An Unexpected Lesson From the Book of Ezra

Speaking of looking back, a few years ago, about ten years ago, I think it was this summer, I wrote a sermon and gave it. The sermon was entitled, Life on the Front Porch. And I gave it as a series of sermons that I put together in talks called Making Life Work. And in that particular sermon called Life on the Front Porch, I spoke of the long periods of time when there was a silence in the Bible record, and one of the points that I made in that was long periods of silence in the biblical record.

If you were to add up the sum total of the years represented by the events, people, stories in the Bible, you have a very short period of time compared to all of the recorded period of human history. From the story of Abraham, story of Moses, story of Israel, Christ. I mean, add it all up. I suppose you could, and it would be a few hundred years, maybe, total. I don't know if it would even be a thousand years.

I'm just talking off the top of my head. But when you take in the whole sum from the creation to today, there are large gaps of time. The Bible doesn't even talk about anybody or any particular situation. And my point in making that was that it's in those in-between times, the silent times, that people, life goes on. People are marrying and giving in marriage. We do our living.

And in reality, that's where the reality of life is filled up. It's with those silent days when not much dramatic is happening. Empires aren't attacking and beasts aren't rising. And the life of Christ was just three and a half years. And we have four books to talk about that of a couple of three or four decades for the Book of Acts and the story of the church right there and the New Testament period and that's it.

But there was a whole lot of time in between where God's church, God's people, servants of God were functioning, working, living, people who knew the truth as it was at the time and as the revelation in particular was. But not much of drama is taking place except that of building character, people living in a godly life. And it's in those moments, those silent moments, where God is still working, God's spirit is still moving with individuals and preparing them for service and His work, in a sense, is continuing on. But we just don't read about them.

We don't hear about them from the biblical record. We can look within the biblical story and even see times within the sandwich stories that we have where there are times when God is silent in unusual periods. And here's one story that I'd like to cover with you today and draw some lessons from for our own lives. We will turn over to the Book of Ezra. I began this some weeks back in talking about the first six chapters of the Book of Ezra and tying it in with the story of Haggai, the prophet that was a contemporary prophet with the story in the first six chapters of the Book of Ezra.

You may recall that at the time we came down to the end of chapter 6 in the Book of Ezra where they had rebuilt the temple. This was the period under the Persian rule where the Jews returned to Jerusalem during the time of the Persian king Cyrus. And as prophesied, he made a decree that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem. This was after the fall of Judah, after the raising of the temple, after the time of Jeremiah and Isaiah and the prophets there, and the end of the kingdom of Judah.

Israel ceased to exist. The temple was destroyed. They were taken captive to Babylon. Seventy years later, right on the dot with the prophecy, Cyrus made a decree that allowed during the Persian rule that allowed the Jews to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. The Persians had a unique approach to dealing with subjugated peoples. They tended to live and let live. They let religions continue. They let people have a certain amount of autonomy as long as they were subjugated to the Persian rule.

Cyrus was a unique figure, even among the Gentile monarchs of that whole ancient period. That's why he was prophesied in advance. And when you even read into the extra stories, the historical accounts about Cyrus, you will find that he was, comparatively speaking, an enlightened Gentile dictator or despot in that sense. And that's why he facilitated the return of the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. At the end of chapter 6, we found that they had rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, and then they kept the holy days, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, verse 22.

They kept it for seven days. They were joyful, and they turned the heart of the king of the Assyria toward them and strengthened their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. And so the initial job for which they went back to Jerusalem to do, to rebuild the temple, was accomplished. And it is at this point the story, in a sense, comes to a pause. Because when you read in chapter 7, verse 1, now it says, After these things in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Azariah, and we're introduced to Ezra, during the reign of Artaxerxes, this is after Cyrus dies, in fact, a period of about 60 years has transpired, between the end of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7.

A generation and more has transpired. We're not told about it. You just know it. You can know that from the dating and the history. Commentaries are all in agreement on that. This is a gap. What happened? What happened to Joshua and Zerubbabel? What happened to Haggai and Zechariah, who was a contemporary prophet, too?

We don't know, except, obviously, they passed from the scene, they died. Joshua and Zerubbabel died. Many of that generation that went back initially would have died. Yet, the life of the city goes on, such as it was, the village. Then we come to a particular point where we see the introduction of a man by the name of Ezra. Now, this is again where we don't have the record of what happened, but we can understand that that didn't mean people were not living a godly life. The work of God, if you will, was not being done.

God was working with individuals. During this gap period, we have at least one other notable event or story in the Bible. It's the story of Esther. During this period of silence, as far as what's going on in Jerusalem, the story that we read about in Esther, of a beautiful woman who becomes a consort of the king and is used to actually save the life of the Jews throughout the Persian Empire, takes place.

It's during this gap period of 60 years that Esther's story takes place. And it's also the time when Ezra, obviously, probably either born and comes to maturity as an individual and goes through his life and becomes who he is at this point in time as we begin to read about him in chapter 7.

Ezra was an interesting individual, and he plays a key role at this particular point in the story. It's a brief role as we have it in Ezra, chapter 7, 8, 9, and 10. And just a few chapters like in Nehemiah, chapter 8, because Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one story and the two men were contemporaries. How and why, how they interacted is not important for us this morning. But Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries, and the two books and the stories there, largely, at least the two individuals, were contemporaries.

