Restored Holiness

EZRA 9-10

Pew Bible Page 465

INTRODUCTION:

Lets go back to the 60’s again this morning. Not 1962 but 1664

Maryland passes the first British colonial law banning marriage between White people and Black people—a law that, among other things, orders the enslavement of White women who have married Black men:

"[F]orasmuch as diverse freeborn English women forgetful of their free condition and to the disgrace of our Nation do intermarry with Negro slaves by which also diverse suits may arise touching the [children] of such women and a great damage doth befall the Masters of such Negroes for prevention whereof for deterring such freeborn women from such shameful matches,

"Be it further enacted by the authority advice and consent aforesaid that whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave from and after the last day of this present Assembly shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband, and that the [children] of such freeborn women so married shall be slaves as their fathers were. And be it further enacted that all the [children] of English or other freeborn women that have already married Negroes shall serve the masters of their parents til they be thirty years of age and no longer."

In 1967, 17 Southern states plus Oklahoma still enforced laws prohibiting marriage between whites and non-whites. Maryland repealed its law at the start of Loving v. Virginia in the Supreme Court.

In these states like Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Delaware, a host of other states that had such anti-interracial marriage laws,

the concern was usually popularly defended as the purity of the white race. marriages,

but particularly those with whites that were the focus of the legal concern.

biblical justification was often found for such laws in the Old Testament book that we have been intermittently studying this summer, the book of Ezra,

and particularly in the two chapters that we come to today.

Leaving aside the strangeness of finding justification for the purity of people's

If you opened up the Bible and beginning reading , Walking into the book, if I assume that marriage between races is bad,

I could find verses to pull out of context and make it seem as if the Bible supports my concern.

But I would have to maintain ignorance about a number of other matters.

The nature of marriage and divorce.

Exactly what God had forbidden to his Old Testament people.

The nature and image of God.

The close association of race and religion in the Old Testament and how that dissolves in the New Testament.

And perhaps most of all, the nature and basis of god's love and therefore the proper nature and basis of our own and

our time together this morning i want us to understand that these last two chapters in Ezra contain the point of the book i'll read portions of these chapters.

The Problem

Ezra 9:1-2 “1 After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests 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, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. 2 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.””

Mixed Marriages

Those who had returned with Zerubbabel 60 years earlier and some non-exiled leaders had intermarried with the “Peoples of the land”.

This issue was revealed after 4-5 Months in Ezra’s work of reestablishing rhythms of studying, doing, teaching God’s word to the people is having an impact and effect.

They have come to the realization they have acted in faithlessness to God and His word and the leadership has been the most egressions.

We need the context of why this would be seen by them as an act of faithlessness.

The Law said do not marry with other religions.

This list is a veritable OT/ Exodus axis evil.

the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites

These are hard core pagans with great idolatry, there were involved in slavery of God’s people,

they were opponents of God’s ways, and some even participated in open child sacrifice.

If there were clear “bad guys” early in the OT these were the guys.

They were told not to marry foreign wives as they were leaving Egypt and a generation later right before going into the promised land.

When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. (Deut. 7:1–4; cf. Ex. 34:11–16)

· Psalm 106:35-36 | 35 but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did. 36 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.

This is not about racial purity but about spiritual purity.

To be clear the issue is not one of the “holy race” being mixed but was one of purity of worship of God.

This is not and should not every be taken to imply or apply that God and His people is somehow opposed to something as beautiful as interracial marriage.

In fact, God has used in several occasions in the life of His people and the genealogy of Jesus to show His mission will be done through A people but is for the benefit of many peoples.

You have Abraham with Hagar,

Joseph with an Egyptian,

Moses with a Midianite,

the Canaanite prostitute Rahab and Salmon (mom to Boaz)

Boaz with Ruth the Moabite, and King David.

None of these guys are perfect but what you have is in each of these cases is relative “faithfulness” to the God of the Bible.

They didn’t walk in the ways they had married into,

they followed God and their brides followed them.

According to Malachi, some of these guys had actually already divorced their Hebrew wives they had come from exile with and/or had as youth

to “trade up” the economically more affluent daughters of the “people of the land”.

So this wasn’t just a Romeo and Juliet forbidden love story,

this is actually selfishness and sin pursuing short term happiness and/or gain at the expense of holiness and faithfulness.

The problem is not race mixing, but religion mixing.

It's not interracial marriage, but interreligious marriage.

Their wives brought idols with them, which made the men adulterous to God.

The problem was and is sin.

· This is the issue the mixing wasn’t a racial issue but a worship one.

The people who married with non-believers began to follow the unbelievers into wicked practice, false worship and death.

This is what the leaders are coming to Ezra to confess.

They’ve heard God’s word and see the plan

The Plan:

Sometimes our sin results in problems for which are no easy solutions. T

This was one of those situations.

