Introduction
1. Last Sunday Night, I told the (lame) joke about how to stop a charging rhino (you take away his credit card)…
• In spite of how lame that joke was, I did get a few laughs…
• During that service, we learned some of the challenges that face our missionaries…
• Disease, danger, wild animals, people & governments in opposition to Christianity, and many more…
• Any time that people undertake to build the church…
• There will be challenges…
• There will be opposition…
• There will be trials and troubles…
2. But we must endeavor to never give up…
• The church must “charge” forward…
• The Church must be built…
• The Church must grow…
• And I’m sure you realize that I’m not talking about the church BUILDINGS…
• I’m talking about the Church…
• The people…
• We must continue to bring people in to the “family of God”…
3. But, sometimes the church DOES stop growing…
• And, it’s really no joking matter…
• Sometimes something happens that DOES stop the church from charging forward…
• It happened in Ezra…
• and, in looking at what happened to the people of God in Ezra chapter 4…
• it is my hope that the people of God in Belleview Church of the Nazarene can avoid the same pitfalls.
Read Text: Ezra 4:1-6; 23-24
1. First of all, there will be opposition.
A. The church will not just grow while her enemies look on and do nothing…
• we see in our text, the enemies of God’s people heard about what was happening…
• so they put their heads together…
• and they came up with a very insidious plan…
• they came to the leaders of the Church…
• and they offered to HELP them!...
• I’m sure that the leaders would have been very tempted by this offer…
• Who WOULDN’T want some help in the re-building effort?
• They even gave a plausible reason why they wanted to help…
• They said, “we are just like you,…
• we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here."
• And we know, from reading God’s Word…
• That they DID sacrifice to God…
• BUT…that wasn’t the WHOLE truth…
• We find the rest of the story in 2 Kings 17…
• In this chapter, we find read about the people who settled in this area…
• How they came to arrive there…
• Some of the trouble they got into…
• And in 2 Kings 17 verse 33, we find the rest of the story…
• “They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought.”
• So, when they came to Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the other leaders…
• Their offer to help would have been very tempting…
• Who wouldn’t want some help…
• And their statement about worshipping God was also true…
• But they also served other gods as well…
• And their motive in offering to help…
• WASN’T so they could be helpful…
• But their offer to help was so they could get in on the inside…
• And slow it down…
• And disrupt the work…
• And try to throw a wrench into the works and clog it up.
B. I might point out that even today, we will see other groups trying to infiltrate the church…
• To change it from within…
• To dilute our message…
• To try to stop the church from charging forward…
• To soften our message…
• To change our stance on things…
• We’ve already seen some denominations embrace certain practices that are against Scripture…
• One such example is homosexuality.
C. But, we must be like Zerubbable and Jeshua…
• We must stand for what’s right…
• We must stand for the truth…
• NOT truth as WE see it…
• But truth as GOD sees it…
• How do we know God’s truth?
• It is revealed in HIS Word!
• Thankfully, God’s people in Ezra’s day didn’t allow compromise to affect the church…
• And we see that Zerubbabel and the others said “no”…
• And the church kept charging forward.
D. Thankfully, we at Belleview Church of the Nazarene has thus far turned a dear ear to those who would seek to compromise our standards…
• We must continue to charge forward in God’s truth as revealed in His Word.
2. When those opposed to the Church were unsuccessful getting the Church to compromise…
A. They resorted to Discouragement and intimidation.
• Verse 4 of our text tells us that “the peoples around them set out to discourage the people…and make them afraid”
• They even hired counselors to work against them…
• Psychological warfare has been used in battle for centuries…
• And here, we see that those opposed to the church were using psychological warfare against the church…
• Perhaps they tried to slow down the shipment of wood from Tyre and Sidon…
• Perhaps they just continued to chip away at them in the arena of public opinion….
• They used whatever means they could…
• When compromise didn’t work…
• They resorted to fear-mongering…intimidation…and discouragement…
• The opponents to God’s work use the same methods today…
• They try to create public distrust of Christians and Christianity…
• “we certainly can’t have prayer in schools…
• we’ve got that ‘separation of church and state’ thing”…
• “we can’t post the 10 Commandments in public areas…
• Because that’s a ‘Christian’ thing…
• “we can’t have a Nativity or sing Christmas carols in school…
• Because ‘God forbid’ someone actually start to follow Jesus Christ”
• So the enemies of God’s people create fear and distrust OUTSIDE the Church…
• And it appears that they have been quite successful in many ways…
• But I’m concerned that the enemies of God’s people are making inroads into the church…
• And creating fear and distrust WITHIN the Church…
• Making us afraid to take a stand…
• Making us fearful to stand up for the truth…
• Making us afraid to speak out…
• And the psychological warfare continues on.
