Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our service tonight. Good to see each one of you. We've had a good day today. Today, of course, was the opening for West Seneca Christian School, the first day of school. And looking around at some of our teachers who are here tonight, they don't look too bad for the first day of school. So it's been a good day. Really an exciting day. Very happy. I think a great spirit, at least upstairs, but even downstairs as I walked through and had an opportunity to observe some of the young folks, just smiles on their faces. I like to see that. I think it was a good day, a happy day, very happy, thankful to the Lord for his provision and care for us, and looking forward to the school year. I know you'll be praying the Lord's blessing on the school. We're just glad to be here tonight with you. We do have our master club workers are meeting tonight. This is their organizational night. We finished summer clubs last week and next week normal clubs begin. So some of them are around getting ready for that. But we're happy that you're here tonight. Look forward to our time together. Let's begin our time with a word of prayer tonight. Let's pray. Our Father, we indeed are very grateful for the opportunity we have to gather together on this Wednesday evening. Lord, a good day, a blessed day. Very thankful for your care and provision for us as a people, for our church, for the ministries of our church. Praying, Lord, your blessing upon our time tonight as we continue our study in the book of Ezra. I pray, Father, that you would give us insight, help us to recognize what Ezra was dealing with and to see the response of the people as they were challenged from the Scripture And I pray, Father, that you would use the events that surrounded Ezra and his ministry there in Jerusalem to challenge our hearts. And that, Father, we might emulate the positive things that happened at that time. Help us, Lord, to honor you as we appropriate Scripture and make application into our lives. We pray for the clubs, that you would bless the leaders, the workers tonight, complete their organization. We pray that you would give us just a wonderful year with the young folks as clubs begin next week. Father, we pray that you would be with all that is said and done with the teen group tonight and all the others. Lord, may you help us to lift up the name of our Savior and to bring glory to you. For we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. You may be seated. Hebrews chapter 10 this evening, Hebrews chapter 10 is where, not Hebrews, Ezra chapter 10, yeah. Sort of a mind fog developed there, I guess. I'm looking at my own notes and not even reading the right word. Ezra chapter 10. We are coming now to the last chapter in our study of Ezra. And I trust, as I've said here the last few weeks, that our time in this book has proven profitable for you. It's been profitable for me to be preparing this. Ezra is one of those books. It's an important book. It occupies an important place in the timeline. It is a book that was written after the return from captivity. We've talked about that. And so we're really, when we read this book, we're roughly 550 years before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. some very eventful things that are happening, and then there are 400 years of silence, and then we have our Lord Jesus Christ and His birth. So, this is important when you consider where the book is in the timeline of the history of the Jews, of the Israelites, and it is an important book because of what it contains. That is the story of a people who should have known better, a people who understood that God had judged their forefathers because of certain sins that they had committed, and here they are, some roughly 80 years after they have returned from captivity, and lo and behold, they are beginning to commit the same sins that their forefathers had committed. And that's where we were last week in chapter 9 when Ezra prayed and he said toward the end of chapter 9, the essence, if I could just paraphrase what he's saying, if we keep this up, then God is more than just to simply remove all of us so there is no remnant left. because we are guilty of these sins." That's paraphrasing, but that's essentially what he was praying. And that brings us to chapter 10, and I'm going to take some time tonight because we want to set this up so the balance of our look in chapter 10 will come next week. But we want to see what is happening here, so I'm going to begin reading in verse 1 in chapter 10. I'm not going to read the whole chapter, but I am going to read back to verse 19. So we're going to read the first 19 verses, Ezra chapter 10, if you'll follow with me tonight. So Ezra writes, Now when Ezra had prayed and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children, for the people wept very sore. And Shekiniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land, yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore, let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my Lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the law. Arise, for this matter belongeth unto thee. We also will be with thee. Be of good courage, and do it. Then arose Ezra, and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel to swear that they should do according to this word, and they swear. Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God, and went into the chamber of Johanan the son of Eliashib. And when he came thither, he did eat no bread, nor drink water, for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away. And they made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem unto all the children of the captivity, that they should gather themselves together unto Jerusalem. And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited. and Himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month on the twentieth day of the month, and all the people sat in the street of the house of God trembling because of this matter and for the great rain. And Ezra the priest stood up and said unto them, Ye have transgressed and have taken strange wives to increase the trespass of Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do His pleasure, and separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the strange wives. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do. But the people are many, and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand without, neither is this a work of one day or two, for we are many that have transgressed in this thing. Let now our rulers of the congregation stand, and let them which have taken strange wives in our cities come out at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city and the judges thereof, until the fierce wrath of our God for this matter be turned from us. Only Jonathan, the son of Ezahel, and Jehaziah, the son of Tikva, were employed about this matter, and Meshulam and Shabbatai the Levite helped them. And the children of the captivity did so. And Ezra the priest was certain chief of the fathers after the house of their fathers, and all of them by their names were separated and sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter. And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the first month. And among the sons of the priests there were found that had taken strange wives, namely the sons of Jeshua, the son of Josedach, and his brethren, Maaseah, and Eleazar, and Jerob, and Gedaliah. And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives. And being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass. And it goes on from there, giving the names of families and the names of men who were guilty. So when we come to this chapter, chapter 9 was about the sin. The fact that they had taken pagan wives, that they had married pagan wives, and that in essence, as we saw from the book of Deuteronomy, they had, number one, disobeyed the very clear command of God that they should not do that. And number two, God told them why they should not marry pagan wives. it was because those pagan wives would ultimately draw them away from the worship of the one true God. That in reality, they would end up raising a family, raising children who would not serve the only God, but that would in fact be raised to respect the gods of both mom and dad. they would be drawn away from the worship of Jehovah. That's the bottom line. That's what the Lord had warned about in the book of Deuteronomy. The worship of false gods is what brought them to the captivity to begin with. We've talked about that. The kings of Judah and how they kept coming back and allowing and oftentimes participating in the worship of false gods. And by the way, you can go all the way back to Solomon. and see where Solomon with his thousand wives and concubines made political decisions to allow his many wives or concubines to continue to worship their false gods. So this is something that had been a long time frame God in His grace had given them 400 years, and then the captivity. Now here we have those who came back from captivity, their children, their grandchildren, maybe some great-grandchildren, and what are they doing? they are now marrying these pagan wives." That was chapter 9. They're guilty, and Ezra's heart was broken when this report was brought to him after he had come back to Jerusalem and to Judah. And it was his response that began a real eye-opening experience, if you will, among the people. They knew this was happening. They knew that it was wrong, but it took Ezra's response and Ezra's prayer to shake them and to cause them to want to do something about it. Now, let me try to set this up, and as I said, I'm really trying to establish the foundation tonight, and then we'll get into perhaps one part of our look at this passage, and then the balance of this we'll try to look at next week. But let me try to illustrate it another way so we can see how this fits into where we are today. We're talking in chapter 10 about repentance. They were guilty of a grave sin. That was chapter 9. Chapter 10 is their response. Repentance. And frankly, you and I can learn some lessons from them when we see how they responded to the rebuke. of the prayer that we find from Ezra in chapter 9, the recognition of what they did, and that lesson is important for us today. How should we respond to sin in our lives? I think there's a real lesson here for that. But again, let me illustrate it another way. One gentleman, as he was talking about this idea of repentance, He told the story of an evangelical author and leader who was exposed some years ago. This is not anything really recent, but it helps us, I think, in terms of asking the question about what repentance is. He was exposed for carrying out an affair over an extended period of time. This gentleman repented. He spent a year in counseling, and then he was restored back to public ministry. The gentleman relaying this story goes on to say that he heard this gentleman giving an interview. He and his wife were giving an interview at a radio station, and the interviewer asked him how he had fallen into this sin. And the gentleman, his response was essentially this. He told the story of an American pilot, again this is a long time ago because this was during the time of the Soviet Union, the story that this Christian leader was sharing was about how back during the time of the Soviet Union, an American pilot flew a small plane past all of the sophisticated radar and warning systems that the Soviet Union had put in place, and he landed in Red Square in Moscow. Then the Christian leader basically went on to say that he had all his defenses in place, just like the Soviet Union, but the enemy snuck this sin into his life and there was nothing that he could have done to prevent it. I'll just let that sit there for a