The Ezra Directive

Ten years ago, I gave a sermon and presentation that I've given at the Ambassador Bible Center a few times over the years. It was a part of a series that I entitled, Making Life Work, and this particular presentation I called, Life on the Front Porch. In that presentation, I spoke about the long periods of time when there is a silence in the Bible record as far as events and what is taking place. The events of the Bible, when you actually tally them up, they actually occur in a very small space of time if you look at from the beginning of Genesis and the creation to where we are right now. The story of Moses, the story of Abraham, the story of the Israelites, of David and all the other characters, the New Testament period. In terms of just adding up the years of the stories that we read about in the Bible, it doesn't even begin to fill the vacuum of all time from Genesis to now. There's a lot of time, months, years, decades, centuries of human existence. The Bible doesn't tell us anything about in terms of what was going on or whatever. That's not the purpose of the Bible. It's not a complete history book. It's a history of what God is doing in His plan and in His purpose, particularly Israel and in the Church.

It's not a complete history book, but the point of my presentation was that there are events and details that take up a small space of all recorded time in human life as far as what we have in the Bible. My point then was that it is in that time in the middle, these vast decades or centuries, decades more or less, as it applies to our own lifespan. It's in those years that we do our living. Our focus on the reality of life that is filled up with those silent days is really not that dramatic. People going about the business of living, having children, marrying, giving in marriage, to use that biblical term, and living out a span of life, a generation and then a next generation, in reality that goes on all the time.

There are wonderful stories that we read about, as far as what we live ourselves, but they are not always stuff of the Bible necessarily. The reality of life is that you and I live our days and our weeks and months and our years quietly, more or less, going to work, making a living, raising children, dealing with the issues of life that come to us.

The reality is that, in terms of our own calling, God expects us to live righteously, to build a character, a godly character, during that time. The reality, when you understand God's plan, is that it's in those moments, those vast wide open planes of time, where we live, that it's really there that God is still working with individuals. And He's preparing people, in His own way, for service in His work at their time and place, and certainly for the world tomorrow, the Kingdom to come. That when we understand that, we can then put our lives in the proper perspective of the Bible and of prophecy. My point during that particular presentation, as I designed it ten years ago, was not to get hung up on prophecy and end-time prophecy and speculation, and always living in a gunlap mentality necessarily, with the high expectation of Christ's return next week, but to live more of a paced life, more of a marathon approach to life, which is a biblical term.

I've been thinking about that as I've been preparing and looking at a series here in the Scriptures that I want to give part two on here today. Because we can look within the Bible and within the biblical story, and there are places that we come to when we see that there are times when God is silent in an unusual period.

And I'd like to talk about this one period that we can see in the Scriptures today. An unusual period of silence that is sandwiched in between two rather dramatic events as far as what God tells us within His story. A few weeks ago, I gave a sermon that I called, titled, The Haggai Ultimatum, where we went into the story of Haggai in the first six chapters of the book of Ezra. And it talked about that time in the period of Israel's history after their destruction of Jerusalem and the nation of Judah, the Babylonian captivity, and the seventy years had elapsed. And the decree from the, not Ezra, but the Persian king, not Xerxes, boy, I'm really bad with drawing names out today, Cyrus. Thank you. When Cyrus issued his decree, which was part of prophecy for the Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem, that took place. And the story is told really in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, along with three prophets that we are familiar with, but don't always understand the relation of their story. And that is Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the last three of what is called the minor prophets in the Old Testament.

Those three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, were contemporaries of Ezra and Nehemiah in a unique story in this period after the exile to Babylon when God began to return Jews to repopulate Jerusalem, to rebuild a temple, and to establish a community there in Israel that prepared the way for the first coming of Jesus Christ.

And the first part of that story in the sermon I gave was called the Haggai ultimatum. For those of you that like titles, today's sermon is called the Ezra Directive. Because it is to Ezra that we look for the next chapter in this particular story to draw certain lessons from. If you will, turn over to Ezra 7.

We'll pick up where we left off in that last sermon, and I'll set the stage for this and show you this gap of time. I mentioned it at the time that I gave that other sermon, but let's go back to it in Ezra 7, verse 1.

Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Bible, falling just before, as they do, the book of Job. If you look at the end of chapter 6 of Ezra, you will see that the Jews kept the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. Verse 22, they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord made them joyful and turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. After a period of time, they had finished rebuilding the temple.

It wasn't an elaborate temple, it wasn't as beautiful as the one Solomon had built, but it was a temple on the spot there in Jerusalem, and sacrifices were able to start. The religious life of the community was revived by these people. Of course, in the initial return, they were led by two individuals, Joshua and Zerubbabel. You read about them at the beginning of Ezra, and also they're mentioned in Haggai and Zechariah as well.

