February 25, 2024: Message: Revival is Difficult | Scripture: Ezra 4:1-5 | Speaker: Pastor Stephen Choy
Worship Songs: A Mighty Fortress is Our God | My Heart is Filled with Thankfulness | How Deep the Father’s Love For Us
Full Manuscript
Introduction
If able, please stand with me as I read to you from Ezra 4:1-5. TWoL: 1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” 4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build 5 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.
Right around my eighth or ninth birthday, I remember waking up to the sound of police sirens and fire engines near my house. It turns out that a bunch of kids had thought that it’d be funny to go from house-to-house lighting toilet paper rolls on fire and throwing those rolls into homes that had their porch or solarium doors unlocked. It turns out that our house was one of them.
But uncharacteristically, my dad had decided to stay up that night to catch up on his favourite show, Star Trek: Voyager. And at around 1 or 2 am, after everyone else was fast asleep, he heard a faint knock at the door, one that no one would have heard had he slept at his normal time.
So, he got up from the couch, walked over to our front door, looked out the glass pane, and there in the middle of the foyer, on top of the “welcome” mat was a toilet paper roll lit on fire that was slowly spreading. And with great awareness, my dad ran to the laundry room a few steps away, found the bucket my mom used to mop the house still filled with water, hefted the bucket to the foyer area, and promptly put out the growing flame.
Yet, the reason why I woke up to emergency sirens wasn’t because our alarms had triggered their system, but because another house, just four houses down from us had left their door unlocked, but unlike us, there was no one awake to hear the knock. Now, everyone in that family, praise the Lord, was saved, but everything they had—all of their most prized possessions, all their memories—was lost forever.
And I remember the next morning, my sister coming into my room with tears in her eyes having just realized that that could have been us if my dad hadn’t decided to stay up, or if my mom, by “mistake,” hadn’t left the bucket filled with mop water. We could have been the ones whose house had gone up in flames, or worse yet, we could have been the ones who burned up with it.
And from that time on, as long as I lived with my parents, every night, my dad, before going to bed, would walk to our front door, open it, lock the foyer door, come back in, lock our front door, and set the alarm. He had learned that it was now necessary to protect our home with every vigilance, assuming that evil could strike on any random Friday night at 2 am.
This is what we’ll learn this morning as we walk with Israel through our passage—that evil can strike at any moment, threatening to take not only the things God’s given us but the very life we have in him, and that we are to protect God’s house and God’s people with every vigilance. We aren’t to be caught flat-footed. We’re to be on guard. Protect God’s house and God’s people vigilantly, first, by … (being aware of)
1) Beware of (God’s) Hidden Enemies
I say hidden because the first words that come out of these non-Israelites mouths was, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do.” It seems like these people are genuinely interested in helping the Israelites, building with them, joining them, which is strange because it’s likely that they are the same people that Israel encountered in Ezra 3:3—back when they built the altar. We read there that these people were scary people.
So, now, as the temple foundation is being laid a number of months later, for these scary people to come and say, “hey, we sacrifice to and worship the same God as you do, let us help you”—their offer must have been enticing to the Jews. Just think, if they say yes, then there’s no need to fear these people. They’d be able to worship freely. They’d be able to complete the work faster. And better yet, they’d have more people—people to call friends, people to include into their family, people who accept them and make them feel important.
But before they do that, they consider, rightly, who these people are. Who are they? Well, in 2 Kings 17:24-41, we find an account of these non-Israelites who are brought from Babylon and other cities to settle in the Northern Kingdom after 722 BC. Why is it important to mention the Northern Kingdom and the date 722 BC? Because under Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, who’s extremely harsh to his people, the kingdom of Israel splits into two—the north, called Israel, and the south, called Judah. And due to the fact that all of the kings of the north were bad, their judgment comes much earlier than the south in 722 BC under Assyria (cf. 586 BC for the south by Babylon).
Now, after Assyria’s conquering and exiling of the Northern Kingdom, they seek to repopulate its cities with non-Israelites, particularly in the cities in and around Samaria. The problem for these people, who would eventually be called Samaritans, is that they came into the land without any fear in their hearts for the Lord, and God sent lions to kill them. Thus, these Samaritans get an Israelite priest who teaches them about God, and in teaching them, they begin to worship and offer sacrifices for their sin. Yet, even in their reforms, their religion is impure. In the midst of their sacrifice, these Samaritans also cling to their old idols—committing themselves to both Israel’s God and other gods. It’s these northerners who want to join the exiles.