moment. Does that ring true biblically? He was essentially saying that, yeah, I was guilty of the sin, but really I was a victim of Satan's clever tactics. Is that repentance? I'm a victim. I mean, is that how we want our children to respond? Well, you know, I know I wasn't supposed to eat the cookies before supper, but mom, if you didn't make them so delicious, I wouldn't have been tempted and taken one. So it's really your fault, because you made your cookies taste so good. Would you as a parent say, aww? But you know, if that's what happened, then you're not guilty. Now, I think mom would say, don't try to get off by using flattery. because you knew you should not have eaten the cookie and you ate it anyway. That's the essence of what this gentleman was saying. It's not my fault. It was the devil's fault. His wife chimed in, making it sound as if her poor husband had caught a bad case of adultery, just like we would catch the flu. Bottom line, Only God knows their hearts. Only God knows the heart of this evangelical leader. I trust that he truly did repent and he just was not very articulate in his ability to explain it. That begs a lot of other questions, but I'll leave that between him and God. But this question of repentance. Is it valid if I sin against God for me to use an excuse and say, well, yeah, I did it, The moment I add that little word, but, am I truly demonstrating repentance or something else? So we're talking here about what is real repentance. Or perhaps I could put it another way. Is there false repentance? Is there such a thing as false repentance? Well, let me just suggest this. Exodus chapter 9 and Exodus chapter 10, we find twice that Pharaoh told Moses, I have sinned. Do we ever consider that Pharaoh repented? How about Esau? Esau felt bad and wept over giving away his birthright. But did he truly repent? He said, well, I'm not sure. All right, let's read what the Bible says. Hebrews 12, verse 17. For you know how that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing, this is talking about Esau, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. So here the Scripture is saying, you know, Esau wept because he lost the birthright. but he did not repent. He wasn't sorry for what he did. He was sorry for the consequences. Oftentimes that's the case, isn't it? Not sorry for my sin. I'm sorry I got caught. I'm sorry there are consequences. That's not true repentance. Or let me give you another example. Judas felt remorse, did he not, when he betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ? What did he do? with the silver. He threw it back at the members of the Sanhedrin, the priests and such. And then he went and hung himself, and yet he did not repent. So clearly, there is such a thing as false repentance. If we want to be right before God, then I think we need to ask ourselves, What is real repentance? How should I respond to sin? That's really the question. As a believer, how should I respond to sin in my life? Well, this text isn't comprehensive. I don't want to pretend that it is, but it does give us some markers. I think that we can glean from this chapter some important truths that we should apply to our lives. Just as last time we were looking at sin in chapter 9 and questioning, are we guilty of sin and can we be guilty like they were of doing something so clearly that God says is wrong, now the question is, is it possible that I don't truly repent? Now that begs a whole other question. We'll get to that later. But the text is teaching a simple principle. Repentance involves real sorrow. Heartfelt sorrow before God, and it prompts action. Talking about from a believer's standpoint. What was the problem here again? Very quickly, I've already touched on it. The Jewish exiles had returned to the land. And many of them had taken pagan wives in disobedience to God's commands. Deuteronomy 7 is where we saw that in the first five books. Ezra 10, verse 11 sums up what they had to do to correct it. Notice again verse 11. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do His pleasure. Very simple. You need to confess your sin before God, and you need to do His will. What is it that we say when we try to define the word confession from a biblical perspective? I mean, we all love 1 John 1, 9, right? If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Wonderful verse, but what does it mean in that verse to say, I'm confessing my sin? Is confession of sin simply saying, yeah, you caught me. I did it. Or is confession saying, God, I acknowledge that I am guilty of this sin because I'm acknowledging that it is sin as you would define it. In other words, are we saying the same thing about our actions that God would say about our actions? That's really how we would begin this whole idea of confession. That's how this idea of repentance would come into play. If I'm saying the same thing about my action that God would say about it, then it's more than just me saying, you caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. I feel bad that I was caught. No, it is saying, I was wrong. I am guilty. I have no excuse." So, their confession before God would be reflected in their attitude toward their actions. And it would not be simply words, it would be action as well. It would manifest itself. He says, and do it. You need to do what God said. Do His pleasure. Now, that brings us to the first point, and I'm just going to touch on this I don't want to stop in the middle of something here. So real repentance begins with our heart attitude before God because of our sins. Ezra's deep mourning. You'll notice verse 1. Now when Ezra had prayed and when he had confessed weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation. So here we have Ezra's response. As we said last week, Ezra didn't say, well, you know, boys will be boys. Ezra didn't say, well, you know, there really just aren't enough women for all these guys to marry. So