Ezra 10

While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites, men, women, and children gathered around him.

They too wept bitterly.

Then Shechaniah, son of Jehael, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, We have been unfaithful to our God by murdering foreign women from the peoples around us.

But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel.

Wow, what a scripture, Lord.

Thank you for being our hope.

Thank you that when we are unfaithful, God, you are faithful.

Lord, apply this word, this strange chapter of Ezra.

Lord, bring it home to us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Lord, we yield ourselves to you.

Lord, we need you.

We need you to intervene in our life.

So, Lord, during this time, over the next few minutes, 35, 40 minutes, and if this preacher is not too long, it's going to be 40 minutes.

We pray that we would encounter the living God through your word.

What more could we ask?

That we would encounter you.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Man, let's jump into this chapter.

Ezra 4.

This is it for Ezra.

This is the end of the line.

And hey, for us as a church, this has been a step of faith because we jumped into an Old Testament book.

This has been a wild ride.

Some of you have said, hey, I never studied Ezra ever before.

This was a foreign book, but I have loved going through this book with you.

It's kind of like we just threw ourselves in the deep end and we had to learn a biblical history.

We had to learn just how to survive and how to understand this text within the context of Scripture.

Man, what an amazing ride we've been on.

Starting next week, starting next week, we're going to be going through the first 12 chapters of the book of Acts.

Are you ready for that?

The first 12 chapters of Acts.

This is foundational.

I have picked this time for us to go through these 12 chapters because it lays the foundation of how to do church right.

And like I said, this is when we start kind of probably seeing new people coming into the church.

It's going to be a great time going through these first 12 chapters.

It's going to be wild.

I cannot wait.

I've been looking forward to this for years.

Years, literally.

15 years ago, I started collecting commentaries on the book of Acts, dreaming of when I'd have a church that I could go through the book of Acts with.

And the day is coming, next week.

So it's going to be good.

But let's finish strong in the book of Ezra.

Have you ever noticed how people try to clean up their act?

Well, that's kind of the terminology that they use.

Maybe you have tried to clean up your act.

There's maybe significant flaws you feel like that are in your life: substance abuse, a series of broken relationships, chronic mismanagement of finances, selfishness, poor parenting, obesity.

There's all kinds of things that people look at themselves in the mirror and they're like, I need to clean up my act.

And people take all kinds of steps to fix themselves, to improve their life, even to get closer to God.

Today we're going to read a story about people in that exact place.

We're going to contrast their steps of self-improvement with a new model for change that is given to us by Jesus.

Right?

One of the ideas that undergirds this teaching this morning is the ability to recognize that you're not perfect.

So look, if you're perfect this morning, you can leave because you don't need to hear this sermon.

For the rest of us, we're gonna just, we're gonna just, you know, sit in this one like a pig in mud, man.

We are just gonna roll around in this whole idea of how God wants to work in our life, deliver us from the things that uh keep us from from being where God wants us to be.

On Friday morning, um, about at 11:55, I dropped off Albert and Don, who faithfully helped me every Friday to drop off food around the neighborhood, and we do kind of food distribution with a bunch of y'all who help us.

And after, as soon as I dropped him off, I got a text message from another brethren of the church who said, Hey, just a heads up, I know you do stuff in Douglas, there was a quadruple shooting in Douglas.

And um, and the Lord just touched my heart through that because for the last three months I've felt like the Lord's been just prompting me to do this new program called Burgers and Bibles, where I go and take Big Max into Douglas, bring five Bibles with me, and just do a Bible study.

But I've been worried, you know, and I've been intimidated by the setting and not sure, you know, how is this going to, how is this going to turn out?

But man, when I got that email, the Lord just touched my heart and I said, I've got to do it.

This community is broken.

We cannot keep seeing this brokenness continue, and only God, only God can come in.

And if it takes Big Macs to deliver people from their sin or prompt them to read the Bible, then man, let's do it.

So I walked, I I drove to McDonald's, got to Five Big Macs, parked.

We went right to the primary.

If you know Douglas, you know kind of the primary distribution point for drugs.

There's a couple houses right there in the middle.

And I said, Hey, I'm here to do burgers and Bibles.