This reminds me of a conversation I was a part of back at my father’s church in Toronto. My mother had invited one of her coworkers to our Christmas Eve service. And that coworker brought her husband along who was a devout Muslim. So, naturally, at the end of the service, my mom and I walk up to this lady and her husband, and we asked them, “how did you like the service?” And they replied, “we loved it!” To which we were a little surprised, and my mom followed up, “what did you think of our presentation of the gospel and the message about the character of God?” And, this time, her husband chimed up, “oh, we thought it was wonderful. You and I, we worship the same God/god, and what you do here is the same as what I do in my mosque. Perhaps, we should have a joint worship event someday.”
And while this gentleman’s enthusiasm was infectious, my mom had to look at him and simply say, “but we don’t worship the same God, and because we don’t worship the same God, as long as you remain Muslim, we’ll never be able to worship together.” The conversation sort of deviated from there, but essentially what my mom was conveying was that only our God is the true God. Only our worship of our God is true worship. You, husband of my coworker, may think that your god is God, and that your worship is legitimate, but it’s not.
Why? Because you don’t know the grace of God—that when I was bound in captivity to my sin, he sent his only Son to die upon a cross for me and to set me free from the weight of my punishment and guilt. Because you don’t know the election of God—that he chose me and set me apart before the foundation of the world so that I might exalt his name and proclaim the goodness of his character in all the earth. Because you don’t know the holiness of God—that he is jealous for his righteous name and has revealed himself not finally through Muhammed or any other religion but through Jesus Christ who is the heir of all things, who created the world, who is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, upholder of the universe by the word of his power—the One for whom every knee shall bow and tongue confess his Lordship over everything—our Great High Priest—the Alpha AND the Omega—the Beginning and the End.
But more than this you do not know the preserving and invincible love of God because your god, dear husband of my coworker, he knows not love in himself like my God does as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You don’t know the extent to which God has displayed that same love for lowly creatures like us as he sends his own Son to be our atonement in order to deliver us from the pit of death and the flames of hell. You say you know god, but you do not know our God.
And this, is what drives home the context of Zerubbabel and Jeshua’s response to these Samaritans: “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God because you know nothing—truly—of our God—what he has done for us, who he is to us, and who we are to him. You cannot understand that, as we understand it, and thus, as much as we’d like you to like us and not stand in opposition to us, you have no place with us.”
For these Samartians, notice, that their claim of right to join and build with the Israelites isn’t because of their heritage with their God—their experience of him—or their love for his relationship in their life. No, they claim that they should build and join the Israelites because the king of Assyria established them and gave them this land, and they’ve done everything to honour the land, including sacrificing to the Israelite God.
In other words, in their eyes, they ought to join Israel because they’ve done all that they’re supposed to do—actually, they’ve gone above and beyond what they’re supposed to do. They’ve earned the right even though he is “your God” and not “our God.” Their works are the reason why they should be able to help and receive the blessings that come with it.
But notice the Israelite response, communicated in context, they say, “We, alone, will build this temple because he is our Lord, our God, the covenant YHWH of Israel.” The reason why Zerubbabel and Jeshua can look into the eyes of these adversaries—these people who want all God’s blessings without truly being God’s people isn’t because they’re being arrogant or unkind but because only those who belong to God—only those who God has worked upon first have a place in his house. It will not be profaned. It will not be mixed with the ways and religions of the world. It will be kept in order. It shall be a house for him, when what these Samaritans wanted was to make it a house to recognize themselves.
And the application question for us in this is clear, is it not? Is our priority our likeability and commonality with man, or is it with God? Do we zealously protect the purity and sanctity of this house and our people regardless of the consequences? Do we know, in our midst, those who can say, “I love God because he has loved me, first. I love God because he sent his Son to die for my sins. I love God because he is more lovely to me than anything or any fear that I have in this world.”? Do we know who truly belongs, or do we willingly and negligently pollute the waters not just by trying to make ourselves more acceptable to the world but, maybe, even by becoming more worldly ourselves?
Perhaps you know where I’m going with this, but we, as a church—as covenanted brothers and sisters to one another—we ought to take our membership here very seriously. It ought to be desperately meaningful to you not for all the fringe benefits like being able to serve in different capacities, feeling self-important, or receiving the congratulations or blessings of others—that’s what the Samaritans wanted. They were in it for what they could get.
