Just to bow your heads in prayer for a moment, please.
Father, we, Father, most of the time we're not really aware of this,
but sometimes your word or your Holy Spirit makes clear to us that,
Father, we're like a bundle of contradictory things.
You know, we want to, you know, we easily see ourselves as the victim,
and then the very next moment we see ourselves as triumphing,
and maybe you want to have lots of money one moment,
and another moment we want to be just very, very generous and live simple lives,
and the next minute we want fame,
and then the other moment we just want to be left alone,
and some moments, Father, we want you to act sort of almost like a divine puppeteer
and just make everything move around to fix our problems,
and then the next moment we want you to not have any type of control over our lives,
and Father, we are not always aware of just how unruly we are
and contradictory we are,
but, Father, we rejoice and just marvel that you see us perfectly,
and still you love us,
and still your Son died on the cross for us.
We ask, Father, that your Holy Spirit would so bring the gospel home,
the beautiful way, Father, that you continually invite us to,
that that beautiful way, Father, would become more and more real to our hearts,
that it might structure and form and shape and propel and draw us
in terms of how we live our day-to-day lives
until that day, Father, when we, your children, see you face to face.
So, Father, do that gentle but powerful work of your Holy Spirit in our lives,
and we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior.
Amen.
Please be seated.
Excuse me, I seem to have something stuck in my throat.
Hopefully, it'll just clear itself up.
So, that was quite a scripture text.
If you're wondering why we would talk a text about that describes other people's religions
as being abominations, as forbidding your sons and daughters to marry other people,
that seems to talk about there being a holy race, and it's terrible
if anybody who's not part of that holy race becomes part of your family.
It's not because I have a weird personality,
and I intentionally go looking for weird texts like that to speak on.
Like, I'm actually very Canadian, and I, you know, my wife and the staff can tell me
that when I first read this text again in preparation for,
I mean, I'd read it many, many times as part of my daily Bible reading,
but when I first read it, knowing that I was going to preach on it,
I was a bit appalled by it.
And I said to people, you need to pray for me.
I'm not quite sure what I'm going to say about a text like this.
It's really, really quite something.
So, but the reason we do it is that one of the things we want to do here
is we want to, Paul in Acts chapter 20 says he wants to declare the whole counsel of God.
And that's what we want to do here at this church,
and one of the ways that we do this is by preaching through books in the Bible,
Old Testament, New Testament.
And so what that means is that we preach,
sometimes we have to look at texts which are just very difficult.
And so actually, if you're sort of trying to figure out the Christian faith,
or maybe you're trying to figure out like whether you should stay a Christian
or whether you should join and become a Christian,
in some ways we're the perfect church for you
because, you know, if you sign a contract or a deal somewhere,
and then you find out in the small print that there's these rules
that you didn't know about and now you're sort of screwed,
we look at the fine print.
And we don't sort of hide from these uncomfortable things
and things which sort of go against the grain of Canadians and how we think.
So let's look at the text.
And so what I'm going to do, it's a bit different from how I normally preach.
I'm going to read, again, all of chapter 9,
and I'll just point out a couple of very, very small things.
And then, but because the issues of intermarriage and abominations
and the holy race and other things
are all sort of intermingled throughout the whole thing,
you know, normally I would read a couple of verses, explain it,
a couple of verses, explain it.
I think what I need to do is we're just going to look at it
so you can see that we're not hiding from anything.
And one of the things I would suggest to you,
if you have little notes or something,
is make a note.
Okay, is George going to talk about this?
Okay, is he going to talk about this?
And if I don't in the sermon sort of address these big issues,
make sure you, if you're online, send me an email.
If you're here, make sure you ask me at the end of the service.
But let's sort of look at the text.
I'm not going to read chapter 10.
It's 44 verses.
It's the continuation of the story.
But just to give you, in a sense,
the summary of what happens in chapter 10.
And actually, let's read the text,
and I'll give you the summary.
And then we'll sort of try to figure out
what's going on in this text.
And just so you know,
a very typical way out of a text like this
is to say, oh, well, that's just the Old Testament.
And they're just sort of hard and judgmental,
and we're Christians,
and that's not what the New Testament is like.
