Ezra 9

Ezra’s Prayer and the Shock of Intermarriage in Chapter Nine

The Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands.

And in this faithlessness, the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost. As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled my hair from my head and beard and sat appalled.

Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my fasting with my garment and my cloak torn and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God saying, oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you.

My God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities, we, our kings and our priests have been given into the hand of the king of the lands to the sword, to captivity, to plundering and to utter shame as it is today.

But now for a brief moment, favor has been shown by the Lord our God to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery for we are slaves.

Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia to grant us some reviving, to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.

And now our God, now O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments which you commanded by your servants, the prophets, saying that the land that you are entering to take possession of it is in land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands and with their abominations that I have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness.

Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons and never seek their peace or prosperity that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.

And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this, shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations?

Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape? O Lord, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped as it is today.

Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for no one can stand before you because of this. This is the word of God. So the word of God does not come with a trigger warning. It's all right there in chapter nine, isn't it?

Why Ezra Was Disturbed by Intermarriage

Now, you know, obviously if you've talked to me or you know my Facebook page, you know I'm not a social justice warrior. I don't think I ever was. Even before my conversion, when I was being trained to be a social justice warrior in college, I was never the kind that was very touchy about passing judgment on various cultural expressions that I felt were unjust or evil.

That never made me uncomfortable, but it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But even this, when I read this chapter for the first time, and I've read this before, I prepared this sermon, of course. But even when I read stuff like this in the Bible after my conversion, it made me a bit uncomfortable.

It certainly doesn't sound like something that comports with our sensitive modern sensibilities. And I don't blame you if you read stuff like this sometimes and you don't really know what to do with it.

But I'm glad that we have this kind of stuff because it forces us to really face some controversial issues head on because scripture is unashamed. And again, there is no trigger warning. And so let's dive in.

Chapter nine starts off and there's no lead up. There's no beating around the bush. The conflict is presented immediately. Again, there is no trigger warning. The people of Israel have engaged in marriages with people from other nations.

The text says that they've intermixed. That's not a very sensitive word. They have not separated themselves from the people of the land. And this is reported to Ezra in the very first verse of the chapter.

And Ezra's response is not subtle. Verse three, as soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. And he's not the only one. The text says that others joined him too.

It said those who trembled at the words of God joined him and they sat around him while he sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. Now, if you read scripture every now and then, you're used to people tearing their clothes in anguish.

When they see something that is just so troubling to them, they'll tear their clothes. That's a common thing in scripture, but we're not used to seeing people tear out their own beards. That is a bit strange.

Maybe a bit excessive, I don't know. You might consider that excessive. Now, I've been cross-referencing the book of Nehemiah a lot while we're doing Ezra. And we've talked about how he prophesied at the same time and he dealt with a lot of the same circumstances.

That Ezra did. And we've talked that their approaches are slightly different. Nehemiah doesn't approach things the exact same way that Ezra does, although they're dealing with the same circumstances. You wanna know what Nehemiah's response to this whole situation was?

Doesn't sit appalled, he doesn't pull out his own hair. Now, that's too tame for Nehemiah. In chapter 13 of Nehemiah's book, this is what it says about how he deals with this. It says this, it says, I confronted them and cursed them and beat them.

Oh, I'm sorry, I misquoted that. He beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God saying you shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.

Oh yeah, I forgot, trigger warning. What kind of a reaction is that? That's a visceral sort of raw reaction. He sees these people intermarrying, he beats some of them, that's what it says. Now, I don't know how to interpret that except to think that is, they're scandalized by this.

Nehemiah and Ezra are absolutely scandalized by what has happened, the people are intermarrying. So the question is why? We know it breaks the law of God, right? Like the law of God is clear that the Israelites were not to marry people from the surrounding nations.

But the question is why? What is going on here? Now, I wanna make sure this is framed correctly from the beginning because this is controversial, right? But most of us know that this whole thing, it's not about race, right?

