SPEAKER_02: Well tonight I want to talk to you about one of those dirty preacher words.
SPEAKER_02: Starts with an R, ends with a Lent.
SPEAKER_02: Tonight I'm gonna tell you to repent.
SPEAKER_02: The reality is that repentance is perennially one of the unpopular tenets of the Christian faith, and yet it's the first word of Jesus' gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus appears on the scene in Mark chapter 1, and the first thing that we hear from his lips repent and believe in the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: And a Christian is someone who has followed Jesus' injunction, has repented of his sins, come to faith in Jesus Christ, and has experienced the reality that repentance is nothing less than the pathway to genuine joy, deep and abiding peace with God, cleansing and washing from our sins, and a satisfaction in knowing the living God.
SPEAKER_02: Really, repentance is it shouldn't surprise us that it is the pathway to joy because in Christ's economy all human tuitions are turned upside down.
SPEAKER_02: In the kingdom of Christ, the way to riches is through poverty.
SPEAKER_02: The way to satisfaction is to hunger.
SPEAKER_02: The way to comfort is to mourn.
SPEAKER_02: And so the way to joy is through repentance.
SPEAKER_02: In the kingdom of Christ, the way up is down.
SPEAKER_02: And Ezra chapter 9 is a picture of genuine repentance and the results that follow.
SPEAKER_02: Tonight I want to walk you through Ezra chapter 9.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we'll walk through the text.
SPEAKER_02: It unfolds in three stages, and then we'll apply some personal lessons to our own lives regarding genuine repentance and the fruits of it.
SPEAKER_02: So let's begin by walking through Ezra chapter 9.
SPEAKER_02: We're going to see in this scene three stages.
SPEAKER_02: First, we'll see a report, a response, and a request.
SPEAKER_02: And I'll show you what I mean by that as we walk through the text.
SPEAKER_02: So let's just begin by walking through the text together.
SPEAKER_02: Look down at your Bibles and follow.
SPEAKER_02: We'll begin in Ezra 9 and verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: After these things had been done.
SPEAKER_02: And doesn't that just beg for a preacherly interjection?
SPEAKER_02: After these things had been done.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, is a continuation of the narrative that we've been studying for this last several months.
SPEAKER_02: And if you recall, Ezra chapter 8, where we left off, recounts Ezra, who appeared on the scene in chapter 7, finally has got into Babylon.
SPEAKER_02: Chapter 7, he was commissioned by the king of Persia after the completion of the temple 60 years prior.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra, who was born in Babylon, raised in Babylon, has been commissioned by the king to go back to Israel, taking a collection both from the treasuries of Persia and from free will offerings from Babylonian Israelites to establish and to solidify and to strengthen temple worship in Israel.
SPEAKER_02: And so in chapter 8, he then collects priests so that sacrifices can be offered in the temple, and then he collects a massive amount of treasure and spends four months traveling through the Fertile Crescent to arrive in Israel in order to strengthen and solidify temple worship in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: So four months have passed as he's traveled and he's finally arrived.
SPEAKER_02: And we'll find that in Ezra chapter 10 and verse 16 that in fact between Ezra 8 and Ezra 9, four more months have passed.
SPEAKER_02: So Ezra's been on the road for eight months now.
SPEAKER_02: Four months traveling through the Fertile Crescent, four months traveling through the provinces of Israel and establishing the king's orders pertaining to uh establishment of new laws and decrees in the land.
SPEAKER_02: And finally, chapter 9 picks up, eight months later, after these things, and a report is going to come to Ezra.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe just one more thing should be said.
SPEAKER_02: I've said that there's four months have passed since Ezra arrived in the land at the end of chapter eight, and now the action of chapter nine commences.
SPEAKER_02: What was he doing in those interluding four months?
SPEAKER_02: Well, probably he was doing what the king had told him to do in chapter seven and verse twenty-five.
SPEAKER_02: If you just look down, uh it's one page over in my Bible, chapter seven, verse twenty five.
SPEAKER_02: The king told Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, when you get to the land, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the provinces beyond the river, all such as know the laws of your God, and those who know them not, you shall teach them.
SPEAKER_02: And so for probably for the last four months, since Ezra arrived in Israel, he has brought treasure to the temple, and then he's traveled around and been appointing judges in all the different locales in Israel.
SPEAKER_02: Judges who will enforce the Torah, who will call the people to covenant fidelity, to obey the law of God.
SPEAKER_02: And after the law of God has been percolating through the people, well, it shouldn't surprise us what happens next is that the law of God does its work.
SPEAKER_02: And a report about unfaithfulness to this Torah comes to Ezra.
SPEAKER_02: And that's where we pick up in chapter 9 and verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: So let's get back to after these things in verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the land with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.
SPEAKER_02: For they have taken some of their daughters to be wise for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the land, and in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chiefmen has been foremost.
SPEAKER_02: Just notice the first thing that comes from the lips of these who who are reporting to Ezra what's been going on.
SPEAKER_02: They say, The people, the priests and the Levites, who even the leaders who are responsible, who should be leading the people in covenant fidelity, have actually been leading the people into covenant faithlessness.
SPEAKER_02: In what way, in particular, have the people been faithless to the law of God?
SPEAKER_02: Well, they have not separated themselves from the people of the land.
SPEAKER_02: That's a theme that is a refrain found all through the Torah.
SPEAKER_02: Over and over, God had told the people of Israel, I've called you to be a special peculiar people for my own possession.