And I'm not going to say that.
Because actually, that's not true.
And I'm not going to repudiate the text,
and I'm not going to do tap dancing around the text.
Believe it or not, I think this text,
in a very stark way,
which grabs our attention,
brings before us the importance
of embracing the beautiful vision of the Bible.
If we get over our fears about the text,
I think the text is calling us
to embrace a beautiful vision
and help us know what it means
to embrace this beautiful vision
and move forward to life.
Now you're really worried.
Is George going to say racism
and all his beautiful vision?
No, I'm not.
Let's look at what it says.
So it's Ezra chapter 9,
and here's how it begins.
After these things had been done,
now what that means is,
if you go back and you read
all of the book of Ezra,
which is a good thing to do,
about 80 years earlier,
after the nation of Israel
had been taken away into captivity,
there's basically no Jewish people left
in what the Jewish people call the promised land,
or we would now call Israel.
And they'd been gone for over like 140 years,
130 years.
And then about 80 years earlier,
a large group,
a fairly large group of people
returned from exile.
And in chapters 1 to 6,
it describes what happened
sort of in the first 20 years
of them coming back.
And then between chapter 6 and chapter 7,
there's almost 60 years of sort of silence.
And then Ezra leaves a very small group of people
to come back from exile.
And so in chapter 9 here,
it's five months after what we talked about
in chapter 7 and 8.
So it's about five months later,
and Ezra's been given the task
by the pagan emperor of Persia
to teach the Torah,
the Tanakh,
and to make it the law of the region.
And that's his job.
So now it's about five months later,
and we'll take it up again.
And after these things had been done,
the officials approached me
and said,
the people of Israel
and the priests and the Levites
have not separated themselves
from the peoples of the lands
with their abominations.
If you're doing little pins
or little marks,
put a mark there.
Make sure I come back
and talk about it.
Why is it that God wants,
that Ezra thinks God wants them
to separate from the people of the land
and to describe what they do
as abominations?
And then it mentions
from the Canaanites,
the Hittites,
the Perizzites,
the Jebusites,
the Ammonites,
the Moabites,
the Egyptians,
and the Amorites.
Now, just to be clear,
so the first thing is
the officials come
and tell Ezra this,
and it's not that
they've just not separated,
but they're actually doing it.
So they've taken up
what Ezra's calling
an abomination.
The things that
the neighboring nations do,
Ezra describes
as abominations
and he discovers
that there's a significant part
of the community
which are doing them.
Then verse 2,
and this is sort of now
describing a little bit
about the means
by which this,
a key aspect
of how this has come about.
Verse 2,
for they have taken
some of their daughters,
that's the Canaanites,
et cetera,
to be wives for themselves
and for their sons,
so that the holy race
has mixed itself
with the peoples
of the lands.
And in this faithlessness,
the hand of the officials
and the chief men
has been foremost.
Now, there's that phrase,
the holy race,
and for many of us
reading this today,
it sounds like
the Deep South
and slavery
in the United States.
It sounds like apartheid.
It sounds like
what the Nazis did
by looking for
a small trace
of Jewish blood.
It sounds like
these racial purity movements
and it's a
pretty stark thing.
So what does Ezra do?
So the people
have told him this.
Some of the leaders
have come and told him this.
It might very well be
that because he's been there
for five months
and been teaching the Torah,
they now realize,
some of them,
that there's been things
going on in the Torah
and the Tanakh forbid.
So how does Ezra respond?
And he responds
in a very interesting way.
He doesn't repudiate it
or tell them
that he's wrong,
but he also doesn't act
in a judgmental way.
He's going to identify
with the people,
but he's going to identify
with them by mourning
and grieving.
Listen to what it says,
verse 3.
As soon as I heard this,
I tore my garment
and my cloak
and pulled hair
from my head
and beard
and sat appalled.
Now just pause.
We all know
that there's different,
you know,
because we have the media now,
we can see how grief works
in different countries
and, you know,
like here in Canada,
like most people
now don't even have
funerals anymore.
We don't really,
and a lot of our grief now
in Canada,
it's done very private
and it's often medicated.
