"Kingdom Wreckers" Ezra 10 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Let me invite you to open your Bibles now to the book of Ezra.

Ezra chapter 10.

Ezra 10 · chapter mention

We'll finish our study in the book of Ezra tonight.

Which makes me excited.

Do you remember when we started this?

I had everybody raise their hand if they'd ever heard a sermon series to the book of Ezra on Sunday mornings.

One person in all three services raised their hands.

And then he came up to me afterwards and said, I'm sorry, I thought you said Esther.

But now we've all gone through.

Let me go to the Lord again one more time before we begin this final chapter of the book of Ezra.

Lord, we do pray for your wisdom tonight.

We pray that you would fill our hearts with a gospel hope.

A hope of Christ who makes all things new, a hope of Christ who heals the brokenhearted, a hope of Christ who is not only forgiving but loving.

It is true, as we just sung, that He will hold us fast.

And we're grateful to you, Lord Jesus, that you hold us, you cleanse us, you make us new.

If anyone is in Christ, behold, he's a new creation.

The old has passed away, the new has come, and so we're here tonight as new creatures.

Our minds and our eyes will go backwards tonight into the Old Testament, backwards to see the lives of those who are not new, who are not remade, but who are still very much lost and groping about, even as the Gentiles are described by Paul and Acts 17, groping out in the dark trying to find the Savior.

So our heart breaks for the lostness we encounter tonight, but is filled with joy about the person of Christ who's come to us.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

I know that there's a uh home Bible study down in Aquacon that gathers on Sunday nights to live stream the evening service.

Uh and tonight's, I'm sure it's also dubbing as a Super Bowl party.

And so if I don't end by kickoff, I don't know what they'll do.

Just picture them clicking.

That's going through my mind right now.

Ezra 10 is a bit of a long chapter, but it's not one that can be split up.

It is one that's a bit of a uh a gut punch to the person who's reading it.

It's one of the sadder scenes in the Bible.

It's a group of God's people gathered together, ready to worship.

They're at the temple.

You think of all we've gone through in the book of Ezra, they have their priests there, which was no mean task.

Remember, this was a big ordeal to get the priests there.

They have the Levites there, they have the gatekeepers there, they have the singers there.

They have the sacrifices there, they have everything just so.

And yet they're unable to draw before God in a celebratory way.

They're unable to draw before God and worship him with a clean conscience to use the language of Hebrews chapter 9.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

Their conscience is yet to be cleansed.

And they're not godly individuals, their sin separates them from God, their sin makes them unclean and unable to draw near to God for worship.

Now, this kind of this kind of gut punch is something that we have seen over and over again in the Bible.

There's been lots of new beginnings that end with tears and a heartache.

I mean, the Bible begins with one of these, doesn't it?

Genesis.

What joy is in Genesis 1 and 2, that all things are well.

Everything God says is good, good, good, good, good.

Not good that man is alone, so here's marriage.

It's great.

Very good, he says.

I mean, it can't get any better than this.

They're literally in the Garden of Eden.

And yet sin enters in and they lose paradise.

And the rest of the Bible is the flowing out of that.

As the rivers flowed out of the Garden of Eden, so history flows out of this paradise lost.

And you see it time and time again, don't you?

You see this with Noah coming off of the Ark, a brand new world.

I mean, all of those evil, villainous sinners were drowned.

And you don't even finish the chapter before there's all kinds of sexual immorality and God's judgment and God's curse on them.

I mean, God killed everybody except one family who was righteous, is what Peter tells us.

They're the only righteous people in the world, and so he's repopulating the world with the only righteous people, and they mess it up before the chapter is over.

And you want to yell at the book, don't you?

Lot, of course, messes it up.

They stand on top of the hill and there's left and right, and Lot goes to the place where there's green grass, and Abraham has to go rescue him one chapter later.

Israel will be no different.

They're across the Red Sea, the law has been given to Moses on top of the mountains, and the law comes down to them, and what are they doing?

Moses has not even come back off of the mountain, and they're, again, worshipping idols.

Very literally, they made themselves cows in the fire, and they're gathered around worshiping the cows, saying, This is the God that led us out of Israel.

It is so sad.

The Jordan River is parted by Joshua.

They cross the walls of Jericho, come tumbling down.

And then compromise enters the camp, and God's judgment is on them, and the Israelites lose their battle.

The book of Judges starts with compromise, ends with compromise.

Israel gets a king, David, who slays Goliath and then runs off and commits adultery and becomes a murderer.

This is, I mean, it's the same story over and over and over again.

It's the Garden of Eden times a million.

Well, here you see it in the book of Ezra.

And this one, for the Jews reading the Old Testament, this is the one that hurts.

