Wise Master Builder #10 | Tribunals in a Rainstorm

The book of Ezra concludes with what seems to be a minor key. However, the notes of sorrow this book ends with is not how the symphony of redemptive history will resolve.

The Text

Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children: for the people wept very sore. And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. […]
Ezra 10:1ff

Summary of the Text

Following Ezra’s glorious prayer of confession (Cf. Ez. 9:5-15), we find a resolution to the tension that his prayer left us with. How can a just God put up with a such a rebellious people? A great assembly of men, women, and children joined Ezra in the grief and confession over their corporate sin (v1). One Shechaniah, of the sons of Elam (Cf. 2:7 & 8:7), eagerly initiates a proposed course of action to remedy the situation (v2). He counsels Ezra that the people should make a covenant to put away the wives and children that had resulted from these compromised marriages (v3). He urges Ezra to be of good courage and undertake this matter, assuring him that they will abide by Ezra’s judgement; thus Ezra gets right to work and makes the priests, Levites, and all Israel swear to abide by this oath. Remarkably, they all do so (vv4-5). It must be pointed out that this difficult task would require a case by case evaluation, and that Israel swore to abide “according to the counsel” of Ezra (v3). Once more, the problem wasn’t the foreign wives; the problem was that Israel had knowingly sinned by joining themselves in marriage to the abominations of the foreign peoples (9:1).

Ezra, with great sobriety (v6) rolls up his sleeves. He sends out a summons to Israel to gather themselves to Jerusalem within three days, and if not, both their property and covenant standing would be forfeited (vv7-8). On the 20th day of the ninth month (Kislev), during a great downpour, the people assembled themselves for this tribunal (v9). Ezra presents the charges (v10), calls them to both confession and repentance (v11), to which the people reply with an affirmation of their submission to Ezra’s judgement (v12). They appeal to Ezra to consider that due to the rain (Cf. Zech. 10) and the widespread guilt, this process would take more than a day or two to sort out (v13). Thus, the people propose that those who were guilty of taking strange wives should come, city by city, along with the elders & judges of those cities, to have their individual case examined (v14). Men were appointed to organize this arrangement (v15). For three months––from the 1st of the 10th month (Tevet), to the 1st of the 1st month (Nissan)––Ezra and the respective elders examined each case (vv16-17). The roster of offenders is thorough (split into the various categories: priestly, levitical, and laity); their sin and its consequences preserved in Scripture for all time (vv18-44).

Grace & Grief

This really is a remarkable moment of grace and grief. God convicted His people through the Word. They respond not merely by confessing their sin, but also by submitting to the consequences of it. They do indeed bear the fruit in keeping with their repentance by doing a profoundly difficult and uncomfortable thing. Namely, putting away their foreign wives. Faith not only confesses sin and entrusts itself to God’s covenant mercy, it also bears fruit in keeping with repentance.

Zerubbabel had undertaken to rebuild the physical temple, and that really was a godly thing to undertake. It was no small thing. But Ezra has undertaken a more difficult project: reforming the covenant community. Ezra aimed to make God’s people an acceptable dwelling for the Living God. When the temple had been finished, the glory fire had not fallen. Nevertheless, by Ezra’s ministry of the Word, the Spirit’s fire is at work within God’s people. The grief at the end of this chapter makes us hope for what would be fulfilled in the outpouring of Pentecost (Acts 2). God promised that His Spirit would write His Law on our hearts (Cf. Jer. 31:33, Heb. 8:10). 

Adam was tasked with serving the Lord with gladness by being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth with people made in the image of God. Idolatry and the sexual pollution which follows it, fills the world with the wreckage of fatherlessness, and broken marriages. Idolatry is the wasting of your strength on vanity. Instead of your strength being used for the glory of God, principally by covenant faithfulness in marriage and the fruit of that marriage, idolatry convinces you to cast your strength to the wind. But your strength is meant for building God a house, a house made of holy kings and priests unto God (Cf. Ps. 127, 1 Cor. 6:18-20). 

Worldliness

I want to give a particular word to you kids, especially those of you who are approaching or in your teens. Your parents have made particular sacrificial decisions in an effort to raise you to be faithful to Christ in the midst of a world that hates Christ and wants to drag you down into the hell which is hatred of Christ. Your Christian education, the rules surrounding entertainment standards, the friends your parents allow you to spend time with are all safeguards to keep you from this worldliness. You need to guard the treasure that your parents have sought to give you. Don’t give a sideways glance to wish that you could worship the idols which this culture is worshipping. You are covenant children. You belong to Christ. God has made great and precious promises to you, and your parents are laboring to raise you as best they can to love the Lord your God. Do not flush it away by uniting yourself to idols, like these Israelites did. 

The end of this chapter leaves us with a bit of a bitter taste. The holiness of biblical law tells us that there are some messy situations in which tearing families apart is the righteous course of action. But consider what this idolatry had led to in Israel’s history, and even at this particular moment. If you turn aside to the vanity of idol worship, your offspring will not be strength in your hand, it will be a pile of ash on the alter of a demon. It will turn your offspring into the fodder for the insatiable lusts of men. We see this in our own culture. Women murder their unborn children with impunity. Millions of babies aborted. The abasement of our sons and daughters through pornography has led to a devastating wreckage of homes. Fatherlessness, sexual pollution, and turning the womb of an impoverished woman into a slave ship carrying a lab-curated child into the arms of homosexual vanity. Worldliness, which is just another way of saying idolatry, is how you get a weak and anemic people. And the sorrow of it all is that the church has not been innocent in these sins. We are weak because we are worldly. But we can be made strong again…

A Living Word

The strength of God’s people is found in the Living Word. That Word first created the world. That same Word put on flesh in order to be the sacrificial offering for all your guilt. It is by this Word whereby young men are made strong and overcome the Wicked One (1 Jn. 2:12-17).

You cannot have a strong Christendom if it is not founded on this glorious Gospel. Everyone here is a great sinner. Take the membership roster of a church and you have a roster of sinners. Liars, cheaters, adulterers, worriers, slanderers, grumblers. However, as the Apostle Paul would say, “such were some of you.” This is because the Word of Christ is a potent Word. It is a Living Word. You are to receive it by faith. Feel its sharpness like the knife at the neck of a lamb. Feel its heat like the fire of the alter. Offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice. By this Word you are made strong because this Word of the Gospel brings you life. In the strength of that abundant life we––as individuals, families, tribes, and tongues––build up a house for God to dwell in.

Charge and Benediction

Your strength is meant for serving the God who made and redeemed you. Don’t mingle it through compromise with idolatry. Don’t diffuse it through unbelief. Don’t make it impotent by sending it off in a hundred different directions. Say with the Psalmist: “My heart is fixed, oh God!”

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessings of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon, and remain with you always. Amen.