To allow those in mixed marriages to continue in them would seemingly condone such behavior and would draw many Jews into religious syncretism right at the time that purity and separation were essential.

Only 111 Jewish men are listed as guilty of this sin,

which was only 0.4 percent of the 28,774 exiles who had returned under Zerubbabel

Even so, we may be inclined to think that Ezra was making a mountain out of a molehill.

But as Paul said with reference to tolerating sin in the Corinthian church, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (1 Cor. 5:6).

If the problem had not been confronted, it would have spread even farther.

Since the Jewish exiles who had returned were so few in number, to allow this sin to continue could have effectively diluted their distinctiveness as God’s people.

Ezra 10:1-5 “1 While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. 2 And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. 3 Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law. 4 Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.” 5 Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.”

Ezra’s deep mourning over the sins of the exiles led others to gather around him, see their own sins, and weep bitterly over them (10:1).

A spokesman for the people, Shecaniah (10:2), confesses the sin and proposes to Ezra that the people make a covenant to correct the sin.

Shecaniah himself is not in the list of offenders, but his family is affected by this issue.

Ezra acted on Shecaniah’s proposal by calling the exiles to Jerusalem, where they all shivered in the December rain (10:9).

Repentance, confession, and separation.

The problem concerned the Jewish exiles who had returned to the land, but had taken pagan wives in disobedience of God’s commandment (Deut. 7:1–4; Ezra 9:1–2).

Ezra (10:11) sums up what they must do to correct the situation:

Ezra 10:11 “11 Now then make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.””

Their confession before God,

if it was genuine, would reflect heartfelt sorrow for what they had done.

That sorrow would not be words only. It would also manifest itself in obedience to do His will.

They agreed that they had sinned and, except for four men who opposed the plan (10:15),

agreed to the plan of action.

A commission was appointed to examine each case.

Presumably if the foreign wife had put away her idols and swore allegiance to the God of Israel,

nothing further was required.

But in the other cases, where the wife refused to give up her idols, the marriages were dissolved,

presumably with arrangements for compensation to care for the wives and children involved.

Principles to be learned.

This is not about racial purity but about spiritual personal purity. so what can we learn for our lives today..

Turning from your sin is painful and messy.

Ezra 10:2 “2 And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.”

who it is that comes and speaks to Ezra and makes a suggestion about confession and repentance. It's Shekiniah.

He's described here in Ezra chapter 10, verse 2, as the son of Jehiel of the sons of Elam.

Now if you slide your finger over to verse 26 of chapter 10 in that list of names of those who were named as guilty of this intermarriage we see both the names of Elam and Jehiel mentioned.

Ezra 10:26 “26 Of the sons of Elam: Mattaniah, Zechariah, Jehiel, Abdi, Jeremoth, and Elijah.”

You realize what that means?

The terrible solution of divorce would be ripping into Shekiniah's own family,

it seems, since they too were among those guilty of this heinous sin.

But we should just stop and appreciate here for a moment how painful it can be to turn from the path of our own cherished sins to the path of God's way to live.

Sin is complicated. Sin complicates what God has made to simple.

Sin breaks what has been made whole and it defiles what God has called to be clean.

Sin cannot easily be undone so we as people, individuals, a community, and in leadership

will face complex situations that have arisen

because of sin in everyday life as we attempt to follow God in Holiness.

In what ways has sin made your life more complicated where God has made it to be simple? Example, you drink to much, get a DUI and then have to blow into a breathalyzer to get your car started. Complicated.

Christians, do you remember the painful separation you had to make between yourself and your sins when you first came to Christ?

Separating yourself even from some of those sins which had grown very dear to you?

Some of which may even have seemed like part of your identity?

Part of who you were?

My non-christian friend, note this carefully. We're delighted you're here with us.

Notice that while becoming a Christian will not be without reward,

it will also not be without cost.

I wonder if you can already see some of the stress and strain between Jesus and some of the things that you've had in your heart for days or weeks or months.

Are you even now weighing up which you would rather keep in trust and which you would rather lose –

Jesus or your beloved sin?

BUT!!!!

God is merciful and long-suffering.

I wonder if you noticed that here. Look back at a few of those statements in Ezra's prayer in chapter 9. Look at verse 8.

Ezra 9:8-9 “8 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. 9 For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but 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 then again, down in verse 13 of chapter 9.

Ezra 9:13 “13 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,”

. And then at the beginning of chapter 10 again those first couple of verses,

So we hear Ezra praying, mentioning God, showing favor, giving a place to his people and praying for God to brighten their eyes and to revive them.

He mentioned that God had not forsaken them.

He had punished them less than their sins deserved.

Ezra 10:1-2 “1 While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. 2 And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.”

And then of course there is Shekinah's wonderful phrase in verse 2, the end of chapter 10, verse 2, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.

Their immediate hope was that God would not disown them and re-exile them if they repented.

His mercy was being shown merely by calling the people to realize the truth, to wake up, to separate from their foreign wives by divorce.

Friends, you can go back this afternoon and read the Lord's commands in Deuteronomy 13, and 16, and 17.

The command was to purge the evil from your midst by putting the idolaters to death.

Here God was showing His mercy in simply instructing them to separate themselves from their foreign wives by putting them away.

So what I first took to be a severe command, divorce, I now understand is a mercifully amended sentence.

God's mercy in it all becomes more apparent and more prominent to me.

Instead of death, there was a way to return and be forgiven by God,

to return to fellowship with God through forgiveness.

God has made us.

We have sinned.

God provides a way.

We, trusting Him, repent and go on,

knowing His mercy and grace, now more than ever.

Can you see that?

My non-Christian friend, do you understand what I mean when I say the Gospel?

It's the basic message of the whole Bible.

It's that there is a God who has made all of us in His image, and that we have all sinned against Him.

That is, we've done what He's told us not to, and we've done it repeatedly and wholeheartedly.

It's an expression of our nature.

God in His great love has sent His only Son to be a Savior for us, to live a perfectly and die on the cross of Calvary as a sacrifice, as a substitute, in the place of all of those who would turn from their sins and trust in Him.

God gave Him to us out of His love.

God so loved the world. He loved the world in this way.

God raised Him from the dead and accepted the sacrifice that His Son presented of Himself.

And He calls us now to turn from our sins and trust in him and we can be forgiven for our sins and have new life in Christ.

True confessions is accompanied by obedience.

These last two chapters include moving confessions of sin.

The true confessions of our sin are always accompanied by new obediences.

Fresh obedience and frank confession go together.

The problem God's people had that put them in this terrible position of needing to undergo such radical social surgery,

such agonizing amputations as these divorces,

was disobeying God's clear command to separate themselves from the people of the lands.

That command was repeated to their parents as they came out of slavery and went into the Promised Land centuries earlier.

It had been taught in their law and reinforced in custom and habit and practice.

But now, in a terrible irony, almost as soon as these people are returned to the land,

some of them had begun to return to the very sins that had brought God's judgment of exile upon them.

So, friends, all of these divorces were happening because the families had divorced themselves from God and His ways.

And now He was forcing them to a moment of choice.

He had clearly commanded them not to take foreign wives.

There was to be no intermarriage between the Israelites and the surrounding pagans.

And we can tell how seriously God meant this commandment because we see the seriousness of the remedy here commanded.

For a God who hates divorce to command divorce.

Ezra 10:11-12 “11 Now then make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” 12 Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “It is so; we must do as you have said.”

They obeyed and followed the advice of Ezra and the Leaders.

Ezra 10:16-17 “16 Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses, according to their fathers’ houses, each of them designated by name. On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; 17 and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women.”

The sin is addressed in verses 16–17,

and it took three months to work through all the cases.

One year after his departure from Babylon, seven months after arriving in Jerusalem (cf. 7:9),

they have dealt with all the men who married foreign women.

Did you realize confession of sin is that important a part of public worship?

Did you notice how in our own times of gathering we're not just about feel good start your week off right with some positive vibes but we always try to make sure we are repositioning ourselves accurately before the Holy God of the universe.

There will always be some time of confession, either as its own prayer or part of a larger prayer in these days when we're trying to compress the service due to lack of child care.

My friend, frank confession is the necessary beginning of the U-turn of repentance.

we should confess our sins.

It's good for your humility.

It's good for their instructions.

It gives fodder for prayer and glory to God, even as we say in confession that He is right and we are wrong.

Brother or sister, I wonder what temptation you're facing

to be too close,

too tied up with,

too married to this world.

Should you be more separated from this world in order to be more obedient to God?

What do you need to separate yourself from?

God desires worshippers

I think you'll find if you look at the religion of the Bible, it's a religion of change and forgiveness and redemption and a restoration of God's place in your life.

Even here in chapter 9 in Ezra, in verse 8, he could refer to God's favor.

Ezra 9:8 “8 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.”

Or in verse 13 about how God has punished us less than our iniquities have deserved?

Ezra 9:13 “13 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,”

I think when you begin to understand that is your case,

Can you see that in our passage? God beckons the people to love Him.

He beckons us through this book to love Him.

throughout the history of Israel and the breadth and length of Scripture,

God is revealing Himself as the only true God.

And as the only true God, then,

He requires our whole and undivided commitment, love, and worship to Him.

Take ahold of His Mercy and Love and worship Him with your who heart.

Respond to His love by accepting his forgiveness and salvation form his wrath.

God is one who favors us and wants to put our sin on His son.