Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: Diving with Sharks

Have you ever wanted to swim with Sharks for fun?

I could imagine that if you found your children in shallow water surrounded by sharks, you would do what was necessary to run into danger to go fight for your child’s safety.

Last June, in NC, Tim Arthur was swimming with his kids and a shark attacked his son, clamping down on this thigh.

Tim rushed to his son’s aid, and began punching the shark in the snout until it released its grip on his son’s leg and swam away.

Tim’s son survived after receiving 17 stitches in his leg.

My good friend in college married the daughter of a seasoned diver and owner of a dive shop here in Memphis.

They train and certify divers to go and explore the ocean depths.

For their honeymoon, I remember seeing his pictures of them diving with sharks.

That is insane to me since these animals are predatory and they attack humans yearly across the globe.

It is foolish to seek out sharks dive down and let them swim all around you without any protection but a rubber suit.

I know it is an adrenaline rush, but its nuts.

Review:

These last two weeks, we have looked at the theme of sin as we conclude the book of Ezra.

We have studied the doctrine of sin and how all have fallen short of the glory of God.

We learned how the word of God exposes sin like light shining in the darkness.

Last week, we looked at our first response to sin and that is acknowledging the offense against God that sin is a confessing to God how wrong we are for engaging in it.

Today, we are going to look at the final chapter of Ezra and we are going to learn that once sin is exposed, and once we seek to confess that offense to God the final step is to separate our selves from it.

I want us to paint this picture in our minds that engaging in sin and remaining in sin, especially after we realize that sin is dangerous and it seeks to destroy us, is like free swimming with sharks.

I am not talking about swimming with them in a cage, I am talking about diving in the big blue ocean and being surrounded by these hungry predatory creatures .

See, since the curse of sin has corrupted this entire world, sharks want to eat when and wherever they choose, as long as its in the ocean.

We are safe on land, no shark has ever been reported to crawl up on land and start devouring people on the beach.

But for us to see the deadly nature of sharks and then to choose to dive into the ocean where they feed and swim with them, is foolish.

Equally, sin destroys everything.

At first we believe the lie like Eve, that rebelling against God will make us wise like him, that our dreams will come true without God’s leadership, but the opposite is true.

Our welfare as humans is only under the leadership and authority of God alone.

When we run from that back into sin, after we understand its effects on us, then we are swimming with hungry man-eating sharks and it will be our end.

As a youth pastor, I used to share this passage with many young people:

Proverbs 5:1-11 “1 My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, 2 that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.

3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;

6 she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.

7 And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

8 Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, 9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless, 10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner, 11 and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,”

This is what sin does to all people, it kills!

Let me be real quick this morning to point out, that we are not just talking about “big sins” as some like to categorize them.

Yes, sexual immorality kills.

So does discontentment.

Every theft begins with discontentment and greed in the heart and sometimes theft leads to death.

Gluttony can stop your heart.

Gossip and dishonesty can ensure a retaliation that will lead to death.

All of these are just examples of how sin leads to our physical destructions, but the chief concern should be our spiritual destruction.

Isaiah 59:2 (ESV)

2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

I want you to pay close attention to this verse because the the HEB word for separation BADAL means to “divide, to sever something from something else.”

As we have learned these past few weeks, our good and beautiful relationship with God has been severed because of sin.

We are divided from him because He is holy and we are sinful.

We cannot dwell with God in our sin because as God’s holiness is to pure to look on evil, God cannot dwell with wickedness (Hab 1:13, Ps 5:4)

Therefore sin separates us from God but the loving kindness of God leads to Him making a covenant with certain persons by his power and love.

Therefore, God can make clean what is unclean and He can call us into his presence again.

What is interesting is that as Israel was called by God to himself, and with him declaring them as holy, he then commanded them to SEPARATE themselves from the unholiness of sin.

Lev 20:24 “24 But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’

I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples.”

Israel was then called to leave sin behind and live in righteousness.

Similarly, the call to the church, who has be purified by the work of Christ on the cross, is also to separate from sin.

Peter writes to the church,

1 peter 1:14-16 “14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.””

What we will see from our final chapter in Ezra today is that the returning exiles respond to the preaching God’s word by Ezra, God answers the pleadings of Ezra, and the Jews separate themselves from sin.

This is called repentance! Repentance is turning away from sin and turning back to God and his word.

Let’s look at how the Jews demonstrate this today.

I.

A verbal commitment to faith in God vs.1-5:

Confession of sin vs.1-4

First, as the prayers of confession from Ezra are being lifted to God, God responds by bringing conviction upon the people.

A group or crowd of men, women and children, gather outside the temple.

It describes them as a great assembly so it was no small few.

Instead, a large crowd gathered weeping bitterly.

Their emotion based in the context of the remaining narrative shows that they were convicted over sin and saddened by its effect upon them.

God answered the prayer of the leader Ezra as God exposed this sin and the people responded.

Praise be to God as his Spirit works in such a way to convict concerning, sin, righteousness and the judgment to come.

This group was led under conviction by a man named Shecaniah, different from the one mentioned in the genealogy listed who returned from Exile with Ezra, but who God led to see that they had committed great sin against God.

These people confessed their sins to God before their priest, acknowledging in detail what had occured.

They speak in no generalities but with specifics about the sin of intermarrying foreign wives.

He uses the word “unfaithful with our God.”

But God gives Shecaniah hope in restoration that can only be found in God so he calls Ezra to action.

To asks the priest to lead the exiles in a renewed covenant with God according to the Law of God.

They are seeking leadership from their spiritual leader as to what they must do to be restored back to God.

They say to Ezra,

They challenge Ezra to the great task of leading the people away from sin and the task was great.

In this task, he would not only declare the law of God to them, but the task of repentance that laid before them was heavy as well.

They were committed to do whatever was necessary but they needed their spiritual leader to be the one to help them see it through.

Commitment to action v.5

Verse 5 states that Ezra started with the leaders of the people and that he lead them to take an oath before God.

Oaths were promises made to God and made to others.

In our story, the oath made in v 5 and the covenant in v 3 was a divine sanction before God to fulfill the promises of the covenant or face the consequences of the covenant.

Normally, animals were slaughters and blood was used in covenant making to symbolize the judgment that would be rendered if the covenant was broken.

These oaths and covenants were based on the truthfulness and faithfulness of the people making them.

It is important to point out that Israel is known for its covenant breaking with YHWH.

They were unfaithful continually and this reveals the importance of the truthfulness of our commitments to God and others.

Making oaths had gotten so ridiculous in Jesus day that oaths had to be made with some promissory attachment to it.

Look at

Matthew 5:33–37 (ESV)

33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’

34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.

36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.

The Jews had become so untruthful in their words that when making oaths, they had to swear by heaven, or earth, or by God’s throne.

Just to promise anything to anyone in Jesus day was not good enough because words had ceased from being truthful.

Jesus point is that when we make a commitment to God or to man, let our Yes simply be a truthful Yes or our No, be a simple No.

This is a truthful heart that comes from one who has been transformed by the God of truth.