Obedience, Opposition, and Opportunity

0:52Many people in their lives tried to dissuade them from going to that people group, noting the inherent risks involved, but every one of them was committed because they genuinely believed that God had called them to go and they wanted to be obedient to the Lord and his calling on their life. Well, so they arrived and they made initial contact with the people by dropping gifts to them over a series of many weeks from plain. And then in early January 1956, they made their first face-to-face personal contact with the tribe.

1:25Things seemed to be going well, but one of the tribesmen lied about them and about their intentions. Tensions, and that directly led to the brutal murders of all five missionaries just five days after they made that initial contact with them. These men and their families were obedient to the Lord, and because they were obedient to the Lord, they faced violent opposition for it. And they aren't alone. There have been thousands of Christians, thousands of missionaries, and everyday Christians who have faced that same kind of opposition and worse for centuries.

2:02And every time that we seek to be obedient to the Lord, we too are going to encounter opposition. Today, in Ezra chapter 4, the exiles are going to continue the work of rebuilding the temple, but they're going to encounter opposition as well from the people that live around them. And that's no surprise because we are promised that very thing. Jesus tells us that if they persecuted him, people are going to persecute those who follow him. Paul said that anyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus would be persecuted.

2:35So opposition should not catch us off guard and it shouldn't discourage us, especially when we realize that opposition opens doors for ministry. There are some doors for ministry that will never be opened until we experience opposition and respond to it in a godly way. And so, what we're going to learn today through Ezra chapter 4 is that opposition to Our obedience leads to gospel opportunities. So let's take a look here at the beginning of chapter 4.

3:09Now, the outset of this chapter seems troubling to many readers today. On first glance, it looks like the Jews are rebuilding the temple, and their neighbors come up to them and say, Hey, guys, welcome to the hood. We would love to help you with this reconstructive effort. After all, we worship God, too. And seemingly out of nowhere, for no reason at all, the leaders respond to them and they say, No way, you're not helping us build. We're going to do this by ourselves. Now, if you have children who own Legos, that's exactly what this seems like. Right? One kid is like, No, these are my Legos. I build it by myself.

3:52Not going to let anybody else do that with it. That's what it looks like to us. It confuses us, it offends us. Because one of the highest virtues in modern society is inclusion. It's the idea that anybody should be allowed to do anything they want to do. And so we see here in verse 1 that Ezra calls them adversaries. He calls them adversaries. They're not friends, and that'll become clear in verses 4 and 5. So, what I want to do now is try to understand the context. Why is it that these people are adversaries? Why would they refuse their help?

4:28Well, you remember back to the start of the We talked about in 722 BC, the nation of Assyria came and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel. And if you are a nation who conquers kingdoms and then subjugates those people, what is your greatest fear? Rebellion. You don't want rebellion. And so Assyria had a very wise foreign policy. They had a very effective resettlement program. And so what they would do is after they conquered a number of countries, they would take people from country A and move them to country B. They would take people from country B and move them to country C, and so on and so forth. And what happened was after these newly resettled people lived together for a while, well, eventually they got intermarried and they had families together. And what the effect of all of that had, these displaced people intermarrying with people of different ethnic backgrounds, different religious beliefs, was that eventually nobody cared enough to rebel.

5:31This wasn't their land. These weren't their people, right? And so that diverse group of people, they've been living here for a long time. I want you to look at 2 Kings 17. Let's let the scripture set the context for us. And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharva'im, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities.

6:01So, when we get to the New Testament and we encounter Samaritans, like in the parable of the Good Samaritan, now you understand a little bit more why this was such a hard thing to reconcile. You got these people in the southern kingdom, these exiles, they are of pure ethnic descent, right? They came only from the people of Israel, only descended from Abraham. But these people here in the northern kingdom, in Israel, they're now mixed, and therefore they are seen as impure.

6:28I'm not saying that's a good or godly way to look at these people. I'm just saying that's the fact, that they looked at those people as impure. But here's the thing: when they were relocated, all of these different people into the northern kingdom of Israel, they didn't just leave their religion behind. All of them brought their native religion with them into this area where they were relocated. Their religious beliefs and practices traveled right along with them.

