“Then the peoples around them set out to discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building. They hired counselors to work against them and frustrate their plans during the entire reign of Cyrus king of Persia and down to the reign of Darius king of Persia.”
(Ezra 4:4-5)
Well, we could probably have guessed the peoples around were not going to be happy with our exiles’ answer to their query on help.
The disgruntled locals couldn’t reverse the edict from King Cyrus, but they could certainly make use of a good old fashioned bribe to slow the importing of materials or make sure the money from the royal treasury didn’t get to our exiles. Based on the kings mentioned in verse 5, the work slowed for around twenty years.
But let’s look at the wording: set out to discourage. That is intense. Discouragement was not just a by-product of the situation; our disgruntled locals set out to make it happen.
The Hebrew word for discourage is “raphah” : to sink, relax, lose heart or energy. The peoples around had one goal: to make sure our exiles lost heart and their work sank.
How about us? Many things can cause us to lose heart. A while back a friend and I had a conversation I regularly return to in my brain. Often a way the enemy of our souls can make our work sink is by bringing up past sin. Regrets have a debilitating way about them, don’t they?
This friend and I talked about how being free in Jesus doesn’t mean we pretend the past didn’t happen. It means we take off the binding chains causing our work to sink and our hearts to crumble, and declare based on what Jesus did on the cross that it’s forgiven.
But you know what many of us do, don’t you? We immediately pick those wretched chains back up, and as we’re binding them back around our wrists and feet and neck, we explain to everyone watching that yes, we’re free and forgiven. But please know we don’t deserve this. And we still struggle with this thing over here. And we’re far from perfect.
Trust me when I tell you I’m saying this to myself as well:
No.
Leave those chains down. Refuse to put them back on. Declare over and over that of course you don’t deserve this. That’s the gospel. And of course you’re not yet perfect. You’re working out your salvation.
You claim as many times as it takes that His death was enough of a guilt offering for you.
That there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus.
And that He shows up best in weak people.
And, friends, let’s do this no matter who tries to hand us back those chains.