Like if we've kind of wrestled with the hard passage of the Bible, one of the common sort of interpretations of this is it's not an interracial marriage per se, but it's a religious thing, it's about religion.

And so God commands the Israelites not to intermarry because the religions are incompatible. So we know that and so we can kind of, even if we think Ezra's reaction's an overreaction or Nehemiah just kind of overreacts, even if we think that, we can at least understand that it's not about race for them.

Biblical Culture, Religion, and Marriage

So here's the thing, God's people were not to marry people from the other nations because the other nations worshiped idols. They had a false religion. Their gods were the antithesis of Yahweh. And so God says that's harmful to create divided households like that.

It's a bad influence for each other, it's a bad influence for your children. We know from the Proverbs that bad company corrupts good morals. And the children of every marriage, according to scripture, those are God's children, right?

God wants your children set apart. The book of Malachi tells us this is the purpose of marriage. I remember talking to someone once and mistakenly, he said that children weren't the point of marriage.

And I disagree, Malachi says that that's one of the primary purposes. He says, look, does he not make them one with a portion of his spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? It says this, godly offspring.

So yes, children are the point of marriage, at least one of the points. And God says they're set apart, they're my children. So if you were to marry a husband or a wife who worships Baal, you're putting your own children in danger.

What do you think would happen? Dad worships Yahweh, mom worships Baal. At best, the kids are gonna be confused, right? And at worst, I don't even wanna think about what could happen. And so you'll understand, most reference books or study guides, if you read Ezra chapter nine, if you look to the bottom where the study notes are, they'll be very clear.

They'll say, look, this isn't about race, this is about religion. And that is true. We all know that this rule even applies today. Christians today ought not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Most of us probably know that at least one couple where they kind of ignored that and it's led to disaster.

So God's command to intermarry is not about race, it's about religions. And most Christians will agree with that, but I will go a step further. It is not just about religion, it is also about culture.

And see, that's the big secular heresy that I am gonna step into here a little bit, because this is completely unorthodox in our culture today. God's people will not intermarry because the cultures themselves at times are not compatible.

They create problems, they can be ungodly. And again, I know that that's controversial, but it really shouldn't be when you think about it, because think about it. Some cultural expressions are evil. Some cultural expressions are morally worse than others.

That is a fact. So when Ezra tears out his beard in grief, Nehemiah tears out other people's beards in anger, this is what the big deal was. It was about cultural degradation through disobeying God and marrying the other nations.

Culture Is Not Neutral

Now, I've said this many times, and it bears repeating, because every time I confront, this is something that I do. Whenever I confront something in scripture or a law in scripture in the Old Testament that doesn't make sense to me, one thing I always have to consider is God is not ridiculous.

God's law is not ridiculous because God is not ridiculous. God makes sense. God is logical. And so, because God makes sense and God is logical, his law likewise makes sense and is logical. So let's think about this from a very base level.

So are cultures neutral? I think that's the idea most people have, not most, but a lot of people have today, that cultures are just neutral, and it's just a matter of taste what culture you like more than another.

So let's talk about a basic kind of cultural expression, right, clothes. Surely clothes are neutral, right? Like I like to wear T-shirts, and in our culture, we got the T-shirt and jeans culture, and sometimes people wear suits.

But in other cultures, they wear different things. They wear tunics or they wear kilts or things like that, right? Or kimonos, right? You don't see a lot of people walking around in kimonos, right, here in the United States, but you might see that somewhere else.

Now, are kimonos or kilts moral, and then jeans and T-shirts immoral? Not necessarily, right? Like that's a matter of taste in a lot of situations. But clothes can be a moral issue. I was thinking about this week for a different reason, but there are some cultures that have a spirituality that's, they kind of embrace like this animism, right, where each person kind of embodies their spirit animal, and as part of that, you walk around dressed like that, or sometimes you wear their animal skin on top of you, and that's your clothes because you embrace the spirit of the wolf.

