Road Trippin With Rachael

“Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana.

History has always been one of my favorite subjects. I love being able to read about what was happening to people in books, politics, religion, travel, day-to-day life, and how they were expressing themselves through art. Basically, I like to learn from those who have gone before me.

There is a fine line between looking to the past to learn from it and gazing forward to forge ahead. We need to take the mistakes and successes of those who have gone before and learn from them. Sometimes this means that we learn from the failures; sometimes this means we learn from what was successful. The point is that we learn, and we try not to repeat the mistakes.

As we look to Ezra chapters 8 and 9, this is exactly what we see happening. The second wave of Israelites returning to the Promise Land are striving to correct their own errors, and will ultimately be faced with addressing the sins the first wave has fallen into. We have all experienced something similar where we know that something being done isn’t right, but before we begin to point fingers we need to access what we are doing that is sinful in our own lives. This concept isn’t new, but is clearly articulated by Jesus in Matthew 7:3-5 when he tells his audience that before you worry about the speck that is in the eye of someone, you need to worry about the log that is in your own. Likewise, when it comes to correcting generational sins and errors, we need to take a hard look at what our own generation is doing and try to course correct before going to another generation an telling them how they have sinned and everything they have done wrong. As we go through these chapters today, let’s take a look at how this second wave lead by Ezra chose to go about doing addressing their problems and later the sins of the Israelites who returned before them into the Promise Land.

Addressing Their Own Problems

For anyone who has gone through professional counselor (let’s hear it Millennials!) you know that it is not an easy process. Regardless of the type of counseling you go through, there is a LOT of self analysis that takes place during counseling, dealing with the things you can or can’t change, figuring out how to move forward in spite of the things that can’t, and understanding the role (if any) you have played in bringing about the issues you are seeking counseling over. Today we have professional, license counselors who assist with this. Personally, I would highly recommend that finding a integrative Christian counselor who utilizes the bible with healthy psychological practices. In the days of the Old Testament – specifically Ezra and others who returned from Babylon – they looked back at their history to see what decisions, practices, and choices lead them to the place that they were currently at, and what did they need to do as they moved forward upon returning to the land. Some of the ways they chose to do this was: be a united front, sharing the burden, and they recognized what God has done.

No house divided is going to stand -at least not for long. With Ezra serving as the lead who would be taking this newest wave of Israelites back to Israel one of the major things that he called for was a united front. The different clans/extended families of Israelites all gathered together and they presented representatives from each of those clans (Ezra 8:1-15). They came together to communicably. Given the number of people – although not a large as when the people entered the Promise Land in Joshua – there still needed to be agreement for this journey, especially since they would not be traveling with soldiers from the Persian military (8:22). Another point that needed to be addressed was the wealth they would be traveling with. The King and Persian governors, along with the Persian peoples had given a large amount of freewill offerings to the Israelite peoples for the purposes of worship at the temple and for the finances to be used appropriately if there was any left over. Part of being a united front is sharing the responsibility of transporting that sum. Taking a the advice Jethro gave Moses, responsibility is split amongst different men for the whole amount (Exodus 18:21). This kept any one person from being responsible for the whole, and held those responsible accountable for what they were responsible for. It became a team effort with each doing their part. They were a united front.

Secondly, the whole plan to go to the Promise land was being bathed in prayer by those assembled. They knew that they were not going to be successful if this was not what God was calling them to. Thankfully, they believed that to be the case, or they would never have made it to this point, but part of their prayer was that they would be unified in their travels, but that they would also be safe (8:22). The numbers recorded at the beginning of chapter 8 are a count of the men who were on the road – that number does not include the number of women and children who were also traveling. These would have been individuals who would not have had any formal training with weapons (8:21). These three days of prayer were accompanied by fasting (8:23), with Ezra commenting that “[God] was receptive to our prayer” (8:23b). As a group, they were prayerful and asked for God provision. That in and of itself is a major step in correcting past misdeeds and sins – because they wanted to do things right.

Finally, this group about to head to the Promise Land, didn’t only pray and they were not only united in their decisions – they also worshipped. They remembered what God had done for them in the past, how he had covenanted with them, and how they were in the situation they were in because of sin. Not necessarily the sins they had individually committed, since these people were all born in Babylon, but they recognized that they were facing the consequences of others’ sins. Instead of being angry at what they were facing, they worshipped God for preserving them, and for being faithful (8:35). This isn’t only a momentary thing for them, but it is a renewal of their faith, and dare I say, a renewal of their conviction (corporately) to be in covenant with God. If we are truly worshiping, then the chatter of disagreements, of problems, and discontent may not go away, but it will quiet so we can focus on what is important – keeping God at the center of our lives.

