Bible Reading 1:Contending for the faith

Good afternoon. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, speak to us, we pray, through your living Word, and open our hearts and minds to believe and obey. In Jesus name. Amen.

What I do want to do today is a kind of case study in contending for the faith from the Old Testament. But first, from the New Testament, here’s Jude 3-4:

Beloved, though I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Those are two crucially important verses for our times. They make clear contending is not what we want to do but it is what we need to do. And the reason that we can contend with confidence is that the faith has been revealed by God and is unchanging. And the reason we need to contend is that false teaching is deadly. It creeps in unnoticed at first. It perverts God’s grace. It promotes immorality. It rejects the Lordship of Christ. It promises everything but slams shut in people’s faces the only door to peace with God. So this matters. It could not matter more. And therefore we must respond to God’s call to contend for the faith. So with that in mind, my point is simply this:

Learn From An Old Testament Case Study In Contending For The Faith

So I want us to turn to the Book of Ezra. This case study in contending for the faith is in chapters 9 – 10. We’ve just heard chapter 9. The circumstances were different, but God was the same. And I want to draw out seven lessons in contending for the faith from what happened here. But before we get into those, let’s remind ourselves what’s going on. The background is this. The people of Israel were God’s chosen people – the forerunners of the church. God chose them and called them to be holy so that through them he could bless all the nations of the world. To become a blessing they had to be radically different from the godless, immoral and idolatrous pagan nations around them. Because of the danger of being dragged away into immorality and idolatry, their men were forbidden to marry pagan women from the surrounding nations. They had to be faithful to the living God who had called them. But instead, they were unfaithful. They wanted to be like the godless nations around them. So they engaged in all of what the Bible calls ‘the detestable practices’ of those pagan nations. Instead of changing the nations around them, they were changed by them.

As a result, they came under God’s judgement. Jerusalem, their capital city, was destroyed. They were taken into exile. They were ruined. The parallels between their experience and what has happened to the church in the Western world over the last 50 years are striking. Two generations later, the survivors were allowed to return to the ruined city of Jerusalem. Some of them did. But even after the disaster that had befallen them, had they learned their lesson? No. Many of the men once again began to marry women from the pagan nations around. Some of them, at least, were actually divorcing their Israelite wives so that they could marry these pagan women. The prophet Malachi makes that clear.

Ezra was an Israelite priest and Bible teacher who was in exile and came back to Jerusalem some years later, into this community of returned Israelites. At first he didn’t realise the extent of this potentially ruinous disobedience. He began systematically teaching the Bible to the people – teaching the truth in this situation of grave error. And that’s when things erupted on this pagan marriage issue. Unquestionably these chapters Ezra 9-10 make for a disturbing, challenging section of Scripture. We can’t deal here with all the questions they raise. But that’s what happens when a nation gets itself systematically into a spiritual and moral mess. There is an inevitable tragedy. There is no easy way out.

Only through a painful encounter with the living God and his Word of truth can peace and hope be found in the end. The sinful, disastrous behaviour has to stop – in this case these pagan marriages that will drag Israel back into catastrophe if they’re allowed to continue. The mess has to be unravelled. And that’s what happens in these chapters. Here then are those seven lessons in contending for the faith from this painful episode in Israel’s history.

First, get familiar with the story of God’s people. We need to know about what happens here with Ezra. A major part of their problem was that they so quickly were forgetting what had got Israel into such a catastrophic mess. So they were just repeating the same mistakes and heading for the same disaster. So, for instance, in 9.7-8 Ezra prays:

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 kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today…

They should have known, and we need to know, from the history of our ancestors in the faith, that unfaithfulness is disastrous; and that revival only comes by the grace of God through repentance and faith.

Secondly, have your eyes open to what is happening in church and society. Some of the leaders of the Israelites came to Ezra and admitted to him to what had been going on with these pagan marriages, contrary to God’s Law and his purposes for his people. Ezra was horrified. Ezra 9.1:

…the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations…”

And Ezra 9.3:

As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled.

