Ezra 9
Ezra chapter 9 verses 1 through
15 will be our passage for this evening. It pairs with chapter
10. Chapter 10 is the long-term response
to what we read in chapter 9. One of the things you should
take note of as we read through chapter 9 is notice how seriously
Ezra, remember he’s writing his memoirs here. Notice how seriously
he takes sin and twice he speaks of trembling at the words of
the God of Israel. And so as we hear God’s word
tonight, may we tremble at the words of our God. After these
things had been done, that’s the caravan of people coming
from Babylon. or Persia, after these things
had been done, the officials approached me and said, the people
of Israel and the priest and the Levites have not separated
themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations. from the Canaanites, the Hittites,
the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Ammonites, the Moabites,
the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their
daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the
holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And
in this faithlessness, the hand of the officials and chief men
has been foremost. As soon as I heard this, I tore
my garment and my cloak. I pulled hair from my head and
beard and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the
words of the God of Israel because of the faithlessness of the returned
exiles gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening
sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice,
I rose from my fasting with my garment. And my cloak torn and
fell upon my knees and spread my hands out to the Lord my God,
saying, oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face
to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads.
And our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days
of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt. And
for our iniquities, we are kings and our priests have been given
into the hand of the kings of the lands to the sword, to captivity,
to plundering and to utter shame as it is today. But now for a
brief moment, favor has been shown by the Lord our God to
leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy
place that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little
reviving in our slavery for we are slaves. Yet our God has not
forsaken us in our slavery, but he has extended to us his steadfast
love before the kings of Persia to grant us some reviving, to
set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins and to give
us protection in Judea and Jerusalem. And now, oh our God, what shall
we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments. which you commanded by your servants,
the prophets saying the land that you are entering to take
possession of it is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples
of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it end to end
with their uncleanness. Therefore, do not give your daughters
to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons and never
seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat
the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance. to your
children forever. And after all that has come upon
us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that
you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved
and have given us such a remnant as this, shall we break your
commandments again and enter Mary with the peoples who practice
these abominations? Would you not be angry with us
until you consumed us, so that there should be no remnant nor
any to escape? O Lord, the God of Israel, you
are just. For we are left a remnant that
has escaped, and as it is today, behold, we are before you in
our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this. Amen. The word of the living
God. I think the response to a passage like this for many
people would be, what’s the big deal? Can’t you hear that today? What’s the big deal? I remember,
I don’t know, 10 plus years ago, a family in my church in another
town asked me to come to the house and talk to their college-age
son. He was dating a girl and wanted to marry her, and she
was a Roman Catholic, and he was a Protestant, a Christian.
And the dad, I couldn’t tell what exactly he wanted me to
do. I think he wanted me to tell the difference between a Catholic
and a Protestant, which was kind of his job. But I couldn’t tell,
did he want me to persuade him to marry her or not marry her?
Did he want me to say, well, it’d be all right? And I couldn’t
in good faith do that. I’m like R.C. Sproul. I think
there’s two views of justification. A Catholic does not have a proper
view of justification, which is no salvation at all. And so
I discouraged him from marrying the girl. I said, I’m sure she’s
beautiful. I’m sure she’s nice. I’m sure she’s a good friend.
I’m sure you enjoy her companionship. And I’m sure that a lot of things
might go really well, but here’s the rub. What are your kids going
to be? They’re gonna be confused. Are
we Catholic? Are we Protestant? Do we believe
in justification by faith alone or do we believe in justification
by some other means or method as the Catholics teach? And so
in good conscience, I had to tell him, no, I don’t think so.