But what you don't know just by reading from the end of chapter 6 into chapter 7, unless you have with you a Bible that's got annotations and commentary, and we'll tell you this, is that between the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7, where it talks about the arrival of Ezra, there's a gap of about 60 years.

60 whole years. And that can be easily demonstrated by the chronology and the years and the dates that we know from the markers that are given here. But we won't deal with dates. I'm not going to shower you with dates today, but just fixing your mind that here's a gap of 60 years, about 57 to, some say, 60 in other cases. That's more than a generation. That's a whole lifetime. That's a lot of time. And we don't know anything about what is going on in this, in Jerusalem, at this particular point in time. Under Joshua and Zerubbabel, they rebuilt the temple. They established a presence in Jerusalem. They met some opposition, and it took them several years and a couple of the help from Haggai and Zechariah to get the job done. But the record stops right after this keeping of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And we have a 60-year gap. What happened in Jerusalem? We don't know. By this time, by the time of Ezra, it's safe to assume that Joshua and Zerubbabel, the governor and the religious leader, they're both dead. That, in a sense, most of that generation that first returned to Jerusalem, a good portion of them have died off. Now, their descendants are still there. There's still a presence. It's small. Initially, there were about 20,000 that went back in the first wave. And so it's fluctuating in its growth. But the job that they got done and finished was rebuilding the temple, and it was finished. And then, all of a sudden, we read about the time of the reign of Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, a different king than that of Cyrus. And he then is beginning to deal with a particular man by the name of Ezra. And we don't know anything that's going on until we get to this point. That doesn't mean things weren't happening. Because in this period of 60 years, you would place the story of Esther.

And we all know the beautiful story of Esther, where this woman who was a concubine of the Persian king put her life on the line to save the Jews in the Persian kingdom during that time. It was during this 60-year gap that the story of Esther took place in Persia. So the reason I bring that up is to help us understand a very important point.

The Bible is silent on some things, but that doesn't mean God is not working. And we find in an unusual book of Esther, which by the way does not even mention God in the book. That leads some critics to question whether it should even be in the Scripture. But if you read through the story of Esther, you don't find God mentioned in the story.

Certainly the story of the Jews and what they are doing is important there. But that is a story of courage and preservation of the Jewish people at a time when Mordecai, not Mordecai but Haman, seeks to eradicate the Jews. It's the first known holocaust, if you will, attempt at exterminating the Jews. And it's within the Persian kingdom. There's another story that is taking place that we don't read about until we get really here to chapter 7, and that is the story of Ezra. Because when we read Ezra coming on the scene, we find that he is in Babylon, and he is an important figure, important enough to be sent by Artaxerxes to go back to Jerusalem as an official figure to take responsibility within the community back there.

And keep in mind that within the Persian realm, the Persians had a very lenient attitude toward their conquered peoples. That's why it was under the Persians that the Jews returned. They were not necessarily like the Babylonians. If they could get along, they would go along. And they would allow a certain level of autonomy within the overall Persian realm. And that's why that was a unique period, at least for the Jews to go back to Jerusalem during this particular period of time. Ezra is in Babylon. And Ezra, we find here, is an interesting individual. Just look at the first few verses. Let's begin in verse 1 of Ezra 7. It says, It goes through the genealogy of Ezra. And it comes down to verse 5. And we find that Ezra is in the lineage of Eliezer and Aaron, the chief priest. This is the Aaron who was the brother of Moses. So it establishes the pedigree of Ezra at this point. And that's important because in verse 6, it comes to a point where it says, This Ezra came up from Babylon, not another Ezra, this Ezra. Sometimes you have to kind of pause it in a Bible line and kind of note what it says. It says, Which, after having given this genealogy to show that this was a man of impeccable, blue-blooded pedigree. This one, not someone else, not another Ezra, not someone who was a pretender, this man was qualified. This man was prepared. This man is the one who came up from Babylon. Then in verse 6, it tells us also that he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. And the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the Lord, his God upon him. Some of the children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, the Nephanim, came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which is the seventh year of the king. And on the first day of the first month, he began his journey from Babylon. And on the first day of the fifth month, he came to Jerusalem, so it took about a four-month period, according to the good hand of his God upon him. And so we find that Ezra was a scribe.

Now, let's stop for a moment just to understand what a scribe was. We really don't read too much about the scribes until we come to the New Testament. And in the New Testament, what we read about the scribes is in connection with the life of Jesus. It's not always a very complimentary picture, because you find that the scribes occupy a very, very significant position within the life of Judah. They are the chief religious teachers. In fact, if you'll hold your place right here and turn over to Matthew 23.