They were both in Jerusalem at the same time. But here's where we're introduced to Ezra. And it goes through his genealogy. It's interesting. It says, This Ezra, the son of Sariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Healkiah, and he goes through the son, son of son of...

All the way back in verse 5, we find out that Ezra was a descendant of Aaron, the first of the priests, the brother of Moses. So Ezra is in a direct line from Aaron down to his time, which is a pretty good pedigree. People liked, you know, in parts of cultures and histories and nations, everybody...the Blue Blood families, the Rockefellers, the Astors in our own American history, Adamses, Washingtons.

Pedigree, you know, counts for something among certain peoples. But at least as God establishes this, we find out that this Ezra comes from a pretty good line, and he's a priest. He's descended directly from Aaron. That's why it says in verse 6, this Ezra came up from Babylon. Not some other Ezra, not just another priest, this Ezra. Again, sometimes in the Bible you have to kind of note it says this Ezra. It's like saying this Scott Moss, this Lowell Elsie, not the imposter.

This is an individual of note. And he comes from Babylon, which had been the capital of the Babylonian Empire. It was not the capital of the Persian Empire, but it was still a major city.

And it was there among the Jews that had been taken captive that Ezra has his home. We're told that he was a skilled scribe in verse 6 of the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. The king granted him all of his request according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him.

Some of the children of Israel, the priests, Levites, and singers, and gatekeepers, and Athenaeum, came to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. 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 according to the good hand of his God upon him. Now the dating and the months we're not going to concern ourselves with here. For this purpose I want to focus on what other points we are told here.

And it says in verse 10 that Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. And so Ezra is given a copy of a letter from the King Artaxerxes to go back and at a declaration to go to Jerusalem and to continue the work there. He is given money, a mandate, and a charge to, in a sense, revive the community and to work and to actually take it through a time of spiritual renewal, which we'll come back and talk about in a few minutes. Let me focus for a minute just on Ezra.

He was, as I said, a blue-blood scribe. It says that he was a scribe and that he had prepared himself. Now a scribe is an interesting category of people that we should at least understand who the scribes were for a moment.

Because Ezra, in the story of the Bible being put together, is going to play a large role that the Scriptures don't talk about, but tradition and Jewish history tell us that it was Ezra who put together the final form of what we call the Old Testament during this period of time. He gathered up the books and the letters and as part of his ultimate role in the story of the Bible, he seems to be the one who finishes what we call the canon or the official version of the Old Testament as we know it. Now, he was a scribe, which means that he was a secretary or he could write, read, good at books in that sense, and doing in a sense clerical teaching scholarly work.

The scribes had been a class of people that had existed even before the downfall of Judah. Hezekiah had certain scribes. And you read, I think it's in Proverbs 25, where there were men of Hezekiah who gathered together certain proverbs. So he had a class of people even working with him at that time gathering proverbs and putting them together and cataloging wisdom literature, historical material from the people of Israel as an official body of people. And it's continued into the time of the captivity. And Ezra and others honed their craft. And they studied the law and the Scriptures.

They taught it. The class of scribes eventually, in the story of Israel moving toward the New Testament, become a very, very important group of people. By the time you come to the New Testament period, the time of Jesus, you read there that the scribes had risen to have quite a significant role in the life of the nation of Judah at the time of Jesus.

In fact, you find Jesus coming into conflict with them. They held very high positions. And he said in Matthew 23, beginning in verse 1, that they sat in Moses' seat. They had a position of authority and responsibility within the community of the Jews at the time of Jesus. And he said, that which they teach, do. But he went on to say in that famous phrase, don't do as they do. Do what they teach as they taught faithfully the Word of God.

But what had happened in the three to four hundred years from the time of, let's say, Ezra forward, that whole system had developed into something far beyond what the Word of God and certainly the teaching of Christ wanted regarding the law of God. It had become very legalistic. We use the term Pharisaical.

They had embodied, created a whole system of other teachings, traditions that even in their mind and I superseded the very law of God. That's another story. But the point is that what they even were during the time of Ezra, a very important part of the community. This is why this Ezra comes on the scene and does what he does. In verse 10 of chapter 7 of Ezra, we're told that he prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach the statutes.

We're told three things here in verse 10 about Ezra. You can learn three things. The first is that Ezra diligently studied God's Word. He studied the law and all the scrolls and the body of teaching that was the law, the Bible, if you will, of their time. He prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and he did it very well.

He searched, if you will, the set of the Bereans in the New Testament, that they searched what? The Scriptures daily to see if those things would be so. What we can say about Ezra is that he searched the scrolls daily. Because they didn't have books like this, they had scrolls that the books were all written on. You could say of Ezra that he searched the scrolls daily, whether these things be so, and he studied it.

He studied it from an academic point of view. He studied it from probably a linguistic and historical point of view. I doubt that he did much archaeological. I had much of a point of view there. They probably weren't into digging up, because remember they were in ancient times, so they weren't digging up ancient times. At the time, ancient world hadn't happened, even though they were living in the ancient world.