This is a very,
some people in the world,
they're very demonstrative
emotionally
about their grieving
and mourning
and that's what's going on here.
The Bible's not telling us
that we should become like this,
but it's showing
how they grieved
and that's what he's doing.
Verse 4,
and here's a really
interesting phrase,
you know that,
that old spiritual,
it causes me to tremble,
tremble, tremble.
That's where they get this from.
The next verse,
then all who trembled
at the words of God,
it causes me to tremble,
tremble, tremble.
Then all who trembled
at the words of God,
the God of Israel,
because of the faithfulness,
sorry,
then all who trembled
at the words
of the God of Israel
because of the faithlessness
of the returned exiles,
gathered around me
while I sat appalled
until the evening sacrifice.
And at the evening sacrifice,
I arose from my fasting
with my garment
and my cloak torn
and fell upon my knees
and spread out my hands
to the Lord my God,
saying,
now just,
it's very interesting,
you know,
that he's appalled.
But as you're going to see
and what he's just done
is in a sense
he sees himself
as needing to grieve
and mourn for the nation.
Now,
this is still problematic
if it's grieving
that they're not racist enough.
Obviously,
that makes it even worse,
right?
But he's grieving
and others are grieving
and now he prays.
Like,
he doesn't immediately
take up a sword
and go starting killing people.
He doesn't do anything like that.
He grieves
and he prays.
And you'll notice
in the words of the prayer,
there's still problematic
things in them
for us Canadians,
but he constantly identifies
with the people.
So here's how he prays.
Verse 6,
Notice the R language,
not these people,
but R.
Verse 7,
We have been in great guilt
and for our iniquities,
we, our kings,
and our priests
have been given into the hand
of the kings of the lands
to the sword,
to captivity,
to plundering,
and utter shame
as it is today.
Now,
just sort of pause here
for a second.
Ezra understands,
and this is a problematic thing
for lots of Canadians,
that what has happened
to them,
they're having their city destroyed,
the people carried away,
that that is all God's judgment.
I mean,
on one level,
Nebuchadnezzar just did it
because he wanted
a bigger empire
and he wanted more tax revenues.
But Ezra understands
that what's happened
is actually God's judgment.
And I'm not going to be able
to talk about God's judgment.
I mean,
I'm going to have enough
just trying to talk
about abominations and racism
without talking about
God's judgment,
but it's a key part
of his prayer.
It's not that he's having
this power of positive thinking,
putting the best face forward.
He's acknowledging
the deep guilt
that led to God's judgment.
And he sees them now
continuing that
which led to God's judgment
on them.
But he's also going to talk
about grace and mercy.
Let's see how he goes on.
Verse 8.
But now for a brief moment,
favor or grace
has been shown
by the Lord our God
to leave us a remnant
and to give us
a secure hold
within his holy place
that our God
might brighten our eyes.
It's a wonderful phrase.
excuse me,
it's a wonderful phrase.
That he might brighten our eyes.
That's a wonderful phrase,
isn't it?
And,
sorry,
I've lost my place
turning around.
If he has shown us favor
to leave us around,
brighten our eyes,
that's verse 8,
and grant us
a little reviving
in our slavery.
For we are slaves,
yet our God
has not forsaken us
in our slavery.
You see,
here's acknowledgement
of God's steadfast love.
And once again,
if he's acknowledging
God's steadfast love
in the context
of being racist himself,
this makes it even worse,
not better.
That's the question
that we need to go back
and think about.
Verse 9 again.
Yet our God
has not forsaken us
in our slavery,
but has extended to us
his steadfast love
before the kings
of Persia
to grant us
some reviving
to set up
the house of our God
to repair its ruins
and give us protection
in Judea and Jerusalem.
And now,
our God,
what shall we say
after this?
For we are forsaken
your commandments,
which you commanded
by your servants,
the prophets,
saying,
now here comes
once again
for us Canadians
the problematic bit.
The land
that you are entering
to take possession of
is a land impure
with the impurity
of the peoples
of the lands,
with their abominations
that have filled it
from end to end
with their uncleanness.
