Sins Roots Run Deep

To Be Whole Again   •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Revelation

Ezra 9:1-3

Recap

To Be Whole Again - looking at the idea of wholeness only coming from God and our relationship with Him
Thus far, we have had the first return of Israelites back into the land after 70 years of exile
The leader of that first return, Zerubbabel, laid the foundation of the temple, restored the altar and sacrificial system, and despite opposition, finished rebuilding the temple
It is around that time, that Ezra gets permission to lead a second wave of Israelites to return back to the land
Ezra receives with him, gold and silver and a ton of other articles to fund the work, to furnish the temple and continue the work
Ezra sets out and just before our passage, has just arrived back in the land and delivers the message to the people about the gold and silver and other articles
It is from here that we jump in to our passage
Ezra 9:1-3
Ezra 9:1–3 CSB
1 After these things had been done, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the surrounding peoples whose detestable practices are like those of the Canaanites, Hethites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites. 2 Indeed, the Israelite men have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed has become mixed with the surrounding peoples. The leaders and officials have taken the lead in this unfaithfulness!” 3 When I heard this report, I tore my tunic and robe, pulled out some of the hair from my head and beard, and sat down devastated.
Now, let me briefly talk about what is not happening here so that we can actually get in to the text
This text, in American History, and I would also venture to say likely still today even, has been used to justify the legal or moral rule against what they would call, not me, but they would call “race mixing”
Let me say outright, that is an abuse of this passage, it is not a proper reading of this passage and is wicked and sinful.
That is not what this passage is about
Now, in order to understand what this passage is about, we have to know the context of what lead the people of Israel into exile in the first place
So when Israel first gets in to the promise land, they do so and there are other nations possessing it
Now these nations are wicked and the LORD says He will uproot them from the land and give it to Israel
The key however, is He tells them they have to hold fast to Him and guard themselves so that they will not adopt the sinful ways of the people they are uprooting
Now you can already guess the fact that.....Israel didn’t do what they were they were told
So you might ask, well what made it so bad that Israel couldn’t just learn from some of their culture and adopt their practices
Well the culture and the religion of the surrounding peoples was not the worship of the LORD it was the worship of Baal and other gods
That’s the first part
The second part is, as a part of that worship, those other gods demanded sacrifices, but child sacrifices.
And Israel, straying away from what was good, began to worship these other gods and make these child sacrifices
They began with dehumanizing, as is the case anytime there is extreme violence, and they became so consumed in their idol worship,
they could not see how they were also being consumed with violence
And so, they were exiled
God brought the nation of Babylon to break His own people, to judge their sin, but bring them out of this violent culture that they consumed and back into relationship with Him
And now, knowing that, you can see the significance of this moment.
Israel has returned to the land, they have rebuilt the temple, which we have been saying all along was more about restoring their relationship with the LORD.
Now Ezra just gets back and now hears that Israel has started again the same process that led them into exile in the first place!
So this, sin, was still rooted so deeply in the people
This wicked desire to abandon the LORD, to go a different way was rooted so deeply,
That even after 70 years of slavery under another nation, they return and begin to do the same. thing. again.
So before we jump in to the points, I want to tell you what I am going to do
First I’m going to lay the ground work of this text, then show its continuation in theme in the New Testament
In order to then make application and talk about what happened at the Capitol earlier this week

