In the sermon titled 'I Fell on My Knees and Spread out My Hands,' Scott Brown explores Ezra chapter 9, where the people of Israel, including priests and Levites, are found guilty of intermarrying with pagan nations, thereby compromising their distinctiveness and holiness. Ezra's response is one of deep grief and astonishment, leading him to prayer and fasting. The sermon emphasizes the cyclical nature of revival and decline within the church, urging self-examination at both a personal and communal level. It highlights the critical importance of marriage as a covenant reflecting God's relationship with His people and warns against the dangers of syncretism and worldliness. The sermon identifies nine elements of Ezra's prayer, including astonishment, trembling at God's word, shame, fear of repeating past mistakes, hope for restoration, and recognition of God's mercy. Through these elements, the message calls for the church's constant need for repentance, awakening, and reliance on God's grace and righteousness. Brown concludes by underscoring the necessity of turning back to God through earnest prayer and acknowledging the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the ultimate assurance of forgiveness and restoration.

Ezra, chapter 9. When these things were done, the leaders came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with respect to the abominations of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Parasites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of those lands. Indeed, the hand of the leaders and rulers has been foremost in this trespass. So when I heard this thing, I tore my garment and my robe and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard and sat down astonished, that everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel assembled to me, because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive, and I sat astonished until the evening sacrifice.

At the evening sacrifice I arose from my fasting, and having torn my garment and my robe, I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God. And I said, Oh my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. Since the days of our fathers to this day, we have been very guilty, and for our iniquities we, our kings and our priests, have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to humiliation, as it is this day. And now, for a little while, grace has been shown from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a peg in his holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. For we were slaves, yet our God did not forsake us in our bondage, but he extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem.

And 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, The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations which have filled it from one end to the other with their impurity. Now therefore, do not give your daughters as wives for their sons, nor take their daughters to your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your children forever. And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, since you our God have punished us less than our iniquities deserve and have given us such deliverance as this, should we again break your commandments and join in marriage with the people committing these abominations? Would you not be angry with us until you had consumed us so that there would be no remnant or survivor.

O Lord God of Israel, you are righteous, for we are left as a remnant, as it is this day. Here we are before you in our guilt, though no one can stand before you because of this. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have justified us, yet we know we are not fully sanctified. We pray that this passage might strike our hearts, that we would forget about the worries of the weak and the cares of the world.

Lord, that you would open our ears, our hearts, our minds, that you would bless the preaching of this word in Jesus name. As we come to Ezra chapter 9, we find ourselves looking at a story of really the story of the church. It's a picture of how things have always been. The history of the church is a history of revival and awakening, passion, joy, and then it gives way to disobedience and deadness and lack of a sense of the presence and the goodness of God. And this is what you find.

And you find this in the church, you find this in local churches, and you also find it in your own life. And one of the questions I want us to consider this morning as we look at Ezra chapter 9 is where are we at? Where are we at as a larger part of the church worldwide? And where is our local church? But where am I?

Where are you in this cycle? And God is faithful through all the cycles. That's one thing that's proven over and over again in the history of redemption. And so when we come to Ezra chapter 9 and 10, these two chapters, they form a unity and they show how God continued to sanctify His people. This is the final section of the book and it's composed, as you'll see, of narrative.

There's a prayer, a long prayer that we'll examine today and then when we get to chapter 10, they're the final lists of those who were involved in this great revival. And it shows us the constant need for the church to repent, to be awakened. This was the need in the days of Ezra, and this will always be our need. And I pray that we'll be a church like that, a church that sees its sin and then turns and finds the revival that these people experienced here. And I think we should be asking, is it time for us to follow Ezra, to fall on our knees and spread out our hands, maybe even tear a little bit of our hair out and cry out to God.

And what has happened here in this section is that the generation that came to rebuild the temple is now they're either in their 70s or 80s or they're dead The temple has been rebuilt 60 years before this time when Ezra comes. And so lots of time has passed and there's a new generation. And that new generation has fallen into worldliness. And this is a cycle that you often see. You'll see parents turning to God.

They find areas of obedience that they never even understood before. They were true Christians and they turned to the Lord. But then the next generation has no fervor. It has not the fervor of the previous generation. And we're all in the midst of this generational transfer.

And you should ask yourself, you know, in the generation that you're part of, is it a generation pursuing holiness or is it a generation that's falling away? That's very critical. And you may be young people who've sat here sitting here today and your parents experienced a gigantic revival. What about you? Are you in a time of reversal?

Are you saying, well, I don't know if we need to be so serious about these things? This is exactly what happened in the days of Ezra. The parents rose up in a time of revival and now after the worship of God has continued for 60 years, all is not well. The rising generation desired the world and they fell into it. And so Ezra arrives, he's apparently very enthusiastic, and he discovers that there are problems that he probably did not anticipate.

