Ezra has returned to Jerusalem from Babylonia. It happened in the year 458 BC. And immediately he began the work of reforming and revitalizing the worship that centered in the temple. But even though that was in many ways the focus of his task, It required that all of the people should be taught the Word of God, and that they should participate as those who were called to live faithful lives before the Lord their God. Perhaps it was in response to that renewed focus upon the law of God and the teaching of the Levites who had accompanied Ezra back from Babylonia to Judah that people were beginning to be impressed with God's requirements. Perhaps it was through this teaching of the law that within a few months of Ezra's arrival back in Jerusalem, he was made aware of the fact that there was a significant dark side to the lives of many of the Jews who had returned to help with rebuilding the temple and re-establishing the nation of Israel in its land. That included the officials and the chief men of the people. And in this final chapter of the book, we have the record of the response of the people to Ezra's own reaction to that news. We saw last time that Ezra was appalled by this revelation that Many of the people, including officials and chief men, had married into the families of the nations who inhabited the land. The description of those nations isn't literally the names of the peoples who lived there at that time, but was taken out of the law of God as a description of the nations who had lived in the land before Israel entered it. the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Perissites and the Jebusites and the Ammonites and the Moabites. These were the people whom Israel had been commanded to eliminate from the land, that they were under the judgment of God and were to have been annihilated from the land. But Israel had failed to do that and groups of these peoples had continued to live in the land or in the nation's roundabout. and now they're there and they're influencing the lives of the people just as they had influenced them throughout the ages of the kings and indeed it was because of those people that Israel had been taken away into captivity in Babylon. It was because of their mingling with those condemned people and through their worship of their idols that God had brought down his rod of chastisement upon them and had sent them into exile. Now they've returned firstly under Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple and then under Ezra but even though they've returned They've returned with the same hearts with which their fathers had been sent into captivity, with hearts that were corrupted by sin, with hearts that refused to submit to the law of God, with hearts that desired the things of the world and so they took for themselves the daughters of the peoples around them as their wives. and as would inevitably happen if that were to continue, soon idolatry would once again infect the nation and separate this people from their God. In chapter 9 we saw that Ezra acknowledged the justice of God in sending the people into captivity and he was reminded of the mercy of God in bringing them out of captivity and bringing them back to the land and enabling them to rebuild the temple and to re-establish themselves in that land and it was because of God's justice that had been displayed and his mercy that had been received that Ezra was so appalled that the people should so quickly be falling back into the same sins that had brought God's justice upon them in the first place. And so Ezra has wept and he has torn his garments and he has displayed his feelings of grief and sorrow at the sins of the people. And in this chapter, Ezra's own practice is beginning to have an effect upon the people. And it leads the people to repentance. And as we consider this chapter, there are three aspects of true repentance that the chapter illustrates for us. Three aspects that can be summed up with three words. Conviction, Confession and Correction. So firstly I want to speak to you about the conviction that these people came under. Ezra was praying and he was making confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God. So this was a public display of his own grief over the sins of the people. And as he did this, others observed. No doubt there was much questioning and whispering among the people. What's Ezra up to? Why is he so grief stricken? Someone will say, well, the officers, the leaders, they've brought news to him that among the people who have returned from exile are those who have married foreign wives. And he is so grief stricken that you see him in this state this day. And as they observe Ezra's grief, they themselves begin to feel convicted in their own hearts. and about their own sins and their own lifestyles. More and more and more people are convicted as this chapter unfolds. It begins with a growing assembly of men and women and children gathering to him out of all Israel. The people weeping bitterly alongside him. But it doesn't stop there because One of the leaders of the people comes to Ezra and speaks to him that action needs to be taken and more needs to be done. that there needs to be a decisive change among the people and news of this is spread through all the land and people are gathered together in Jerusalem to hear what Ezra has to say and he speaks to them of the sins that they've committed specifically this sin of marrying foreign wives. Now it's clear isn't it that not every single person has committed this sin. Well it speaks there of men and women and children who had gathered to Ezra out of Israel and who were weeping bitterly. We observed last time that Ezra was weeping and confessing sin as though this was his sin but he hadn't sinned in this way. And not all of these people