1. Holiness

Because the point of the people of Israel, the point of the people of God is that they are supposed to be different
They were supposed to look different than all of the other nations surrounding them because they worshipped the one true God
If the LORD is God, than He is the only God and there is no other but Him.
So following this God, the people of God should look, act, and talk differently than everyone else!
That idea of separation is what is meant when the people are described or are called to be “holy”
It was this different-ness that came as a result of the worship of the LORD
So the “holy seed”, referred to in v. 2, is not referring to some racial purity line or some foolishness like that,
But of the holiness, that is the different-ness of the people as compared to the surrounding nations.
Now this is not just something of the people of God in the Old Testament,
This carries over into the New Testament people of God
Speaking to Jewish believers, the Apostle Peter writes
1 Peter 2:9-10
1 Peter 2:9–10 CSB
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Peter picks up on this Old Testament principle and continues it to the people of God in the New Testament
That believers of Jesus are a “holy nation” that is we are different than those around us
But why? Why are we supposed to be different?
1 John 2:15-17
1 John 2:15–17 CSB
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.
We are to different because the things of this world are not things that will remain.
Being a follower of Jesus means living for His kingdom and that which will remain forever, and the wordly things around us, eventually will all fade away
So that means living for money or wealth or power or status, all those thing are things the world pursues to an end which is worship
Its not as though money is inherently evil, but without Christ, our wicked hearts will take any good thing and turn it into a thing to worship
a thing to live our life for, to stake our purpose on
To say, “I will get this or make this happen no matter the cost”
James 4:1-4 says this
James 4:1–4 CSB
1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? 2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.
It is this wicked heart, the sinful nature into which we were born that so desires to following and worship anything other than the LORD
It is was brings us to this place where we will wage war and lie and murder
And ask for things will a horrible motive that is not of God
And James points out that these are things that result from a love of the world
James is getting at this idea that, you can try to befriend and cozy up to this world, and by the end, you will end up in a place that is hostile towards God and the things of God
This is this separateness or this holiness that they people of God are supposed to have
It wasn’t even just based in worshipped but also in emotions and thought patterns of this world
Romans 12:1-2
Romans 12:1–2 CSB
1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Again we have this separateness but here it is of the renewal of the mind
It is a different means by which we process the things that we see
This passage in Romans hearkens back to a passage in Isaiah
Isaiah 8:12-13
Isaiah 8:12–13 CSB
12 Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear; do not be terrified. 13 You are to regard only the Lord of Armies as holy. Only he should be feared; only he should be held in awe.
The separateness the people of God should have
But that leads us to our next part,

Leadership

Now I want to notice the last part of Ezra 9:2
“The leaders and officials have taken lead in this unfaithfulness”
This, unfortunately, is not new to Israel’s history
Most often times, it was the leadership of Israel and their actions that allowed, or promoted, or fostered a mindset where the people could abandon the LORD and worship like the surrounding peoples
And did not just remain the case in the Old Testament!
We can see this is the case in the New Testament as well
The Jewish Leaders, blinded by their sin, refused to see Jesus as the promised Messiah but instead
Paid off one of the followers of Jesus, that is Judas, in order that Judas would betray Him and have Him handed over for multiple fake trials with
false witness all in order to make sure Jesus would be crucified
If you want to talk about the corruption of leadership, we need look no farther than the New Testament account of Jesus
But this corruption of leadership does exactly what the word says...
It “leads” people into a place where this sin is viewed as okay and right so that they would individually take part in it themselves
So in Ezra 9 that’s what we see happening, the people, out of disobedience to their good call of separation, and out of being led by corrupt leaders,
Are lead into our 3rd point

