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In shocking conclusion to the book of Ezra, we see drastic action taken to deal with sin within the community. Join me, Pastor Richard, as we journey through Ezra chapter 10.

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Morning, brothers and sisters. This morning's Old Testament reading will be taken from the book of Ezra, chapter 10. I'll be reading from verses 1 through to 15. Verse 1. While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women and children gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. And Shechaniah, the son of Jahel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra. We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. But even now there is a hope for Israel in spite of this. Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children according to the counsel of my Lord, and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the law. Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you. Be strong and do it. Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath. Verse 6. Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jehohan, the son of Elisha, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exile. And a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the written exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem, and that if anyone did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders, all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from the congregation of the exiles. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth on the ninth month of the twentieth day of the month, and all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. And Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, You have broken faith and married foreign women, and so increase the guilt of Israel. Now then make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do his will. Separate yourself from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives. Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, It is so, we must do as you have said. But the people are many, and it is a time of heavy rain. We cannot stand in the open, nor is this a task for one day or for two, for we have greatly transgressed in this matter. Let our officials stand for the whole assembly. Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times, and with them the elders and judges of every city, until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us. Only Jonathan, the son of Asahel and Jazahel, the son of Tikvah, opposed this, and Mashalam and Shabbatai, the Levite, supported them. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks to God.

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It's good to be together with you today. Today's passage reveals a genuine hatred of sin before God. And I'm not sure how many of us here today can claim to have that same hatred of sin. What is a hatred of sin? It's a I would say it's a holistic negative response to all that displeases God. And so it's holistic in the sense that it must permeate our head and our heart and our hands, that we want nothing to do with these things. And so in our passage today, their hatred of sin resulted in a very shocking result. All those who had married foreign women sent them off, including any children that they had had together. I don't know if that shocks you. When I read it, it shocks me. It does. And so as we look at Ezra chapter 10 together this morning, you're going to walk away this morning with answers to a few different questions. Were they being racially prejudiced in this passage? Why was it they sent away only foreign women and not foreign men? Is divorce being advocated here? Does God come before family? And is it right that we take sin so seriously, or should we rather be focused on the good things and on serving the Lord? We've gotten quite a passage today. Church, shall we begin with a word of prayer? Precious Lord, I thank you that your word informs us that your mercies are new every morning. I thank you that every day is a blank slate, a fresh start for living for you. And so this morning, Lord, uh, would you put your word of truth into our lives, that it can take root, that it can grow strong, that it can bear good fruit. Lord, would you uh share with us your love that we may live out knowing that we are a loved people? And would you help us to understand just how terrible sin is, that we would hate it as you hate it, and instead we would love all that is good as you love it. So, Lord, would you open our ears and prepare our hearts for your word today? I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so our flow this morning is going to go like this. Uh, we're gonna have a very brief recap of the book of Ezra. We're gonna answer these five uh very contemporary questions that kind of arise as we look at the text. We'll have just a very short summary, and then we're gonna close with a challenge. So we'll do a recap uh chapter by chapter. And in chapter one, so we've got to bring back to our memory, right? In chapter one, the king of Persia proclaims that Israel should return to Jerusalem to rebuild. And this was something that had been prophesied previously through the prophet Jeremiah. Chapter two tells us who it was that returned with Zerubbabel in this first wave of returnees. In chapter three, we have the altar being rebuilt in the exact spot where the previous one had been, and the temple foundation is laid. In chapter four, we have the opposition arising, remember? And so the rebuilding has to be put on pause, put on hold for that time. And then in chapter five, uh God moves, and so they're able to resume the rebuilding. When we come to chapter six, the