Repent
Pastor Marq Toombs • May 30, 2021
Sermon Overview
EZRA 9:1–15
The people have married foreign wives and Ezra mourns over Israel's unfaithfulness. How does he respond? How are we to think of divorce and marriage and how does Ezra's response relate to the New Testament teaching?
Sermon Transcript
Grace and peace be with you from the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's wonderful to be with you today and to share this time of worship and service with you.
I wanna take you back just a couple of years ago to Memorial Day weekend 2019. And that was the first of many times, but the first weekend that I was invited to come over here and preach, and I was to fill in for the pastors, Ryan and Zach who were to be away on a mission trip that weekend. Although the trip was canceled, they graciously allowed me to come over anyway and we had no idea at that time what the Lord had in store for us. But here we are, after two years loving the Lord and working together for the cause of the gospel in this place.
I just hope that for all of you, who are here, whether you've been here a long time or a short time I hope that you experience what my family and I have experienced in these two years. And that is that RPC is a house of healing for those who are weak or wounded or wandering or whatever it happens to be, I hope that you have experienced the same grace and mercy that we have.
Now, why do I open with such a lengthy introduction to 2019? Well, because I'm stalling, of course! Did you just hear that scripture reading? You know what we're about to get into. And I sent a message out warning everyone yesterday that I've been arguing and debating with Ezra the priest all week. And now I'm inviting you to enter into the fray with me as we engage this text and see what comes to pass.
It's a difficult story. Not only difficult because of the complexities of the actual story but made more difficult by the fact that so many of you have experienced the tension that you see in this story. I know that some of you have experienced not only marriage but the trials that come with marriage, some of you have experienced divorce and remarriage and the challenges that come with that. And I just wanna put your mind and heart at ease upfront that this sermon will not be a sermon to beat you up at all. I'm not going to lay a guilt trip or do any fear mongering. In fact, I want us to wrestle with the text in Ezra and then move as quickly as possible to the gospel of Jesus Christ and see how Jesus deals with us wherever we are in our part of the story. And so keep that in mind as we make our way through - especially these early moments of choppiness and sketchiness that you might feel in the story. Okay?
Where are we? Well, we're in the series on Return. We've been in exile for the last year, 2020, and as things are reopening and we're coming back together and getting on mission and engaging in ministry, again, we are very much like the exiles who were returning from Babylon back to Jerusalem and Judea. And you know that as you go through this transition there are things that can be challenging and difficult along the way. And that's exactly what you find in this story.
Ezra the priest has come. And he is an older man, and he is devoted to God and committed to not only learning the word of God but teaching the people of God how to live out the word of God in their life and experience. And suddenly, some guys come to him and report to him something that disturbs him.
One of my seminary professors loved to tell us as he was teaching us about life in ministry — he would say, "Know that as you go out into the real world, that some things are right some things are wrong, but many things are irregular." And you find a lot of irregularities and difficulties in this story.
Ezra the priest is not immune to these kinds of things. And so, a report comes to him and then we see his response and then we're going to see how they tried to reach a solution to this problem. But here's the report. The report comes. And what the report says is, "Look, we've looked around at the community and we have found that there are clergy and laity who have not marked the antithesis between us and them, between insiders and outsiders. That is between the Jews and the non-Jews. Here we are trying to build a temple and erect a wall and they have not marked the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile." And they claimed that that's what the Law of God wanted them to do.
Now, the Law of God did say that people should not marry — marry people who worshiped other gods and bow to other idols. But it didn't mean you couldn't marry someone who was a different color than you, or someone who came from a different nation or ethnicity than you. But that's how these guys are treating the story.
Now, keep in mind, they're on high alert. They've just spent 70 years in exile and they do not want to go back. They do not want to offend the Lord. And so, they're going through everything with a fine tooth comb and they wanna make sure it's all buttoned up, and all the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted, and they wanna make sure it's just right. But they found this irregularity. And so they try to figure out "What are we gonna do about this? We've discovered some people who are Jewish who have married non-Jewish people from the land, surely God is going to come and get us."
Now, they seem to have overlooked that in their own story, in the same Bible that they're quoting to get this passage about marriage - they seem to overlook the fact that some of their own heroes also married foreign women: Joseph, Moses, and Boaz, to say the least, and these are no slackers. These guys are icons of the faith lifted up before the people, as models of how to follow God. And somehow they overlook that part of the story.