You ready?

And then one, the first guy I went to, the first guy, poor kid, man, he was so high, so high, he couldn't even look at me.

But there was another girl there that was kind of helping with the distribution.

And uh she heard what I was saying, and she said, Well, why don't you invite the people at the bus stop?

And I said, Well, I would, but you know, those guys are so oftentimes so drunk they wouldn't be able to really comprehend what's going on with scripture.

And she said, Well, man, if you're looking for people that aren't drunk or high in here, you're in the wrong place.

So the guy that's really high, he looks up at me and goes, I'm high right now.

I'm like, Yeah, no kidding.

But word got out real fast.

Here's this here's this preacher with these burgers.

I had this big bag of Big Macs, and I had people like, hey, you giving away those Big Macs, you know?

So we sat down, and within like 60 seconds, I had a table full of people, and we went through the first four verses of John chapter one.

I told them next week we're gonna do 10 burgers.

Here's the thing.

Here's the thing, right?

We live in a broken world.

We live in a broken world, but that's not how God made it, right?

That's not how God made it.

Um and he wants to restore people, he wants to deliver people.

A lot of people are looking to escape the brokenness of this world through substances, they're trying to escape the brokenness of this world through relationships, through work.

There's all kinds of ways that people are trying to get away from the brokenness that they sense in this world.

But the only way, the only way that we can really be delivered from the brokenness in this world is through Jesus.

And that's the direction we're going with this text.

So we've gone, we've gone through and we've seen that this book is a post-exilic book, which means that it's after a 70-year discipline of God disciplining the children of Israel, having them in captivity, and now he's divinely issued through these kings this decree to come back to Jerusalem.

There's two major parts to the book.

There's the first six chapters, which covers the leadership of Zerubbabel, and then the last seven through ten.

Chapter seven through ten is the leadership of Ezra.

Ezra views himself as a second Moses, and he believes that he's overseeing a really a second Exodus.

And so we see a lot of patterns from the first Exodus replayed here under Ezra's time.

Ezra is inspired with the messianic hope by reading the prophets of his day.

Reading Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel caused Ezra to have this hope for this future Messiah, this future age.

If you read through Isaiah, you can understand that it's kind of like when you're reading Isaiah, it's like looking at a mountain range where from a far ways away it just looks like, you know, like these bumps.

But when you get close, you realize that one ridge is 10 miles beyond the front ridge, right?

So when you read Isaiah, one of the things that we get is we get the first coming of Christ, or we have the immediate fulfillment that takes place, then we have the first coming of Christ, then we have the second coming of Christ.

So there's literally things in the book of Isaiah that haven't even to this day yet been fulfilled.

So Ezra is filled with hope that God is going to do this work, especially Ezra 40 through 66.

Man, it fills you with hope.

And he is believing that there's going to be this spiritual revival taking place.

And what we saw last week was uh just this devastating reality of um the devastating reality of these leaders having uh intermarried with foreign women.

And one of the things we talked about last week was, is this wrong?

Like, was Ezra's concerns legitimate?

Because there are characters, primary characters in Israel's history, like Moses, who married a foreign wife.

So was he wrong to do what he did?

And kind of where we landed with this last week was um as he's praying and grieving over sin, we agreed that no matter whether Ezra's right or wrong, his concern about sin is legitimate.

And we're gonna see that theme continued.

So we asked this question last week.

What is the balance between missional engagement, you and me engaging people that don't know Jesus with the gospel?

What's the balance between that activity and then our own personal holiness?

Our own personal holiness.

So that's that's a difficult issue, right?

Because you are, let's say that you struggle with a bunch of sinful things in your life, you encounter God in a supernatural way, all of a sudden you're in love with God, you're going to church, and your desires have been changed, and you don't want to talk like those friends talk over there.

You don't want to engage in uh those things that you used to do.

So, because and when you do those things, you feel like, oh man, I just feel corrupted in my relationship with God.

I feel like I've there's distance now.

It's taken away that glory of knowing God.

So, what's the balance between walking with God and being separated from our sin and yet loving our neighbor, being engaged as missionaries with our neighbor?

We're gonna answer that question a little bit more today.