It gets confusing, I know. But he knew the Scriptures. But more importantly, it tells us here that he did it. He prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and secondly, to do it. So he went beyond the academic level. A lot of people studied the Bible, and there are men, theologians, and academics who study the Bible, study the Hebrew, the Greek. They know they've forgotten more than the sum of all of our knowledge in this room about just things about the Bible, the language, the history, and the culture.

But they don't study the Bible to do it. See, that's the other... that's the key. And Ezra not only studied it and knew it backwards and forwards, memorized all the Scriptures, but he recognized that the Scriptures spoke to him personally. Just like what you do in your life when you read the Bible or when you understand that certain... the Sabbath, the holy days, loving your wife, your husband, your neighbor, not stealing, not living a life of hypocrisy, not telling lies, not living lies.

When the Bible says that, you become to the point where you realize, that speaks to me personally. I don't care what my neighbor does. This is what God is telling me to do. And so you do it. That's where Ezra was. He learned it, but he also did it. He showed his faith by his works. And so he did that secondly. And then thirdly, here in verse 10, it says, he taught the statutes and ordinances. So he was an effective teacher, not only because he knew it, but because of his own personal example. So Ezra was quite an individual. You can read a lot from what you're told there in one verse when you really stop and focus on the words and then expand that picture.

Now, let's talk for a minute about this return, because Ezra's coming roughly 70, 80 years after the first group of Israelites, or Jews, went back to Jerusalem. And they were under the time of Joshua and Zerubbabel. And keep in mind, they rebuilt a temple. But the temple they rebuilt was, by comparison, kind of just a prefab. Not a prefab, but how would we describe it today?

Just a kind of a common house. Whereas the temple of Solomon was ornate with gold and fine craftsmanship and woods, and even the craftsmanship of that building was beyond this imagination as you read about it. What was built under Joshua and Zerubbabel, sometimes called the Second Temple, was so inferior that when they saw it, they were told they wept.

Those who remembered it, the first one in its former glory, they cried. As if to say, wow, not what it used to be. We missed out something here. They didn't have the money, they didn't have the craftsmanship, time, whatever. And, you know, it was kind of a cinder block, if you will, temple, to use a modern building material as opposed to something made out of marble or finely cut stone.

Just by comparison. But it was a functioning temple, but it was less so. And it took them a while to get that done. They eventually got it done. They had sacrifices. The priests worked, and the community kind of faltered along there, off and on. Sometimes, you know, as I was looking at this, I asked the question, why was Jerusalem rebuilt? Why was the Second Temple erected?

What was the whole purpose of that? And looking at what Ezra did, Nehemiah, and during this particular period of time, because that temple never had God's spirit in the same way that the First Temple did. We're not told that the presence of God descended upon that temple like it had during the time of Solomon. And there's no record from the Bible that it ever did. Now, that temple was later refurbished, made better by the time of Herod.

It was the temple that Jesus came to. But you don't read of Jesus doing much there other than what? When you read of Jesus and the temple during his period, what did he do? He overturned the money tables on at least a couple of occasions. When he was 12 years old, he taught there. But we don't read about him doing much else. And he didn't have, in a sense, much regard for the temple, certainly the way it was being used. And even the city.

He cried over the city. And he said, how often would I have gathered you under my arms? But you wouldn't. And he knew the attitudes of the people and the leaders there within Jerusalem. So Jerusalem and the temple never became what it was. And at the point you have to understand about this period under the Persians and all the way up to the time of Christ and Rome, Israel or Judah was never a sovereign nation from that time on.

Actually, from the time of Babylon when they fell at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar forward, they were never a sovereign nation. What was allowed to be restored here during the time of Ezra and from Cyrus and forward really was nothing more than an outpost. It was always under Persian rule. And then it was ultimately next under Greek rule, and the successors to Alexander, and then the Romans came on, and the Romans ruled Judea.

The Jews had their culture and their community, but it was always under the foot of another foreign power. They were never a sovereign people. And I worry about the temple. So why was this so important for Joshua, the Rubabell, Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and all that period of time? For all of that to be done, the best conclusion I can come up with, and maybe you can come up with something better or more to it, was for one purpose. One purpose alone. Because there had to be a place within prophecy, within the Scripture, for Jesus Christ to come in the flesh to build his church.

Galatians, Paul, says that Christ was born in what was called the fullness of time. So the only reason that I can understand for all of this business that Ezra and all were going through was to keep something alive until the time of Christ, which was a very important part of God's plan and purpose. That's not to diminish it. That's just trying to put it all in perspective. There would be no other reason to rebuild the nation, the city, and the temple.

Ultimately, they all pointed to Christ. And once that was done, that second temple and the city was destroyed in 70 AD a second time at the hands of the Romans. And there was not a Jewish presence until 1948 in terms of a sovereign nation in the state of Israel today. And so coming back to the time of Ezra and this period, the point was to the building of a spiritual temple, the church, in advance of the Second Coming.

What Ezra, Joshua, Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, what they did was to lay the groundwork and to point to the coming of Christ and the building of the church. And as a type for us to understand in terms of the work continuing and building and growing in advance of Christ's Second Coming, and the building of the spiritual temple among the people of God today, which is at the heart of the message of Pentecost.