Not only must we have our ears open to the words of God, we must have our eyes open as well. Ezra’s reform began when some of the Israelite officials faced up to what was going on among them, and approached Ezra with the facts. Burying our heads in the sand might seem easier. But if we do that, we simply allow a bad situation to continue to slide, and to get worse and worse.

Thirdly, be someone who trembles at the words of the living God. 9.3 again:

Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered round me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice.

There are basically two different approaches to the Bible and its teaching that we can take. We can look for loopholes – trying to find ways round it, trying to find ways not to take it seriously without outright rejecting it. Or we can tremble at it – aware that we are listening to the very words of the living God, and knowing that the only right response is to understand, believe and obey. We will never contend for the faith revealed by God’s Word if we haven’t first learned to tremble at God’s Word.

Fourthly, feel the seriousness of the situation. We have already heard how appalled Ezra was at what he found out. This is what happened next – from Ezra 9.5:

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: “O 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.”

How we feel these things will vary. Our personalities differ widely. That’s fine. But the seriousness of unfaithfulness to God in our church or our society has to impact not just our minds but our hearts. If we’re going to put our heads above the parapet and contend for the faith in a potentially hostile environment, then it’s not enough for us to think about the truth superficially. We have to feel it deep down in our hearts. Like Ezra, we have to be appropriately appalled, and prayerfully ashamed.

Fifthly, contend both collectively and individually. There is here a significant collaboration between the individual Ezra, who certainly gives a lead in his response to the situation, and also the wider group of God’s people who have seen the need for fundamental change. We need both if we are to contend for the faith effectively in our church and society. So Ezra 10.1-4:

While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly. And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “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. Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put 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. Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.”

We need to stand together with others who see the issues and are ready to act. But then some individuals have a particular calling which may be more public. When we’re ready to contend both collectively and individually, then we’ll be ready, with the help of God’s Spirit who lives within us, to act on the next lesson.

So, sixthly, speak humbly but boldly. Ezra 10.5:

Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel swear that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.

This is where the rubber hits the road. This where the contending takes place. If we’re ready and willing to speak up, then God will give us opportunities. But we must always remember that in such situations there are two kinds of speaking that need to be going on. So we must speak on our knees to God in prayer. And then speak on our feet, as it were, to church and society. That’s what Ezra did. He humbled himself before God and the people, identifying himself with the sin that had got them into this mess. And then from that position of humility he spoke with great boldness. So speak humbly but boldly.

And then finally, act when you can,Ezra 10.14-17 – Ezra is speaking to the people assembled in the pouring rain:

“Let our officials stand for the whole assembly. Let all in our cities who have taken foreign wives come at appointed times, and with them the elders and judges of every city, until the fierce wrath of our God over this matter is turned away from us.” Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah opposed this, and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite supported them. Then the returned exiles did so. Ezra the priest selected men, heads of fathers’ houses … On the first day of the tenth month they sat down to examine the matter; and by the first day of the first month they had come to the end of all the men who had married foreign women.

You might not be able to do more than speak up when the opportunity is given to you. But sometimes we are in a position to do things to further the work of revival and reform. Once patterns of unfaithful behaviour are embedded in the life of church or society it becomes very difficult and painful to turn back the tide. As at the time of Ezra, we can get into the tragic and unavoidable situation of having to choose the lesser of two evils if things are going to be put right. But as Jude reminds us, it needs to be done. So let’s hear the call to contend for the faith. And remember those lessons from Ezra. Think of them as relating to our ears, eyes, feet, heart, mouth and hands. Ears open to God’s Word. Eyes open to see what’s going on around us. Feet on which to take our stand. Heart to feel. Mouth to speak. Hands to act. As the grieving Israelites, moved by the Spirit of God, said to Ezra (this is Ezra 10.4):

Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, we have wandered far from you. Have mercy on us, our church and our nation. By your grace teach us through a deep work of your Spirit to tremble at your Word, to repent, to believe, and to do your will. In Jesus name and for his sake. Amen.