And he discovers that the previous generation had not separated themselves from the filth of the Gentiles. And they had adopted the ways of the world. And they were born into this time of revival. And they began to look around and they began to see the world and how they wanted to be like it. They wanted to look like it.

They wanted to act like it. And so they participated in the abominations of the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hittites and the Jebusites, you know, and all the ites that are there and the Moabites and the Termites and all, whoever else was on the ground there. And so Ezra shows up and he's been there four months now. And it's finally occurring to him what has happened. And he makes some very disappointing discoveries and he finds that the people found it was just too much trouble to live biblically and that they'd compromised on a particular area of life and that was the area of marriage.

They'd set aside God's ways for marriage. We know that the devil is always hard at work to destroy marriage. It's such a pivotal thing. And what we find if you read the book of Genesis, in the first three chapters you find that God creates this remarkable, astonishing array of stars and planets and all these animals, amazing things. And at the very pinnacle of the creation narrative is the two becoming one flesh.

That's the pinnacle, because that is the picture of the love of Jesus Christ for his church. Marriage is important. And so, marriage is really being compromised here. As we find even in our own culture, There are so many ways that marriages are being destroyed in our day today. We can see a window into how that happened at this time.

Matthew Henry, commenting on this scene just overall, he says, the temple was duly respected and the temple service was carefully kept up yet all was not well either the purest ages of the church have had some kind of Corruptions and it will never be presented without spot or wrinkle till the glorious church the church triumphed Ephesians 5 27 and so, you know all all ages of the church have their times of compromise and difficulty, and so that's what we find here. And I pray that it's useful to us as we examine our own hearts, examine our own church. Where are we at? Are we on the downgrade in our hearts, in our church? Or are we on the upswing?

More holiness, more obedience, more love, more joy, more passion, more desire, or are we in sort of a whatever zone? Because that's exactly what happened to the second generation. They entered into the whatever zone. And let's not be, let that be true of us. Okay, as you can see in outline before you, I've divided into two sections.

First of all, this encounter that Ezra had, he encounters the worldliness of the rising generation in verses one and two. And then there are nine elements of Ezra's prayer that I want to identify and I would just want us to ask us to consider should this be our prayer for ourselves and for our church and you'll see these nine elements. First of all, the first element is astonishment in verse three. The second element is trembling at the Word of God. Verse four.

The third element is shame and humiliation. Verses five and six. The fourth element is fear of repeating the past. The fifth element is hope for restoration. That's in verses eight and nine.

The sixth element is a sense of failure, verses 10 and 11. The seventh element is a conviction regarding marriages, verse 12. Number eight, there's awareness of the mercy of God in verses 13 and 14. And finally, an awareness of the reality of their predicament in verse 15. So that's the scope of what we'll be dealing with here this morning.

So let's begin with Ezra encountering this worldliness that has taken place in this rising generation in verses 1 and 2 Verse 1 when these things were done the leaders came to me saying The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites and this is this is a critical statement. Are you with me? Look at it. They have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands. That's really critical.

Secretism is always the greatest danger to the church. With respect to the abominations of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Parasites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. Verse two, for they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of the lands. Indeed, the hand of the leaders and the rulers has been foremost in this trespass. Now I want to give you six observations of these first two verses.

First of all, the timeframe when these things were done. Again, this is about four and a half months after Ezra arrives. If you look at chapter 10 verse 9, you'll see the date that this encompasses. The temple has been completed for 60 years and Ezra is making some disappointing discoveries that there is there is send their their problems there you you may have experienced something like this in your life where you you go somewhere or you do something you have all these great expectations but then you look under the hood, and there's a lot more problems there than you thought. Like you might have actually gotten married, and after a while of looking under the hood, you're saying, wow, there's more sin here than I thought.

There's more sin in my life. There's more sin in my spouse's wife. You might have gone through like a theological awakening. You know, you began to embrace the doctrines of grace, and you started looking for a Reformed Baptist church. And you finally found one.

And you came, and you were so happy. It was like you died and went to heaven and then after looking under the hood for a little while you're thinking whoa there are a bunch of sinners here what is wrong with this picture well this is a this is a common thing that happens, and it happens in many, many areas. If you get a new friend and you think, oh, this is the most wonderful friend I've ever had, well, that endures for a few months or maybe a year, and then you find out, well, You know, I've looked under the hood. And this is a common thing. And so you find this reality of joyful expectations often are met with disappointments when you find the reality of sin.

And God is in the business of revealing sin. And what we do with that when it's revealed to us is what really makes the difference between awakening and declension. We either pull back or we pursue God even more to remove sin, to renounce the sins of our own lives, and our own families, and our own church. So that's the first observation. First observation is the time frame.

Secondly, how did Ezra know this was happening? He was there four months. And I think there are two things that happened. He had an opportunity to observe the people, but he received a report from his leaders. I believe these are the 11 leaders that are spoken of earlier in the previous chapter.

