Year 2, Day 42: Ezra 4

The World’s Means

Ezra 4 seems like a fairly cut and dry chapter.  So it might seem like today there is reason for a short blog post.  After all, what more can be said besides “the inhabitants of the land did what they could to stop the rebuilding of Jerusalem and they were successful in doing so until the reign of Darius in Persia.”

For starters we can look at the means involved.  First, the inhabitants of the land attempt to join the work.  It could be that the inhabitants of the land actually wanted to help and when they were refused they decided to get the work stopped out of spite.  Or it could be that they were offering to help only to bring more trouble than help to the process.  We cannot be sure what the true motivation is, but we can be sure that interference is a common tactic used to stop God’s plans.  After all, last chapter we left the refugee Hebrew nation praising God.  Now we hear of trouble coming down the pipeline and the work (even the praise) has been stopped.

We can also see in this chapter the “end around” tactic.  When it becomes clear that the inhabitants of the land will not be able to directly manipulate the happenings in Jerusalem, they go out and bribe the local counselors to make the construction work harder.  This would be not too different than today when building inspectors make it difficult for buildings to get built.  Or when courts make it hard to obtain permits and zoning for building to take place.  The native inhabitants get the legal system involved and by its very nature this implies the process slows down considerably.

Finally, we see the “over your head” tactic.  The local inhabitants go to the Persian King directly.  They tell the king to look in the records and discover for themselves that Jerusalem has a reputation for being rebellious (which, unfortunately, they did).  The king offers up a decree to halt all building in Jerusalem.  The construction stops, and it appears that the local inhabitants have won the day.

It is clear that the world will work against the progress of the Lord.  When things get rolling for God, the world and its powers are sure to come in and try to stop it.  That much we can count on.  But the question this raises is why the world happens to be so against God’s work.

Resistant to the Core

I think this chapter points to a very clear answer: humanity resists the work of God out of spite because God asks for humbleness.  Human beings have a difficult time being humble – we really do, me included!  We like to do things our way.  We want to be in charge.  We want people to recognize us for our brilliance.  We don’t really want to be humble and do something someone else’s way.

We see this in the local inhabitants.  When they come offering to help (whether legitimate or through a devious motivation) and they are rejected, they are spiteful and find other ways to hinder the work.  They hinder the work because they didn’t get their way!  Their plans were not allowed to move forward, so they react.

But we also see this resistance in the history of the Hebrew people as well.  The people that throughout this post I have been calling the local inhabitants are traditionally thought of as the predecessors to the people Jesus calls “Samaritans” in the New Testament.  They are Jews – largely Jews from the northern kingdom – that mixed with Gentiles during the captivity.  These Samaritans exist because of the rebellion of their ancestors against God – rebellion in the very nature that they refused to life God’s way.  They come from a stock of people who chose their own way over God’s ways and even in captivity did not learn their lesson.  We know that the people of the Northern kingdom corrupted the practices of God’s people and mixed in the practices of other religions of the world (See 1 Kings 17:7-18 as a reminder).

God wants us to live His way; we want to live our way.  We might even be willing to compromise with God and live our way with a Christian spin.  But this is not what God asks us to do.  God asks us to live His way.  Human beings are not very good at being humble.  We’re not very good at taking orders.  And we certainly aren’t very good at doing things the way God wants them done.

And our refusal to be humble leads us into turmoil.  It pits us against the work of God.  Much like the local inhabitants of the land, we often find ourselves in a choice between doing things the way God desires or asserting our will into God’s plan and getting in the way.  It really does largely come back to humbleness.

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