We Seek Your God As Ye Do
Ezra 4:2
Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither.
The adversaries who opposed Ezra in the rebuilding of the temple tried many ways to get him to stop. One of those ways was to get him to believe that they were all the same. They came and asked Ezra if they could build with him because they said that they sought God as he did. Ezra proved that they did not seek God as he did because when he refused their offer, they immediately turned on him and falsely accused him of insurrection before Artaxerxes.
One of the great battles you will fight in your Christian life is against people who won't understand that we are different. Satan will always try to get us to join up with people or causes that may seem important, and his whole purpose of doing this is to get us sidetracked from what we are trying to build, which is the kingdom of God. As a believer, you have to accept that people are different from us. When they are different from us, we have no business joining them, because they will pull us away from spreading the Gospel and eventually from what we believe.
In my early ministry as an evangelist, I was preaching at a church in southern Alabama when the pastor asked me to join him and his church as they joined hands with every church in the city to show their opposition to abortion. I kindly refused this pastor's offer, even though I was preaching for him. He told me they were only joining these people for that cause and nothing else. I told him that I could not hold hands with people who did not believe in salvation by grace alone for any cause. Though this did not sit well with this pastor, and though I had never preached for that pastor again, I'm thankful that I took this stand at a young age because, had I not taken this stand, it would have changed me.
My friend, there are many things we can join that may seem like they are not bad, but we must be careful to understand that Satan is sly and getting us to become comfortable with a crowd that does not believe like us. Satan is very sly in his ability to get us to hold hands with people who do not believe like us, so that we will eventually join them and leave what we do believe.
For instance, I cannot join hands with people who do not believe in salvation by grace alone. I must not join hands with anyone who adds to salvation or changes the Gospel. I don't join hands in their conferences or by reading their books. It does not matter how many good ideas they have; their ideas will corrupt me if I join them for any cause.
Moreover, I cannot join hands with people who believe like me, but are directionally different from me. There are people who are good people, but their direction is different from mine. I have learned that if I join someone who is directionally wrong, they will eventually take me to a destination different from where God would want me to go.
Furthermore, if I look for someone to join up with, I will find someone, but I will find the wrong someone. The only one I am to join up with is Christ in reaching the lost. If you get busy doing what you're supposed to do by reaching the lost, you will discover many others in the same yoke with you, who can be your friends, as long as they stay in the yoke.
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