A Godly Man’s Godly Sorrow | Ezra 9 (Mark Evans)

In the book of Ezra, the officials inform Ezra that the people of Israel have intermarried with the surrounding pagan nations, which is a violation of God's law. Ezra is deeply grieved by this and confesses the guilt of the people and acknowledges the just consequences they have faced. He does not make excuses or shift blame. This teaches us the importance of godly sorrow for sin, which leads to confession and repentance. If you have your Bible, do make your way to the book of Ezra, as we come now to the second and last chapter in the book. We find ourselves in Ezra 9 this morning as we continue our series through this wonderful book. And to get us going, I will read the first six verses of Ezra 9. And these are the words of the true and the everlasting God. After these things had been done, 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, from the Canaanites, 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 the chief men has been foremost. 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 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, O my God, I am ashamed and blushed 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. While the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we do praise you for your word. Even hard passages such as this are so full of life because they do indeed lead us away from impurity, from sin, and lead us towards the fount of living water, the only one who can cleanse us from guilt, this great righteousness that has become ours, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And so we do pray you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear. In his name we pray, and amen. Amen. You may be seated. Well, I can still remember from my time in health care, specifically when it came to compounding pharmaceuticals, how great the importance of purity was. Certainly things like customer service, timely delivery, and quality nursing were all quite important to a patient, but nothing compared to purity. And it's not hard to see why, is it? If you deliver a drug, you administer a drug, even administer the drug with a smile and great care. It's all for naught if that drug is not pure, because all it takes is for that pure drug to be mixed, to be mingled with some impurities, and the result can be an extremely toxic, if not fatal, combination. Rather than healing a patient, such impurity could easily kill a patient. Above all else, purity is king. And so it is in Ezra 9 for us to consider this morning when we see Ezra returns home hoping to find a pure people, only to discover instead this toxic, fatal mixture, not chemically but spiritually. He discovers this deadly blend between Israel and the surrounding nations. And so what we'll see is this godly man's godly response that we will have much to glean from. And so we'll walk through this rather lengthy chapter looking at three simple parts. We'll look at godly sorrow, followed by a good confession, and then perhaps most importantly of all, the grace of our God. Start off with the main point, that godly sorrow for sin leads us to the grace of God. It's an important question even to think about now. When did you last have godly grief for sin? We all speak much of the grace of God, but do you know something of sorrow for your sin? Because of course you truly can't know one without the other. If you have a distortedly low view of sin, then you will form a low view of God's grace. If sin is of little consequence to you, then the mercies of God will seem to be of little consequence. But the more and more we grasp the sinfulness of our sin, as if the vastness of God's grace starts to expand right before our very eyes, that before long we'll be like Paul saying, oh, the depths, how far, how wide, how deep is this love of Jesus Christ? So let's follow Ezra on that path, looking firstly at godly sorrow. As verse 1, we see the red flag pops up right away. These officials approach Ezra, and they notify him of a problem. Now just remember, Ezra is a man on a mission. We saw last week, if you weren't here, he's returning back to Jerusalem, but his goal was never simply return home. His singular goal was see to it that God's law is being kept by God's people. And so in verse 1, the officials report, it unfolds, will be of highest concern to Ezra. It reads this, the people of Israel and the priest and the Levites, so just notice, from the common Israelite all the way up to the highest religious officials are included. It says, they have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands. Now remember, when Israel was exiled, he had this vacuum in the holy land, and that open space was replenished with non-Israelites. So now Israel is back in the promised land, and they're surrounded by these pagan nations, yet they have failed to separate themselves from them. We learn much here of the nature of true holiness. Now to be holy certainly means more than separation, but it also certainly does not mean less than to be separated from the world. We are in the world, but not of the world. Christians are called out as a holy people. As 2 Corinthians clearly says, come out from their midst and be separated from them. Now it's sometimes said of Christians that we should not be known by what we are against. That's too negative, too contrarian. Instead, we should only be known by what we are for and what we affirm, which sounds so good, but just imagine an oncologist who says, you know what? I no longer want to be known by what I'm against, so I'm no longer taking a stand against tumors, against metastasis, against cancerous growth. Now these diagnoses are far too negative. From now on, you'll only get affirmations out of me. Now you ought to respond, no, doc, you don't understand. I need your negations because they are the pathway to health, and so too is the separation that holiness requires. As Paul says, what does Christ have to do with Belial? What does the temple of God have to do with idols? Here Israel is failing to