This is the one that hurts.

As you know, Gentile American Christians, we're not that familiar with the book of Ezra because it really functions in this little intertestamental time period here.

In most of our minds, the Old Testament ends with the Israelites getting thrown into exile, and yeah, there's Daniel in there that that's nice and everything.

So we we don't really appreciate the hope that was in there that Jeremiah said, 70 years you're coming back.

They come back, they repopulate the land, they're there, they get the temple.

I mean, that's what we read about.

They get the temple built again.

Not a small feat.

They rebuild the temple, they corral up Levites, they consult the genealogical records.

Just think of the irony of how carefully they looked at the records in Ezra chapter 2.

Ezra 2 · chapter mention

There were dudes there with old school Hebrew names.

Like they're not, they're legit Jews.

But they weren't in the records, and so they weren't allowed in.

These people were fastidious about this.

And then by the end of the book, you get what we read last week in Ezra 9, where they're intermarrying back with the pagans.

They're intermarrying with the Samaritans and with the Gentiles and the people of the nations around them.

Again, it's it's a something we lose the severity of, but just think of the significance of them intermarrying.

This was exactly what God told them not to do.

This was Solomon's sin, of course.

We all know that.

I mean, Solomon had a thousand women, and the issue wasn't even the quantity of them.

Remember where God told David, look, if you would have wanted more wives, you should have asked.

Well, Solomon asked.

But the issue with Solomon's wives is that they were Gentiles, they were pagan wives, and then beyond that, they brought in their idols with them, and they taught Solomon's children how to worship idols, and the Israelites were led astray.

Solomon's own children would become idol worshippers when the kingdom divides.

Remember, the king after Solomon, what does he do?

He rebuilds the cows that Moses made.

That's the significance of it.

This is Deuteronomy 6, the Shema, Shema Israel, Adnaya, Chenu, Adnaihad.

Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

It's the most significant command the Jews have.

The very first command that comes after it: do not marry foreign women.

So here you are in Ezra 10.

The temple is there, the Levites are back, the gatekeepers, the singers, who all have paperwork, are there.

And you think this, I mean, is the Bible gonna end at Ezra 8?

At the end of Ezra 8?

Is this the end of the Bible?

Do they figure out how to worship the right way?

And of course the answer is no, because Ezra 9 comes along, and you see their sin of choice in Ezra 9, verse 1.

Ezra 9:1

Just there's never been a sadder after these, if you look.

Chapter 9, verse 1 of Ezra, after these things had been done.

After every all the good stuff.

Notice the way that it's it's said there.

It's not even that they were marrying Gentiles, although that was a significant problem.

It's that the Gentiles brought with them their pagan gods.

That's the issue.

You bring in idol worship back to the land.

Now, Ezra, of course, doesn't know about this.

He finds out about it.

This was happening when Ezra wasn't there.

Remember, Ezra came late.

There was a first return, 60 years have gone by.

Now Ezra comes back with a group of people, even a handful of years after that.

So he's inheriting this.

He's walking in on this, there's just all the celebration at chapter 8, and then somebody taps Ezra on the shoulder and says, You know, take off your party hat, Ezra.

You're so happy?

I'm sorry to let you know this, but the people have been intermarrying again.

Now, what was it exactly they were doing?

Well, they were taking these pagan women, likely divorcing their own Jewish wives to do this, by the way, leaving their Jewish wife, taking a Gentile woman.

A lot of these Gentile nations practiced uh worship, worshiping sexual gods, and so you worship God through different sexual, perverse sexual acts, and so slightly some of that was even involved.

There's idol worship involved.

There's this idea that you can you can marry me, but if you I have to bring my God with me.

That's not a that's not that foreign of a world to us.

I remember as a high school kid, I had a teammate of mine in in soccer, Salim was his name, and he was Muslim, and we were friends all growing up through high school.

It wasn't until I got saved at the end of high school that I met Salim's mom.

I'd seen his dad around, but I met his mom.

His mom was a Christian.

Uh the reason the only reason I met her is because she went to the church that that I got saved at.

And over a few months I get to to meet his mom, and turns out that his dad had lied to her about the sincerity with which he held his faith, married her, she was foolish and married a non-Christian, and then Dad said, This is how it's gonna be.

You can bring kids to church until they're 12 years old.

And they'll start going to the mosque with me, and when they're 18, they can choose.

But from the age 12, 40, you don't get to talk about Jesus to them, you don't get to show them Bibles, you don't get to go to church.

What do you think that's how's that gonna turn out?

That's what's happening in Israel on Ezra's watch.

It's not random people that are doing it either.

It's we're gonna see the list.