These leaders had been trained by Ezra. They were applying his instruction. They were going about the land. They were making the announcements of what changes were going to happen as a result of Ezra coming, his being charged by the king to do particular things. I remember King Artaxerxes commanded that the people obey the law of God.

If you go back to chapter 7 verse 4, you know, the king, Artaxerxes, is writing directly to Ezra and he says, you are being sent by the king and his seven counselors with regard to the law of your God which is in your hand. And then in verses 25 and 26, he says, I'm charging you to go and apply the law of God in the land. I want you to take the laws of God and apply them. And if people don't want to apply them, then whoever will not observe the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily on him, whether it be death or banishment or confiscation of goods or imprisonment. These people came with a mission and they saw the landscape and the land and they saw these people have rejected the law of God.

That's how it's renewed. The third observation is what were they involved with? Well they were involved with the sin of not separating themselves from the sins of the Gentiles, from the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites. They did not see themselves as a separate people. The issue is exclusivity.

They had lost a sense of the exclusivity of the gospel, the exclusivity of Christ, and also the separation that's necessary for true followers of Jesus Christ to engage in. They had not separated themselves from the worldliness of these nations. Now these five, there are five of these nations are mentioned in Deuteronomy chapter 7. And in Deuteronomy chapter 7, Moses says, when you go into the land, separate yourself from them because, and don't marry their wives, don't marry the women because he says they will turn your son's hearts. They will turn your son's hearts.

Now five of these eight that are listed here are Canaanites, and then you have Ammon and Moab, which is mentioned in Genesis 19, out of the great sin of Lot when he was in the cave. But these people had fallen into rebellion against Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verse 3. And They had rejected the all-sufficient command of God regarding their marriages, and they made these shifts in their lives. And they began to look like and talk like and be married like the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and all the other ites that were there. And this was the source of Ezra's sorrow.

And so you can read about this in Deuteronomy chapter 7 verses 1 through 6. You can read about this very same thing in Exodus chapter 34, particularly verse 12, where Moses says, take heed to yourself. Don't make a covenant with the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Jebusites. You know, do not go where they're going. They are a snare.

He says, when you come, destroy their altars and break their sacred pillars and cut down their wooden images. The translation for modern times is you take the idols of this day and you crush them. The entertainment idols, all the idols that are surrounding us, the immoral idols, you crush them, you destroy them, you put them out. You do not compromise with them. You do not let them in your house.

You don't talk to them. You don't praise them. You do not celebrate the celebrities. Those are the idols of our day. And so Moses was very clear about this.

But what was central really was that they were violating God's plan for marriage. It was all part of this culture that they developed that looked a little bit too much like the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the rest of them around them. It was a cool culture, you know, they wanted it. They wanted coolness, just like every culture does. And they didn't want to be rejected.

But they had set aside the fact of the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Exclusivity was the issue. The Canaanites and all these other religions were inclusive. They were polytheistic. You could embrace the Canaanite gods.

You could pick up Jehovah, add him to your list. You could have about any God you wanted most of the great religions do that and but this is in sharp contrast to the exclusive claims of monotheism in the scriptures where God says you shall have no other gods before me. In other words you have a laser being focused on the one true God and when you begin to embrace and pat on the head the idols of your day you you have rejected really the exclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Moses warned about this, Isaiah warned about this, particularly in the area of marriage. If you forget what God said about marriage and you marry a pagan you'll become pagan.

Remember the illustration earlier you know if you take meat into your bosom is it going to clean your uncleanness? No. If you take clean meat and put it next to rotten meat the clean meat won't make the rotten meat clean. The rotten meat makes the clean meat rotten. That's how it works.

And that's what's being spoken of here. And you know, this is a real issue in our own day, tolerance, where tolerance is the chief virtue in our world today, tolerance for everything except the Word of God. And you know, these words are eminently practical for us in America's religion of diversity, where exclusivity is the greatest sin that you can commit. It was interesting, Paul Washer at the Shepherds Conference gave a message about persecution and one of the things that he said, and I'm sure he's right, he said, what the Christian church is going to be persecuted for in modern times is their view of the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. And that, you know, that Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father but through me. There's only one way to God, and it's this exclusivity that Moses dealt with and now that Ezra is dealing with. And the truth is there is one God and one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ, who was a ransom for many. He is the only ransom. He is the only true God.

The people in Ezra's day wanted to fit in, and so they began to accept the testimony and the life and the way of these Gentile nations. You know, we live in a world where people say all paths lead to God. And in a sense, that is true. All paths do lead to God. They all lead to the final judgment.

Every person's religion will lead them to the final judgment of God. So all paths actually do lead to God, but not in the way that most people say. And so this third observation, now the observation number four who is involved, well the priests and the Levites led the way And these are the same people that were spoken of in Ezra 6, who put away the filth of the Gentiles. And so there was this drift. But what's astonishing here is that it was the leaders who compromised.

