Sometimes when we are doing God's work and we know we are doing God's work, we can maybe allow a little bit of our...optimism to creep in and think that somehow, because we are doing God's work, God is going to bless our efforts and honour our motives. Things are going to be smooth sailing, because after all, we are doing God's work. But then we encounter opposition, and here is the amazing thing to me: we encounter opposition and are surprised by it. We are surprised as if worldlings and atheists and…syncretists, would somehow act any differently than they are actually acting. And so what we have in Ezra 4:1–24, is opposition to the work of God…
The enemies of God are actually going to try very, very, very hard to hinder the work of God. Make no mistake. These are God's enemies. They are God's people's enemies. They are enemies to the mission of God, the purpose of God, the truth of God. In fact, they are going to try their very best in a variety of different ways, to try to hinder the work. And their efforts will prove temporarily successful. And again you think, if these people left [the place] they had been calling home for the last 50-70 years, and they make that 900 mile trek to come back based on promises that God had made to the prophets, wouldn't you think that God would bless their faith in a way that things would be easy? Sometimes we think that God owes us because we have simply trusted him and have done what he has told us to do.1
Brian Borgman
4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build