3. Finally, we see that the enemies of God resort of politics to stop the church from charging forward…
A. in Ezra 4:11-16, we see a copy of a letter that the enemies of God wrote to the King…
• And in Ezra 4:17-22, we see the King’s response…
• And we see that while compromise was an inffective tool against the church…
• And we see that discouragement and intimidation likely slowed things down…
• We see that, through the political process…
• The church was stopped dead in its tracks…
• As soon as the enemies of God, Rehum and Shimshai and their associates had their ammunition against them…
• They went to God’s people and forced them to stop building the church.
• And we find those fateful words in verse 24, “thus the work of the house of God… came to a standstill…”
B. It is interesting to see who these enemies of God’s people were…
• Verse one calls them “the enemies of Judah and Benjamin”…
• It doesn’t say…”the Chaldeans”…or “the Persians”…
• Matthew Henry’s commentary calls them “the relics of the 10 tribes and the foreigners that had joined themselves to them”. (Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Vol 2. Ezra 4)
• These are the people that we studied in Jeremiah who refused to be led into captivity as God planned…
• Instead of going God’s way…
• They went their own way…
• They lived amongst the pagan people…
• And as we’ve already mentioned…
• They joined their religion of serving God…
• To the pagan religion of idol worship…
• Which Matthew Henry appropriately calls a “mongrel religion”…
• You know what a mongrel is…
• It is a dog that is not pure bred…
• And in fact, it has so many different breeds that we sometimes call it a “Heintz 57 Varieties” dog.
C. I dare say that the enemies of God’s people are the same today…
• They will take Christianity mix it and match it with all sorts of other thoughts and philosophies…
• So that people today are quick to say that they believe in God…
• But there are many ways to God…
• Buddha, Mohammed, the worship of nature and many more…
• But we stand on God’s Word…
• And God’s Word …in the words of Jesus Himself…says:
• “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”—John 14:6
• There is NO other way.
D. The Church has always faced opposition…
• There are people who don’t WANT the church to charge forward…
• SOME of these people…
• May even be people who USED to follow Christ…
• But NOW…they’ve gotten sucked in by worldly thinking…
• And the church becomes just another sociological experiment…
• Or the church becomes a pawn in political maneuvering…
• But I SAY, the Church is simply God’s people…
• Going God’s Way…
• And if we as the church start letting the opposition get a foothold…
• We will see the church come to a complete standstill…
• Just like it did at the end of Ezra 4.
Conclusion
1. So, how are we going to stop those who wish to stop the church?
• I think we find the answer all the way back in verse 1…
• Scripture says, “the exiles were building a temple for the Lord”
• Seems innocent enough…
• But when we read it from the KJV, it adds some more description…
• “the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD”
• It doesn’t say, “The children of GOD were building the Temple”…
• It says, “the children of the CAPTIVITY”…
• I find great meaning in that phrase…
• Great meaning…albeit, very subtle meaning.
• I don’t believe that I am reading too much into Scripture when I say that this points to their thinking…
• They viewed themselves as “children of the captivity”…
• Even though Cyrus had issued the decree to allow the building to take place…
• These people of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin still felt the oppression from 70 years of captivity upon their shoulders…
• They still felt that these foreign rulers had authority over them…
• And while it is true that they had CIVIL authority over them…
• God was still God…
• Just as He is today…
• And they had, not only a DESIRE to worship God together…
• But they had an OBLIGATION to worship God…
• And no civil or government authority can take that away unless we let them…
• In Ezra’s day, they allowed the enemies of God to bring the Church to a standstill.
• Why?...because they were thinking like children of the captivity…
2. What’s that mean for us today?
• I think the meaning is obvious…
• The key goes back to our thinking…
• Do we think of ourselves of children of captivity?
• People under the rule of governments and nations?
• Or, do we think of ourselves as children of God?
• I say that if we will THINK like we should THINK…
• We will realize that we are children of God…
• Scripture says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s."…Matt 22:21
• And what is God’s is our WORSHIP…
• Our worship belongs to GOD alone…
• The Church belongs to God alone…
• The Church…by definition…is God’s people.
• People who BELONG to God.
3. As God’s people…
• We are OBLIGATED to see that the Good News about Jesus Christ continues to spread…
• We will not allow the enemies of God cause us to compromise…
• Or grow discouraged or intimidated…
• Or bow to their political pressure….
• Or God-forbid…come to a complete standstill.
• So…how’s YOUR thinking?
• Are you a child of GOD?
• Or a child of captivity?
• The answer to that question will determine the direction of the Church!