be the separate holy nation that she was called to be. And you can see the severity of their compromise in that word there, abominations, found in verse 1. You see, it's not as if they're just casually socializing with the non-Israelites around the water cooler, no, they're fully participating in and imbibing in what are detestable, abominable practices. And, of course, we see the same failure in spades in our own day. We have seen this with the LGBTQ agenda, for instance, and the church's outright failure to separate from and to stand against what is an abomination. And that failure of separation has not resulted in a neutral space, a safe space, no, it's resulted in the church's compromise. But there are ultimately only two options when it comes to holiness. We can be separated from our sin, or we can be separated from our God. And we have, in many ways, chosen the latter. Now, you might be wondering, well, what exactly is this abomination named in verse 1? Well, as you read on, it's spelled out for you in verse 2. For they, that is, the Israelites, have taken some of their daughters, that is, of the pagan nations, to be wives for themselves and for their sons. So the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And the faithlessness of the hand of the chief officials has been the foremost. So one of the things that God's law was clear on was do not intermarry with the surrounding nations because they will be a snare and a trap to you. They will lead you away from God and lead you toward false gods. It has nothing to do with racial purity. It has everything to do with spiritual purity. You can recall the great King Solomon, for instance, who at the height of his glory, 1 Kings, reads, but he loved many foreign women. And in doing so, they led him astray to worship false gods. And you see the same thing here. Rather than separating, they have syncretized themselves with the nations. And you see, it's this failure at an epidemic level, starting with the top, the chief men, the leaders, and trickling down to the common, everyday Israelites. And so, how might we think about this today? Well, certainly, a very obvious immediate application would be that Christians are to only marry within the faith, that Christians are not even free to think about marrying a non-Christian. And so, to parents with budding children, it's wise to have ongoing discussions, even now with your children, about the joys of marriage, about the joy of what it is to be united to Christ and united to one another as one flesh. And, of course, with that, as always, comes the even greater goal that your very marriage itself serves as a living testimony, the best example of all of what it is to be man and wife. As is often said about these things, it's much better caught than it is taught. But we also learn from Israel's failure something of the basic differences between men and women, namely, sons and daughters, that our confused world knows nothing of. The Scripture teaches that daughters, in particular, are to be given in marriage, while sons leave. Daughters given, sons leave. Now, you might remember from Exodus, it says, the man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. And conversely, you see in Scripture how the bride is adorned and presented or gifted to a groom. You can even look at verse 12, you see the negative version of this truth. God commands them, do not give your daughters to their sons. Now, despite ourselves, we have a small sliver of this truth remaining in our society. I attended a wedding recently and I was pleased to hear the officiating minister pose the question to the father of the bride, which was, who gives this woman to marry this man? Now, perhaps no one paid attention to it, maybe it was all just lip service, but that question points to the much deeper biblical truth that daughters are a very precious gift to be given by parents, mainly by the father, as it marks this transition from his headship over to the new headship that is her husband. In many ways, it exposes the modern-day lie of feminism that an independent woman, a strong woman, right? An independent woman is a safe woman and she is an autonomous woman. She is a woman who can stand on her own two feet and Scripture would say, no, that is an abandoned, unloved woman, because such headship is a tremendous blessing when wielded correctly. So, this truth not only remedies for us marriage, but it also remedies for us the misguided pursuit of marriage, what is often called today recreational or casual dating that is the norm in our culture and in many ways, the norm amongst even Christians, right? We know this all too well, boy ask out girl and there is little to no interaction with the parents, particularly the father is absent and if he were involved, it would be considered this weird intrusion, right? This anomaly. And so, with the nuisance of the parents removed, now all that is left is this boy-like-girl, this girl-like-boy. Now, let's fall in love and you fast forward six months and they are either more compromised in their purity or they are on to the next relationship to repeat this vicious cycle. But when parents, especially fathers, are doing their job to prepare their children to leave and cleave, it provides this great blessing of giving daughters away and of sending off sons. And yet here, you have the exact reverse of that benevolent headship. Instead of daughters being given, these daughters are being taken. You see in verse 2, they are taking these wives for themselves even and for their sons. It's an evil made even worse and that the leading men are the ones leading the pack in this abomination. So we can apply this, of course, to Christian marriage, but we can broaden it out to any sin of syncretism, right, that mixes holiness with godlessness. You see that conclusion in verse 2, the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples. And now once again, this is not a call to withdraw from the world. A hermit crab Christianity that withdraws into a shell is no Christianity