But membership in your local assembly—in your church—ought to be meaningful because it is the way that we affirm and oversee one another’s safety in the gospel—as those who can look out and say, yes, I know this person belongs here because she belongs to Jesus. He displays his love for the truth. She dies to herself. He confesses his sin and accounts for the sins of others. She displays the fruit of the Spirit. He knows our God, and it is clear, our God knows him.
Membership—knowing who is and who is not—is the means of showing how important the kingdom of God is to us—that no matter who comes at us—no matter how frightful the world may seem as it imposes its agendas and ideologies upon us—we exist, and we gather together to build this house not for us but for our God who means more to us than being liked or acceptable in the eyes of the world.
This is why we take church membership and teach it so seriously, so meticulously, and so intentionally because we will not compromise on the purity and sanctity of the gospel in this place and in its people. God is worth the adversity because through Jesus, he’s beaten the greatest adversary of our sin, and by it, we know his love in his personal relationship with us and in our relationship to one another. Those relationships ought to be clearly defined. Reflect, then, together, the love of this Jesus by protecting his house and his people with every vigilance from the influence of an evil world.
And as you identify and separate yourselves from the enemies of God, be ready for persecution.
2) Be Ready for Persecution
I wanted to really dive into that first point and draw out from the text the importance of knowing who we are—not only in our individual salvation—but who we are and who we need to be to each other because from the description of our passage, we can infer what is coming for those who truly belong to God, namely, that his people will suffer persecution. And if we don’t know who we are to God and to each other, then we won’t last.
Now, we often say—I’ve actually said it myself fairly recently—that here in America, we really don’t suffer persecution. But, perhaps, the more accurate thing to say is that we, here in America, don’t suffer very much physical persecution. No, our kind of suffering and persecution will probably look something like what we see here in Ezra 4:4-5.
Just consider what these Israelites have to put up with. The exile is over. The physical destruction of their people has come to an end but see what these enemies of the Jews are doing as Zerubbabel and Jeshua turn them away. They seek, firstly, to discourage the people of Judah.
What does this mean? Well, the right definition of the verb is to cause someone to sink down into nothingness, to make someone feel weak, to dishearten someone to the point where they’ve lost courage and drive—to make them feel hopeless.
And perhaps this is what you’re feeling this morning. Perhaps, you’ve just found out that someone in your workplace, in your close group of friends, or even in your family has been making fun of or gossiping about you behind your back because of something he or she doesn’t like about you—maybe it’s the fact that you’re Christian, maybe it’s the fact that you don’t see eye-to-eye. Or, perhaps, you’ve been sharing the gospel with someone you love for years and years, and yet, for all your pleading, they just won’t respond to you with anything but scoffing, accusation, and hatred. This is suffering, is it not?
And what this kind of discouraging does to a person—what it often leads to is the second kind of suffering that we see in the Israelites of Ezra 4:4, namely, that because they are being discouraged, they’re made to feel afraid—afraid to build—afraid to do what they’re legally allowed to do under King Cyrus’ command—afraid to do what they’re divinely allowed to do under the sovereign oversight of God.
Said another way, suffering and persecution—even if it’s not physical persecution—tempt us to turn our eyes from who we are in each other, and who we are in God, to who we think we are in ourselves—to become cowardly, to become self-pitying, to become isolated from the help of others and reliant only upon our own power and strength. These temptations are real, and when they come, we suffer because the devil and the world they want us to feel alone—they want us to feel like we can’t do what God wants us to do.
And sometimes, the world takes it so far that a third kind of suffering comes, in that, they turn entire governments and state actors against us. They can’t leave it at the individual level of discouragement, they’re not settled with making us terrified and unable to act, but they want the power to constrain and hinder us from obeying and worshipping our God, just like they do to the Israelites in Ezra 4:5.
See, it may be true that we do not truly suffer physically, but these things—discouragement, intimidation, and the practices of a corrupt government that attempts to block us from being who and what we were meant to be—they are struggles that we are experiencing even now. The truth isn’t only that persecution is coming, it’s that if you truly live as a Christian in this world—if you’re seeking to minister the gospel to your unbelieving friends and family, if you’re attempting to uphold your Christian ethics in the workplace—in the way you socialize and interact with coworkers, if you’re engaging with people on the street about their sin and their need for a Saviour—it’s not only that persecution is coming. No, you’ll very likely find that persecution is already here, and that it’s always been here.