Here's the um outline.

This is the outline for the chapter that we're looking at.

In verses one through six, Ezra works with the leaders on determining the nature of repentance.

You'll recall that the problem that these people faced is they said, Ezra, there are leaders among us who have married foreign wives.

And so in verses one through six, Ezra's gonna work with the leaders on determining the nature of repentance.

In verses eight through 15, Ezra works with the men of the land to enact this step of repentance.

So they make some decisions, they act on it.

Verses 16 and 17, the people obey.

And then verses 18 through 44 is a list of names.

We're not going to read through all of them.

It's a list of names of the people that obeyed.

Okay?

So let's go through this.

We saw that Ezra was praying, confessing, weeping, throwing himself down.

Sounds like a temper tantrum of a two-year-old.

But but really, this is um, he's upset over this situation.

It's a it's a crisis.

A large crowd of Israelites, men, women, and children, gather around him.

They too wept bitterly.

This is um this is unique to Israel's history.

If you're familiar with Israel, it is rare for them to be spiritually responsive to spiritual leaders.

What we see over and over again in Israel's history is that prophets are trying to say, this is the wrong that's going on, and these doggones, stubborn Israelites will not repent.

You know, it's like they just they won't do it.

It's like a stubborn kid, you know, that just will not change their way.

But here, Ezra attracts a crowd and they're also weeping bitterly.

Verses 2 through 4.

Then Shechaniah, who's the son of Jeheel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us.

But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel.

Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women, their children, in accordance with the counsel of my Lord, of those who fear the commands of our God.

Let it be done according to the law.

Rise up, this matter is in your hands, we will support you.

So take courage and do it.

So this is a significant next step.

You'll notice that the solution to the problem is offered by someone other than Ezra.

It's another spiritual leader.

And they, this guy, Shechaniah, says, here is what we should do.

Here's what repentance should look like in our situation.

And it is very powerful for him to say, we have been unfaithful to our God.

One of the reasons why, more and more as I study this, I'm convinced that the step Israel took was a condoned step by God, is the agreement that we see here.

It is fascinating that Ezra's grieved over sin, but then you have this huge group.

We'll see here that the spiritual leaders are fully compliant with a step of repentance.

It's wild.

So they said, We've been unfaithful.

Let's separate ourselves.

Um, we'll do it according to the counsel of my Lord, to those who fear the commands of our God.

Amazing.

Okay, let's go into verse 5 and 6.

So now Ezra rose up and he put the leading priests and Levites in all Israel under oath to do what had been suggested.

And they took the oath.

Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the room of Jehanon, son of Elishib.

While he was there, he ate no food and drank no water, because he continued to mourn over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

So the people agree together by oath, right?

And it's very important when you make an oath, and this is what it says in Leviticus, if you make an oath, you have to keep your oath.

It's a dangerous thing to make a promise, but these guys make this promise.

And then Ezra withdraws, and notice he continues in his state of fasting and mourning.

That's significant for us as the reader, because Ezra is not just putting on a show.

He's gotten some results, but he continues in this state of mourning and being deeply concerned over sin.

He's still fasting.

Verses 7 and 8.

A proclamation was then issued throughout Judah and Jerusalem for all the exiles to assemble in Jerusalem.

Anyone who failed to appear within three days would forfeit all his property in accordance with the decision of the officials and the elders, and would himself be excelled from the assembly of the exiles.

So it's this blanket statement.

You got three days to get here, or you're gonna lose your inheritance.

In other words, you're gonna be excommunicated out of the nation.

Verse 9, within three days, all the men of Judah and Benjamin had gathered in Jerusalem.

Isn't that amazing?

They obeyed, they listened to this edict, they showed up, and on the 20th day of the ninth month, all the people were sitting in the square before the house of God, greatly distressed by the occasion and because of the rain.

It's raining.

This is uh so the rainy season in Israel is from October to February.

This happens to be mid-December, and it's pouring, right?

It's pouring, and so they're already upset over this crisis that there's been these individuals who have married foreign wives, and it's pouring rain.

Here's what Ezra says in verses 10 through 11.

Then Ezra the priest stood up and he said to them, You have been unfaithful.

