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Dr. Jim Hamilton, Jr. shares the
following illustration:
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The bad guys in Andrew Peterson's
novel, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of
Darkness, are the nasty Fangs of Dang.
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Dang is an awful, accursed place,
which seems to be under judgment.
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The Fangs of Dang walk upright like
humans, and in fact they look exactly like humans, except for the greenish
scales that cover their bodies, and the lizard like snout and the two long, venomous
fangs that jut downward from their snarling mouths. Also, they have tails.
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Fangs stink, literally. They eat
molding, decaying food. They make everything around them filthy. And they are
murderous and hateful.
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In the night they steal children
from their parents and make the children slaves, or worse.
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The Fangs of Dang are awful killers.
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In the story, they are out to
capture the children who somehow survived the destruction of the Shining
Island.
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While they try to escape the awful
Fangs, these children constantly call on the Maker for help and rely on him.
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The Fangs show no regard for this
Maker.
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What we need to understand as we
look at Ezra 9 and 10 is that an Israelite marrying a Canaanite would be like
one of the children from the Shining Island marrying a Fang of Dang.
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Unless a Fang is converted and
transformed into a new creature, the only way one of the children would be able
to cuddle up to a Fang and marry it would be for the child to forget his
identity, forget everything that is good, true, and beautiful, and grow
comfortable with the filth, stench, and cruelty of the Fangs.
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But the children love what is good
and true and beautiful, so the thought of one of them marrying a Fang is not
only revolting, it's impossible!
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That revulsion is what we need to
have in mind as we see the Israelites who have intermarried with the peoples of
the land.
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Last week we began to see how God
used Ezra's devotion and obedience and this week we will see the rest of the
story.
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After worshiping in the Lord's
Temple and delivering the King's message to the governors and magistrates who
supported the people and God's temple, the Jewish leaders go to Ezra with some
rather disturbing news.
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"Many of the people of Israel,
and even some of the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate
from the other peoples living in the land. They have taken up the detestable practices
of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites,
Egyptians, and Amorites. For the men of Israel have married women from these people
and have taken them as wives for their sons. So the
holy race has become polluted by these mixed marriages. Worse yet, the
leaders and officials have led the way in this outrage" (Ezra 9:1-2).
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How does Ezra react to this news?
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He tears his cloak, his shirt, pulls
hair from his head, and his beard, and sits down, shocked and appalled by the
situation.
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Why does Ezra react this way?
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In Exodus 34 and in Deuteronomy 7 we
read about God's instructions through Moses to the people of Israel about what
they were to do when they entered the Promised Land.
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They were to tear down the pillars
and altars for the worship of the false gods of the people of the land and
worship only God.
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They were not to marry the people living
in the land or to worship their gods because God is a jealous God and his
people are set apart as holy to him.
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Israel was to destroy totally the
people of the land. They were to make no covenant with them, show no mercy to them,
and not intermarry with them.
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If they did these things, then they
would follow in the footsteps of the people of the land and worship their gods.
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God set Israel apart as his
treasured possession and if they chased after other gods, he would repay them
with destruction.
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What
do we find happening at the beginning of chapter 9?
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We find disobedience. Some of the
leaders, other men, and their sons have married daughters of the people of the
lands and they have taken up their detestable practices.
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God's command against intermarriage
was not bigotry, it wasn't racism as we might suppose from verse 2, because the Hebrew says holy seed.
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Moses married a Midianite woman,
Zipporah. Boaz married Ruth, a Moabite woman.
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These women became faithful to God,
so the problem wasn't that they were foreigners.
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The
problem was that Israel's remnant was following after false gods because they
married women who did not turn to the Lord.
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God called his people to be holy and
mingling the holy seed with the unfaithful seed is worse than refusing clean
water in order to drink from a toilet.
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From the holy seed was to come one
who would crush the head of the serpent.
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Israel was the nation through whom
all nations would be blessed.
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Mixing the holy seed with the
unfaithful seed shows no regard for the hope of God's promise.
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Many among God's people were ignoring
the word of God. They were not learning and living the word.
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Instead of being faithful, they were
faithless.
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Instead of following God, they
became comfortable and began to follow the practices of the people living in
the land.
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The people living in the land refuse
to worship the living God, who created all things and who gave instructions
about how to shield and support abundant life.
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Instead of worshiping their God and Maker,
they worship demons pretending to be gods and makers who trap their followers
by enslaving them to their lusts, desires, and appetites.
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We need to remember that we learn
and live out the word for the purpose of building a relationship with God.
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We are called to live differently
and separately from the people of the land around us.
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God
does not expect holiness from unbelievers; he expects holiness from his people.
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Ezra continued in his devotion to
God and his faithfulness to God as he studied, obeyed, and taught God's word to
his people.
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Ezra didn't point out their sin;
rather some of the Jewish leaders came to him in confession.
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The fact that they recite the
nations who had been living in the land at the time of the Exodus shows that
they had been studying God's law and God used it to convict them of their sin.
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Everyone
who trembled at the words of God gathered around Ezra and he sat there utterly
appalled until the time of the evening sacrifice.
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Only then did Ezra get up, still in
his torn clothes, fall to his knees, and pray to the Lord his God.
