The Danger of Disobedience

0:59Seatbelts had a PR problem, and so car manufacturers and governments hired ad agencies to help them with this problem to convince people to buckle up. And so we had all of these different ad campaigns that ran, like the one that you see behind me, this Volvo ad from the 1960s. This was created by a guy named Massimo Dutti. D-U-T-T-I, no relation. But for decades now, we have heard. Heard all of these different phrases about buckling up. Click, clack, front and back.

1:37Don't give up till they buckle up. And of course, here in our beloved Texas, click it, click it or tick it. So over time, people became aware that getting trapped in the car could be dangerous, but it's far more dangerous to get into a car accident without a seatbelt. Well, friends, today in Ezra 4, we're going to be covering the second half of the chapter. And in the first part of the chapter, the exiles had just finished laying the foundation of the new temple and began experiencing opposition almost immediately. It came in the form of discouragement and fear and obstruction. And that opposition was private and informal. But today, that opposition is going to shift to being public and formal. It's going to be officially sponsored by the government of Persia.

2:33And disobeying the king and this formal decree that he's made, that would be very dangerous for them. To disobey this decree might lead to fines or imprisonment or even to death. But what we're going to learn today in Ezra 4 is that disobeying God is more dangerous than disobeying man. Let's look now at the text together. We're picking up here in verse verse verse verse. Verse 6 today. And this chapter can get a little confusing at this point because Ezra jumps ahead in time. Well, back in verse 5, Ezra noted that the exiles experienced persecution from the days of Cyrus. He was the Persian king who ruled from 538 all the way to 529 BC, all the way until the days of King Darius. And King Darius reigned from 521 to 486 BC. But then here in verse 6, Ezra jumps ahead to two different instances, one that occurred during the reign of Ahasuerus, and one that occurred during the reign of Artaxerxes. Well, Ahasuerus was also known as Xerxes I. And if you've seen the movie 300, he's the crazy king, the crazy Persian king in that movie. He ruled from 486 to 465 BC after Darius. And he was also the one in power during the book of Esther. So if you've ever read Esther before, that's who we're talking about there. And then after him, Artaxerxes came into power, and he reigned from 464 to 424 BC. He's the king who commands the work on the wall to cease, but then later changes his mind and sends both Ezra and Nehemiah back to Jerusalem to oversee the final rebuilding efforts. And so it's important to know all of this because the arrangement of the chapter seems very odd unless you understand what it is that Ezra is doing. So at the outset, he's describing this opposition. That they faced when they returned, this opposition that was private and informal. And now he shifts to describing these instances all throughout their time back in Jerusalem that shifted from private and informal opposition to public and formal opposition. And so this passage does a couple of things for us. First, it reminds us that we can't put our hope in human government.

4:58The very beginning of this book, King Cyrus is in power, and he is favorably disposed to the Jews. He says, you guys go back, you rebuild the temple, I'll provide the resources that you need. Anything that you need, just ask and we'll get it sent to you. He is favorably disposed to them, but then just a couple of kings later, you have unfavorable disposition. The people are no longer in the king's good graces, and it can change that quickly. And so we have to keep in mind that whether government officials in America are for the church or against the church, friends, God's purposes are going to prevail. No human government can stand in the way of what God is trying to achieve. The second thing that this chapter does for us is that it reminds us that opposition might not be short-lived. Opposition might not be short-lived. I mean, we learn in this passage that they faced opposition from the time they came back in 538 BC until after. They finished the wall in 450 BC. Almost 100 years, they went through discouragement, fear, obstruction, and official government decrees saying, you can't do this anymore. You can't rebuild the temple. You can't rebuild the wall.