I won't make you drag you through all the names of the list, but most of them are leaders, many of them are leaders.

They are the priests that are doing this.

And so Ezra is devastated.

We looked at that last time in chapter 9.

Pastor Ryan led us through study of chapter 9.

It's incredible in chapter 9 how Ezra repents of the sin as if it was his own.

Ezra, of course, didn't marry a foreign wife, but he repents for his people.

I mean, he's just gobsmacked by this.

He doesn't know what to do.

He ends chapter 9 by saying, Yahweh, God of Israel, you are just.

This is the remnant that's escaped.

Speaking of the Babylonian exile, now he says, Nobody can stand before you.

God would be just if he just wiped out the Israelites right here, right now.

That's how it should end, he's picturing it.

But Ezra's gonna turn to the Lord in prayer.

Chapter 10, verse 1, Ezra prayed.

Remember, he's praying at the temple.

He's making confessions, the time of the evening sacrifice.

We'd read that back in chapter 9.

A very great assembly of men and women and children gathered to him out of Israel.

For the people wept bitterly.

I mean, it is just hard to get your mind around this scene unless you've been to Jerusalem, maybe you've seen the temple, you can kind of picture this.

The temple that's there now sits in the footprint of the Herodian temple, and that side of the temple where the wailing wall is, is going to be the same side of the temple where Ezra's temple would have been.

This scene would have played out there.

I mean, the city of Jerusalem goes right up to this place.

There's houses, there's markets.

In fact, David's castle, whatever the word for, David's palace, is right down the hill from that.

I mean, so this is the place.

You could, from David's palace, you can see this wall.

This is the place where everything is happening in Ezra's lifetime.

This is the area they rebuilt.

This is the city.

It's not spread out like suburbs.

People are living on top of each other.

The temple is in the middle of it, and right outside on that wall is Ezra in front of everybody weeping.

Do you remember chapter 9?

He's pulling out his hair.

Not in his prayer closet.

At the base of the temple.

I mean, what would the news be right now?

If you heard that the president was outside the White House right now, just weeping and wailing and pulling out his hair.

And it doesn't even matter who the president is, although that would affect what pulling out the hair would look like.

But just think about what that would do.

Like that's going to go on the news.

What second you go back to Second Kings with the king walking along the wall of the city, and then he's in sackcloth and ashes.

He rips off his robe and he's weeping and lamenting.

That's what's happening.

I mean, Ezra is their leader.

He's the one sent by the Assyrians with, I mean, by the Babylonian Persians with their control over Jerusalem, and he's the high priest overseeing all of their worship here.

And he's lamenting and weeping bitterly, and he's going on for hours.

So people are drawn to see what exactly is happening here.

As the crowd gathers around.

Shechaniah, verse 2, the son of Jahiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra.

We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of our lands, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.

And there's just a lot right there in that verse.

First of all, Ezra is such a capable leader here that you should marvel that what happens after this was not Ezra's doing.

Ezra was so respected as a leader.

Ezra was so respected as a priest and as a preacher.

Remember in chapter 7, he was the one preaching to them.

He was so respected that when his people saw him broken about this, his people rose up and they came up with a solution.

Ezra does not direct them and tell them what to do.

This is a grassroots idea here.

The people are going to come up with their solution because of how much they love Ezra.

So that's the first thing to note here.

Another thing to note, working backwards through this here, is the word married.

We have married foreign women from the peoples of the land.

That is not the normal Hebrew word for married.

In fact, it's not the word used anywhere else in the Old Testament for married.

The normal Hebrew word, Hebrew doesn't have a word for married like we would use.

The normal way you'd say it in Hebrew is I took a wife.

Which sounds strange.

But even in English until really the 1700s, that was the way people often spoke of marriage.

They would say, I took a wife.

Or you would ask, you wouldn't ask somebody, are you married?

You would ask somebody, have you taken a wife?

And that's because that's the way the kind of language was in the Old Testament.

Although in English translations today that's cleaned up and they just used married is how it's said today.

But this is not that word.

The word that's used here is not the word for taking a wife.

The word that's used here is the word for dwelling with someone.

It's the word for abiding with them, sitting down.

So the idea here, the imagery is that you have to ask, what was marriage in the Hebrew world?

Well, you would go to the city gate and you would have the priest would oversee this, and I'm sure there were some kind of vows, but it was a formal negotiated thing.

The priest and the elders of the city would be involved.

There's a dowry that was paid.

It was very important it'd be official.

We're not back in the days of Abraham here.

We're in a highly legalistic structure here.

The Jews have rules for this.

So marriage would be a formal legal process.

They didn't do that with these Gentile women.

They didn't go through the process with them.