There's always a temptation for leaders to compromise because they also want to be accepted. They too want to be cool. You cannot find one who is not tempted in that way as well. And so often, in order to be accepted, they'll take on the ways of the people, which are the ways of the Gentiles, so that they're not ostracized. And yes, even leaders are tempted to follow the crowd.

And that's exactly what happened here. It's a very damaging thing when you have leaders who do not want to be holy, who want to be fitting in to this world. They want the praises of man. It's the most dangerous thing of any one of your leaders that they would want the praise of men. And so this is how it happened.

They, too, wanted to have the acceptance of the Gentiles. Here's the fifth observation. There are very specific forms of worldliness that are marked out here, And it had to do with this mixing of marriages. He calls it a trespass. This is a very serious thing that they were engaging in.

The word trespass in verse 2 is the same word used in 1 Chronicles 10 13 and it's this that cost Saul his life. So it was a very serious thing. They were mixing the holy seed by diminishing the purposes of marriage. Now all of this has to do with friendship with the world and you know James said said it like this, you adulterers and adulteresses do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Whoever therefore will be a friend of the world is an enemy of God." We have to recognize that this whole problem was about the exclusivity of God.

And it's very much like what Peter urges in his letter in 1 Peter chapter 2 where he says, you are a chosen generation, a holy nation, his own special people, that he may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into light." This is all about the exclusivity of the gospel and that's why Paul said in a parallel passage in 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians 6, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. He says, for what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, and what communion has light with darkness, and what accord has Christ with Belial, or what part has a believer with an unbeliever. Hey, those who appreciate and celebrate the works of unbelievers should understand how dangerous that is for them. When you bring the works of unbelievers, when you unite yourself with Belial, you appreciate the works of the devil out there You are in danger and we take it so lightly, but let's recognize this there's a drift that takes place it took place in that generation and And it was devastating Observation number six the last observation in these first two verses, the prohibition was not ethnic, but it was spiritual.

This prohibition against marrying people from other nations was not a prohibition against interracial marriages the way that we think about it. Marriage to foreigners was never unlawful in the Bible. In Exodus chapter 17, we learn that the people from the nations can be grafted in by circumcision, by turning to God. When Israel came out of Egypt, there were Egyptians that came with them And you could you can be part of the people of God if you renounce your unbelief and your paganism. And there are many examples of this in the Bible.

You have Rahab, who is a Canaanite. You have Naaman, who is Assyrian. You have Ruth, who is a Moabite. And in Deuteronomy 21, you even learn that when you're in a time of war and you conquer a pagan nation and now there are all these Canaanite women there, you can actually marry one, but how does it happen? It speaks of this time of war there in Deuteronomy chapter 21, And there's a process that she goes through and I believe it's a process of conversion She renounces her former gods and her identity she cuts her hair She puts on new clothes and she makes a barrier between the religion of her family and actually her family itself It's a picture of conversion.

So this is not about marriage, marriages prohibited between people of different colors. It has to do with different hearts. And so this just shows the constant need of the church for repentance and awakening. And I pray that our church would be like that with a constant sense of its need for awakening. Here we are this morning.

We're in a group of people. Some of you are in a time of awakening. It's the most exciting time in your life. Some of you are on the downgrade. It's always like that.

And so here we are, right here with this passage in front of us, to say, hey, where do you stand? Where are you at right now? You know, how do we apply this? Is this the time to follow Ezra and fall on our knees and spread out our hands and cry out to him? By mixing it with the ways of the Gentiles and asking ourselves, how have I not separated myself from the filth of the Gentiles?

And how have my compromises given license to others? And in the same way that the leaders and their compromises gave license to others to live just like the Canaanites lived. You know, you who are fathers and mothers, you know, you're leaders of homes. Have you been foremost in these trespasses? Elders and deacons in a church should ask this question, have I been foremost in any of the trespasses that I could be guilty of that are being dealt with here?

Do I want the favor of the world? Am I wanting the friendship of this world? And do I realize how dangerous that is? You know, children growing up in Christian homes, they always have to face this. Do they want the world or do they want everything absolutely everything in their lives dedicated to God you know they they Christian children they parent children growing up in Christian homes they grow up in kind of a constrained environment, that's a good thing, but then they grow up and they look out there and they see this remarkable world.

You know it was amazing to go back to LA again and I grew up in that area. What a wondrous world, what a tantalizing, amazing world. And you grow up and you go to LA and you just fall into LA's arms and guess what it's a result of spiritual declension and when the things of this world begin to make you happy and you say I can only be happy When I'm touching the things of the world Then you know where you are. You're on the downgrade Without question. Okay, so then you know Ezra sees the scene He comes back all this expectation and then he prays and so I want to identify nine elements of his prayer that are here.

The first element is the element of astonishment. He responds with grief over the sin of his people. And so verse three says, "'So when I heard this thing, I tore my garment and my robe "'and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard and sat down astonished. So he saw it and his response was grief. It broke his heart.

