Holiness

“Holiness”, Ezra 9-10

• You shall have no others Gods in your life but the one true God
• Nothing in your life should appear that you might worship anything else but God
• No using the name of God, your God, in curses or silly banter; God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.
• You shall have one day where you rest, and do no work. God created the world and everything in it in six days and then rested. You do the same.
• Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
• No murder. 
• I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. 
• No adultery. But don’t think you’ve preserved you’re virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices—they also corrupt.
• No stealing. Ever 
• No lying. Ever
• No coveting, which is similar to lust, desiring things someone else has and not being satisfied with what you have. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s

How do you respond to the commands of scripture?  When you do something contrary to Gods commands? 

• Please turn to Ezra 9, page 395 in the pew bibles
  • Please stand for the reading of God’s word 
  • Read Ezra 9:1-6 / Pray (9:6)

Exposit 9:1-5

• From the timeline we see it’s been a months since he got there. We know who he was and what he was called to do, a priest sent to study, live and teach the Bible. 
  • So the assumption is that he has been doing just, teaching the LAW. 
• What does the law do? As New Covenant Christians. Remember, Ezra was trying to usher in the New Covenant as talked about in Jer. 31, and as we see, it never does, but we are people of the New Cov.! 
  • How do we view the law? 
  • “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions…”Galatians 3:19

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. Galatians 3:24–26

• BUT, does that mean we take don’t take our sin seriously? Absolutely not
  • Again, Jesus say if you eye causes you to sin, do what? Hand? 
    • What can we learn from Ezra? His response to sin. 

Read vs. 3-5

• He mourns, he grieves. 
  • May we do the same
  • We are so quick to say “there’s no condemnation in Christ” that we rarely feel the weight of our sin. 
• When we minimize our sin, we minimize the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. We minimize God’s character, his holiness. 
  • And he prays. 

Read vs. 6-15

• Exposit prayer
  • May our prayers reflect his, we pray in this way. 
  • Where is the one who cries out, OH GOD, Have mercy! 
  • Fast to deny your flesh so that you may overcome sin? 
• And now things just get weird. 

Read 10:1-17… There’s a list and it ends. Anti-climactic.

• Why Divorce? 9:2
  • *Important, “with their abominations” BUT, notice he said “race” or “offspring”, the word is seed? 
    • Is there a difference from a holy people and a holy race? Yes. 
    • The scriptures never command for Isrealites to not marry non-isrealites
  • In fact, we see a lot of people we look to as fathers of the faith that did marry non-isrealites. Moses to Zipporah, The story of Ruth, Joseph’s wife was an Egyptian, which we have 12 tribes of Isreal, The Levites were not a tribe, either was Joseph, but his 2 sons, Mannasseh and Ephraim became tribes and they had an Egyptian mom. 
  • Ezra takes some what Tim Mackie calls, “creative interpretation” 
• We see this thinking all throughout the NT as Jesus addresses 
  • You see, what makes a holy people is how they live, not their race. Ruth says “Your God will be my God” 
  • BUT the caution is, if you marry outside the covenant people, you were prone to fall into their ways. 

“Be holy, for I am holy” 1 Peter 1:16