They just got rid of their Jewish wives.

And everything here is it's the men doing it, it's the women who are the victims here.

There's no evidence here that women, the Jewish women, were marrying Gentile men.

All the descriptions, the names at the end, it's all the men.

The men were doing this.

They were getting rid of their Jewish wives and moving in with Gentile women.

That's the image here.

And so a different word is used.

This is not a formal marriage.

It's just they started living.

Common law marriage would be the English word for it.

This is their sin.

And the fact that it wasn't a legal marriage, I mean, that just makes it worse, doesn't it?

That makes their sin even worse.

They didn't even bother to fill out the paperwork.

Well, going backwards even a little bit more, verse 2, Shechaniah is the one who comes up with the idea you're about to read about.

Shechaniah, you're going to see his name later.

His dad is on the list of men that have done this.

So Shechaniah himself is likely half Jewish.

His mother is likely a Gentile.

Or if not, if his mother is Jewish, his father put his mother away and married somebody else.

I mean, he's one of the victims of this.

His parents divorced.

Now he's rising up.

He's a respected man.

And he comes up to Ezra, and he can speak with integrity on this.

Because when you think of that kind of sexual immorality, you have to understand that the victims here are going to be the wife, of course, but the victims in a very real way are the children.

Who had parents.

They had a home.

They were being raised as a family.

And then dad comes home one day and puts them out.

The custom back then is if there's a divorce, the women would go back to their parents' house and the women would take the children with them.

And so these kids, and and it's not reading into this to accentuate the kids here because Shechaniah is one of them, and the last verse of the chapter is about the children.

Shechaniah is one of these children who is a victim of this.

He's broken by it, I'm sure.

He's got on with his life, but now it comes out.

And he pleads with Ezra, verse 3.

Let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children according to the counsel of my Lord.

And of those who tremble at the commandment of God, and let it be done according to the law.

Arise.

And he's speaking to Ezra here, for it is your task, and we are with you.

Be strong and do it.

Shechaniah here is the first one that's recorded that comes up to Ezra, who is weeping and pulling out his hair and gathering the crowd.

And Sekaniah comes up to him and says, basically, stop the weeping, Ezra.

Man up and do this.

Take action.

Put these women away.

Send their children back with them.

I think the idea here is if they've born children with their pagan wife, their pagan wife should take the children back and raise them with their pagan families.

That's his appeal.

I don't think he's arguing for his own self deportation.

Here because he's of age.

He's old enough to be a leader here.

That's just a little reminder to you that this is not about the racial element of this.

It's not about Jews marrying Gentiles.

Jews are allowed to marry Gentiles if the Gentiles love Yahweh.

If they're converted.

I mean, off the top of my head, I can think of Rahab and Ruth.

Bathsheba.

That's the significance of Bathsheba.

She was a Hittite, but she was doing the ceremonial bathing in 2 Samuel 12.

She was doing the ritual, or 2 Samuel 11, doing the ritual washing, demonstrating that she had converted to Judaism.

It's not wrong to marry a Gentile woman who converted to faith in Yahweh in the Old Testament.

But the stress here, both in chapter 9, verses 1 through 4, and then here in chapter 10, is that they didn't convert.

The Jews are marrying Gentiles and they're bringing their gods to them.

And so Shekaniah says, you've got to put them out.

You cannot tolerate idol worshiping people here in Israel.

Be strong, Ezra, and do this.

It's really a heartbreaking scene to see this man arguing for really what's going to be devastating effects on these families.

Ezra, verse 6, withdrew from the house of God and went to a chamber of Jehoin, the son of Eliasheb, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles.

A proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem that all the return exiles, that they should assemble at Jerusalem, that if anyone did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders, all of his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from congregation to exiles.

So Ezra's responses, he hasn't tipped his hand.

He hasn't let us know what he's going to do.

He had one person saying, Have everybody send their wives and children away.

Ezra doesn't respond.

Instead, he goes in, he prays and fasts, he gets out of the temple court, goes and prays and fasts through the night.

And the next day tells everybody, Listen, show up here in three days.

Get the message out.

If you are not at the temple court in three days, then you lose your property and you're banned from Israel.

Not an idle threat.

I mean, he will do it.

So all the people of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days.

It was the ninth month, the 20th day of the month.

This is early December by our calendar.

It's the rainy season there, which we'll factor in in a second.

All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of the matter and because of the heavy rain.

Just I like how it's tucked in there.

They're trembling because of the sin.

Also, they're soaking wet.

Israel is, I mean, it could be in the 60s, probably in December there, the low 60s, high 50s, pouring rain.

They're shivering.

There was no rainzer sent out the invitation.