Therefore,
do not give your daughters
to their sons,
neither take their daughters
for your sons,
and never seek their peace
or prosperity.
That's a hard phrase,
isn't it?
Never seek their peace
or prosperity,
that you may be strong
and eat the good
of the land
and leave it
for an inheritance
to your children forever.
He's basically quoting
or paraphrasing
parts of Deuteronomy,
but as well as that,
Exodus,
and as well as that,
actually,
the book of Judges
and Joshua.
And after,
verse 13,
after all that has come
upon us
for our evil deeds
and for our great guilt,
seeing that you are God,
have punished us
less than our iniquities
deserve,
and have given us
such a remnant as this,
shall we break
your commandments again
and intermarry
with the people
who practice
these abominations?
Would you not be angry
with us
until you consumed us
so that there should be
no remnant
nor any to escape?
O Lord,
the God of Israel,
you are just,
for we are left
a remnant
that has escaped
as it is today.
Behold,
we are before you
in our guilt,
for none can stand
before you
because of this.
Now,
you'll see
there's 44 more verses
after this,
and I can just tell you
that the short answer
about what's going
to happen after this
is some of the secular leaders
are struck by this,
as Ezra continues to pray.
They say that
we need to deal with this,
we need to put away,
literally,
they need to put away
their foreign wives
and the children
from the foreign wives
and that we need
to deal with this,
and they start to deal
with it right away.
In fact,
this has probably happened,
they can date it
if you're sort of curious.
This has started to happen,
I've lost the dates here,
but I think it's something
like the 12th of,
oh yeah,
the 16th of December
is when this happens.
The 19th of December,
they call everybody together
and they say
that if you don't come together,
your property's forfeit.
Ezra wants to deal
with it right away,
but the leaders
of the community
say,
no, no,
this is a very,
very big issue,
we want to make sure
we do it in a just way,
and so people go home
and on the beginning
of the 29th of December,
they begin looking
at individual cases
and they are to judge
these people,
the goal is to have
the wives
and the children put away,
I'll talk about it
a little bit in a moment,
but they're all to be judged
according to the law,
according to what we call
the Tanakh or the Torah
or the Old Testament,
and by the 27th of March,
so they take three months
and it's all dealt with.
So what's going on?
As I said,
I didn't go out of my way
to find a chapter like this
and I've read it many times
but it never really struck me,
I guess it strikes you
very different
if you have to speak
about it in public,
and in our case,
it's on YouTube,
so who knows
what's going to happen
downstream.
So here's a couple of things,
let's just walk towards,
if you could put up
the first point,
that would be
very, very helpful,
and this is something
which I've only been
becoming aware of
over the last couple of years.
The world has been
so changed by Jesus
that it is hard
to look at anything
the way an ancient pagan would.
This is a very odd way
to begin this,
isn't it,
for some of you,
but it's the truth.
The world has been
so changed by Jesus
that it is hard
to look at anything
the way an ancient pagan would.
There's a fellow
by the name of Tom Holland
who wrote a best-selling book
called Dominion,
and some of you
are aware of him.
There's a very, very good book
brought by Glenn Scrivener
called The Air We Breathe,
and he looks at seven things
which most modern Western people
just think of as obvious,
and he does a very, very clever thing.
He uses non-Christian scholars
and experts
to show how all of those ideas
that the average Canadian think
is just obvious and reasonable
aren't obvious and reasonable,
but all, in fact,
come from the Christian faith,
all of them.
And so we're so used
to thinking in these categories.
Like, Jesus is so completely changed
the way people in the world think
that when they look at stories like this,
whether people realize it or not,
they're looking at it
from part of the way
that they've learned to think
because of Jesus.
And so when we hear a text like this,
we think of the soccer moms
who live next door to us,
we think of our nice neighbor,
and we think this sounds
like very, very, very type
of extreme type of behavior
and way of discussing it with them.
But what we don't understand
is what actually,
what is it that the people did?
Like, what were those people
doing around there?
And what did they believe?
And what were the stories
that they told themselves?
If their kids went to Sunday school,
what would they be taught
in Sunday school?
And how did that,
that they were taught
in Sunday school,
then how did that reflect
in their religion
and their culture
and their politics?