The difference is perhaps some of those, the wives of those men, converted and worshiped God not the gods of their lands. And so they made changes to become devout and to follow in the worship of God, along with their husbands. And perhaps some of these wives and children that are mentioned in Ezra 9, didn't do that. We don't quite know, but it's suggested that they might have tried to hang on to their gods.
This report comes to Ezra who is a devout man, and he hears this and he realizes that this wall of separation has not been erected in the hearts of the people.
So the Law is used in one way, but it actually meant something else. The Law was not about marking out ethnic or racial boundaries between the people of God and everyone else. It was about marking out spiritual and ethical boundaries between believers and unbelievers. And that's not just the Law thing. The gospel requires the same thing as we will see in just a moment.
So how does Ezra respond to this? Maybe not quite the way you and I would, but this was his response. He heard this report, and if you know the Hebrew, it says, it just sucked the wind out of his sails or something like that (smile). He experienced shock and sorrow. He has this dramatic response. He tears up his clothes. He's pulling hair out his hair from his head and his beard. He prays without eating for a period of time. And he doesn't just do that because he's devout, although he is very devout, he does it because he is distraught. He can't believe what's happening, he's perplexed. And he's struggling to figure out what to do next.
If you read his prayer carefully enough, you'll see that his prayer is a mixture of repentance and remorse, of regret and resentment. And you'll notice that he wavers between guilt and grace throughout this prayer of confession. On the one hand, he confesses the guilt that led his people into exile in the first place. And then he confesses the grace that led them back home. But then he confesses the guilt that led them to mix and match in marriage, and then he confesses the grace that allows them to survive and thrive in the presence of God. He feels the tension between guilt and grace in his own life and in the life of his community. And so, like many pastors who feel that they are in the grip of an unprecedented crisis or situation, Ezra was at a loss to know exactly what to do in the situation at hand.
And here's part of the reason he felt that way. It's because he is coming to grips with the fact that the word of God is so clear about some things and yet not so clear about other things. The word of God speaks so loudly on some matters and yet keeps silent on others. For example, in this situation at hand, the Law of God does not speak to the situation at hand. It does not tell God's people exactly what to do if and when they go into exile for 70 years, establish a life there, work for the peace and prosperity of that nation and then come back to their land along with their non-Jewish wives and children in tow. The Law doesn't speak to that. And so what the people are left doing, Ezra and his team of advisers are left doing, is scrambling to try to figure out what to do.
If you read on into Ezra 10, for example, you will find that they come — these leaders come to Ezra with a proposal — and the proposal, I must warn you, sounds so brutal and raw. At least to most of us. (There might be some who are like, "Yeah, I like that.") But here's the proposal. It's a radical plan that requires mass divorce. It requires — if you crunch all the numbers — about 100 marriages and families to dissolve. The proposal is that all the men who married non-Jewish women should separate from them and send them away along with all of the children.
What is the net effect of that? The net effect of that would be that those wives and those children would functionally become widows and orphans. Is this what the Law of God requires? No. The Law of God does not require this. This is something that grew out of the discussions that these leaders had; and they're trying to figure out the best way to move forward.
So on the surface of things that might have the appearance of this sort of hard core obedient faith and devotion to God. But if you dig down a little deeper you realize that it was actually a zealous overreaction and over-correction to a situation. Something that was driven more by guilt and fear than by grace and faith.
So I wanna say that while I appreciate and admire so many things about Ezra, I think the story highlights for us how someone can be so right in principle and yet so wrong in their method. Ezra shows us that there is a wrong way to be right.
Now, why would I say that? I don't have a bone to pick with Ezra. I can appreciate the difficulties of trying to shepherd a flock of people who don't have it together all the way. A flock of people who have been taken, where they are not where they should have been — and with all the congregational mess that comes with it.
But I also say that because of what the Law and the Prophets testify. The Law and the Prophets testify that God desires mercy, not sacrifice.
For example, God's Law says in Deuteronomy 31, "Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones and the sojourner within your towns." Why? "So that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and be careful to do all the words of this Law and that their children who have not known it may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God." Part of what I want you to hear in that is that God anticipates a situation in which you're going to have a mixed community, where people aren't going to know all that they need to know or be doing all that they should be doing. So what is God's response to that? Teach them, show them the way, point them in the right direction. Don't give up on them.
The prophets say similar things when they speak to God's people. For example, in Zechariah 7, this is a prophet who has been preaching during this time of Ezra's coming and the rebuilding of the temple and the wall, and all of that. Zechariah says, "Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner or the poor, and let none of you devise an evil scheme against another in your heart."