You didn't say three days, unless it's raining, then show up in four days.

There's no gym they can go into.

You know, you think when we plan a venture to Manuel, that was the rain plan.

Not here.

You're going to be outside and you're going to be soaking wet.

Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, You have broken faith and married foreign women, and so increase the guilt of Israel.

Just that phrase, increase the guilt of Israel.

If that's even possible, how guilty were these people that God threw them out of the land.

But this did the trick.

This is even worse than before.

Now make concession or confession to Yahweh, the God of your fathers, and do his will.

Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.

So Ezra now commands them to take drastic action.

And so the main question in the book of Ezra here in Ezra chapter 10 is is he right to do this?

Ezra 10 · chapter mention

Is he right to tell these people to divorce their wives?

And there's lots of ways to answer this question.

I mean, one way is to say, well, they weren't really married.

Okay, it was a different word, it's kind of common law marriage, and I think that is true.

There was kind of common law marriage, but they had children.

I mean, the point of this is that families are going to be ripped apart.

Families are going to be separated.

And I have, I'm going to have a very vivid memory of my mind when my parents got divorced.

I remember looking out the window and seeing one of my parents pack up stuff and drive away.

And that was that.

Went from having a mom and a dad in the house to not anymore.

That's the kind of thing that could mess somebody up, you know?

If Christ didn't come into my life, I don't know how my head would be with that.

But Christ has the power to change that in someone's mind.

That's what Ezra is dealing with.

Not only dealing with you catch it, that's what he's telling people to do.

He's telling the dads to go home, pack up their wife's stuff, put it in the back of the trailer, and send it back to Samaria.

Bring the kids with them.

Ezra is commanding that.

And he says, this is what God wants them to do.

Malachi is at the same time as Ezra.

They're friends.

They preach to the same people.

And Malachi is going to preach his sermon, Malachi chapter 2, and it says, the Lord hates divorce.

Malachi 2 · chapter mention

It's an abomination to him.

So why is Ezra telling him to do it?

Well, the Lord does hate divorce.

It's the sixth commandment.

Don't commit adultery to guard the sanctity of marriage.

But there's another commandment before the sixth commandment, namely the first commandment.

And you can tell just in the way Ezra is dealing with this, this is a first commandment issue for him.

It's not a sixth commandment.

He hasn't gotten to the sixth commandment.

He's on the first one.

Hence the question to Jesus: what's the greatest command?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

That's commandment number one.

And you can even say the first, at least the first three tablets, if not the first four commands, all flow out of that.

The greatest command.

The first three commandments or four commandments of the ten commandments all are about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

That's where Ezra's stuck on.

Commandments five through ten are about loving your neighbor.

So Ezra's saying we've got to deal with the first one before we get to the second one.

And he calls the people to repent.

It's so easy to think that Ezra's overreacting, but that's because we take sin so flippantly here.

We don't take sin seriously in our culture or our world.

So we look at Ezra and we say, hey, calm down, Ezra.

It's just idols in the fireplace.

Calm down.

They made a deal.

You know, you can teach the kids about Yahweh until they're 12.

And they can go back to worshiping idols.

And then when they're 18, they can choose.

What's the big deal, Ezra?

Well, it's a huge deal for Ezra.

And repentance is not just saying I'm sorry.

This is very practical implications to all of us.

Repentance does not just mean saying I'm sorry for sin.

Repentance in our life and in our world means actually taking action to change sin, to remove the sin from your life.

You can't undo past consequences, but you can take drastic action to remove the presence of sin from your life.

You know, we are in a world of people who struggle with pornography and looking at things online, but the idea of you know not having their phone by their side 24-7 wouldn't w would sound like an overreaction to them.

Like, yeah, I can't control what I look at on my phone, but wait, you think I should like don't you realize that everybody's on a phone?

What kind of overreaction are you talking about here?

I think somebody who looks at inappropriate things in the computer and they they can't fight that sin, but moving the computer out of their room, that's just that's way too much.

Then you picture Ezra in the pouring rain with weeping families around him saying, put those people away.

So yeah, you can tie your phone to a brick and throw it out your window, okay?

And what a scene this is.

Remember, it's not the racial identity of these people that was the problem, it was their pagan practices, and so that's why Ezra says, You've got to deal with this, and you've got to deal with it right now.

Verse 12, the assembly answers with a loud voice, it's so.

We must do as you have said.

I mean, these people are convicted by their sin.

But the people are many, and it is a time of heavy rain.

Have you noticed, Ezra?

We can't stand out in the open like this.

Nor is this a task for one day or for two.

We have greatly transgressed in this matter.

Let our officials stand for the whole assembly.

Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at the appointed times, and with them and the elders and judges over every city, until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us.

Again, what a picture of Ezra's pastoral leadership.

These aren't his ideas.

Have you noticed this?

The drastic action of divorce that came from Shechaniah.

Now, a very reasonable proposal.

Hey, give us some time.

You can't just tell everybody to go home and divorce their wives.

I mean, that's going to be chaos.

There has to be paperwork, there's got to be plans made.

Every family situation is different.

You don't want to throw out the rehabs in the roofs with everybody else.

There has to be some intelligence put into this.

So let's get all of our, let's, you know, all call here, all hands on deck.

If you're an elder, if you're a godly man in your in your community, come to the city gates.

Come to the city gates, and let's work through this one family at a time.

That's their proposal.

Again, a very reasonable proposal, and just notice how Ezra structured this in such a way that the people come up with the idea themselves.

And this seems like a good idea.

Verse 15, only Jonathan, the son of Ashiah, and Jehaziah, the son of Tikva, opposed this.

And Meshalem and Shabbatai the Levite supported them.

So the returned exiles, we'll see those other names, some of those other names later in Nehemiah.

Then the returned exiles did so.

Ezra the priest selected the men, the heads of fathers' houses according to their father's houses, each of them designated by name.

And the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter, and by the first day of the first month, they'd come to the end of all the men who'd married foremans.

This is on our calendar, this is three months' time.

It took them three months to work through this.

Which Ezra at first is like, do this now.

Pouring rain, do it now.

And they say, ah.

But there's a lot of wisdom in this measured approach.

Three months go by.

That's an average.

There's going to be 113 of these.

I think my numbers are correct.

There's one that's like father-son, and I'm not sure how that works out, but either 112 or 114 in that window of these cases to work through took 90 days.

That lets you know that they're going through maybe one and a half cases a day, maybe two cases a day, if they're not doing ones on Friday and Saturday, which seems likely.

In other words, there's an intelligent process in this where the priests and the men of integrity are actually working through this.

They're looking at the age of the children, they're looking at the families involved.

They're making, remember, I keep saying this, but I just want to make this so clear.

This is not a racial thing.

Moses married a Cushite, for goodness sakes.

It's a religious thing.

And that's why you need the leaders and the men of integrity to do this.

It's not sinful to marry someone from a different race or ethnicity.

I married a non-New Mexican.

We have figured out how to make it work.

The point here is do not be unequally yoked.

That's the point.

And so this happens.

There were some of the sons of the priest, verse 18 says, who had married these foreign women.

And you get their names right here: Masiah, Eliezer, Jarib, and Gedaliah, some of the son of Jeshua, the son of Jehosedak, and his brothers.

They pledged themselves to put away their wives.

And their guilt offering was a ram of the flock for their guilt.

Now, I'm not going to go through this whole list.

I'm not going to realize names and make you.

I've read a couple genealogies, four, I think, in the last few months here to you guys.

So I'll spare you this.

A question you might want to ask yourself, though, why are these names given here?

Why are the names given?

It's 0.38% of the population.

It's a sliver.

It's 8% of the leaders, though, the Levites are designated.

8% of the Levites, which is significant, but not even a half of a percent of the whole population.

Why name them?

I mean, they're being named to shame them.

And their memories.

It's the opposite of Ezra 2.

The genealogy that starts Ezra is they're all named for their glory.

They're all named so that the church throughout eternity will remember the names of those who trusted Yahweh enough to go back to Israel, to go back to the promised land and rebuild the temple.

Their names will be written and read, and you're going to get the names again in Nehemiah.

These names are the opposite.

For all of time, the men who compromise in this way are recorded to their own shame.

To their own shame.

Can't figure out a sadder way to end the book than to list these guys like that until you get to verse 44.

All of these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even born children.

In fact, the Hebrew says some of these some of these women even were put away with their children, is the way the Hebrew reads.

In other words, this is a sword right into the heart of Israel.

A couple comments on marriage here before we close out with, I think, the main point of this chapter.

Obviously, divorce is bad.

Divorce is not the design of God in marriage.

God made Adam and Eve perfect for each other.

He didn't make Adam and Eve and Mary and let Adam choose.

He made the two of them compatible, perfect, Eve to be a helper to Adam, and that to be their condition through the rest of their life.

This is what Jesus appeals to in Matthew 19 when he is asked by the Pharisees about divorce.

Of course, the Pharisees, when they asked Jesus that question, are setting him up.

This is when Jesus had left Israel.

He was across the Jordan River in the area that was ruled by Herod.

This is where John the Baptist was beheaded for him saying that it was sinful for Herod to divorce his wife, marry his brother's wife.