Well, here's what they were taught.
Baal, the main god
that they worshipped,
had sex with his mother.
Why did he have sex
with his mother?
Because his father,
who was a higher god,
was mad at his wife
and he wanted to humiliate her.
So he encouraged Baal
to have sex with his mom.
You can just picture
some of the moms here
telling them a nice sweet story.
Yes, I want to tell you
all about Baal.
He had sex with his mother.
Because his dad
wanted to humiliate his wife.
It gets worse.
Baal, sister,
one of his sisters
took the form of a cow
and while she was
in the form of a cow,
he raped her
77 to 88 times.
He raped her
77 to 88 times.
This is their gods.
As well as that,
Baal
regularly had sex
with his daughter.
And Baal
fought with
and murdered
his brothers.
And part of their mythology
and part of their worship
is that after this
had happened,
it was like an endless cycle.
So it's not as if
Baal just once did it.
It's how they understand
how fruitfulness happens.
Like part of fruitfulness
is to, in a sense,
worship and reenact
Baal having sex
with his mom.
And as well as that,
the whole purpose
that any of the gods
had any human beings
created was so that
human beings
could be their slaves.
Every human being
was a slave.
Glenn Scrivner,
if you go googling,
he has this
very powerful video
called
The Night Before Christmas
and one of the things
he says
is that for the pagan gods,
if a pagan god
was to arrive,
people would flee.
And it's a stark
contrast with Emmanuel,
the Christian notion
of God with us
as Jesus.
So imagine
you live in the neighborhood
with people like this
and they're your neighbors
and you start to realize
that the neighbors,
that's the stories
they tell their kids.
Would you let your kids
play with them?
And then you get
to know the neighbors
and one day
they're saying,
oh yeah, yeah,
you know God,
you know,
the gods,
Bahal and Asherah,
they've given us
two boys
and four girls
and then you sort of
ask them,
well,
one moment
there's just like
two boys and two girls.
Did something tragic
happen to two
of your daughters?
They say,
oh no, no,
nothing tragic.
One of our daughters,
we gave them
to the temple priest.
You know when you go
to see the priest
having sex with somebody?
Well, one of them
is my daughter.
And what about
your other daughter?
Well,
we needed to deal
with the gods
being angry at us
and they needed
a human sacrifice
and it was our
great honor and privilege
to give our other daughters
so the priest
could kill the daughter.
Would you let your children
play with your neighbors?
Would you want
your son or your daughter
to marry
one of the neighbors?
Well,
my George,
that paints this whole picture
in a very different light.
what do you think
the family structures
would be like
where the stories
that they tell you
to structure the universe
is of this type of...
I mean,
let's...
How many of you
want to agree
with the word abomination?
That's not a judgmental phrase.
It's actually
a pretty good phrase.
Really?
That's how your family
is structured?
That's how you see the world?
That's what you reenact?
You reenact
the regular rape
of Baal of his sister?
Like,
that's how you
understand the world?
Now,
here's the other thing
to understand
and this...
When I tell you this
and you might want
to read Glenn Scrivener's book
or Tom Holland's book
Dominion
or hear Tom Holland
do some interviews.
And...
You see,
this great...
This profound project
is...
That's how everybody thought.
Like,
if you could go back in time,
okay,
the equivalent of the CBC,
the equivalent
of the Supreme Court,
the government,
the spiritual leaders,
the universities,
the artists,
like,
that's just...
That's just how everybody thinks
and that's just what
everybody knows.
And...
If you can think about it,
so God is actually
trying to form a people
that are centered around
a beautiful vision
which is radically...
To say radically
is too weak a word
for how different it is
from what everybody knows.
And you can understand
a little bit
if they...
If people are told...
I'm going to describe
more of it in a moment
that no,
we...
We...
No,
we actually
don't have a priest
having sex
with a whole pile
of young girls
as a way of worship.
We read the scripture.
Boy,
is that ever lame.
No power in that.
No...
With that.
What wimps.
And don't you know
this is how the world is,
you Jewish people?
Now you understand
a little bit
about what the constant
struggle is
that God is trying
to form a people
in the midst of
how everybody thinks
like this
which is very,
very different.