I want you to notice that—that this kind of non-physical persecution is something that was always there for the Israelites—all the days of Cyrus until the reign of his successor, Darius, years later. Their suffering wasn’t only momentary. It was ever-present, and more than that, it was focused. Verse 5 tells us it not only lasted a long time, but it was meant to frustrate the purposes of Israel. It was intended to break them—to force them to react inappropriately—to reveal or bring out their hypocrisy—as people who didn’t truly trust God like they said they did.
And, church, this is how the world tests us. They work not only to prolong our suffering but to frustrate us—to break us—to prove both to themselves, as those who want sin to abound, and to us that we are not who we say we are. And the question is how do we react? How do we react when the world works so hard to frustrate us—to make our lives difficult? What do we look like when we’re broken by discouragement, fear, or earthly powers?
Is our natural instinct to complain and become angry? Do you lash out at people who love you and seek to strip them of their dignity when you’re at your lowest—to grumble when things don’t go your way? Do your words and actions communicate an attitude of the heart that you think you’re better than whatever it is you’re going through?
Is our natural instinct to gossip and slander—perhaps to retaliate in deeper, more insidious, and cowardly ways? Perhaps, you do the work. Perhaps, you fight through the difficulty, but as you’re doing it, you’re trying to lower the esteem and reputation of those who are forcing you to do something you don’t like.
Is our natural instinct to distrust God? Do you avoid your church and church community—neglecting to meet with them or treating them like people who are meant to serve you? Do you stop consuming the Word of God as if it has nothing to give you, knowing that if you stop seeking your nourishment there, you’ll only go out to seek it in other things—worldly things—fleshly things? Is this how you react when hardship comes your way? Do you give into the demands of the world? Do you let your pride and self-pity win?
Or does the Holy Spirit who abides in you—who ministers the gospel to you, who shows you your own worthlessness, and frees you, in Christ, from the shackles of your own arrogance and sin—does he remind you of who you were when you were just you? And then does he turn your mind and fill you, now, with who you are in God? Does he give you an awe for what you have together with these people—the bride of Christ—sitting in your midst? Do you draw near to your Saviour who suffered the cross on your behalf, suffered your sin, and urges you to find your rest in him?
Here’s the thing about suffering and persecution: it’s not meant to distract you or draw you away from Christ—it’s meant to draw you deeper into him. As the world seeks to discourage us, terrify us, and hinder us, we’re meant to plumb the depths of our joy, our security, and our freedom in Jesus—to fall upon him with greater surrender and devotion than ever before—to call out to him—to saturate yourself with him—to find your peace in the endlessness of his grace because he has suffered for us!
How might we be ready for persecution—a persecution that is coming—a persecution that is already here? It’s by drinking in the truth that no matter how big our distress is in this life, our God is far greater and far bigger because of what he’s accomplished for us and our sin through his Son upon that cross. Nothing we suffer will ever be something he cannot carry us through because Christ has already borne the worst of it all in our stead.
I’ve told you about my love for C.S. Lewis’ Narnia before and in his fourth book, when we go in chronological order, Prince Caspian, there’s this scene where our heroes have been tarrying for a long time, falling into despair and hardship. And then, when they least expect it, they look up, and there he is, standing before them, and Lucy Pevensie cries out, “Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan! At last!” And after embracing her, he says, “Welcome, child.” Then Lucy takes a step back to look at her Lion of a Saviour, and she says, “Aslan, you’re bigger.” “That is because you are older, little one,” answered he. “Is it not because you’ve grown?” Lucy asks. “I have not,” says Aslan, “but every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
And the moral of this is that the longer you know your Jesus—as you grow in your love for him, in your dependence upon him, in your trust of him—the more he becomes your everything, the more of his everything he intends to give you—to fill you with his wonder and majesty. How might we prepare ourselves for persecution in order to protect God’s house and God’s people? It’s by growing in your love, hope, and joy for Jesus every day—being vigilant in your worship of him and in your watching for him.
He has saved you from your sin, and he is coming back to save you from every discouragement, fear, and worldly power. Take care, then, of all he’s given you by his grace—this church, these people, your faith—so that his work for you might not have been in vain, and so that you might be ready for the day when he calls you home.
Comments are closed.