May 19, 2024: Message: The Broken Heart of Missions | Scripture: Ezra 9:6-15 | Speaker: Pastor Stephen Choy
May 19, 2024: Worship Songs: Fairest Lord Jesus; Magnificent, Marvelous, Matchless Love; And Can It Be
Full Manuscript
Introduction
If able, please stand as I read from Ezra 9:6-15. TWoL: 6 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. 7 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. 8 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 hold2 within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. 9 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 protection3 in Judea and Jerusalem.
10 “And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments, 11 which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. 12 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.’ 13 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, 14 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? 15 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 none can stand before you because of this.”
Today is Missions Sunday, which typically means that the emphasis of our worship is supposed to be on global missions—bringing the gospel to the unreached. But as I thought about it, I realized that preaching a sermon to you about engaging in cross-cultural, cross-geographical, cross-lingual missions might be unwise because we, as a church haven’t done this in a very long time (if ever).
Which means that I could preach to you about missions until I’m blue in the face, but the application for us will be what it typically is, namely, that our participation in the mission effort is to send missionaries—writing cheques, giving money, sitting here in our comfortable sanctuary, not really being challenged to grow beyond what we can afford monetarily. But I want us to be more than that. I want us to be a going church. I want to see missionaries raised up in our midst—parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends who are the first to encourage each other to consider bringing the gospel where it’s absent.
Yet for us to be a church that sends people and not just money, something in our culture must change first. What we need is to cultivate a heart for missions, and believe it or not, Ezra 9:6-15 is all about cultivating a heart for missions—a heart that is broken—a heart that mourns wickedness—a heart that cries out to the only God who can bring us to repentance. What we need, church, isn’t only hearts that want to fund gospel initiatives but that are burdened, wearied, strained, undone, and overcome by the lost rebellion in the world.
The heart of missions begins with a brokenness—a brokenness for those who will never get to rejoice with the saints—a brokenness for those who will never know peace with God—a brokenness for those who will never find salvation from their sin. And before we can go out and teach others how to cultivate this heart, we need to cultivate it in ourselves first. We need to be taught and directed in how to deal with our own sin before the Lord, and until we do that rightly—until we are earnest and vulnerably honest in this endeavour amongst ourselves, our talking about global missions will be superficial at best.
This is what Ezra was sent to do with Israel—to teach them how to deal earnestly with their sin, and that’s what he intends to do with us this morning. And he does this—teaches us—so that we might not be easily swayed in worldly ways, and, more importantly, so that we might not be ineffective in our witness of the gospel. We’re to be ready to respond when the call to missions comes, making sure that we’re dealing earnestly with our sin before God, and we’re to do that, firstly, by …
1) Learn(ing) From (Our) Weighty Habits
What I want all of us to see right from the start is that our passage is chaotic. If you try and break it down into its component parts, it’s a really hard thing to do (Ezra doesn’t speak straightforwardly). And the reason I need us all to notice this is because it’s a real prayer. The more I studied this text, the less I knew how to preach it because it portrays a man who doesn’t know what to do. It’s a man who is at the end of his rope, and he just lays it all out.
We’re told at the end of verse 5 that Ezra says this prayer during the time when the congregation would have gathered for their evening sacrifice—their evening worship, and what I’m prone to think is that priests of that day would very much try to do what I do for you on Sundays. They would try to present neatly organized material. Perhaps, they’d even try to do so in such a way that you might be impressed by them.
But what I experience as I read verses 6-15, as Ezra prays to the Lord in front of all his people, is that he has no desire to impress them. Here is a man laid low. And his language, his logic, his put togetherness—it’s just not there because what he sees about Israel—what he sees about himself—makes all that fluff—all that impressiveness—mean absolutely nothing. His composure is gone. In fact, what we see in Ezra is sin’s effect personified—what it does to us and to the world—the separation and the disassociation it creates between us and a God of order, sensibility, peace. Ezra is untethered and in agony.
Look at the words he’s able to mutter: “O my God, I am ashamed, and I blush to lift my face to you.” That second phrase about his blushing, translated another way, reads, “I am humiliated in myself to the point of being unable to lift my face to you, O my God.” In other words, the intensity in which he feels the weight of this sin—the weight of what he sees in himself and in his people is so heavy that it feels like death. That’s what he’s saying. “I can’t even look to you God.”