had or could have sinned in this way, but they're all feeling the sin of the community. They're all feeling the sin of the nation. And they're all beginning to confess that sin. To acknowledge the sin and the seriousness of that sin as the Spirit begins to work in their hearts. and to open their eyes to what is happening and the awful prospect, the reality of God's judgment if they continue in this way. You see the people had accepted norms and one had followed another, one had married their neighbor, a foreigner. and another had followed suit and soon this disease had spread throughout the people. Sin works that way and public sin particularly works that way. Public accepted norms begin to break it down our own convictions of what is right and wrong and what is acceptable or unacceptable and before we know it things that once we spoke out against we are beginning to engage in to participate in or at the very least to turn a blind eye towards, or it's not something that I would do, but, well, that's okay for them. And nothing is said. And no one wants to rock the boat, as it were, or cause any trouble, or be accused of being too holy, too pure, But just as sin can permeate a society, so can conviction, as is happening here under the blessing of the Spirit of God. Now it doesn't tell us here that the Spirit of God was working among these people, but we know that must have been the case, for it is only by the Spirit of God that we can be awakened to the reality of our sin and have our eyes open to that which we once publicly accepted as the norm and now begin to see well it may be normative for the world but it's not normative for God. It may be okay for the world that does not acknowledge God or seek to honor and glorify God, but it's not okay for those who would seek to obey God and to do His will and glorify Him in their lives. And so the Spirit is working, awakening and convicting these people. The second thing that we see that's happening here is having been convinced of sin, they begin to confess sin. It begins with Ezra himself making confession before the house of God, the temple, and then another man takes up the refrain and says, we have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. Now interestingly, this man who speaks these words, Shekeniah, his name doesn't appear in the list in the second half of the chapter. Perhaps the list isn't an exhaustive list, though most commentators take it as an exhaustive list. if it's an exhaustive list Shekeniah who is not named there is not a participant in the sin and yet he says we have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. He's identifying as Ezra himself had done with the people because you see these people don't stand as individuals alone before God They stand as members of the community and as members of the community then the sins of the one affect the whole. Indeed this had always been true for Israel and the whole community then was expected to deal with the sin within the community and to purge the community of the sin and this is what Shekeniah is doing then, he's calling on Ezra to action, to deal with these things. He goes on to say, even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this, therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children according to the counsel of my Lord, that is according to Ezra's counsel and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God. So there are others there who are familiar with the law of God and who are seeking to be obedient to it. They are the guides for the people, the teachers of the people. And let it be done according to the law. Let us examine the law of God. Let us see what the requirements of the law of God are and let us act in obedience to the law. Arise, he says, for it is your task and we are with you. Be strong and do it. And so Ezra goes aside for a while in private prayer, no doubt seeking the strength and the courage and the wisdom to put into action this exhortation that has been made of him. So a proclamation goes out through all of Judah and Jerusalem calling all of the men to come together that he might speak to them of their communal sin, the sin of the community and they confess then, now then make confession to the Lord the God of your fathers and do his will. Confession of sin. is humbling. It is an acknowledgement of failure. It is saying, I've come up short. I've not been obedient to God. But the confession of sin is essential. It's essential to come to God with our sins and humble ourselves before God and acknowledge to God our sins. There can be no forgiveness without confession. There can be no forgiveness without humility and acknowledging to God that we have not served him as we should, we have not honored him as we should. But then confession is more than confession to God. We must confess to those who are affected by our sins. And here the whole community is affected. It was sins of individuals that affected the community of Israel that caused them ultimately to end up in captivity under the judgment of God. They hadn't acted upon the sins of the few and so the sin had spread throughout the nation and God's judgment had fallen on them after many, many warnings by the prophets. And now Ezra is calling the people, the people as a whole, to confess sins that are individual sins. but sins that the nation is responsible for because those individuals are members of the nation. We tend to think so individualistically. That's our culture. That's the way our society thinks and works. We take individual responsibility for our actions. We have individual goals and aspirations. We live our lives largely for ourselves, pursuing our own plans and our own ambitions. Rarely do we think in communal terms, because those thoughts are alien to our culture. now they're not