SPEAKER_02: And as he equipped them and taught them of holiness and taught them of this covenant, and called them to enter the land and to walk in covenant obedience, one of the first things he told them was, You will be separated from all the peoples, you shall be holy to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: This is everywhere in number Leviticus chapter 24 instance.
SPEAKER_02: But the Torah also called specifically and particularly for the Levites, in addition to be set apart, even within the nation of Israel, to be holy to the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Numbers chapter 8, verse 14, calls the Levites to be further separated from the people, holy to the Lord, to function as his priests.
SPEAKER_02: And this is exactly what they're not doing.
SPEAKER_02: In particular, look at verse 1, it says, In what way?
SPEAKER_02: Are you not separating yourselves from the peoples?
SPEAKER_02: Well, verse 2, they've taken some of the daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands.
SPEAKER_02: They're entering into marriages with pagan peoples.
SPEAKER_02: And this is the first thing that God told them not to do when they entered the land.
SPEAKER_02: Deuteronomy chapter 6, God tells the people, here's the number one commandment.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the Shema, the the overarching command, even to today in modern uh in modern Judaism, Yahweh your God is one.
SPEAKER_02: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_02: The very first command he gives them after that is in Deuteronomy chapter 7, he tells them, Deuteronomy 7, verse 3, do not intermarry with the people that you're going to encounter in the land.
SPEAKER_02: There's a list that's almost identical to the list of peoples here in Ezra 9.
SPEAKER_02: And then he continues, 4 in verse 4, they would turn your sons from following me to serve other gods.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 6, you are a holy people to the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the first command.
SPEAKER_02: You want to be preserved in covenant fidelity to Yahweh generation after generation.
SPEAKER_02: Do not intermarry with people of the land of Canaan.
SPEAKER_02: But notice particularly that even in Deuteronomy 7, when God gave this marriage stipulation to the people of Israel, that it wasn't based on race.
SPEAKER_02: It was based on religion.
SPEAKER_02: Deuteronomy 7, 4.
SPEAKER_02: Because this is why you should not intermarry them.
SPEAKER_02: For they would turn you away from following me to serve other gods.
SPEAKER_02: This was always the issue when it came to marriage in the Torah.
SPEAKER_02: The issue was fidelity to the covenant, preservation of loyalty to Yahweh generation after generation.
SPEAKER_02: It was never racial.
SPEAKER_02: We have even in Isaiah 56 and verse 3 this promise that Yahweh makes through the prophet Isaiah that every foreigner who attaches himself to me to serve the Lord God, to love his name, and to be his servant, to keep his covenant, I will bring into my holy hill, and I will cause his heart to rejoice, because my temple will be a place for the prayer of all nations.
SPEAKER_02: What is the the the quote that Jesus makes in Mark chapter 1?
SPEAKER_02: Yahweh always planned that his house would be a house of prayer for all nations.
SPEAKER_02: The issue was not race, the issue was religion, it was covenant loyalty.
SPEAKER_02: This is why, for instance, in the Old Testament, we have a book named after a Moabite, one of the peoples in Ezra chapter 9, verse 1, that the Israelites were not to marry.
SPEAKER_02: They were not to marry Moabites.
SPEAKER_02: And yet we have a book in the Bible about a Moabite who an Israelite married, who's the great grandmommy of David.
SPEAKER_02: It's the book of Ruth.
SPEAKER_02: Because the issue wasn't race, it was religion.
SPEAKER_02: It was covenant loyalty to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: Ruth, just as Isaiah 56 stipulated, attached herself to the true God to worship him, to be his servant, to keep his covenant, and God incorporated her into his covenant people, and she's even in the line of Jesus, the ultimate holy seed of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't race.
SPEAKER_02: Even as Isaiah continues in this prophecy, he ends in Isaiah 59 saying that it's not race that has separated you from Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 59, 2.
SPEAKER_02: Your sins have made a separation between you and God.
SPEAKER_02: That's the problem.
SPEAKER_02: That's the issue.
SPEAKER_02: And you see that in verse 1 of Ezra chapter 9.
SPEAKER_02: If you look at the text closely, you see the problem isn't a race issue.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 1, the people have not separated themselves from the people of the lands with their abominations.
SPEAKER_02: These are pagan, practicing peoples, worshiping alternate gods.
SPEAKER_02: That word abominations would include their worship and their entire lifestyle.
SPEAKER_02: Abominations is a big picture word in the Old Testament that applies to sp particularly, primarily the worship of false gods other than Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: But then it incorporates all of the lifestyle and practices that come with worship of other gods.
SPEAKER_02: Their idol worship, their sexual perversion, sacrifice of children, dishonest business practices, lying lips, wicked thoughts, vices of all variety are entailed in that term as you trace it through the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: That's the problem, is that the people in the land who were supposed to be separate, worshiping Yahweh, loyally practicing the Torah and practicing temple worship, waiting for Messiah to come in this newly established second temple, instead, were becoming just like all the nations around them.
SPEAKER_02: That was the problem.
SPEAKER_02: That was the problem that Ezra encountered.
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, this wasn't how it started.
SPEAKER_02: You remember in chapter 6, when the second temple was first built, the first thing that the people did was they celebrated Passover, the primary sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: And in order to participate in the Passover, Ezra 6, verse 21 says that the Passover was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile and also by everyone who had joined them, and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: That was how everything started.
SPEAKER_02: That's the premise.
SPEAKER_02: Is it to worship Yahweh?
SPEAKER_02: You separate yourself from the world and devote yourself to serve and honor and follow Him.
SPEAKER_02: But of course, sixty years have passed since the establishment of that temple.