6:17And what this reminds us is that God has a plan and a purpose for every trial that we go through. He is working out our sanctification. He's working out our salvation. And we can trust in him as we learn to worship him and have faith in him during times where our circumstances don't look good. So with that understanding of the chapter, let's take a look at the actual content. Here in verse 6, we learn that the adversaries of the Jews wrote an accusation against them at the beginning of the reign of Ahasuerah. So this is 486 BC or shortly after. Now, it's really unclear as to whether anything came of this. It doesn't say that anything changed for them, that they had any new restrictions. But then in verse 7, we jump ahead to the next king, Artaxerxes, and they write additional new accusations against the people. And there's a couple things you really need to know about King Artaxerxes for this passage to make complete sense. First, Artaxerxes came to power after his older brother was murdered.

7:25So historians disagree as to whether Artaxerxes himself murdered his older brother. Or if somebody else in the court murdered him, but what for sure is true is that Artaxerxes came to power in the midst of conspiracy. His older brother, who is supposed to inherit the throne, was murdered mysteriously, and then Artaxerxes came to power. The second thing you need to know is that Artaxerxes dealt with rebellion in Egypt for the first 20 years of his reign.

7:54So for the first two decades that he's in power, he's dealing with a revolt, a revolution in Egypt that is sponsored by Greece. So this whole thing is very tricky militarily and politically. That's the situation here. So if you come to power in the midst of conspiracy, and if you're dealing with an act of revolution for the first 20 years of your reign, you're going to have a pretty low tolerance for rebellion of any kind. And so you see here in verses 7 through 10 the nature of this accusation. I want to look at what they say in the following verses. So in verses 7 through 10, the adversaries go out of their way to communicate how many people in the region don't like what they're doing. I mean, look at verse 9. Who is upset with the Jews? Reham, Shimshai, the rest of their associates, the judges, the governors, the officials, the Persians, the men of Erech, the Babylonians, the Elamites, and the rest of the deported nations, and all puppy dogs everywhere.

8:57Right, they go out of their way to say, Every single person on planet Earth is mad about what these people are doing. The reality is, this may have been a very small minority of people that did not like the Jews, that were unfavorably disposed against them. But they try to make it sound in this initial part of the letter like everybody here in this whole region is upset about this. And then in verses 10 through 14, they use undisguised flattery to try to gain sympathy with the king. Look at what they call themselves in this section. They say, We are your servants who eat the salt of the palace and can't bear to witness the king's dishonor.

9:46I mean, give me a break. These people have lived through three different empires at this point: the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, and now the Persian Empire. There have been untold kings who have reigned over them. They don't give a rip about Artaxerxes. They know that he's going to come and go just like the rest of them. But they need his sympathy, and so they have to suck up to him. So they use this undisguised flattery to make it sound like they are his loyal subjects, when, in fact, these are people who are all from different nations. These are people who have all different loyalties. They're not loyal to Artaxerxes, but they have an agenda. And so they have to make it sound that way.

10:29And then in Verses 12 through 16, they make several charges against the Jews. And what they're doing is they're playing on the king's fears. First, they play on his fear of rebellion. Did you see what they said? They call Jerusalem rebellious, wicked, and seditious. And as we've already noted, Artaxerxes is dealing with a very significant rebellion in Egypt. And so that's going to cause him great alarm. Second, they play on his fear of financial ruin. They make this accusation that has seemingly no basis. Look at what they say. They will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired. Well, how in the world do they know that?

11:17I mean, Israel, if anything, was excoriated by the prophets for being too accommodating to the nations who were trying to oppress them. They didn't have much history of rebellion in the ways of taxes or anything like that. And then, third and finally, they play on his fear of humiliation. Look at the very end. They say, basically, if you let this work continue, the city is going to rebel, and then what? You will then have no possession in the province beyond the river. Well, that would be humiliating for this king to inherit this great Persian Empire and then have parts of it breaking off due to rebellion. So they're playing on his fear of humiliation. Well, how is he going? To respond to these charges. That's what the back half of this chapter is all about. It's the king's response. Look at verse 17.