It disturbed him and so he did these three things. He tore his garment, he plucked out some of his hair, and he was astonished. And it should help us to ask the question, am I grieved when I see God dishonored? Like, am I disturbed when people reject what is plain in Scripture? You know, Jesus said in Matthew 5, 4, blessed are those who mourn.

He's talking about those who mourn for sin and the question is does it grieve you? Are we like David that as he declared in Psalm 119 verse 136 rivers of water run down from my eyes Because men do not keep your law Righteous are you oh Lord and upright are your judgments Your testimonies which you have commanded are righteous and very faithful. My zeal has consumed me because my enemies have forgotten your words. Your word is very pure. Therefore, your servant loves it.

Do you grieve? Do you have the capacity even now, right now, where rivers of water run down your face because of the sins that you see around you, or maybe that you see in your own life? Are you even grieved for your own sin? And are there areas that we should be astonished, but we're not? That's a question.

Let the Holy Spirit speak to us. Are there areas that we should be astonished, but we're not? We've just begun, we have just gotten used to it. We've lived in LA so long, we can't even see it anymore. You know, when the Apostle Paul went into Athens, what happened to him?

His spirit was disturbed within him. That's this right here. It's the exact same thing. But often, we get unastonished at the sin that is around us, the entertainments and various things that take place. Are you dull to your negligence as a father or as a wife?

Are you dull to your harshness as a husband? Are you dull to the worldliness in your music or in your clothing or in In the way you're educating your people because you want the praises of man or have you become dull? Are you astonished? It's a very important question You know It staggers me with how clear the teaching of the Bible is about the Sabbath, how few there are in astonishment at how the Sabbath is rejected in our land. But all this just shows the constant need of the church for repentance and awakening.

And it was the day, it was the need in the days of Ezra, and it will always be our need. And so I pray that even this morning we can have a glimpse of this. Are we astonished? Second, second element of the prayer, trembling at God's word. Now remember this is a prayer.

He's his and the first thing that he expresses is his astonishment and then and then trembling. Then verse four, then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel assembled to me because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive. So this is an assembly of faithful people that are gathering to Ezra. Ezra's grief had a good effect on others, and they came actually to grieve with him. Everyone wasn't grieved, only certain people were grieved.

And who was grieved? Those who trembled at the words of the God of Israel. Those were the ones. And of course this is a quote from Isaiah chapter 66 verse 2. But on this one I will look on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word this is the one that God blesses and he looks upon them and so it's a blessing It's a blessing when a leader is grieved rightly for his own sins and the sins of his people.

It's a blessing when people follow and they find themselves grieved in the same way. And they were trembling because of why? Because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive. The word he uses here is treachery. And it's the same word that's used in Malachi chapter 2 of how God had dealt treacherous, how the people had dealt treacherously with one another, particularly in their marriages.

You know, And I think an important question this morning is, you know, who are those here this morning who tremble? You know, are we... Do we need to tremble? And do we need to be trembling more than we are? And notice he doesn't come up with an alternative method of worship.

He is paying attention to the morning and the evening offerings here. We've encountered this before, we encountered it again. The morning and the evening offerings. You know that book that Charles Spurgeon wrote, Morning and Evening. Well, it's really based on this very same pattern of worship in the Old Testament.

It's recorded in Numbers chapter 26 verse 1 through 8, in the morning offering a sacrifice was made for sin, in the evening offering a sacrifice was made for sin. And so that's also how you get the pattern for the worship of God in your family. This is why the Puritans said, you know, begin the day with worship and end the day with worship, morning and evening. And, you know, this is the pattern also that churches have taken for a Sunday morning and a Sunday night service. It really is.

There's actually a reason why churches have had Sunday night services. They've been set aside almost comprehensively in the church today. But there's a biblical reason for it. And often people, they don't pay attention to that. I remember I heard Leonard Ravenhill once say that the Sunday morning crowd proves how popular the church is, The Sunday night crowd proves how popular the preacher is and the Wednesday night prayer meeting proves how popular God is.

Well there are these patterns, there are these rhythms that God places in our lives. So Ezra is involved in the morning and the evening offering and they were trembling at his word and just shows the church's constant need for repentance and awakening and and lifting up our hands before him. Then the third element of the prayer is shame and humiliation in verses 5 and 6. At the evening sacrifice I arose from my fasting and having torn my garment and my robe. I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God.

I love that phrase. I think we should memorize that. I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God. Verse 6, and I said, Oh my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to you. My God, for our iniquities have arisen higher than our heads and our guilt has grown up to the heavens." So It's amazing what he does.

He falls on his knees and he spreads out his hands and he is in such grief that he pulls out some of his hair of his head and out of his beard. And he's doing this during the evening sacrifice. The morning sacrifice was about 9 a.m. The evening sacrifice was about 3 p.m. And if you read about the evening sacrifice, you'll find out some really interesting things.