SPEAKER_02: Sixty years have gone by since Ezra chapter six, and in the intervening generation has fallen away from covenant fidelity and are now learning to practice and to perform the same kinds of things that all the peoples around them are doing.
SPEAKER_02: And you wonder, and I don't want to get too far afield here, but you wonder what would draw them to intermarry with these people who aren't following Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: And there's a little phrase here in Ezra chapter 1, or Ezra chapter 9, rather, that I think maybe gets at the issue.
SPEAKER_02: Over a couple times throughout this chapter, you see this little phrase, they gave themselves to the peoples of the lands.
SPEAKER_02: Peoples of the lands.
SPEAKER_02: That gets used over and over.
SPEAKER_02: And we're talking about Israel.
SPEAKER_02: You would think maybe that the land here is talking about Israelites because it is the land of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: But the way that that little phrase, peoples of the lands, gets used in Ezra is talking about all of the people who, when the Israelites were taken into exile in Babylon, and then these decades passed, there were other peoples, Hittites or Perizzites, Jebusites, etc., who came to inhabit the land of Israel and became the property owners, and they were the affluent, well-off, financially established, independently working peoples.
SPEAKER_02: And so when Israel came back into the land, many of them were not financially affluent, were struggling, didn't possess property, and there would have been great temptation, at least from a financial standpoint, from a social welfare standpoint, there would have been great temptation to marry into these other families, perhaps maybe with sincere motives that we'll one day convert them to worshiping Yahweh, and yet in the wisdom of God, he's called his people to be separate.
SPEAKER_02: Not to make decisions merely on the whim of what seems productive in the moment, but to make decisions based on the written commandments of God.
SPEAKER_02: The first thing that Ezra encounters as he comes into the land is that as the word of God percolates among the people, they realize we haven't been doing that.
SPEAKER_02: We haven't been doing that.
SPEAKER_02: We've fallen away.
SPEAKER_02: Sixty years later, we are not following the covenant anymore.
SPEAKER_02: This is Ezra's concern.
SPEAKER_02: And you notice specifically, there's one more thing to say about this concern in verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: Notice verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: It says, For they have taken some of their daughters to be wise for themselves and for the sons, so that the people to be wise for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands.
SPEAKER_02: And there's something that I've got to say here about this little phrase.
SPEAKER_02: The holy race.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you have another English translation that you're working with that translate this better than mine.
SPEAKER_02: Holy race.
SPEAKER_02: It's one of those translations that just makes me slap my forehead, like, what were they thinking?
SPEAKER_02: Because it lends itself to a false impression, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: It sounds like the issue is though the Israelites were somehow a superior race, and the problem was that the superior bloodline of the Israelites would be somehow mingled with these inferior Canaanite peoples, and the superior Israelites would be diluted over time.
SPEAKER_02: And that's not at all what's happening here.
SPEAKER_02: The issue is not race, the issue is religion, and a better translation that would capture the way that Ezra is linking this text to preceding texts in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: And your Bible might even have a footnote that says, or offspring, or seed.
SPEAKER_02: It's Zerakodosh.
SPEAKER_02: It's holy seed.
SPEAKER_02: What's happening here is that Ezra is capturing this big idea in the Old Testament, that God has a holy seed that's running from Adam and Eve through Abraham, through David, to a Messiah, and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed with this holy seed, and it must be preserved.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just back up for a second and you remember this.
SPEAKER_02: That, you know, we understand that the very first gospel promise comes in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, where upon the entrance of sin into the world, God gives a promise to Adam and Eve that the offspring of the woman, the seed of the woman, so an individual human being, Satan will bite his heel, but the seed will crush the head of the serpent.
SPEAKER_02: And so redemption and everything that was undone in Adam will be restored through this seed of the woman, through this human offspring.
SPEAKER_02: And you read through the rest of the book of Genesis and you're looking for this offspring.
SPEAKER_02: Where's this redeemer?
SPEAKER_02: Where's the restorer going to come?
SPEAKER_02: And you come to the big pillar chapters like Genesis chapter 12 and 15 and 17, where Yahweh makes and then fleshes out this covenant with an individual named Abraham, to whom he promises, through your offspring, will all the nations of the earth be blessed.
SPEAKER_02: And so this human offspring, this human seed is going to come through Abraham, and then Abraham's family begins to expand supernaturally against anything naturally that was possible because he's having kids when he's a hundred, and his children are having children, and then at the end of the book of Genesis, in the beginning of the book of Exodus, the offspring of Abraham, the seed of Abraham has expanded.
SPEAKER_02: There are millions of people strong.
SPEAKER_02: And so the book of Exodus recounts the story of God making them into a nation, giving them a covenant through Moses, calling them to sacrifices, to a priesthood, to worship to Yahweh, and this is going to be the bed where this human offspring is going to come, through the seed of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: And you read through the rest of the histories of the people of Israel, and you come to another big text like 2 Samuel chapter 7 that promises that this David figure, this king of Israel, is going to have a seed.
SPEAKER_02: A seed who will be a king, who will establish a kingdom that will last forever.
SPEAKER_02: And then the people, as you read the end of that book, don't obey the covenant God gave them.
SPEAKER_02: They don't walk in God's ways.
SPEAKER_02: They don't remain faithful to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: And so Yahweh, out of faithfulness to his character and to his word, drags them into exile.
SPEAKER_02: And that's how 2 Kings chapter 24 and 2 Kings 17 in.
SPEAKER_02: Northern kingdom, southern kingdom, dragged off into exile.