Man, we've seen that word a couple times, haven't we?

Unfaithful, unfaithful.

You have been unfaithful, you have married foreign women, adding to Israel's guilt.

Now honor the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and do his will.

Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.

That's that's the sermon.

Nice and short.

You wish I preached that short, didn't you?

Hey, if it got results, I'll I'll cut it down to like uh 30 seconds.

No, it's uh it's all good.

Verse 12 through 14, the whole assembly responded, absolutely not.

We're not gonna listen to you, Ezra.

No, that's not how they responded, right?

What did what did what did they say?

The whole assembly responded with a loud voice.

You are right.

Let's say that together.

You are right.

What?

When does that ever happen?

You're like you married the wrong people, and they're like, you're right.

I can't believe this.

This is crazy, right?

We must do as you say.

But there are many people here, and it's the rainy season, so we can't stand outside.

Besides, this matter cannot be taken care of in a day or two, because we have sinned greatly in this thing.

Uh, verse 14 Let our officials act for the whole assembly, then let every one in our town who has married a foreign woman come at a set time, along with the elders and the judges of each town, until the fierce anger of our God in this matter is turned away from us.

So that's that is their response to Ezra.

And you notice that they uh turn to a Kind of a democratic model of let's appoint somebody who will represent us in this effort.

They're compliant, but they said, let's um we need some more time, which we have to really appreciate that, right?

We've got to appreciate this need for more time because you've got lives at stake here, right?

We have women and some children that are going to be um sent away.

Now, uh let me just say briefly, the way that this would take place, uh the way that marriages were arranged, were based off of a dowry system, which is a down payment in advance, that just in case the marriage didn't work out, there was a financial means for the father to care for this woman and her children.

Um so we don't think that these uh individuals were destitute necessarily, and we it seems like from verse 14 that there is some, that they're not just hastily just kicking these women out.

Um, but it's it is uh it is it's still devastating.

We have families that are literally being broken up um because of this act.

Now, verse 15, we have the uh few that did not support this decision.

Only Jonathan, Asahel, and Jehazian, son of Tikva, supported by Meshulam and Shebethi the Levite, opposed this.

So not everybody, there's a couple of people who did not um support this, and one's a Levite.

Interesting.

Verses 16 and 17.

So the exiles did as was proposed.

Ezra the priest selected men who were family heads, one from each family division, and all of them designated by name.

On the first day of the tenth month, they sat down to investigate the cases, and by the first day of the first month, they finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign women.

And your text, we're not going to read it now, but your text continues to give you the list.

And one of the things that we see is that uh the number of these cases is not a lot compared to uh, you know, 50,000 people coming back 80 years before this, and another um uh 15 years prior, we had um a wave of 5,000 people.

So out of thousands of people, we have enough just to enough names to fill the second half of this chapter.

So um this is drastic, it's concerning, it's a difficult passage.

Um, but uh lest you think that there was, you know, 20,000 wives sent off, you can read through the actual names of the individuals.

Okay, so that's the text.

Now, what does God want to say to us this morning through this?

Well, first of all, we come away from this text.

We want to know, was this divorce necessary?

First of all, we know from Deuteronomy 7 that the people, when they were going into Canaan, going back a thousand years under Moses and Joshua's leadership, they were told to not marry the women of the land.

There's no command to divorce the women if you do.

But in Deuteronomy chapter 7, they're said, they're told, don't marry the women of the land.

Deuteronomy 7 · chapter mention

And it's named.

There's there's seven different tribes or people groups that they're specifically told not to marry.

Israel, Jewish people were never prohibited from never marrying outside of Judaism.

It was just the people of Canaan and Egypt, right?

That's the prohibition, and there's a purpose statement given behind it.

It's don't marry them lest your heart is carried away.

So it seems, it seems like maybe Ezra took this and it kind of expanded on it because back in chapter um nine, he said that we are a special race.

So um so there's this ethnicity here, which God never um the command is tied with this ethnicity, and commentators will say that's a little bit further than how God described his relationship with this nation, right?

Um there are blessings tied in with the ethnicity of being Jewish from God, but the idea that um that ethnic state gives rise to this complete prohibition is not there.