12:12The king sent an answer to Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe and the rest of their associates who live in Samaria and in the rest of the province beyond the river, greeting. And now the letter that you sent to us has been plainly read before me. And I make a decree, and search has been made, and it has been found that this city from of old has risen against kings, and that rebellion and sedition have been made in it. And mighty kings have been over Jerusalem, who rule 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 be not 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? Then, when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letter was read before Rehum and Shimshai the scribe and their associates, they went in haste to the Jews at Jerusalem and by force and power made them cease.

13:17So, what happens here is that after Artaxerxes reads this letter, he has his staff search the archives, and sure enough, there have been previous rebellions in Jerusalem. Most probably it's referring to those of Hezekiah against the Assyrian Empire, and then of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah against the Babylonian Empire. So that's not wrong. That's true. But again, this was just a couple of kings in all of Israel's history of great accommodation to these foreign powers. But the king goes off of those records rather than anything King Cyrus had decreed earlier, and he says that the exiles have to stop rebuilding the city and the wall until another decree is made by him. Now, I want you to note that. I want you to pay attention to that because what did we say at the beginning of this series? God's providence is one of the key themes in the book of Ezra.

14:14And here we see God's providence again because the king doesn't say, this city shall never be rebuilt. He doesn't say that. He says, the city won't be rebuilt until I make a different decree. In other words, I have the power to go back and change what I've said right here. He leaves the door open, and that's exactly what he's going to end up doing. He's going to end up going back and changing his mind and saying, actually, I do want the work to go forward. I do want the wall to be rebuilt in the book of Nehemiah that we're going to see in the spring. And friends, this reminds us of God's word in Proverbs 21. Look on the screen. The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will.

15:02Again, we don't have to fear when government authorities appear to be against us or against the church, because the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. And right now, this looks like a really sad situation. It looks like a defeat for the people of God. I mean, Artaxerxes could have just sent officials to Jerusalem. He could have said, I want you guys to go investigate. I want you to find out why it is that they're rebuilding the city, why they're rebuilding the wall. I don't understand what's going on here. It looks like rebellion. He could have done that, but he didn't.

15:38Instead, what does he do? He tells the authors of the letter, these adversaries, I want you to go and make them stop. I want you to stop all of the work. And look now at verse 24, the very end. Ezra jumps back into the present day. So here we are in the 530s, 536, somewhere around there. 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.

16:13So the chapter stops there. The people quit working on the temple because the king and their adversaries commanded them to stop. They obeyed man rather than God. And so for us, as we read that chapter, it begs the question. What would I do if I were in that same situation? If we were in a situation where the king or the government had commanded us, you can't obey God anymore, what would we do? And now you might say, what would I do? What choice do I have? These men had an official decree from the king. So if they continued to work, well, they could have been fined. They could have been thrown into jail. They could have been put to death.

17:02But this is where it's so helpful for us to look at the rest of Scripture and see what other believers did during this exact same time period, during the time of the exile and the return. You see, other believers who were alive during this exact same time period made different decisions, decisions to obey God rather than man. And their decisions reflected the belief that it was more dangerous to disobey God than to disobey man, no matter what the earthly consequences were going to look like.

17:36So probably a lot of you have read the book of Daniel before. And the book of Daniel is a wonderful book that takes place during this same exact time period, the time period of the exile and then the return. And right at the beginning of that book, there's a story, a very famous story, about three guys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these guys were exiled along with Daniel to Babylon, and they were serving in King Nebuchadnezzar's time. Court. Well, sometime later, Nebuchadnezzar made this massive statue 90 feet, and he commanded that anytime music was played, wherever you were at, whatever you were doing, you had to fall down and worship the golden image. And anyone who did not fall down and worship the golden image would be burned alive in a furnace.

18:24Well, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused, and some of the people saw them not falling down and worshiping this golden image, so they reported it to King Nebuchadnezzar. Well, he brings the guys into the court. He is furious, and he says, Hey, you have two choices. You can worship or you can die. And I want you to look at what they say to the king. Look on the screen. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.