at all. We are in the world, yet not intermixed with the world. This is why Scripture so often uses the analogy of light. Light coexists with darkness, yet without any intermingling. And light, simply by virtue of being light, overcomes the darkness. One of the great saints once said that all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish a single lit candle. And in Israel, here is failing to be that light. So there is the abomination in all its fullness. But we next see this reaction of a godly man's godly sorrow in verse 3. It reads, as soon as I, that is Ezra, heard this news, I tore my garment and my cloak. I pulled my hair from my head and beard, and I sat appalled. Now that reaction may seem erratic to us, odd to us, but these are the mechanics of godly sorrow for sin. It's actually this great mark of maturity that sees the sin in the lives of loved ones and is moved with the gravity of the situation. If Ezra had indifference here, that would actually be a sign of great immaturity. I'm sure if you asked yourself, have I ever felt this pain when I see sin in the lives of others? Have I ever felt this pain when I see sin in my life? That my sin, but one sin, is worthy of eternal condemnation and the judgment of God under His wrath, the sorrow that rather than separating from the world, I would rather separate from my God. And maybe you're wondering, well, if there's godly sorrow, does that mean there's such a thing as ungodly sorrow? And the answer to that would be, yes, there is, because you can contrast godly sorrow with worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is also full of grief. In fact, the two types may look very similar from the outside. Yet, worldly sorrow is only skin-deep remorse, all for man-centered reasons. It may be remorse over the consequences. It may be remorse over the penalties and the punishments that one has to suffer. It may be remorse because you believe that you could do better next time. It might be remorse simply over the embarrassment that it brings to your person. But nowhere is God's honor found in such remorse. You could think of Judas, for instance, who was, indeed, filled with sorrow, but that sorrow did not lead him to repentance. You could think of Esau, who was, indeed, filled with sorrow, but it wasn't the sorrow that led him to repentance. But Ezra here shows us the better portion. Here is godly sorrow. Here is the kind of grief that has God as the chief audience. It is as with David, with his great sin. And just remember, David sinned against Uriah. He sinned against Bathsheba. He sinned against his country. He sinned against his own wife. And yet, when David adds it all up, what does David confess? O Lord, against you and you only have I sinned. Now, he's not denying that he harmed other people. He's not denying that he sinned against other people. But he's saying, what makes my sin so heinous, so vile, so sinful, is that I have offended the most holy God. And he's wrapped with sorrow over it. So, Shashua, when was it I last had godly grief for my sin? Now, the good news is that this godly sorrow spreads. It's contagious, even more contagious than the sin. Ezra's sorrow starts to sweep across the land. You can see that in verse 4. Then all who trembled because of this faithlessness of the returned exiles, they gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. So now, things are starting to turn. What we have here is the beginning of true revival. True revival doesn't begin with a shout, doesn't begin with clapping, doesn't begin with exaltation. No, it begins with these trembles before God as God works repentance in the hearts of His people. And so we've seen the problem, this intermarriage with the pagans. It's this great sin of faithlessness. And here we have this great reaction of a godly man's godly sorrow. But we cannot stop there, right? We must now press on to confession. Because isn't it true, this is sometimes where we fall short? For some, it's quite easy, isn't it, to mentally beat yourself up, to fog yourself with guilt in light of your sins, to be like Christian in the pilgrim's progress and just carry around your guilt like a backpack heaved upon your shoulders, so much that your guilt nearly becomes a part of who you are. Friends, such sorrow is not meant to be permanently strapped to our backs. It's meant to spur us onwards towards confession. And you see that exact emotion in verse 5. You see there, Ezra arose. He rises up from his sorrow. He doesn't wallow in the sin. He's not paralyzed by guilt. He doesn't bathe in the shame. He rises up. However, watch out for motion sickness, because you see in verse 5, the moment he rises up, he falls back down again to his knees in confession. So let us look now how godly sorrow leads to godly confession. One of the things that priest interrogators will say is that to get an admission of guilt from a suspect, they have to employ all kinds of tactics, isolation, good cop, bad cop, that bright light shining in the face, even deception, so difficult it is just to get an admission of guilt. And of course, we are not really all that different, are we? That from our first father onward, all of us have said in some form or fashion, no, I'm not guilty. It's actually the woman that you gave me. But what it leaves out is how Ezra does none of those things. He comes before the Lord with this remarkably plain confession. And even more amazing is that Ezra himself is personally guiltless. This is not his sin. He's not the one intermarrying. And though he's personally guiltless, he's the one most grieved by it. Parents, I know you know something of this. And you see the sin in the lives of your children. And you are far more grieved about it than they are for their own sin. And that is very Christ-like, isn't it? For no one was more guiltless than the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet no one was more grieved by the sins of his disciples. So let us look at this confession, and you'll notice that two things emerge, two things