Matthew 23. This one statement Jesus makes about the scribes tells us the degree to which they had arisen in their position among the Jews over a few hundred year period to the time of Jesus. And he said in verse 1, the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Now, that was a very high position of religious teaching, religious rulership within the community of Israel. Now, keep in mind, even at Jesus' time, Rome was the chief authority.

The Jews were not an autonomous nation. They had a certain level of governance under the Roman rule. The Roman garrison was stationed right in Jerusalem. So they were not an independent nation. And Jesus goes on and says, Whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do. So he acknowledges their position. But do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. They were hypocrites. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear. They lay them on men's shoulders. But they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men.

Verse 6, they love the chief places at the feast, the best seats in the synagogue. They love to be called rabbi in verse 7. So Jesus doesn't give them a very complimentary press, which shows you how far they had come from the time of Ezra. Ezra was ascribed, but he was not ascribed like we read about in the Gospels.

That only came about after centuries, literally, of being in power, corruption, and problems, which is a whole other story in itself. But the point we need to understand is that the scribes were the chief religious teachers. And when Ezra comes on the scene, this is his role.

And this is why it's important in understanding the Ezra directive to recognize what a scribe did. Ezra is following in a line that had already existed among the people in Israel before their exile. Hezekiah had scribes. You'll read in the book of Proverbs where Hezekiah, I think it's going about Proverbs 25 or 26, he had a class of people who pulled together the various Proverbs. There was a scribe community, a group of professional note-takers, if you will, clerks, people at a level who were keeping records and occupied within the religious community from a political as well as a religious perspective in pulling together documents, organizing, keeping things together in kind of a clerical scribal position of authority within the community.

And by the time we come to the picture of Ezra, we see that he is charged with Biorite Xerxes as a scribe to deal with God's Word and to come back and to teach that within the community of Israel. In verse 10, back in Ezra, chapter 7, as it says about Ezra in kind of a window into his personal life, his resume, if you will, it says, Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. Verse 10 gives us a window of understanding into the type of person that Ezra was. He was a priest as well as a scribe because he's descended from the Aaronic line, so he was also a priest.

He was prepared at this point in the story for what we see him being charged to do by Biorite Xerxes to go back to the community there in Judah, Jerusalem. And we find, just in verse 10, we can define these three aspects, that Ezra had diligently studied the law and the teachings of God as they were and as they existed at the time.

We could say of Ezra, remember what they said of the Bereans in the book of Acts? Remember the Bereans, a group of people there in Berea, they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so? Well, we could say of Ezra that it seems that he searched the scrolls daily to see if these things were so. Because what he had of Genesis and whatever Deuteronomy was and Numbers and Leviticus was at the time, it was written on a scroll. But as a scribe, in their school, if you will, or in their office, they had all of the law. They had the story of Israel, the story of the kings, they had the Psalms of David, they had the Proverbs because they had taken those with them in their exile.

And they had preserved them, they made copies, they taught them, and they had studied them. So Ezra was an individual who had prepared his heart to seek the Lord, which means that he studied the law of God. He searched the scrolls daily like you and I would search the Scriptures daily, studying the Bible, understanding it, preparing our heart. And that's again an important phrase to note, that he prepared his heart to seek the Lord, and he obviously knew God's teaching well.

The second aspect of this, about Ezra, is that he obviously came to a point in his life where he moved from studying the Scriptures from an academic point of view to a personal point of view. He came to a point where he decided that the Scriptures spoke to him personally. It was not just an academic exercise of preserving something for the community, of preserving something for the next generation, to be seen as the top professor within the Jewish community of the story and the history of Israel. It was more than that for him. You know, some people make a lifetime of studying theology and studying the Bible, but they don't look at this as an instruction book for their life. I mean, there are very brilliant men who study the Greek and the Hebrew and the story and the archaeology and the history of all that is the Bible. And they can run circles around you and I in terms of detailed technical knowledge. But when you read and study their writings about the book, they don't believe it is a book that lays a claim on their life. They don't believe that it is an inspired book of God. They look at it, in many cases, as a piece of literature to be taken apart, analyzed, and put back together in a very secular, humanistic way. Ezra did not approach the Scriptures that way. Ezra approached the Scriptures eventually in his life where he said, These speak to me. This is a lamp to my feet. And so he was convicted to live them, not just to academically study it, which is how God's Word has to impact us.

