How to Stay Faithful in a World of Temptation | Ezra 9:1-15

Show Notes

Episode 694: 
In this episode, we dive into Ezra chapter 9, exploring Ezra's deep sense of grief and responsibility upon learning that the Israelites have begun to intermarry with pagan nations, leading them away from their commitment to God. Ezra's reaction is not one of anger but rather a heartfelt breakdown before God, showcasing his humility and leadership. We emphasize that this chapter is not about legalism but about the importance of purity and holiness in the lives of God's people.

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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. So we are back. I'm in the studio with Wesley Woods, and since Chris isn't here, Wesley's gonna sing good morning to. Us, good morning, goodnight. I can't do it like this. Hey, that's how we need to rate there, Chris. Chris loves to sink good morning, and I feel like people are going to be grieving over not having that one part. So that's fantastic, Wesley, thank you so much for that. Well. Hey, uh, we are in Ezra chapter nine, and this one hits hard because the temple is humming along, the sacrifices have been you know, and the worship is brought back. But now Ezra is devastated because in just such a short time, the people have begun to allow compromise to creep into their lives. And so you see Ezra, he's he doesn't blow up, he just kind of breaks down before and just yeah, he gets really honest. And so it's not about legalism, it's about purity and holiness, and so that's what this chapter is all about. But before we jump into that. Uh, the we have a special segment okay, and it's mail Bags. Did you know Mailbags has its own theme song. Yeah, it's mail Bags. That's the same song. So here's what it is, Wesley, and this is for you. It's from Alisha p Okay. So, Alisha, thank you for sending this into us. If you have a question or a comment or something like that, so you can send an email to info at the Bible guides dot com. Yeah, and Desiree goes through all those for us and she'd be able to help us out. But Alicia p asks if you had to give a Ted talk was zero prep? What would it be about? Oh, so that's a good one here. I like Ted talk. Do you like that talk? Yeah? So it should probably be about something biblical. Yeah, if I. Had to give one, it's gonna be a brickoven pizza or waffles and some kind of guy was in some kind of way. There's gonna be like a like a life revelation in that like some kind of way. But ye, brick oven pizza or waffles. Because you are a world class expert on. It's got to be a brick oven. I'm a brick oven snob. Do you have a brick oven at home? I do not. You don't. Do you do any cooking? Do you do a little cooking or so? When I was younger, I used to make pizzas all the time. But now that I've had like brick oven, there's not like. If I'm going to do it, it's going to be a full fledged brick oven, you know. In the backyard I. Am am working on and maybe next summer I want to build an outdoor kitchen. I cook all the time. I love it, and especially the outdoor stuff, so the built in griddle, the built in grills and smokers. But one of the things I want to do is a brick oven. Yeah. No, I like making pizzas too. I'll make pizzas on my grip now and those are really good. But brick of in his next level? Yeah, okay, a couple of minutes. Spin it around. So for our listeners who don't know what a TED talk is usually so TED is a platform where they will host conferences, especially for leadership people or forward thinkers mostly, and they'll bring in cutting edge, forward thinking people to give like a fifteen minute talk. They're world class experts often and they have to distill all this down to a fifteen minute talk, and usually they have this really punchy, powerful delivery. It's really great. Right, there's kind of a formula to the Ted talk thing. I love it. If and so I like to I have the Ted app on my phone and if I have some free time or whatever, I'll filter through and find something that looks interesting, and you know, it helps expand your mind, kind of that Renaissance man kind of an idea of knowing a little bit about a lot of things. Yeah, just value and that and that's what you get. Yeah right, Yeah, I love those Ted talks. Yeah, yeah, man alive. What would I do? What would I do for a Ted talk if I didn't have any prep? If I didn't have any prep, it might be uh the idea of disciples making disciples. Look so Secon tifty two to two. So if I was going to do a Bible one, yeah, I'd probably do something like that. Or the purposes of the Church. I think you do those two things together, yep, you know, worship and evangelism. You can keep it tighter in like fifteen minutes. Yeah, yeah, the five purposes, I think you do those two. If it was just a normal, you know, casual thing. I probably would talk something about travel, the power of international travel. I would have thought hunting, Yeah yeah, hunting, hunting, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, So those are those be my my things. So that's good. That was a really good question. So