Repentance Unto Life | Ezra 10 (Mark Evans)

In the book of Ezra, the people of Israel have married foreign women, which goes against God's law. Ezra and Shekiniah lead the people in confessing their sin and making a covenant to put away these wives. Repentance is a lifelong commitment, and it involves turning away from sin and turning towards God. The summons to repentance is done unto God, guided by wisdom, and requires specific actions. True repentance is not just about self-improvement, but about transformation by the power of God's Spirit. It is a difficult process, but there is hope for Israel and for all believers. I want you to feel free to make your way in your Bibles to the book of Ezra as we come now to what is the last and final in our sermon series of this great book. It will be in Ezra chapter 10 for today, Ezra chapter 10. And to get us going, I will read the first five verses of Ezra 10. And these are the words of the true and everlasting God. 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 Shekiniah, the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra, We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the lands. But even now there is 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. And Ezra arose and made the leading priests and the Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as has been said. And so they took the oath and the grass withers and the flower fades. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, indeed, here we are as those who so often have a broken faith and yet we know there is great hope for the greatness of our Savior who loved us, who gave himself up for us, who indeed came to do the will of the Lord. And so we do pray that you would give us eyes to see and give us ears to hear, even most so give us hearts that are soft, ready to receive your word and make good on it by faith alone. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Martin Luther is a familiar name to us, that great 16th century reformer who nailed his 95 theses to that church door in Wittenberg, Germany, repudiating many of the malpractices of the Roman Catholic Church and in so doing he sparked that movement and in many ways is still in motion to today. But what may be less familiar to us is the very first of his 95 statements that had nothing to do with justification, nothing to do with faith alone, nothing to do with the Pope directly. Instead Luther's number one leading statement was simply this, that when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, repent, he willed that the entire life of believers is one of repentance. See, in other words, Luther's bold claim was that repentance is not something that we do for a day, it's not something for a limited season, it's not something that applies to the new believer but then we mature out of it over time. So he set forth the truth that from our spiritual cradle all the way to our grave, our entire life is one of waging war against our sin. That's something for every Christian to consider, even for you to consider right now. As rightly said, be killing sin or your sin will be killing you. Put to death your sin or your sin will put you to death. And it's to those very crossroads of kill or be killed that we come to today in Ezra chapter 10 because just a reminder as to where we are in the story, we left off with Ezra returning to Jerusalem only to receive this rude awakening because upon return Ezra is welcomed by this great abomination that the holy people of Israel are not so holy after all because they had mixed themselves with the pagans by taking these pagan wives. That action was described as a great faithlessness because God's law was very clear. Do not take such wives because they will lead you astray from the living God. And so not only did Israel fail to not separate themselves, they full on syncretized themselves with worldliness. But all hope was not lost because we witnessed a godly man's godly sorrow in the face of this abomination. Ezra acknowledged the guilt of God's people and he appealed to God's grace. And so there's this sliver of hope for Israel. So that's where we left off in chapter nine. And while that's a great start, that doesn't go far enough, does it? It's never enough to simply confess and yet there be no change. To confess and yet no repentance. If we become a people who merely confess our sins but never turn away from our sins, then our confession is just empty words, isn't it? Now we could even say that if there is no change, we haven't even really made a genuine confession coming from godly sorrow because the biblical idea of confession is that it is best friends with repentance. The two always go together as a happy couple. And that is what is so great about chapter nine, now paired with chapter ten, is you get to see those two essential parts play out. We saw the confession last time. Today we get to see the action, the hard work of holiness, the demands, cutting off your hand, gouging out your eye to enter heaven, maimed but saved. And so we'll walk through chapter ten looking at three parts, just looking at the summons to repent, secondly, the resolve to repent, and lastly, the action of repentance. And as a whole, we're simply considering what does it look like to turn from your sin and to turn towards god. And so kids, you could say that Christianity is a 180 degree religion. And if you don't know what that means, you could just draw a half circle on your notes to symbolize that we are always turning away from our sin, but we don't stop there with a half turn. You make the full turn towards god, a full 180 degree turn. If you're confused, just ask whichever of your parents is the better at geometry and they will explain