alien to all cultures of the world but certainly in the Western world we're very individualistic and so we have to work hard at understanding and appreciating this communal or corporate view of our actions that it affects the whole nation for Israel and for us it affects the whole church. For Paul presents to us the picture of the church as a body. More than once in his writings this appears. He speaks of each member of the church being like a part of the body. Each brings something different, some different skill, some different gift is the word that Paul uses. so that the church as a whole is able to function organically to fulfill God's commission to make disciples of all nations and to teach them all that Christ has commanded and so we must have this idea of the church as a body and realize that just as in our physical body when a part of the body is diseased it affects the whole body and sometimes that disease can spread through the whole body and it's with that view of sin that we must think not individualistically but corporately and so Shekinah says even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this He doesn't say even now there's hope for these people who are committing these sins in spite of their sins. He says there's hope for Israel, there's hope for the nation, there's hope for all of us if as a whole we will deal with the sins of these people. And if this is an exhaustive list then it's barely more than a hundred people. that's affecting the whole nation and we know that nearly 2,000 returned with Ezra and nearly 50,000 had returned with Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple quite apart from the remnant who had remained still in the land. So this is a tiny proportion of the whole But Ezra understands and Shekeniah understands and others begin to understand and appreciate that the sins of these relatively few is affecting the future of the whole. And so confession is being made, not only individually before God, but corporately before the people. This is what Ezra is calling for. You have broken faith and married foreign women and so increased the guilt of Israel. Now then, make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do his will. Separate yourself from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives. And then there's this appeal made to him. Yes, this is true. We have sinned. Yes, this must be done, just as you have said. But there's lots of us and this is something that can't just be done in a day or two and it's the middle of winter. That's why they were shivering in the square. And Ezra heeded them and instead of it all happening all at once with all of the people, they were brought city by city. back to Jerusalem over a period of a couple of months in order to deal with this issue. And each one was examined according to the law, and each one repented and confessed according to the law, and each one acted according to the law. You know there are times when we must confess our sins to one another. James speaks of it in James chapter 5. We're not going to look at it now. It's a difficult passage that needs to be dealt with by itself. But he speaks about confessing our sins to one another. And the reason for it is because those sins are affecting the body. Where our sins are public, we must confess them publicly. When our sins are private, But because they're impacting our life and our relationship to God and affecting the body, then there is a confession that is appropriate before the body in that situation too. And the whole body is to work together then to put right what has gone wrong. This is what these people are doing here. And that's the third point, the third aspect of repentance. We've seen that there is conviction of sin, there is confession of sin, and thirdly there is correction of sin. The law had been broken. They were not to marry foreign wives who would take them away from the pure worship of God, who would lead them into idolatry. That is what had happened and this must not happen again as Israel is being restored in their land and in the worship of God at the temple. The law had been broken and now the law must be the guide to their restoration. Putting right the wrong must be done according to the law. This again is the appeal that Shekinah makes to Ezra. using his wisdom and the wisdom of others who feared the commandment of the Lord, let it be done according to the law." And so we read this passage, we read about these many men who had married foreign wives, some of whom had borne children to them, and we read that they divorced them. They sent them away. They separated from them, from their wives and from the children who had been born to them. And we think, well, that's terrible. That can't be right, can it? But it was the law. They had entered into these marriages that were essentially illegal in the sight of God. And to put it right, they had to take these extreme measures. Now we're not told exactly what happened. We're not told whether those women and children were provided for. We're not told whether they were sent back to their own families. Now that was Often the case in situations of divorce or widowhood that the woman would go back to her father's house. So it's not necessarily that this is a cruel situation in which the women and children are having to fend for themselves. That may be the case. but we're not told exactly what the outcome was for them. But you see this is what sin does isn't it? Sin destroys, sin brings pain. The consequences of sin are never ultimately good. They may for a brief time bring a sense of joy, even a sense of peace, a sense of happiness, a sense of fulfilment. A sense of purpose for a time. But sin is always corrupting. Sin is always destructive. Sin never comes to a happy end. It always results in pain and