G.K. Chesterton
wrote a book
over a hundred years ago
called Orthodoxy.
It's still well worth reading.
And one of the things
that he said
is that
the sort of
in some ways
the modern world
has gone mad
and it's gone mad
because the modern world
has taken
some of the Christian virtues
maybe one or two of them
out of the whole range of them
and they've
followed them
to the utmost
but they follow
these virtues.
It's very interesting.
I was just watching
Tom Holland
who's still not a...
He's basically
become a Christian
in his thinking
but he acknowledges
that he hasn't
become a Christian.
But he now
just sees
that it's hard
for him to see
the world
through anything
other than Christian eyes
but he can't quite
have that giving
of himself.
And, you know,
he said
in this conversation
that
the modern world
takes a different virtue
and sort of drives it
like a sledgehammer
through everything
and has disconnected it
from the other
Christian virtues
and it's also
disconnected it
from God,
grace,
forgiveness
and forgiveness
and that that's
what's describing
the modern world.
So, if you could
put up the next point,
this would be
very helpful.
There can be
no good yes
without saying
multiple no's.
This is something
which is very hard
for us to think about
but if you think about it
all,
that's actually just
true all of the time.
If one of you decides
that you want to get
your PhD
which is a good thing
to do to pursue
that higher education,
you're going to have
to say no to all
sorts of things.
You're going to have
to say no to spending
the money that you spend
on your PhD
to maybe buy a car
or some other types
of things
or a nicer car.
You're going to say no
to spending,
you know,
on a nice day
you're going to go study
rather than go play
some sports.
Like, you have to see
a range of no's.
If you're going
to have children,
if God gives you
that ability
and the opportunity
to have children,
you have children,
you say yes to children,
you're going to have
to say no
to all sorts of things.
Your house won't be
as tidy,
you won't have
as much money
to spend on yourself.
You have to all of a sudden
take them into the account
when you do things
and if I want to say yes
in marriage to Louise,
I say no to three
and a half billion
other women.
That's like that.
You can't say yes
to something good
without saying
a whole range of no's.
The yes forms the no's.
That just makes sense,
right?
We want people
to say yes
to things which are good
and once you say that,
there's going to have
to be a whole pile
of no's.
And so that's what we see
working out here
in the text.
And if you cover up
the next point,
here it is.
The Lord is inviting you
to say yes
and embrace
his grace-given
beautiful way.
The Lord is inviting you
to say yes
and embrace
his grace-given
beautiful way.
You see,
here's what's going on
in the text
which we don't
entirely realize.
What they're saying,
what the Jewish people
are invited to learn
and we're invited
to learn from this
is to say,
no, no, no, no, no, no.
Human beings
aren't made
to be slaves.
God made human beings
so that we could be
in a covenant
of love with him.
His desire was
that we would walk
with him
and have talks
in the garden
with him
that he could have
fellowship with us.
That's the vision,
not slavery.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You don't just,
you don't just do
all of these things
to people.
You don't just sort
of treat your children
and your wife
and your kids
like property.
No, every human being
is made in the image
of God.
They have an integrity.
They have a dignity.
They have a value
that works.
No, no, no, no, no.
Everybody doesn't
have to be married.
Like, just,
what did I just say?
Every human being,
even if they're single,
even if they're a widow,
even if they're an orphan,
they have a value.
You can't just oppress them.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
The community
that should be formed
around this beautiful way
is one where they acknowledge
that there's the broken,
there's the poor,
there's the orphans,
there's the stranger,
and we're supposed
to care for them,
and we're not allowed
to oppress them.
And no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's not as if men
are sort of somehow
better than women.
No, no.
There's this beautiful vision
that every man
bears the image of God
and a woman
bears the image of God.
And God wants
a husband and wife
to cleave to each other
and forsake all others
and to be generous
and to be fruitful
and to be multiply
and to make the world
into a garden
and into a beautiful place.
And it's to be characterized
not by the darkness
of doing these things,
but God wants there
to be light
and he wants there
to be life
and he wants there
to be generosity.
And he wants to be able
to walk with you.