SPEAKER_02: And yet the seed is preserved in another nation.
SPEAKER_02: And so the Israelites are in Babylon and yet they still manage to remain distinct.
SPEAKER_02: The Torah is still being taught.
SPEAKER_02: The Hebrew language is still being spoken, and generation after generation, they are remaining a distinct people, understanding the Torah and disseminating that knowledge generation to generation so that Ezra can be born in Babylon, decades after the dispersion, and he is a scribe skilled in the law of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: And then God can raise him up and raise up a group of people and fulfill his word to bring the people back into Israel to establish a temple where there will be a priesthood, where there will be a covenant with sacrifices where the Messiah can finally come.
SPEAKER_02: And Ezra is aware of all of these realities.
SPEAKER_02: He's aware of all preceding scripture.
SPEAKER_02: And he's led this people back to the land to establish and to solidify permanent, ongoing sacrifice in the temple.
SPEAKER_02: And I gotta think in the back of his mind, he's thinking soon Messiah will come.
SPEAKER_02: Soon he's going to come.
SPEAKER_02: And then the first thing he encounters as he gets into the land is that the people is just mingled up with all the other nations.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a temple, but there's no covenant people.
SPEAKER_02: There's no practice of the sacrifices.
SPEAKER_02: There's no adherence to the Torah.
SPEAKER_02: There's no disseminating generation to generation the knowledge of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: And it feels like all of God's purposes are teetering on the brink.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he means when he says the holy seed is mixed up.
SPEAKER_02: That word being mixed up is used in Psalm 106, verse 35, when the people of Israel mix with the nations to learn to do as they do, so that they would be blended in as though they'd never even existed.
SPEAKER_02: See what's at stake is that there, if there is no covenant people, then there can be no temple, there can be no sacrifices, and there won't be a Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: Just think about this for a second.
SPEAKER_02: Think about this reality, where we are in the history of God's story in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Think of this maybe through the lens of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: Where is Jesus crucified?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the Lamb of God.
SPEAKER_02: He's the Savior of the world.
SPEAKER_02: He's the Messiah of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: Where is he crucified?
SPEAKER_02: Crucified on Passover in Jerusalem, just outside the temple.
SPEAKER_02: There had to be a covenant people practicing Passovers who could reject the Messiah so he could be the real Passover Lamb, so that forgiveness could go to God's people.
SPEAKER_02: That wouldn't happen in, say, Samaria.
SPEAKER_02: You think of this.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus visits Samaria, John chapter 4, and what's happening in Samaria?
SPEAKER_02: The Samaritans aren't practicing Torah.
SPEAKER_02: They have a Torah, but it's modified, and at best there's some kind of medial adherence to it.
SPEAKER_02: They've rejected the prophets, they don't have a temple, there are no sacrifices.
SPEAKER_02: There's no real covenant observant in Samaria.
SPEAKER_02: There's no concept of what is a Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: What does that even mean?
SPEAKER_02: A sacrifice to take away sin?
SPEAKER_02: A Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_02: Those concepts have been evacuated from the society.
SPEAKER_02: What would it even mean for Jesus to show up in Samaria and say that I am the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world?
SPEAKER_02: Is that concept even?
SPEAKER_02: There's no fertile ground on which that concept can land.
SPEAKER_02: But in Jerusalem, where the covenant people have been observing Torah, the Messiah can come, the Messiah can fulfill the Torah, be the sacrifice to take away the sins of his people.
SPEAKER_02: And there are ready adherents to Torah who God converts and they become the first messengers to take the word of Messiah to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: There has to be a covenant people, there has to be a temple so that Messiah can come.
SPEAKER_02: That's what's at stake here.
SPEAKER_02: That's why this morning Jesse mentioned that Ezra 9 is a pivotal chapter in the story of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And this is why.
SPEAKER_02: Because in Ezra's mind, he's looking at this saying, the Covenant promises of God are teetering on the brink.
SPEAKER_02: Are God's covenant people going to be just obliterated, not by external pressures, but by internal compromise?
SPEAKER_02: Now you could, of course, say that, well, God is sovereign and God is going to fulfill his promises.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, his promises won't be eclipsed in the trash bin of history.
SPEAKER_02: And yes, that's true.
SPEAKER_02: And yet God works through means.
SPEAKER_02: And what we're going to see in the remainder of this chapter is that the means by which God is going to preserve these great promises and preserve a covenant people to whom he can send his Messiah is He's going to act through a humble and repentant priest.
SPEAKER_02: And so I want to move on, and we'll go through the rest of this chapter much more quickly.
SPEAKER_02: But we want to move on to Ezra's response to this news.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe just for a moment before we jump to his response, just imagine in the background of his mind.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we know that he's been traveling four months through the Fertile Crescent with this massive caravan of people.
SPEAKER_02: He's finally arrived in the promised land.
SPEAKER_02: He's got these great expectations.
SPEAKER_02: He's for four months been establishing judges who will implement Torah and make Torah the law of the land and bring people to covenant fidelity.
SPEAKER_02: And then all of a sudden he gets this just dramatic news that the whole people has walked away from Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: There's massive defection in the covenant people.
SPEAKER_02: How would you respond?
SPEAKER_02: How do you respond when the people you love and care for most deeply do the very thing that you thought most outrageous, most unthinkable, the deepest form of betrayal?
SPEAKER_02: What's your response?
SPEAKER_02: And I could think of a lot of ways that I would respond.
