Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

Ezra 7-10 (selected verses) March 9, 2008
I Saw the Lord – Part 6
“U-Turns Encouraged”
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer

God created human beings to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. From those first days in the Garden of Eden, God walked with the man and with the woman in complete communion. God had complete love for us, and we had complete love for God. Our hearts were not divided against God and his will then – We were all walking together in the same direction, in common purpose, hiding nothing, sharing everything.
Last Sunday in the midst of our revival journey during Lent, we were challenged by the example of the life of King David, by his honest prayer in Psalm 51, and by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, to do a reality check on our own lives to see how far out of communion with God we have fallen. It became glaringly obvious to those who had ears to hear, that our own goodness or rightness before God, is not good enough, is not right enough, is not worth a handshake or a high five, and is not going to earn us anything that lasts beyond our final earthly breath. Our reality check last Sunday confirmed what the Scripture tells us: that we are sinners through and through, for “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) There is no one who is righteous, not even one. There is no one who seeks God. (Romans 3:10) Our righteousness is like a filthy rag compared to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. (Isaiah 64:6)
In the box in front of the communion table are slips of paper with particular sins circled or underlined that some of us felt conviction about last Sunday. We carried them up the aisle and put them in the box last week as a way of saying to God, “I see my sin. I own how far from perfect holiness I am. I see how far I am from your will for my life. I see it God.” This was an important step in our journey to a true revival of our hearts, because if we don’t see something that’s in our path, we’re going to keep tripping over it, tripping over it, tripping over it, and eventually we’re going to fall down. Last week, God shined his light on our sin in order for us to see it so that we might know how very much we are in need of a Savior.
Wabush, a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada, was completely isolated for some time. But recently, a road was cut through the wilderness to reach it. Wabush now has one road leading into it, and thus, only one road leading out. If someone would travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush, there is only one way he or she could leave—by turning around.
Each of us, by birth, arrives in a town called Sin. As in Wabush, there is only one way out—a road built by God himself.
Ezra was a Jewish priestly scribe who led about 5,000 Israelite exiles living in Babylon to their home city of Jerusalem around 400 years before the birth of Christ. God has a few things to teach us today, using the life of Ezra. I’m going to read a couple of verses from chapter 7 of Ezra: v.6: “This Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord the God of Israel had given; and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was upon him.” (A scribe, by the way, was a person who copied sermons or scripture). v.9: “On the first day of the first month the journey up from Babylon was begun, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the gracious hand of his God was upon him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel.”
Ezra had SET HIS HEART to:
• Study the Scriptures,
• To do what the Scriptures say to do, and
• To teach what the Scriptures say to others.
Back before Christmas, John and I picked up our granddaughter Riley to make a special present for her mommy and daddy. I bought one of those kits to make a mold of her hand – you know the kind I mean. I actually bought it last year to do with her, but when I read that you have to keep your hand perfectly still for 2 minutes (or something like that), I knew she’d never make it. But, this year I was sure she could do it at almost 4 years old. Well, you do this and you do that, and you pour the stuff into the mold, and you wait a certain number of seconds before you put your hand in – which we did. But all of sudden that material started to harden and it was hardening fast! Quickly Riley slapped her hand down in there and held it still – and the result was a sweet little handprint SET in plaster forever. It’s set in there. Just like Ezra’s heart was SET to:
• Study the Scriptures,
• To do what the Scriptures say to do, and
• To teach what the Scriptures say to others.
Just like Jesus SET his face to go to Jerusalem as we read in Luke 9:51, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.” In other words, Jesus was not going to turn back from what he had been sent to do. Ezra was not going to turn back from what he knew was right to do. Hearts can be SET on certain things. Faces can be SET in certain directions.
When Ezra got to Jerusalem to be part of rebuilding the temple of God, he discovered that God’s chosen people, who knew God instructions, did not follow God’s instructions about intermarrying with the people of the land. Listen to Ezra’s prayer after he finds out how they had been living (New Living Translation, Ezra 9:6-15):
“O my God, I am utterly ashamed; I blush to lift up my face to you. For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens. Our whole history has been one of great sin. That is why we and our kings and our priests have been at the mercy of the pagan kings of the land. We have been killed, captured, robbed, and disgraced, just as we are today.
But now we have been given a moment of grace, for the Lord our God has allowed a few of us to survive as a remnant. He has 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 that we were able to rebuild the Temple of our God and repair its ruins. He has given us a protective wall in Judah and Jerusalem.
And now, O our God, what can we say after all of this? For once again, we have ignored your commands! Your servants the prophets warned us that the land we would possess was totally defiled by the detestable practices of the people living there. From one end to the other, the land is filled with corruption. You told us not to let our daughters marry their sons, and not to let our sons marry their daughters, and not to help those nations in any way. You promised that if we avoided these things, we would become a prosperous nation. You promised that we would enjoy the good produce of the land and leave this prosperity to our children as an inheritance 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 now we are again breaking your commands and intermarrying with people who do these detestable things. Surely your anger will destroy us until even this little remnant no longer survives. O Lord, God of Israel, you are just. We stand before you in our guilt as nothing but an escaped remnant, though in such a condition none of us can stand in your presence.”