And that's this beautiful vision.
And why wouldn't you
want to embrace that?
If you're watching this
and you don't know
where you are with Christ,
why wouldn't you want
to embrace that?
That's the vision.
Don't you want that
to be true?
That's what we want
to be true.
And the Bible says
God's,
and if you embrace
that vision,
you say no
to child sacrifice.
You say no
to incest.
You say no
to murdering your brother.
The beautiful way says
we're going to figure out
reconciliation
rather than murder.
We're going to figure out
truth-telling.
We're going to figure out
repentance.
We're going to figure out
prayer.
We're going to learn
how to walk
with our God together.
We want to row
in the same direction
in the family
and the community.
Isn't that a beautiful vision?
And if you do that,
you've got to say no
to all this other stuff.
So even in chapter 10,
I have to watch my time.
I'm sort of already
at the end of it.
Here's the thing,
is that from the law's
point of view,
and this is just
to give you a sense
of the complexity
of the issue,
not the complexity,
the closest modern
Canadian example
of what they're facing
is the issue
of bigamy.
You see,
according to Jewish law,
these relationships
were all illegal.
So just in Canada,
if it turned out
that I have
a second wife,
well,
that's against the law.
You folks would have,
if Louise didn't
kill me first,
you would have to
figure out what to do
with me about
having two wives.
But what the Canadian law
doesn't allow
is for there to continue
to be two wives.
One of them has to be
put away.
But how are they
put away?
There's two things
in the text
which give you a hint.
The first is,
by the way,
that there's conversion.
If you go back
and read Ezra 6,
verse 21,
you'll see that
part of what's
been going on
on this whole
80, 100-year journey
is that the peoples
of the nations
get captivated
by this beautiful vision
and are included
in the beautiful vision.
And so conversion
is an option.
And the other thing
is that the law
which is used to judge,
and they don't go
into all the details,
there's literally
thousands of cases,
they can't go into
all of the details.
Well, they're judged
not according to
the pagan myths,
but they're judged
according to the law.
And the law
specifically says
you are to care
for the orphan
and the widow,
that justice
is to be done to them.
So it doesn't go
into the details,
but you know
that that's how
they're to be judged.
Now, just in my last
couple of minutes,
what about the racism
and the holy race?
If you could put up
the fourth point,
that would be very helpful.
The holy race
is not a biological reality,
but a grace-created reality.
The holy race
is not a biological reality,
but a grace-created reality.
In fact, actually,
literally,
it doesn't say race.
The Bible has no category
for race.
Race is a secular idea,
not a biblical idea.
Biblically,
there are only human beings,
and every human being
is made in the image of God,
and that's the only reality.
There's just human beings.
That's all there is.
But the actual literal word
isn't holy race,
but holy seed.
And it's a collective singular,
which is a weird tense.
But you see,
what makes,
in a sense,
so on one level,
it's describing
the people that God
has called apart
for himself,
but God calls them apart.
He doesn't just say,
oh, well,
you have the right chromosomes,
or you have the right skin color.
No,
everybody enters by grace.
God is the only one
who can set us aside
for himself.
It's a grace-driven reality,
and it's this odd
double symbolism,
because you see,
right,
if you go right,
the term first comes up
in Genesis 12,
where God said
he's going to bless
all of the people groups
of the world,
and he's going to bless
all of the people groups
of the world
through his holy seed.
And on one level,
it describes those people
that God has called
apart from himself,
but it also describes
the one who would come
from that people group,
which is the Messiah.
It's this,
because it's a collective singular,
it on one level
describes the people,
but it also can describe
one person.
And you see,
all the way through this,
even if you listen
to this text,
Ezra,
there's a,
you know,
there's both a promise
and a riddle
to how Ezra thinks.
He knows about this
holy seed,
and God is going to,
is doing something
through the holy seed,
and one day he's going
to go through something
with the holy seed.
He also understands
that he can't stand
in God's presence
because his sins
are so bad,
and he understands
there's something
grace there,
but he can't quite
get his mind around
how that's going
to all work out,
because you see,
if you just have,
if God just sort of
lets you just go
for the wrong things
you've done,
that's called favoritism,
that's called prejudice,
it's actually not
anything good.