what that means. So with that, let's look at this summons to repent. As you see in verse one, we meet back up with the weeping Ezra, but he's not alone this time. Remember, his godly sorrow started to spread throughout the congregation. And incidentally, that alone is an incredibly encouraging thought. Have you ever realized that your personal pursuit of holiness doesn't merely affect you, it also benefits the people of God as a whole. It's somewhat like if we were on a team together. All of your individual workouts, your individual training, individual practice, not only benefits you, but it also benefits the entire team when it comes time for the game. And so too for the Christian life. Your personal, individual pursuit of holiness benefits the entire church body. And you see that effect as verse one continues. And notice at the end of this verse, there is now, quote, a very great assembly of men, women, and children gathered to Ezra out of Israel for the people wept bitterly. So Ezra's repentance, it has this ripple effect throughout Israel. So much so that this man Shekiniah stands up and he makes this confession in verse two. He says, we, notice the pronoun is now the collective, we, we have broken faith with our God. We have married foreign women. And just like Ezra, he appeals to God. He says, despite this, we still have hope for Israel. And that note of hope is something that we must hear clearly with a full heart and a full mind, because this is exactly what we forget in the depths and the despair of our sin, that the more and more we slip and fall, the more and more we start to believe all is hopeless. Things will never change. All is lost. It's right where Satan would have us be imprisoned and without hope. But that is to forget who our God is, that our God, as Romans says, is the God of hope. And so Christians are always to have an abounding hope. We are not as Ephesians says, like those who are without God and therefore without hope in the world. No, like Abraham, we can even believe hope against hope. So great are God's promises to us. And here it's as if God gave Shekiniah just enough light to see that great truth. And so verse three, he says, therefore, as in because we have this great hope, let us make a covenant with our God to put away our wives. And he says, according to the counsel of my Lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, let it be done according to the law. And so we learn three simple things about repentance here. Notice firstly, repentance is a thoroughly God word commitment. He says, let us make a covenant, a solemn bond, a profound pact with our God that we will do this. Secondly, you notice that the action plan is in very concrete terms. It's not vague. It's not contingent upon emotions or feelings. No, with precision, he says, we must commit to severing our marital bonds with our foreign wives. Nothing less or other than that will do. Thirdly, notice repentance is guided by wisdom. He says, let's carry out this action with Ezra's help. Remember, Ezra was a man who could dispense biblical counsel. And even more importantly, he says, let's do it according to the law of God. And so you can bundle all that up and see that this summons of repentance is done unto God, according to God's law as the guiding authority, and it contains specific concrete actions governed by God's law. And you can see just how contrary that is to the world's way of change, that the world is indeed all about change, right? Being the best version of yourself, overcoming vices to be a better person, behavior modification. But nowhere in such change is found true repentance, true transformation that is carried out by the power of God's Spirit, according to God's Word and all for the glory of God. You know, the world would have you be a moralist, always running on the hamster wheel of self-improvement and never arriving at the glory of God. Now with that said, though, let's just pause for a sobering moment and realize just how difficult this would have been. The call here, realize, is to sever your nearest relations, to break ties with your wife, even your children, right? It would have all the effect, the feel of tearing out your own heart, cutting off your own limb. Because indeed, when we fall in love with our sin, it is as if we are giving ourselves over to it. And the effects of sin is it starts to darken our understanding, it clouds our judgment, it perverts our desires. It's, of course, obvious from the outside looking in, isn't it? Anyone can look at an alcoholic from the outside looking in and see very clearly that his desires are misaligned, his desires are self-destructive. But what about when it's you on the inside? You are the idolater. You are the proud one. You are the gossip. You are the one caught in lust. You are the greedy one. Then it's much more difficult, isn't it? It is as when Nathan said to David, no, David, you are the man. You are the sinner. And so it's no accident that when the Lord Jesus summons us to repent, he uses such graphic imagery, cut off your hand, gouge out your eye, mutilate yourself so that you might be saved in the end. There is no measure too drastic, too extreme when it comes to severing ties with our precious sins. And some of you are going to think about it even now, if you are in the throes of such sins, be it pornography, lust, addictions, indulgences, even relationships that ought to be broken off. Hear this clarion call of Scripture, that is not who you are anymore. Put to death the old man and put on Jesus Christ. And if you hesitate, thinking, well, I don't know if I'd have the strength to do so, we'll just hear what Scripture says next in verse 4. It continues saying, arise, for it is your task