I moved on from that church. I don’t know whatever came to
be of him and that young lady. But it’s important for us to
understand here especially in a day and time when maybe racial
sensitivities are really high. This is not about marrying a
person of another color or culture. This is about marrying a person
of another faith. This is about marrying a person
who does not worship Yahweh, the God of Israel. This is about
not worshiping Canaanite, not marrying someone who worships
the Canaanite gods or the Amorite gods or who sacrifices children
to Moloch and all the other abominations of the ites. You remember the
seriousness, I think, of maybe last fall when we were looking
at Israel entering into the promised land, we studied Joshua, the
conquest of the promised land. You’re to go into the land and
you’re to wipe them out. This is the judgment of God through
the sword of Israel on these people. Their judgment, their
guilt has reached up to the heavens and God is now sick and tired
of it. And he’s going to punish them by wiping them out through
the sword of Israel off the face of the earth. And Israel will
inherit a promised land. They’ll inherit houses they didn’t
build, walls they didn’t brick up. Cisterns they didn’t dig,
they’ll eat grapes from vineyards they did not plant, they’ll eat
olives from the trees they did not nurture, and so on. And so
as we think of this passage of scripture tonight, I want you
to have an appreciation for people who tremble at the words of God,
and perhaps tonight, by God’s grace, you’ll tremble a bit more
at the word of the living God. Maybe you did respond in your
head, thankfully not out loud, what’s the big deal? Hopefully
after a few moments of digging through this chapter, you’ll
see it was indeed a big deal. Now remember where we are in
the life of Israel. Around the year 1000 or so, we’ll just round
it up. That’s when Saul and then David
and then Solomon built up Israel into a great and mighty kingdom.
It was a couple hundred years after the Exodus, after the conquest. And Israel is a mighty big land
under Saul, then David, and then Solomon. I heard somebody this
week say, in fact, I think it was Senator Josh Hawley. A strange
place to hear of good theology, but this guy’s got his theology
right. He was being interviewed by Al Mohler and he said, you
know, when Adam failed in the garden to spread the glory of
God across the face of the earth, we see it happen in a pretty
big way under Solomon and the people came from all across the
earth. to see Israel, to see Jerusalem, to see his wisdom
and to see what God was doing through the kingdom and the temple
and all the rest. But after Solomon, wasn’t there
a pretty sharp decline? And that sharp decline led a
couple hundred years later, by 586 at least, temple destroyed,
city laid bare, Jeremiah’s lamentation. The Babylonians have come and
they have wiped away the city. The glory of God has departed.
And now we’re all hauled off and carted off to Babylon. Well,
remember, in 538 under Cyrus, the first wave came back under
Zerubbabel and company. And then, I don’t know, 50 so
years later, we had, after the temple built, we had Ezra come
back. And there’s gonna be one more
little round in about 15 years or so with Nehemiah. They’re gonna rebuild the wall.
But this is a second wave of Israelites coming back to Judah
and Jerusalem. This is a second wave in the
second Exodus. And remember how excited everybody
was. Oh, we got Ezra. We got a teacher
of the law. We’ve got a reformer. We’ve got
a Martin Luther here. We’ve got a man of the book and
he’s going to teach us the law because he knows it and he lives
it himself. Well, Ezra gathers up those 5,000
people and remember they, pack up at the river, camped out,
got the caravan. They’re kicking the tires, find
out there’s no Levites. Remember that last week? And
they went and found them some Levites and they made the trek. They got their gold and the silver
and made it securely and safely. They got back to Jerusalem. They
handed over all the goods, checked it in at the temple and you would
think Ezra is going to get to work. He’s going to be like Paul
in Tyrannus Hall at Ephesus. And he’s just going to shut corn
for a couple of years teaching the Bible, right? Well, the officials
come to him at the beginning of our passage and say, Hey,
it ain’t so good around here. Um, that’s what happens usually
when a pastor goes to a church, you know, he sends out his resume,
pulpit committee gets it. They like him. He likes them. And they tell each other sweet
lies. Oh, you come here and you’re just going to have this rosy
pastorate. And he tells them how good he is. And then, oh,
six, eight weeks in, the shine starts to wear off and he realizes
where the termites are and the dead bodies are and all that. And they realize he’s not as
good as that. Well, that trial sermon he preached the day they
voted on him. And so they all got to decide
to stick it out. or talk about them at Sunday
lunch and get rid of them if they can. That’s usually the
way it goes in the South. But you can imagine Ezra’s just
deflated. Oh my goodness, what have I gotten
myself into? A couple weeks ago, I had lunch
with a guy who is gonna pastor a church over in the Triangle
area. And he and his wife came to lunch
and they wanted to know, well, what’s it take to kind
of revitalize a church? And I said, it takes everything
you’ve got. Because it’s like jacking up a house off of a rotten
foundation. You’ve seen that happen. Somebody
goes and buys a wonderful house, money pit, and they figure out
the foundation’s no good. So they raise it up. They tear
out the foundation. They put a new one in and drop
the house back on it. And then you can re-plaster the walls.