temple is rebuilt and dedicated. So that work is finished and completed. And then in between chapter six and verse chapter seven is where the book of Esther, the book of Esther takes place. And the key verse in that, if you've uh read through the book of Esther, is in Esther chapter 4, verse 14, it says, Have you not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? And so uh the whole book is really a tale of bravery and of God's faithfulness. Uh but then we we we continue with Ezra, right? We're in Ezra chapter 7, and Ezra is sent to Jerusalem. And in chapter 8, we have that whole recounting of the journey, and he says, The hand of my God was upon me, and you remember the vast amount of wealth that they transported with them, and not a single bit was lost. And so uh we come to chapter 9, and we have Ezra's prayer, and this was just uh last week, right? Ezra's prayer regarding uh all these foreign marriages that had come to light. And here we are in chapter 10 this morning, and we we see what Ezra's action was uh after all of this. And this will be our last chapter in the book of Ezra. So today uh we see that while Ezra is praying and mourning at the entrance of the temple, Shechaniah, one of the priests, uh, he comes to him and he says, We have broken faith with God through marriage to foreign women. And although it's not evident in our English translation, Shechaniah is saying that we have broken faith with God alone. All right? Who it's with God that we've broken faith by doing this thing. We've broken faith with God alone. And he continues on to say, let's make a covenant, a sacred agreement before the Lord to put away these foreign wives and their children. Ezra, as chief among us, would you lead us in this? And so Ezra, he spends the night fasting and praying, and then in the morning there's this proclamation that goes out all the returned exiles must return to Jerusalem within three days, within three days. Otherwise, their property is forfeit, and they are no longer to be considered a part of the community. And now that was very serious. That was about as serious as it could get for them. And so they came. Now, because of the season, it was rainy, it was cold, it was miserable, there was no convention center, there was no large indoor place that they could gather together out of the weather to meet. And so they sat down outside of the temple in the cold, in the rain, on what was probably this hard-packed ground, might have been turning muddy underneath them, and they were shivering with cold and rain. And Ezra addresses them all, and he pronounces them guilty before God because of these marriages with the people of the land. And he says, It is time to separate yourselves. And so this the people they respond, they speak up, and they say, You're right. Look, you're right, it's true. But this is it's a big problem, it's a complicated problem. Uh, we need proper investigation of this. There's gonna be legal proceedings, they're gonna take some time, and we're all sitting here cold in the rain. Let's let's take the time needed to do this correctly. And so, 10 days later, uh the all the tribal leaders that you know they met with Ezra, and after 10 days of meeting together, there was about two months uh where they went and they finalized the list of who are those who had transgressed before God in this way. It took a long time to sort it out. And so then there's this long list that follows, uh, which you can read, uh the second half of chapter 10. And it starts with the priests, those who are supposed to be leading the community. It starts with them and then ends with the common people uh who didn't perhaps have any special position. And it lists out each one who had broken faith with God by marrying foreign women, and it ends with a strange note. Verse 44 says, All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even borne children. A bit curious that it's written that way. It sounds a bit odd, right? But what this tells us is that this was a very recent problem. And so it had happened recently, these marriages taking place, and so there was a surprise that uh already there there were some children because this was a recent problem. So last week in chapter 9, Ezra received the report of the people about all uh that there had been this marriage with foreign wives, and particularly among those in high position, the priests, the Levites. Um the extent of the problem wasn't quite apparent to him. And so Ezra, he he prayed, he grieved publicly at the entrance to the temple, and in part it was sending a message to everyone. And yet we can see it was also uh sincere. He was being sincere in his prayer and his grieving and his mourning. And so he tore his clothing, he pulled the hair on his head and on his beard, and he knelt on the ground, and he was he was kind of praying out a mini-sermon while loudly weeping. And so that's the scene where we find ourselves. But what was the issue? What was so wrong that it happened here? And so the first question that maybe would come to mind is was this about racial purity? And to be clear, no, racial purity was not the issue. Idolatrous practices were the issue. Uh, if you were to look through the Old Testament, if you've read through the Old Testament, there's a lot of genealogies there, right? There's a lot of so-and-so begat so-and-so, and these were the sons, and then they they go on down through, and this happens many times. Um perhaps some of you have had trouble sleeping some nights and you've read through genealogies, and I I don't know. The genealogies can be difficult to go through, but when we do that, we get the impression that God is interested in uh one ethnic race only, Israel. But here's what the Bible tells