Read the Room...

Yesterday I preached a message titled " The responsibility of the remnant" ending our time in the book of Ezra. We've been looking at the returning exiles and how they faced opposition when it came to rebuilding their temple and rebuilding their lives in general, physically, but most importantly spiritually. In the end, after all the adversity we see the Jews completed their mission of rebuilding and their lives were off to a new start......or was it? In Ezra chapter 9 we see a great danger in the form of intermarriage. As the remnant of Israel (The small number of remaining Jews graciously left by God out of Israel's larger mass) the people should have understood two specific things when it came to their desire to honor God, move forward and leave their past behind and I think we can all learn from them.

1.) They should have understood their generations climate!

Ezra prays to God about the intermarriage problem and in his prayer, he recounts how the Lord warned Israel through the mouths of his prophets about the climate of the land the Jews called the promise land, not the natural climate but the spiritual one. Before their temple was destroyed in the first place, God told them about the prevailing thoughts, mentality and spiritual practices of the people of the land. They worshipped idols and sacrificed their children in worship of these idols. These lands were therefore polluted by their inhabitants. Israel should have been aware of this fact as they constructed their temple! they should've understood that although they worshipped the God of righteousness and light, they were surrounded by darkness and evil...... they should've read the room. As a Christian, I ask you today, have you read your " generations room" your neighborhood, community, city, country etc... we must understand that we are surrounded by darkness! having that understanding causes us not to be shocked when we run into evil and corruption, but that awareness also equips us to do something about it!!

2.) They should've understood their general call!

Now we get into why intermarriage for Israel was discouraged and flat out prohibited. I just mentioned how they should've read the room, knowing that the peoples of the land were misaligned with them when it came to values, priorities and righteousness, it made zero sense for Israel to desire to join and intermingle with them, especially if they understood that mixing with the nations caused the judgement of God to fall on them in the first place. The ban on intermarriage then wasn't based on ethnicity but spirituality! God desired for Israel the same thing he desires for us to serve our unbelieving neighbors by being lighthouses of truth and holiness, doesn't want us to conform to the world around us but rather TRANSFORM IT! I believe many of us have missed our general call as believers to be salt and light to a dying world around us as we've elected rather to be LIKED by them and integrated into their culture and society. We are meant to fit out not fit in, i pray that we remember that. In the end Ezra prayed to God for forgiveness on behalf of those who had intermarried with the nations around them and those who did actually put away their wives in an act of repentance! Let us have the same heart posture as well as we seek to please our father!