Let’s take a quick look at what was happening. Cyrus the King of Persia has recently taken power in Babylon. He has been “stirred” by the spirit of God. It is time for the people of God to return to Jerusalem. He finances the journey of 42,360 prior exiles to return under the leadership of Jozadak and fellow priest Zerubbabel. Upon return, the group falls under a spell of fear because of the local inhabitants. But they persevere, and in the second year after returning, they manage to lay the foundation of the temple. After this success, the local population wants to get involved.

We like to say God is not hiding. The narrative historical account of God’s interactions with his people in the old testament show us patterns of how life works. This is also true of our enemy, the evil one, and our self-centered sin. Both work against us and also follow typical patterns. It is good to remember these tandem enemies are not original or creative. Evil often will market itself as cutting edge, modern, and innovative. If we are paying attention to these patterns, we should not be surprised as to what is going on around us.

In the book of Ezra, just like today, when people see the Christian life as a “success” path. A way to a good business, family, or self-image it starts to gather fans who want to join in, apart from its core purpose, which is the justifying and sanctifying work of Jesus Christ. In Ezra, Zerubbabel knew the local population had false motives, they weren’t in it to glorify the living Yahweh God. This specific work of rebuilding the temple by Cyrus orders was to glorify God only. Zerubbabel knew nothing should get in the way of the light that Jewish people were to shine on the world.

In response to this rebuff and a failure to incorporate their ways, the enemies of God’s people created a false narrative to stop them. This is the pattern we see day in and day out in our world today. When God’s people are faithful, they often receive a blessing on the macro level, the world wants in on the action but only to get the worldly things they want out of it. If they aren’t able to get in on the action and gain control, they attack the work by creating a false narrative. We swim in a world of false narratives, from slick dishonest science backed by millions of dollars to pagan rituals that have been around 1,000 years claiming to be full of a real love that backward Christianity lacks.

In the case of the rebuilding of the temple, a new king Artaxerxes arises to leadership and the enemies of God appeal to this new king with a mix of out of context truths and lies to stop the work. Artaxerxes believes the misinformation and orders the work stopped. Just like we should not give up, neither did Jerusalem’s rightful residents, a new leader Dairus arises and the work begins again, and after another attempt to stop the work is made, they appeal based on the truth, and when the records are fairly examined, they are found correct and the temple is both newly financed and allowed to finish.

This where the namesake of the book Ezra arrives. Ezra is here to teach the people the law of Moses and create order. Ezra discovers, in a familiar pattern, God’s people have began to adopt the ways of their enemies. They have began to intermarry and form bonds with those who were trying to stop the building of the temple, and whose ways often included such abhorrent practices as child sacrifice.

This is another common work of the enemy. When God’s people appear to be successful, they lose focus. They seem to almost immediately start to follow and adopt the ways of the world around them. Ezra takes dramatic action here to stop this and breaks apart these illegitimate marriages. The Jewish people are God’s message to the world of his truth, and from them will come the savior Jesus. Ezra knows they cannot get off track.

What does all this have to do with connecting to God in a busy and distracted world? We need to be careful not be drawn off course by false narratives of how we spend our time. Our hearts, minds and the weight of our life should not put our trust and hope in social economic theories, false views of identity, and political utopias on either side of the spectrum. We need to also not become weary and not adapt the deceitful tactics of our enemy.

If we want to rebuild our cornerstones, it must be focused on Jesus. We need to keep on bravely being peculiar people given to good works, who are also given to daily study of the word of God, and responding to his commands. We should prioritize prayer as Jesus tells us to pray in the Lord’s prayer, and remembering our blessings telling the truth in love. We can bet such a simple way of life will be met with fear and lies. But Remember, the temple was re-built and Jesus like the exiles will return.

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.