ROOTED - Thursday, April 2, 2026

Ezra
4:4-5

 4   Then the
people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to
build 5 and bribed counselors against them to
frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the
reign of Darius king of Persia.

Reflection:
Adversaries to Building

Written By: Pastor Jesse Caro

I
like the Book of Ezra. It is a story of the providence of God, that he would
compel a foreign King (Cyrus) to allow God’s people to rebuild the Temple. The
Temple had been destroyed, and now under Persian captivity, the people had no
means to rebuild the Temple. There was no hope of doing so. Until Cyrus orders
it… and (one might say “miraculously”) helps pay for it. The Children of Israel
gather people and resources and start laying the foundation. It, of course, was
not the size and scope of the first Temple of Solomon, destroyed by Babylon (a
fact bringing tears to those who had seen the original Temple) but it was being
rebuilt, nonetheless.

That
is, until opposers came along! They wrote to the next king, Artaxerxes, demanding
that the building stop. The argument was simple: “these people will rise up against
you… and, even worse, you will lose tax revenues!” Compelling arguments… so the
order to stop was given and the plan to frustrate the building of the Temple and
to cause the people to fear succeeded.

We
ought to be very careful when we read a narrative like this (set in a
particular time and place) not to immediately apply it to our lives today. Of
course, it is unavoidable to not read this story in light of Timberlake’s
building campaign. And while we don’t want to draw strong conclusions and
parallels from this text to Timberlake, we can say this: fear should never
stop us from doing what we feel the Lord has asked us to do. We ought to
not allow people “of the land” to dissuade us from honoring God. It is an
age-old temptation: to allow naysayers to stop God’s people from making progress.
That was true thousands of years ago and it is true today in 2026… in Lynchburg
and everywhere else there are naysayers.

Prayer

Lord,
help us to follow through on our calling, no matter the pressure and
discouragement coming from others around us.