Just think about who this man is—I’ve taken the time to be painstaking in our study of his character these past weeks so that when we got to this text, we would understand the pain of his words. Ezra is a man of the book. Ezra is a man of desperate prayer—a man who will not relent from taking the most severe disciplines to seek out the favour of the Lord—a man who is intent in every way to see the face of God and to know the joy of his presence in his life. But here, Ezra, the Bible reading, God-fearing, unceasing prayer warrior, sacrificer of his own body for the sake of feasting on divine hope, he can’t even look to heaven.
Here is a man who made his life about looking to God—of blessing his name—and yet, when sin enters his life, he utters no blessing, and he cannot set his eyes upon that very thing that has made him who he is—that has purposed him to do all the incredible things he’s done—that has flooded his life with grace upon grace. Sin has ripped from him the very thing that he has set his heart to treasure above all.
And he isn’t only intense about his sin, but he knows why it deserves such mourning. He uses words in the chaos of his prayer to describe what it is he’s so sad about, like how Israel has forsaken the commandments of God—that they’ve committed evil deeds—that they’ve accumulated great guilt—that they’ve made themselves to be an abomination—that these acts have brought upon them the anger of a most holy God.
And not only are they doing these things now, but it’s what they’ve been doing since their inception as God’s people. Verse 7 says, “From the days of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt.” The duration of their wretched sinfulness has been piling up upon them to the point where he cries out, “our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens!”
In other words, Ezra sees sin not just for the terrible thing that it is in that moment but for the terrible thing it’s been in the history of his people—that all their past intentions—all their past habits have led them to become an unholy people—people who forsake their God and venerate themselves. His is a sorrow that is as incomprehensible as it is complete.
And I want to make sure that we learn something here about how this priest is dealing with sin—how his earnestness—his intensity towards it is meant to affect us and train us in how we should deal with sin because it’s likely that none of us are like this. In the first place, none of us are as honest as Ezra is about our own sin. We don’t call our sin an abomination. We don’t treat it like a hellbound evil that it is pouring out from us, which also means that we’re not very intense about its effect on our lives.
No, we tend to deal with ourselves more softly. Just consider how we give and receive criticism these days. When we do something wrong, before anyone can tell us to do better, we require them to butter us up: “You’ve been doing such a great job, people like you, I remember this thing you did—that was fantastic, BUT here’s one … suggestion for how you might improve.” We’re simply not okay anymore with people just telling us that we’ve done a bad job, that we’re not likeable, or that we’ve failed. Why? Because internally we don’t think that we’re as bad as we really are.
Or think about how you confess or consider your own sin? Think about those big instances of sin. Whatever it might be, what, typically, is your attitude in that moment? If you’re anything like me, you’re sorry for what you’ve done, but it’s a sorrow for something that you see merely as a mistake—a one-off—a misstep, a blip in your otherwise good behaviour. We think of these large sins as isolated events. It’s not something we think of as the result of a pattern. Yet, that’s not how Ezra deals with or thinks of sin, is it?
The reason why he brings up the guilt of Israel’s ancestors isn’t because he thinks their sins are his—he’s not saying his fathers’ sins are his own. No, he brings up their sinfulness because it’s clear Israel hasn’t learned from their past. They’ve become so numb to their culture—so accepting of smaller sins and habits that by the time they were doing far more terrible and rebellious things, they can’t tell that something more than just the one sin has gone wrong.
I was dealing some time ago with someone who I knew had hit his wife on multiple occasions, and when I went to confront him about it, you know how he reacted to me? He told me that those instances were nothing—that he wasn’t that kind of person—that I didn’t have anything to worry about. But the more he spoke, the more I worried because what he didn’t see is what Ezra saw in his people—that his sin—his act of hitting his wife wasn’t only because of momentary, improper anger management. It was because of how he’d become a person who didn’t value his wife. It was because of how he’d grown comfortable with belittling and disrespecting her.
See, his problem wasn’t that he lacked feeling shame for those instances where he had struck his bride—the big, obvious sins. I knew he was sorry for those situations. Rather, his problem was that he wasn’t sorry for what he’d become blind to in his heart along the way—the person that he’d become in his regular habits—feeling like it was okay to mistreat those whom he said he loved—feelings that gave way to greater, more terrible sins.
And this is what happens when we take for granted what sin is, the weightiness of it, and how it affects us. This is what happens when we set our sins apart from who we are—that that terrible misdeed—that’s not us, when it very well is, clearly, us. It has always been us, only we’ve been too preoccupied with our sensitive egos or our lofty sense of self to notice it.
Church, if we’re going to develop a culture of evangelism and missions, then we need to have a higher vision and a deeper sorrow for what our sin is—for the ways we’ve become numb to patterns and habits that we no longer see as problematic—because only then will we have a proper empathy and desperation for the direness that exists outside of us. Just think, when you give for global missions, are you asking simultaneously if you should be amongst those who go? Or are you giving because it’s something you’re used to doing—something you think is good to support but only from afar?
The reason why we’re not ready for the sermon on missions is because our view and understanding of the weightiness and pervasiveness of our sin—of our offensiveness to God in the habits of our lives—is too little. And when our view of sin is too little, we often reduce our Saviour to one who is equally little—one who is too little to risk anything more than that which we find easy to give up. Before we speak of missions, we must be on mission here to learn from Ezra—that we might implore our God to show and help us think deeply about the nature of our sin—its weightiness and its habitual pervasiveness in us.
But, as we do this—as we come to mourn what we’ve been blind to for so long, I hope we don’t make it about us in self-pity or feelings that we’re being overwhelmed. Rather, as we grasp sin’s weightiness, I hope that we turn to our second point and …
2) Count Today’s Mercies
Three times, Ezra, uses the words “this day,” or “today.” We see them twice in verse 7 and then once more in verse 15. In verse 7, it begins, “from the days of our fathers, we have been in great guilt until, or as far as, this day/today,” and then he continues, “[and it was our shame to have lost our land to the kings of the earth because of our sin,] as is still the case tothis day/today.” But then verses 8-9 come, conceding that despite their great guilt, and despite their shame of sin, God has shown them great mercy.
What kind of mercy has he shown them? Well, verse 13 tells us the first kind of mercy they received, namely, that even after all that has come upon them for their evil deeds and for their great guilt—the shame and judgment of losing their land, being taken captive, and being plundered, their God has not punished them as their sins deserved. They deserved to be treated like Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who were instantly struck dead for defiling Israel’s offering to God, or like Ananias and Sapphira who were cast into the ground to breathe no more when they lied and attempted to join God’s covenant people in dishonesty—the fact that he has not wiped the Jews from the face of the earth is in and of itself an unspeakable mercy.
And yet, mercy does not only imply a withholding of deserved punishment, but in Scripture, mercy, especially when it’s in reference to God, is often spoken of as a gift. It is spoken of as God’s active pity or compassion on those who are afflicted. This is what leads Ezra in our passage both in verses 8-9 and the rest of verse 13 to reflect on how God hasn’t only spared them, but he has given them a remnant. He has compassionately placed upon them his favour in the provision of their lives. He has provided them, verse 9, with his steadfast love. How? He has revived his house, repaired its ruins, and protected his people.
This day/today, says Ezra, our shame is great, and yet even in our shame, our God has given us mercy—withholding from us judgment and pouring out upon us his compassionate kindness.
And I’ve been asking myself all week why Ezra keeps coming back to this time stamp, “this day/today” and the significance of this dual understanding of mercy? What is their link? Then, it finally dawned on me, it’s because Ezra—Bible-believing-Ezra, unceasing-in-prayer-Ezra—he knows that the day of mercy will come to an end.
He knows that “this day,” “today” will one day become “tomorrow,” and he knows what’s in store for those who harden their hearts, go about doing what they want for now, assuming that they have time to receive mercy tomorrow, namely, they will not be able to receive it. Why? Because as the Psalter tells us in Psalm 95:7-11, if you hear his voice today and do not enter his rest, you shall never enter it. Ezra knows this. He understands that if his sparing you from righteous judgment and his gift of pity, compassion, and love are not enough for you now, then nothing ever will be.