and we are with you. Be strong and do it. So you can take courage from that verse and firstly see that you are not alone. Part of being in and with the body of Christ means that you're with a band of brothers and sisters who are with you to encourage you. Secondly, see that God will and does supply the strength by His Spirit. The very thing that God commands, God supplies. This charge is very similar to Joshua's charge, be strong and very courageous to do God's law. So then comes the simple point when all that's left to do is do it. I remember as a kid, that old Nike slogan, which was, just do it. Then comes this time when all that's left to do is just do it. You've prayed, you've confessed, you've prayed again, you've confessed again, you start to wonder, what's left to do? I feel like I've done all there is to do and Scripture says what's left to do is simply do it. By God's strength, lop off your hand. And so to bolster their commitment to just do it, you see in verse 5 they take this oath. And you may not know, if not you will now know, that our Westminster Confession actually has an entire chapter dedicated to taking oaths, where oaths are commended in matters of great weight, in great importance, calling upon God to witness that we will do what we say we will do. Now you might react and say, wait a minute, didn't Jesus forbid taking oaths in Matthew 5, when He said, just let your yes be yes, let your no be no. Aren't oaths even unchristian? That would actually be the stance of the Quakers, for instance, not that of Christians. Because Jesus is not prohibiting oaths altogether, what He is prohibiting is the foolish and improper use of oaths. Because in matters of great importance, such as we have here, oaths are entirely proper. And so that leads us nicely into the next section for us to consider as we look at not just this great summons to repent, but their resolve to repent, and see if they can follow through on this binding commitment to divorce their wives. But before that, that probably brings up a question in your mind. You might be wondering, well how do we square this call for divorce with that of the New Testament teaching on divorce? The New Testament teaching, as well as the church's longstanding tradition, is that there are only two lawful reasons for divorce. That would be adultery and desertion. And so at first glance, it may seem like this class action divorce of Ezra 10 is in tension with or even contradicts the New Testament teaching on divorce. But I don't think that it does. This is done according to God's law. And just remember from chapter 9 that these wives that they took were from the surrounding pagan tribes. They had Canaanites, Perizzites, Hittites, probably some Californians were in that mix as well. And what we do know from Scripture is that such pagans routinely practiced cult prostitution as part of their worship. Sexual infidelity was baked into everyday life, everyday religious worship. And so while an inference, it is a reasonable inference that these marriages in Ezra were sullied by perpetual and persistent sexual infidelity and threatened the holy line of the coming Messiah. Now these women are not like Ruth who said, your God will be my God. And if so, then these divorces would be lawful according to Scripture, both old and new. And regardless, we're certainly not to apply this as saying that Christians are to divorce non-Christians per 1 Corinthians 7. However, we can and must apply it to the aggression of cutting off our sin. And so let's look at Ezra's resolve to repent. You see in verse 6, Ezra spends this entire night in mourning over the faithlessness of God's people. Which is even more astounding when you realize there are roughly only 110 men who were guilty of this sin. You've got those names there in verses 18 and following. That's less than 1% of Israel. It's this tiny, tiny minority of Israel. And yet it preoccupies Ezra so much that he weeps and spends the whole night mourning over it. And what a great correction to us in the modern church as to just how individualistic we view ourselves from one another. We're reminded that to belong to the covenant community once again means that your pursuit of holiness, my pursuit of holiness, or lack thereof, affects the entire church as a whole. A little leaven affects the entire loaf of bread. But we see how Ezra's godly sorrow has the power to persevere with conviction. Just put yourself in his sad shoes. Remember, he is literally about to sever marriages, rip families apart. You can just imagine the burden, the angst that would rest upon Ezra. And so, verse 7, he makes the proclamation that everyone guilty must assemble. And then verse 8, he attaches this penalty to it, that if anyone does not come within three days by order of the officials and the elders, his property forfeited and he himself will be banned from the congregation of exiles. So we have here this solid preview of the all-important practice of church discipline. Church discipline has largely fallen by the wayside in the modern church, but it is absolutely vital to the health of a church. In fact, if you had to pick three essentials, three things that make up for a healthy church, saying if you have these things, you've got a true church. And if you don't have these three things, then no matter what you do, no matter how well you do it, you don't have a healthy church. Our forefathers said that church discipline is one of those three things, along with the preaching of the word and administering the sacraments. Now church discipline positively just means any and all training under the authority of God's Word. I think unfortunately people hear the word church discipline and they bristle at its negative