And in a sense, right where we are today, literally in the time between Pentecost and Trumpets, we're in these summer months, this period of the harvest developing, growing, building toward the fall harvest. And first fruits, a small harvest, growing in anticipation of a greater fall harvest. So we even, you know, literally at this point in time in the year, we kind of, it's a good time to just kind of look at this and to understand something as it fits to the message that we're told and kept here a few weeks ago on the day of Pentecost as we move ahead.

So Ezra coming back, a teacher of the law, preparing his heart, doing it, teaching it to others, going back to Jerusalem to, in a sense, provide a spiritual awakening. You read through the rest of chapter 7 here in Ezra, and the decree of Artaxerxes is quite interesting in what is kind of his mandate to Ezra and what they are to do.

They were to go back and to kind of revive things. Verse 18, he says, whatever seems good to you and your brethren, do it to do with the rest of the silver and the gold. Do it according to the will of your God. He gave them ample money and resources to do it.

The articles that are given to you for the service of the house, deliver in full before the God of Jerusalem. Whatever is needed, he said, I would provide. Verse 23, whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it diligently be done for the house of the God of heaven. So Ezra was given by this Gentile ruler the money, the furnishings, and the permission to go back and to, for the time, really revive the work. You find the people in Jerusalem would get excited when they had a good leader, then when that leader would pass, after a few years, they forgot why they were.

What they were supposed to do. They forgot who they were and why they were there. It's hard for people to keep in mind. Remember a white-haired old man, for those of you that used to go to the feast years ago, getting up and always saying, what?

Why are we here? Because we had to be told every year why we went to the Feast of Tabernacles. And not just why we were in Big Sandy or Jekyll Island, is where I first started hearing it in Big Sandy, but not just to hear that, but to understand who we were and what we were a part of.

He had the vision, and he wanted to make sure that we kept that bright and shining in our mind. Because God's people, no matter whether they're at the time of Ezra or the modern period, they tend to forget who they are and why we do what we do. Because we get caught up with life.

We get caught up in living in those gap periods, those silent times. We get our jobs, our families, our wishes, our desires, our ups and our downs. And it's so easy to forget. Well, the people here had forgotten. And here's a Gentile ruler giving a scribe of God money, permission to go and to create a spiritual awakening among the people of God.

In verse 27, it is said, So I was encouraged, as the hand of the Lord God was upon me, and I gathered leading men of Israel to go up with me. So Ezra understood that God's hand was on him. This was not just coming solely from the king. He hadn't hit the jackpot or the lottery or the Hoosier Casino that day. He knew that the hand of God was upon him through all that was now put before him and the men that were gathered around him to go and to do this.

And so he goes back. Now, I mentioned that Ezra and Nehemiah were individuals contemporary. Nehemiah was a different city. We'll get to that story eventually in this, not today, but in another sermon. But you have to understand that Ezra and Nehemiah and Ezra here, as we focus on him, was really a catalyst in a great spiritual awakening within the people of Israel. And it was the last time of a spiritual revival where they went back and they revived people. How many of you have ever been to a revival in your old days? How many of you well know what a revival is? Do they still have revivals around these small country churches?

Sometimes I see these signs up and I don't know. I remember my mom taking us to a few of them when we were younger before we ever came into the church. But you have a revival where a traveling speaker comes through and three, four, five nights in a row there's a tent meeting or whatever.

But it's meant to revive people, to get them focused spiritually, back on track spiritually. So you go to a revival and people in the Protestant evangelical world, they're ministers. That's all they do. They go around from church to church preaching revivals. Well, there's something to a revival. This is what Ezra was to do here. They were creating a spiritual awakening, a time of repentance to take the people back to a deeper faith and obedience to God.

Those are interesting stories even to discuss in terms of the history of America, but I won't get into that necessarily today. Chapter 8 gives kind of an account to the peoples and their travels back and ultimately they return to Jerusalem. When we come down to chapter 9, that we come to an interesting situation.

Because they came back to Jerusalem. They had all of the money, gifts, gold and silver. Again, they had hit Aladdin's magic cave full of all the money and whatever they needed to revive the spirits of the people when they came back. When they got there and got settled in, verse 9 says, when these things were done, they got in, made certain distributions, probably had a big welcoming type of meetings or celebrations and acquaintances and establishment of protocols and whatever with the community that was there. It says at the end of verse 8 and verse 36, they delivered the king's orders to the king's satraps. These were the Persian governors of the region and beyond the river. It took a while for Ezra and his entourage to establish themselves and establish with the Persian leaders on scene, the governors and their own Jewish community as well. So when these things were done, the leaders, being the Jewish leaders that were resident there, they came to me saying, they had this report, The people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with respect to the abominations of the various tribes that were listed, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites, a listing of the usual suspects in biblical stories. You can just lift this out and put it back in Leviticus, or Numbers and the story of Israel and subsequent histories. It's always the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Amorites, Moabites, Egyptians, and all these. These are the usual suspects who were the cause of the downfall of Israel. And it says that they've not separated themselves from these people of the lands. Now, just a little bit of understanding. This whole land of Jerusalem and what was Israel and the ancient kingdom of Israel is the same essential piece of real estate that we have today over there in the Middle East. And when you remember the story of Joshua, they had specific marching orders when they crossed the Jordan, went into the land. They were to drive all of these peoples out. God was giving them that land. And the religion and the customs of these peoples did not match up to the way of life God had given to Israel. So there were cultural problems. They were different peoples of different nationalities. But the most important difference was in religion. The story of God telling Israel to push these peoples out is a story that, quite frankly, the ramifications are still with us in our headlines today. We read about the Palestinians, the Jews, land for peace, settlements in Israel, Middle East peace, roadmap to peace, what's going to happen. Obama goes and gives a speech in Cairo to the Muslim world. Netanyahu counters with his offers, just talking about recent days. And once again, the whole story just continues through its never-ending cycle. And at the heart of it, when you really understand it, are the same issues and largely the same issues and same problems that date all the way back to the time of Joshua. We're here with Ezra and are there today. Different peoples trying to live on the same piece of land.