And so there's this,
there's this profound
mystery and riddle
which is there
that somehow or another
there's this promise
of grace,
we don't see how grace
is going to work
because we do things
which are wrong,
and yet at the same time
we understand
that there's going
to be a way
that God is going
to make us holy
and stand in his presence,
and if you could put up
the final point
that would be very helpful.
it's a promise
and a riddle,
this beautiful way
points to the beautiful way
in all of its fullness
and completeness
that comes to Jesus,
from Jesus,
where even though
people reject Jesus,
virtually nobody in the world
anymore can think
apart from Jesus' teaching.
It's because of Jesus' teaching
that we're at first
struck with what's been
happening to the women.
That's not how pagans
would view it.
They would just say,
oh, well, you know,
sucks to be those women.
You know, we can kill them anyway.
Like, we can just kill
the children anyway.
But on one hand,
yeah, the Savior that comes
that changes how the world thinks,
at the same time,
well, here's the thing,
Jesus dies,
you know how all
of the pagan myths
say that human beings
are created to be slaves,
and part of the beautiful way
is that God did not make
human beings to be slaves.
But Jesus dies a slave's death
so that you, a slave
to the world, the flesh,
and the devil, and to idols,
and your passions
might be free in him.
That's the culmination
and the propulsion
of the beautiful vision.
If the pagan gods come,
you run because they want to kill.
when Emmanuel comes,
he dies
for those of us
who are slaves
so that we could be his children
by adoption and grace.
Isn't that a beautiful vision?
That is the beautiful vision.
And he wants to include you.
And he wants you
to embrace the beautiful vision,
and if you embrace
the beautiful vision,
there's going to be
a whole range of no's
that you have to say.
And by the way,
this whole issue
of intermarriage,
it's part of the reason
why it still is
a Christian teaching,
and it's a Christian teaching
if you just think about it
for a second.
I'm called to be generous
with my money,
and I think that the Bible
wants me to try
to be generous
with 10% of my money,
and if I marry somebody
who actually thinks
that's really wrong,
how's that going to work out?
I think I need to gather
with the Lord's people
on a Sunday morning,
and if I marry somebody
who says,
no, Sunday mornings
is when you sleep in,
and then maybe go
and have some really nice
croissants and coffee,
how's that going to work out?
And if you say,
I think I really need to go
and spend some time
in Bible reading and prayer,
and they say,
well, I wanted to spend
some time with you,
how's that going to work out?
And it can go on
and on and on,
and it's not that
the Lord is cruel to you,
he wants you to embrace
the beautiful vision,
and he wants you to walk
in the beautiful vision,
and he wants you to walk
in the beautiful vision
and the power
of the Holy Spirit
for your great good
and the good of the world,
and I urge you
to embrace it,
but stand in prayer.
Father,
I began by praying
about how we seem
to be contradictory
and we want it all,
and we want people
to think we're generous,
but we don't want
to give away any money.
We want people
to think we're smart,
but we don't want to read.
We want to be athletic,
but not work out,
and we never even
see ourselves usually
most of the time,
and Father,
we give you thanks
and praise for this
beautiful vision
and how it's anchored
in grace,
and we ask,
Lord,
that your grace
given to us in Jesus
would become such
an anchor to our soul
and such a strong
place to stand
and such a reality
in our lives
that pushes us
to be generous,
and it pushes us
even to look at ourselves
and on one hand,
Father,
just laugh at ourselves
at how ridiculous we are
and at the same time
call out to you
for help,
that Father,
our lives,
Father,
more and more and more
might embrace
the beautiful vision
in all of its completeness
in all of whom we are,
that this beautiful vision
would be that
which guides our church,
our individual lives,
our friendships,
our interactions,
Father,
with the state
as we try to get them
to cast away things
which aren't in keeping
with it,
not that they all
become Christians,
but that it's ultimately
a beautiful vision
for everybody,
and so,
Father,
we ask that this
beautiful vision
would become more real
to our hearts,
and we ask this
in the name of Jesus,
your Son and our Savior.
Amen.