us. I want us to be clear on this. In Genesis, the Bible says God created them, male and female. He created mankind, male and female, and he said that it was good. This wasn't about one race is good or anything. Mankind was created good. Genesis 12 uh, when God is speaking to Abraham, and he tells us that Israel was chosen to be his chosen race. But they were chosen and blessed with a purpose. What was that purpose? To be a blessing, to be a blessing. That's in Genesis 12. They are blessed to be a blessing. Leviticus chapter 19, beginning in verse 33, it tells us, when a stranger sojourns with you, so this is kind of a something almost like a permanent resident. When someone comes, they're not a citizen, but they're they're there for a while. When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself. God was not anti-foreigner, he didn't tell his people to be racially prejudiced, no. But instead, in a time when there was no protections for foreigners, all right, we're looking at the culture of the time. There's no protection for foreigners, and there were if you were outside of the community, there there was no legal rights for you, there's nothing to protect you. And yet at that time, God gave Israel instructions to treat foreigners well, that they were to be a blessing to the nations. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself. Isaiah chapter 49, verse 6, it says, I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. And we're given a glimpse of the future in Revelation chapter 7, verse 9, where there's a vision scene of a great multitude made up of every nation, from every tribe, people, and language, all worshiping God together. And so, if it wasn't about somehow racial purity, then why did they have to send the foreign women away? Why was it such a big deal? What was the issue here? The issue was that by marrying foreign women, Israel was in danger. They're in danger of being led away from their monotheistic worship of God because people influence people. All right, that's we know that to be true. People influence people. And we the easiest example of this is King Solomon, right? Um for political reasons, he he married 700 wives and 300 concubines. He was and he was led away by them. He didn't maintain his heart for the Lord, but uh he wandered because of that. And so Israel, the nations around them, they also had some truly horrible religious practices. Uh idol worship, they had ritual prostitution, temple prostitution, and even uh the gods Molech and Komosh, who are some of the pagan gods at the time and the nations around them, uh, is part of their worship, the religion, they would offer infants to be burnt alive as sacrifices to these gods. And so the foreign women they were sent away because of the danger of religious syncretism. Religious syncretism. Um because religious syncretism is it's kind of an amalgamation of different religions and culture and philosophies. And so an example of this could be considered the prosperity gospel. Prosperity gospel, it kind of blends the biblical idea that God loves to bless his people and the cultural value that wealth equals success. And so it forms a new gospel that kind of says believers have an inherent right to material wealth and success because God blesses his followers. It's a melding together of trying to form something new out of what the Bible says and what culture says. This is syncretism. And so this was the issue that we see with Israel in chapter 10 here. There was a danger that the values, the worship practices, the idols that these uh foreign women brought with them were going to, in a sense, infect Israel. That they were going to take it on. And this was a very real concern because Israel could remember their history. They know this has happened to them in the past. They were aware this is where the road leads if we allow this to take place again and to take root. And so in the Old Testament, we do recognize that the covenant with God it was transmitted to. Genealogically, it was transmitted from generation to generation. And there were some exceptions where there's inclusions of those who are considered Gentiles, who are not part of Israel, such as Ruth. And if you remember Ruth, she completely rejected her old identity and her old people. And she said, Your God will be my God. She fully took on the identity of God's people. And so she was brought in in that way. So in the Old Testament, the covenant was passed down genealogically, with some exceptions. But in the New Testament, in the under the New Covenant, faith is never equated with any ethnicity or genealogy. All right? We see it is by faith in Christ alone. So again, why send away foreign women? But why not the foreign men? Why not the foreign men? There's two elements I think that can answer this. The first was uh cultural in nature, all right? It was a cultural thing because when a marriage took place culturally, the woman would leave the family, leave her family, and join the husband's household. And so, therefore, there weren't there weren't any foreign men among the Jewish community to be sent away. Because if uh one of the Jewish women had married a foreigner, she would have left to go to his household. So the the the foreign men they just they just weren't there. The second element is perhaps in regard to uh a historical shift that was taking place. Because early in history, Jewish law identity always came through uh the patriarch from the father. And we see that in the genealogy. They they always list the men and they tend to list the sons uh in that time. But there was a shift that took place where by the second century AD the Jewish law had changed, and now it was considered if the the Jewish mother was uh if the mother