Ezra
God led me to the book of Ezra this weekend. I really didn’t know anything about him and hadn’t really heard his name mentioned but a few times. As I read through this book I was stopped cold in chapter 9.
Let me back up a bit and explain a little to you about this man. Ezra was a trusted man with great wisdom. He was committed to obeying God and He was dedicated to God’s people. He was a priest and a great leader who was devoted to studying God’s word. Seventy years after the fall of Jerusalem King Cyrus of Persia declared God’s vision for him to rebuild the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem so he sent thousands of Jews, under the leadership of Zerubabbel, to Jerusalem where they began rebuilding the temple. They met much opposition while they were there and within 6 years the rebuilding came to a halt. Ten years later the temple rebuild resumed and within 5 years it was completed. The city itself was still in ruins but the people had an alter where they could worship God and offer sacrifices. About 80 years later Ezra came on the scene and was chosen to take some 2,000 men and their families to Jerusalem to carry out a program of religious education. When he got there he was hit with the hard truth that his people were living in sin, marrying pagan women and accepting their way of living and worshipping their gods. His reaction really touched me and made me stop and think long and hard about how I handle the sin I see.
“When I heard this, I tore my clothing, pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat down utterly shocked.” -Ezra 9:3
Ezra was devastated to hear of the sin his people were living in. He sat down utterly appalled, crying for his people, and while some joined him, he sat there for the rest of the day! As evening came and a sacrifice was ready to be offered up to God, Ezra stood up from his place of mourning, in his torn clothes, and fell to his knees in prayer. Ezra was ashamed of not only the sin of others but his own sin. He related to the people and humbled himself taking responsibility for the sin in his own life as well as the others’. He didn’t point fingers or blame any one person or group of people. He knew full well the sins of his people since the day they left Egypt and he was scared of the consequences. He was truly dedicated to his people and to helping them repent from their sins, as well as his own. His motive was not to condemn but to help them heal and rebuild their holy community.
What caught me when I read this was Ezra’s deep concern for his people and I began to look at how I view sin. Ezra took sin very seriously and was willing to fall to his knees weeping and whaling for his people. How many of us could say that’s our first response when we hear of someone’s sin? I looked back on my life and realized that up until recently, when I heard of sin, my first thought wasn’t always to fall to my knees in prayer. Unfortunately my first thought was usually of judgement and condemnation. Of course I wouldn’t humble myself to identify with them, I wasn’t the one who sinned. I would just look down on the person involved and come up with my solutions to their problem. I know it sounds awful when I get brutally honest, but I believe it’s how a lot of us view sinful people. Until I was able to get real about the sin in my life and accept God’s forgiveness, and until I was in a committed relationship with God, I was unable to take sin seriously. Especially now that I have been a foster parent, my eyes have been opened to a whole new world that I sheltered myself from. God has shown me that the sins of others is no different than my own sin. We are all brothers and sisters in a fallen world. We are each equally susceptible to temptation and sin and instead of pointing our fingers at each other we should be falling to our knees in prayer for our own sin and the sins of others. Like Ezra, we should be concerned for people who are hurting and living a life full of sin and bad choices. Before we ever lift a finger we need to identify with someone who has sinned and remember that our sins are no different.
Our job is to love and forgive no matter what. God didn’t say forgive those who ask or forgive those who work really hard to get better. We are to forgive everyone and love them because God loves us. I hope that you can begin to see things a little differently and understand how satan will use our sins against us and cause division between people. I hope that you will take your sins and the sins of others seriously and begin to pray for people in our community and all over the world instead of condemn them. It is a different view, one I struggle with daily but in God’s eye it is the only view. We must continue to love in a fallen world! We don’t have to accept sin, or brush it under the rug, we need to take it seriously and pray for all involved. I challenge you to humble yourself and pray for someone today who is living in sin. Recall the sin in your own life and remember how easy it was to make one bad choice. Fall to your knees weeping for God to forgive the sins of our community and our nation! If forgiveness is hard for you, ask God to help you. He is waiting for us all to step up and make our community and our nation holy again.