When David was fleeing Absalom, he offered the evening sacrifice, lifting up his hands before the Lord. That's in Psalm 141 verse 2. We also know In Daniel chapter 9, God sends Gabriel to Daniel to answer his prayer while he's in the midst of the evening sacrifice. You just never know what's gonna happen in the evening sacrifice. You just never know what's gonna happen when you fall on your knees and you spread out your hands, you don't know.

God has a tendency to meet with people when they do that. He gets together with them. He reveals his glory to them. He convicts them of their sins. He comforts them.

He lifts them up. He helps them. He reveals his plans to them. And so it's very important that we're involved in these rhythms because God does things. He just has a tendency to do things during these rhythmic times of worship.

And this prayer that he's praying, it reflects the depth of his sin and the sins of the people, but it also reflects just the greatness of God's mercy. As we move on through this prayer, you'll see that even more clearly. So there's this shame and this humiliation. And then there is fear of repeating the past, number four. That's in verse seven.

As he's praying, he has this sense of fear that they're going to repeat the sins of the past and end up in captivity again. And so he says, since the days of our fathers to this day, we've been very guilty and for our iniquities, we, our kings and our priests, have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to humiliation as it is this day." And I think he's talking about the time when the Assyrians came in and killed so many in Judah in the days of Isaiah. He's talking about the Babylonian captivity, you know, where they were deported, you know, and where Daniel and the young men were actually, they were they were taken away. They were castrated and taken away to Babylon. And what he's saying is, please, let's not let that happen again.

Turn from our sins now so that the wrath of God has stopped. And that's a question that we should always ask. Is there anything that the wrath of God is coming down upon my life because I've refused to turn? But what we know from God is very often when you turn, he holds back his hand. Not always, but he often does.

And that's what he's praying, he has this fear of repeating the past. And then the fifth element of the prayer is hope for restoration, verses eight and nine. Now notice some of the remarkable words in here, grace, escape, a peg, revival, not forsaking, repairing the house. These are all, these are all matters of hope for restoration. So verse 8 reads, and now for a little while grace has been shown from the Lord our God." What's he saying?

He sees the sin, but in the seeing of the sin is hope. There's hope for restoration. There's hope for grace. He's recognizing God's extending his hand of mercy towards sinners who've fallen into these traps. That grace has been shown from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a peg in his holy place, something to hang on to so that we don't get swept away in the judgment of God, a pig.

That our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. In other words, there's hope for revival in your bondage. Hey, you look back at your sin, you look back at all the things that you did to mess up your life, guess what? There's hope for revival in your bondage. Hey, you look back at your sin, you look back at all the things that you did to mess up your life, guess what?

There's hope for revival in your bondage. And so that our God might enlighten our eyes. Verse nine, for we were slaves, yet God did not forsake us in our bondage, but he extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia. This is God's mercy towards sinners. He rescues you while you're in your bondage.

Why? To revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem. This is the whole matter of the restoration power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He rebuilds your walls. He rebuilds your life.

He takes you in the time of the downgrade and he snatches you out of it. This is the mercy of God. You know, when you read Ezra, I just hope you haven't missed the mercy of God. You know, remember this 117-year period where people are going up and down. They have all this zeal, they build the altar, and then they put in the foundation of the temple, and Then they get discouraged for 16 years and they stop And what's God do?

He has mercy He sends a prophet and he pulls them out of their trouble and they get back to work and now They've fallen back again. And what does he do? He extends mercy. And he puts in their heart a zeal for him so that their walls would be rebuilt. The walls that had fallen down from worldliness.

You know, what walls have fallen down as a result of our worldliness? Well, God has compassion upon that and he says, I'm going to rebuild your walls. There's this hope for restoration that's here. So Ezra knew that the revelation of sin is a revelation of an opportunity to escape. You see your sin and you really only have two problems when you see your sin.

And I hope that we're seeing our sin this morning. Two alternatives. One is you either escape or you shrug your shoulders at your sin. That's it. There are only two ways.

And God is always bringing his people to a crossroads of revival and awakening or shrugging their shoulders. So Ezra knew that confessing sin could mean a new beginning for his people. You can always turn back, you can always confess and repent and turn to Jesus Christ as Lord and to trust in His sacrifice for your life. And then the sixth element is a sense of failure. Verse 10 and 11, and now, O our God, what shall we say after this?

For we have forsaken your commandments, which you commanded your servants, by your servants the prophets, saying, The land which you are entering to possess is an unclean land, with the uncleanness of the peoples of the lands and with their abominations which have filled it from one end to another with their impurity And so here Ezra has a sense of failure at how they have been made unclean because of the uncleanness in the land. Now you're going on in your life and you better get really clear about one thing. If you follow this world in its ways, you're going to end up in the land of uncleanness, and you should evaluate absolutely everything in your life. Everything. Because if you follow this world, if you follow this world in its entertainments, if you follow this world in its philosophies, if you follow this world in its fads, If you follow this world in its entertainments, if you follow this world in its philosophies, if you follow this world in its fads, if you follow this world in anything, in its clothing, in its activities, If you just follow this world, you're going to end up with their impurity, as he speaks of it in verse 11.