6:54So, look again on the screen at 2 Kings. It says, And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore, the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So, the king of Assyria was told, the nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the God of the land. Therefore, he has sent lions among them. And behold, they are killing them because they do not know the law of the God of the land. So, this reflects common ancient Near Eastern thought. That is, there is a host of gods, and each one of these gods. Rules over a different part of the earth.

7:32So, if you want to have peace and security, you've got to understand how that God operates over that part of the earth. So, this is not true or accurate theology, but this is what they believe. And so, what the king does is he says, Okay, here's what we're going to do: we'll take one of the priests from Israel and we'll send him back, and then he can teach these new people who have been resettled how to worship God the right way. But look what happens in 2 Kings.

8:00But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made. Every nation in the cities in which they lived. So, these nations feared the Lord and also served their carved images. Their children did likewise, and their children's children, as their fathers did, so they do to this day. So, you see, when the people came and they said, We worship God as you do, that wasn't entirely untrue.

8:34They had been worshiping God ever since the days of Ezar Haddon when he moved them there. The problem, of course, is that they weren't worshiping only God. They didn't do it then, and they didn't do it many generations later. They simply added him to all of the other gods that they already worshipped. And so, now you can understand why the leaders refused their help. It's because these people were positive. Polytheistic, they worshiped many different gods, not just the God of Israel. And to worship any other God or gods alongside the one true God is to break the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

9:17So that's what these people had been doing. So to accept their help wouldn't be taking a step forward. Humanly speaking, now they've got more money and resources if they accept the help, but from a spiritual standpoint, they're not taking a step forward. They're taking a step backward to the time before the exile. Why were they exiled to begin with? Because of sin and idolatry. Because they had done this very thing decades ago for hundreds of years. So they couldn't accept their help because they had a completely different theology.

9:49And more specifically, they had a completely different vision for the temple. You see, they were not building all faiths' chapel. They were building a temple exclusively for the worship of the one true God of Israel. And in that temple, they were going to worship him alone according to the ways that he had prescribed in scripture. Now, friends, we're faced with similar situations regularly. If you're a believer, you come across these kinds of things in your life on a normal basis. I'll give you two examples. The first is with non-profit organizations that are starting. By Christians. So let's say that there's a group of Christians and they see a need in the world. They say, these people lack access to clean water, or these people are struggling with hunger, or these with poverty, or these with homelessness. We want to help with that need. And so they start a nonprofit organization that is designed to meet those needs as a bridge to sharing the good news of Jesus with those people so they can meet not just material needs, but also spiritual needs. But what they realize after starting that kind of an organization is that they take a lot of money and it takes a lot of volunteers.

11:08And so then some outside organization, maybe a government organization, maybe not, comes to them and says, hey, we've got money. We've got volunteers. We love what you're doing. Can we be a part of it? But you see, to accept their help, to accept those people, that money, it comes with strings attached, doesn't it? You have to stop talking about Jesus. And so what happens is the mission becomes compromised. Now they're still doing good. They're still meeting all of those material needs for water or food or poverty or homelessness or whatever else. They're still doing good, but Jesus has been taken out of it. The mission has been compromised.

11:48And the same thing happens in local churches. You know, for a lot of local churches, they don't have a formal membership process. And so if you want to join the church, you just raise your hand in the service and say, I want to become a member. Or you fill out a card on the back of the seat, and now you're a member of the church. But nowhere along the way did anyone ask the question, hey, we believe these things about the Bible. Do you believe those same things? We believe these things about Jesus. Do you believe that? This is our vision for discipleship and evangelism. Do you share that vision with us?

12:20And so, what inevitably happens in so many local churches is that the mission becomes compromised because you have people who are now members of the church and they all have different and competing theologies and visions. And that's why we have such a thorough process here at New Life, so that we can, as best we're able, ensure that we all believe the same things, that we all have the same vision and goals with discipleship and evangelism, and that we all believe the same things about the good news of Jesus Christ in the gospel.

12:51To do anything less would be to compromise. And you see, Zerubbabel and these other leaders, they knew they couldn't compromise. They couldn't accept money or labor from these other people because to do so would inevitably compromise the mission. Obedience to God was their sole concern. They wanted to be sure that they built the temple according to God's commands for the express purpose of worshiping God in the ways that he had commanded. But as we're soon going to find out, any time that we are committed to obedience, we're going to experience opposition. So join me here. In verses 4 and 5.