John the Baptist had his head cut off for this, and so the Pharisees had the perfect plan to trap Jesus, and they asked Jesus, What do you think about divorce, Jesus?

And Jesus says, Have you read Genesis 1 and 2?

He didn't fall into their trap.

He outsmarts them by appealing to the created order.

So divorce is bad.

Nevertheless, the New Testament makes allowance for divorce.

In cases of adultery, if a spouse commits adultery, the aggrieved spouse is no longer bound to marriage and can divorce.

And of course, whenever there's divorce, there's remarriage.

1 Corinthians 7 makes that very clear.

There's no secondary status.

That's not taught in the Bible.

There are a lot of churches that say that, but it's just not biblical thinking.

You're allowed to divorce if you're married to an unbeliever and the unbeliever leaves.

Now that is particularly important for Ezra.

You're allowed to divorce, 1 Corinthians 7 says, if you think, what circumstance would that be?

Okay, two non-Christians, one gets saved, and the other one says, rar.

I don't like you going to church, don't like you in your Bible, don't like you in Jesus, I can't deal with this.

And now if that's all they say, both Peter and Paul say, stay with them.

Christians, stay with the unbeliever, receive the rar, and deal with it with patience, because you don't know.

Perhaps your patience and faithfulness will be what the Lord uses to change this person's heart.

But if this person's heart is not changed, and they're upset that you're loving Jesus and it just aggravates them and they say, fine, I'm out of here, then Paul says, wave bye-bye.

Let them go because you're called to live in peace.

That's the New Testament teaching on this.

This express command in 1 Corinthians 7, though, says, if you're married to an unbeliever, stay.

Stay with an unbeliever.

Because you, this perhaps is how you can bring them to Christ.

You don't know what the Lord's going to do.

And even the way Paul says it, it's like, maybe.

Paul says, I don't know.

Maybe you being a godly wife to an ungodly husband will be enough to convict him and bring him to faith.

Or maybe you being a godly husband to an ungodly wife is enough to convict her and bring her to faith.

Paul says, I don't know, maybe.

Crazier things have happened.

Give it a try.

But then he says, if they reject you because they reject Christ and they leave, let them go.

Let them go.

But Paul also says, 2 Corinthians 6, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

What fellowship has light with darkness?

Do not marry a non-Christian.

Obviously, command to believers, because non-believers wouldn't be applying 2 Corinthians 6.

Don't marry non-Christians.

Now, how does this work in Israel?

Very foundational ethical grid here.

You have to understand that Israel is not made up of believers.

Most of them are not believers.

Not all Israel is Israel, Paul says.

You're born in Israel, you weren't converted into Israel.

And so the idea of being unequally oaked isn't really match up in Israel.

They're not allowed to marry foreign women who bring in their idols with them for first commandment reasons, not for 2 Corinthians 6 kind of reasons.

It's not like the foreign women will corrupt them, although that will happen.

It's that they're inside of God's land.

They need to abide by God's laws, and God's laws say no idols.

Now clearly foreign women had the corrupting influence.

But the point is most of them didn't have regenerate hearts anyway.

This is why you can't take these ethical commands to Israel and apply them to the church because just so much is different.

In the church, you are converted in the church.

You get saved and you are baptized and you join the church.

That's the New Testament model.

So members of the church are supposed to be converted.

So it would be absurd as language Paul uses to talk about a baptized believer who's now marrying a non-Christian.

I mean, it's insane.

It's absurd.

Because it would be trying to say light and darkness should marry.

Or the devil and Jesus should marry.

What possible fellowship could there be?

If you love Christ more than you love sin in the world, it would be so surreal to say, yeah, but my closest relationship in the world can be with someone who doesn't love Christ.

That's okay, we'll work through it.

That's the New Testament command.

Part of this is you have to appreciate what God is doing in marriage.

Marriage is not a contract between, you know, two people that just can't do better than anybody else.

They settle on each other.

I read that definition once in a marriage book.

You know, marriage is often when two people say, Oh, on the open market, I can't do better than you.

So all things considered, let's do this, and the other person agrees.

How romantic, huh?

Find that in a Valentine's Day card.

Marriage is the idea.

It's you confessing your own inability.

It's you confessing your own inadequacy.

It's not good for you to be alone.

It's not good.

God has called you with a uh called you min with a work, and it's not good for you to take your calling by yourself.

So it is good to have a wife, the scripture says.

He who finds a wife finds a.

Oh, such a good thing.

Such a good thing.

But what about the person then who finds a wife who doesn't love the Lord and shackles himself?

To her.

Two horses pulling in opposite directions.

It's a very bad thing.

It's a very harmful thing.

And that's what Ezra is encountering here.