And it just doesn't work. You've got a clash of cultures.

And that is a problem of not only biblical history, but of human history.

People that are going to live on the same piece of real estate are going to have to walk together or agree if they're going to walk together. I can digress for just a moment, but it has a point. Debbie and I, earlier this month, took a few days and went out to South Dakota and Montana. And in doing so, we went to Mount Rushmore near the Crazy Horse Mountain and went up to the Little Bighorn Battlefield and walked over.

I was reading a book about Crazy Horse, the Sioux Chief and George Armstrong Custer, and their battle. I wanted to know about that as I was going out to that battlefield, but you have to understand the contending cultures. And they tell you this, and when you go to these places today, you have to realize you're getting a modern history.

They try to be more fair to the Native American. They're no longer Indians or Native Americans. I don't mean to denigrate anyone, but you recognize that as you sort it all through, you've got to listen carefully and watch. The Little Bighorn was the last great battle between the western culture that was coming into the west and the Indian culture that was, that was invading. The Indian culture was a primitive culture. There was no match and it was not going to endure alongside the modern western culture that the Americans were bringing as they came across the plains.

That's the story, that's the history, and it is a clash of cultures. And without getting too far into the right and wrongs of all, everybody makes mistakes. The Israelites made their mistakes. The westerners, the Americans made their mistakes as they went in. The people, the indigenous Native American culture of the west, personally, is my personal thought from all I've studied and read about it. It was, look, it was what it was. It was not a benevolent culture. When you really study into the life of the Native American, they warred and fought against each other. The Sioux, parts of the Sioux nations were there because they got driven, they had to leave Minnesota because they didn't have enough to live on there, so they went west.

And when they went west, they clashed with other Indian tribes. You know what they did? They clubbed them to death. They shot them with their arrows, and they clubbed them to death, and they took over. I mean, the Native American story is just as bloody as the bloody story of the westward expansion of America. Who's right and who's wrong? I'm not going to get into all of that.

What is is. The point is, contending cultures are not going to be able to exist on the same piece of real estate without problems. And that's what we have today in the Middle East. That's what we had back here in the Bible. When we come down to the story of Ezra, you have a group of people, the remnant of Israel.

Yes, they were primarily Jews, of the tribe of Judah. But they were, keep in mind, they were a remnant. And they were in a land that God had given to them for his particular purpose. And it was a divine purpose with far-reaching eternal consequences. God's judgments and God's plan is what it is. Is it fair? Yes. But you have to understand it in the context of eternity and the knowledge that the God who kills can also be the God who makes alive. And when you understand that and believe that, then you can understand, at least, even though there's still human misery and heartache in the stories that we read in the Bible of the injustice and the problems.

But God was doing something with eternal consequences with Israel. And they failed. They were removed from the land. He put them back at this point in time. And they were a remnant for a very special purpose even here during the time of Ezra.

That's what's important to understand. And so when we come down to the point where this report is being given to Ezra, and he says that the people have not separated themselves. We've got a problem, Houston. We've got a problem. It's a big problem. There were different people with different faiths on the same land. And what had happened in verse 2 is they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons so that the holy seed, this remnant, a holy seed, holy only because God separated and made them holy by His presence, by His law, and by the covenant that they agreed to live by.

That was the only thing that made Israel holy. They were just as violent and vicious, parts of them, as any Canaanite or Moabite. Inherently, an Israelite was no better morally than the other nations. You looked at the Levi and Simeon and what they did when their sister was ravaged. You know that story? So they were capable of violence, and the only civilizing influence that they had was that of God. And so they're holy only because God's working presence, purpose being upon them. But it says, the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of these lands. Indeed, the hand of the leaders and rulers have been foremost in this trespass.

And so what had happened was the sons and daughters of both peoples had intermarried, which is inevitable. It's going to happen. You know, one people's in the land, they have children, grandchildren, descendants. Another people come in from wherever, start to live. They go to the same schools, go to the same A&W drive-in, hang out at the same malls. Boy sees girl, girl sees boy from other land, from other nation. There's an attraction. Wow! It's something different, something whatever. People get interested in one another.

They eat lunch together, they set the same class together, they develop relationships, and they get married. And if they have different cultures, and if they have different religions, what do we have? Houston, we got a problem at times. Oh, sometimes it isn't the problem because one or both faiths, cultures, just disappears.

