1. Ezra 4:1–3 (ESV)
  2. Application

Truth and intolerance

Ezra 4:1–3 (ESV)

1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel,

We live in a day when truth has been sacrificed on the altar of expediency, where belief in absolutes is out of fashion. We live in an age of political correctness and religious correctness. If you speak about marriage, you are going to be accused of not being sensitive to sexual preference. If you speak about office in the church, you are going to be charged with being a misogynist, of trampling over women's rights. They are going to call you a fundamentalist if you believe the Bible. If you say, Jesus is the only way, and there is no other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we must be saved… as we do and are ready to die for it, the world will say we are intolerant, narrow-minded, fundamentalists, and guilty of arrogant belligerency because the world in which we live is intolerant of us. Crying out for tolerance, it is tolerant of everything except us—those who insist that Jesus is the only way.1

Derek W. H. Thomas