connotation of something carried out punitively under a heavy hand. But just as parents train up a child, just as an athlete trains up his body, so too church discipline just trains us up. It shapes us to be what God has called us to be. Now indeed, what we have in Ezra 10 is the most extreme form of church discipline, which is that of excommunication for scandalous sins, because remember, by this sin, Israel is repeatedly, egregiously, persistently disobeying God. You might remember a similar incident from 1 Corinthians 5. That man there in Corinth had taken his father's wife. Paul says a kind of immorality that not even the pagans engage in. And what does Paul tell them to do? He says, excommunicate, exclude that man. Even those words, deliver that man over to Satan. And we have that preview here. To be banned from the congregation as an Israelite means you're no longer participating in the ritual sacrifices and worship of Yahweh, considered to be a pagan. And so we are reminded, instructed, that church discipline is practiced for the sake of the church's purity, that this sin had defiled and desecrated Israel's calling to be a holy nation. And we have the exact same calling, as 1 Peter 2 says of us. We are a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people of God's own possession. And so church discipline has this great purging effect, just like you would want to purge the impurities from drinking water, so too, Paul says, purge the evil person from among you. And we see further that church discipline not only aims at purity, it follows a progression. It's never carried out hastily or rashly. We've seen in Ezra 9 and now 10 that the sin has been named, rebukes have been issued, warnings have been issued, all with much prayer and godly grief. The congregation as a whole is involved, and it's after months of examination. And so you can recall Jesus' own words, His teaching on this, right? Your brother sins, you go and rebuke him. If he doesn't listen, go again. Bring your brother along with you this time. If he still doesn't listen, then tell it to the church as a whole. And then still, if he does not listen, let him be excommunicated, may he be considered a pagan to the congregation. And so, Ezra resolves to do so here for the sake of God's glory and for the purity of the church. Now with that, we see the resolve to repent, let us look at the action, the fruit of this church discipline. And you see, we're off to a good start. You see this immediate response in verse 9. All the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within three days. So while the purpose is one of purity, here is the great hope of all church discipline, and that is the restoration of the sinner. That certainly does not always happen this way. I know I personally have only seen sinners, unfortunately, harden themselves under church discipline. I have also seen sinners soften themselves and respond like this under church discipline. And we have the latter here. Israel responds in repentance. They muster up in formation, and so committed they are, as verse 10 says, they're doing this in the pouring rain, as Ezra reiterates that they have broken faith. But then he pronounces this remedy of repentance in verse 11. We simply put, you see Ezra says there after the confession, quote, do His will. Do God's will. Do the will of the Lord. It's the simple summons of every Christian, isn't it? To do the will of God, which is precisely what in our fallen natures we do not want to do, we cannot do, and therefore we don't do. But as sinners, we do not want to carry out God's will. Instead, to the core, we are self-willed. Sometimes said of a particular child, if they're very obstinate, if they're very stubborn, hard-headed, we say that child is self-willed. That may be true. That's, of course, true of each and every one of us. We might say it with a smile on our face. We might even do it politely. But to the core, we are self-willed, declaring before God, I will do it my way. And even as redeemed sinners, the nature of our indwelling sin pulls us off drift of doing the will of the Lord. I remember when I first got into bow hunting, I got my first bow. The man who sold it to me, who was himself a very experienced bow hunter, he specifically showed me how to sight in the bow, that you've got to sight the sight, the pins, very precisely so that the arrow will fly with accuracy. We were actually able to do it right then and there in the store. And in my mind, I thought, okay, check, that's done. On to the next thing. But he said, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way at all. See, over time, with use, the more shots you take, eventually, this sight is going to drift off course. And you're going to have to go back, and you're going to have to reset it. You're going to have to recalibrate it. Otherwise, you're always going to be off target. And how true of the Christian life, isn't it? That we wander from God's will. We lapse into doing our own will to our own destruction. And so here comes Ezra, with his great recalibration, saying, get off of self-will and get on to God's will. As Paul says, it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. And so, just ask yourself, what are the settings of my will? Is the compass of your heart pointed true north to Christ, or have you drifted off target? As Hebrews warns us, take care, brothers, lest there be in you an evil, unbelieving heart that would lead you astray from the living God. As you see the work of the Spirit in their lives, they recognize that if they persist in their sin, as verse 14 says, the fierce wrath of God would remain over us. They have finally, rightly, awakened themselves to the reality of a holy God