Their impurity. These abominations, they fill the land from one end to another. In other words, you can see them everywhere. Popular culture has always been popular everywhere. You know, and with the world that we live in, popular culture is spread throughout the world in a second.

And it's interesting, you know, you can go to, you know, almost any big city in the world, and everybody pretty much looks the same. You know why? Because their impurity is from one end to another of the world. Everybody just wants to be so liked and so like the things that are liked that they compromise. And so they had rebelled and so...

Now this prayer here is very interesting. You know, Ezra is praying in the plural. He's saying we. Do you notice that? And I think there are several things we need to recognize.

First of all, Ezra did not marry a pagan wife and he was not participating in the religion of the pagans. We know that from the earlier things that are said about Ezra. He did not commit these sins. But he was confessing the sins of the people, and he did not want to distance himself from his people. He wanted to bring his people with him, and so he was not distancing himself with them.

He knows that he too is profane, even though that he didn't marry a worldly wife and participate in all the worldly worship. That was the bout. He understood that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He understood that if you break one law, you've broken them all. And so Ezra is actually repenting of the sins that the people have committed.

This is not the church repenting corporately by the way. This is a man identifying the sins of a people and Repenting of their sins it would be it would be like what elders You know should do from time to time when they say these are the sins of our church Please repent turn from these sins, you know All preaching really has that purpose. We're doing that today. We're identifying sins and we're saying, is the Holy Spirit convicting you of these things? I mean, we're not fortune tellers.

We can't see in your hearts, but we can know what sin looks like and we can speak of it and we can trust the Holy Spirit to work in whatever way each individual needs that work to be taking place in their life. We might not be able to put our finger on the exact thing that you're struggling with, but the Holy Spirit can. And so we trust the work of the Holy Spirit. But this is kind of equivalent to the elders of the church calling the church to repent. That's really what this is.

But those elders are not distancing themselves from the people. And he says, we, we're in this together. We're a family. I'm a shepherd in a family and I'm calling you to repent but I'm not going anywhere so he's repenting and walking with the people and their repentance he's not standing above them he's one of them So it's a remarkable thing that he's doing here. And then number seven, there's a conviction regarding marriages.

Now verse 12 is interesting. I think Ezra pulls out of his prayer and he starts talking to the people. So he's talking to people, you know, people have gathered. It's at the evening sacrifice. He's been praying, he's crying to God, he's pulling out his hair.

He's lifted his hands, you know, before the Lord. And then in verse 12, It's like he stops praying and he starts commanding. Okay, do you see that now? Therefore do not give your daughters as wives for their sons nor take their daughters to your sons and Never seek their peace or prosperity that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your children forever." So in verse 12, he breaks out of the prayer and he starts talking. You know, has that ever happened to you?

You start, after you pray for a while you start preaching and you go back to prayer Maybe you've done that as a father or maybe that's even happened here I don't know but that's what happened with Ezra and he speaks of this conviction Regarding marriages and there are two things that he says here in verse 12 first of all marriages are really critical marriages are critical and you do not give your daughters as wives for their sons nor take their daughters in other words when you when you marry it's a gigantic deal and and faith is the heart of the deal. You know, don't fall for a pretty face. Don't fall for a hot body, guys, okay, or girls. You're in for trouble. So he's saying, no, don't engage in marriage that way.

And he says, even go another step further, don't seek their peace or prosperity. And never seek their peace or prosperity that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it as an inheritance to your children forever. In other words, he's saying, if you form a marriage out of worldliness, you won't be strong, and the heritage you leave will be lousy. And he's saying, Don't participate with them. Don't strengthen their cause.

Don't... Hey, don't give them money. Don't buy their movies. Don't buy their dolls. Don't strengthen the causes of the pagans.

And don't marry them. Stay away from them. And marry, marry for the glory of God. Marry in order to take dominion for Jesus Christ. Marry so that you want to become a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Don't marry for any other reason. Because marriage is sacred. And if you marry for the wrong reason, you won't be strong and your inheritance will be all broken up. So marriage is really important. It's really important.

It's really the heart of this whole passage. And it just shows the constant need of the church for repentance and awakening. And then Ezra returns to the prayer in verses 13 and 14, and he has this awareness of God's mercy. I love this part. And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, since you our God have punished us less than our iniquities deserve.

Can't you relate to that? Hey, have you been punished less than your iniquities deserve? Have you? Absolutely. Absolutely you have.

