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The Bible Breakdown
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The Bible Breakdown
Ezra 09: Mourning for the Lord
Why did Ezra mourn so deeply for his people, and what lessons can we glean from his sorrow? Join us as we journey through Ezra, chapter 9, in our thought-provoking episode titled "Mourning for the Lord." Discover the profound grief Ezra felt upon realizing the Israelites’ disobedience through intermarriage and the subsequent corruption of their worship practices. Explore how Ezra's heartfelt lament and fervent prayers underscore the severe consequences of straying from God's commands. Together, we’ll uncover the significance of maintaining purity in worship and the weight of repentance in returning to God’s grace.
In our second segment, "Seeking Forgiveness and a Harvest," we shift our focus to personal transformation and the courage needed for spiritual growth. Inspired by Ezra 7:10, we delve into the importance of repentance, seeking God's guidance, and extending forgiveness to others. Reflect on the call to move boldly into the harvest fields, spreading God's teachings just as Ezra did. Through a heartfelt prayer for forgiveness and divine revelation, we aim to inspire you to study and obey God's laws, transforming your life and imparting His wisdom to others. Don't miss tomorrow's grand finale of our study in Ezra, chapter 10, as we continue this enriching spiritual journey.
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The More You Dig. The More You Find.
Well, hello everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today, ezra, chapter 9, and today's a difficult chapter. We're going to call it Mourning for the Lord Letting your heart be broken for the things that break the Lord's heart. We're going to do that in just a moment. But, as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share and subscribe to the YouTube podcast and all the things the YouTube channel and the podcast, leave us a five-star review and then, as always, gather with us at the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook, because the more we dig, the more we find. There's a lot in this today, but if you have your Bible and open up with me, we're going to be in Ezra, chapter 9.
Speaker 1:Well, as you notice, what we've been going through is Ezra. He arrives to Jerusalem and he has all these high hopes for things that are going on and all these things that are happening, and God has just been with him and doing all this. But as he arrives in Jerusalem, we don't always think about things as they are. We think about things as we are and if we're going through a good season in life, we feel like everything else is in a good place in life and if we're going through a bad season in life, we think everything else is in a bad season. We don't always see things the way they are. I can only imagine as Ezra has been doing all these things and he's been rallying people together and Lord the King Artaxerxes has given him just a boatload of money to go and make all this happen. I mean, he's just running cloud nine. And then he gets here and he realizes not everything's the way it should be, not everything is as he would have hoped for it to be, and he finds himself just mourning for the Lord because of the state of the people. So we're going to read this together and see what God's word will teach us about what we do.
Speaker 1:When we see sin in the people around us, in our nation, what do we do? Let's find out as we read Ezra, chapter 9, verse 1. It says this people living in the land. They have taken up the detestable practices of the Canaanites, hittites, perizzites, jebusites, amorites, moabites, egyptians and Amorites, for the men of Israel have married women from these people and have taken them as wives and for their sons. So the holy race has become polluted by mixing marriages. Worse yet, these leaders and officials have led the way in this outrage. Now, why is this a big deal? Because one of the things that God told the nation of Israel all the way back when they were leaving Egypt is when they were getting ready to go into the promised land.
Speaker 1:Now, a thousand years before this, as he said, I want you to not marry with the other people groups because of their detestable worship, their detestable idols, all these things it will mix in and it will pollute the worship of God. So I want you to stay with your people group. It wasn't because they were elitist, it wasn't because they were somehow racist or anything like that. So we've got to take out our 21st century mindset and go back to the time where, when you would marry into another family, you also would marry into a lot of times, the customs and the different things and all these other surrounding nations would have had these detestable paganistic worship where they would do child sacrifices and stuff like that. And so God said stay away from that, stay, do child sacrifices and stuff like that. And so God said stay away from that. Stay, true to me, all of that. And so they were told to do, to stay away from all that because God knows that it would corrupt One of the things that happened to the wisest man to ever live outside of Jesus. Who's God so kind of different but Solomon? When he married all these different women outside of the Jewish nation? It corrupted his heart and their paganistic worship drew him away from God for a season. So God knows exactly what he's talking about. And so he told them stay away from the other tribes, stay within the Jewish nation so that you can keep your worship pure. But they hadn't done it and they had completely gone against what God's word had said to do.
Speaker 1:Verse 3, look what happens. When I, ezra, heard this, I tore my cloak and my shirt and pulled hair from my head and beard and I sat down utterly shocked. It's almost like you had one job, guys. You had one job and you failed. Verse four then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel came and sat with me because this outrage committed by the returning exiles. As I sat there and utterly appalled until time of the, and I sat there utterly appalled, until the time of the evening sacrifice.
Speaker 1:At the time of the sacrifice, I stood up from there where I had sat in mourning, with my clothes torn and I fell to my knees and lifted my hands to the Lord, my God, and I prayed.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I am utterly ashamed. I blush to lift my face to you, for our sins are piled higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, we have been steeped in sin. That is why we and our kings and our priests have been at the mercy of the pagan kings of the land. We have been killed, captured, robbed and disgraced, just as we are today. But now we have been given a brief moment of grace, for the Lord. Our God has allowed us, and a few of us, to survive as a remnant. He has given us security in this holy place. Our God has brightened our eyes and granted us some relief from our slavery, for we were slaves, but it is an unfailing love. God did not abandon us in our slavery. Instead, he caused the king of Persia to treat us favorably. He revived us so we could rebuild the temple of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:And now, oh our God, we can say after all of this, once again, we have abandoned your commands. Your servants and prophets warned us when they said the land that you are entering to possess is totally defiled by the detestable practices of people living there. From one end to another, the land is filled with corruption. Don't let your daughters marry their sons. Don't take their daughters as wives for your sons. Don't even promote the peace and prosperity to those nations. If you follow these instructions, you will be strong and will enjoy the good things the land produces, and you will leave this prosperity to your children forever.
