Ezra 9 & 10 -- Something WE Need To Do

Ezra found out upon arriving in Jerusalem that many of the former captives who’d returned had broken the prohibition God had ordained about marrying non-Jewish people.  His people were to be set apart, holy, and unmixed with the world.  Despite the grace He’d shown in preserving the remnant through the captivity and inclining the minds of the foreign kings to actually pay for the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, even some of the priests and Levites had thought so little of this prohibition that they’d married outside their people.

Ezra was shocked at the news, even pulling out the hairs of his head and beard by the roots!  At the evening sacrifice, the people watched as he fell to his knees and cried out to God.  He made the people’s sin his own, saying, “My God, I am too ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our sins are so many.  They are higher than our heads … But now, our God, what can we say after You have done all this?  We have disobeyed your commands … What has happened to us is our OWN fault.  We have done evil things, and our guilt is great.  But You, or God, have punished us less than we deserve; You have left a few of us alive … We admit that we are guilty and none of us should be allowed to stand before You.”

The world today would look at Ezra and deride his taking-on of the sins of others as ridiculous.  After all, he hadn’t done anything, and they were quite happy to be doing it, so his petitioning would mean nothing to them.  Thankfully, that’s not the way the Jewish remnant reacted.  Despite heavy rains and the short notice, they all came from their surrounding towns and gathered together.  They agreed with Ezra and with God about their sin, and they set up a process to disentangle themselves from the mess they’d made of their lives in the face of God’s grace.

I believe we’ve lost something as a nation by our lack of nationally recognizing and admitting OUR sin to God.  The likelihood of our countrymen reacting in this way is incredibly remote.  Yet what an impact it would have if each of us felt responsible for all of our citizens – if we believed that we could and should confront sin in love and call for repentance.  Multiculturalism has taken us so far down the road leading away from God, in the name of individual rights that I fear we may not be able to find our way back.

One thing I noticed about the reaction of the people in these chapters was the complaint about the rain.  Rain is a blessing from God, and it’s been so very long since we’ve seen substantial rain here – almost 10 months!  The rain represented God’s purification and grace.  Perhaps they could have thanked Him for washing them clean of their sins and for still providing rain despite their sins.  Instead, it became an excuse to extend the process of repentance.

Father, help each and every Christian in our nation to own up to the collective sins of our nation.  I need to do this, too, rather than simply thinking it’s not my fault.  Evil thrives when good men do nothing.  Lead us as a nation to the kind of national repentance we see in Ezra.  Bring us back from the abyss.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford