Well, I did it again. I did and I got busted for it, too, but I was shown great grace. My crime was walking my dogs in my neighborhood with no collars or leashes. Yes, I am an offender! I’m a law-breaker and a desperate criminal and I deserve to pay the price. It’s my fault. Take it out on me but leave my dogs alone. They are innocent. It’s all me.
I have lived at that house in Bridgeport for four years and every day of the world, I walk my dogs. It’s never been a problem before but a couple of months ago we were almost home and the Bridgeport animal control officer pulled up in his truck and gave me a warning that I needed to have them on collars and leashes because some dear neighbor of mine called the cops and said my dogs were terrorizing the neighborhood. If you have ever met my dogs, you know how ridiculous that is, but what can I say? It’s a law.
So, I broke out the collars and leashes and I was doing real well about walking them with those every day…until one day last week. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I was lazy or I was thinking what a stupid law that is or how good my dogs are or how we all hate messing with those things. So, we took off and we had a good walk and we were almost home when we came around the corner and there he was.
I couldn’t run, couldn’t hide. I’m busted right there in front of my house and I’m sure the crazy person, I mean, lovely neighbor who called him is watching, laughing her head off. The animal control officer gets out shaking his head and we talk for a minute about just how many tickets I deserve. No collar, no leash, no proof of rabies, no proof of registration and something else. He said for the two dogs it was about 10 tickets he needed to write me.
So, what am I supposed to say? I have no response except to tell him he is correct and I deserve all of them. I can’t tell him I didn’t know or that he just doesn’t see them or that he can’t prove it. I’m busted with nothing to say in my defense. But for whatever reason, he showed me grace. He didn’t give me any tickets. Thank you Lord! So, since then I have not only asked for forgiveness but I have repented of my ways and it has not happened again.
Have you ever been there? Have you ever been guilty of a crime, maybe not anything as heinous a crime as walking dogs without leashes like me, but have you ever been guilty of something and had no excuse, no reason, no alibi or justification for what you did? What was your response? What was the response of the one who was confronting you with this sin? How did your sin and your response to it affect the people around you?
I ask those questions because this is the situation we find in the Old Testament book of Ezra. Ezra is between the books of 2 Chronicles and Nehemiah. The man Ezra probably wrote 1 and 2 Chronicles and was a contemporary and friend of Nehemiah so it’s appropriate they would be next to each other. The passage we are going to look at is the 9th chapter, verses 1-7. The 9th chapter of Ezra is found on page 340 of most of the Bibles in the pew in front of you.
We are continuing with our sermon series entitled, “Nothing Special – Common Men and Women God Used” and today, as I said, we will be looking at the very common and ordinary man named Ezra. Last week we saw how God used ordinary old Gideon to defeat hundreds of thousands of Israel’s enemies. Gideon was absolutely nothing special. He was scared, wrong and weak all of his life and yet God used Gideon to get God’s will accomplished.
So many times, we all feel like there is nothing we can do to get ourselves or our friends or family or country out of the messes we get in. We are not smart enough or powerful enough. We don’t have any influence whatsoever and so we just stop trying. Now, you might be surprised to hear me say that all of that is correct and that you should stop trying because you can’t do it. You can’t…not in your own power.
But we will see in Ezra’s story, as we saw with Gideon, that we can do all things with God and we can do nothing without God. If you feel like you have no talents or gifts and you have no influence or power, you will be encouraged by the story of Ezra. Ezra was a scribe. Do you know what a scribe was? A scribe’s job could entail doing things like bookkeeping or law-keeping, as it were, but basically a scribe was the guy whose job was to painstakingly copy the canon of scripture. They didn’t have the printing press yet and so they had to copy scripture by hand and they had to do it exactly as it was written. So that means that Ezra’s great, God-given gift…was nice hand-writing. Seriously, and you think you don’t have the talents to be used by God?
So, let’s read in Ezra chapter 9, verses 1-7 about how God used this great calligrapher to change the world.
Verse 1: After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.” 3 When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. 4 Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice. 5 Then, at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God 6 and prayed:
“I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. 7 From the days of our ancestors until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today.