that are always present in a good confession. Firstly, the acknowledgment of guilt, the plain confession of guilt, followed by the appeal to God's mercy, our guilt, God's grace. So firstly, this confession of guilt, you see it begins in verse 6. Ezra says, our iniquities have risen higher than our heads. Our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. Then verse 7, he acknowledges the full extent. While we're prone to downplay our guilt, to mitigate it, Ezra simply says, no, our sin has been this way since the days of our fathers until now. Then he's not done. Ezra acknowledges God's just and righteous consequences for their sin. Verse 7, he says, our sin is why we were handed over to the sword, to captivity, to plundering and to utter shame as it is today. Those penalties there are the covenant curses for their disobedience. You can even skip to verse 10 and see this very similar statement there. Ezra says, for we have forsaken your commandments. And so what can we do? We can package all this together and see how this confession contains this plain ownership of guilt. It confesses the full extent of their sin. And it confesses God's consequences are always just and always righteous. There's not even a hint of charging God with unfairness or injustice, nor is there any hint to soften it, to explain it away or to shift the blame. And what a model for us to follow in our responses to our sins, to plainly confess, to acknowledge our guilt and to accept all consequences as righteous and just. Upon hearing it, I'm sure you can see just how opposite this is to the world's methodology for handling guilt. Both parties, that is the church and the world, both agree that guilt exists. Both agree. It's a real problem of the human condition. And yet their approaches could not be further apart. The world attempts to heal the wound lightly. It may do this by reducing guilt to simply an emotional, psychological experience. It might do this by engaging in positive self-talk, positive self-affirmation, perhaps the all-time favorite of forgiving yourself. Or even the newer claims that guilt is just societal pressure. Not only are you not guilty, you are in fact a victim and therefore absolved of any guilt. Or to go the other direction, as Nietzsche famously said, that a guilty conscience is actually just a sign of weakness. And so you are to overcome it with power. Do not feel guilty. You can see, of course, how none of those acknowledge the source of our guilt, our sin before a holy God. And so not knowing the source, neither do they know the true remedy for our guilt, the forgiveness found in Jesus Christ. Instead, it attempts to heal the wound lightly with all kinds of man-made, artificial attempts at atonement that are no more effective than taking a beach ball, pressing it underwater until the upper pressure releases it over and over and over. And so, kids, this is a great practice to get into now while you're young. One of honest, plain confessions. Kids, it's very tempting to make excuses, all right, to want to always be right, to maybe even not want to confess your sins. Believe me, you're not alone. Grown-ups do this too. In some ways, grown-ups are better at it than kids are. The kids know that a full confession of sin is met with a full dose of God's grace and His forgiveness. Start the practice now of a very plain confession of sin. Well, lastly, Ezra shows us one more basic truth about our guilt, and that is that our sins are actually worse than the sins of pagans in the sense that when we sin, we sin against more grace and more light. All right, so one thing to dishonor a man, it's far worse if you are dishonoring the man who is your father. And so, you can skip to verse 14 and see that in light of the abundant grace that Israel has received, Ezra confesses this, "'Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us, to the point of there being no remnant left at all?' He's confessing, he's recognizing, if we persist in the stubbornness of our sin in the face of God's grace, then we are accruing greater and greater guilt, and we will face the severity of God's judgment. In church, the very same warning applies to us, that if you or I were to walk in the stubbornness of our sins, without confession, without repentance, as Hebrews 10 says, if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, then there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but only a fearful expectation of judgment. This persistent, unrepentant, rebellious sin is to trample once again the Son of God underfoot." Well, this is indeed a hard word, so let's see it through to the end. So, you see, godly sorrow leads to a good confession, which are all indispensable parts of repentance. But that would not be enough, would it? Right? We would not want to stop there with only confessing our guilt. This would be like exposing a wound, but not applying the healing balm to the wound, like cutting open the body, but not performing the surgery. And so, let's notice, Ezra not only acknowledges the guilt, now comes the appeal to God's grace and His mercy. We can trace back over his prayer and see the threads of God's grace throughout. And so, go back to verse 8. Notice he says there in verse 8, Now, for this brief moment, favor has been shown to us to leave us as a remnant, to give us a secure hold in this place, that God would brighten our eyes, that God would grant us a little reviving in our slavery, for we are slaves, yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery. You see, Ezra is confessing what's true of every Christian, that apart from the grace of God, we are nothing more than slaves, slaves to our sin, captives to our guilt. And if you're here this morning and not a Christian, know that this is your true status. The Scripture says you are in complete bondage to your sins, and you cannot free yourself from your iniquities. Yet the great hope is found in the yet our God. In verse 9, Ezra proclaims the good news that those slaves, yet not forsaken slaves, sinners