As they adopt either a third way, or one gives up what they were, culturally or in religion. And this was the problem. This was not a problem of interracial here. This was a problem of interfaith. Understand that when you look at the story and the subsequent solution for it. This is where we enter into a very, very difficult subject. It's a hard subject. We don't like to talk about it sometimes. And when we do, we sometimes couch our language so that we don't offend as we talk about it. But let's read on. What did Ezra do? He heard it. He said, I tore my garment in my robe, plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard, and sat down astonished.

Wow! Kind of an extreme reaction. I don't like plucking out my whiskers. I use really good shaving cream, get it real nice and moist, and then I have a real sharp blade so that when I go over it, it just slides right off. Because when it pulls, it hurts. So I can imagine the pain that Ezra was going through, but you understand the emotional distress that he was in. And everyone who trembled, the words of the God of Israel, assembled to me because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive.

And I sat astonished until the evening sacrifice. He couldn't believe what he was seeing on the report and all that came upon him. And he went into fasting. I tore my garment. I fell on my knees, and I spread out my hands to the Lord my God. And I said, God, I am too ashamed. And humiliated to lift my face to you, my God, for your iniquities have risen higher than our heads. Higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. And he goes through a long prayer of repentance on behalf of the people.

I'm not going to go through all of that. But you see what he did. There was a faithless breach of faith here. Verse 2 talks about this holy seed involved in this trespass. And the word trespass really means a breach of faith. Go back to why I told you they were here.

Why was there an outpost of Jews in Jerusalem to begin with? Because of God's plan. They were a remnant. They were all that were left of a once large nation under a covenant with God during the time of Solomon and David at its highest. They were all that was left. The Israelites of the north had disappeared. Judah had disappeared and been scattered as well. This was a remnant. You see, not all the Jews went back.

Many of the Jews stayed in Persia, stayed in that area of the world. Today you still have about 10,000 or 15,000 Jews living in modern Iran, the ancient area of Persia, descended from this time. Not every Jew returned, but a remnant did.

It was for a unique purpose. As he says, they were a holy seed and they were not living up to their calling. They were in danger of that being swept aside. Here in chapter 9, he goes through a prayer. In chapter 10, he says while Ezra was praying in verse 1 and while he was confessing, weeping and bowing down before the house of God, a very large assembly of men and women gathered to him from Israel, for the people wept very bitterly.

This went on for a period of time, maybe a few days. Word got out and some of the people then recognized, uh-oh, they're convicted. And so one of their leaders comes and says to Ezra, We've trespassed against our God and have taken pagan wives from the peoples of the land, yet now there is hope in Israel in spite of this. A lot of this is obviously condensed, but it's an interesting situation now beginning to play out. He says, then as a spokesman, he says, Therefore, let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and those who have been born to them according to the advice of my Master, those who tremble at the commandment of our God and let it be done according to the law.

This is where it really gets hard for us and for a modern mind and for you and I today to wrap our heads around this and really understand it. We read this and pass it off as a piece of just Old Testament history, and the lesson for the church today is still, there's still a lesson here. And we have to understand why this was transpiring here and not look at it and say, Oh, they were a little bit archaic, ancient in their thinking, and we are more modern and they were less understanding, but we're more understanding and compassionate today in these situations.

But this is part of God's Word, and there's a lesson here for us to understand. And it's really, it is a hard thing, but those of us with modern minds need to read it and understand. First of all, we need to understand the response of the people, the response of Ezra. Ezra crashed in on his mind the enormity of the problem because he was seeing this remnant and this opportunity, this outpost of God slipping away, fading, melting before his eyes. It was just melting. And he recognized the danger. That's why he had such an extreme emotional reaction and went into fasting and prayer.

And some of the people began to realize, uh-oh, wait a minute. Something's wrong here and we better listen to it. And they began to tremble at the commandment of God and to recognize that we've got to, there have been some wrongs here and some things have been done. And what is taking place? In verse 9 it says, All the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered at Jerusalem within three days.

It was the ninth month of the 20th of the month and all the people sat in the open square of the house of God trembling because of this matter and because of heavy rain. They were trembling because of the problem and because they were getting wet. And it was a cold rain because it was in the winter months. So it wasn't just a nice, gentle summer shower. It was a cold rain and they were setting out in it before the house of God.

And Ezra stands before them and says, You've transgressed and have taken pagan wives, adding to the guilt of Israel. Now therefore make confession to the Lord God of your fathers and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the pagan wives. Wow! It's a hard thing. Separate yourselves from these wives.

And all the assembly answered and said with a loud voice, Yes. As you've said, so we must do. But there are many people. It's a season for heavy rain. We're not able to stand outside, nor is this the work of one or two days. Well, that's an understatement, isn't it? For there are many of us who have transgressed in this matter. Please let the leaders of our entire assembly stand, let all in our cities who've taken pagan wives come at appointed times together with the elders and judges until the first wrath of our God has turned away from us in this manner.

And so they went through an investigation and some were put away. We're not told all the details here. I'm going to read through all the other scriptures here. Some were put away.

