Confidence in the Mediator

Intro

We’re continuing our study of Ezra Chapter 8 this morning in what has proven to me to be a very rich passage in this larger narrative of how God rebuilt his people after exile. Last week Charles invited us to consider what it looks like for us to be desperately dependent on God in the midst of our vulnerabilities. Let’s pick up there this morning.

I want you to think about a season in your life where you were especially vulnerable. Maybe that season is right now. How did, or how has, God ministered to you in that space?

These last 15 months or so has been a long season of vulnerable transition and grief for our family. By God’s grace and help I really feel like that chapter is closing and a new one is beginning.

When I think back to those first few months here, when the transition was new and the grief was fresh, I can point to several ways which the Lord ministered to me in my vulnerability. Ted Lasso season 2 not only brought me deep laughter, but its driving theme of fatherhood helped me be introspective as I processed my own father’s passing. Our neighborhood on the Near East Side is like a mini Redeemer enclave, so when we had no capacity to find or choose community for ourselves, God found and chose community and friendship for us. Every Sunday here at Redeemer, when we would sing Nathan’s songs, all of which were new to me, God brought me into a place where the tears could flow freely and my heart could be tuned to his love and mercy.

In all these ways and more God ministered to me in my vulnerability. But if I’m honest, there were several points of doubt and temptation to despair along the way. I can still remember the first time when I looked at Neva and said, “I just want to go home.” There were several days where the temptation to chase after shallow comforts and idols tugged hard on my heart.

What about you? Can you count the ways the Lord has ministered to you in vulnerable seasons? Can you also identify the ways your heart might be prone to wander and despair?

How can we find the confidence needed to trust and obey the Lord when we are most vulnerable, when our hearts are most tempted to walk away?

Hold onto those thoughts, because it’s here that our passage meets us this morning. As we saw last week, Ezra and the people are in a very vulnerable position. They’re preparing to head back to Jerusalem, a 900 mile journey, with a small fortune and no protection. They’re not only vulnerable to the physical challenges that a long journey like this would have presented, but they were particularly vulnerable to bandits who would harm and plunder them.

Ezra led the people in being dependent on God through his careful strategizing and commitment to prayer and fasting. But as we look over this passage again, we notice something else: Levites. What is the deal with the Levites? One of the ways in which Biblical narrative draws our attention to the main point of the passage is the way it might speed up and slow down through different events. Notice that almost no attention is paid to the journey itself. This treacherous journey filled with physical challenges and dangerous threats would likely have made for a much better story. Instead, we get several paragraphs about the Levites and their assignments to carry all the treasures.

Why?

Well, we’re going to find out. As we do, my hope for our time together is that we will grow in confidence as we experience the presence and love of God for us in our mediator Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

Background

Look with me at verse 28. Ezra has noticed the lack of Levites, so he strategizes carefully to get a group of about 260 of them to come and join the rest of the exiles. After their fast he carefully assigned all of the bronze, silver, and gold into the care and protection of this group of Levites. Then he says to the them, “You as well as these articles are consecrated to the Lord.” This verse will unlock the rest of the passage for us, but first we need to take a small trip back in biblical history.

We’re going back to the book of Numbers. Now, I know Numbers is generally about the place where we stop in our Bible reading plan’s every year, but stick with me. You should know that Numbers is actually GOAT Old Testament; what some scholars call the GOOT.

The Levites as a tribe were particularly set apart to be mediators of God’s presence with the people.

We learn of this briefly in Leviticus but in far more detail in Numbers. And in Numbers 3, we find the heart behind God’s choosing of the Levites as well as Ezra’s need of them in our passage.

Look with me at these verses which you have printed in your bulletin:

English Standard Version Chapter 3

Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn who opens the womb among the people of Israel. The Levites shall be mine, 13 for all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and of beast. They shall be mine: I am the LORD.”

Do you see the connection between Numbers 3 and Ezra 8:28? Just as the Lord set apart the firstborn, then the Levites, by consecrating them to himself; so too does Ezra remind these Levites that they have been consecrated: chosen and set apart to love and serve the Lord.