was Jewish, excuse me, if the mother was Jewish, then the child is considered Jewish. So it moved from sort of being passed from the father to being passed from the mother. And so some scholars argue that this change, the shift was kind of taking place during Ezra's time, even right here in chapter 10. So, anyway, the bottom line is there was a threat to Israel's identity as God's chosen people, and yet then with the men, they they just weren't there. The foreign men weren't a part of the community to begin with. So, is God in favor of divorce then? No, God is not in favor of divorce, all right? Uh Ezra, he was praying and weeping and mourning publicly in front of the temple that Shechaniah uh, you know, he he came and he said, I uh we're gonna advocate putting away foreign wives and their children. And this was actually in a response that Ezra himself had earlier suggested. Putting them away is an interesting choice of words. And well, we'll just tell you. There's some grammatical evidence uh in the original text. There's grammatical evidence that they may not have recognized these marriages as legitimate to begin with. And so if in their thinking it wasn't legitimate to begin with, then there is nothing to divorce. But we don't know. We weren't back there. There's some evidence for that, but really what we need to know is this text is descriptive. It's describing what happened, it's not prescriptive, it's not telling us uh that this is what we should also do. Okay, it's describing what happened. But there's also this emphasis on removing, removing the influence to idolatry from the community. And so uh this was very critical because we know that, as we said earlier, the covenant was passed on genealogically. It's passed down from generation to generation. And so the the people they needed to maintain their identity and relationship with God. And the accompanying children were sent away with the foreign wives. And you know, when when I first read the text, wow, it it seems it seems very harsh. It seems very uncaring. I don't know if if you've read through this what your feelings were. But here, I guess from this modern standpoint, it feels very is this what Christians are like? If there's a problem, they they they just abandon the family like that. But we have to understand that there was a real danger that Israel would go back into idolatry. And the children went away with the mothers because that was the custom throughout the lands, not just in Israel, it was throughout the lands, this was the custom. If there was a divorce, if there was a splitting of the family, the children would follow the mother. And so we shouldn't see anything necessarily unusual or particularly cruel in this part of it. Now, looking at Malachi chapter 2, verse 16, and I'm going to read this from the amplified Bible. I think it gives us a better sense here. It says, For the Lord the God of Israel says, I hate divorce and marital separation, and him who covers his garment, meaning his wife, with violence. Therefore, keep a watch upon your spirit, that it may be controlled by my spirit, that you do not deal treacherously and faithlessly with your marriage partner. God is very clear. Um, He does not wish for marriages to end in divorce. And yet we see it taking place in this passage, because the community they were faced with two bad choices. They had two choices here: to allow idolatry to once again take hold in the community, or to divorce and put away these foreign wives who had entered into the community. Putting them away was seen, in a sense, the lesser of two evils. It was a bad situation they were in, but they were just going to put God first. Looking to the New Testament, this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, beginning in verse 12. He says, To the rest I say, I not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. According to the Bible, if you're a believer, uh really you should not be marrying someone outside of the faith to begin with. But perhaps you became a believer after you're already married. Well, Paul says as long as your spouse is willing to continue to live with you, willing to accept that you have your faith in Jesus, the marriage should continue. Divorce is the last resort for the believer, and only under certain narrow circumstances. So, does God come before family then? Yes. This is a hard thing to say sometimes. When things are going well, it's easy to say. When they're not going well, it's hard to say. But God must come even before our families. If you're forced into a corner where you have no choice but to choose between your faith in God and your family, God must come first. And I hope none of us here find ourselves in such a desperate position. But if you do find yourself in a position where you must choose between God and family, God must come first. It's not an excuse to ignore our immediate family or family responsibilities just because you want to serve the Lord more, no. But if your family doesn't believe in God, if they're telling you you have to give up your Christian faith or you will no longer be a part of the family, in such cases you must choose God over your family. And of course, this isn't theoretical. Um it's happening around the world even today, and we could uh wouldn't take much looking or searching to see examples, even in the Middle East, where there are people who are forced to choose between remaining in their faith or remaining in their family. There's no middle ground available to them. And they're choosing Jesus. They are. They're choosing Jesus no matter the cost, because they know they found in him something that is more valuable than even their families, more valuable than even their lives. And so, church, we we