You can fix the plumbing and the electricity. And that’s what
Ezra’s got to do here. a coat of paint. In fact, if
you’ve cheated and you’ve looked ahead at chapter 10, you realize
that all the priests, all the Levites and all the leaders and
everybody, there’s about 110 of them, who have married foreign
women are going to put those foreign wives away. That’s gonna
be the reality of the judgment of God they face. That’s gonna
be the reality of hearing a sermon and doing what the word says.
They’re going to put away their foreign wives. They’re going
to put away their children’s. Maybe some of you remember when
we studied Genesis on Sunday or Wednesday evenings, and remember
Sarah had the big brainy idea. Well, Abe, since we can’t have
a child, why don’t you take my concubine, Hagar, and let’s have
a baby with her. And so Abraham says, swell idea,
honey. And they do all the things that
must be done to make a foreign baby. And they’re a thorn in
the flesh. And you remember, There’s a little
quarrel in the house. You know, you do with your servant
as you please. And so she sends Hagar off. The baby’s laying there, probably
gonna die. And God sees, God hears, God
watches over. But you think to yourself, what
a horrible thing. Couldn’t they have built her
a little, you know, little one-room house? Maybe a couple hundred
yards from the big house. Well, you know how strife is.
It doesn’t matter what you do. If it’s there, it’s there. And
so you can see how drastic it is that they have done this thing
and what God requires of them. This is urgent. We remember Deuteronomy
9. Exodus 33, passages like that
where God expressly, explicitly, clearly, firmly, and loudly said
to Israel, when you go into the promised land, you remain separate. You remain distinct. You don’t
go after those people. or their gods. Now, I know, you know, we fall in love and,
you know, we think beauty is more than skin deep and all those
things. And we say now, what’s the big
deal? I want to tell you and encourage
you, when we have somebody in our church go through premarital
counseling, even go so far as to say to them, you know what,
if you don’t agree theologically, not just are you both Protestants,
not just do you both love Jesus, but there’s conflict. If one
of you is a Baptist and one of you is a covenant, well, one
of you is going to put the child under the covenant. The other
one of you is not. And so then there’s the struggle. How are
we going to educate them? We don’t send them to public
school, Christian school, homeschool, and all the rest. Being equally
yoked is a very deep and significant thing, I do believe. And that
leads us to think the first thing this passage shows us is Israel’s
priority. Israel’s priority is to be separate. Israel’s priority is to be distinct. Israel’s priority is to be clearly
and uniquely the children of Yahweh. Now, I know we all love
world missions. And I know we all love evangelism.
And I know we all want other people to come to faith in Jesus
Christ. And so we take evangelism explosion.
We send our money here. We send a little money there.
And I want to tell you, to quote, was it George W. Bush? It’s not
rocket engineering. The easiest way to be a good
witness is to really live like we heard this morning with the
life of the apostle Paul, live in such a way that no Gentile
can say anything against you and hold up in court. Just a
simple life witness. And that was Israel’s priority.