thank you for that. And it wasn't too brutally difficult. Sometimes these things are hard, but that one was zero prep. Yeah. I could talk pizza all day. Yeah. Yeah, Well the zero prep things means you have to be an expert in your field at that. Yeah, you are world class pizza guy. Yeah. We found a new place, did you really in Birmingham on the forward? Yeah? Yeah, brand new place. All right, well that sounds like you need to take me there. Yeah, talking about out, I don't know a new place. There's a new temple in Jerusalem. Yeah, there you go. So we're always trying to figure out the worst possible transition into out of the second the opening segment into these passages we're reading. But uh, there is a new temple in Jerusalem, and there's this crisis that Ezra sies because the people, as it as is the habit of almost all people. You have these amazing moments where God does it an amazing thing, and then we kind of will slip back into our old habits, yep. And so the worship is back in all those things. But Ezra gets this gut punch because the people are already compromising, and what's happening is they're marrying into pagan nations and they're dragging their leaders down with them. So it says this after the temple was built, and it spells all that out in chapter seven and eight. In chapter eight and verse nine says, when these things had been done, the Jewish leaders came to me and said, many of the people of Israel, even some of the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the other people living in a land. They've taken up the detestable practices of the Canaanites and Hittites, and Parasites, and Jebuzites, and Ammonites and Moabites and 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. When I heard this, I tore my cloak and my shirt, pulled my hair from my head and beard, and sat down utterly shocked. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel came and sat with me because this outrage committed by the returned exiles. And I sat there utterly appalled, until the time of the evening sacrifice. At the time the sacrifice, I stood up from where I had sat in the morning, in morning, with my clothes torn, and I fell to my knees and lifted my hands to the Lord, my God, and I prayed, Oh, my God, I am utterly ashamed. I blushed to lift up my face to you, For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt as real to the heavens. From the days of our ancestors until now, we've 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've been killed and captured and robbed and disgraced, just as we are today. But now we've been given a brief moment of grace, for the Lord, our God, has allowed a few of us to survive as a remnant. He's 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 in his unfailing love, our God did not abandon us in our slavery. Instead, he caused the kings of Persia to treat us favorably. He revived us so we could rebuild the temple of our God and repair its ruins. And he's given us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem. And now, oh, our God, what can we say after all of this? For once again we've abandoned your commands, your servants. The prophets warned us, your servants. The prophets warned us when they said, the land you are entering to possess is totally defiled by the detestable practices of the people there. From one end to the other, the land is filled with corruption. Don't let your daughters marry your sons. Don't take their daughters as wives for your sons. Don't ever promote the peace and prosperity of 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. 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 some of us to survive as a remnant. But even so we are again breaking your commands 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 we come before you and our guilt as nothing but an escaped remnant. Though in such a condition none of us can stand in your presence. Wow. Yeah, is that where I end? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's read the old chapter. Yeah. What jumps out to me is a couple of verses. But verse thirteen. Now we're being punished because of our wickedness and our great guilt. So we kind of got that picture, but we have actually been punished far less than we deserve. For you, our God, have allowed some of us to survive as a remnant. So even though they did wrong, God didn't. Earlier up in the verse, it talks about how God didn't abandon them in verse nine. So the fact that they messed up but God still preserves some of them. You know, there's something to that. The humility of saying, hey, we're in a rough situation, but you're still good to us because you could be punishing us and we deserve it. There's a tremendous amount of humility in that. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, it's heartbreaking. Let's deal with this because it's kind of surprising. It sounds like this is a racial issue, right, but it's not a racial issue. It's not about ethnicity. It's not about race. It's about idolatry. Yeah, right, So it's about the behaviors. Remember it says it says in verse what was it two, maybe one have not kept themselves separate from the other peoples. They've taken up the detestable practices of the Canaanites and Hittites. And then it said the reason they did is because they married. So this is one of the reasons why we always caution young people. The Bible says, don't be unequally yoked, you know with unbelievers. We're not supposed to marry unbelievers. And it's not that God hates them and loves us. Right, that's not it. It's not some kind of a racial or social thing. It's that God says, listen, when you marry, you wind up wanting to please the one you marry, and so then you start making compromises. It's not one person making choices, it's two. And so compromises are are very important in a marriage. And what happens is oftentimes you begin compromising your beliefs and your morals when you have somebody who has different beliefs in different morals, and they're not centered on God and on God's things and on God's laws. So what's going to happen is you're going to compromise down to their level. Rarely do they ever come up to God's level. And so in this situation, that's what's happening. Is the marriages wound up causing the compromise. But God was mad about the compromise. He had warned them don't marry. But it was because he was afraid they would take up all the detestable acts. And let's be honest, the Canaanites were known for sacrificing children, right, some of them. It was sexual practices in the temples of their worship, of worshiping their gods. Right, it was temple prostitution. You had really crazy, detestable. Acts worshiping other gods, and. Yes, and God said, these are detestable to me, But if you wind up worshiping, if you wind up marrying them, you're going to wind up worshiping their gods. And that's what happened. And as a foum, So it wasn't about ethnicity, it was about loyalty to God. They weren't just blending families. They were blending their religious systems and their gods. And that God will not share with other gods. Yeah. Right, So this brings up an interesting point, Jeff, So can you blend? Can you walk on both sides of the fence? No, is what I'm getting at? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Now, now what if you're eighty percent on one side of the fence and just twenty on the other side, so I'm mostly on this side. Well, what you're asking, what you're asking God to do is share his throne. Yeah, God, I'm going to give you eighty percent of the throne and then I'm going to give this other god money. Yeah. Work, you know, my partner, whatever, I'm going to give them twenty percent of the throne. So spit over over yeah, and just a little room ye yeah, exactly to deal. Here's he's all God or not the God in your life, right, and that that's that's the big one. Yes, I think it's it's a difficult thing. So if sometimes in people say, well, I'm in a blended marriage, you know, Paul says, if you find yourself in a blended marriage the first Corinthian seven, he said, stay that way because maybe your walk with God, maybe your gentle Peter says, maybe your gentle spirit, maybe the change God's doing, and you will win over your spouse. So God doesn't say leave the relationship you're in, but God does say don't get into one if you're not in one now. And most of my friends I know that are in a blended marriage. Maybe they became Christians after they got married or whatever. Most of them say, boy, it's difficult because our values aren't exactly the same. I love my spouse. And when you say blended as in Christian and non. Christian, non Christian, yeah, yeah, I love my spouse, but our values aren't the same. And so there's a struggle there sometimes in difficulty. So be humble, be gentle. You don't have to preach, let your life preach. Not yet. That's a good point versus like, don't beat them over the head with the Bible, but just let your light and the God in you. The more you see to transform. You should come like Jesus. The more they're going to notice. So there's that. So then the other thing I love about this is Ezra's response is grief, not rage. Ezra doesn't go blame the people, Shame on you, You're ruining everything I'm trying to create. Right, he doesn't do that. He takes responsibility as a leader. And he doesn't blame God, which sometimes happens. We were in a meeting recently with some of our top leaders and there's some things we need volunteers to start focusing on. And it's been a mild frustration for a while. We've talked about it a little bit among our leaders, but we haven't really built a good system to fix it. And so at the beginning in this meeting there was some say, ah, well, they just won't do it. And I spoke up and I said, I don't think we should blame it on our followers. We have not yet led them effectively in that area need them to do. So let us take responsibility to create the systems to effectively lead our people. So instead of blaming, we accept responsibility. And it's kind of the same thing. This is what he said. He comes with grief, and he comes with repentance on behalf of the people than and blaming him. God, I want you to know I'm a good guy, but