13:36Verse 4. Then the people of the land 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. Now you remember back to verse 1. Ezra called these people adversaries, and now you see why. Their real motives come to the surface, and we see that they wanted to slow down and eventually halt entirely the rebuilding of the temple. That becomes clear. The exiles are focused on prioritizing obedient worship, but these people are not. And that's because they are pluralistic in their faith.

14:26And if you're pluralistic, or if you are nominal in your faith, in other words, you say that you are a believer, but you don't actually live like one, that makes you very uncomfortable. People that prioritize obedient worship makes you really uncomfortable. See, if you're pluralistic, you don't really care what God or gods that people worship because you yourself worship dozens or hundreds of them. You can't get excited about any one God or his agenda when you worship that many of them.

14:58And if you're nominal in your faith, That is, if you claim to be a believer, but that really doesn't inform the way that you live, moderation is the key, right? Moderation is the key for any nominal believer. For the nominal believer, you don't care what people believe as long as they don't believe it too strongly. And we see in 21st-century America, in our society today, it's filled with pluralism and it's filled with nominalism. And that's why, if you are a believer in Jesus who takes the Word of God seriously and who intends to live your life according to what it says, you are extremely, you are seen as extreme, you are seen as radical, you're seen as a weirdo, right? All of those things are increasingly true in our culture. But, friends, obedience to Jesus, obedience to God's word, it's not radical, it's not extreme, it's basic Christianity. That's what it is. Look at what Jesus himself says in Luke chapter 6.

16:07He says, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.

16:47You see, Jesus himself teaches us we can't call him Lord, Lord, and not seek to obey him. But that makes many people uncomfortable, and so they oppose our obedience. In the case of these adversaries, they want to halt construction on the temple. And so what form does their opposition take? How do they oppose the people's obedience? Well, you've heard the expression, if you can't beat them, join them. Well, they actually reverse that. If you can't join them, beat them. They tried to join in with the work to slow it down and to halt it. That didn't work. So now they're going to try to beat them, and they're going to use three strategies. Discouragement, fear, and obstruction. Discouragement, fear, and obstruction. The first tool is discouragement. They literally try to remove the courage from the people who are trying to obey God in rebuilding the temple. And what form does that take? Well, we don't know. It doesn't tell us, but maybe the people are coming up to them and saying, hey, this is going to be really expensive and time-consuming. Are you sure you want to go to all that courage? Cost all that energy and effort to rebuild this temple? Maybe they said, What if it fails? I mean, are you really sure that God called you to do this? If God cares about his temple so much, why did he allow it to be destroyed and burned to the ground?

18:17See, they come and discourage the people. And when people try to discourage us from obeying God, at first, they're the problem. When people try to discourage us, at first, they're the problem. But after we become discouraged, those people are no longer the problem. We become the problem. And we become the problem because we become our own worst enemy. When you're discouraged, nobody has to tell you to stop obeying God. You willingly choose to stop obeying God on your own. We become our own worst enemy. What happens is that we take our eyes off of God and we put them onto our problems and obstacles, our inability to do what God has commanded.

19:07And so we're encouraged all throughout the scripture not to do that, but to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Look at what Paul writes to the Galatians, who were very discouraged. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. That's the message that Paul wants to tell these churches that are dealing with so much discouragement because of the false teachers who have come in. Don't give up. Don't give up. You will reap, but you have to keep at it. You have to stay faithful. You have to stay obedient. You will reap, but you can't give up. And so, in the face of discouragement, that's what we need to do. We need to set our eyes back on Jesus and his perfect ability instead of on our problems and obstacles and our inability.

20:02That's the first strategy: discouragement. The second tool that they use is fear. So, if discouragement doesn't work, maybe they can make the people of God afraid. And what form did that take? Again, we don't know. The scripture doesn't tell us, but maybe they just come and say, Listen, if you rebuild that temple, we will tear it down. Or maybe they come and they threaten personal harm. They say, Don't you know that so many people in your area, they're upset that you're rebuilding that temple? I would hate to see anything happen to your families.