If we're going to live a committed life. Another point about this is to realize that Ezra did that at Babylon. This was the same Babylon where Daniel lived. This was the same Babylon which was the heart, if you will, of the beast. beginning with Nebuchadnezzar. This was the big bad Babylon of the Bible.

Where, if you want to look at it from what it says in Revelation, it was the repository of every foul spirit and idea that you could imagine then as spiritual Babylon will be in the future.

This is where Ezra lived. And he walked by the idols and the temples.

And the calendars that were there, the social customs of Babylon, were not what he was used to.

But it was in that environment he lived a righteous life. You don't have to be in the kingdom of God.

You don't have to be in a particular place to live righteously. In fact, none of us are in the kingdom of God today. And most of us live, as we do in our neighborhoods and in our communities, and they're far from being righteous places.

The point is, like Ezra, we have to choose to live righteously in the midst of a lot of unrighteousness. And he did. He chose to do that. As it says, he prepared his heart to seek the law of God and to do it. There's a third point about Ezra. He also knew that his role was to teach this way to his people. It was part of his heritage, of his own family, going back to Aaron. He took that seriously. And so he was a teacher. And I'm sure that he was an effective teacher as he directed people's steps in the way of righteousness. So he diligently studied. He recognized that they spoke to him personally. And then he also taught that to other people. And he was doing this during this period of time, this gap, this silent period, where we don't know what's going on in Jerusalem. And yet he's preparing himself for something that even he did not fully know what that knowledge and preparation would lead him to do. That's where vision comes in. Why do we do the things we do? Keeping the Sabbath, obeying God, commit to the way of life. Ultimately, it has to come down in our lives to a vision that goes beyond any particular benefit we can recognize for ourselves now. That benefit may be peace of mind. Maybe some very tangible physical blessings that we can look to as well as spiritual blessings. Those are good. But ultimately, we have to have the vision that what we do, the worship we engage in, the study that we do, the knowledge growth that we achieve over a period of time, through a trial, through a period of study, through a period of fellowship, and just the accumulation of years in the Church, that is for a greater purpose beyond our own time and day. And that takes a vision to be able to recognize that even in our own time, God can use it, but He's going to also use it in the Kingdom to come, that indeed we are being prepared to be teachers. But it takes a great deal of vision to keep a focus on that and to believe it and to allow it to drive our lives. That's a challenge. We're being caught up in pursuits of our own goals or our life, and marriages, and children, and jobs, and pursuit of money, pursuit of pleasure, or just getting by in life. It's hard to sometimes keep that vision, but it is necessary. And you have to sense that Ezra, though he probably had his ups and downs, bad times and good times, just like any other human being, when it was all said and done, he was still moving forward. He was still making progress. His heart was being prepared to seek God as a way of life, because of His calling and because of His role, and He begins to be used for that. Now, when you go on here in chapter 7, you find—and we're not going to read through the decree, the letter from our deserxes here—but essentially the King tells him down in verse 12, as He addresses him as a priest, a scribe of the law of God of heaven, He said, I issue a decree that all of the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites in my realm who volunteer to go to Jerusalem may go with you.

And so He provides means by which Ezra takes another group of people to go back to Jerusalem to engage the community in the work and the life that is being done there. We're not given a lot of the details necessarily as to how this came about at this particular point, but a request was made, and the impetus for that request, we don't again know all the details. Maybe the outpost in Jerusalem had sent a message back to the capital of Persia saying, we need some additional help. We need some reinforcements here. We need a teacher. Maybe that had been in the form of the request. And it was decided that Ezra was the one to do it, but he went back and took four months. Chapter 8 gets into the story of that and the return to Jerusalem and the fasting and prayer for protection. They brought back gifts and money for the temple, and they returned to Jerusalem. He mentions that back in chapter 8, verse 31, where they departed and went up to Jerusalem. And came to Jerusalem in verse 32 of chapter 8. And down in verse 36, it says, they delivered the king's orders to the satraps, king's officials there, and the governors in the region beyond the river. So they gave support to the people and the house of God. Now, let's pause for a moment and let me insert another thought in the story. Jerusalem had been rebuilt. A temple had been rebuilt. A community had been reestablished there. Again, it was not an autonomous community. They were not a sovereign nation. They did not have a king. But it was an outpost. It was a home. It was an attempt to rebuild the home, and it was according to the prophecies. Why? Why would God and His plan cause Jerusalem to be rebuilt and even a temple to be rebuilt? Have you ever thought about that? Jerusalem had been destroyed by the armies of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews had been carted off to Babylon. That whole system came to an end. You read in Ezekiel, where even the presence of God was lifted off of the temple, and where God had actually, through a spiritual presence, been in that temple that was built by Solomon, there was a day that had come when that presence of God left. We do not read anywhere in the Bible where the presence of God returned to any future temple. The temple that was rebuilt at the time of Haggai and Joshua and Zerubbabel, we don't read where God's presence was there in the same way that it was of the first temple. That's an important point to remember. The city that is rebuilt is a far cry from the city that is height under David and Solomon and the subsequent kings.

Why rebuild Jerusalem? Why rebuild the temple? The only real purpose that I think that we can deduce from Scripture, and call this my own speculation that will be fine for the purposes here today, but I think that it's a solid argument that we can make, that all this was done to prepare for something.

That one thing was the coming of Christ and the building of the church. Go with me a little further. You go forward to the time of Jesus. Jesus comes to Jerusalem and to Judea. It's again not a completely sovereign nation. It's under Roman rule. There's a refurbished temple. Herod made it even better than what had been done during Haggai's time.

But when you read of Jerusalem, Christ, he wept over Jerusalem. He said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you've killed the prophets. How many times would I have gathered you under my wings, but you would not? The only times we have Jesus going into the temple was either when he was young to teach, to engage the religious leaders, and confounding them, because by that time a lot of their teaching had kind of been confused, or he goes in to overturn the temple tables. Because they had turned it into a house, you know, an exchange house. We don't read about Jesus coming to the temple in the same way that God's presence was there in the Holy of Holies. It was, again, largely symbolic. And after Jesus died, and after the church was founded within a few decades by 70 AD, that temple in Jerusalem was destroyed again. Destroyed again.

The Jews did not even have a presence there to speak of until the 20th century. Why then rebuild it back during this time of Zechariah and Ezra, Nehemiah? What was the purpose of rebuilding that? The only real purpose that I can come to in the plan of God was it was a place for Jesus to come to in the flesh. It was first coming to build His church. There were prophecies, and that was why there were prophecies. Of a rebuilding and of a return to 70 weeks prophecy. There's no other reason to rebuild the nation, the city, and the temple. All of that means to prepare for Christ. We're told in the book of Galatians that Christ came, His birth was, in the fullness of times. There was many matters in place at the time Jesus was born for that moment to be the time in human history when God put His Son on the earth in human form to do that particular part of the phase of the plan of God. But once all that was fulfilled, the city, the temple, the nation was destroyed in 70 AD. So the work of Ezra, and this period was to point to the building of the spiritual temple, really. As we look at it from our perspective, and we put this together with all the other scriptures knowledge that we have from the scriptures, the work of Ezra at this period, as we focus on, was to really point to the building of the spiritual temple. That's the biggest lesson you and I take from it. It wasn't so much to worry about the physical aspects of this rebuilding period. We look at it and gain lessons for us today in advance of Christ's Second Coming, in a phase, in a period, when Christ is building His church, the spiritual temple. We could go through all the scriptures that Paul tells us about in Ephesians and in Corinthians, where we, the church, is the temple of God. And you can even draw that down to the individual level, as we know as well, in terms of our bodies being a temple of God's Spirit. Right now, in this age and in this part of God's plan, it is a spiritual temple that is being built. And that's our interest and focus upon the lesson from this epic of Ezra, because it teaches us something as we are being involved in the message, or in the preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus and His building and His work of building the spiritual temple at this time. And isn't that really the message of Pentecost, which we just kept here a few weeks ago, of the first fruits and of the small harvest, growing now in anticipation of a greater fall harvest? This period between Pentecost and the Feast of Trumpets is this period, if you will, this gap between two holy days, Pentecost and the Feast of Trumpets, that even in this gap can teach us something that I think is connected to what I've drawn from this story of Ezra's directive, of this long period of time of many weeks stretching between Pentecost and Trumpets in the symbolic sense, of the Church being built. This is the phase of the Church, this period from Pentecost forward, where the spiritual temple is being built.

In anticipation, the first fruits, the smaller harvest, in anticipation of the greater fall harvest. And so if we can place the story of Ezra in that context in which we essentially live right now, in our life, and even literally right now between Pentecost and Trumpets, we can understand something in terms of our lessons from this story, but really to the larger lesson of what God expects of us and how he is working with us. When we go back and look at this coming of Ezra and Nehemiah, because you have to realize that Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one story, one book. They were contemporaries. And how they interacted is another whole story. You'd almost need a week of classes to kind of sort it all out and understand that. There are discrepancies and there's not a full knowledge here as to who came first, Ezra or Nehemiah. Some say Ezra came first and Nehemiah was second. Some say Nehemiah was there first and then came Ezra. It's really not that important to the overall story as to who came first. It is important to realize and true to understand that they were contemporaries.

And to understand this, most importantly, they were catalysts. Ezra and Nehemiah in a great spiritual awakening, the last spiritual awakening within the story of Israel. You ever heard of a spiritual awakening in American history? Those of you that studied history, American religious history.

How many of you are aware of periods of time called the spiritual awakening? Too many of you? Yeah. There were two great periods in American history of what they called historically the spiritual awakening. There was one in the pre-revolutionary America in New England. There was a great time of powerful preaching and the Puritans and that period of time. That's called the first awakening. There was a second awakening in the very early 1800s. And that awakening, they call it the second spiritual awakening, that happened on the frontier in places like what is now Virginia and Kentucky. And it was a revivalist, charismatic type of preaching out in the frontier outposts of what was then America.

Keep in mind, Kentucky was the west of that particular period of time. And it gave rise to what we generally call the evangelical movement of American religious period of the later 1800s. But there were ministers that the Methodist Church got its start in that second great awakening. My mother was a Methodist, and my earliest memories in a church were in the Methodist Church for a period of time. The Methodist Church then was completely different from the Methodist Church today, by the way. But my mother used to tell me how when she was a kid, she used to hear stories and scripture teaching about the millennium, about the thousand year reign in the Methodist Church. You won't hear that in today's Methodist Church. But that period of awakening, the second awakening of the early 1800s, gave rise to an evangelical period. But as historians describe and study that period, they recognize that there was a religious zeal and energy. People went to meetings, went to camp meetings. That was when the period of what they called revivals or camp meetings got started. And it led to a great deal of interest and attendance in religion. The histories tell us that the knowledge of the Bible wasn't really all that great.

In fact, it was less than the colonial period. And it was a precursor of our even more biblically illiterate modern world today. But people went to church. Religions were founded. The Methodist was founded. Baptists flourished. But people were not any more generally knowledgeable about the Bible, or certainly not even the truth. But they were religious. And that can be good, but it doesn't always go quite that way. So the point is that a period of spiritual awakening has to have at its core a point and ideally the truth. Ezra created a time of spiritual awakening, and it is the last one in the story of Israel within the Bible. That's another reason to focus on this particular period of time. Ezra and the Amaya, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were key figures in this episode. And it worked for the time. The people rebuilt the temple. They rebuilt Jerusalem. They made a commitment, a rededication to the law of God. But it likely did not endure beyond the lives of Ezra and the Amaya or the prophets. When those men passed from the scene, as human nature takes its toll, so did their fervor, their commitment, and their dedication. A spiritual awakening is a repentance that takes you back to a deeper faith and obedience to God. This is what Ezra is involved with here. This is what Nehemiah is involved with when you come into the story of Ezra, especially in the last two chapters of Ezra. And then what we might pick up beginning at about Nehemiah chapter 8. In Ezra 9, it comes to a point where there is the real point of the life that Ezra encountered when he returned. There was one very large problem, and it's told at the beginning in chapter 9. And it was a big problem. It says in chapter 9, verse 1, These were all Gentile, meaning they were non-Israelite tribes, clans, nations that had always lived around the nation of Israel. You read about them going back into the book of Deuteronomy in Numbers. And they were peoples of the land that had been uprooted. They were people beyond the Jordan River. The Moabites and the Ammonites, especially, lived beyond the Jordan River, the present area of Jordan. Of course, the Egyptians are easy to identify. But this was the mixture of people in the same land at this particular point in the story. And in one sense, it's not a whole lot different than the same story we see on the same piece of real estate today. The ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and the Arabs and the state of Israel today, as far as land and peace and who's going to occupy the land. And the West Bank and the Bethlehem and Jerusalem and the Palestinian rights and all of the headline stories that we just continually deal with. President Obama recently gave a major speech in Egypt. He talked about the Palestinian-Israeli situation the Israelis have made some counter offers. It's just an ongoing story. And at the heart of it are different peoples occupying the same piece of real estate.

Different cultures, different languages, even for that matter, different religions. Even the Muslim and the Jewish faith today. And it's not a whole lot unlike what was the problem or at the core of the problem during the time of Ezra.

You have differing peoples occupying the same piece of land. And they are there for different purposes. The Israelites or the Jews who had come back at the time of Ezra and before were there for a distinct reason.

They were a remnant and they were to establish an outpost, if you will, of God's way of life in Jerusalem at that time. For God's purpose, as I already outlined. But the conflict came in with these other nations, these other peoples who had different religions.