These were the convictions of the next generation of Israelites to return to the land.

Addressing the Problems of the Generation Before

We’ve all been there. We’ve looked at the state of our family, country, world and can see what decisions were made that got us to a certain point. This applies to both the good things that the generations before us have done, as well as the bad. Take education for example. By making education more readily accessible, generally speaking more people can read, more people are able to pursue higher forms of education, and as a whole people are more well informed. A negative example would be food factories – although they get more food out to more people – the process of extending shelf life has increased people’s salt intake and consumption of hormones with neither being good for you. The point is that not everything our predecessors have done is bad, but we do need to look at them critically to see what has been harmful and how we can go about correcting them so we don’t make the same mistakes. Unfortunately, as we go through Ezra 9 specifically, we are going to see that some predecessors were going wrong, having not learned from the past.

As I said previously, the first thing that has to be done is recognize where things are going wrong and what has happened that lead in that direction. In the case we are looking at in Ezra the root of the problem was two-fold: the leaders went against God’s directive not to intermarry with the peoples around them, and the people followed suit (Ezra 9:1-2). Why was this such a problem? I’ve said it previously, and I will restate it: this is not an ethnic issue; this is a spiritual issue. The people group that surrounded Israel polytheistic, worshipping multiple gods. They did not believe in Yahweh. The issue is about much more than having a disagreement about what to do on Sundays. Your faith foundation influences every corner of your life. It affects the way you interact with your spouse, how you parent, how you choose to spend your time, how you handle adversity, and how you choose to live your life. When two people do not have that same foundation, they are a house divided. There is a reason Paul tells the church in Corinth not to be unequally yoked (II Corinthians 6:14); when two oxen are pulling the same way they accomplish what needs to happen, but when they are going in two different directions, not only does the field not get plowed, one of the oxen will be pulled in the direction of the other. Unfortunately, all too often it is the believer who acquiesces, resulting in marital strife and children never attending church or hearing the Gospel for themselves. This is exactly what happened in chapter 9. Intermarriages with non-believers happened, and to keep the other partner happy idolatry began to once again enter the stage. This made worse by the leaders of the Hebrew people, the priest and officials, because they were also participating in this sin. People will follow the example set by their leaders. If the message communicated is that it is okay to go against God’s directive, that is what will happen. We may all like to think we wouldn’t give to social pressure, but realistically there are far less divergent thinkers who won’t give in then we like to think. The golden calf incident is another example of this (Exodus 32), and we also have a New Testament example of Peter struggling with public opinion (Galatians 2:11-13). Sin began with leadership, and trickled down to the people – this is where the problem began.

Ezra and the people who were a part of the second wave have the correct response. They didn’t immediately attack those who came back first and were now one to two generations in the land; hey didn’t go around accusing them; they didn’t make backhand comments. Although, unlike many we see in life today (and I’m thinking of the western church) these Israelites would have had the right to do so. They were individuals who were taking great pains to do things to the letter of the law, and the enter the land of their forefathers only to see those who went back earlier doing the very things that landed them in Babylon. It went beyond a disagreement; this was a faithfulness issue. And Ezra does what he should have before addressing the people: he prays. He mourned for the sins that his people were committing, for the sins he has committed, and for the devastation this sin was causing for the people long-term (Ezra 9:6-15). Like Ezra, we should weep when we see our leaders sinning, and like Paul in Galatians we need to call out sin for what it is, but like Jesus told us in Matthew we need to take a hard look at ourselves. ***Please note that if you see a sin that is causing someone physical harm or inappropriate sexual behavior you need to remove that person in harms way, and the one doing the harming needs to be reported – immediately. ***

Application

What does this mean for us?

We wat to think that the way we want to do something is better than the way it was done before – sometimes its true and sometimes it isn’t. But when there is something that is happening that is a sin, unless someone is being harmed, we need to make sure we are guiltless on the issue and then prayerfully and lovingly address it with the ones committing it. We should mourn for the sin being done, but that does not excuse being ugly to the person or group committing the sin. In the next post on Ezra we will be taking a closer look at this. And before you address the issue, you had best be certain that you have gotten that wood plank out of your own eye before you address someone else’s splinter.