SPEAKER_02: And part of me, even reading Ezra up to this point, there'd be a tendency to wonder if maybe Ezra would just utilize his power.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the king of Persia, the king of the world, in Ezra 7, verse 26, had given him authority to execute people who didn't adhere to Torah.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he could just say, get the swords.
SPEAKER_02: What we get in the following verses, I want us to see, is a window into the heart of the kind of man that God is going to use to move his covenant purposes forward.
SPEAKER_02: This is the kind of person that God delights to use.
SPEAKER_02: Like God used David, and of course, the key passage when we understand David's story is God looks on the heart.
SPEAKER_02: And what we're getting in Ezra chapter 9 is a window into Ezra's heart.
SPEAKER_02: This is a man of God.
SPEAKER_02: Look at his response in Ezra chapter 9, verse 3.
SPEAKER_02: As soon as I heard this, Ezra says, I tore my garment and my cloak, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled.
SPEAKER_02: Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice.
SPEAKER_02: And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, saying.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is a dramatic a response as you can imagine, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: There's no other character in the Bible who does this.
SPEAKER_02: He rips out his hair.
SPEAKER_02: He rips out his beard.
SPEAKER_02: In Job chapter 1, when Job experiences the terrible catastrophe of his whole family dying, he shaves his head, but he doesn't rip out his hair and rip out his beard.
SPEAKER_02: He's absolutely in shock.
SPEAKER_02: He's appalled, he's broken, he's crushed.
SPEAKER_02: Notice something about the language here twice in verse 3 to 5.
SPEAKER_02: It says that he sits down, and how does he sit down?
SPEAKER_02: He sits down, and this summarizes his whole response.
SPEAKER_02: He's appalled.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you remember last Sunday morning Jesse preached Jeremiah 2, verses 12 and 13.
SPEAKER_02: Be appalled, O heavens, be utterly dismayed, for my people have committed two evils.
SPEAKER_02: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewn out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water.
SPEAKER_02: In that courtroom scene, God calls heaven and earth to witness, and what he calls them to do is be appalled at the sin of my people.
SPEAKER_02: It's the same word here.
SPEAKER_02: That is his response.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra is appalled at the sins of his people.
SPEAKER_02: It's a rare soul who responds not in indignation, not in gleeful slander, not in smug condescension, but in broken contrition over the sins of others.
SPEAKER_02: That's a godly response.
SPEAKER_02: But I think we really get an even deeper window into it if we continue to look through the through the text.
SPEAKER_02: And the rest of chapter 9 is Ezra's prayer to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: And this is the part where we begin to see elements of repentance.
SPEAKER_02: And so let's begin walking through his request in verses 6 through 15.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra begins to pray to God.
SPEAKER_02: That's part of his response.
SPEAKER_02: In verse 6, he says, Oh my God, I'm ashamed and blushed to lift my face to you.
SPEAKER_02: My God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.
SPEAKER_02: From the days of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt.
SPEAKER_02: For our iniquities, we, our kings, our priests, have been given into the hands of the kings of the land, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today.
SPEAKER_02: That is a wild verse.
SPEAKER_02: He's talking about the sins of others, but he says, verse 6, I am ashamed, and I blush.
SPEAKER_02: Or other translations, I think the King James captures the idea really well when it says, I'm too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my eyes.
SPEAKER_02: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_02: What Ezra's doing is he's owning the sins of his people.
SPEAKER_02: Particularly as a leader, responsible to lead the people in covenant faithfulness.
SPEAKER_02: When the people depart from faithlessness and forsake Yahweh, Ezra takes ownership of it, personal ownership of it.
SPEAKER_02: He includes himself in the rest of it, these aren't his sins.
SPEAKER_02: But he includes himself in the sin in the rest of the text.
SPEAKER_02: He uses the first person.
SPEAKER_02: I am ashamed because we have sinned.
SPEAKER_02: You know, Jeremiah, years prior, told the people of Israel before their exile that they were going to be exiled because of their sin, but on multiple occasions in chapter 6 and chapter 8, he told them specifically, you're going to be exiled because you don't know how to be ashamed and humiliated when you do sin.
SPEAKER_02: Now, Ezra has the polar opposite response.
SPEAKER_02: He hasn't even sinned.
SPEAKER_02: But he loves God's glory.
SPEAKER_02: His heart is so knitted to God's covenant.
SPEAKER_02: He so desires God's people to be faithful to him that even when he's not personally culpable for the sin, he himself is humiliated and ashamed that his people would depart from Yahweh.
SPEAKER_02: Look at verse eight.
SPEAKER_02: But now for a brief moment, favor has been shown by the Lord our God to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God might brighten our eyes and grant a little reviving in our slavery.
SPEAKER_02: For we are slaves.
SPEAKER_02: Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving, and to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: What he's saying is, in spite of the reality that we have sinned and we have brought the first the exile upon ourselves, God was faithful to his covenant and brought us back, and in spite of that kindness.
SPEAKER_02: Now we're going to verse ten.
SPEAKER_02: Now, O our God, what shall we say after this?
SPEAKER_02: For we have forsaken your commandments.
SPEAKER_02: Notice verse 9 said, You have not forsaken us.
SPEAKER_02: But verse 10, even though you preserved us in Babylon and brought us back and gave us so much more than we deserved, now we've forsaken you.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 11, for which you commanded your servants and the prophets, saying, and what follows in verse 11 is a smattering of biblical texts.
SPEAKER_02: I think this is an interesting insight just to pause on for a moment.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra hasn't taken any kind of authorial privileges to say, oh, before I begin to pray, I would like to have a moment to compose a literary masterpiece that we preserve for all of God's people in the ages to come.
