Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey.
- [00:26]
Family. Welcome to day 341. We are in Ezra chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10, four chapters of the Bible for you to read today. All right, I'm super, super excited because Ezra's finally gonna get to Jerusalem. Ezra has now entered the chat. All right, Ezra is now in the Book of Ezra. So it can be a little odd, right? For the first six chapters of the Book of Ezra, Ezra is nowhere to be found. And then we get to Ezra, chapter 7, verse 1. And what does it say after these things? Now I'm going to have to give you context for after these things, because a lot of things happen after these things. But anyway, after these things. During the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahutub, the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son. Oh my gosh. This. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The son of Aaron, the chief priest. Okay, it's important that Ezra is a descendant of Aaron. Okay? The. The chief priest, this Ezra, came up from Babylon. He was a teacher, well versed in the law of Moses, which the Lord, the God of Israel, had given. The king had granted him everything he asked for. The hand of the Lord, his God was on him. Talk about a like killer introduction. Some of the Israelites, including priests, Levites, musicians, gatekeepers, temple servants, also came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king. He had begun his journey from Babylon on the first day of the first month. That's important. First day of the first month. And he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month. For the gracious hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the law of the Lord and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. And then you're going to get a copy of King Artaxerxes Letter, Verse 13. Now, I decree that any of the Israelites in my kingdom, including prince, priests and Levites who volunteer to Go to Jerusalem with. You may go. You are sent by the king and his seven advisors to inquire about Judah and Jerusalem in regard to the law of your God, which is in your hand. Okay, so Torah observance. If Zerubbabel is there to build the temple, Ezra is there to get the Torah in the hearts of the people. Because it does not do anyone any good to have a temple but not have the Torah. And then last, Nehemiah, which we'll learn about tomorrow, is there to rebuild the walls. They need rhythms. They need worship. They need a temple. They need to reinstitute, sacrifice. Okay, but then Ezra's got to get their hearts right. This is spiritual renewal. And then last, they need protection. Okay? So remember, what's the big 30,000 foot idea? Return, rebuild, repent, Return, rebuild, repent. If you just look at the Book of Ezra, okay, Ezra, chapters one through three were all about return. Zerubbabel brought people back, they returned to Jerusalem. Then Ezra, chapters four through six, they rebuilt. And now in Ezra, chapters seven through ten, they are going to repent. Okay, so that's a 30,000 foot context. Repentance. All right? Ezra comes to Jerusalem. Let me give you some context. Then we'll dive into some nerdy nuggets. This is the second wave of return. Now, here's probably the context that a lot of us need, all right? Now, when was the temple. When did the temple get rebuilt? 515 B.C. 515 B.C. what year is Ezra returning to Jerusalem? 458 B.C. so we're talking 57, maybe 58 years after the temple is rebuilt. Okay, so there's a massive gap in between that first wave that came with Zerubbabel and this wave that's coming with Ezra. Also, all the events of the Book of esther happened between 483 B.C. and 473 B.C. okay, so in between chapter six and seven, the entire book of Esther has transpired. What's the context for the intermarriage and divorce issue? Okay, now, when Ezra gets to Jerusalem, the number one issue that he is going to encounter is the fact that people have married pagan women. Okay? And this is a complicated and complex problem. Now, it's complicated for two reasons. It's complicated because when we get to the New Testament and we get to places like 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, in 1st Peter, chapter 3, the New Testament is going to say that if you're a Christian and you're married to someone who's not a Christian, that you should not divorce them. However, when Ezra gets to Jerusalem and He finds that there are people who have intermarried, they've married non Jews, and Ezra is going to essentially have a mass divorce. Like leaders and Levites and priests are all going to divorce their pagan wives. And. And this is the repentance. Now this is controversial because the Torah never says, don't marry people of different races. Ok? This is like, this is tension. It says, don't marry pagans. Like, let's just think about it, right? We've all just got done reading a book like Ruth, okay? And we have a Moabite woman who's then made a vow. Your God will be my God, your people will be my people. I'm gonna go wherever you go. And because she vows to be to attach herself to the covenant of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, she can marry an Israelite. And that's totally fine. There are multiple examples, like people like Rahab, who's a total Canaanite, who gets grafted in. Why? Because she's going to be Torah observant. Okay? So Ezra is doing something that is completely new and to be honest, pretty unique in the entire canon of scripture. At no point before this were different races of people not eligible for marriage. And at no point after this, okay? So there's a massive shift that's going to take place and I'm going to actually walk you through exactly like what that shift is. I want us to turn to Ezra, chapter nine, verse two. Okay, Ezra, chapter nine. Actually, I'll just start reading like chapter nine, verse one, and we'll get to verse two. It says, after these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, the people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring people with their detestable practices. All right, so the people are now going to get compared to the Canaanites because essentially what Ezra is going to do is Ezra is going to make a claim that they need to be treated like Canaanites. Okay? They're going to be equated to the Canaanites based on behavior practices like those. So it doesn't say that they are those. It says that they are like those, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them, and the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness. All right? This marks a new moment in what's going to be like the standard for, like, biblical holiness. Because remember what the people do when they come back from exile. And then what is going to happen in the 400 years of silence leading up to the New Testament is actually going to create the world of the New Testament that we have. Okay, so the word that's now used for the first time in the Bible is holy race. Holy race, or in Hebrew, holy seed. Now, up until this point, the Torah has said that the people of Israel are to be a holy people. That's actually the words that have been used for the entire Bible. Holy people, holy people, holy people. And how do they act holy? By keeping Torah, by worshiping Yahweh, by not having idols. So intermarriage prior to this moment has been less about race and more about religion, which is why a Moabite could. You could marry a Moabite as long as that Moabite is loyal to Yahweh and faithful to the covenant. Okay. Because there has not been a need to keep the race pure, but to keep the religion pure. Okay, I hope everybody's tracking. Ezra now introduces the idea that in order to keep the religion pure, the race has to be kept pure. And this is a new idea. This a brand new idea. And what is going to happen now from this moment on is the Jewish world is going to become way more focused on race than it is religious ideology. And I know this is so nuanced, but I want everyone to really realize that the vision that Yahweh's always had from Abraham is that all the nations of the world will be blessed through you, Israel. And the commands to not intermarry have never been about race. They've always been about religion. And for the first time, we see where Ezra's making it about race. And this one decision by this one leader is going to carry consequences into the 400 years of silence and into the New Testament. By the time we enter into the New Testament, we are. Paul is going to be radical in terms of his acceptance of Gentiles and the Gospel going to Gentiles radical. So if anyone's ever been, like, reading the Old Testament and you got people in the Old Testament like Rahab and like Ruth, who are clearly not Jews. And it's not a big issue. Zipporah, like, literally, Moses, wife, Zipporah, not a Jew. And it's like, not an issue. And then you get to, like, the Gospels and there's this clear, like, racial issue, like Peter, for all intents and purposes up until, like, pretty deep into the Book of Acts has some racist, like, ideologies. If you're kind of wondering, like, where did this come from? The seed of that is, like, really, literally right here. Ezra, chapter nine, verse two. And scholars are divided on this. Okay? If you do a deep dive on this, you'll find there are certain scholars who are like, I think Ezra made the right call. There are other scholars who are like, I think Ezra was being a little racist also, because at no point in the Torah does it say to add a new sin on top of the original sin. So if marrying people who are pagans or intermarriage is a problem, guess what's an even bigger problem? Divorce. Literally. Paul is going to have to, like, clean this up when we get to the New Testament, because when we get to First Corinthians 7, Paul's essentially going to be like, hey, if you married a non Christian, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're not going to divorce them and then remarry some cute Christian girl. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Jesus and Paul are really going to come down on the line of, even if this person wasn't God's will for you, the moment you married them, they now became God's will for you. So there is no, like, hey, I'm going to go renege on this whole marriage situation because I was unsaved when I got married and I married an idiot, and now I'm saved and. And there's better options. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. First Peter 3 and 1 Corinthians 7 are going to really push back on that idea as a whole. So why is Ezra doing this now? Some people would say he had to do it. The tough call, but he had to do it. And he had to do it because the purity of it's why genealogy is so important in Ezra's book. Genealogy is important because there's some people who literally, they can't even be priests because there is no proof that they are from the line of Aaron. Okay, so the reason that Ezra gives us a full genealogy is because genealogies are the proof that you actually can't even serve in the temple. Okay, So a lot of scholars will make an argument that Ezra had to do this or else it would jeopardize whether or not Jesus was fully Jewish. But that doesn't line up because in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, there's multiple non Jewish ancestors that Jesus has. Jesus blood is not 100% pure Jew. It's not it's not. It's just not true. David is part Moabite, okay? Like, that's the whole point of the Book of Ruth, is to, like, show that King David is not 100% Jewish. So, like, blood purity or like, racial purity is not a godly idea. That is a very secular idea. Even if Ezra was right, or it's like, he's definitely interpreting Scripture, which means he's taking the Torah, he's interpreting it, and he's applying it to a scenario that's unprecedented, which honestly is going to start what's called a Rabbinic tradition. And the entire group of the Pharisees are going to come from this discipline of taking the Torah, looking at new life scenarios and applying the Torah to scenarios that are unprecedented. And I just want to put into perspective how big of a deal Ezra's gonna be. Ezra is going to be the person who edits, compiles the final version of the Torah. Ezra is the reason that we have an Old Testament. Ezra is this. This, like, Ezra's a teacher of the law, okay? And I know in the New Testament, these. This group is, like, kind of vilified, but that's what Ezra is. And honestly, this movement towards Torah observance is what's going to start the group of the pharisees. And post 70 AD after 70 AD, rabbinic Pharisaical Judaism is the only form of Judaism that survives. So Ezra's legacy is huge. And this is a big moment of what it means to be rabbinic. It means to take the Torah, which is not in a literal way, but can be outdated, quote unquote, and apply that law to life scenarios that we haven't encountered before. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold, literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies and at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode One of the things that I don't want you to miss is that Ezra is talking to a new generation of God's people. That's very easy to miss, which is the same thing happens in the book of Deuteronomy. It's easy to kind of miss the fact that Moses is having to give the law a second time, AKA Deuteronomy, because there's a new generation that wasn't there when the law was given at Mount Sinai. So again, not only is this a new Exodus, but Ezra is being set up as a new Moses. There's actually a couple things that connect Ezra as a knew Moses. Okay. And one of them is the time in which Ezra departs from Persia. Okay? The timing of the departure From Babylon, chapter 7, verse 9 says on the first day of the first month was the founding of his going up from Babylon. This coincided with the Israelites departure from Egypt on the first day of the first month. You can see Exodus 12, 1, 2, number 2. He made sure that there were Levites and priests carrying the sacred temple vessels, okay? Just as there were among the Israelites in the wilderness in numbers, chapter 10. His support from the royal treasury is an extension of the plundering of the Egyptians motif From Exodus chapter 3. Ezra prays for a straight path back to Jerusalem. This phrase adopts the promise of Isaiah 40. In the wilderness prepares the way of the Lord. Make a straight path in the desert for our God. Ezra mentions a three day rest after arriving in Jerusalem, which imitates the three day rest of Joshua in the Israelites after crossing the Jordan. Ezra is to appoint judges and leaders who will teach and administer justice, which corresponds precisely to Moses appointment of the same. After the Exodus, Ezra is a new Moses, okay? He's 100% seen as a new Moses. If this is the new Exodus, Zerubbabel is not the Moses. It is Ezra. And as we are going to see tomorrow, Nehemiah is going to be set up as a new Joshua. All right, that's enough context clues. That's enough nerdy nuggets. What is our timeless truth for the day? Our timeless truth is that all three movements are gonna end with an anticlimactic response. You get to the end of the book of Ezra and you're kind of like, I mean I, ah, like it's not like it ends on a high note. And the whole point of partial fulfillment of the prophetic words of Jeremiah and Isaiah and no permanent change, because what's gonna happen is that the people in Ezra's generation, they're gonna be spiritually inspired and repented for 25 years or so. And then they're gonna go right back to their normal behavior, which these books are actually supposed to get you to the place of. I think we should be believing for something else, and that something else is Jesus. These books are a fulfillment of prophecies, but not the full fulfillment. They are a change, but they're not permanent change. Only Jesus can bring permanent change. And that's what the entire Old Testament is doing. And that's a lesson that all of us need to learn, that only the person of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit can bring permanent change, permanent revival and real, lasting change. Which is why Paul is going to say, it's not the commands that bring change, it's a different heart that brings change. And I just want to always challenge leaders. Pastors out there don't go for behavior modification. Always, always, always, as we lead God's people, let us actually go for heart transformation. And that can't be done outside of the power of the Holy Spirit in the person of Jesus being preached and exalted. That's a timeless truth. Ezra's spiritual renewal, Ezra's spiritual repentance, it takes the people so far, but like every book of the Old Testament, it's supposed to get us to the place of we need God's spirit to be poured out on all flesh. We need the day of Pentecost. We need a savior to go to the cross and actually die so that we can become temples of the Holy Spirit. It's a partial fulfillment of it's a change, but it's not permanent. And now that we're living on this side or the opposite side of Calvary, the opposite side of Pentecost, we actually have the power to believe for full fulfillment and for permanent change. And I would say don't stop until you see everything that God has for us. Permanent change and full fulfillment. Okay? The promises of God. All right, tomorrow we got day three, 42, we got a brand new book of the Bible. We're going to be in the book of Nehemiah, chapters 1, 2, and 3. If you're on a streak, I'm so proud of you. If you're not on a streak, I love you. I love you. I love you. I wish it was on a streak, though. We are getting down to the wire, guys. We got Nehemiah, and then we're going to head into the last couple of books of the Bible. I'm super, super excited. I love you guys. I'll see you right here tomorrow, same time, same place as we start the Book of Nehemiah. Peace.
- [23:24]
Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram @the bibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses at the Bible Department. We'll see you back here tomorrow.