what would you expect them to do? They simply did what any red-blooded guy would do. If there weren't enough Jewish women, they went out and found a woman. No, he didn't look at it that way. He didn't try to find some excuse, some rationalization, which we're all guilty of at times, trying to rationalize and excuse some of our own actions. No, he said, this is wrong. And he wept. And it drew people to him. What's going on? Why is Ezra so brokenhearted? And then he prays his prayer, and they hear in his prayer how he identifies himself. Ezra had just gotten there, remember? Ezra hadn't grown up in Jerusalem. He hadn't been part of that group that went over some 80 years before. Ezra was not there taking a wife. Ezra had been raised in Babylon. He had just arrived in Jerusalem. They had sacrificed the money that had been given to them, that they had made sure the integrity of that 5,000 that came with that second group, that they had not lost a penny or wasted a penny of the money that God had provided so that they could help reestablish worship in Jerusalem. He just got there, and yet, what does He do in His prayer? We have sinned. We deserve God's judgment. He identified Himself with them. We talked about the humility of His heart last week. And because of that, as that happened, verse 2 mentions this gentleman by the name of Shekiniah, who was the son of Jehiel, who was one of the sons of Elam. You go and you look In verse 26, verse 26 makes this statement, "...and of the sons of Elam, Mataniah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, and Abdi, and Jeremoth, and Eliad." These are men who were of the family of Elam who had taken pagan wives. It doesn't say that Shekiniah did, There's reason here to connect a couple of dots, at least in my own mind, and say Shekeniah was likely one of the family of Elam. He knew what his brethren were guilty of, that they were guilty of this very thing. So he confesses the sin and he makes a proposal to Ezra. He says the people need to make a covenant. They need to make a covenant before God that they will correct this sin. It's not just that they're sorry. They're going to correct what they've done. Now, he's not listed as an offender, but six members of that clan are. So Ezra acts on Shechaniah's proposal by calling the exiles to Jerusalem, and they're shivering. Notice verse 9. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem within three days. That's significant in itself. They were taking this seriously. It was the ninth month on the twentieth day of the month, and all the people sat in the street of God trembling because of this matter and for the great rain." This is the month of December, and it's rainy season. This is a cold rain, and they're standing outside in the rain. They are trembling because they know they're guilty before God, and they're physically trembling because they're wet and cold. But they're there. In my mind, that's significant. Can't we wait until the rain stops? Can't we wait until it warms? Can't we do this in the springtime? It's not really convenient to do it now. I think this is an indication of that attitude that I suggested we should have. They were taking this seriously. This is wrong. This should not have happened. We should not, on the one hand, condoned it, nor should those who actually did it have been allowed to do it, nor should they have chosen to do it. They're acknowledging their sin. So a commission was put together and appointed. That was part of what I read. Presumably, one of two things was going to happen as this commission then would begin to examine each one of these men. Each one of these men who had a pagan wife would come before that commission. And the presumption is one of two things would happen. That the wife would agree that she would not worship her idols, but would make her allegiance to the God of Israel. Were there provisions in the Old Testament for someone who was not a Jew to become a part of Israel? Do we have an example of anyone? Any Gentiles? Any pagans? Ruth? Rahab? I mean, there were ladies who were not Israelites or Jews, who were pagans, who became faithful members of the body. So presumably there would have been that option that these ladies could have said, we will not worship the God of my fathers. We will worship the God of Israel, the only true God. And if that happened, they would be allowed then to exercise that choice. However, if the wife refused to give up her idols, then the marriage would be dissolved. Now I think arrangements would be made compensation-wise to her and to the children that would be involved. That would only be right. Because we have to understand the culture. Could they have sent these women back? No. They wouldn't have been accepted back. Their fathers had given them away. and they would not have had the choice to go back. So there would have to have been some provision to take care of these wives or these ex-wives and the children that would have been born to this couple. That's not, as we've said before, the text doesn't give us every fine detail. But I think we can expect that that would have happened because the expectation was essentially either your wife gets on board or you get rid of your wife. There's no middle ground, and nobody else should be guilty of this particular sin. Now, there are four aspects of repentance here, and I'm just going to mention the first one just to, again, try to whet your appetite, and then we'll go from there. When we talk about this idea of repentance, It is primarily toward God. Now let me explain that. Ezra in verse 1 has prostrated himself before the house of God. In verse 2, Shekinah says, we have been unfaithful to our God. God that they made a covenant in verse 3 because they trembled at His commandments. Verse 11, they needed to confess their sin to the Lord and do His will. While sin always hurts other people and we need to ask their forgiveness if we have