But Ezra, Ezra does, he is, well, I'm kind of jumping ahead.

I better not say that yet.

Um what happened?

What happened to what happened to the women and the children?

We don't know what was the spiritual condition of these individuals after their divorce.

So we have these men that are listed out, 18 through 44.

They send off their wives.

What happens to them spiritually?

Like, does their relationship with God improve?

We don't know.

We don't know.

Let's go through a couple of things here.

First, you will notice that there's no divine commentary that is given to us.

This the genre of text is what we call narrative, right?

Does God anywhere in here tell us, do we have any sense of like God spoke to Ezra in a cloud?

Go and separate yourselves from these women.

Does that happen?

No.

We don't have that.

We don't have any divine commentary.

As much as Erizra wanted to be a second Moses, we don't see God speaking to Ezra in a cloud or giving specific instructions.

Here's what Ezra has: Ezra has scripture, Deuteronomy 7 and beyond.

That's what we call Torah, first five books of the Bible, and we have history to inform him.

Second, while there are examples of Israelites marrying foreign wives, like Moses, like Joseph, um, like um who else?

Abraham, Mary's Hagar.

There are numerous examples of foreign wives leading the people astray.

So Ezra and you and I can open up our Bibles and we can see children of Israel marrying foreign wives, and it leads their heart astray.

What's the story of Solomon?

What happens with Solomon?

Why is there a northern nation, Israel, and a southern nation, Judah?

Why is that the case?

It's because Solomon married foreign wives.

And God said to him, Solomon, your heart is divided between me and these pagan wives.

And so when you die, I'm gonna split the kingdom in half.

Fascinating.

Another example, Samson and Delilah.

How did that turn out?

Well, it was he was under a pile of rocks at the end of the time, right?

Man, that was not a good scene.

Right?

Hagar and Abraham, isn't it fascinating?

The patriarch of Israel, he is given the promise of God that through you this line is going to progress.

He thinks, okay, if I um get my wife's servant pregnant, then I can take that child and fulfill God's promise.

God's like, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't need your help.

I don't need your help.

And so when Isaac is born through Sarah, the um Hagar is cast out.

Remember?

She's put out of the home.

And in fact, Paul refers to that in Galatians and says, this is a picture of how we're to relate to the law.

We're supposed to cast out the works of the flesh.

Okay.

So history leads us to believe that their act at this point was well founded.

But the root issue is not necessarily reformed.

Their heart could very well remain evil.

What, and that's the reality.

Okay, think about this with me for a second.

These pagan wives come in and they're worshiping idols, right?

They have a Jewish husband, right?

Y'all who've been married or been married in the past, you know the dynamic of that relationship.

You know the influence that you have on one another.

It's not like there's a clear wall there of like, okay, you do your paganism over here, your idol worship over there, and I'm gonna just stay over here.

No, there's an influence that these wives would have.

That is, that in itself is the root issue.

That's the concern.

In fact, the third thing here, the true issue is not the marriage itself, it's the influence of the wife upon the husband to turn him towards paganism.

It's an issue of unfaithfulness towards God because of an external influence.

That's that word that's used, the unfaithfulness.

The unfaithfulness.

The people are saying we're gonna separate ourselves from these women so that our hearts won't be led astray.

Let me tell you, this is classic religion.

I'm gonna do this external act in hopes that my heart is reformed.

Track with me here, okay?

Zero in on this.

The religions of the world, our culture, tells you change this piece of behavior, and it will affect your relationship with God.

Clean up your act here so that God can be happy with you now over here.

Here with the children of Israel, they're saying, we're gonna put away our wives so that we can be restored in our relationship with God.

And that is insufficient.

It does not affect the change to the degree it needs to.

Now, there's nothing wrong with cleaning up our act.

I just want you to know that our dirty acts flow from our hearts.

And what truly needs to be reformed is our hearts.

We need heart change.

Putting away these pagan wives is insufficient.

So you have people who say, okay, I'm gonna stop doing drugs so that I can know God better.

I'm gonna go to church so that I can clean up my act.

I'm going to do this so that my heart will change.

And you need to understand and understand this.