suffering and death. It's the lie of Satan since the Garden of Eden, that disobeying God can bring happiness to your life. It's the lie of Satan all through the history of the world, that disobeying God will have no effect, that he'll just let you get on with your life and it'll be happy and it'll be healthy and it will be full of peace and joy. No, sin destroys. And in order to deal with sin, sometimes extreme measures have to be taken. Isn't that Jesus' own teaching? He said, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. I'm not suggesting that when you go home tonight, you should get out a saw and cut off your hand or somehow pluck out your eye. That's not what Jesus was saying. He's not saying literally do this. What he's saying is take extreme measures to deal with it. whatever it takes, whatever it costs, to cut off sin. You must do it. And this is what these people are being called to, they are being called to stand faithful in God's presence and put right what they had done wrong. They must put the clock back And so they act. And they put away those foreign women and their children. As we turn to God, we must turn away from sin. Here were a people who had returned from Babylonia, they had returned from captivity, they had returned from experiencing the justice of God because of the sins of their fathers and they had returned to the promised land and to the promised city and to the promised temple that they might worship God. They were turning back to God. and they couldn't keep hold of sin at the same time. This is how we understand Lot and his wife and daughters fleeing from Sodom before the justice of God fell upon that city. And you remember how the angels who had been sent to plead with Lot to come out of that terrible place of sin and rebellion against God. And as they pretty much dragged them out of the city before fire and brimstone fell upon it, Lot's wife looked back and she was turned into a pillar of salt. She couldn't let go of the things that she loved in that city. She couldn't turn to God and turn away from sin. And she clung to it. Because you can't have both, you see. You can't have God and have your sins. So one must go. One must go. Which will it be? Will you let go of God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who has given you life and every good gift that you enjoy in your life, the one who has promised that he will be with you and He will sustain you and He will help you under every circumstance of your life if you will follow Him. If you will walk side by side with Him, He will never depart from you. He will never be unfaithful to you. His strength will always be available to you. His wisdom will always guide you. Will you let go of Him? For what? For the fleeting fancies of this world? Full of promises, yes, but vain, empty promises. They cannot deliver upon them. Oh, how Satan had promised so much to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. You will be like God. God had made them in his image. They were as like God as it was good for man to be. But they listened to Satan and they lost it all. Which will you let go of? God or sin? those sins that you love. Those things that have become idols in your heart. It's easy to give up the sins that we don't like, isn't it? It's like giving up brussels sprouts. It's not a hard ask. for most people, but the sins that we love, the sins that we enjoy, the sins that tantalise and draw us in, will you give up those sins? You know it's going to be like cutting off your hand, plucking out your eyes, But it must be done if you are to follow God. For you cannot have God and your sins. You cannot worship God and mammon, as Jesus said. These three things are true of the repentant heart. a conviction of sin, confession of sin, and correction of sin. Ezra led the people to acknowledge their sin and he directed them to turn from it. Not a simple matter of acknowledging, oh, I failed you, God, please forgive me. It was humbling. humiliating but it brought real change, true repentance always does. It wasn't enough you see that the Jews should be restored to their land, they must be restored to a right relationship with the Lord or they'd still be in captivity. What was their captivity? When they were in Babylon, what was it that most grieved them? Play your songs, play your tunes, they were told by their tormentors. How can we sing the songs of Zion when we're so far away? You see, there must be a restoration to the Lord or you remain separated from him, you remain in captivity. You know among the most encouraging words in this whole book of Ezra are the words spoken by Shekinah at the end of verse 2, but even now There is hope for Israel in spite of this. You see, today is a day of grace. Today is a day of salvation. Today is an opportunity to cut off and pluck out and turn away from sin, whatever the cost of that may be. Even now there is hope in spite of sin. because Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father interceding. He has not yet begun his return to this world to bring judgment. So it is a day of hope, a day of opportunity, but it is a hope an opportunity that is centred in the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can break the power of sin in your heart by his Spirit. If you will come to him and appeal to him, Lord God have mercy on me a sinner. Break the chains of this sin in my life. Restore me to the God of my salvation. And may your spirit strengthen and guide me all the days of my life. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask for your mercy this day. All we have sinned and broken faith with our God. Yet there is hope in spite of this. We appeal to you, in the name of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour for sinners, have mercy upon us, for his glory. Amen.