SPEAKER_02: Instead, what was recounted to us in this text is that Ezra hears of the sins of the people, is broken over, and spontaneously prays, and when he spontaneously prays out of the overflow of his heart comes a gush of scripture.
SPEAKER_02: He's the kind of person that if you prick him, what flows out of him is scripture.
SPEAKER_02: That's the kind of person that we're getting a win to into here.
SPEAKER_02: You know, um, this is just a if you'll indulge me in a side a side story.
SPEAKER_02: My advisor uh in my uh degree program did one of his degrees at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and he told me that he had an experience there that he didn't expect.
SPEAKER_02: He said, When I first went to Jerusalem, my concept of intelligence was stretched by some of the people I got to interact with.
SPEAKER_02: He said, When I went there, I had heard the legend, and this is a well-known legend, that Ezra had the entirety of scripture that had been written up to this point cold memorized.
SPEAKER_02: Sounds kind of outlandish, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, I thought that was just a legend, it sounded kind of cool, but when I got to Israel, I met people right now, walking around Jerusalem, who have the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, cold memorized.
SPEAKER_02: And you can walk up to them and begin to read to them from the chronologies, in the genealogies, in chronicles, and read them a few names, and they'll pick it up and read you the rest of the chapter.
SPEAKER_02: Not read, but recite from their memory.
SPEAKER_02: So, I take that as good evidence that Ezra was a Bible man to the point that the whole thing is in his head.
SPEAKER_02: The whole thing has now got down to his heart.
SPEAKER_02: And when you shake him up, what comes out is scripture.
SPEAKER_02: What comes out is desires in line with God, because God's word has so worked through his mind, into his heart, that it's trickled into his affections and his emotions, and it's controlling his response.
SPEAKER_02: And right now the way he's responding is in shock and contrition that Yahweh has been forsaken.
SPEAKER_02: Notice, we'll just read through the rest of verse 11.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 11, which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, This is what the prophets told the people the first time they came into the land.
SPEAKER_02: The land that you are entering to take possession of is a land impure, from the impurity of the peoples of the land, with their abominations that have filled it from the end to end with their uncleanness.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.
SPEAKER_02: And after all this has come upon us for our evil deeds, that's talking about.
SPEAKER_02: Now we caught into the land, we broke the commandments, we went into exile, God's been merciful and brought us back.
SPEAKER_02: After all this, verse 13, you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved, and had given us such a remnant as this.
SPEAKER_02: Shall we now break your commandments again?
SPEAKER_02: We're doing the very thing that God has thrown out the first time.
SPEAKER_02: Shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations?
SPEAKER_02: Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape?
SPEAKER_02: O Lord the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped as it is today.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, we are before you in our guilt.
SPEAKER_02: No one can stand before you because of this.
SPEAKER_02: Just as he said at the beginning of the prayer, I'm too ashamed and humiliated to even lift up my eyes.
SPEAKER_02: There's really not even a resolution to this.
SPEAKER_02: There's just empty-handed contrition and appealing to the mercy of God.
SPEAKER_02: That you know, Psalm 107, verse 9 says, the empty soul God fills.
SPEAKER_02: Before we move on to some personal reflections, I think maybe so we could get some closure on how this fits in the whole of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Because I've mentioned that what Ezra was looking for was Messiah to come, and for all of the promises of Israel being restored in this glorious way.
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a little phrase here in verse 9 that says that God has given them a tent peg, just one little tent peg, to be able to establish something in Israel, in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: That's a phrase that comes from a prophecy in Isaiah, where Isaiah looks forward to this glorious day when they'll strengthen their tent pegs, they'll spread out their tents, and it describes in lavish detail how Israel will be prosperous beyond anything that anyone had ever imagined.
SPEAKER_02: And as we're saying, we've got just like a little foothold on that future kingdom that God has promised.
SPEAKER_02: Messiah is going to come, and then he's going to bring that kingdom, and he's waiting for it, and he's wanting it.
SPEAKER_02: But he's broken over the sin that is stopping it.
SPEAKER_02: So is that the end of the story?
SPEAKER_02: Well, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_02: It's not the end of the story.
SPEAKER_02: This is the instrument by which God is going to restore temple worship, preserve the covenant people, so he can send the Messiah, so the Messiah can forgive sins, so the message of repentance and forgiveness can go around the world.
SPEAKER_02: So, as Paul says in Romans 11, the full number of Gentiles can be grafted into the olive tree, and then repentance will come to Israel, and then the kingdom that was promised in Isaiah will be established and Messiah will come.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, the very heart attitudes that Ezra has in this chapter are described elsewhere in the Old Testament as the heart attitudes that the people of Israel will exhibit in the future when Messiah comes to establish the temple.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra is like one remnant, one instrument that's preserving the people until that full repentance comes to Israel.
SPEAKER_02: Just give you a couple of these.
SPEAKER_02: Ezekiel 36, verse 32 describes that the people will receive new hearts.
SPEAKER_02: That's the I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh passage.
SPEAKER_02: That text says that Israel in that day will be ashamed and humiliated over their sin.
SPEAKER_02: The same words that describe Ezra's response to sin.
SPEAKER_02: In Zechariah chapter 12, it says that a king will come from Zion, and all Israel look on him whom they have pierced, and they will weep as one weeps over a newborn son.
SPEAKER_02: Isaiah 52, verse 13 says that when Israel recognizes their Messiah, they will be appalled.