That's pretty primitive, and you don't see a lot of that going on these days, but it exists. Now, are those kinds of clothes neutral? Clearly not. Clearly not. That particular cultural expression, that is evil according to scripture, and we ought to call it that.

And so a Christian ought not to marry someone who practices animism. That should be clear. What about food, right? Ethnic food, cultural food. Like, you know, I like a lot of different ethnic foods, and I think some are better than others, but Chinese food isn't morally worse than Puerto Rican food, right?

Like that's a matter of taste. I think I might be worse or better, but it's not a moral issue, per se. But there are some cultures that practice cannibalism. That's their food. That is a moral issue, obviously.

So those are pretty easy ones. Those are both pretty primitive, and we can easily see why if you wear a bear suit, and you think that you would have the spirit of the bear inside of you, like, that's evil.

We can see that. We can see, yeah, if you eat people, that's evil. What about something more difficult, right? What about if a culture was ruled by women? All the civil leaders were women. All the women led the home, all these things, and they were in charge of their husbands.

They were supposed to protect their husbands. Is that morally neutral? Now, you know what? On second thought, I'm not gonna go there, because I'm already in dangerous waters as it is, but you get my point, right?

Like, cultures aren't morally neutral automatically. They could be, in a sense. Some aspects of them are, maybe, but some aren't, and this is true today, and that was true in Ezra's time. That's why he pulls out his own beard, right?

Like, your Canaanite wife might be pretty. You might love her very much, but she comes with religious practices that are an abomination to God. She comes with religions, religious norms, and cultural norms that have no place in the people of God, and that has to be considered.

That's why God has that law. He's not ridiculous. It's not that he's thinking, you know, these Canaanites, they're lesser than you. No. Like the Book of Acts, we just read that. God decides. Out of one man, God created everyone, so the Canaanites are related to Adam, just like we're related to Adam.

So it's not that they're lesser than you, but their cultural practices are incompatible with scriptural cultural practices. So that has to be considered. Now, this is a topic that interests me greatly.

This is no secret. If you've seen my Facebook feed or watched any of my videos, you know that this idea of cultural morality is important. Cultural identity. These are things that I think are interesting and important these days, right?

There's a paper that I come back to, and I've read this position. It's a short thing, and if you wanna read it, just let me know, I'll send it to you. It's very short. It's probably about a couple pages long.

And I come back to it again and again and again because it's just gold, right? Absolute gold. It's by Rush Duny, and it's called The New Racism. And I read it again and again because it's so useful. This is what Rush Duny says in this paper.

He says that the mentality of a people is not a product of race. Let me repeat that. Rush Duny says the mentality of a people is not a product of race, but of religion and the culture of that religion.

The key factor is always religion. So what he means by that is that when you get to the foundations, right, deep, deep down, you ask yourself, why do some cultures act one way and other cultures act another way?

The foundational beliefs are always religious in orientation. They're always faith statements. So if you wanna know why some cultures produce documents that say, that take as a foundation that all men are created equal, right, you should look at their religious beliefs.

If you wanna know why that same culture tolerated kidnapping and enslavement of African Americans, you should look at their religious beliefs. And I'm not saying those religious beliefs are right or wrong, I'm just saying that they were religious beliefs.

If you wanna know why our culture today murders 3 ,000 unborn children each and every day, you look at their religious beliefs. Put simply, if you wanna know why some cultures love their neighbors and other cultures eat their neighbors, you look at their religious beliefs.

The Gospel Confronts Ungodly Culture

Now, the point is, and this is why Ezra reacts the way he does, this is why Nehemiah reacts the way he does, there is no compromise between biblical culture and non-biblical culture. There can be no compromise.

When you intermingle godly culture with an ungodly culture, it's not a good result. A Christian must live counter-culturally in every place where the culture at large contradicts scripture, and that is applied to our marriages as well.

That's why it's so crucial who we marry and who we start families with. Because culture, when it's shaped by scripture, when it's corrected by scripture and guided by scripture, that's a beautiful thing.