You think of what we mentioned a few moments ago, how everybody
looked in on Solomon’s Israel. The borders were at their greatest
distance. The land was stretched. It was
as big as it could be. Solomon was wise. The temple
was grand. the one, wasn’t Solomon’s temple
one of the wonders of the ancient world? It was amazing what God
had done in Israel and all the nations were to look and say,
who are those people? They’re strange, they’re different. Oh,
they worship Yahweh. And so we began to see Gentiles
fear God. That was true of Rahab and others. They saw who the people were
and that God was special in their lives. And it’s much the same
way now, isn’t it? Our priority is the same. Now
we’re not, localized in this little bitty nation with this
little bitty temple and this little bitty kingdom. We’re all
over the place. And that’s why we say much to Brenda’s chagrin,
where you live, right, you know, where I’m going with this, where,
where you live ought to be a witness to the world. You know, you gotta
have the brightest house on the street. It ought to, it ought
to be a fragrance in the midst of darkness. your happy home,
your happiness when you’re at work, your joy, your service. We ought to give the Gentiles
no evil thing to say. And so this intermarriage, this
deep spiritual problem is putting a big hurt, a big shadow over
Israel’s priority. Now think about this in your
own life. Oh, I follow Jesus. And my little
joke is, but do your neighbors hear you yelling at your cat
or kicking your cat? You know? Oh, we love Jesus, but we don’t
go to church. Oh, I love Jesus, but you’re
not kind to your spouse. That sort of thing. Our priority
is to live for God and to let the world see how great and gracious
he is. Now, one last thing on this priority,
Malachi chapter two. Malachi chapter two speaks of
God’s purpose in Christian marriage, and it’s to produce godly offspring. And you see the danger here.
Israel is a distinct nation. Israel is a nation with a great
priority to show the glory of God. Israel is putting the next
generation at risk. What happens when generations
don’t follow after Jesus? The church can diminish greatly. We’ve always had this belief
throughout the history of God’s people that our religion best
spreads generationally. Yes, we do evangelism, we do
missions, but evangelism very often happens first within the
generations. So that’s Israel’s priority.
What’s Israel’s problem? Big deal, you say. So they married
a few Canaanites. So my kid married a Roman Catholic.
Or maybe in today’s culture, so my kid wants to be in a homosexual
union, but they still love Jesus. We hear that often, don’t we?
What’s the big deal? There’s a word that comes up
in chapter nine several times, and it’s faithlessness. We break faith with God. We break
faith with the things he tells us about himself, the things
he expects of us. And we break faith with the belief
that he’ll provide for us better. How does God expect us to get
daily bread? Well, one thing, we pray for it. Number two, we
work for it. Should we ever steal it? No,
that’s not how God chooses to provide. And so you’re maybe
feeling a little lonely. I’d like a wife, I’d like a husband.
I can’t seem to get one at the Baptist church or the Presbyterian
church or the community church. And so there’s this person of
this other faith and they seem to have a shine on me and it’ll
be okay. We call it missionary dating,
right? I am so persuasive. I have such powers of the Holy
Spirit that when this person is around me, they’ll be so enamored
by my faith in Jesus that they’ll just drop all their godlessness. That’s not the way it works.
And perhaps you know someone, maybe it’s someone in your own
family who went that way. And what is God saying here?
You can’t be indifferent. And Paul echoes this in the New
Testament. He says, do not be unequally yoked. You know this
principle. Well, Israel’s problem is faithlessness. They didn’t believe God’s commands
or his promises or his provisions, and they have committed treason
against him. They have married into the people
of the land. They have married into the religions,
the syncretism of the day, and they’ve taken for themselves
foreign wives, which always lead the heart astray. Remember Solomon. the son of David, the man after
God’s own heart, solemn and the son of David, the wisest man
on the face of the earth. He had how many wives and how
many concubines? And what did those people do?
They led him astray and he fell into faithlessness as well. And it was a detriment to Israel.
There’s never a good reason to go against God. It doesn’t matter
how good your reasoning skills. It doesn’t matter how good your
rationalization is. It doesn’t matter how strong
your emotions are. It’s good to be firm and fixed
in the word. And the real problem, the bigger
maybe aggravation here is this started top down. You had the
priest involved in this. You had the Levites involved.
You had the governors involved. You had people from the top down
doing it. And what happens? You know, a
lot of our friends in the faith are maybe United Methodist and
they’re struggling now. They’re struggling. Their denomination
has done some things that doesn’t follow the scripture. And there’s
this video floating around by the United Methodist Church.
And it takes satanic abominations and applies biblical words to
them. And it’s trying to deceive the
church into understanding, oh, this is love. Love is love. Relationships
are relationships. And commitment is commitment.