I think that it is safe to say that probably some were not put away. When they investigated and they looked into the various households and had them come before the leaders here, the religious leaders, you have to ask and wonder, did some of the wives, some of the husbands, convert, as we would use our modern language? Did some of them adopt the faith of the Jews? I happen to have to think that they did because of the way human nature is, and a situation like this is not just cut and dry. I don't think we're being told that everybody wound up separating.

Some did. And were convicted and that doesn't mean that they weren't taken care of. That part's not even covered in the scriptures. I have to think that they were. But I also happen to have to think that there were some here who became Ruth's, who, when confronted with the reality before them, and they had one, two, three, four little children here, that they said, your God will become my God, your people will become my people, wherever you go, I will go too.

I happen to think that that's what happened. Again, we're not given all the details here as to how it all played out. But certainly, some had to make it. Everyone had to make a decision. Everyone had to make a decision. We're just not given all the details. Why did this happen? As I said, the people were a very small remnant. There was a great deal at stake with the people in the land at this time, in this group.

They bore the identity and the destiny of Israel. And what God was doing, as I explained earlier with the whole reason for this Jewish outpost and the rebuilding of the temple, it wasn't just so that the temple in Jerusalem and all of the stuff about Jerusalem and the temple that eventually becomes the stuff of Jewish tradition could continue.

That is so insignificant and has no such ultimate bearing. As I was saying in Bible study the other night, it's not the Jew. It says at the end of Romans, a Jew is one who is a Jew inwardly. And the Jewish culture, call it the Israeli culture or whatever, and the Jewish culture that developed from Ezra forward and is with us to this day in Judaism, is no more godly than anything else. And though we have an affinity because of the Jews being of the tribe of Israel and religious Jews observing the Sabbath and others keeping the Holy Days after a fashion, we have an affinity with them.

But their culture is not our culture. We're not Jews. I had learned that years ago at ambassador getting caught up in the dig and the Israeli thing and studying Hebrew for a couple of years and getting involved in that. You kind of...well intentioned.

I didn't mention this other night, but one of my friends that I took Hebrew with, we went to the dig together, he was really caught up and enamored by the Jewish culture. Well, today he's a Jewish rabbi. I looked him up, Googled him a few years ago, and found him down in Tennessee. He heads up a little messianic...I don't know even if they're messianic, but he had his robes on. He was kind of a rabbi type figure. He was a contemporary of mine, my same class at Ambassador College. He got caught up and he was even farther into the Jewish thing than I was at that time. And he...you know, I think he had a Jewish name.

We're not Jews, okay? We are not Jews. We're not messianic Jews. And the Jewish culture only is good for what it is. But all of this, in relation to what God was doing with the people here, had to do with preserving a holy seed for the spiritual work that was ultimately going to be done through Jesus Christ and the church. And beyond that, into the eternal spiritual body of Jesus Christ. But these people were at a unique moment. And they had some...they were there for a reason and they had to live up to it.

And there were laws within the society. And there was a great deal at stake. Now, the story kind of ends.

It kind of plays out here, at least in the book of Ezra. We read this today as we administer within the church, as we look at ourselves. And again, we have to be careful. We read it with a modern mind. Only so much as the modern mind is guided by revealed Scripture of God. We read this issue of marriages here today with the teaching of the Apostle Paul in mind. We don't require people to separate if their mate is not a member, those who come into the church.

Paul covers this in 1 Corinthians 7 very thoroughly. We do not disfellowship anyone. Member, young person, attendee, however category they may be. We don't disfellowship anyone who might marry someone not of the faith. That's not our policy as we administer marriage within the New Testament Church of God. We do teach what the Scriptures say, according to what Paul's principles primarily found there in 1 Corinthians. And we administer that. Understand that, and I think we all recognize that when we look around ourselves and look around within the church today.

How is this done and why does so-and-so allow this? The church allows certain things because of its understanding of the Scriptures, just as God allows us all free choice, and does not, in a sense, coerce us. I'm not talking about blatant sin and issues that are very clear. But on the subject of marriages, and marriage to people, quote, not in the church, we understand that that is a situation that's just what I said. It's a little bit hard, right? We don't like to talk about this one.

Well, let's talk about it for two minutes. You guys got full stomachs, so you don't have to rush out to get some lunch. Just stay awake. Let's talk about it for a few minutes. Today in the church we have a period of time to study and to learn lessons from the past, from all of the Bible, from even our own historical experience and in our own time. In the United Church of God today, we have fewer people, which translates into fewer marriage opportunities, especially for women, I've noticed, over the last 10 to 15 years. Sometimes that's kind of a situation we're in. What is is.

People have to make their decisions. Interestingly, when we go to the Feast of Tabernacles, our total attendance is usually around 20,000 worldwide, which is about the same number of people that went back to Jerusalem. It doesn't mean anything. It's just interesting. You talk about opportunities. Why did these people pick a foreign wife, non-church wife? Why? Because they were there.

And maybe they didn't have as many men and women of their own age, whatever. And as I said, they mingle them all. Boom! Things happen. We all know that, right? You make decisions. We all make decisions. When it happens today, when a person in the church, baptized in the church, grown up in the church, sitting in the chair in the church, understand this, just because a person is sitting in a chair in the church doesn't mean they're in the church. Some of you are nodding your heads.