Like ethnic differences, like the difference between Puerto Ricans and Chinese people and every other ethnicity you can think of, it's beautiful because God created those differences. He created the diversities that we have.

But we have to make sure that those cultural differences that we have, if they're contrary to scripture, we need to correct them by the scripture. We need to apply the Bible to our own ethnic distinctions and our own cultural distinctions.

Because when you don't, that's how you get the horrors of slavery. That's how you get the abortion crisis. Like, let's just be real, you know, the people who came to America, they had a foundationally Christian worldview, but they had blind spots.

They had blind spots. They didn't allow the scripture to correct their opinions on kidnapping African Americans and bringing them to the United States. That's how you get that stuff. There's no intermingling allowed.

And so that's why we had the horrors that we did, because there was intermingling allowed. They allowed cultural things that said, oh yeah, yeah, this is totally fine. That was allowed to intermingle with godly things, and that's not a good practice.

And so biblical culture needs to be cultivated, needs to be practiced and prepared. Rushdie says that the new racism that he's talking about is a kind of a hidden secret kind of racism. It's subtle. It's the kind of racism that, one example he gives is, he had a student, a black student, and he said that when he had a liberal professor, like a non-Christian liberal professor, he always knew that he could get a great grade with very little effort.

Because the teacher didn't expect anything out of him. Even though the teacher was like, yeah, you know, I'm trying to help black and brown people, the teacher wasn't doing that. Because the teacher didn't think that he was capable of the same work that white kids were.

See, that's kind of a hidden kind of racism, right? It's the racism that says that cultures, you know, they're morally neutral, and so we don't want to export the white mentality in our gospel and our missionary work.

Here's Rushdie again. Listen to what he says here. He says, what is the white mentality? And what is the European mode of thought? If it is specifically white, if it is specifically European, then it must be common to pre-Christian Europeans as a racial factor.

The pre-Christian Saxons, for example, practice human sacrifice and much more. The Western mind common to Europe and the Americas is a product not of race, but of culture, religious culture. Elements of it, none too good, go back to the barbarian peoples of Europe.

And other aspects are from Greek philosophy. Again, none too good. But the Western mind and culture in all of its advances is a product of biblical religion. It is a religious, not a racial product. So what he's saying is the good aspects of American culture, those are biblical, right?

That can't be made more plain. I'm gonna say that again. Everything good, culturally speaking, about a country or a nation is because it either comports or is derived from the Bible. And the bad aspects of that culture, those are something else, but they're not biblical.

Because we know that every good and perfect gift comes from above because God is the source of goodness. So if you try to intermingle goodness from God and wickedness from Satan, it just doesn't work.

It never works. That's why the alt-right is so twisted. If you know about the alt-right, right? There are these white nationalists. They're gaining popularity. This is why they're so twisted because what they try to do is they look at all the good things in culture, right?

And they say, look, look at how awesome Western civilization is. And you know why it's so awesome? Clearly it's the white skin. It's a racial thing. That is so dumb. It misses the point entirely, right?

Like the whole point of this is that white Europeans before the gospel came, they were painting themselves blue and going to war and practicing human sacrifice and beating each other up with clubs. That's what they were doing before the gospel came.

It's only when the gospel comes that the greatness of Western culture was truly realized. So we must be careful because culture is not neutral and it's also not primarily racial, it's religious. A lot of pastors and Christian leaders, it's very popular and fashionable to imagine the future of Christianity as a multicultural future.

That is very popular. And inherent in that idea is this idea that cultures are neutral, but I tell you, they are not. Ethnicities are good and differences in our ethnicities are created by God. The Bible is very clear on that, but that's different than culture.

That's a completely different matter. We must be careful not to over contextualize the gospel message until it's completely unrecognizable. This is Rush Dooney one more time. I'm sorry, there's gonna be one more quote.

Here's what he says. He says, closely related to all this is the area of Bible translations. He says that there's a dynamic equivalence theory that's common to most Bible societies and translation group.