I don't need to go into all the details, but they were pagan religions that involved, in some cases, child sacrifice. Those of you that read the Chronicles of the Kings books here a year or more ago, you know the graphic stories of child sacrifice and the constant conflict between God's people, Israel, and the nations. That's why God said when he told Israel to go into the land under Joshua, clear it out.

The fundamental principle is that you can't coexist with two different faiths, two different cultures in the same piece of land without there being conflict, without there being assimilation, without there being a watering down. What Ezra had to confront, what was brought to him here, was that it says the people, the priests and the Levites, all of them, they'd not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands. Now that is a sociological discussion that can go on for a whole lifetime. What does it mean to separate from the people? To separate. This is chapter 9 and 10, and this story and this episode is a hard subject. When you read through it, you can look at it and say, Mmm, mmm, wow, it's hard. It's hard to read, and it's even harder to think about when you understand what it's really saying and the implications. And it's even harder to accept it.

It's harder to accept it, especially for our modern minds. Because we want everybody to get along. We think we can all... if you've grown up on Sesame Street, you realize that everybody can live on Sesame Street. All different cultures, all different faiths, can live in Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. But our headlines, even today, tell us, no, they can't. And cultures are very, very strong. Ethnic cultures are very, very strong, and so are religious cultures. They're very, very strong. We can live together. We have to live together in our modern pluralistic world. It doesn't mean that there won't be conflict. It doesn't mean there won't be problems. And then when we add in the dimension of what God is doing, because that's really the whole point of the story of Ezra. Nehemiah in this episode is, what was God doing? Why was it important that they separate themselves from the peoples of the land? Well, go on to verse 2. He says, For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons. Well, that's normal. Boy meets girl. Down at the local drive-in here, just around the corner from the Kidron Valley. Boom! Jewish boy meets Ammonite girl. She's dark-haired, beautiful, and her dress is just angled in the right way, and sparks start flying. And the Jewish boy says, I want that girl. Or vice versa. You know how it works. Attraction. They had taken their daughters as wives. And then it says, So that the Holy Seed is mixed with the peoples of those lands. Now, that is not a politically correct statement for today, is it? The Holy Seed is mixed. You don't want to understand this correctly, number one. This is talking about interfaith marriage. This is not talking about interracial marriage. This is not even addressing that subject. So we don't go there on that one. This is interfaith. This is dealing with religion. The whole injunction that God gave from the beginning in Deuteronomy with Israel, and people, you don't take their wives to you. Because they're going to bring in different gods, and you're going to be interested in those gods. And they're going to be enticing, because that form of worship has music, dancing, and all that goes along with it. And it's exciting. And the more gods the merrier than just this one austere god that has ten commandments, let's have a whole different set of gods. And they're more forgiving. They're more lenient. They're more fun. And God says, don't go there. But the story they did, and even Solomon did, and it caused his heart to be turned. It was all a matter of religion and way of life that would be watered down. God was dealing with Israel in a unique way as a chosen people under a covenant for a special purpose at that time. And he wanted them to be separate. It didn't happen. That doesn't mean we don't have the time to go into all the sociological explanations of other nations and other lands, and God's will and purpose and all of that. We should rather not all understand that. But here he gets into this matter of the holy seed being mixed with the peoples of the land. And it says, even the hand of the leaders and the rulers has been foremost in this trespass.

The children of the leaders have done it as well as the children of the middle class and everyday Joe Sixpack on the street. And Ezra says, when I heard this, I tore my garment and my robe and plucked out some of my hair of my head and beard and sat down astonished. That's quite a reaction when he heard it. Now, in verse 2 it says that they have been foremost in this trespass. If you have a margin in your Bible, you'll see that it says, unfaithfulness. Which, when it's translated out, the term here of trespass or faithlessness means really just a breach of faith. There's a breach of faith that's taken place. This is a hard subject to discuss. We don't normally preach on this subject. But in this part of the story and in other places within the Bible, God has a great deal to say about it. And, as I said, in this case with Ezra, it is very hard to read for a modern mind as to what has to be done. You read through the story and you find that after a period of reflection, prayer, and fasting, Ezra calls them together. And you go down to chapter 10 in verse 9, and it says, So all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered at Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month on the twentieth of the month, and all the people sat in the open square of the house of God, or the temple, trembling because of this matter and because of heavy rain. And so get the picture. It's in the winter and it's raining, so it's a cold rain. It's not a rain like we have today. And they're setting out in the open, and so they're trembling as, all right, they're cold and they're shivering, but there's also an inner fear of what is going to happen here. I mean, you get the picture. They're setting out in the open skies. This is how important this is to the community. And Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, You have transgressed and have taken pagan wives, adding to the guilt of Israel. Now therefore make confession to the Lord God of your fathers and do His will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land from the pagan wives. Wow! That's hard. But Ezra is a scribe, versed in the law, knows why he's there, knows the very purpose for this community to even be in Jerusalem, has no choice. This is what he must say because it is God's law. And it is God's will for this people at this time. Hard? Yeah. Very hard. All the assembly answered, and they said with a loud voice, yes. As you have said, so we must do. But there are many people. It's the season for heavy rain and we're not able to stand outside, nor is this the work of one or two days. No, that's true. That's an understatement. Sorting out this is going to take a period of time. There are many of us who have transgressed in this matter. Please, let the leaders of our entire assembly stand and let all those in our cities who've taken pagan wives come at appointed times, together with the elders and judges of their cities, until the first wrath of our God is turned away from us in this matter. And so, this was their answer. Yes. Not, no. There's a reason. Yes. Now, we find that they made a decision, but we're not given all the details.