When zeal for the letter of the law, outweighs zeal for the spirit of the law, bad things happen to good people. And what is the spirit of the law here? Love, show mercy and show mercy not only to those who are at the core, not only to those who are at the highest in leadership positions, but show mercy and kindness to those who are at the very bottom and far away on the margins. Why? Because this is the heart of God for people. Let none of you devise evil against one another.
Now I'm not suggesting that Ezra and the team of advisers were devising evil, I'm simply saying that they were in a tight spot and they were trying to sort through what to do. And apparently they opted for doing what they considered to be the lesser of two evils. But the net effect of that is that some of these wives and children became widows and orphans.
I can't help but imagine, I can't help but wonder how many of them fell into poverty? How many of them became enemies of the true faith or how many of them became God haters or God-cursers as they grew up with this bitterness that they were separated from their dads, or that wives were separated from their husbands.
What we learn in a story like this is that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
A question we like to ask is "What does this have to do with Jesus? And what does this have to do with you?" It's an important question. Because when we read a story like this, and we engage in the truth of this story and the tension within the story, we start to wonder what happened there? Did Ezra do the right thing? Did Ezra do the wrong thing? And the Holy Spirit never says, "Ezra did the right thing.” “No, Ezra did the wrong thing."
The book of Ezra will end on a cliffhanger. And we'll all be scratching our heads wondering, I don't know if that was right or wrong. I just know it makes me feel very uncomfortable. I don't know what you would have done or what I would've done in his sandals, but you've got some thinking to do, don't you? Some wrestling.
Now to take Ezra off the hook for a moment, I just wanna say that you and I have the benefit of looking at a situation like this and of living in a story like this — We have the benefit of looking at it through the lens of the gospel of Jesus.
So we've been in Ezra. I wanna turn your attention to the New Testament. If you're willing and able look to Matthew 19:3-9, at least mark it down. And as you're looking for that, I want you to know that exile had hindered the priests from teaching the people and hindered the people from learning the word of God. So you're in a situation where not everyone even understood what God required of them. And what happens is, when you don't know everything that God wants you to do, you're going to end up doing some things that he didn't want you to do in the first place. How do you correct that? Well, you correct it by changing your mind.
I have a teacher many, many years ago - I had a teacher that would say to me that he loved to read the Bible in the evening. And he would sit in his easy chair under a lamp. And one night his wife came in and cynically said to him, "What do you think you're doing?" And he looked up at her and he said, "Changing my mind." Well, when you read the Bible that's what you do, you change your mind. But you don't just change the way you think about something you change the way you live. And that's what the scriptures are asking us to do.
In Matthew 19, we have this interesting story that connects very well with Ezra 9 and 10. And the reason it's a neat connection is because Jesus is engaged in a conversation with what many scholars believe were the spiritual descendants of Ezra. You know these people as the Pharisees. They were the separatists and the Puritans of their day. And much like Ezra and his council of advisors, these guys had a tendency, not only to have a very high view of God's word, but they had such a high view of God's word, and they wanted to protect it so much, that they created their own rules to go around God's word, to keep God's word safe. And I say that facetiously and not flatteringly, because it was a terrible thing for them to do.
Well Jesus deals with them in this way. Matthew 19 says, "The Pharisees come to him and they tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" If you're a Star Wars fan, you know that at this point you should be hearing someone say, "It's a trap." It is a trap because you might as well be reading this, like, is it lawful to divorce one's wife because she's a foreign woman, because she came from the wrong tribe, or the wrong part of town, or she has the wrong color of skin? Or fill in the blank — "for any cause". And they're trying to trap Jesus. And he takes them all the way back to creation and to the story and creation to talk about how God made them from the beginning, male and female. And God said, "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh." And then he emphasizes that they are no longer two, but one flesh. "What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate."
Now keep in mind the Pharisees like Ezra were all about separation. They're trying to mark out boundaries and figure out who's in and who's out. And Jesus is emphasizing here that he's far more interested in and inspired by God's creative work of bringing together — uniting man and woman, husbands and wives — than he is interested in man's destructive work of dis-uniting them. In other words, Jesus is looking for a way to keep marriages together. The Pharisees are looking for ways to allow people just to blow them apart. And so for Jesus, tightening the bonds of marriage is far more important and interesting than loosening them or looking for loopholes in the Law of God.