Some of you say, what's that mean? I don't know. People marry somebody sitting in a chair in the church thinking they're marrying somebody in the church. It's been that way since 1934. Just to go back to pick a date and past to begin all of this.

And they find out after they get married that that man or woman is no more in the church or converted than this proverbial man in the moon, cow in the pasture, dog in the backyard. Right? Yeah, we nod our heads. So, number one lesson, just because they're sitting in a chair in the church doesn't mean they're in the church.

Doesn't mean they believe. Doesn't really mean that. Now, doesn't mean that you couldn't have a good marriage relationship with them. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes that doesn't. Look around, think back. History tells us that. There are clear scriptural teachings that tell us that can two walk together except they be agreed? And Paul talks about that it is better to marry within the faith. Go through all that. I don't have time to go into all of that. Today, when people make a decision to get married, to someone in the church, to someone not in the church, it's a decision. It's a calculated decision. Everybody makes a decision.

And when you make it, you've got to count the cost. You count the cost. You should. And because every decision has consequences, every decision, I repeat, has consequences. We want to make sure that the consequences are as good as we can make them, control them, manage them, create them. But every decision has consequences. And you and I, our children, my children, your children, you, our friends, every one of us has to live with the decision. We have to live with the decision. And we have to live with that decision in those quiet hours of the in-between times.

Because when you get married, that wedding experience ceremony is about 20 minutes. On the wedding day, that's 24 hours, the wedding night's over, and then you find out that those ruby red lips just have to be fed.

And that in the cold light of day, there's other things that suddenly you didn't see or come out there, right? And you have to get on with life. In a week, in a month, in a year, in a decade, in children, maybe a divorce, maybe a separation, maybe some heartache, maybe some joy. Life goes on. And we have to live with that in those periods of in-between, the drama. There might be a drama and a spike of an iron skillet being thrown.

And I've heard of some of those. Or a shotgun being pulled. And I've had to deal with some of those.

Those are the dramas. Those are the peaks. It's the in-between things that we have to live with. That's why decisions have consequences. The decision to marry one who does not share our faith is a lifetime decision. It translates into hours, weeks, days, and months, and the years of our life.

I've come to a point where I look at each couple on its face and the facts and try to make a decision as best I can. No minister of God is obligated to ever perform any marriage ceremony that they feel uncomfortable with, just because two people or one person is in their congregations, doesn't obligate any minister to do a ceremony. Now, nine and a half times out of ten we do them.

Sometimes, I've listed every wedding I've ever done. I've still got a listing inside my little black book. Some of them I know didn't work. They were married between two people who were both sitting in chairs in the church. Others, I read that sometimes, and I wonder, whatever happened to so-and-so, I wonder if they're still around. I know the first couple I ever performed a wedding ceremony for, they're still married. Several, subsequently, I know are not. Others, I just don't know about it. You lose track of people over the years. And I have to look at the facts. I've come to certain conclusions in my later years. Sometimes, I make a decision for hope.

Sometimes, I make a decision for hope and give the benefit of the doubt, however you want to put it, and hope. But, none of us in any of these decisions that we make, our children, our grandchildren, our friends, are exempt from the clear teaching of the Scriptures that go from the earliest books of the Old Testament through this story in Ezra into the teaching of Paul. The law of God, the principles stand. Ezra did one thing here in his, one last point I want to make about his life. He's often called the second Moses in Jewish tradition because he anchored the community in the law of God. And that's what he did do. I won't have time to talk too long about this marriage thing to go to Nehemiah chapter 8, if you could go there and read it on your own in Nehemiah 8, where he bound them to the law. There was nothing else for Ezra to bind these people together on and to anchor their life and kind of be the egg, if you will, the glue that holds it and binds it together. It wasn't the city, it wasn't the temple, and they were not a sovereign nation. They didn't have that name. They didn't have a king. Never had a king from this point on, from the time the last king of Judah. So it wasn't a temple, it wasn't a king, it wasn't a nation, a sovereignty that bound them together. Ezra bound the people together in a covenant to the law. That's what bound them together. And that's why he's called the second Moses. It became the identity for the community from that point on. That's why they sought so diligently to not break the law and created all these other human traditions around it, so that by the time you get to the teaching of Christ and His time, you see that he had to castigate the Pharisees and Sadducees and the scribes, because they had put too many burdens upon the people by their own custom and tradition, where they couldn't even recognize the law of God. That's another story in itself. That's why Paul said to the Romans, as we were talking the other night in Bible study, as he was talking to the Jews in chapter 2 of Romans, that they were hypocrites, and that they didn't really follow the law, and that they had lost sight of the spirit of the law and didn't understand it. I think Ezra understood it far more than they subsequently came to develop. He saw that it had a part on his life, and he followed it within his heart. And he was more of a new covenant Israelite, if I could use that term, than perhaps we might recognize. But his life is an interesting one to study. And the episode here with the Israelites, the Jews, is a very fascinating one to look at in terms of these gaps, these quiet hours that go by on the front porch. We can look at his story, and I think there are many lessons for us to learn in anchoring ourselves to God and worshipping God in our quest for the Kingdom.