19:01Look at that confidence. But it's not a confidence that is brazen and filled with pride, like our great faith is what's going to save us. They say, but if not, even if he doesn't do that, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. So, how about that for faith and courage? They say, listen. God can save us from that. You can throw us in there. God can save us. But even if he doesn't, even if we fall in there and God chooses not to deliver us and we are burned up instantly, we will never fall down and worship your golden image.

19:43So Nebuchadnezzar's not real happy about this. He has the furnace heated seven times hotter. They bind the guys in their cloaks and everything. And the guys that go to throw them in, the furnace is so hot that when they get close to throw them in, all the men who are trying to throw them in die. But God miraculously delivers them, much to the king's amazement, and they walk out of the fire. Their hair is not singed. Their cloaks are not burned. They don't even have the smell of fire on them. And I want you to look at what Nebuchadnezzar says. This is not a king who worships God.

20:22Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own God. Isn't that amazing? He ends up praising God and he ends up commending them for setting aside his command. He says, you guys were right. To disobey me and instead obey your God, because your God is the one true God.

21:07These guys feared the Lord more than they feared man. They knew it was more dangerous to disobey God than it was to disobey Nebuchadnezzar. And that's not the only amazing story from the book of Daniel. You have the story of Daniel himself. He serves in Nebuchadnezzar's court just like those guys. And then the Persians take over the Babylonian Empire. And now he's serving in Darius's court. And during the reign of Darius, Daniel rises to power, and there's a whole group of guys that are really jealous of him, and so they devise a plan to get rid of him. They trick King Darius into making a decree that if anybody worships anyone except for him, King Darius, for 30 days, they would be thrown into a den of lions.

21:55And so what's incredible about this is that the text says in Daniel 6, after he learned of this decree, it's very explicit in Daniel 6, after he learned of this decree, he goes back home, he opens his windows towards Jerusalem, he gets down on his knees, and he prays three times a day, just like he had done all of the rest of the days of his life. So this wasn't a protest. This wasn't something like, let me show you, I'm Going to openly defy you. He's just like, I'm going to go about my business. I worship God. I pray three times a day with my windows open towards Jerusalem, and no decree from the king is going to make me do otherwise. Well, obviously, Daniel gets spotted by these men. They've set him up, and so they have him thrown into the pit of lions. Now, Darius has great respect and love for Daniel. He's torn up about this. He fasts, he prays all night long, and he runs out to the den of lions. First thing in the morning, they remove the stone, and he cries out to him, Daniel, are you okay?

23:00And he is. He comes out alive. And look at what the king says in Daniel 6:26. I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever. His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end. See, King Darius understood something that so few kings understood or understand today, and that is that his kingdom is temporary. Every kingdom, every nation is going to come to an end. But God's kingdom is eternal. God's kingdom never ends.

23:52See, Daniel was threatened with a gruesome death if he defied the king, but he knew it was more dangerous to disobey God than to disobey. A man. So I bring those stories to your attention so that we can return back to Ezra chapter 4 and ask the question again, what would I do? What would I do? See, we read this passage in Ezra 4 and we identify with these people. It's right for us to identify with the men and women of Scripture who failed to obey God because they were afraid. I mean, all of us have given in to the fear of man at different points in our lives, haven't we? We have failed to speak up. We failed to do what God has commanded us to do because we were afraid of what people would say or what people would do. And what Ezra IV does is it reminds us that we're not alone in that struggle, that people for centuries have dealt with that. God's people have always dealt with the fear of man. And that's why the fear of man has to be replaced by the fear of the Lord.

25:00How is it that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could face down the fiery furnace? How is it that Daniel could remain steadfast knowing that he'd be thrown to the lions? I mean, the answer isn't that they didn't fear man at all. These were regular human beings just like us. I'm sure they were very afraid of the consequences of their disobedience. But their actions communicated that they. Feared God more than they feared man. They knew that disobeying God was more dangerous than disobeying man, and that's what Jesus said too. Look on the screen at Luke 12.