This translates the Bible into culture and its ideas. So instead of the words being word for word, it says, okay, we're gonna translate what the Bible says into ideas, not really the words itself. And so what happens is instead of reshaping the culture, the Bible is translated into that culture, which makes the culture the unerring word, not the Bible.

Thus, the culture corrects the Bible and not the Bible the culture. See, Ezra realized the danger for what it was. He knew that the gospel and the scripture boldly confronts the errors of the culture, not vice versa.

So even if there's something that's thought of in your culture as a sacred cow, so to speak, the gospel will call that out and insist on repentance. It doesn't downplay sin. It does not set it aside. It does not play footsie with sin.

And it certainly doesn't welcome it into the church. It insists on repentance and faith. And that's what Ezra demonstrates and the people will demonstrate next week. You see, when the gospel came to Europe, the early missionaries, they didn't have any regard for the culture that existed at the time in Europe.

They didn't seek to contextualize the gospel message to their pagan religion where they sacrificed people to the gods. They didn't seek to soften the message because they were afraid that it might hurt their pagan sensibilities.

On the contrary, this is one last Rushtuni quote. This is what the missionaries to Europe did. They regarded their pagan religion as unregenerate and in need of being broken and redeemed. All the plagues and the evils of the European mind are products of the fallen man and the relics of barbarian cultures, not of Christ and his word.

All that is good in the European mind is a result of Christian culture, not of race. And so I pray that you consider Ezra's reaction. I pray that you consider his words about why is he reacting? Why is he sitting appalled by this intermixing of the nations?

I think if you're really honest with yourself, you'll understand that the Canaanite culture, the Jebusite culture, the Egyptian culture, they were just unacceptable in the kingdom of God and in God's people.

I know that that's controversial. And I know that what Ezra says and does and what Nehemiah says and does is also controversial. But I ask that you go to God in prayer to understand and to get wisdom on this matter because it's so vital today.

Prayer for Revival, Repentance, and Mercy

Let's pray that Christ will become foundational in our own culture. Let's pray for revival in the areas where we've neglected to acknowledge Christ. And let's repent in those areas. Let's pray. God, I pray that you would create a revival in the United States, Lord.

I pray that we would all recognize that the good things that we have, the good aspects of our culture, and there are many, God. I'm not saying that there are not many. I pray that you would help us to recognize that those good things are directly derived from the scripture or, at the very least, compatible with it.

And Lord, I pray that you would help us to repent and to change our minds about the areas of our culture that do not comport with scripture because it's that intermingling that's so dangerous. It's why Ezra tears out his beard.

It's why Nehemiah gets so angry. Lord, I pray that you would help us to apply the same standard to ourselves because so many of us, including myself, will intermingle scriptural foundations and scriptural beliefs with unscriptural ones, ones that come from somewhere else.

And just as it's a disaster for a culture to do that, it's a disaster for us to do that to ourselves and for our families, God. So I pray, Lord, that you would help us to be wise enough to understand how to live in such a way that we consider your word as foundational.

I pray that you would help us to understand how to organize our own lives, our personal lives, in such a way that considers Christ as foundational. Also our families, Lord, also our church, also our communities.

God, I pray that you help us, God, because we need wisdom from above in order to do this, God. Lord, I also thank you so much, as our psalm that we read in the beginning of our worship, I thank you for not forgetting your covenant and for having mercy on us and for providing us with redemption because without that, we would be completely lost.

As Ezra says in his prayer, God, that you have not treated us the way you could have because of our rebellion, but yet you've saved us. You have a remnant, God. Man, just some of the things that go on in the United States, you would be within your right to just completely come in and wipe it out, but you don't, you have your remnant.

So God, we thank you for that, Lord. We thank you for sparing us. We thank you for your mercy on each and every one of us, Lord, and your continuing mercy, Lord, as we imperfectly try to apply your words to our lives, Lord, we're gonna mess up.

We're not gonna get it right every single time, but we can count on your continued mercy towards us, Lord. We thank you for that, Lord. We thank you for inviting us to this table as you're about to do, in Jesus' name, amen.