That does not work well.

The goal isn't self-improvement.

If you came here for self-improvement, um, you're gonna be sorely disappointed.

The goal is holiness and absolute morality.

God has a standard for you and I that we be absolutely perfect.

Not just clean up our act, but absolutely flawless.

And hopefully, when you hear that, you just go, oh shoot, I'm I'm screwed.

I can't.

That's it for me.

Right?

Hopefully you're tracking with me.

If you're hearing God say you need to be perfect, and you're like, okay, okay, I'm gonna get my act together and I'm gonna pull up my boots by my bootstraps, and and God, I'm I'm really gonna do it this week.

If you are thinking that way, then you're not hearing how perfect the standard is.

It's not a better life.

It's no, you need to be absolutely perfect.

And here's, by the way, if you've ever sinned in the past, you're already, that still counts, like you're already screwed up.

You can't fix that, right?

Your good acts today don't outdo the past acts, right?

You and I are condemned.

We are we're we're we're messed up.

I hope you you that's like that's like first base in understanding this, okay?

You gotta you gotta get that.

You we're messed up.

We're not gonna justify ourselves.

Like if you're sitting here thinking, good, if I just get rid of my wife, everything's gonna be better.

Listen, you're missing the point.

You're missing the point, right?

Yeah, she's saying the same thing.

She's like, man, if I can get this guy out of my life, woo! Holiness, God, I'm gonna be perfect.

Just get this guy out of my life.

One of the reasons we have Israel.

Like, how big is your Bible, right?

Okay, so you got this Bible, and you all are like, man, the Old Testament's so long.

There's so much reading.

Like, when can we get to Jesus?

Hey, here's the here's the thing, right?

Here's um, oh my gosh, it just keeps going.

It keeps going.

When does it stop?

Okay, okay.

All of this, all of this part, the big part, this is the story of people trying to put get their act together.

It's thousands of years of people failing to get their act together.

If you thought you were gonna come to church and get your act together, just know.

These people already did it, it doesn't work.

Right?

That's why we like Jesus.

Okay, I just we're working through this.

We're working through it.

Okay, so this brings us to a discussion about the old covenant law, right?

The law, the Torah, right?

Moses goes up on Mount Sinai, he gets the law, Ten Commandments.

The law was God's covenant with the children of Israel.

The law was incapable of changing a person's heart.

It was a standard representing the holiness of God, but it was not able to reform their hearts.

It served a good purpose, but was not able to unbend a bent heart.

Okay?

You understand that?

The law of God, be holy.

If we're gonna summarize God's law, it's be holy, be perfect, be loving.

Never fail.

Okay?

That law, that standard, is not capable of making you perfect.

It's like a measuring stick.

Like if my son said to me, I want to be six foot five and he's six foot right now, and I took a measuring stick, I can't break off five inches of the measuring stick, feed it to him, and make him six five.

Right?

But people look to this law and they're like, if I just do the law, then I can be perfect.

No, the law is there to condemn you.

It's there to show you how much you've fallen short, you don't measure up.

Okay?

You tracking with me?

Take, for example, my dog leash, right?

The dog leash serves a good purpose.

It keeps my dog close to me when I want to go for a walk.

But if I expected my dog leash to teach my dog to sit or to come when I call him, I'm gonna be sorely disappointed.

If you look at the law of God and expect it to do something that it is incapable of doing, then you are going to be sorely disappointed.

You're going to be in this cycle of condemnation because you can never live up to that holy standard.

I want to show you a couple of verses about the inability of the law.

This is in the New Testament.

This is Hebrews 7, 18 and 19.

The former regulation is set aside.

That's the law.

That's if you go to the context of this passage, you'll see that this is the old covenant law given to Moses.

The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless, for the law made nothing perfect, and a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God.

Do you see this is being written after Jesus came in and he instituted a new covenant, a new way that humanity is to relate to God.

Galatians 2.16 says this.

Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

Because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

These people, listen to me very carefully.

These men put away their wives.

That act did not justify them in the eyes of God.

They were no more righteous the day after their wife and kids left than the day before.

The works of the law, trying to live up to the law, is not going to get you into heaven.