these idiots are doing the wrong thing. As he said, he comes and says, God, we don't collectively, we don't deserve your blessing. And I love that real leaders don't just yell about sin. They own it and they weep over it, and they lead repentance from the front. Yeah, and I like the verbit he used. And I like the fact that he's just open and blunt. He says, for our sins are piled higher than our his. So he doesn't even try to drowning. You're drowning in our say, He. Doesn't even try to sugarcoat it, like God, we messed up a God, we are just a train wreck. It's essentially what. He says, right, And I think this is what repentance really looks. Like, so we talk sometimes about this. God is not about the guilt. God is about you seeing your sin like he sees your sin. Yeah, right, Yeah, that's what we want. So it's not like, oh, I'm a horrible human and I don't deserve to live kind of thing. It's it's it's agreeing with God. What I've done is is is not right. And my sins pile up over my head. I'm drowning in them without you. That's really what he's saying there. And he's not making excuses, he's not making comparisons. Well at least I'm not as bad as so and so. Right, He's just really being honest before a holy God. And when you get honest about your sin, what you're saying is, my desire is to be holy like your holy God says, be holy even as I am holy. Right, And so when we start to be honest about our sin, like Ezra is Ezra saying, listen, my behavior sometimes or the behavior my people, has not lived up to our desire, our desires. We want to be holy like your holy We want to do what you would do. We want to follow you, but our behavior has not. So we change our mind about our behavior. That's repentance. I change my mind. What I was doing is wrong, and I want to come back to your way. And when he does that, God gives grace. Yeah. Yeah, I love that fact that how we can turn from our ways. We can repent, which just means to turn one hundred and eighty degrees from where you were just going. We can repent and it doesn't matter what we've done that God will still forgive. God will still welcome us back. There's no such thing as the sin that God won't forgive. Well, I've been to jail. Well, God can forgive you. Well I told a lie. Well God can forgive you for that. Well I'm messed up here. He can still forgive you. Don't let the sin keep you from running back to God in embarrassment or shame. Yeah, he was ashamed and was it actually says that in verse Oh my God, I am utterly ashamed. But he didn't let that stop him from running to God in the midst of the issue. Well, I think when he has this understanding that hey, you could have punished this way worse. Yeah, right, boy. A lot of us we get grumpy, we get bitter when we feel God's heavy hand on us. Yeah, right, and we blame him, he's just being me us whatever. And Ezra saw it the other way. Hey, the exile could have been the end of us. You didn't have to give us back our land. Yeah, you didn't have to restore a remnant back to Jerusalem. It could have been way worse. And when he began to realize it could have been way worse, I think that gave him the confidence that God's shown mercy. So even though I'm ashamed of my sin, God's already extended mercy, so I can complete on that mercy and come back and ask for God's grace again. There and so he's acknowledging, Hey, God opened the door for us to return back. And what we did we brought mud back in. We tracked the mud back in through the door again. Why why do we keep doing this? Right? And he's worried. Are we not going to learn from our past? He literally says, he ends it, Shall we break your commands again? Right? Is this what we're gonna do? We're just gonna keep breaking commands. God, I don't want to just keep repeating these patterns over and over and over again. Help us, help us move past these bad patterns. Yeah, it reminds me of that. The video with the sheet that stuck in the ditch. The guy gets the sheep out of the ditch, he trots along and then jumps right back in the ditch again. Yeah, we played that video during we did the financial deth of it. And there's this video of this this sheep, he's running down the side of this ditch and then he just jumps like he's gonna jump over the ditch. He's too fat, and he lands and gets stuck in the ditch. And so this farmer goes down. He gets in this water and his mud, and he just worked so hard. He lifts that sheep right out of the ditch and the ditch runs about. The sheep runs about five or six more steps down the thing. It falls right back in the ditch. Yeah, and the farmer just walks away. Get it. And that's what we do, man, We get ourselves out of debt. We run a couple more steps, we fall back in that we get ourselves you know, where we stop doing some of these dumb sins or whatever, and then we fall back in the ditch again if we're not careful. And so I've heard before. If we don't learn from the last fall, we're asking for the next one, right, that's true. And so if you look at your last fall as a as a lesson. You know why I did that is because I love myself to be alone during these vulnerable