sinned against them. Sin is first and foremost against God and I'll just I'll just read for you in 2 Samuel 12 and verse 13. David, of course this is his sin with Bathsheba. After his rebuke, David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, Thou, the Lord also hath put away thy sin. Thou shalt not die. That's the grace of God. But David said, I have sinned against the Lord. Let me ask you a question. Had he sinned against Bathsheba? Let me ask you a question. Had he even more so sinned against Uriah? Yeah. And it wasn't that he really couldn't apologize to Uriah at that point. Uriah's dead. It isn't that he shouldn't have apologized to Bathsheba, but it's a recognition that above and beyond everything else, he sinned against God. And that's why he writes in Psalm 51 and verse 4, David writes, "...against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight." It's recognizing that when we sin, ultimately, we've sinned against God. And that should move us. It should affect us. We have talked about the danger of becoming insensitive to sin. And how easy it is for us to grow insensitive to sin. To not be bothered by sin in the way that we should. That's been a danger from the very beginning. We live in a day where because of media, because of all the ways that we can be impacted by sin. It's hard to escape the sin culture that is around us. That simply means you and I, because we're all susceptible and men and women have always been susceptible, we just have more opportunities to grow insensitive towards sin. It should be our prayer, God help me to develop and maintain a sensitive heart towards sin, to never be satisfied, to never be hardened so that sinful acts that occur around me don't bother me and sin in my own life I can easily overlook. We should pray that we would have a heart like Ezra. Ezra was not insensitive. Ezra, in the sensitivity of his heart, he fell down before the Lord, and he confessed and prayed on behalf of those people. We should ask God to help us have sensitive hearts. Now, we need to go on from here. Obviously, there are three main points, but I wanted to be sure and get this far tonight to challenge us in our thinking that why should I feel sorry when I've sinned? Because we've sinned against the Holy God. He did. He did. Great consequences for that. And that's where we're ultimately going to go. As children of God, we'll never lose our salvation, but is it possible, as children of God, if we fail to repent, that we will suffer consequences? In fact, we'll have the Lord's table this Sunday, and in 1 Corinthians 11, something that you and I might look at and say, well, you know, it's just communion. I mean, how bad could you sin in taking the Lord's table? And yet, what did Paul say in that passage? Because some of you have partaken of the Lord's table in a way that dishonors God. Some of you are sick. and some of you sleep. What is sleep a euphemism for? God had taken some of those Corinthians home because they had dishonored God in the Lord's table. Whoa! That should change the way we think about sin because chastisement is real. So my purpose in trying to point this out tonight and build this is simply to challenge us to not follow what I'm afraid is for far too many in Christendom a low view of sin. We have a low view of God and we have a low view of sin. And by that I simply mean, well, people sin. Jesus died for my sin. Oh well, I sin. rather than being moved to say, God, help me to walk in a way that pleases you. And I might need to make some changes in my life, but Lord, I'm willing to do that with your help as the Spirit of God empowers me, as he directs me through the Word of God to recognize areas in my life where there are weaknesses, and I'll be satisfied with mediocrity in my walk with the Lord. but to have the godly ambition to be holy as He is holy. Is that what the Word of God says? That should be true of us. And may God help us that that would be important to us. Let's bow our heads in prayer to that. Yes? What is the significance of what you have read in the chapter about those that did not agree with Yes, there were a handful that didn't and they would basically be put out of Jewry. They wouldn't be allowed to stay in Jerusalem and Judea. They would have to leave. Otherwise, this whole thing would have just been a sham if they could persist in their sin with no ramifications. So, sure. All right, let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that we have to study your Word, and Lord, it's important that we walk our way through passages like this and seek to gain insight. Lord, this is the history of something that actually happened. These are real people that lived some 2,500 years ago, Lord, they were guilty, many of them, of making choices that were not biblical, that were sinful. And Lord, it was dealt with on a national basis. It was dealt with. Lord, I'm sure that there would have been ringing of hands. There would have been weeping. Lord, there would have been emotion involved in all of this. It would not have been easy. but they chose to do the right thing. And Lord, I pray that from our perspective, you would challenge our hearts, that we would not, by your grace, that we would not be insensitive to sin, that Father, we would understand that you are holy, and that as your people, as the redeemed children of God, if we are growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ, if we are experiencing the wonderful sanctification, the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, that, Lord, sin and the gravity of sin is something that would definitely be important for us to recognize. So, Lord, help us to learn from this passage, and Lord, help us next week to pick this back up and continue thinking about it. And Lord, by your grace, help us to walk in a way that pleases you. Lord, we'll seek to give you the glory in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. As we...