who will not abide sin. That as the psalmist says, to the man who does not repent, God sharpens his sword. It speaks so clearly to the necessity of repentance, doesn't it? Now, to be clear, our repentance does not cause God to forgive us. We don't earn forgiveness by repenting any more than we earn it by having faith. But to be equally clear, there is no forgiveness of sins without repentance. And we men, in particular, have something to learn here as the heads of our families. You could call this call of Ezra Ten to be the CRO of your home, to be the chief repenting officer of your home. Remember, it was the leading men who unfortunately led the way in this sin. By the grace of God, perhaps it's those very same men who lined up to lead the way in repentance. Sometimes we men, I think we deceive ourselves by saying, well, if I admit my faults to my spouse, before my family, to my children, then I will lose my authority. I've got to cultivate, maintain an image of superiority, of strength. But Scripture would say the exact reverse. If you don't confess your sins, if you don't model repentance, then your authority is just a sham and a fraud. And so ask yourself, am I out in front? If my family was following me, would it not be long before they run headlong into repentance? Indeed, as we all think of our own failures to do God's will, just as they did, asking how would the wrath of God be turned away from us? Where do we look to see the will of the Lord embodied? Where do we look to see the will of God carried out with perfection? We look no further, no higher than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. That what was said of Him, that His very food was to do the will of His Father. His very delight was the fear of the Lord and how hard He wrestled to do the will of the Lord. That after searching out, after asking, is there any other way? Father, could there be any other way for this cup to pass? Is there any other way other than the agony of the cross and the full fount of God's wrath coming down upon me? After wrestling that, what did He say? Not my will be done, but Thine. And in doing so, He turned the wrath of God off of His people and onto Himself so that we, self-willed sinners, could become the righteousness of God. And so, as we begin to close, let us lay up in our hearts several uses of this awesome section of Ezra. And firstly, before we even get to those, let's just start with the foundational truth that is the basis of all change and all genuine repentance. And that is that through Christ, by the Spirit, God has given you nothing less than a new heart. That God has removed the heart of stone. He has transplanted the heart of flesh. And that means many things, not least of which is that you, Christian, by the power of the Spirit, have the ability to repent. Have the power to repent, to turn from the path of destruction and to turn towards life by God's help and His help alone. And we've seen in this section of Ezra that repentance entails three things. It is particular, it is painful, and thirdly, it is productive. Firstly, repentance is particular. Notice they did not say, they did not confess, we're sinners generally speaking. No one's perfect. We fall short of the glory of God just like everybody else does. No, very precisely, very particularly, they said, we must put off our foreign wives. That and only that will categorize as repentance. And so too for us, as we hold up the mirror of God's law. The Spirit comes and says, here are your specific blotches, here are your blemishes, here is where you're misaligned in your love of money, in your anger, in your laziness, in your lust, and so forth. That's why it's a good practice to simply name your sins out loud, to confess them out loud. And not out of despair, but out of the hope of putting them to death. Secondly, we've seen that repentance is painful, it's painful. Nothing less than gouging out one's eye, cutting off one's hand. We've seen it's not a pointless pain, is it? It's very much like the pain of a surgery, like the pain of swallowing bitter medicine, but you just know such pain is going to bring about healing and restoration. And what that means for us is that our pain threshold can never be too high. There is no pain that will outweigh the pains of hell. And for these men, they may have lost life as they knew it, but what did they gain? They gained God as their exceedingly great reward. And so, too, for us, if we put the right valuation, the right appraisal of Jesus Christ, if we rightly see there is the pearl of great price, then there's no pain, no measure too drastic to do in order to gain Him. And lastly, repentance is productive, it produces a harvest of righteousness. As Hebrews says, no discipline at the time seems pleasant, it is painful, but afterwards, what does it yield? It yields this peaceful fruit of righteousness. And so, Christian, take great courage as you seek to put to death your sins. Take great comfort, for there is no sin so great that it surpasses the greatness of our Savior and His mercy. For our God is the God who did not spare His own Son, but graciously gave Him up for us all. Let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, indeed, how awesome it is to confess that You did not spare Your own Son, but gave Him up for us, that we as sinners might be cleansed and forgiven and even so, too, that we as sinners might be able to turn from our sin and to turn towards Jesus Christ, to be evermore like our older brother and walking in the paths of life. And so, we do pray for us, teach us to be a repenting people, to know what it is to cut off our hand, to gouge out our eye, but in doing so, have the pearl of great price. In His name we pray, amen.