In other words, in verse 15, Ezra says, “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 none can stand before you because of this,” why? Because he believes tomorrow has come. He is convicted in his heart that there is now no escape from the wrath that they justly deserve. God hasn’t punished us in full. He’s poured out compassionate favour upon us. And yet, in both acts of mercy, we’ve still turned back to sin.
“What,” he says in verse 10, “is there, then, left to say? We are alive when we should be dead. We flourish when we should be slaves and beggars. What else can we plead for when we take the commands of your holy Word and spit on it? What hope can we have? What mercy remains for us? Who can stand before you because of this? As tomorrow dawns, has all the kindness of this day passed, and is judgment all that is left for us to expect?”
I just finished teaching a membership class, and I asked the people in that class, “Do you know how prayer works? Do you know why God both delights and commands us to pray even though he is a sovereign God—in control of everything at all times and in all ways?” The people in the class said, “no.” So, I directed them to Exodus 32.
There we find Moses on Mount Sinai, speaking with God, and as they’re speaking, the people of Israel, led by Aaron, make a golden calf, and they begin to worship it. And in seeing their idolatry, God tells Moses that he intends to wipe these fools from the face of the earth. But then Moses steps up and intercedes, and he asks God to relent in his wrath not because the people are deserving but because he loves them, because he has made promises to them, because he intends to bless them. And God listens and relents.
And I asked, “Does this mean that by our praying, we have the power to change God’s mind? No. But What Exodus 32 teaches us is that in God’s sovereignty, he calls us to pray because our the prayers are the means by which he accomplishes the things he’s always intended to accomplish from the beginning. He allows us to be apart of his grand plan of salvation.
Yet, greater than this is that God has always known that we are a stiff-necked people. God has always known we would forget his mercy towards us. God has always known that we would need more of his mercy, which ALSO means that he has always known and planned to send someone to intercede and plead for us so that his sovereign purposes might be fulfilled—so that his wrath might be satisfied and so that his people might be saved.”
Ezra might seem to be hopeless, incoherent, and in the throes of deep agony here in our text, and yet, we know his hope is not completely abandoned because if it were, he would not pray. He wouldn’t intercede. This is, after all, Ezra—Bible-thumping-Ezra—that we’re talking about. He knows even if all he can mutter is, “I do not know what to say because we, my people and I, are full of sin, and because I think your mercy is about to run out,” it is better to bring our incomplete, imperfect pleas and complaints to the Lord, than to say nothing at all. It is better to have someone—ANYONE—intercede for us than to be left with an angry God.
And still, if we turned to Luke 22 and John 17, there we find a man kneeling in a garden who, when we did not know how to pray or what to say—when sin was at its greatest, tempting us to flee from God and deny his mercy—though he was in agony sweating so heavily that it seemed like blood dripped from his face, though he knew he would become deeply acquainted with our sin as he is nailed upon a cross for it, he prays and pleads on our behalf, “Father, not my will, but yours, be done. Keep those you have given me in your name. Guard them so that none might be lost. Sanctify them in the truth. Make them one with us. Give them your mercy.”
And because that man was greater in every way than Ezra, because he intercedes for us, Hebrews 3:15-4:3 tells us, “Tomorrow has not yet come. Today is not at an end. If you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. The promise of entering his rest still stands. Believe and enter that rest before it is too late.”
Or, as it says in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Because of Jesus, the wrath of God is satisfied, and our salvation is eternally secured, even when we forget the weightiness of our sin.
How, then, are we to overcome our wickedness—our rebellion—our offensiveness before God? It isn’t simply by learning how terrible we are before him, but by counting and praising the new, infinite mercies that we’ve received today because of the interceding blood of our Saviour poured out for us.
We need both these things, church. We need a greater awareness of the sins hindering us from giving ourselves entirely to the will and ways of God, and in that awareness, we need to cling desperately to Christ who will not only call us to the nations, but who will, himself, provide us with the joy to go. Through him, we have escaped the punishment that we deserve, and we have received, instead, the favour that belongs to the Son of our most glorious God.
Learn, most earnestly and most deliberately, how to deal with sin before the Lord. Do this so that, when the time comes—when he calls us to mission—we might be ready to follow wherever he calls us, and so that, in our going, we might rightly teach them how their sin has been dealt with in our Christ who comes in mercy to save them.
Comments are closed.