So here’s a fun fact in biblical history that is often overlooked. At the passover, God tells the Israelites that if they put the blood of the lamb on their doorpost, their home will be passed over, their first born will be saved. But every home without the blood of a lamb, there the first born will be struck down in an act of judgment against the Egyptians. Well at the same time that God was saving the firstborn among the people of Israel, he was also consecrating, or setting them apart, for special service to himself. For a brief blip in redemptive history it was not the priests and levites who were the representatives of all the people, but it was the firstborn of every family.

So what happens in Numbers is a redemptive transaction. Rather than taking the firstborn from every family in Israel to be dedicated to a life of service, God instead sets apart one tribe, the Levites, for this role. And it is now through the mediation of the Levites that God will dwell with his people.

The Levites, then, were the mediating tribe between God and the rest of Israel. They were the priestly tribe in Israel. Not all levites were priests, but all priests were Levites. And all the male Levites were set apart in a unique way for service in the tabernacle or the temple to mediate God’s presence with his people.

When we go back to this early biblical history in the pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, it’s easy to lose track of the big picture. But ultimately, what God was doing was bringing his people out of a land of slavery into a land which he had set apart for them so that he could dwell with them. That’s the heart of God throughout Scripture. He longs to be with his people. He wants us to dwell in his presence.

But there is a problem. None of us can stand in God’s presence without being crushed by the sheer, raw glory of his power, beauty, and holiness. We need a mediator who can make that possible. This can be hard for us to comprehend; even absurd. Why do I, a modern person who is well to do on my own, need a mediator? Think about it from this perspective.

In his book the Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt, a social psycholigist up at NYU, argues that our default human condition is an obsession with moral righteousness. We are so desperate to be regarded and countest as just, upright, and virtuous. It is this obsession with righteousness which leads us to being judgmental toward other people, or other groups. Our obsession drives us to being critical of anyone, or any group, different from ourselves. And as this posture consumes us, we become blind toward our own inability to keep the very same moral standards which we hold for others. So Haidt concludes that our obsession with righteousness runs so deep that we become selfish hypocrites who are so skilled at putting on a show, we fool even ourselves. None of us know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do.

To stand in the presence of God’s perfections is to have our hypocrisy completely exposed. And that is terrifying, because to stand in the presence of God exposed as the hypocrites we are would be our undoing. Even the best of us would completely fall apart.

But God still longs to be with us. So how has He resolved this tension? Through mediators. And through the Old Testament, it is the Levites collectively who serve the function as the mediating tribe between God and the rest of Israel. The Levites make it possible for the rest of Israel to dwell in God’s presence, receiving all of God’s benefits without the risk and danger falling on us.

So, for example, in the Exodus, God promises to dwell with his people in the tabernacle. The Levites were responsible for every single detail of the tabernacle and item needed for worship. When the people would camp out and the Tabernacle would be built, it was the Levites who slept in a circle around the Tabernacle to prevent the rest of the people from coming too close and being crushed by God’s presence which rested there. It was the Levites who kept the items needed for worship pure, and if anything went wrong in their service, it was the Levites who would be struck down, not the rest of the Israelites.

The Levites took on the risk of Israel’s sin and weakness so that they could receive all the benefits of God’s presence. That’s the function of a mediator. God dwells with his people through mediators.

Temptation

Ezra knew all of this. He knew that if God would be with them on their journey, His presence would be mediated through Levites. He knew that if anyone was going to take the risk of guarding these temple treasures from thieves and bandits, it had to be the Levites.

So why didn’t the Levites come? You see it wasn’t just the people who were vulnerable, but the Levites also had their own unique vulnerabilities of their own.

This consecrated calling for the Levites might sound like a high and noble calling to us, and it is, but consider this calling from the perspective of these Levites. There was little choice in your life as a Levite. At an early age you knew what role you played in life and there was little room to deviate from that path. Yours would be a life of meticulous service. You would not be able to work for your own land or inheritance, but would be entirely dependent on the offerings of God’s people. When you went to Youth Levite camp, you didn’t get to sing songs around the campfire with all your friends, you’d be subjected to horror stories about how great grandpa Nadab and Abihu were struck down for using the wrong coals. It could be you! The expectations were nearly impossible to fulfill perfectly.

