, some of them don't, some of them are Jewish, some of them aren't.

Who knows after a few generations?

These are the Samaritans, by the way, you encounter in the Gospels.

The Samaritan woman.

She's one of these people.

They lived up in the hills outside of Jerusalem between Jerusalem and Galilee.

They were outcast from the Jews when the Jews repopulated the land.

They were outcast from the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans.

They had no home, so to speak.

But here they are, up in the mountains.

And they see the temple being built, and they want to come back and help.

They want to come back and help.

Here's your first lesson for dealing with opposition.

One, opposition is about exclusivity.

Opposition is about exclusivity.

I didn't put this in the slides tonight because you have it in your green notebook, but if you forgot your green notebook, then treasure this in your heart.

Opposition is about exclusivity.

In other words, people are opposed to what God is doing because they are opposed to the exclusive nature of what he's doing.

They reject God's program in the world because they reject the exclusive nature of it.

And it has always been this way.

Jesus says, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.

Why do they persecute Jesus?

Because he said he's the way, the truth, and the life.

And they couldn't handle that.

And so they go after him and still go after us as well.

John 16, verse 1, Jesus says, These things I've spoken to you, so that you can be kept from stumbling.

John 16:1

And when that happens to you, he says in John 16, verse 4, you will remember that I warned you.

John 16:4

He says, They're going to rise up against you, and when it happens, don't say I didn't tell you about it.

So why do people rise up against Christians?

Because they reject the exclusive nature of God's word.

This is the way it was with Cain and Abel.

I mentioned that earlier.

It was the way it was with Noah.

Noah had rebellion on his hands because people wouldn't repent from their sins.

It was the way it was with Lot.

People in Lot's own city rejected him because he wouldn't compromise enough.

Lot tried to assuage them by compromising, specifically compromising sexually in that world, and no amount of compromise was enough.

As long as he held a shred of connection to God, Lot was rejected.

Abraham had persecution, much of it from Lot.

David was persecuted, run out of town, because of the exclusive nature of what he taught.

Moses had rebellion in his hands.

People couldn't stand that he was the leader God gave them.

A third of the angels rebel against God for the same reason.

Why can't they be like God?

And that's what the world has.

Most of the world, of course, hates God, but there's a certain breed of false religion in the world that has the anything but Christianity motto on it.

People that will believe and accept anything as long as it's not Christianity.

No matter how ridiculous or how logically contradictory it is, as long as it's not Christianity, it's A-OK.

Because Christianity is exclusive.

In fact, it flaunts its exclusivity.

There's really no other religion that is like that.

Even in Islam, you have this idea that there's a common mercy that can go to the world.

A common mercy, there's hope for those that are outside of Islam.

You see, this concept of purgatory is the safety net in Catholicism.

In Mormonism, there's even the hope of baptism for the dead.

I mean, every religion has some kind of fail-safe that can be inclusive of people from other religions.

Some kind of back door into heaven for those that reject their message.

It doesn't mean we're saying we're the only way to be saved because there's some other hope for other people.

Next time you see the Pope talking about how Islam and Catholicism have so much in common, that's which you need to hear that through.

That's what he's going for there.

He's not actually advocating for the commonalities between Islam and Catholicism.

He's underlining the very basic facts that it's not an exclusive religion.

There's always going to be a back door in every other religion into heaven.

Except for Christianity.

And this is why the world rejects it.

It makes absolute moral commands, absolute moral statements about the world that people reject.

And sometimes their form of rejection is interesting.

Like here, their form of rejection is an invitation to partner with them.

And notice what they actually say in verse 2.

Let us help you.

After all, we worship your God.

Notice what word they use there.

God.

Not the word Yahweh.

That's like the Shibboleth or Sibeleth, if you will.

To know if somebody's a real God worshiper, do they know God's covenant name?

You guys claim you're Jews that have been living in the mountains for the last 400 years?

That's interesting.

What's the name of the God we worship?

Shouldn't be a hard question.

But they don't know Yahweh's name.

At least they don't use it here.

Instead, they respond with we worship God like you do.

Just a generic God.

And we've been sacrificing to him ever since the Jews are brought into exile.

How do they sacrifice without a temple?

Just a question that I would be asking.

How do they sacrifice without a temple?

You know, it's the story of people who translate the Bible in different language groups, and as they release the first version of the Bible, they'll always it seems like a common refrain is you'll get some elders who look at the Bible and say, Yeah, this is the religion we've always believed.

Okay.

How?

How did you always believe it?

Where's the church?

Where's the Bible?

You didn't have it.

It's just an interesting approach to syncretism.