So, what is happening here is that Ezra has just gotten the news that there were quite a few people in Israel who were disobeying God’s laws and Ezra would have known God’s laws from copying them over and over again. In Deuteronomy 7:3, God is speaking of all those people; the Canaanites and Perizzites and all the other “ites” when He says, “Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.”
Now, that’s pretty plain, right? Do you think that verse could be interpreted in some other way? “Don’t intermarry with foreign people.” Plain and simple and yet obviously some of them had chosen to disobey God in this. In fact, verse 2 says the leaders and officials have led the way in this. So, evidently this was not just one person choosing to disobey God like Achan in Joshua chapter 7 where Achan stole some items from Jericho and he and his whole family were killed for it. No. This is widespread and accepted at every level of society.
So, what is Ezra’s response when he is notified of this? I want you to look closely at what he did and didn’t do and then we will see in a minute what happened because of his response. The first thing it says he did was to tear his clothes and pull out his hair. That sounds pretty extreme, doesn’t it? Now, I’m not advocating we do this when we see sin around us. In fact, this is the opposite of what Nehemiah does when he gets the same news. If you read the last chapter of Nehemiah (13:21), you will see that Nehemiah didn’t tear his own clothes or pull his own hair. He did that to the people that sinned. It says he beat them up.
So, no, I’m not saying that either one is the proper response. That was their response and sin deserves a response. It should break our hearts. It should hurt us that we have hurt God. That’s how you know that you are a true believer when it hurts you; it pains you; it bothers you and you don’t have peace when you are made aware of sin around you. That happens because the Holy Spirit lives inside of us as Christians today and we will have a response to sin because He has a response to sin.
Notice what Ezra does not do. Notice that Ezra does not make light of it. He doesn’t make excuses for it since “everybody” is doing it, it must not be that big of a deal. He doesn’t justify it or redefine what they are doing to make it sound ok. He doesn’t try to reinterpret scripture. Nor does he get into an argument with those who are doing this, trying to prove that he is right and they are wrong. He simply sits there and meditates on it for a while.
The commentators say he sat there for several hours until the evening sacrifice. He meditated, thought about it and rolled it over in his mind over and over and I believe all this time he was preparing himself to approach God with it. Because as soon as it was time to worship, he did just that. He went to God in prayer. He has humbled himself. He has prepared himself and now he gets on his knees and he enters God’s throne room.
I’ve said before that sometimes you just have to kick open the door of God’s throne room and rush in and jump on His lamp and cry, “Help me, Abba Father!” He understands that when your car is flying off the bridge, you don’t have time to prepare yourself and come to Him reverently like you might at other times. But this is one of those other times and before you come into God’s presence in prayer; before you dare go into the throne room of the Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer and Author and Finisher – and He wants you to, make no mistake – but before you do that you remember that it is a throne room and should be approached with great reverence.
Reading John’s description of God sitting on His throne in Revelation 4 can and should be intimidating and yet we are also told in Hebrews 4 to come boldly before it. Ezra comes and he comes boldly but he comes very humbly as well. Look at his prayer starting in verse 6. In the NIV it starts out, “Oh my God…” and can I please stop right there for just half a second to say this one quick thing that is not part of what we are talking about this morning but needs to be said?
We see and hear those three words used all the time. It has gotten so commonplace that we don’t even hear it anymore. It is just used as an expression of surprise. Well, I just have to say one thing about that. Stop it! Unless you are talking to Him or about Him, using His name is using it in vain and He hates it. So please stop! Ok, time in. Let’s get back to Ezra’s prayer.
We didn’t read his whole prayer for the sake of time but all through it Ezra owns this sin. Ezra himself had not taken any foreign wives nor had his children but Ezra goes to God taking his share of the blame for it as he says, “our sins” and “our guilt”. Ezra says he is ashamed and disgraced by what they as a country have done and notice he does not ask for anything.
Ezra points out the sin. He owns it, admits it and brings it to God without excuse or justification and throws himself and his country at God’s feet to do with as God wishes. It’s that way through the whole prayer. Ezra doesn’t ask for wisdom or help or anything else. He throws himself on the altar before God and offers himself as a living sacrifice and as it says in Romans 12, holy and acceptable to God.