25:43He says, I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. See, Jesus affirms the worst thing that people can do to you and me is kill us. That's it. After that, there's nothing more that they can do. But God is all-powerful, and his authority and his jurisdiction does not end at death. God's authority and jurisdiction has no end, so we must fear him more than we fear man.

26:30And when the authorities tell us that we have to stop obeying God, we have to say, along with Peter and John from our opening reading in Acts 4, look again at what they said, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. The problem, of course, Is that we haven't always feared God more than we fear man.

27:06And neither did Peter. As we know, Peter, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he told Jesus, I am willing to go to prison and even to death with you. But as soon as they came to arrest Jesus, what did he do? He ran away. And only a short time later, he denied Jesus three times, denied even knowing him, after he was so confident that he would never turn away from the Lord. Now, we know from Acts chapter 4 and elsewhere in Scripture, Peter did learn to fear the Lord more than he learned to fear man.

27:45But we also know from what Paul tells us in Galatians 2 that Peter continued to struggle with the fear of man his entire life. It's not something that was just solved and went away. No, instead, it was something that he was going to deal with his entire life. Friends, the good news is that Jesus, who is Peter's Savior and ours, he never feared man more than he feared God. He obeyed God the Father perfectly in every single way.

28:22When Jesus was standing before Pontius Pilate, he stood silently in front of him. Pilate was questioning him, he was asking him all this stuff. About who he really was and everything. And Pilate says to him at one point, Do you not understand that I have the authority to release you or to crucify you? You won't speak to me? And Jesus says to him, You would have no authority over me unless it was given to you from my Father who is in heaven.

28:58See, Jesus wasn't controlled by the fear of man. Jesus was controlled by something much greater. And the scripture tells us that it was joy. Joy was what controlled Jesus. Look on the screen at Hebrews 12. The author says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Listen to this, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

29:52What are we supposed to take away from that? Well, first, Jesus didn't just obey God out of. Duty, but out of delight. He did it for the joy that was set before him, the reward that awaited him of sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Jesus Himself reminds us in John chapter 10, No one takes my life from me, but I willingly lay it down. And he laid it down for the joy that was set before him.

30:26But the second takeaway is an encouragement to endure all sorts of opposition. Because in context, if you've ever read Hebrews 11 and 12, you know that Hebrews 11, it's called the hall of faith. And what it is, is an entire chapter of how men and women in Scripture obeyed God rather than man, in spite of the great opposition that they faced. So you read all about these men and women of faith who obeyed God rather than man, and then you get to chapter 12, you read those verses, and then here's what Hebrews 12:3 says. Listen to this. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted.

31:14Consider him so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. Church, that's our encouragement today. Our encouragement is to fear the Lord more than we fear man, to obey God rather than man. But when we fail, and we often do, the good news is that Jesus succeeded where we failed. Every gospel account, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is the account of Jesus' life and how he perfectly obeyed God from the time of his birth to the time of his death on a cross.

31:50He was tempted in every way and yet was without sin. He himself said that I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it. I came to do everything that is required in it. He obeyed perfectly and then laid down his life willingly on the cross in our place for our sins. And now, whoever trusts in him through repentance and faith is counted righteous as Jesus is righteous. He succeeded where we failed. So our charge today is the same. It's to fear the Lord more than we fear man. It's to believe that disobeying God is more dangerous than disobeying man.

32:32But what we must remember is that when we fail to do that, when we fail to fear the Lord as we should, when we obey man rather than God, friends, we have a Savior. We have a Savior who gave up his life for us, for our failure, for our sin, and stands in our place ready to intercede for us for the joy that was set before him. And I pray today that. The joy of Christ would be our strength too as we seek to obey and honor the Lord in every area of our lives.

33:08Let's pray. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.