That we do the same thing you do.

Well, it doesn't seem like you have the temple, doesn't seem like you have the priests, doesn't seem like you have God's word.

So how have you been worshiping God?

And Zerubbabel sees through it in verse 3.

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 it to Yahweh.

He drops the covenant name, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us.

This is their response.

They see through the charade of, we just want to help work with you and sing kumbaya by the campfire at night.

They see through it and say, No, you don't.

You're trying to compromise.

You're trying to get us to water down what we're doing.

You're trying to do to us what the Assyrians did to you, to breed us and our worship out of existence.

So no thank you.

In fact, you have nothing to do with us.

That's not in a very evangelistic approach.

But this is not a new covenant people right here.

The point of the old covenant was not to go into all the nations and make disciples, but to lead a transformed life that you draw converts in.

So that's why they can legitimately say, You're not one of us.

You're trying to delude us.

And think about this.

Every time you see the coexist bumper sticker, which still is around, it still makes an appearance.

I thought it had been sufficiently mocked out of existence, but does any of you have one?

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.

Like no, I meant it like that.

There's a certain logical contradictory nature to it.

Can't we all just get along?

Well, not if you all make contradictory claims about what matters most in life.

Now there is a certain truth to the coexist mantra.

As Christians without a kingdom, we are scattered in this world.

We don't have an earthly kingdom.

We're citizens of heaven.

We don't have an earthly kingdom.

So we need to coexist with people of earthly kingdoms in this world.

Christians need to be able to coexist.

So if by coexist you mean can I be a good neighbor to people that reject Christ?

You better be.

Can I work hard at a secular company?

You know, my boss doesn't know Jesus and my co-workers don't know Jesus.

I don't know if I can work there.

Hey, that's the only place you're gonna work, my friend.

Unless you join a church.

You're gonna work around non-Christians.

That is the nature of the world.

You have to be able to coexist in the world.

If that's what it means, great, you should have the sticker on your car.

But if it means that all religions have overlapping truth claims that can be harmonized in a way that can lead to co-worship, then false.

Do you remember Jesus' first temptation?

The very first one from the devil was to receive the kingdoms of the world.

If only he would give up worshiping God and worship the devil instead.

I'll give you everything you want, Jesus.

Everything that's going to be yours, I'll give it to you now without the cross.

Just don't worship God.

I think of this when I see the kind of stories all the time.

That say, you know, the church's numbers are decreasing, church's numbers are decreasing, and the way to get the church's numbers to bounce back and to grow up and to be the church for the youth tomorrow is to change your doctrine to be less exclusive and more inclusive of whatever the current fads are in society.

I'm sure you've seen those stories and heard those that argument that if you just make the church more like the world, then the church will grow.

But it's worth reminding you that those things that people want the church to do are not what keeps them from going to the church to begin with.

It's never about those things.

It's always about the exclusive nature of Christianity.

And the moment the church gives up its exclusive claims on truth, it dies.

I mean, it's not a coincidence that you look at the denominations in the world that have done this, that have believed the liberal lie that if they change their doctrine, if they, hey, if you want to reach the next generation, you have to give up teaching in creation, because nobody believes that.

After all, science is so sure about evolution that people aren't going to join a church that doesn't believe in evolution.

So just teach evolution and the young people will come to your church.

And churches fall for that kind of stuff.

Like, okay, we'll try that.

And what happens?

Churches are net people are young people are never going to go to a church that just has male leadership.

I mean, that is so antiquated and patriarchal, and that's just, you know, that's just nobody will do this.

I mean, are you kidding me?

And so churches give up on that so that they can grow and reach the next generation.

Nobody believes in inerrancy and the virgin birth.

I mean, come on.

You need to give up on those kind of things in church.

Nobody's gonna come listen to a sermon from a book like this.

I mean, come on.

Give up on those kind of things in church to reach the next generation.

And so churches do that.

And, you know, gay marriage is just the most recent wrinkle in that radar.

They say, you know, if you don't adopt that into your church and you don't make that okay, then nobody's gonna go to your church.

You're gonna be so backwards and out of touch.

That's the one today.

Well, if only there was some kind of experiment we could do, or we could look at churches in the last hundred years that have believed that lie and changed their theology and change their teaching so that they could attract the next generation of people.

Have there been churches in the last hundred years that have done that?

Yes.

And did it work?

No.

Those are the churches that are dying and are dead.

That's the nature of this kind of attack, though.

And so you have to give Zerubabel props for seeing through this.

They say, hey, let us just build with you.

And Zerubbabel, he has the long view here.