Because Ezra’s heart was SET to study the Scriptures, to do what the Scriptures say to do, and to teach what the Scriptures say to others, Ezra saw the reality of his and his peoples’ sin. In his prayer, he wasn’t so much sorry for the intermarrying as he was sorry for their overall lack of obedience to the instructions of God. He was broken before God, just like I think some of us were broken before God last week. I don’t know about you, but I was so aware of my sinfulness this past week. It’s true that apart from the Lord, I can do nothing of any value. This is the truth about all of us. Apart from the Lord, I am nothing – and this truth alone sets me free to turn around and set my face towards God. This truth drives me to want to please God above pleasing anyone else. This truth takes me to my knees to give God the highest praises, honor, and glory for not abandoning me to an eternal life of wickedness apart from Him.
To repent, friends, means to turn around and go the other way. To repent was the message of the prophets, and was the message of John the Baptist who prepared the way for Jesus by saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2). To repent was the message of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 4:17, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” and to repent was the message of the Apostles as recorded in Acts 2:38, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.” Repentance involves a change of mind, which produces a change of will, which produces a change of living. Repentance that does not change the mind, does not change the will, and does not produce a change of living, and is not true repentance.
True repentence has to do with believing God when God says “do this,” or “don’t do that.” To think that we can add Christ to our lives but not subtract sin is to think we can add a new baby to our households and not subtract sleep, or substract the money it takes to care for the baby.
Perhaps this lack of understanding or commitment to true repentance is why so many people look at the church, maybe even people who have been part of a congregation in the past, and say things like, “I want no part of the church. They’re nothing but hypocrites. In fact, I think people are more cruel to each other in the church than they are anywhere else.” Perhaps we have been convinced of the truths of the Word of God, but we’ve never really been saved from our wicked ways because we have never been willing to turn away from them.
Ezra’s heart, that was SET on knowing and doing the will of God, taught the people the true meaning of repentance. Here’s what he said (10:2-3), “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. So now let us make a covenant with our God to send away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the law.” If you jump to the very last verse of the book you read, “All these had married foreign women, and they sent them away with their children.”
That’s true repentance. They believed God enough to do what he said they needed to do, regardless of whether they completely understood or not. I can’t think how painful it must have been to send their families away, but not nearly as painful as it would have been had they continued to live in their sin against the will of God.
Do you remember the story of the prodigal son? The son wanted his inheritance from his father before his father was dead – and the father gave it to him. The son went off, squandered all of the money, ended up homeless, feeding pigs, and eating pig food. The Scripture in Luke 15 tells us that when he came to his senses, he turned around and headed home to his father. He knew he had sinned in a particular way against his earthly father, but he also knew he was a sinner before God (the Scripture tells us, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you.”) The son SET his heart on doing what he knew was right to do, realizing that without the blessing of his father, he could do nothing but throw slop. It is the same for us with our Heavenly Father.
Repentance begins with coming to our senses.
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “I cannot keep sneaking around on my spouse and convince myself it’s not hurting anyone. I am hurting my spouse and I am sinning against God.”
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “I am finished pretending that not being reconciled to my brother, or my sister, or my parents, or my children is okay with me. It’s not okay with me because it is not okay with God. I’m supposed to be an ambassador of reconciliation in the world.”
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “Alcohol is not helping me. Alcohol is hurting me. I have put alcohol (or drugs or food or pornography or my work or my hobby or my family or my ambitions or my money or my fears) on the throne of my life, and I want God on that throne from now on.”
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “The fact that my children don’t want to come to Sunday school and worship should not be determining whether I do my part in raising them up in the knowledge of the Lord and in the context of the church family. I know where we should be on a Sunday morning, and from now on out, we’re going to do this God’s way.”
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “Living with my husband or wife as nothing more than two people sharing a house is not what God wants for us, and it’s not what I want either. I want to work on restoring my marriage to what God intended it to be.”
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “Just because I’m older now, doesn’t mean I cannot continue to serve God in important ways. I’m going to stop waiting for someone to beg me to do something, I’m going to volunteer to serve, because I can, and because God says I should.”
• Repentance begins with a change of mind – such as, “Being sexually active outside of marriage might be okay according to the culture, but it is not okay according to the laws of God and so it is not okay with me anymore.”
Repentance begins with a shake of the head, a coming to our senses, that moves like an electric charge from the head down to the heart. Repentance begins with a change of the mind that moves firmly and quickly to a change of the heart/will that moves immediately to a change of behavior that is in line with the will of God as revealed in Scripture. This is the fruit of true belief – changed lives!
• This kind of Christian living would make the world sit up and take notice.
• This kind of Christian living would change the world, one life at a time.
• This kind of transformed living is what Jesus died to give us – freedom from being slaves to our sin so that we could receive life in all its fullness - just as God intended from the days of the Garden.

Repent.
Turn around.
Walk away from your sin.
For the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Let us pray: Gracious God, Merciful Lord – thank you for not turning away from us, even though we turn away from you. Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for being the God of the second chance. Thank you that your blood is so much more powerful than our sin. We put ourselves now under the blood, asking you to wash us, to remove the stain of our sin. We ask you to forgive us of our sin, and give us a willing spirit, ready to do your will without compromise. Hear us, Father, as we confess to you those ways of living from which we know we must turn. (Silence for confession)

Thank you, Holy God, for receiving us in your arms of love. Thank you for welcoming us home. May we not rely on our own strength, but on your power, to live lives that glorify you and enable us to enjoy you forever and ever. Amen.

Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

03-09-08