SPEAKER_02: In the same way that Ezra is appalled over sin in this text.
SPEAKER_02: And in this way, Paul says in Romans 11, 26, all Israel will be saved.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra is the instrument to preserve the covenant people, so Messiah will come, and there is coming a day when that king will come to Israel, and all them, all of Israel will be saved.
SPEAKER_02: But in the meantime, we are among those given grace to be included in this people through the Messiah Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Through repentance and faith, we come into the olive tree as Paul says.
SPEAKER_02: And what we get in Ezra is we get a window into what repentance looks like in the Messiah's kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: And so maybe just to conclude tonight, I want to just go back through a backtrack, go right back through the text, and draw out a few lessons for our own lives on what repentance looks like for a Gentile who's been grafted into the Messiah's kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: So let me walk through real quick five marks of genuine repentance in Ezra chapter 9.
SPEAKER_02: And I'll go through these pretty rapid fire, but if you're taking notes, I'm going to spit them out at you.
SPEAKER_02: So Ezra chapter 9 gives us five marks of genuine repentance.
SPEAKER_02: Here's number one.
SPEAKER_02: Genuine repentance responds to the word of God.
SPEAKER_02: Genuine repentance is a response to the word of God.
SPEAKER_02: We see this everywhere in the text.
SPEAKER_02: It's premised from Ezra chapter 7 that says what Ezra was doing in the meantime, between chapter 7 and 8 and chapter 9, is he was going around Israel and he was establishing judges who would implement the Torah.
SPEAKER_02: And so for four months the Torah has been being taught to the people, and what's happened is just what we would expect.
SPEAKER_02: The law of God, the word of God, is working conviction and bringing about repentance in God's people.
SPEAKER_02: Without the word of God in your life, sin lies hidden.
SPEAKER_02: We don't notice it.
SPEAKER_02: We justify it.
SPEAKER_02: We get used to it.
SPEAKER_02: We're comfortable with it.
SPEAKER_02: But when the word of God comes, it's like light in a dark place.
SPEAKER_02: It exposes our sin, and the work of the Spirit is to awaken our consciences and to elicit this sense that Ezra had of being appalled at our sin, being shocked at our sin, being ashamed and humiliated at our sin.
SPEAKER_02: If we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, then we have to be constantly exposed to the word of God.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe here's a paradigm to think through this text.
SPEAKER_02: The sin of Israel in Ezra chapter 9 is that Israel, the bride of Yahweh, unfaithful to her husband.
SPEAKER_02: They're marrying pagans.
SPEAKER_02: There's an analogy in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: The New Covenant people of Christ is the church.
SPEAKER_02: We're the bride of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: 2 Corinthians chapter 6 says, Don't get married to pagans.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, 2 Corinthians chapter 6 isn't just about marriage.
SPEAKER_02: It's also about sharing of life.
SPEAKER_02: What partnership has Christ with Belial?
SPEAKER_02: What partnership has Christ with Satan?
SPEAKER_02: Rather, Christ wants to wash his bride, Ephesians chapter 5, with the washing, the water of the Word.
SPEAKER_02: The means by which Christ conforms his church to his image, washes her and purifies her is through the instrument of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance begins when the Word of God exposes sin and the Spirit of God works through the Word of God to bring that sin to bear on us, to bring the law of God, to awaken our conscience so we run to Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance begins with the response to the Word of God.
SPEAKER_02: But repentance doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, repentance takes ownership of sin.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance takes ownership of sin.
SPEAKER_02: You see this in all over Ezra chapter 9, but I think especially of verse 6, where even referring to the sins of others, Ezra in verse 6 says, Oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.
SPEAKER_02: I'm ashamed and humiliated.
SPEAKER_02: For we have sins.
SPEAKER_02: He even names the specific sins in the rest of the prayer.
SPEAKER_02: There's no sweeping it under the rug.
SPEAKER_02: There's no soft peddling.
SPEAKER_02: There's no blame shifting.
SPEAKER_02: There's no, well, God knows my heart and I'm sincere.
SPEAKER_02: There's an ownership, a clear-eyed ownership, no pushing it off on circumstances.
SPEAKER_02: There's an ownership of the reality that this is my sin.
SPEAKER_02: As the hymn writer says, mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance responds to the word of God, takes ownership of sin, and then entails a whole person response to God.
SPEAKER_02: The whole person responds by running to God.
SPEAKER_02: You see this in Ezra's response, especially his physical response.
SPEAKER_02: You think of verse 3 where he his response is, verse 3, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled.
SPEAKER_02: There's no division in Ezra's personality in the way he repents.
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a tendency sometimes to think of repentance as merely one of a number of things.
SPEAKER_02: You might think of it's merely an agreement with God that that was bad.
SPEAKER_02: It might be merely feeling bad about it.
SPEAKER_02: It might merely be just trying to do better next time.
SPEAKER_02: But Ezra won't allow us to reduce repentance to just a category of change my behavior, change my mind, change my feelings.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance is a whole personed response to God.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra's mind has changed.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra's heart has changed.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra's attitude has changed.
SPEAKER_02: His affections, all of him is responding to God.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing in his life, nothing in his person, nothing in his thoughts is held back.
SPEAKER_02: It's a whole personed response to God.
SPEAKER_02: You know, when we repent of our sin, we we can't categorize our person.
SPEAKER_02: God wants all of us.
SPEAKER_02: There's no divvying up our response to God.
SPEAKER_02: God wants a whole hearted response to him.
SPEAKER_02: An emotional, an action active, and entire person.
