Ezra and Holiness

Here's what our small group will be working on next week. What does holiness look like in our lives? In the life of our congregations? 

Our text is Ezra chapters 9 & 10, this will conclude our time in Ezra.

This may be a tough passage for some of us to read. It is important to remember Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians Chapter 10, that the things that were written in the past were written to teach us spiritual truth in Jesus Christ.

It is also important not to romanticize “falling in love” nor to minimize the power and influence of sex. Yes, there is romance (I hope) in love, but there is also choice, and that choice determines where we channel our thoughts and hearts and bodies. Sadly, we live in a culture in which we are programmed to give in to our impulses and not deny ourselves, surely God will understand…won’t He?

Our heavenly Father wants us to know the beauty of sex in marriage, but if we should choose to disobey Him in our sexual expression, we can be sure that there will be consequences to our sin. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus takes the external act of sexual sin and moves it inward to our hearts – adultery is adultery whether you act it out or think it out. In the Ten Commands when God says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife”, God is looking at our hearts.

In the Law of Moses (Deut. 7:1 – 4) God commanded Israel not to intermarry with the pagan nations because the result would be that Israel would stop following the Lord and He would then send judgment. This, of course, happened in the Wilderness, during the Exodus from Egypt to Canaan, and many times thereafter, including during Ezra’s time. (Numbers 25:1 – 18; Revelation 2:14, 20 – 23). Also remember that in our study of the Minor Prophets the image of adultery has been used again and again to portray the unfaithfulness of the people of God – remember when we explored Hosea?

Please look at 1 Kings 11:1 – 4; a sad commentary on what happens when we think we can ignore God's commandments regarding marital and sexual relations.

Of course, there is much more than sexuality going on here, we’re really looking at God’s command to be holy as He is holy; 1 Peter 1:13 – 16; Leviticus 11:44; 19:22. More than anything else, the idea of holiness, purity, and devotion to God (Romans 12:1-2) underlies our passage in Ezra.

How might the following Scriptures relate to our Ezra passage?

Which of the following speaks to you in a special way? Catches your attention?

Which of the following represents an area in which you have learned specific life-lessons?

Which of the following is an area in which you have been particularly challenged?

2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1

1 Thessalonians 4:1 – 8

Hebrews 12:4 – 17 (with a particular focus on verse 14).

Matthew 5:8

1 Peter 2:9 – 10

Ephesians 4:29; 5:1 – 5

Some thoughts:

 A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the prevalence of moral, ethical, and spiritual lawlessness in our society. In looking at Ezra and his relationship to the Persian Emperor, we saw (I hope) that in order to exercise authority that one needs to know what it is to submit to authority (Jesus and the centurion).

This week I hope we’ll ponder that we live in a society that not only rejects the idea of the holy, but that seems to be doing everything it can to destroy the very idea of holiness. Sadly we find this occurring in much of the professing church. The idea that our hearts and minds and bodies should be pure is foreign to our culture, including much of our church culture. It seems as if we are intent on robbing our children of innocence and ensuring that adults are captured in the quagmire of impurity.

If we are indeed people in a relationship with Jesus Christ, then we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit – He is the Holy Spirit. He is not the Anything Goes Spirit, nor is He the Sugar Daddy Spirit, but since God is Holy He is, the Holy Spirit. Consider that while God is also Love, and Light, that the primary designation the God adopts for the Third Person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit – there must be a reason for that.

The spirits of Satan are unclean and impure spirits; demons, principalities and powers seeking to strip mankind of the image of God. What we look at matters, what we think about matters, the words we use matter, the actions of our bodies matter. If our eyes and ears allow impure images and words into our souls, into our hearts, into our minds…let us remember that if we are Christians, that the Holy Spirit lives within us; indeed, let us remember that the Father and Son live within us – and that we are introducing impurities into the very Temple of God. We are, if you will, desecrating the Temple and image of God when we drink the cup of the enemy.

So then, in the time of Ezra the work of the Temple of God, the rebuilding of the Temple and the City, the worship of God, could not continue until the issue of impure marriage was dealt with. As long as we are engaged in promiscuous relationships with the sin and filth of the world, the Church of the Living God cannot (in some measure which I don’t pretend to understand) be restored. As long as our local congregations are living lives indistinguishable from the world, there will be no lasting renewal into the image of Jesus Christ. This is about so much more than mixed-marriages or sexuality – this is about being holy as our Father is holy.

This is about the purity of our minds and hearts and souls…as well as our bodies. This is about money, this is about our time, this is about what our hearts treasure, this is about speaking the Word of Christ to others, this is about being faithful to Christ in the workplace, the civic organization, the neighborhood - this is about belonging to Jesus.