Road Trippin With Rachael

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher would read to us when we came back from lunch and recess. These books were all different, but the one that has always stood out in my mind was The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I liked the book so much, that my parents bought me The Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas that year (which are still on my bookshelf to this day), and launched me into a lifelong love of C. S. Lewis. As an adult, I still make periodic trips back to Narnia, but now I also enjoy trips to Perelandra, Mere Christianity, The Four Loves, God in the Dock, and The Pilgrim’s Regress. One other book that I’ve come to appreciate is The Screwtape Letters.

Originally published in 1942, The Screwtape Letters are told from the point of view, not of the Christian but of a demon that is assigned to him. Screwtape, through a series of letters to his nephew, explains how to go about keeping his assigned human from believing in the Enemy (Christ), and should that fail making his human ineffective for service to the Enemy. It’s all about strategy with Screwtape. He wants his nephew to do whatever he can to keep his assigned Christian from being effective. Whether that is having him sent to war, or making him comfortable at home – whatever it takes, and that doesn’t always mean the “whatever” is a bad thing. Although a novel concept as a work of writing for its time, we can see how this works our practically through the Ezra 4. Though not told from the view of demons assigned to their humans, we see chapter 4 told from the view of those on the other side – those who are experiencing the affects of Satan’s strategies. Ezra 4 records how those who did not like the Israelite people returning to the land try to find ways to either be a part of the process for their own gains, and when that ultimately doesn’t work they escalate their complaints only telling half the story, and do everything they can to keep the temple from being rebuilt in Jerusalem.

As we go throughout Ezra 4, we will be looking at two philosophies deployed by Satan to keep God’s people from doing the work he has for them to do. Taking an example from Lewis, we will approach this from the view of Satan using strategy to prevent the returning exiles from accomplishing their mission to rebuild the temple. These two strategies are: if you can’t join them, beat them, and if you can’t beat them frustrate them.

If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them

**As a reminder, this was not an ethnic issue, but a spiritual issue. These people may have claimed to worship Yahweh, but it was a perversion of the the Hebrews were commanded to do.**

“When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple for the LORD, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the family heads and said to them ‘Let us build with you, for we also worship your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of King Esar-haddon of Assyria brought us here’” (Ezra 4:1-2, CSB)

Here we see the first of these two philosophical strategies deployed. The Israelites were returning to the land, they had gotten their houses set up, and they were beginning to build. They had already gotten the foundation and the altar build where they were now able to make sacrifices once again. Now, they had those who had been in the land after the Israelites were taken, who did not want to see the temple rebuilt, who are identified as “enemies,” wish to have a hand in the building – something that was not allowed during the construction of Solomon’s temple and would not be allowed this time either. his brings us to our first major point – that Satan is always going to try and make sin look like it will be beneficial. From a human perspective, it would make sense to increase the workforce, to increase the giving to the Levites, and to increase the funds that were to go towards the temple. Maybe they would get it to be closer to that of Solomon’s. But at what cost? If they assist with the construction, they have a say in what goes into it. It would no longer be a place for only Yahweh, it would become place for any god that the surrounding peoples worshiped because it would be their temple, too.

Another way that Satan likes to beat believers, is by making sin have appeal. The most notable example of this is found in Genesis 3. Taking the form of a serpent, the Deceiver leads the woman to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and then share it with her husband. This act plunged the world into sin, and we are still facing the consequences of it. What looked appealing has proven to be disastrous, leading to death, shame, jealousy, murder, and separation from God. Satan was not able to join Adam and Eve as individuals who were secure in his relationship to his creator, so he convinced them do exactly what God said they shouldn’t, couching it as a good thing for them to be more like God. Instead, it separated them from him, and it took sending his Son to die on the cross for humanity to once again make a choice to be reconciled to God.