He says, if I say yes to this, then our group will be gone before we even start.

And that's why he opposes it.

By the way, the word here that's used for adversary, that is the word, same word for Satan.

He opposes them.

You have nothing to do with us.

That's the word for adversary there.

You are our adversary, nothing to do with us, is how the YSV renders it.

This is an attack from the devil himself, and Zerubil sees it.

Well, first, recognize that recognize the opposition is about exclusivity.

Second, recognize the wisdom looks like serpent dove.

Serpent hypen dove.

Wisdom looks like a serpent dove kind of relationship.

And that's what you see here.

He ends his very firm defense.

You have nothing to do with us.

He ends it with verse, the end of verse 3 with, because King Cyrus, the king of Persia, told us to do this.

So he's hiding behind a little bit.

He's very strong to them.

We want nothing to do with you.

But then he's hiding behind plausible legal cover.

Do you see that?

He's saying, Oh, I want nothing to do with you.

By the way, the reason I don't want anything to do with you, he's he's playing with a straight face.

Oh, you say you worship our God?

Oh, great.

Great.

I'm so glad for you.

However, I don't believe you.

And also, the king said, We can't work with you.

Sorry, it's the king.

It's above me.

I can't help you.

That's what he says.

This is the nature of wisdom when it comes to dealing with persecution.

Blessed are you, Matthew 5, verse 10 and 11, when people revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil falsely against you for my sake.

Matthew 5:10

We understand that there's a blessing to being persecuted, and that colors our response.

We don't get angry when we're persecuted because we know there's a blessing behind it.

2 Timothy 3, verse 12.

2 Timothy 3:12

All who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

So opposition is coming and it is beneficial to us.

Matthew 10, verse 16, key verse.

Matthew 10:16

I'm sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

Ouch! That doesn't sound optimistic, does it?

I'm sending you out like a sheep into don't worry, don't worry, little sheep.

I'm sending you out there.

Oh, yeah, I'm also sending you into a flock of wolves.

I don't know if wolves go in flocks, but there you go.

And so Jesus says, be innocent as doves, wise as serpents.

That's Matthew 10, 16.

The balance has to be there.

They recognize that the Samaritans are opposing them, but they play it with a straight face.

That's dove-like.

They play it with a straight face.

Hey, our treaty with the king for prohibits us from doing this with you.

I think this is the right approach.

You're dogmatic about your claims, you're strong, you're wise, you know what's happening.

They're wise like a serpent.

Serpent is an idiomatic for wisdom here.

They're wise like a serpent to see the attack.

Because not everybody would see this.

I'm telling you, there's a lot of gullible people that would have fallen for this attack and said, oh, how great.

We were just getting so tired from all the work, and here's a whole army of people that want to help.

Praise God.

No, they're wise enough to see through the attack, but they're innocent enough to have some kind of legal cover for their defense.

And I don't think it's wrong to avail yourself when you're faced with these kind of persecutions or kind of choices with the legal cover that God provides through common grace and through legal institutions.

I think it's totally acceptable to do that.

Let me give you an example.

When I was still in California, the state of California passed rules about college outreach on college campuses that said that organizations could not do ministry on college campuses unless they signed a statement that said they would not discriminate their membership based upon sexual orientation.

And this is a big deal in the news.

Maybe you remember this a few years ago.

Well, 2012 is when this went down.

And many Christian organizations left the university campuses because of that.

They left.

All the parachurch organizations basically left secular schools back then because of this.

And our church, the church I was at on staff at there, we decided not to leave.

We signed the statements because we said we're not going to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation.

But we have in our bylaws that you have to be, to be part of our ministry, you have to be a member of our church.

There.

That solves it.

So we're not discriminating against anybody based on any kind of orientation whatsoever.

As long as you're a member of our church, you can serve in our organization.

Problem solved.

Problem solved.

And there was enough cover for that that we got away with it.

And they're still on the university campuses to this very day.

I think that's a practical example of this kind of thing.

You are unwilling to compromise, but you also recognize that in God's common grace, He's given lots of loopholes in dealing with the world.

And you figure out how to avail yourself of them.

Because you recognize when all is said and done, you want people to be enemies of the cross and enemies of God, not enemies of you.

And that's certainly what Zerubil recognizes here.

Well, verse 4, the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build.

Discouraged is kind of a weak sauce word right there.

I mean, now they're building, and all these groups of the pagan Samaritans up in the hills are hurling insult and throwing rocks at them and threatening them.

And so the people of Judah are getting afraid of working.

And they get bribed.

Verse 5, they bribe counselors against them.

I don't really know what that means.