SPEAKER_02: And that leads to the fourth reality of repentance is that it's a response to the word of God that owns the sin, and whole person runs to God with empty hands.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance, number four, has empty hands.
SPEAKER_02: I think you see this especially in the conclusion of Ezra in chapter 15.
SPEAKER_02: Look at the way he stands before God.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 15.
SPEAKER_02: He says, O Lord, the God of Israel, you are just.
SPEAKER_02: Period.
SPEAKER_02: For we are left a remnant that's escaped as it is today.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, we're before you, and we're in our guilt, and none can stand before you because of this.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing that he's clinging to, nothing that he's leaning on, nothing he's trusting in.
SPEAKER_02: That would in any way commend him to God.
SPEAKER_02: He's just empty-handed in his sin, in his guilt, standing before God at his mercy.
SPEAKER_02: That's part of repentance.
SPEAKER_02: How easy it is to suppose that there's some participation I can make, there's some penance I can make, I can do better next time, I can try harder, and then the feelings of guilt will begin to reside as I start to get further removed from my sin.
SPEAKER_02: But Ezra doesn't do any of that.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra doesn't minimize, Ezra doesn't hide it.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra brings his sin in all of its shock and awe before God and stands before him in his guilt, empty-handed.
SPEAKER_02: Here I am.
SPEAKER_02: And of course, this leads us to the last reality of repentance in this chapter.
SPEAKER_02: And it has to drive us to this reality, and this is the crucial reality.
SPEAKER_02: This is the game changer.
SPEAKER_02: This is what makes Christian repentance Christian.
SPEAKER_02: Is it Christian repentance falls on the mercy of God.
SPEAKER_02: It falls on the mercy of God.
SPEAKER_02: You know, think of what we saw in verse 9.
SPEAKER_02: Where though Ezra says in verse 10, we have forsaken your commandments, but in verse 9, he says, Yet our God has not forsaken us.
SPEAKER_02: Yet our God has not forsaken us.
SPEAKER_02: Not because of their any good in me, not because of anything that I am, not because of anything I could be, but because of the mercy of God, because of the character of God.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 13, this is what Ezra is banking on, is that God gives me less than what my sins deserve.
SPEAKER_02: There's something in the character of God.
SPEAKER_02: He is a savior by nature.
SPEAKER_02: Ezra knows that he can come before God and doesn't need to minimize his guilt, and doesn't need to explain his guilt.
SPEAKER_02: And doesn't need to clean some of his guilt, but he can stand in the shock of his guilt before this holy God and cast himself on his mercy.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we find in the New Testament over and over this reality that the way that the Spirit works in us is he awakens us to the holiness of God and he drives us to himself, and when he drives us to himself, he reveals to us his grace.
SPEAKER_02: And those things, those realities always go together in Christian repentance.
SPEAKER_02: The holiness of God and the grace of God.
SPEAKER_02: And a Christian is caught in the middle and thrown about so that God, who f this God who ought to judge him, but has now forgiven him, becomes the consuming passion of his life.
SPEAKER_02: This holy God before whom I stand and cannot hide and ought to judge, and if he should mark iniquities, who could stand?
SPEAKER_02: Not me.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, like the tax collector that Jesus tells us of in Luke 18, who wouldn't even lift his eyes up to heaven, just as Ezra, but stood far off and beat his chest, saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner, Jesus says, that person discovered the grace of God that day because he went down to his house justified.
SPEAKER_02: Because it's always a reality that the empty heart God fills, that the mourning soul God comforts, that the broken he heals, that those who recognize that they are poor and begging that he lifts up and makes king makes citizens of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: This is the upside-down reality of the economy of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: It's the broken he heals, the empty he fills, the sorrowful that he comforts.
SPEAKER_02: When you repent, you discover the mercy of God.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I think of Exodus chapter 34, where God reveals himself to Moses, discloses his glory to Moses.
SPEAKER_02: Moses says, I want to see your glory.
SPEAKER_02: And God says, I'll show you my glory.
SPEAKER_02: And he reveals to him that he's a God who punishes wickedness, transgression, and sin, and at the same time is merciful, forgiving, extending mercy to thousands.
SPEAKER_02: And when you come to Jesus Christ, you find the holiness of God and the grace of God have met together in the cross.
SPEAKER_02: And when these two polarities capture you, they become the consuming wonders of your life.
SPEAKER_02: And you can say with Ezra that I'm compelled.
SPEAKER_02: I'm compelled by the reality of God, a God of infinite holiness and of infinite grace.
SPEAKER_02: Repentance is merely the path that brings us there.
SPEAKER_02: Father, we rejoice in the realities that you reveal to us in your word.
SPEAKER_02: We rejoice in the comfort that you give us in your word, knowing that when you work conviction in us and you bring us to repentance, that you meet us in our sorrow and in our longing and in our brokenness, and you heal us and you forgive us and you cleanse us and you redeem us.
SPEAKER_02: This is your glory, that you are a God of matchless perfections.
SPEAKER_02: You're a God of perfect excellence, you're a God of grace and mercy and holiness and wrath, and in Christ we can know you and stand in awe of you and rejoice in you.
SPEAKER_02: Father, we ask now this week that you would seal these realities in our heart, that you would make us a repenting people, a people discovering daily anew the joys of walking with Jesus and humble repentance and discovering that he would give us grace upon grace.
SPEAKER_02: We ask this in his name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being with us today.
SPEAKER_00: And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuel Bible.church.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_01: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_01: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.