His final strategy when it comes to beating the Christian, is to make sin look like worship. The surrounding peoples said that they had been worshiping God since the times of the Assyrians, but what they worshiped was a mixing of faiths. The gods of the people of Canaan had been wrapped up and mixed up with the worship of the God of Israel. Worship of Yahweh looked like the worship of Ba’al. If we want to take a New Testament example, look no further than the book of Acts. In chapter 5 Ananias and Sapphira sell some land, and plan to give the proceeds to the Church. Wonderful. But they decided to keep a part of it and still claim that they were giving it all. Realistically, for them to keep some of the profits from the sale of their land wasn’t wrong; what was wrong, was claiming to give it all and acting like it was an act of worship, and then lying about it. Had they been upfront about keeping some of the money, they might have been used in a major way for the early Church. Who knows what God could have used them for! But they sinned, and then pretended that they were worshipping while committing that sin. For an Old Testament example, there is I Samuel 15. King Saul was supposed to utterly destroy everyone and everything of the Amalekites. God was using the Israelites to bring judgement on the Amalekites for their sins, but instead Saul chooses to leave the king, and animals alive – to sacrifice he says (I Samuel 15:8-15). Saul did not do what he was commanded to do – which is sin. He then tries to make his sin seem like he is worshipping. Satan makes sin look oh, so appealing, and tries to make it look like this that are good. But when he can’t join you, he finds ways to beat you.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Frustrate Them

The second philosophy that Satan likes to use: if you can’t beat them, frustrate them. If the tactic of getting them to sin and turn away from God doesn’t do it, make it hard for them to do the things that God is calling them to do. Primarily, he is going to do this through two ways: discouragement, and half-truths that will slow you down.

When we speak of discouragement, I don’t know if there is a better example of a whole group of people, convinced they were doing God’s will, being held up by discouragement than the Israelites when they are trying to build the temple. There they are getting the foundation completed, getting the altar made, and are preparing to get to work on the walls, when all of a sudden they get a Stop Work Order from the King of Persia (4:21). How did it get to this point? For one, the people who were already in the land went out of their way to discourage them – to the point that they were afraid to build (4:4). Second, they bribed officials to frustrate their plans not through just one king, but multiple kings (4:5). Just to really frustrate the people, a letter was written to King Artaxerxes claiming that Jerusalem was a rebellious, evil city with the assertation that if they complete the temple they will refuse to pay taxes (4:13). Money will always talk, and it was enough that one king unknowingly attempted to cancel out the decree of another – which we learn through Daniel 6:15 cannot happen: a law is a law for the Persian Empire. This was how Satan worked; he found ways that were utterly discouraging.

As disheartening as discouragement is, knowing that some of it is based off of half-truths only adds to the discouragement. Ezra 4:12 shows how these half truths play out. Jumping down to verse 15, it’s eluded to that Jerusalem was a rebellious city, and that could be proven based on the record books. However, what they don’t expound on is that their rebellion took place while they were in the midst of being overrun by the Babylonians. Any rebellion they had was short lived because of how quickly the deportations began. This half truth, combined with the hinting of them not paying taxes and the royal treasuring suffering (Ezra 4:13), was enough for the king to issue a decree (in direct opposition to King Cyrus’ decree in Ezra 1:1) telling them to cease work. I could not imagine what the Israelites felt when that letter arrived. The discouragement they must have felt combined with what they knew to be lies, and mixed in with the fear of them not having defenses must have been overwhelming. And they stopped.

But only for so long. Because then we’ll have chapter 5.

Final Thoughts

It is a beautiful thing to be in God’s will. Things line up, and we are seeing things happen. We know we are in his will through the leading of the Holy Spirit, our own peace of mind, and through the affirmations of fellow believers. But as we see with Screwtape, Satan doesn’t want us to be successful. He does everything he can to to beat believers down so that they will be ineffective at the work God gives to them. This is done through manipulation to make sin appear to be appealing, beneficial, and even to make it look like we are doing something good. And if that doesn’t work, he utilizes discouragement and frustration to stall progress. But what he forgets is that there is a next chapter, and in the end God will be victorious; even when Satan thinks he has us beaten, God is victorious.