20:36Maybe it took the form of those personal threats. But whatever the strategy involved specifically, they were trying to make the people afraid. And one of our greatest fears is that people will physically hurt us. We all are familiar with that fear. And you know, many people in Scripture were familiar with that too. King David. David, godly and faithful a man as he was, he was well acquainted with fear. King Saul, the first king of Israel, he tried to kill David on multiple occasions. Years later, after the kingdom had been established, his own son Absalom tried to kill King David. And so he knew what it was to be afraid. He knew what it was to literally have people after him trying to kill him. And so if you go and read the Psalms of David, you will see again and again how David is going to do exactly what I'm going to encourage you to do this morning, and that is to remind himself of who God is. Look at Psalm 34 on the screen. This is written by David. He says, I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them.

22:09Tim Chester, a number of years ago, wrote a great book that we have actually in the bookstall. If you'd like to pick up a copy, it's called You Can Change. And in that book, he's talking about one of the primary fears that we deal with, which is the fear of man, the fear that other people are going to hurt us or do something to us. And in that part of the book, he's referring to the words. Reflecting on this psalm, and look at what he writes about this.

22:34In the face of some threat, David is speaking the truth about God to himself. He's reminding himself of God's glory so that fear of others is replaced by trust in God. You see, that's a truth that we have to understand and appropriate into our lives. The fear of man cannot be removed. The fear of man cannot be removed. You are never going to get that out of your life. What you have to do is you have to replace the fear of man with a greater fear, namely the fear of the Lord. And the way that you replace the fear of man with the fear of the Lord is that you fix your eyes on Jesus and you look at him and all of his glory. You look at God and all of his glory in the scripture and you see how he has been powerful and faithful, how he's never failed to provide, how he's never failed to protect. And when we fix our eyes on those truths, we can replace the fear of man with the greater fear of the Lord. To borrow a phrase from Ed Welch, when we do this, God is big and people are small.

23:57And so that's what we must do. The third tool that they use and final tool is obstruction. So, if discouragement doesn't work and fear doesn't work, you have to use some more concrete methods. So, I want you to look at the text again and see what it says here. Verse 5, they bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose. So, what does that mean? Well, it could mean that they bribed false prophets to say that God was telling them things that God wasn't actually saying.

24:35You see that often in the Old Testament. There are these false prophets that get bribed and then they go to the people and they say, hey, this is what God is saying. Or it could mean that they bribed government officials. Because if you recall from the first chapter, King Cyrus had agreed to financially support this work. He was going to send resources, he was going to send money. And so maybe they paid government officials to just make sure that those things never arrived.

25:03But either way, what they're doing is they're using obstruction. They're putting roadblocks, financial roadblocks or spiritual roadblocks. They're putting roadblocks in their way so that they wouldn't be able to complete the task. And according to verse 5, this goes on from the days of Cyrus all the way to the days of King Darius. Well, King Cyrus came into power, as we know, in 539 B.C. over. This area. They went back in 538 BC to start rebuilding the temple, and King Darius doesn't start ruling until 520.

25:39So you have 16, 17, 18 years of discouragement, fear, and bribery. It was a bad scenario. Now, next week, we're going to see obstruction taken to a whole new level in the rest of this chapter. The opposition is going to go from private and informal, discouragement, fear, bribery, to public and formal. That is, it's going to be government-sponsored. And government-sponsored opposition, we get a glimpse of that in verse 6. If you look there, people begin making formal accusations to the government.

26:21Government-sponsored obstruction, or what we would call public persecution, formal persecution, that's hard to deal with. I mean, we know that from Scripture. You think about in the first century, in Jesus' day, King Herod actually mandates that all of the male children to and under be put to death. I mean, public, formal opposition, and persecution, that's very, very hard to deal with. But I would say to you that sometimes private and informal opposition and persecution can be harder to deal with. It can be even harder to deal with. Harder. And the reason that I'm saying that is because public opposition is pretty black and white.

27:07The government comes and they say, we forbid you to worship God. We forbid you to tell other people about Jesus. Well, when they do those things, it's pretty black and white, isn't it? You're either going to submit to what they've said or you're not. You're either going to say, okay, it's illegal to worship, it's illegal to evangelize, so I'm not going to do it, or you're going to be Daniel, you're going to be Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, you're going to be Peter and John, who, after they were arrested and thrown into prison and then released and told, don't you dare talk about Jesus anymore, they said, we have to obey God rather than men. We can't do that.

