Ezra 4:1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel…
Facing Adversity
Have you ever noticed how doing wrong is easy and doing right is not? Doing wrong is natural and doing right is nothing short of supernatural! Make no mistake, when you set out to do the right thing, to follow God and honor Him, the devil is going to send adversity. When the Lord raises up a person, the devil raises up adversaries. So it was with the work of God’s people in restoring the temple and that which had been destroyed in Jerusalem.
Ezra 4:1 says, “Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel…” What follows is one problem after another. Now adversity takes many forms, and as you read the story about the opposition, the adversity that these people first faced as they sought to rebuild was deceit.
In Ezra 4:2 it says, “Then they came unto Zerubbabel, and the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do.” This was nothing short of deceit. These people had no intention or desire to build what was torn down. So, they began their opposition by using deceit. You don’t have to fight someone if you can fool them, and that is exactly what they intended to do.
When that didn’t work, they tried discouragement. Verses 4-5 talk about how the people of the land “weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, and hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose.” Have you experienced this in your life? You decide, “This needs to change. I need to start something right. I need to stop something wrong.” Instantly, you face deceit, discouragement, and accusation.
The accusation is found in verse 6: “And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, wrote they unto him an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.” They were trying to work this king against God’s people and what God had decreed they should do.
The good news is that God’s eye is always on God’s people. Chapter 5 tells us that they began to build. Verse 5 says, “But the eye of their God was upon the elders of the Jews, that they could not cause them to cease, till the matter came to Darius: and then they returned answer by letter concerning this matter.”
Don’t expect to accomplish anything of worth without facing adversity and without the God-given resilience to push through it. Anything worth doing is going to face opposition, and anything worth doing requires the grace of God to push through it. That was the experience of God’s people in Ezra’s day, and that can be your experience as well. Expect adversity and rely upon the grace of God which is always greater.