It doesn’t matter what form it shapes. In fact, we’re 21st century,
y’all. It looks a little differently
than it did in Paul’s day or Jesus’ day or Abraham’s day or
Moses’ day. No, God never changes. His word
is firm and fixed. And we need to state clearly
what God states clearly. And we need to realize there’s
never a good reason to stray. There’s never a good reason to
rationalize. But what happens when the church
begins to do such a thing? They’re, as we say from that
old song, looking for love in all the wrong places. And it
brings great trouble on Israel. So there’s Israel’s priority.
There’s Israel’s problem. Now there’s Ezra’s posture. He
plucks out his hair. He plucks out his beard. He lays
face down with his arms stretched out towards the temple. And he
does so until the evening sacrifice. When is the last time you prayed
all day? When is the last time you prayed
all day and it was full of mourning? When is the last time you prayed
all day and it wasn’t rationalizing your sin or saying, what’s the
big deal, God? When’s the last time you prayed
towards heaven corporately for God’s people? You see, Ezra is
standing in the gap, isn’t he? Ezra is standing in the gap for
the people. He’s like Moses interceding for Sodom. Lord, if, I mean,
remember how he just whittled it down? If you just find a few
people in Sodom, would you not spare the city? And finally,
God in his mercy says, get your nephew out of there. and his
family and the sons-in-laws. Ezra’s posture is one of standing
in the gap. The people are faithless, but
here he is faithful. And doesn’t this point us to
Jesus? When we are weak and we are without the ability to follow God and
to walk in his ways, Isn’t it nice to have a person
like Ezra? Isn’t it wonderful to have Jesus
Christ to stand in our place and appease God’s wrath and to
put his avenging wrath away from us? Sometimes there’s only one
in the midst who has a lick of sense and sees things clearly. And so Ezra is acting on behalf. He is interceding on behalf of
Israel. Some of what he does, his posture,
his behavior is dramatic. It’s symbolic. but he tears his
clothes, he pulls his hair, he plucks his beard, he sits appalled. And like-minded people come and
sit with him, and they tremble. Maybe you’ve been outside a critical
care room, an ICU room, and you tremble because you don’t know
whether the person in that room is gonna live or die. And you
tremble because it’s touch and go, as we say. Do we ever sit
outside the critical care room of the church and say, Oh Lord,
we’re dabbling with homosexuality. We’re dabbling with the inerrancy
of scripture. We are dabbling with the long ago settled creeds
and customs of the church. We are dabbling with a definition
of justification. We are dabbling with sacred things.
There was a wonderful article recently on one of the websites
that follows the reformed church in North America. And it speaks
of good faithful churches actually needing to repent of shutting
down during COVID. You know, we were down those
eight weeks because the government said, we don’t know what this
thing’s going to do. And there was the love neighbor. There
was the, keep the Sabbath day. And, you know, it was a tough
one and God willing, we’ll never be faced with that again. And
we’ll never have to do that again. But, but this person writing
this article said, we messed with the Lord’s day. We messed
with the sacred worship of God. And he writes this article and
says how on a Saturday night, a friend called him and said,
look, I’m, I’m in your town. I want to come to your church.
And this guy said, well, you can’t come tomorrow. We’re limiting
the number of people who can be at God’s house. And he said
to him, you mean you’re going to turn me away? You’re going
to turn me away from worship? And he said, yeah, I have to.
And his friend said, no, you don’t. And maybe you better correct
your thinking. And so now a couple of years
later, an article, a thought of needing to repent. Think of
Martin Luther who went to Rome on an errand for his local church
officials. And when he got to Rome, he saw
much of what possibly Aaron found, or not Aaron, Ezra found when
he saw the leaders intermarrying with the peoples of the land.