Whatever the, you know, when you're looking like Balaam style, the people from Judah and Benjamin are looking for help and living in this new place, and they they go to somebody for help, and the person's been paid to give bad advice.

Like, oh, how do you grow crops here?

I picture like opposite of Thanksgiving.

How do you grow crops here?

Oh, you just put a little salt in the field.

It goes a long way.

It's perfect.

I picture that kind of thing being what happened there.

This goes on all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia, who's well after Cyrus.

And, by the way, in the reign of Ahazarius, at the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

So this is jumping 40 years in the future.

He's saying this happened to other times also.

And here's a third example, verse 7, in the days of Arta Xerces.

This is a third king.

So just understand the chronology here.

What's happening in Ezra 4, our narrative, is happening under the reign of King Cyrus.

It continues under the reign of King Darius, and it continues after that in the Persian Empire under King Ahazarius, also called Xerces.

That's the king that is in charge when Esther, the book of Esther, takes place.

He's a king that actually visited Israel, by the way, in 480 or so BC.

Visited Israel on his way to put down a rebellion in Egypt.

And then another king on this long list is Arda Xerxes in verse 7, and that's the king after Esther.

So he's giving you this big scope.

They're covering 80 years here.

This opposition keeps happening through all the book of Ezra and all the book of Nehemiah.

And it's some people stumble over how come he's bringing in so many different kings and he's leaving the chronological order.

And here's a good American analogy for you.

If I said, you know, the impeachment process in the United States of a president has always been politically charged.

Even there were things during President Nixon's impeachment that were called the Saturday Night Massacre.

I mean, what a violent term.

And when it happened with President Clinton, the same kind of language was used and all these kind of threats and stuff.

And also with President Trump, a very partisan environment.

Well, you would know that I'm using those things to help you understand what happened with President Nixon, right?

You wouldn't say, whoa, did he forget who was President when?

Or is he saying Trump and Nixon lived at the same time?

And well, they did, but you know what I mean.

That's what's happening here.

He's using a bunch of different kings from a bunch of different time periods to show you that they've always been persecuting the Israelites.

And here's one example.

They wrote a letter, and I want to read through the letter for you.

The rest of this, it switches from Hebrew to Aramaic.

Ezra so far has been in Hebrew language, it switches to Aramaic here.

And it gives you this long letter.

Verbatim.

So this is a letter they wrote to Artaxerces well after what we were reading about earlier in chapter 4.

It's translated here in verse 8, probably into Aramaic.

I mean, written in Aramaic and translated into Persian.

Rahim, the commander of in Shemeshai, the scribe, wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerces the king, as follows.

Rahim the commander and Semishai the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the governors, the officials, the Persians, the men of Erech and the Babylonians, the men of Susa, that is the El Elamites, and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Asnapar, how great to see you, you've never even heard of them before, deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and the rest of the province of Beyond the River.

Beyond the river is the province where Israel is.

It's a state in the Persian Empire called Beyond the River, beyond the Euphrates.

So it's an actual whole state.

Israel belongs to that state right now.

It's not its own nation, it's a territory of the state called Beyond the River of the Persian Empire.

This is a copy of the letter that they sent.

Dear Artaxerts, the king, your servants, the men of the province beyond the river, send greeting.

Enough with the pleasantries.

Verse 12.

And now be it known to you, the king, that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem.

Cue ominous music.

They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city.

They're finishing the walls and repairing the foundations.

Be it known to the king, if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they won't pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired.

Now because we eat the salt of this palace, it is not fitting for us to witness the king's dishonor.

Therefore we want to inform the king of the s.

By the way, that phrase eat the salt, it's an idiom, which means we don't have it in English, but it means that you eat what that land produces.

So you might in English say, Because we pay the bills around here.

You could say it.

We pay the bills around here.

It means that you're getting the benefit of where you're working.

You put bread on the table for me.

That would be a way of telling your boss, you put bread on my table.

That's their idiom here.

We want, we're giving you a heads up, king, because we're eating the salt of the palace.

And it's not fitting for us to watch you be dishonored.

Then verse 15.

Make a search in the book of the records of your fathers.

You'll 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.

Well, that's all true.

I mean, the Israelites in Jerusalem were a bunch of rebels.

We make known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province beyond the river.

Well, the king writes back.

Again, this is all way in the future of Ezra.

But the king writes back to Rehim, the commander of Shemeshai the scribe, and the rest of their associates who live in Samaria, 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, a search has been made, and it has been found that in this city from of old is risen against kings, and the rebellion and seditions have been made in it.