times. Or I keep going back to these same people, or I keep turning to that same channel or whatever. If you don't learn from it, you're going to do it again. But if you, if you fell and you learned from it, you can avoid it next time. And that's what I was going to tie into with a couple of minutes that we have left. What advice would you give for the person to stay away from that? Yeah? Whatever that is? So it could be alcohol, it could be people, whatever there that is. How do you practically stay away from those things? Yeah? Well, on one side, you have to have the powerful Holy Spirit in you. You got to constantly be surrounding the spirit. God, you know, protect me from these things, Give me wisdom and discernment, give me strength. That's important. Keeping that go, ongoing prayer, conversation with God all day every day is important. But then also there's things you can do too. You can delete that app. Yeah, that's technical to you. Yeah, right, you can delete that account and and don't download it again, right the next time you download it. That's a choice. So don't don't do it. You're not strong enough. Don't do it. Yeah, you can decide, you know what, I'm not going to go for that meeting at the bar and just have a coke while everybody else is having a drink because alcohol is a temptation to me. I'm just gonna but let's meet somewhere else, right, So you can you can preemptively try to make choices. There are times where you find yourself you're surprised, and you wind up having to be in a situation that you didn't want to be in. That's where you need to have this really full reservoir where you've been walking with God. So you're agreeing with God about the consequences of your sin and about the fact that holiness is important to you and that you want to honor God, so that then you're putting on the armor of God. The armor of God is because you're wading into the battle. Yes, but there are lots of battles we don't need to fight. Yeah, I don't. If alcohol is an issue, I don't need to go sit on the bar stool. If porn is an issue, I don't need to have those apps on my phone. Right, If lying is an issue, I need to be careful about how I tell my stories and and and how I'm viewing my life, and you know, all those kinds of things. So so you can preemptively avoid some of these these battles. But then every day you need to put the armor of God on, spend time in His word. So we can't wade into it and then be shocked and surprised as when we're tempted by it. That's right, that's right. So what he knows is this sin of them and you know, marrying into these other cultures and then embracing their gods and then following these detestable behaviors. He knows that this sin left unchecked, doesn't just hurt them, right, it threatens everything that God is rebuilding. And it's interesting that the threat here is that we can tear down what God is doing just as easy or easier than you know, the armies in Nebukenezer or Artis is coming in and wiping us out. Is we can tear it down on the inside and if we're apart, if we're separated from God. So Jesus said, as I'm the vine and you are the branches. And at one point he says, apart from me, you can do nothing. The most dangerous thing we can do is spend less and less time for him with him. You know, I have some woods behind my house, and a previous owner had allowed a neighbor to put a little garden in those woods, but then the city shut it down. Hey, that's a park. You can't have a garden in our park. Stush it down. Well, that previous neighbor had planted some grapevines and then they went unchecked. Well, the grape vines crawled all the way at the top of the woods, spread all over the woods, and began killing trees. And so I noticed that at the end of last year when we moved in, and so I decided, need to get those grapevines out before the leaves start growing this year, which is going to kill most of the trees. And so I got a lot of them out, but the grapevines just wrapped themselves so tightly around sometimes I can't get them all out of the trees. But what I did do is. I went and I found them at every spot in the ground where they were, and I cut them. I cut them, I cut them. So now what's happening is they are dying. There's no leaves on them, and the trees are pushing out path and their new branches are putting out new leaves, right, And so I have to cut off the source of nutrition for those roots that are growing up that are trying to kill me. And I need to then give opportunity for the good things of God in me to grow. And so I can't have it both ways. We just can't. Either God's way is important to me or my way is important to me. But if God's way is important, I need to cut off the roots. I can still see some of the dead branches up there. I don't know that I'm ever going to get them out. There's still the remnants are there, but they're not killing the trees like they were last year. Yeah, cut off the source. Yeah, you got to cut off the So. Yeah, no, it's good. It's a good spot to stop. Well, I think so well. Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. On the Bible. Guys,