Don't leave this morning thinking that your good works are gonna outweigh your bad works that you've done.

If you have ever once sinned, told a lie, thought something terrible in your heart, had a bad attitude towards your family member, then you are condemned, going to hell.

You have to understand that the only way, the only way that you can be forgiven and justified in God's courtroom is right here.

By faith in Jesus Christ.

We've put our faith in Jesus Christ that we may be justified by faith in Christ.

I know that's hard-hitting.

I know that that's truthful, but if your eternal state is contingent upon that one truth and that misunderstanding, how many people?

How many people think today, riding the bus in Baltimore, walking down the street, are thinking, man, if I get hit by a car today, God's gonna look at me.

He knows the good things that I did.

He knows, you know, I took care of my parents when they are old.

I give kind of money to the homeless guy on the side of the street.

God's gonna look at those things, he'll let me in.

You know, Peter, when I talk to him at the pearly gates, he'll let me in.

You are sorely mistaken.

It's funny, but it's not.

It's not.

The old covenant law served a purpose, but it was not capable of reforming the hearts of people.

Do you understand that?

The law can't change your heart.

It only shows you how screwed up your heart is and my heart is.

Here is what you need to understand.

A divorce is not going to reform your heart.

Sobriety isn't going to change your heart.

A monastery or monastic robe won't change your heart.

A ministry position won't change your heart.

Being at church won't change your heart.

There's only one thing.

There's only one thing that can change your heart, accepting the spiritual work that Jesus did through his death on the cross and his resurrection.

That's the only thing.

But you say, Josh, how does my surrender, how does my surrender and trust in God change my heart?

Isn't that the question?

It's like, okay, I understand final destination, but right now my heart's still screwed up.

How does my trust in God, how does this function?

What are the mechanics of this whole thing?

Jesus came.

Jesus came to be your substitute to stand in for you.

It reminds me of when people go to bet on a horse at a horse race, which I have never done.

But I understand how it works, and you understand how it works.

When you bet on a horse, you start saying, That's my horse, right?

When he wins, you say, We won.

No, you didn't win.

You were sitting up there in the bleachers and you put some money on him, right?

No, but you identify with the horse.

That horse did for you what you could never do, right?

You identify.

Jesus is our race horse in that metaphor, right?

He did for us what we couldn't do.

But rather than running a race, he was our sacrifice.

Here's what he did.

He obeyed the law perfectly, right?

So you're hearing me like almost kind of like trash the Ten Commandments.

Is that kind of hopefully you don't feel like that, but you could listen to me and you're like, wow, Josh is not really down with like Moses and the Ten Commandments.

This isn't going good.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm just saying it fits in the place.

Jesus came as your substitute, as your racehorse.

He did the law perfectly for you and me.

He paid for my guilt, your guilt, by dying on the cross.

His sacrifice was accepted.

By the judge of the whole earth, the Father, and then he was raised from the dead as evidence of the work being complete and as a new leader that we follow.

We've covered all this stuff before.

We've covered it before, but I just want you to know that the Bible says that we inherit the work of Christ.

Again, the question was: how does my belief in God change my heart?

Right?

First of all, he positionally changes you.

The moment you believe in God, he changes your identity.

He now says, I'm stamping you.

You belong to me.

You're God's property.

Then he takes, he puts his spirit in you.

So he resides in you.

And he begins to change you from the inside out.

You're like, but I haven't cleaned up my act yet.

That's fine.

He wants to do it in you.

In you.

He wants to work in you.

So it comes out and it's like, whoa, my act changed.

What happened?

You know, it's like, well, it's because he's working in you, in you, not outside in, inside out.

What Jesus accomplished through the cross, it's credited to us, but it also places us under the unending flow of God's grace.

You ever turn on the tap?

Imagine water pouring out in your bathtub.

When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're stepping under that flow.

But it's not water, it's grace from heaven coming down.

Not just saving you so you don't go to hell, but the supply, the daily supply of love, of good attitude, of wisdom, of generosity, of kindness, patience and traffic, the ability to put up with your honoring neighbor, the ability to say no to temptation when somebody's trying to sell you drugs at Douglas, right?