Speaker 1:Now we are being punished because of our wickedness and our great guilt, but we have actually been punished far less than we deserve. For you, our God, have allowed us to survive as a remnant, but even so, we are again breaking your command and intermarrying with people who do these detestable things. Won't your anger be enough to destroy us, so that even this little remnant no longer survives? Oh Lord, god of Israel, you are just, and we come before you in our guilt, as nothing but an empty remnant, though in such a condition, none of us can stand in your presence. Wow, you just hear the hurt in Isaiah's heart.
Speaker 1:Isaiah was a scribe and a priest, and so he had read the stories of the nation of Israel as they had left Egypt, and remember he's the one most likely who wrote first and second Chronicles, and so he knows where this leads. And so what Ezra is saying is he's like God, you had so much mercy on us, we had no, no shot. We messed up. When we came into this land, you told us, stay away from the other nations because they will mess you up. But you know what? We didn't do it, and because we didn't do it, over and over and over again, you punished us and we'd come back to you. And you punish us, come back to you. And now, when we should be completely destroyed, you've given us this opportunity to come back to you and look at what we're doing. We us this opportunity to come back to you and look at what we're doing. We're not even all the way back yet and we're already sinning again. I'm so sorry, jesus. I'm so sorry God, I'm so sorry, yahweh, I'm so sorry. Do you know what we do?
Speaker 1:It's so easy to look at the world around us and get discouraged. We look at the world around us and we go how did we get in this mess? And we? We just mourn over it. And can I tell you, there's a time to weep, there's a time to mourn over our nation.
Speaker 1:There's a time when we we realize that nowadays that it is becoming not commonplace but rather commonplace for shootings in schools. It's becoming more and more commonplace for shootings in schools. It's becoming more and more commonplace for disruptions to happen in local churches. It's becoming more and more commonplace for people to not want to make fun of any marginalized person unless they're a Christian, you know, and then you can make fun of them. Then we look at the absolute slaughter of the unborn in the United States, millions of babies killed every single year, and we look and we go God, no wonder we're in such a mess, no wonder that we are struggling in our nation. Of course. How dare we say we should be blessed? How dare we look around and wonder why this is happening? Of course it's happening. Of course, because we've turned our backs on you.
Speaker 1:What do we do? We do exactly what Ezra did. We come to God and we say God, I repent for my nation, I'm so sorry, I can't do anything about what they're doing. I can do something about my heart and I come to God in a state of repentance. And today. Maybe that's what we need to do. Maybe it's okay every once in a while to feel the sting of what's going on around us.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've been following this podcast for very long. I always try to encourage you, try to tell you a fun story, I try to leave us on a high note, but I think every once in a while it's important to feel the weight of what's going on in our nation. And I know we have people who listen all over the world and you probably have things going on in your nation and really it's happening all over the world. But when you look at what's going on, no wonder, no, no, no wonder. And then you look at the church world and we have. Then you look at the church world and we have so many people in the church world that are so afraid of being disliked that we don't speak up.
Speaker 1:I've talked to people before who say, when it comes to the things such as the abortion debate, they would say you know what? I believe that life is precious and we should always want to protect innocent life, but I don't wanna offend anybody. Well, no one seems to mind offending that poor unborn baby, my goodness. We look at this situation where there are little kids who are not even old enough to vote, they're not old enough to drink, they're not old enough to get a tattoo, but they're old enough to tell their mom and dad what sex they are. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, no wonder, no wonder. We have people in our nation who claim to be Christians but they're trying to redefine God's word and say that God's word says something it doesn't say. And how dare us say anything else? They have no idea what God's word says, but they want to tell you what it says. And because they get on TikTok, they get on social media, they get on YouTube, and they say it loud enough and never actually open their Bible, we believe it. No wonder, no wonder.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's okay if, every once in a while, we feel the weight of the moment. And I'm sorry if you're on your way to work right now and I don't want to bum you out today, but my prayer today is that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see all around you, because what I see is I see a world ripe for harvest. I see a world that needs Jesus so desperately. But here's the problem no one will get saved if we don't realize they need it, if they don't realize that we need it. No harvester goes to harvest the grain unless they see that it's ready for harvest. Jesus himself said the harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the harvest fields.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's time for us, as a church, to take a moment and just say, wow, this is bad. This is pretty bad. What a perfect time to go get the harvest. But the only way we're going to get it is if we admit that these things are right. These things are wrong and these things are what we're doing, these bad things. And so we first repent. God, I am sorry for my part in this. I'm sorry that I was so afraid of being disliked that I didn't tell people truth with this. I'm sorry that I was so afraid of being disliked that I didn't tell people truth with love. I'm so sorry that I didn't stand up for you. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me and forgive my nation. That's the first step to revival.
Speaker 1:Any revival begins with sincere repentance in our hearts. Let's pray, god. Thank you for taking a moment to remind us that sometimes it's okay to mourn over the state of the world around us. But, god, we don't say that with pride, we don't say that with arrogance. As a matter of fact, we say start with me, god.
Speaker 1:I repent for my part in letting these things happen. I repent of the sin in my own life. I pray, lord, that you will start your refining fire with me. Forgive me, reveal to me areas that I need to walk in forgiveness and then, god, open my eyes to see the harvest all around me if I will have the courage to move into the harvest fields. I'm thankful for you today, in Jesus' name, amen. How is this going to be possible? Because the Bible says in Ezra 7, verse 10, this is because Ezra had determined to study and obey the law of the Lord and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel, the desires to know God and then to make him known. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for the grand finale of Ezra. Ezra, chapter 10.