The priest, who at least in the Roman Catholic day of Luther,
were to remain celibate. They were to be single, not married,
but they were with the prostitutes of Rome. And he saw all kinds
of debauchery and was greatly troubled. And so sometimes syncretism
enters the church. Sometimes a mix of belief enters
the church. And we need, with grief and with
hatred of our sin and our apostasy, our faithlessness, to turn back
to God. And we thank the Lord. Thanks
be to God for a man like Ezra who’s got some sense. And all
day he’s on his knees with his arms spread, begging God. Well,
Ezra’s prayer is the bulk of this passage. And I want to read
it again because it’s so wonderful. And if you’ll follow, it picks
up at verse six. And Ezra, as he’s laying on the
ground, says, Oh my God, I am ashamed. And I blush to lift
my face to you, my God, for our Iniquities. This is corporate,
right? Our iniquities have risen higher than our heads. Our guilt
has mounted up to the heavens from the days of our fathers.
He’s stretching it all the way back, isn’t he? From the days
of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt. And
for our iniquities, we are kings and our priests have been given
into the hands of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to the
captivity, to the plundering, and to utter shame as it is today. Remember, Israel was to be a
light to the nations. And what’s the case now? Their
city was laid bare. Their temple was destroyed. The
presence of God departed when the Babylonians came. Utter shame. But now for a brief moment, that
shame has been lifted, hasn’t it? Favor has been shown by the
Lord our God to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold
within this holy place. Remember, this is a small temple.
They’ve only got a portion of the city. They’ve got about a
15 square mile piece of the promised land. This is not Solomon’s day,
is it? This is not David’s conquest or Joshua’s conquest. This is
a little bitty place. And he says, you gave us You
gave us a little lodging place. You gave us a place to pitch
our tent. You gave us a secure hold within this holy place so
that you, our God, might brighten our eyes and grant us a little
reviving in our slavery. Do you ever stop and think that if it weren’t for the mercy
of God in Christ, he would wipe away his church from the face
of the earth? How quickly we bring him shame
because we say, what’s the big deal? Well, he goes on in verse
nine, we are slaves, yet our God has not forsaken us in our
slavery. Remember, they’re still under
Persian rule, but he has extended to us his steadfast love before
the kings of Persia. He has granted us some reviving
so that we can set up the house of our God and repair its ruins.
And he has given us protection in Judah and Jerusalem. Remember,
this isn’t the first time they’ve dealt with the attraction. Remember the people of the land
came early on and said, Hey, look, we’re in this thing with
you. If you build, we build. Sioux Casa, Ace, our Casa, right? Sioux Temple, Ace, our temple.
I’m butchering. I hadn’t had Spanish since high
school, but you remember they said that. And remember the,
the leader said, Oh, you got nothing to do with us. You’re,
you’re the peoples of the land. Y’all are mixed religion people. We worship
Yahweh. Oh no, we’re with you, we’re with you. No, no, no. So
this isn’t the only time. Well, the prayer goes on in verse 10.
And now, oh our God, what shall we say? And what’s the answer? Not a thing. You better keep
your big mouth shut. You’ve got no excuse. For we
have forsaken your commandments, which you commanded by your servants,
the prophets. We’ve ignored Moses. We’ve ignored
Jeremiah, we’ve ignored Isaiah. We’ve ignored all the warnings.
Remember all the prophets said, if you disobey, you’re going
to get punished. And if you get punished, it’s going to be exile.
Northern kingdom got hauled off by the Assyrians, came true.
Southern kingdom got hauled off by the Babylonians, came true.
We’ve ignored you. Your servants, the prophets,
said the land that you were entering to take possession of is a land
impure with the impurity of the peoples, with their abominations.
They filled it from end to end with their uncleanliness. Therefore,
do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their
daughters for your sons, neither seek their peace nor their prosperity,
that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave
it for an inheritance. to your children forever. You
think about the modern day American church. Let’s strip away all
forms of Christianity and godliness and let’s figure out what the
non-Christians want, not what God wants. Let’s figure out what
will make the non-Christians come to church and let’s create
the syncretistic worship service with good coffee and comfortable
seats. That’s what we’ve done in America.
There’s no other way to put it. And where is the church sitting
out the critical care unit saying, Oh God, we have really goofed
it up. No, they’re trying to do it more and more and better
and better, aren’t they? And people make all kinds of
money off of it. And he goes on to say, shall
we break your commandments again? You’ve brought us some reviving.