All that stuff is the supply of God's grace.

God's grace is upon you, flowing upon you.

Romans 5, 20 and 21 says this.

The law was brought in.

The old command, old command uh old testament, old um covenant law was brought in so that the trespass may increase.

But where sin increased, grace increased all that much more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness.

The reigning of grace, like God's grace comes into you and it's this royalty.

It lifts us up out of death, it lifts us up out of temptation and despair and says, There's my grace for you to reign in life.

So also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Eternal life starts the day that we surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The men of Ezra, in Ezra's day, they properly understood the danger of sin.

They took practical steps to separate themselves from sin.

At the end of the day, they were still faced with their own depravity.

They were faced with their own depravity.

Look, if you're married to sin, you need to know this morning that God has the answer.

It starts with your heart, my heart, being affected by an outside source.

When you surrender to God, he has access to your heart.

God begins to change your heart and reshape your desires.

The old forms of sin become less and less fulfilling.

And you develop your relationship with him.

As you develop your relationship with him, he separates you off from those things that have been tempting as your failings.

Here's how radical the New Testament.

Remember, Jesus came in and he said, I'm giving you a new covenant.

Here's how radical it is.

When we get into the New Testament and people living out under a new covenant, here's what Paul says about marriage.

Check out this.

Check out this.

To the rest, I say this I, not the Lord, if any brother has a wife who isn't a believer and she's willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer, and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.

For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband.

Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so.

The brother or sister is not bound in such a circumstance.

God has called us to live in peace.

Here's what he's saying.

No longer are we shuddering in fear of sin, like getting us through our unsaved spouse.

He's saying, no, no, no.

You as a believer, under the new covenant, now you're in a position where you sanctify and set apart your unbelieving spouse.

You have this relationship where you are purifying them.

Now I don't think he's saying they're saved, but they are set apart.

They've got special attention in the heavenly economy because you're a believer.

It puts us in a position where we don't have to divorce ourselves from sin.

Instead, we get to remain with the sinner and see God use us to radically work in that environment.

Amazing, amazing.

On the back of your bulletin, get your back of your bulletin out.

On the back, there are there are five slots there.

These are five people that may be thinking right now, they may be thinking that their good works are gonna get them into heaven.

They may be thinking that they've done enough good that they're gonna be good as gold when they appear before God's throne.

What I want you to do, and some of you may not have a pen.

Actually, Scott, if you're not leaving.

Oh, good.

I'm glad you're staying at church.

Um we expect that of our interns.

Just kidding.

Uh Scott's got some pens.

What I want you to do is I want you to put the names down there.

Just write some names.

I'll take I'll take one as well.

And I want you to just fill in the names.

These are people that right now they're far from God.

They're far from God.

They're not at church right now, right?

And these are the people they need to know.

Well, first of all, these are the people that God has put into your life, um, not by accident.

God's put these people around you, and they need to know the grace of God, right?

They need to know that they're loved by God.

And so just write their names in there.

You may not have five.

If you've got one, that's better than none, right?

Yeah.

So, um, and this takes a little bit of time, but I want you to put their name down there.

And here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna just pray for them for a second.

Because they need to know that their religion, their religion is not going to keep them out of the fires of hell.

It's only Jesus that can deliver them.

All right.

So not only is this word for us, but it's for them as well.

And somehow God's put them in our lives, and somehow He wants to use us in their lives.

Let's pray.

God, we just we lift up these names before you.

Lord, these individuals, um they're no better or worse than us.

Lord, we're we're here together as a forgiven people, messed up, condemned, other than having Jesus as our advocate.

And Lord, we just want to advocate for them for a second.

Lord, we just pray for these individuals.

We pray for these names.

God, you know the hairs of their head, you know what's going on in their life.

And Lord, this word of your grace, your covenant with us, your just deliverance from sin, Lord, it's not just for us, it's for them as well.

Lord, would you look upon their needs today?

Lord, as we pray for them this week, as we touch base, Lord, just flow through us.

Lord, you you ultimately want to save them.

You just want to use us in their life.

And so, God, we pray, we pray that you would work through us, work through us, Lord.

Look upon not just us, but these individuals as well.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.