What a vulnerable place to be in. It’s no wonder the Levites didn’t show up. Even back in Ezra 2 when the first exiles returned, of the 42,000 who were numbered, there were only 74 Levites. For the first time in their history, in exile they’re afforded an opportunity to have choice, comfort, and a life free from the anxiety that being a fallen mediator for a fallen people must have brought. Their calling was to be a living sacrifice of worship on behalf of the people, and when that call came around once again they collectively said: No.

I get it. Would you have made a different choice? Be honest. And yet our calling today isn’t any different from that of the Levites. Sure, it looks different in form, but not in substance. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12 that we are to present ourselves as living sacrifices in our obedience and worship. But the problem with living sacrifices is we have the bad habit of getting off the altar.

In our vulnerable spaces, when the Lord calls us to trust and follow him, we turn from away. We question whether the Lord really knows what’s best for us. We look to other people, other things, for power, control, pleasure, approval. You see, in the end, all of our temptations, what are they? They’re our feeble attempts to try and acquire the benefits of God’s presence apart from God’s presence. They’re false gods. But as many of us know all too well, these false gods never deliver on what they promise, and often lead us into a deeper pit of shame and despair.

And yet it’s here in these words to the Levites in verse 28 that we find our calling is one of grace, not shame. Yes, the Levites were weak, yes they did not respond to their calling, yes they were tempted to live for themselves. And yet God through Ezra is still choosing them to be set apart in a special way. That God still chooses us, sets us apart to himself, it flows out of the heart he has to be with his people. It’s God saying, “Yes I know you’re weak, yes I know you can’t do this perfectly, but I love you, and I want you to be set apart to be with me.”

Confidence in the Mediator

It’s these words of grace which are at the center of Christ’s work for us as our final and perfect mediator. It’s in Christ that we see totally the extent of God’s heart to be with his people. And when this sinks deep down for us, it can make all the difference in the world.

Allan Boesak is a Black South African minister and leader who ministered in South Africa during the height of apartheid until it ended in the early 90s. He championed the cause of liberation and freedom for Black South Africans. What made Boesak’s position so unique was that just as he was well situated in the Reformed Christian tradition, not unlike our church today, so too were the Dutch Reformed White Nationalists who championed the cause of apartheid, segregation, and oppression. As Boesak fought for freedom, he would publicly wrestled with this question - what business do Black people have in the Reformed tradition if those who claim the same faith wield it to oppress, harm, and dehumanize us?

In one of his speeches in 1981 he confronted this issue head on. Throughout his speech, he surveys all the ways the Reformed tradition has advanced the cause of freedom and liberation in its history. He looked at some of our greatest statements of faith, including the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism, and he said this:

“This is one of the most powerful statements of faith I have ever encountered. In our situation, when black personhood is thoroughly undermined, when our God-given human dignity is being trampled underfoot, when our elderly are uprooted and thrown into the utter desolation of resettlement camps, when mothers and their babies are being exposed to the merciless winter, when young children are terrorized and tear gassed into silence, when the blood of our children flows in the street - when then is our comfort in life and death? That I, with body and soul, am not my own but belong to my faithful Savior, who is Jesus the liberator.”

Boesak knew that if God would be with the oppressed people in South Africa, it would not be through some new way of their own choosing. He knew they could not turn aside from Jesus. God would be with his people just as he has always done, through his chosen mediator Jesus Christ.

This was Ezra’s confidence. As weak and prone to failure as the Levites were: if God would be with them it would be through his chosen mediators.

Where did Ezra’s confidence come from? Where does that deep, unmovable confidence to stand firm on Jesus Christ even in the vulnerable places of injustice or suffering come from? It is from knowing that God’s heart is not only to dwell with us, but that he is actually with us, even now in this exact moment, through his chosen Mediator.

And if Ezra had reason for confidence in the Levites, how much greater is ours in Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews tells us that his office as our mediator and priest is permanent; he now lives to intercede for those who would come into the presence of God through him. In his sacrificial death, Jesus took on all of the threat of God’s presence on our behalf so that we could receive the benefits of his perfect love, beauty, and justice. In his resurrection Jesus willingly takes on this role as our mediator who now lives to intercede for us. Even now, day and night, he makes it possible for us to be with God, until that final day when we are made perfect and dwell with him forever.

When we’re most vulnerable, most tempted to turn aside from the Lord, this is what we need most: To not only know that God wants to be with us; but to experience that he is with us, in and through Jesus Christ.