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Let me summarize his prayer: "Oh, my God! I am ashamed. In the past
we were guilty of not following you, and we are still steeped in sin. We were
sinful and disobedient, and so we were exiled. But you have taken a remnant and
restored our place with you. This remnant has been blessed to rebuild the
Temple, the city, and our homes. How do we honor and thank you, our God? By
sinning all over again!"
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The people did not separate
themselves and the evidence is that they had taken the daughters of the people
of the lands for their wives and had taken up their detestable practices.
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But they were God's remnant, the
leftovers from the exile.
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A
remnant can still be useful.
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When I was a child my grandfather
had a men's clothing store where he tailor-made suits and my grandmother would
take the remnants, the leftover pieces, and make beautiful blankets out of them
to use at the cottage.
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When Toni and I were married my
mother saved the leftover scraps of wedding material, the remnants, and made
Christmas decorations for our home and gave them to us as gifts our first
Christmas together.
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While my parents and my sisters were
cleaning out my grandparent's home, one of my sisters found a large stack of
remnants left over from the men's store. Among the things she made from those
remnants was a scarf that she gave me for Christmas a few years ago.
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A
remnant can still be very useful and very beautiful! A remnant of people can be
useful for God's glory, as he accomplishes his purposes.
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But God's remnant had been
unfaithful and had broken his commandments. They were not to intermarry, but
they did, and their mixed marriages lead to idolatry.
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After the very public prayer of
Ezra, the people present with him repented and acknowledged their sin and
covenanted with God to put away their wives and the children of those
marriages.
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These folks then tasked Ezra with holding
the entire remnant of Israel accountable for their sin.
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The
cost of Israel's sin was very great and the consequences severe.
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It resulted in the severing of
marriages and the destruction of families, fathers separated from their
children, wives divorced.
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In chapter 10, Ezra addressed the
people, then he sent out messages to the entire remnant of the nation of Israel
calling them together stating that any that who would not come in three days
would forfeit their land and their membership in the congregation of the
exiles.
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After the three days, all the men
assembled before Ezra in Jerusalem and Ezra commanded them to separate
themselves from the people of the land and from their foreign wives.
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With the exception of a handful, the
men of Israel took responsibility for their sin without excuses, repented, and
obeyed.
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The cost of Israel's sin was very
great and the consequences severe.
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Those
who took foreign wives did not set their hearts to know the Lord above all
things, and they did not teach their children to fear the Lord and walk in his
ways.
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Too often as Christians we live no
differently than those around us.
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However, when we take
responsibility for our sin, repent, and obey, we win!
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We
do many of the same things that some of the remnant of Israel did.
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We
don't keep God's commandments. We don't build our foundation on our
relationship with God. We don't learn and live the word of God.
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We
make excuses and justify our behavior. Instead
of cultivating our relationship with God,
we often feed our addictions.
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We may not worship demons
masquerading as gods and makers, but we do worship food, television, Netflix,
the Internet, games, and novels (including so-called Christian novels, movies,
and TV), drug and alcohol abuse, even work and busyness.
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None of these things are an adequate
substitute for an abiding relationship with the living God.
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In fact, when we feed these
addictions instead of cultivating a relationship with God it produces a whole lot of bad fruit in us, such as, anxiety,
depression, and other mental illnesses, broken relationships with our children,
broken relationships between husbands and wives, and broken relationships with
others in the church and community.
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Is
there other evidence? 80% of church youth walk away before adulthood, and as of
2008, 3500 people leave churches across North America every single day.
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But there is hope.
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When
we take responsibility for our sin, repent, and obey, we win!
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Who is affected by our sin?
Everyone! Everyone is affected by our sin.
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Quoting Psalms 14 and 53, Paul wrote
to the church of Rome: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one
understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have
become worthless; no one does good, not even one" (Romans 3:10-12, ESV).
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The apostle John in his first letter
writing to a group of Christians wrote the following: "If we say we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word
is not in us" (1 John 1:8-10, ESV).
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To whom were Paul and John writing?
They were writing to the church, to Christians.
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Everyone in this room who claims to
be Christian still sins daily.
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Confession and repentance are not
merely a onetime thing. They are part of
our daily walk with God.
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In the minds of Paul and John,
apostles of our Lord Jesus, they were still sinners who needed to confess and
turn from their sins in the power of the Holy Spirit.
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John wrote, "If we say we have
not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us."
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There's a cost to our sin and the
cost is very great and the consequences severe, but thanks be to God, when you
and I say yes to the prompting of the Holy Spirit to receive the gift of God of
the abundant life promised in Jesus Christ the cost of our sin is paid.
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We don't have to own our sins
anymore because the Lord Jesus took them all on the cross and he took all the
wrath of God against our sin on himself.
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So when we don't confess our sin,
when we say we don't sin, when we try to justify our sin, then we are making
little of the cross of Christ, and we are denying the truth that he bore all
our sin as he suffered, bled, and died on the cross.
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Our job as Christians is not to make
little of Christ's cross, but to make much of Jesus Christ.
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If we say we have no sin and refuse
to confess and repent, then we make God into a liar and act more like Fangs of
Dang than children of the Shining Island.
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But
when we take responsibility for our sin, repent, and obey, we win!