Worship

Now this wasn’t worship as it should be, this was worship of foreign gods, the same foreign gods that got them exiled in the first place
But why? What would bring the people to come back and worship these foreign gods that led them to extreme levels of wickedness and violence last time?
This is where it is important to have a firm understanding of Basic Christian Doctrine
(which if you want to know more about, come talk to me and we will set up and work through a Doctrinal Basics class)
But the answer is sin
But when we just stop there without understanding the doctrine of the sinful nature of people,
we can still have a hard time understanding events like these and like we are seeing in our culture
Sin is not just a thing that we do, whether on occasion or frequently
Sin is an inherited nature
Romans 5 walks through the principle that Adam was our representative in the garden of Eden and so, His fall became our fall
So then, we are born into the nature of Adam’s fall
So, apart from Christ, it is not, well do I choose sin or not
Without Christ, the only choice is sin....its just sometimes, it doesn’t visibly look like it
That sin nature is what draws us to worship things and people other than God
Romans 3:10-18
Romans 3:10–18 CSB
10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. 11 There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. 13 Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. 14 Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, 17 and the path of peace they have not known. 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
This is what we are seeing in Ezra,
And likewise today.
This is where, I want to begin to make application to the events that we are seeing in our country.
Romans 3, what I just read, is a quotation by Paul, from Isaiah 59
I want to read a good portion of this chapter because its necessary to understand what is happening form a biblical perspective
Isaiah 59:1-10, 14-20
Listen to me. This is us.
We have been putting our hope in our politics and politicians so much so that it has become our religion and we have worshipped it
For decades
And don’t think for a second that I’m only talking about 1 political party here.
It is all of us.
It is the mindset where we see things like this, and our very first thought (it is not supporting it) is,
“man, I’m glad the next administration will make this better”
“will fix this”
Augustine in his book City of God says this:
“Indeed, the only cause of their (Rome) perishing was that they chose for their protectors, gods condemned to perish”
We have all swallowed this political pill of hatred of the other side and it has resulted in a deep infection of violence
We have adopted the religion of politics so much so that our mentality is “no king but mine no matter the cost!”
And if you think for a second, this isn’t you I ask,
When was your last conversation about the political nature of this country
or the president
or the next president
and compare that to
when is the last time you told someone about the good news of Jesus Christ?
When is the last time you shared with someone the hope in the fact that (like in Isaiah 59:15-20)
That when the LORD saw that all of us had gone astray,
That no one would intercede on our behalf
He stepped in with His own arm and brought salvation
That while we were busy as slaves to sin, making and waging war with one another
The LORD stepped in, put on His armor, and His war clothes and waged a war of vengeance and retribution against our sin
in order that we would no longer be slaves to sin!
And you might say, well Cody that doesn’t fix our broken political system
it does ! Because it is the same message, the message of the Gospel that brought together the disciples which included Matthew & Simon
Who are Matthew & Simon you ask?
Well you see Matthew was a Jewish tax collector which meant he was viewed as a traitor to his people because he would collect whatever he was told to collect
and give that to the Romans who were the owners and oppressors of the Jewish people
And Simon, is referred to as Simon the Zealot
Historically, the Zealots were a radical Jewish faction that was so opposed to the Roman Occupation that they would later resort to physical violence in a revolt
So Simon, prior to Jesus, would have in all likelihood been viewed by the Romans as a political terrorist
And Simon would have previously looked at someone like Matthew with a deep hatred, viewing him as a traitor to his people
but what brought them together?
What brought Matthew out of his role as a tax collector for the Roman oppressors?
What brought Simon out of a small political faction bent on the use of violence in order to political freedom from subjugation?
It was Christ!
it took people who like us say “no king but mine no matter the cost”
And brought them to a place of “no king but Christ no matter the cost”
So as we end I ask you.
What is your response to the events that are surrounding our nation?
Ezra 9:3
Ezra 9:3 CSB
3 When I heard this report, I tore my tunic and robe, pulled out some of the hair from my head and beard, and sat down devastated.
We need to understand how to mourn in a godly way
I know a lot of people who for one reason or another are sad or upset
But most are still viewing the answer through the political lens
which you have just learned will do nothing, because our problem with our nation is the problem with our nature....
our sin nature
And our politics won’t change that it will only amplify that.
Ezra, as we will see next week, sought the LORD.
So if you want to know how you can walk away today, and do something to change what is happening in this country
stop the isolation
I’m not talking about the quarantine, we were isolated far before that
Know your neighbors
know your co-workers
And may your relationship with them be one that,
If someone were to ask your neighbor or co-worker “what is the most important thing to them”
Make it so that their answer wound’t be politics, or family , or wealth or status
that they would say, its Jesus

Preparation

Community prayer initiative
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