yet not forsaken sinners, guilty yet not rejected by our God. It's as if through these clouds of darkness pierces the light of day, of God's favor, God's mercy, this renewal, this revival of strength that He is extending to His wayward, guilty, sinful people. And you see specifically what's being extended in verse 9. You see that phrase there, God's steadfast love, God's steadfast love. That's actually one word in the Hebrew, Hebrew word hesed. It seems to have endless translations. It might be said, God's kind love, His loyal love, His faithful love, His great mercy. And I think translators stumble over it because that word hesed carries with it the power of God's covenant, that our God loves us, not with just some ordinary, everyday love, but with covenantal love. Now what is it about covenantal love that makes it so powerful, so strong? Well as a familiar example, we can think of the covenant of marriage, that man and wife enter into a covenant bond with covenant promises that their love for one another is going to transcend circumstances, failures, ups and downs, highs and lows, sickness and health. It's a bond so strong that only death will annul it. And of course, these human covenants of marriage, they're just a faint shadow, a faint replica of God's great covenant love for His people. That is no mistake that Jesus Christ is described as our groom and we His bride that He bought with His own blood. Because in Jesus Christ, God covenants with us to forgive us our sins, to be gracious and merciful to us, to not repay us according as we deserve, and that is only the beginning. That positively God covenants with you to bless you, to sanctify you, to save you to the uttermost. And if you're wondering, what is a word that sums up the nature of this covenant, of such undeserved kindness for the guilty, steadfast love for sinners? What is a word that describes that? You'd be right to say that must be a covenant of grace. So we've seen all throughout Ezra. What else explains God's restoring a wayward people, restoring them to himself, bringing them back to himself, raining down blessings upon them along the way? What else explains this other than God's covenant of grace? You can even see it threaded there in verse 13. Ezra says and recognizes our God has punished us less than our iniquities deserve. And how true for you and I that He has punished us less than we deserve. And not only that, He has kept us, guarded us and preserved us. And so what good news for you today, Christian, that the very same covenant of grace extends to you, that God promises and His promises do not rest upon your performance, that God's forgiveness does not hang upon your ability, that God's love does not falter based upon how you did last week or how well you're going to do this coming week, for it is rightly called a covenant of grace, freely bestowed undeserved love for sinners. And so as we begin to close, let us treasure up in our hearts but three great uses of this section from Ezra 9. Firstly, this clear call to break up with the world, to separate from the world. We've seen Israel's failure to separate. The holy race became mingled and mixed. And it didn't seem to bother anyone other than Ezra, so desensitized to the world they were. What does Scripture say? To be friends with the world is to declare war with God. So just ask yourself, what are the ways I have befriended the world? What are the areas that I have given ground to worldliness? In my life, in my finances, in my marriage, in my business, in my affection, in my relationships? And of course, no, we ask such a question with tremendous blind spots, and so ask it the way the psalmist says, Lord, search me, try me, prove me, lead me in the everlasting way. And know that God delights to do so. Secondly, would be cultivate a godly sorrow. Cultivate godly sorrow. The question is not, will we be sorrowful? That is not the question. We will be sorrowful. The only question is, will it be the sorrow that leads to death, or will it be the sorrow that leads to salvation with no regrets? And so something we can do now is cultivate godly sorrow, to train ourselves to feel the right pains at the right time and over the right things. So to be clear, this is not a call for more introspection. This is not a call for more navel-gazing, right? Don't say the day is not done unless I've flogged myself half to death. No, no, the better path is that the more and more we get a sincere love for Jesus Christ, the more and more we get a sincere love for His Word, the more and more we will be like Peter, who was filled with sorrow for denying the Lord Jesus Christ, only to come back all the better and all the stronger once he was restored. So to cultivate godly sorrow, and lastly, make a good confession, make an honest confession. We've seen this morning that rather than wallowing, godly sorrow propels us to make a good confession to our God. And it's a confession made with great confidence, isn't it? Because it's on the basis of who God is and His covenant promises to us to be merciful, to be gracious, to forgive us, even to bless us. For we know that our God delights to do so. For He is the very one who did not spare His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all. It's rightly called a covenant of grace, because our God is full of grace. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we do indeed praise You, that You are the God merciful and gracious, that You have punished us less than our iniquities deserve. And may we look forward and know why, because of the great mediator of this covenant, crushed for our iniquities, given up on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God. And so we do pray we would know what it is not to have worldly sorrow that comes all too easily, that we would instead know what it is to have godly sorrow, the kind of sorrow that leads to confession, to restoration, to salvation above all else. And so we ask this in the name of Jesus Christ and pray that You would lead us by Your Spirit. Amen.