Now is divorce ever permitted by the Lord and by the scriptures? The answer is Yes. Yes. Not for just any and every reason, but the scriptures give us specific reasons which I won't get into today. But yes, there are times in which the Lord permits it.
Is divorce ever required by the Lord in his word? And the answer is no, it's not required. It's never required, but it is permitted at times. And that's another reason why I would say Ezra was wrong to require it.
Now, the Apostle Paul — I get some backup here from the Apostle Paul, so you'll know it's not just me versus Ezra. I'm quite sure he could take me down in many different ways, but I'm getting support here from Jesus and the Apostle Paul. So look in 1 Corinthians 7, and you'll see how Paul addresses this very situation that we find in Ezra 9, where you have spiritually mixed marriages.
Paul's not concerned about whether a Jew married a Greek or a Greek married a Roman or a Roman married a Syrian or any of that. He's not worried about that. He's looking at the fact that in life, in the real world, there are many irregularities. And one of those irregularities is that sometimes people find themselves in a marriage in which one is a believer and the other is not a believer.
Lot of ways to get into that situation. I'll give you a couple.
So what if you're already married to someone who is an unbeliever? What do you do? It doesn't matter whether you were an unbeliever when you married them, and then you later became a believer; Or you were both believers and one of you fell away and became an unbeliever after you married; Or whether you just realized one day that one of you has faith and the other doesn't. Let me advise you not to follow the advice of Ezra and the advisors around him. The Apostle Paul speaks to this in a much more personal and practical way. And here's what he says in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.
"If any Christian man has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him he should not divorce her. If any Christian woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her she should not divorce him. Why? For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean but as it is, they are holy."
Now, Paul is not saying that if a believer and an unbeliever are married, that the unbeliever is automatically saved and that their children are automatically saved. That's not his point. His point is that the marriage is legitimate, and so are the children. And why is it legitimate? It's legitimate because the husband and the wife have made a permanent, exclusive, legally binding, commitment to one another to stay with each other, till death do us part.
It's a part of common grace that people even in these marriages can enjoy a very happy and healthy life before the face of God. And so, if you find yourself in a marriage like this, do not despair. God takes us right where we are not where we should have been. And he works with us and our spouses to get us where we need to be.
So let me encourage you to do your dead level best to make the most of your life and make the most of your marriage as a follower of Jesus. For who knows? Whether you, by God's grace, will be used to bring your spouse to salvation in Christ. Keep in mind that Paul goes on to say here that we have been called to live at peace. So as far as it depends upon you live at peace with your spouses whether they are believers or unbelievers, but don't follow the advice of Ezra at this point and send them away and separate from them. No, follow the advice of Jesus who is interested in helping you come together, stick together and stay together.
Well, I mentioned to you that I was here two years ago and I preached for the first time at this congregation. And it just so happens in God's Providence that on that Sunday, I was preaching on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, but it was in the context of looking at marriage relationships. I'm sure that many of you remember that sermon — it left a deep impression upon you. (smile) But for those who don't remember I would like to end today with the way that I opened that sermon two years ago. I think it's so fitting for us.
"Kill the dragon. Get the girl." This is the way that Nate Wilson summarizes the whole story of the Bible in his book Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl, Kill the dragon. Get the girl. And according to the scriptures, this is exactly what Jesus did. When you get some time read Ephesians 5, and there you will see that Paul calls the relationship between Christ and the church a profound mystery. You see
that "Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy"
- and we see this in his gracious sacrifice at the cross;
that "Christ cleanses her by the washing with water through the word"
- and we see this in his gracious sacrament of baptism;
that “Christ will present her to himself as a radiant bride without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless"
- we see this in his gracious word and the preaching and teaching of the gospel of grace.
that "Christ loves the church as his own body, and he feeds and cares for his body."
- we see this in his gracious sacrament of the Lord's supper.
And what I'm trying to get you to see as we reflect on the person and work of Jesus is that Jesus himself married a foreign woman, that Jesus took someone who was an outsider and made her an insider.
And furthermore, Jesus promises to this bride that he will never leave her or forsake her, that he never has any intention of separating from her or sending her away. Why? Because his steadfast love endures forever.
And that my friends is the good news of Jesus Christ.
May your marriage and mine be a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the church. Like Ezra, Jesus wants you to live according to the word of God; but unlike Ezra, Jesus wants you to stick together and to be set apart for God's glory and for your good by his grace.
Let us pray.
