Handling Opposition

Taught by Arlene Solomon 10/12
Notes by Linda G.

As Chapter 4 of Ezra opens, we see that the returning exiles are met with some serious opposition as they rebuild the temple. “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).

Arlene began her teaching by explaining how she approaches her study of a particular passage, she often finds herself asking questions. Looking at Ezra 4, a relevent question might be “If we are doing the work of the Lord then why does God allow opposition?”. She gave us four possible reasons:

1)God wants to prove our faith genuine. (See 1 Peter 1:3-9) The trials we face test the reality of our faith. Trials help us to see what we truly believe. She pointed out that you have no idea what you believe until you are forced to believe it. It is easy to believe God for a job for one week but make that a year and it gets a whole lot harder. God wants to prove our faith genuine.

2)Some things are learned only through opposition. Often it is only through opposition that our prayer lives or our time in the word are prioritized. As we face opposition we also learn who we are in Christ. According to Ephesians 1:4-8 we are blessed, chosen, adopted, forgiven, redeemed and loved. It is in these desperate times that we have to make a choice to believe that this is how God sees us.

3)God wants to sift what is useless for what is useful. He wants to remove those things that may be standing in the way of what He wants to do in our lives so that we can be more useful to Him. Some of the things Arlene mentioned were: pride, self-sufficiency, our own agenda, idols and a lack of perseverance. God wants our motives to be pure. (See Luke 22:31-32).

4)God wants to turn us inside out. We have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us and often it is only through adversity that His power is obvious. God's desire is that the Spirit be magnified in our lives while things of the flesh diminish. This is our hope: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Cor 4:16-18).

The next logical question Arlene asked was “How do we handle opposition?”.

Sometimes praying that God would move the opposition isn't always the answer. Sometimes God wants us to be moved by it.

There were four different kinds of opposition the Israelites faced in Ezra 4. They were deception, discouragement, fear and bad counsel.

In Ezra 4:2 we learned that the enemies of Israel were attempting to make the Israelites think that they were just like them. While they indeed worshiped the God of Israel, they also worshiped other gods as well. God had appointed Zerubabbel and Jeshua to oversee the building. Zerbabbel was from the direct line of David and Jeshua was a son of the last pre-exilic priest. God was preserving the purity of his chosen people to prove His faithfulness to them. It wasn't so much about bloodlines as it was about the faithfulness of God to preserve His chosen ones. The leaders were able to recognize this deception and refused their help. Because of this, these enemies 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" (Ezra 4:4)

We examined the four ways the enemies opposed them in more detail.

1) Deception- means to be led astray or wander from the truth. This is important for us to study becasue the Word tells us that in the last days deception will increase. We see this in 1 Tim 4:1, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons”. If deception is going to increase it is crucial that we learn how to recognize it.

Arlene gave three areas in which we can be deceived as portrayed in scripture.
1) Enemy (Genesis 3:13)
2) Others such as a) false prophets (Jer 6:13) b) brothers (Jer 9:4) c) friends (Jer 9:5)
3) Ourselves through a) our own hearts (Jer 37:9) b) our own self-righteousness (Jer 2:34-38) c) idols in our lives (Jer 3:23) d) the pride of our hearts (Jer 49:16)

She pointed out that all of the scriptures fell within the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the prophet that was sent to warn Judah of the impending disastor that would come if they didn't repent. The times were marked by pervasive deception.

Yet we need not be at the mercy of deception. God has given us the ability to exercise discernment. “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God” (Phil 1:9-11).

The word found in this scripture for discern is a word in the Greek that means approved or tested. It carries the notion of testing something whether it should be received or not. Discernment is the ability to pick out what is best.

Discernment is not having a critical spirit. The Lord does not give us discernement for us to pick out what is wrong. He gives it so we can pick out what is best. Arlene gave us a very practical example of this. When shopping for oranges she will go through the bin picking up and looking for the heaviest – these are the ones with the most juice. It is not that she discards the ones she doesn’t find acceptable…but she holds on to the best. She doesn't declare that the oranges she left behind are wicked and should burn for all eternity. She just takes what is best and is on her way. This is how we apply discernment in the spiritual sense.

So the big question is how do we get discernment? (all the following points came from 1Cor 2-3)
Arlene gave us five ways: 1)start with prayer, 2) loose carnality & worldliness (i.e. jealousy and quarreling) – it will surely quench the spirit(1 Cor 3:1 & 3), 3) going deeper into God’s word (1 Cor 3:2) by studying it, doing it , 4) we need to follow God, not man (1 Cor 3:3) 5) we need to prioritize things of God over things of the world.(1 Cor 3:18-20)

After spending a length of time on deception we returned to our list of oppositions the Israelites faced from their enemies.

2) Discouragement - we learned that discouragement in the Hebrew represented two words. Both of those words dealt figuratively with "the hand". One word symbolized power with a lifted hand. When examining these two words together the word picture was as if the hand that was lifted in power had been dropped. In scripture hand is often associated with power. Discouragement denotes a loss of power. What Arlene pointed out was that satan can not give us power he can only take it. If we are discouraged it is because we have chosen to give our power to him. He has no right to it. She also pointed out that Jesus' desire is to restore our power to us as illustrated in Luke 6 when he healed the man with the withered hand. Jesus gave him his power back.

3) Fear was also a weapon used against them. A commonly used acronym is ‘F’ false – ‘E’ evidence – ‘A’ appearing – ‘R’ real. How often do we fall for this? Fear puts us in a place where our emotions are ruling us. We need to learn to discipline our minds with the Word of God to overcome this overwhelming obstacle. The prescription for this can be found in Proverbs 31:18 “She tastes and sees that her gain from work [with and for God] is good; her lamp goes not out, but it burns on continually through the night [of trouble, privation, or sorrow, warning away fear, doubt, and distrust]" AMP. We need to have that same agressive stance that the Proverbs 31 woman had.

4) Frustrating counsel. Arlene asked the class what we would look for in a counselor. Here are some of the replies: wisdom, understanding, someone who gives the Word – not their opinion, trustworthy, experienced, someone who’s walk is in line with their words, someone of prayer.

Very sadly, we see the result of the opposition the returning exiles faced in Ezra 4:24, “Thus the work on the house of God in Jerusalem came to a standstill until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia”. We can draw a parallel from this temporary defeat. Just as the Israelites stopped the work because of deception, discouragement, fear and frustrating counsel, we can too. Don’t give up!!

The best way to beat the enemy at his game is to allow God to use the opposition for us and not against us. Allow it to enpower you by:

• Letting deception bring discernment
• Allowing discouragement to bring courage through Jesus
• Use fear to discipline your mind
• Let bad counsel point you back to God