ask the question: is it right that we take sin so seriously? Or should we be focusing on the good things and serving God? Uh, in a sense, the answer is yes. We need to do both, not one or the other. When Ezra found out that uh not only were there some in the community who had taken these foreign wives, but it even taken place among the priests and the Levites, uh, he was devastated. He was devastated. He knew God had done so many miraculous things to even bring them back to the land of Israel, to their homeland. It was a miracle they were allowed to do that. And they weren't just allowed to, but uh the king had sent them with wealth, huge amounts of wealth, to rebuild the temple, to rebuild the altar, to rebuild the place. It was miraculous. It was amazing. But when he saw that this was happening to the community, he tore his clothes and he fell down in front of the temple and he was shouting and he was weeping and he was pleading with God, and he was pulling out his hair and his beard. After all that had taken place, they were already sliding back into rebellion with God, and it rocked his world. And so, reading through today's passage, um, if you go through, you'll see in the end they identified there was 113 cases of these marriages. And really, it took all in all almost a year to sort the whole matter out. But they did it because they recognized that sin is that serious. They dealt with their sin and they did it without excuse. There was no excuses given. There is no little asking for exemptions, but what about this one or that one? No, they did it. They took it seriously. So we summarize. Uh, does God promote racial prejudice or purity? No, he does not. Does he advocate divorce? No, he does not. Must we put God before family? Yes. Yes, we have to. Do we need to really focus on sin? It should be taken very seriously. And I go one step further, friends, friends. My church family, friends. The Christian who never struggles with sin is Christian in name only. It's our struggle with the patterns of sin in our life that confirms we are saved. If there's no struggle against sin in our lives, honestly, there's no reason to think that we are saved. We're just fooling ourselves. Dealing with sin is a serious matter. That's why every time we come together for our worship service, we have a time for prayer of confession. And after that prayer of confession, we receive the absolution from God. We acknowledge that He forgives our sins. This is part of our continued struggle against sin in our lives. And so, in closing, uh, I want to ask us today do you want to remain as we are forever? Do you feel that we've met our full potential as a church family already? Have we all grown fully into spiritual maturity already? Does the Lord have more for us than this? I want to see. I want to see our church to take the next step. Alright? Who we are today is not who we have to be always. And you're wonderful. I I love you as a church family, alright? I'm not saying that uh I'm not talking about the negative things, but right now I'm looking forward because I think we can we can go further as a church. We can go further in the Lord. We can see him do more in our lives and more through us. But I don't believe we're gonna move further unless we are serious with sin. We have to we have to make war against it day by day, not peace with sin. We must make war with sin. We see in the passage today it was very painful. They were they were in a very bad position, and neither way forward was a particularly good one. But you know what? They they before the Lord, they knew what they needed to do, they must put him first as a community and as individuals, and it is the same for us today. If we want to go forward as a church, if we want to see more of the Lord, if we want to experience more, we we're gonna have to make changes in our lives, and they may be painful. But you know what? When you make these painful decisions, God's grace comes in, and we experience his love afresh, and we experience that forgiveness, and we experience his strengthening and comforting and enabling as we walk out our decision. And so this morning, you know, I don't want to try and load on any condemnation to us. I don't think that helps us. I don't think that's something that that moves us forward. But instead, it is my prayer that we will allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit from the inside out. No, only the Holy Spirit can convict me of my sins, enough that I'm willing to do something about, to repent. That word repent is like it's doing a turning. You're changing course, you're moving away from this thing, no longer towards it. Only the Holy Spirit can do that in my life. Only the Holy Spirit can do that in your life. And so I am not looking for a rah-rah-rah moment where okay, let's let's get the team up and let's let's all come to the front and make a lot of noise. No. I don't know about you. I I've had many of those experiences in the past. I believe what God is looking for is something more long-term, don't you? You see, even in the passage today, a complicated situation wasn't settled in one day. It took time. Church, I I I want to invite you. I want to invite us, I include myself in this, that we we begin to pray more and more, Lord, would you teach me your ways? Would you reveal to me what's displeasing to you and give me the strength and the courage to deal with it? Lord, even if there's consequences, would you would you pour out your grace that I can make it through and remain faithful? Amen. We pray that you've been ministered to by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about Ish Christian Church, please visit our website at yccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.