27:48Public opposition is pretty black and white. But private, informal opposition, that's a lot more gray. What do you do when your own family members oppose your obedience to God? I mean, in the Ten Commandments, it says, honor your father and mother. What do you do when your boss opposes obedience to God? I mean, we learn in the New Testament that we are supposed to submit to authority, that we're supposed to work hard. For our earthly masters, what do you do when your neighbors oppose your obedience to God?

28:40And they tell you, we don't want you doing the things that you're doing. It's not very black and white, is it? It becomes a lot more gray, and that's why I'm saying sometimes private and informal opposition is even harder to deal with. And you see that reality right here. They get so discouraged, they get so afraid. Skip down to the end of the chapter in verse 24. Look at what it says. 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, 17, 18 years. It just sits there, a foundation with no building on it.

29:31The exiles really wanted to obey God, but they experienced opposition, and they forgot that opposition leads to opportunity. And because they quit obeying God at this point, they missed out on the opportunity to see God do great things in their lives. They missed out on the opportunity to have their faith strengthened and grown as they watched God provide for them and protect them all the way until the temple was completed. But even more than that, they missed out on an opportunity to be a light to the nations through their obedience. And that was the whole purpose and point of the nation of Israel. It was supposed to be a light to the nations. Look on the screen at Isaiah 49.

30:19And now the Lord says, He who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him. For I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength. He says, It is too light a thing that you should be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

30:58Now, you remember from the beginning of the sermon, I was telling you the story of Operation Aka as it became known. But I didn't share the ending of that story with you. I think a lot of you may know it, but even if you know it, it's such an encouraging thing to hear again. After those five missionaries were murdered, Elizabeth Elliott, Jim's wife, and Rachel Saint, Nate's sister, went back and they moved in with the Aka. People. They weren't seen as a threat because these were young women. They moved in with the Akka people and they began sharing the good news of Jesus with them and they began forgiving them for the horrible sin they committed against their brother and their husband. And in time, most of the tribe, including many of those people who participated in the murders, they came to faith in Christ. The whole tribe was radically changed for good.

32:04And so we're reminded that the opposition led to an opportunity to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the same thing is true for us. All of our suffering, all the things that we go through, all that opposition, it can lead to gospel opportunities as well. Look on the screen at 1 Peter 2. The context of this chapter is our suffering. He says, For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our. Sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.

33:20See, friends, if you're a Christian, you're a follower of Jesus. And followers of Jesus follow in his steps, as Peter just reminded us. See, Jesus left us an example to follow. When he was reviled, he didn't revile in return. When he suffered, he didn't threaten. He continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Jesus left a perfect example for us to follow. But that's not the good news. The good news isn't that Jesus left us a perfect example to follow, although that is very good that he did that. The good news is that Jesus also died for our sin and our failure to follow in his footsteps and love our enemies like he loved his enemies.

34:10The good news of the gospel is that Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross, and through faith in him, we are now healed by his wounds. And some of you need to experience that healing today, but you haven't experienced it. That healing yet. You haven't experienced the healing of forgiveness, and you haven't experienced that healing because you haven't returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls, as Peter talked about. See, what you need to do is that you need to recognize that your greatest problem is not the enemies that oppose you in your life. Difficult as those family members, as those friends, as those co-workers or neighbors, difficult as they might be, your greatest problem is not the enemies that oppose you in your life. Your greatest problem is that you were born an enemy of God.

35:09You were born with a sinful heart that was bent on rebelling against Him all the days of your life. But Jesus died not for his friends only, but also for His enemies, people like you and me. And we receive Him and we receive forgiveness and healing through faith in Him alone, not trusting at all in our works or in our attempts to follow His example. But if you put your faith in Jesus, you have to understand that following Him comes with a cost. It is costly to follow Jesus, and that's why it's important for us to count the cost before we decide to follow Him. Because part of that cost is the opposition that we're going to experience, the discouragement, and the fear and the obstruction, part of that. Cost is the opposition that we will experience as Christians.

36:06So we have to count that. But we also have to remember that opposition to our obedience leads to gospel opportunities. And by the grace of God, if we take advantage of those opportunities, some of those are going to result in new life in Christ. Let'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.