We don't know how they sorted all of this out with this group at this particular time. Did some of the wives convert? Did they decide to become Jews or adopt the faith of Israel, the God of Israel? Did they become Ruth's, in other words, and say, Your God will be my God and Your people my people? I suspect that they did, knowing, again, how these things work, and that the number of them probably became Ruth's. And, in that case, there would have not needed to be any separation. Again, this was a matter of faith, not race or ethnicity. This was a matter of faith that was at the transgression for these people at this particular time. They were a very small remnant. There was a great deal at stake with the people in the land at this time and this group at this particular time. They bore the name of Israel, the name of God, the identity and the destiny of Israel for God's purpose in this plan at this particular point in time. So, they had to make a decision. They understood the severity and the importance of what they had to do. You can well imagine that there were some hard decisions. I imagine many of them became the Ruth's and converted. I would imagine that there were some as well who would not have done that. Probably the families would have had to leave Jerusalem and settle in the land of the wife or the husband, whoever was the pagan. That decision was made, knowing human nature as it was. Probably a number of them did. Was compensation made? Were arrangements for where there were children? I don't know. We're not told all of that. We're given the outline of the story. With the other scriptures, we know the details there. We recognize that it's a hard decision to make. But it was right. It was by God's law. It was right for that particular moment and necessary. Ezra had no choice.

I would like to think that Ezra was a humane, compassionate man. The pulling of the hairs out of his chinny-chin-chin was as much just out of the anguish of the human toll that was in front of him and what that was going to mean. As much as the fact and the reality of that. We read this today in the church.

We have to read it as we look at this intermarriage within the faith. From the viewpoint of a lot more scripture that applies to this. We read it today with the teaching of Paul in mind. And what he says in 1 Corinthians 7. We need another sermon or two for that. Because Paul was dealing in the time of the church with members who came into the church, with mates who were not a part of the church. And there were conflicts and problems. And Paul says, look, if you were called in this way, don't separate. There's no command. You don't need to. Paul did not apply what he knew about Ezra to the people in Corinth at his day in that way. He said, you're called, remain where you are. He did go on to say it if you're single. In essence, he said, don't go that direction. His advice was not to go that direction. In other words, to marry outside of the faith. So he gives a lot of detailed instruction there in 1 Corinthians 7 in regard to that. We don't require to this day in the church a mate to separate from their non-member mate. That's never been a requirement. We do not disfellowship anyone who might marry someone who is not in the church, as we would say today. That is our policy and the approach that we have. We do teach that what Paul taught on the subject and what the principles from all of these scriptures from Old Testament, New Testament certainly show us that it is far better for a believer to be married to a believer rather than to choose to marry a non-believer. I don't have the time to go into all of that, but we understand that. That is our advice. Should a person decide to do otherwise, we don't discipline. We do not disfellowship for that within the church today. I think all of us understand that. But we have in the church today a period of time as we look at these biblical stories and as we look at what happens in the lessons that we learn. In the United Church of God today, at least our part of the Church of God community in the United, we have fewer people today. Which, for some people, is a single category that translates into fewer marriage opportunities. That's just the reality. It's interesting, I mentioned that the first wave of the Jews who went back to Jerusalem was about 20,000. Our attendance at the Feast of Tabernacles for all of our United Church of God sites is about 20,000. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't make necessarily that connection. But I can well imagine in the times of Ezra there was the thought, well, there's no girls around. Or there's no men. Single men and women. And there's not enough of them. But there's others from these Gentile nations and tribes. So, I mean, let's all live together. Let's all go to Sesame Street. Because that's human nature. It's human thinking. And it's normal. I don't say it's in and of itself bad. It's just what is. And it is the reality. Today, when we look at that, when we see the situations, and I've...