Ezra 3 & 4

Ezra 3
I love the first sentence together: "the people gathered together as ONE man to Jerusalem." They were of one accord; one mind; one spirit! Paul admonishes us in Philippians 2:2 to be of one spirit and then describes what this looks like in a few words:

"Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others" (Philippians 2:3-4).

I imagine the Israelites doing this in their gathering in Jerusalem. Why are there so many divisions among Christians when this is clearly written in every Christians bible?

The people built the altar of the Lord. This is a good example of people coming together, intent on one purpose, working together and striving together. They also celebrated together the festival of booths and other sacrifices.

The people of the Lord also laid the foundation for the newly restored temple. It was a bittersweet time because those who could remember the old temple were gripped with sadness and those who did not rejoiced in having a temple to the Lord.

Ezra 4
Enemies of Judah and Benjamin approached Zerubbabel about helping them build the temple (I imagine some equivalent to today might be if a newly born Christian, being the temple of God [1 Corinthians 6:19], built there bodily temple by reading the Koran instead of the Bible). Z rightly determined this to be evil and rejected the offer. The people of the land, the enemies who were rejected, thought it unfair and wrote a letter to the king of Persia complaining of the Israelite construction. They were able to convinced the king to halt construction.

I don't know where God was in all this. The text doesn't give us any insight into what he thought. I bet, though, that he was involved in all of this somehow.

Praise the Lord that his people, whom he sustains, were still in service to him. I pray that his people today would awake, like Paul says in Ephesians 5:14, and begin to walk as wise, not as unwise people, that they would make the most of the days for they are evil, and that they would understand what the will of the Lord is from his word which is unfailing and more sure than any other sign, miracle, or spoken word! (Ephesians 5:15-17, 1 Peter 1:25, 2 Peter 1:19).