That’s what God wants. God wants us to be holy. That’s why he gave them the prohibition against marrying outside of their faith. He didn’t want their faith in the Almighty God to get watered down and mixed in with other false religions. Holy simply means to be separated from the others and totally dedicated to God’s service. This doesn’t mean you have to be a preacher or pastor or a monk. Not at all. Whatever you do, wherever you are, be dedicated to God, keeping his rules and making disciples as you go.
As you go you will look and act differently than others around you but that’s ok. You are supposed to. Now, the cool thing about Ezra’s story is that if you keep reading you will see that revival broke out in his country. Because of one man; one man who prayed; one man whose only real gift was good handwriting started to pray with a broken and contrite heart and poured himself out to God, confessing the sin of his country as his own and because of that his whole country did the same and his whole country changed and was again blessed by God.
Now, how many of you are sitting out there thinking, “Man, we need another Ezra”? Yea, because that’s what this country needs is somebody with really good handwriting! No. What this country needs is just somebody – even one person – who will do something similar to what Ezra did. We have talked lots of times about how God has not changed since the Old Testament. He is the same in the New Testament and He is the same today in our lives. He hates sin.
I mentioned Achan a few minutes ago. He committed one sin and God killed him and his entire family. The only sin recorded that Ezra and the Israelites were guilty of was the sin of intermarriage and not keeping themselves holy and yet God had caused them to be in slavery for years and years. He had allowed their rulers to be killed because of this like it says in verse 7.
I have to tell you that I realized just this week that I am guilty of some faulty thinking. I even shared it with you lately. My thinking has been that while no man knows the hour that Jesus will come back for us as believers, I just thought that these times we are living in surely can’t get much worse and that God will see us as a Christian nation, have pity on us and send Jesus any minute now because life in this country has just gotten crazy.
Now, again, no man knows how God is thinking and no man knows the hour and He might come back before I finish this sermon (and I hope He does) but my faulty thinking has been that it can’t get much worse. It is so bad here in the United States that Christians have gotten…uncomfortable. *Gasp* That’s right! People are even disputing with us on Facebook! How much worse can it get?
What I have realized this week is what should have been obvious to us and that is that Israel was and is God’s chosen people and yet He allowed them to be enslaved and killed for much less than what we as a country have chosen to do. Who do we think we are? Do we think we will be spared the judgment and punishment that God gave His chosen ones? They were guilty of one sin. Achan was guilty of one sin. God does not change.
How much longer will He show grace and mercy to our country that disobeys the plain word written in Leviticus 18:22 that says, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” That’s pretty plain. There is no justifying it. There is no redefining it. Homosexuality is a sin this country - and I will say like Ezra said that - we are guilty of!
How much longer will He show grace and mercy to our country that disobeys the plain word written in Exodus 20:13 that says, “Thou shall not murder” when we as a country not only murder innocent babies in the womb but then, as we have found out this past week, we also “harvest” their body parts for money like a farmer harvests carrots? How much longer?
How much longer will He show grace and mercy to our country that disobeys the plain word written in John 8:11 where Jesus told the woman, “Go and sin no more”? I don’t know how much longer but it can’t be long. God is merciful but He is also just and He has declared that He will judge sin and that should scare us. That should scare us for our lives but also for the lives of our children and grandchildren.
Yes, we need another Ezra! We need another man or woman who will own our country’s sin and who will grieve over that sin and maybe that grief even causes them to rip their clothes and pull their hair but ultimately it causes them to make the sacrifice of worshipful prayer to Almighty God and offer themselves as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God so that this country and our children and grandchildren won’t inherit God’s wrath that we all deserve.
Ezra knew because God had spoken through him in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” God has not changed. He could still show mercy and bring revival to our country and it could start right here today. Or we can continue doing what we are doing and allow our country and our children to suffer the consequences.
Tell God right now that you want revival to start in you. If that means you need to accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord then do that right now. Let it start with you as you humble yourself and pray and seek God’s face and turn from your wicked ways. Paul said in Corinthians that today is the day of salvation. Ezra said that today is the day of revival. I say that today is the day that it starts with me. How about you?
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