This is the mercy and the tenderness of God. His hand of mercy is always extended to his people. And you might be hurting really bad for your sins, but recognize this is that God, He punishes us less than our iniquities deserve. And then he says, and has given us such a deliverance as this. So this confession was a deliverance.

Do you see that? A confession is always deliverance. That's why Peter said, repent so that times of refreshing will come in. Repentance and refreshing are our brothers and sisters. And then verse 14, he says, should we again break your commandments and join in marriage with the people committing these abominations?

Would you not be angry with us until you had consumed us so that there would be no remnant or survivor? So he's acknowledging God's mercy. It's such a wonderful thing that he does there. And he sees the delivering power of God and how kind God is. But notice in verse 14, there's something really interesting.

I want you to look at verse 14 really carefully, okay? There are two questions in verse 14, And I don't want you to miss what he's saying here. He's asking God questions in prayer. Have you ever done that? Have you ever asked God questions in prayer?

Well, that's exactly what Ezra's doing. He's saying, Lord, Lord, should we? Lord, would you? Okay. Question number one, should we again break your commandments and join in marriage with the people committing these abominations?

Question number two, would you not be angry with us until you had consumed us so that there would be no remnant or survivor? Well, what's the answer to the question, these questions? Well, these are rhetorical questions because the answer is no, Absolutely no. Question number one, no. Question number two, no.

This is not going to happen. And he's saying no in the first question. No, we'll not continue to make bad marriages and engage in abominations. No, we won't do that. Why would we do that?

And then the second question, you know, would you not be angry with us until you had consumed us? And the answer is no. We're not consumed. You will not destroy your remnant because you are showing grace, because you're not punishing as we deserve. No.

He's a God of mercy. These questions really are just to demonstrate that God has mercy because He cares for you, because He's a good shepherd and He walks with his sheep out of the wilderness. And here, the Good Shepherd is walking with his sheep out of this time of declension, where the younger generation said, we'd rather be like the world. And now they're saying, no, that was a bad decision. Bad decision.

And then nine, the last element of this prayer. There's this clarity about the reality of their predicament. It's declared here. Ezra has a real awareness of this predicament. In the final verse, Ezra declares again what is the only hope, the only hope, and the only help for a remnant that has a bad past.

Are you ready? Verse 15. Oh Lord God of Israel. By the way, that's a statement of the one true God. This is not syncretism.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. It's a declaration, it's a confession. You are righteous. That's another confession. It's the righteousness of God that's our only hope.

It's the righteousness of God that is angry with our sin. For we are left as a remnant as it is this day. That's a declaration of God's loving kindness toward his remnant. And then he says this, these are some of the most remarkable words in the Bible, here we are before you in our guilt. Here we are before you in our guilt.

That's our state. That's us. That's the church. And when we gather, we gather like that. Here we are in our guilt.

We've messed up so many things. We have so many bad patterns we're trying to correct and it's going to take almost forever to correct them. But here we are, Lord we are your people, the sheep of your pasture. And then he says this, Though no one can stand before you because of this. No one can stand.

Here we are. No one can stand except for one thing. The sacrifice of the evening sacrifice. The sacrifice of a lamb. The substitution.

One who would take the wrath for your sin, one who would die so that you might live. No one could stand. And here we are in our guilt except for one thing, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's our only hope. You know, don't forget that Jesus Christ died for your sins.

Don't forget that there is one offering and one sacrifice for sin. And the activities in the morning and the evening sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord. His sacrifice is always available and it's always efficacious. Jesus Christ was the sacrifice for sin. He was slain for our transgressions in the same way that the Lamb was slain in the evening sacrifice.

God was angry with our sin and he provided a substitute and he ransomed us and he purchased his church with his own blood. And here we stand, here we are before you in our guilt. And no one can stand except for one thing, Jesus Christ the righteous. He said on the cross, it is finished. And Hebrews chapter 7 says that he remains a priest continually.

He is the sacrifice that works continually for your sins. In Hebrews 7 it says, He always lives to make intercession for them, since He did once for all when he offered himself up. And so we have been sanctified through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And so here you have a picture of a church and Ezra sees it very clearly. Here we are standing before you in our guilt and no one can stand.

This is really the heart of the Church of Jesus Christ, the cross, the shed blood of Christ. And we're here to celebrate that today. And When we go to the Lord's Supper, we are celebrating this very same element of the evening sacrifice. And so it'll be such a joy. I pray that you have such joy.

I pray that you have such a hatred of your sin and that your repentance, you know, will lead you to times of refreshing. And that we together as a church will recognize who we are here. We're part of the church. The church is either in a time of downgrade or it's a time of awakening and I pray that God would give us all together a time of awakening wouldn't it be great if he would give it all to us at one time and it would spread out throughout this whole world that's really the hope of the church Is it time to follow Ezra and fall down on our knees and spread out our hands? It actually is that time as we celebrate the Lord's Supper.

Let's repeat a prayer that's somewhat like this prayer together. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive others. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the power, kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.