You’ve let us come back from Persia. Shall we break your commandments
again and enter Mary with the peoples who practice these abominations? Would you not be angry with us
until you consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor
any to escape? He didn’t wipe them out last
time, did he? But what’s Ezra afraid of? He could do it this
time and he would be in the right. Oh Lord, the God of Israel, you
are just. For we are left a remnant that
has escaped as it is today. Behold, we are before you in
our guilt. None can stand before you because of this. They’re in a real fix, aren’t
they? They’re in a real crisis. And thank the Lord that Ezra
showed up and he sees it and he recognized it. It is corporate
guilt. That’s why we do a corporate
confession of sin every Sunday. God deals with his people as
a whole as he does also individuals. He deals with the corporate sin.
He deals with the national sin. He deals with the things that
God has said do not do. No excuses, only pleading. No excuses, only straight up
confession. encouragement to us is to confess
our sins particularly. You know, confession and repentance
is transactional, isn’t it? We live in a day where we say,
I’m sorry if. Oh my goodness. Or we get the
classic, I’m sorry that you feel offended. Oh, you want to punch
the person, don’t you? Well, we can’t do that because
then we’d have another thing to repent of and it’d just get
messy. But if you ever say, I’m sorry
if I offended you, no, start over, get out your eraser. No
good. We say, oh Lord, you’ve given
us your commandments and you’ve been really clear. And I’ve just
put them behind my back. I’ve said, Lord, I want to do
what I’ll doggone well please. And I don’t care who you are
and what you say, and I don’t even care what you do to me. I’m just going
to do it because that’s really the reality, isn’t it? Where
is that kind of confession? And not just so with God, but
with one another. Don’t ever take God’s mercy for
granted. Our faithfulness is required. And we thank the Lord that the
end of his prayer takes us right to Jesus. The end of his prayer,
behold, we are before you. in our guilt, and none can stand
before you because of this. But there’s a but, isn’t there?
There’s an except. Except Jesus has come. Except
Christ has come, and he has taken all our sins, all our unfaithfulness,
all our syncretism, all our marrying and mixing and loving the things
of this present evil world, and he has paid for it at the cross
of Calvary. And so Israel’s predicament here
is they’ve been caught. They’ve been busted. The man
of God comes and the covenant threats of almighty God are real.
And they say what we can only say to God, I don’t bring you
anything except my guilt. What do we say that we contribute
to salvation? If we’re a good Arminian, we say, well, I came
to my senses and you know, good for me. I came to Jesus. No, the only thing we bring to
salvation is our sin. The only thing we bring is our
guilt and the judge of the earth, the judge of the earth would
be right to put us to death. Now the exiles here are sad. 110 of them spoiled the lot.
And again, you say, say it out loud. What’s the big, well, you
don’t say it, but what’s the big deal? 110 of them. Well, let me remind you of Achan. One. Took a little plunder from
Jericho. Weren’t supposed to do it. They
went out to battle the next day. They lost, what, 10,000 people?
I forget the number. It was a lot of them. A little
leaven spoils the whole lump. You’ve got to get rid of sin
in the camp. And we remember that our faithlessness
requires a faithful one. And thank the Lord here for Ezra.
But thank the Lord for Jesus. Thank the Lord for Christ, the
faithful son, obedient unto death. His merits reach up to the heavens. Our sin reaches up to the heavens,
but his merits, his righteousness reaches up to the heavens. And we can only say, my sin,
my sin, and my savior. And we can cling to him in that
great exchange that took place at the cross. Our sin for his
righteousness, our disobedience for his obedience. Let’s do pray
together. Lord, we thank you for the reminder here, the scared
straight program, as it were, Show us a little snapshot of
your covenant community saying, what’s the big deal? And you
saying it is a big deal. And you sent your son, the Lord
Jesus. Let us never forget what sin is. Let us never forget the
cross of Calvary. Let us never forget. so that
we take for granted our position in your kingdom. Help us to live
for you by your grace, for your glory, for the good of others,
and the witness before the watching world. Hear us and help us and
bring us safely home to the new heavens and new earth, we pray
in Jesus’ name, amen.