Now, Nehemiah is going to encounter people who intermarried also.

And Nehemiah is not going to tell them to divorce.

Nehemiah is going to tell them to repent.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

We don't find out, but he doesn't tell them to divorce.

So is it right that Ezra told him to divorce with Nehemiah and Malachi apparently see the same play on the field and call it a different way?

I don't know, we weren't there.

It's helpful to think through the three uses of the law, though.

The first use of the law is to curb bad behavior of sinful people.

And that's certainly what Ezra is doing here.

Ezra is bringing down the full force of the law on these people to curb their sinful behavior and to keep their sin out of the promised land.

The third use of the law is to tell believers how to live.

I don't think Ezra 10 applies to us in that way.

I don't think there's an ethical obligation for us here, apart from seeing the folly of being unequally yoked.

But it's a second use of the law that I think is critical here.

The second use of the law, and I see some of you writing it, the first use is to curb evil people.

The third use is to tell Christians how to live.

But it's a second use that I think Ezra, the book of Ezra, has in mind.

The second use is to show you your need for a savior.

And that's why the book ends in this heart-wrenching fashion.

It started with such high hopes and such eager expectations, and it ends with just sadness.

It shows you that there's you need a New Testament, and Ezra 10 is not it.

It shows you that no matter what priests you get, no matter what sacrifices you get, no matter what architect builds the temple, you can have the oddliest priest around in Ezra.

It's not enough.

It's not enough.

This is Nicodemus asking John, asking Jesus, well, what must I do to be saved?

And Jesus says, be born again.

Remember, it's a pun in the Greek, be born from above, versus be born again.

It's the same word.

Nicodemus goes with born again.

Do you remember?

He says, How could I start over?

And Jesus says, you can't start over.

You can't start over.

A thousand new starts would be a thousand same sad tales of woe.

Start over all you want.

It's not going to help.

Ezra can start over, over, over, over, over, over, over again.

But until Christ comes, this will be how the story ends.

Jesus is not there in Genesis 3.

He's prophesied, but he's not there.

And so, of course, sadness comes out of the garden.

Jesus is not there when Noah gets off of the ark.

And so, of course, sadness comes into the world.

Jesus is not there when Abraham and Lot part ways.

And so, of course, it becomes a sad story.

The Savior hasn't come in the Ten Commandments.

So, of course, Moses comes back down from the mountains to heartaches and idol worship because they don't have Christ.

They're not in the new covenant.

Joshua didn't have the Savior with him.

He may be named after him, but he's not him.

And so he comes into the promised land and he cannot bring the new covenant.

He only has the power of the old covenant.

He has signs and wonders and miracles and trumpets and swords and falling walls and converted prostitutes.

He's got all that.

But he does not have the new covenant.

And so, of course, it's a sad story.

You think exiling them from the promised land and then returning them will purge the land of its sin?

The sin is in the hearts, and their hearts aren't changed.

They all divorce their wives and put them away.

You know what you find in Nehemiah?

They just do it all over again.

So what, if Nehemiah has them divorce again and put them away?

Is that going to make it better?

No.

You picture the end of Nehemiah, Nehemiah just saying, Lord, come quick.

Nehemiah ends with its own sad scene.

I mean, they're just driving home the point that without the new covenant, there is no hope for change.

And this is why we can rejoice, because in Christ we are a new creation.

This is what the old covenant did.

Ezra did not have the power to tell them, put away your idols, put away your foreign wives, and behold, you are a new creation.

He could not say that.

He couldn't say, Bring the ram.

Remember the Levite who where was it, verse 19, who brings the ram of the flock for his sin offering?

Ezra could not look at him in the eye and say, You sacrificed a ram for your immoral actions.

Great.

Your conscience is cleansed.

The blood of Christ forgives you from your sins.

Go and sin no more.

He could not say that.

He knows they'll be back.

That's the heartache of Israel.

That's the heartache of the old covenant.

But that's why there's good news in here.

By understanding that the primary purpose of the law is to change hearts by showing the inability to keep the law, it drives you to Christ.

And so Ezra ends with such sadness.

All these married foreign women, some of the women had even born children, children who are going to grow up as covenant breakers in a covenant-breaking land.

It just shows you the need for Christ.

It shows you how much better we are in Christ.

It shows you the superiority of 2 Corinthians 6 over Ezra 10.

Because Christ is a better priest than Ezra.

Lord, we're thankful that you are the priest who can take away our sins.

You are our high priest.

And so we're grateful for the forgiveness that we have in Christ, the love and kindness we have in Christ, for the power of the gospel to change the calloused heart.

You alone are our Savior.

So we give you our life.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here to manual.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.