He probably just read the book of Second Kings, that would be enough.

And 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 to cease, and that 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 herd of the king?

When the copy of King Artazerse's letter was read before Raham and Shemishai the scribe and their associates, they went in in haste to the 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, King of Persia.

That's the end of this chapter.

So these events, these letters take place in Nehemiah's lifetime, much later.

Ezra is just giving them to you now to let you to make this third point for me, your third point and final point tonight.

In persecution, you need God's perspective.

God's perspective is essential in persecution.

So first recognize that opposition is always about exclusivity.

Second, respond to it with wisdom, dove, a serpent dove like wisdom.

And then third, you need God's perspective.

You have to zoom out a little bit and recognize that this kind of thing always happens.

Always happens.

You know, you can't, there's a there's a weakness in American evangelicalism of robe ripping and freaking out about how this latest attack from the culture is gonna be.

This is too much.

Too much.

I'm grumbling right there as I go to vote.

Had it up to here, mm-hmm this country's going, mm-mm.

You know, come on, come on, zoom out a little bit.

Are things bad?

I guess.

Are they getting worse?

I don't know, I suppose.

But they're always like this.

Just zoom, consider the book of Ezra.

They were like this back then.

And even as Ezra is describing the first beginning of the temple, he's giving you a period here of 80 years, and he's talking about to the whole 80 years, this stuff's always happening.

It's always happening.

So don't panic about your little persecution you experience at one moment.

Darius was the strongest Persian king ever, and he shut down the building of God's program.

But God raised up Nehemiah, who came and got it going again.

I mean, that's the point.

Wherever there's opposition, God responds to it.

The opposition had short-term success, they stopped the building for 16 years.

Think about that.

If you're 20 years old, that means the temple has been unstopped being under construction your whole life.

And you think of, you know, things in DC.

They were working on the Washington Monument, I think, for the first six years I worked here.

Are they building a whole new one underneath that thing?

It just seems like it takes forever, but then zoom out and realize, not really.

And the concept of eternity, 16 years is nothing.

The wicked may prosper for a moment.

God's enemies may seem to have victory after victory, but they're not going to win the war.

So you don't want to underestimate Satan's power, but you don't want to overestimate it either.

You don't want to devalue opposition in society, but you don't want to overreact either.

Underestimating the opposition would be not taking the threat seriously.

No, they certainly took it seriously.

Overestimating it would have been to panic and break the king's command.

They don't break the king's command.

When the king says stop the building, they stop.

There's a point in here that Christians need to obey the government, period.

Unless the government commands you to sin, which is different than legislating sinful things.

And I hope you see the difference.

The government can, you know, legalize gay marriage, but that doesn't make you be gay.

The government could have a homosexual holiday, but that doesn't make you be gay.

Daniel can work for Nebuchadnezzar, even when Nebuchadnezzar has his everybody show up to work and worship me day.

Daniel could do that.

He could show up at work.

He just couldn't do the actual worshiping.

Underestimating this kind of stuff would be to say, oh, it's no big deal.

It doesn't affect me and my culture.

Just a chicken sandwich, who cares?

Underestimating.

Overestimating?

Ah! Chick-fil-A! You need the balance and understand that everything is a worldview issue.

And God is in sovereign control over all of it.

His program will advance and it passes even through persecution.

Behind every act of opposition is the basic worldview dilemma.

Is Jesus the king or Darius?

Is Jesus the king or Cyrus?

Do you serve for Jesus' pleasure or for the pleasure of the world?

If you have that lens, then you recognize behind every person who rejects Jesus Christ, behind every person who hates Christians or is opposed to Christians because of their views on this sad or the other thing, you recognize it's not about their views on this side or the other thing.

That has nothing to do with it.

Behind it all is the basic teaching that we believe the only way to heaven is through faith in Jesus Christ.

Lord, we're thankful for the fact that you are a savior and you send your son to be a savior in a world where there is opposition.

Lord, we don't want to be complacent in this world.

We're thankful for the freedoms we have in our culture and the benefits you've given us by being in a country that is free and gives us the freedom to worship, gives us the ability to worship freely like we are tonight.

We're grateful for those freedoms.

And because of that, we pray that we wouldn't underestimate the powerful allurement of opposition, that we wouldn't compromise when confronted with it, knowing that compromise produces death.

So, Lord, I pray for the resolve of the people in our congregation.

Keep us from being compromisers, keep us from assimilating the practices and the beliefs of the world into our own worship, into our own worldview.

Help our worldview be your worldview.

Help our convictions be your convictions and help us live lives that are separated unto you for your glory, for this life and for all time.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.