In
our passage this morning, we’re entering the story of Ezra and
Nehemiah at an important moment in their story. Nehemiah has led a large group
of Israelites back to Israel and they’ve rebuilt the walls of the city, rebuilt
the temple, even though it wasn’t as majestic as Solomon’s, and now Nehemiah
calls the people to celebrate, and as part of the celebration, the priest Ezra
begins reading to the people from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible,
while the Levites explain what Ezra is reading, “They
read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so
that the people could understand what was being read.” The people began
to weep as they listen to the words of the Law. They realize how far away from
following God’s Law they’ve drifted. They hear about the Feast of Tabernacles
and so they build booths to live in to remember how God provided for the people
in the wilderness for 40 years.
During
the entire festival, Ezra reads from the Word of God and a revival begins
as the people reflect on their relationship with God and how they have, or have
not been following God’s will and Laws. The day before our passage, many of the
men who had married foreign women had separated themselves from their wives and
children because the Law they just heard read, spoke against such marriages. Ezra 10:3, “Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away
all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord
and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the
Law.” The wives and children are sent away, just as Abraham
sent Hagar and Ishmael away hundreds of years earlier. So much brokenness. The people gather together and for 3 hours they listen
to the Book of the Law and then they spend another 3 hours confessing their
sins and worshipping the Lord. This is an intense time!
The history in Ezra and Nehemiah is hard to hear. Husbands set aside their families because they made a
choice to marry foreign women, which God has warned against in Deuteronomy
7:1–4,
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land
you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the
Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites,
seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has
delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy
them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not
intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their
daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following
me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will
quickly destroy you.”
We saw this happen with even wise Solomon, who turned away from worshipping God alone, and even
built temples and altars to foreign gods, going as far as even kneeling before
these altars with his wives. The prophet
Malachi, who was a prophet at the same time as Ezra and Nehemiah, talks about
God’s purity, but he also talks about God’s dislike of divorce. One thing is
really clear, going against God’s ways brings lots of hurt and brokenness.
In
their confession, the leaders and people first focus on God’s greatness and goodness; how
God is the God who created the universe and all life in it. God chose Abram and
made promises to him to give Abraham the land they’re now in, and God kept his
promises. In the years afterwards, God protected and provided for his people,
revealing his own greatness while doing so. God gives them the gift of the Law
to shape and form them into a people who reflect God and the kingdom of heaven.
Now
the people go into an intense time of confession. They confess
their disobedience, their times of rebellion against God, confessing that God’s
gift of the Law was ignored over and over again. The people keep running after
other gods and even when God punishes them, as soon as their punishment is over,
they run back to their sins again, and then when God allows their enemies to
defeat them, as soon as the Israelites cry out to God, he saves them again and
again. God sends prophet after prophet, but in this prayer in Nehemiah, they
confess that they didn’t pay them a whole lot of attention, just going about
their lives doing what they wanted, rather than focusing on God and his Law.
One of the themes that shines through in the people’s confession is the
acknowledgement that their sin has consequences and that God is perfectly
justified in punishing them. They did not make excuses for the mess they’re in,
they’re perfectly honest about their sin. Confession is not confession when
you’re trying to make excuses about what you’ve done; that’s just trying to
shift the blame away from what you’ve done. As the people confess, “In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous;
you have acted faithfully, while we acted wickedly.”
Israel’s
problem usually wasn’t confession, we see Israel coming back to God and
confessing their sin over and over again, even being brutally honest about
their sin, but there is one thing their confession doesn’t lead to; to
repentance and lasting heart and life change. It’s easy to confess our sin,
there are actually a number of people who seem to take great joy in confessing their
sins, and then going back and repeating them all over again. There are those
who believe that it’s Jesus’ and God’s responsibility to forgive our sins. As
long as we confess our sin, we’re alright and can go back to what we were
doing. Then there are those who believe that if we’re going to sin, then we
should sin boldly, as Martin Luther says, by the way, he’s misquoted, so that God’s
grace and Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin is seen to be even greater and glorious.
Paul deals with this amazingly twisted way of thinking in Romans 6, “What shall we say, then?
Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those
who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that
all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We
were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just
as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life.”
Sin
is powerful in its ability to destroy and twist things so out of shape
that they’re no longer recognizable, especially our hearts. Repentance is
turning away from sin and evil and turning towards God. John the Baptist is one
of the most powerful preachers of repentance, hear his words to the Pharisees
and Sadducees in Matthew 3, “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to
where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you
to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do
not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell
you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is
already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good
fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for
repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I
am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His
winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering
his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Repentance leads to a changed heart and life, a life shaped by obedience; an obedience that needs
to flow out of our relationship with Jesus and is based on trust, love, and a
desire to please Jesus, not out of a sense of obligation or guilt. Jesus says,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
Jesus wants us to want to keep his commandments because of our love for him,
not because we’re afraid of punishment or rejection, but because we belong to
him. For John the Baptist, repentance looks like what Jesus talks about in
Matthew 25 where people are feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty,
caring about the people around them. John tells them in Luke 3 to give their extra
coat to someone in need, and share their money with the poor. He urges them to
make sure they run their business fairly, treating everyone with honour. John calls
us to not cheat others. Repentance means living Jesus’ way in everything we do.
Repentance
is not just feeling sorry, or getting comfortable with God. It’s about changing
the way we live our lives in the world. It’s a wonderful, free life living for
God’s kingdom of justice and righteousness and peace in the spirit of love of
God and neighbour rather than for ourselves.
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