THE OT PERSPECTIVE
OF SIN:
MARRIED TO GOD,
BUT DATING THE WORLD
How do we typically view sin in the OT? When you and I
read the OT we often see a God who is angry, who wants to pour out wrath on all
humankind, and who eagerly judges the world. God seems pretty grumpy. (By "OT" I mean "Old Testament")
We can
focus on those emotions and write off the God of the OT altogether. But we need
to pause for a second and think about why God is angry? We could look at this
theologically and point out that God is holy and he hates sin. When his people
sin they are breaking his commandments. This is true, but there is more to it
than that.
Suppose
a woman’s love language is quality time spent together with her husband.
Quality time doesn’t have to be romantic dates at fancy restaurants. She just
wants to have a meaningful time together. So they may sit together on the couch
watching TV. But while they are watching her shows, he plays a game on his
phone or scrolls through Facebook. If they do go out for a coffee, he sits
there with nothing to say until an acquaintance walks by and all of a sudden
he’s a chatterbox. Shouldn’t she begin to feel angry that her significant other
finds everything and everyone else more interesting than her?
This is
a very simple illustration, but it is meant to turn off your theological
perspective for a moment and think relationally. God is a relational person.
The reason we see his anger, wrath, and judgment in the OT is not just because
his rules were broken, but because man’s relationship with God has been
disrupted. Sin disrupts our relationship with God in the same way that adultery
breaks down a marriage.
Our text
today relates how Ezra, a priest who is sent to minister to returning exiles in
Israel, reacts to the sins of his people. They had begun to take pagan wives
for themselves after coming home from captivity in Babylon and Ezra begins to
pull out his hair. Let me tell you why.
Remembering Covenant Promises
For those of us who are married I ask this jarring
question: How often do you go back and read your wedding vows? Do you ever
think of them and evaluate how you are doing in your role as a husband or wife?
One of
the first things Ezra did when they returned to Israel was to read the
Scriptures to the people. They had not heard these words in a long time and it
convicted them.
Some of
the officials, leaders in the community, came to Ezra and confessed that “The people of Israel and the priests and
the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with
their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the
Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites”
(9:1b). Now this is an odd confession because some of these peoples did not
exist at this stage of history. Why would they mention these people groups if
they aren’t around?
The key
is that these names are a link to a commandment of God. Those leaders were
referencing Exodus 34:11-16 where these names were first mentioned (read).
Now the
men of Israel were taking wives who were not Jews. Likely there were few Jewish
wives to go around. Thus they were intermarrying with unbelievers and so
threatening the purity of their faith. It was not a threat but a reality that
if they married these pagan women their hearts would be turned from God to
idolatry. It was inevitable. They would replace the living God with gods that
are not gods.
When the
people heard the words of Moses it was like a husband and wife reading their
wedding vows and seeing how far they fell short of their promises. God had
chosen this people to be a holy people, his own people, and had made (in
effect) a marriage covenant with them, and they were breaking it with this
seemingly insignificant act. But it was not insignificant in the big picture of
faith.
Breaking Covenant Promises
Marrying an unbeliever is a risky choice. Some people
call it evangelism, but it seldom works out that way.
According
to the Exodus passage it breaks God’s commandment and his intention to create a
holy people. If we disregard this commandment we declare that to be married is
the most important goal in life, more important than obedience to God.
This is
why Ezra confesses in v. 10, “We have
forsaken your commandments, which you commanded by your servants the prophets…”
The commandments were there to protect the people. But if the people don’t
understand or appreciate the commandment, they choose another option. That
option is none other than “sin.”
The most
common word for sin is found in the Hebrew word chata (in Greek it is harmatano).
This verb is found in the OT over 600 times. It means “missing the mark.” Picture
an archery target – we place it in the center aisle and I take aim. But instead
of shooting as accurately as I can at the target, I deliberately aim to the far
left and miss.
We may
think of “missing the mark” as making a mistake rather than a willful chosen
sin. But in the Bible the term suggests not failure, but a decision to fail.
“Missing the mark” is a voluntary and culpable mistake.
When we
choose these other things as more important than God, we make them ultimate.
Ezekiel 14:3 says, “these men have taken
their idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity
before their faces.” God was saying that the human heart takes good things
like marriage, career, possessions, and family, and turns them into ultimate
things. Our hearts make gods of them, making them the central focus of our
lives, because we think they can give us significance and security, safety and
fulfillment. Idols are not just bad things; they can be good things – and the
greater the good, the more likely we will expect it to satisfy our longings.
God’s view of Covenant Promises
Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the
very best things in life. An idol is anything that is more important to you
than God. If it is an obsession, absorbing your heart and mind more than God,
it is an idol.
Think
again of our opening illustration: a husband and wife that are distracted from
their relationship by “other” things will be relationally broken.
Consider
how God views sin then. First of all, whatever distracts you from obeying him
is an idol. The Bible sometimes uses a marriage metaphor to describe idolatry.
God should be our true spouse, but when we desire and delight in other things
more than God we commit spiritual adultery. Idolatry and adultery are synonyms
in the OT.
The best
illustration of this metaphor comes to us from the prophet Hosea. God tells
Hosea, “Go take for yourself a wife of
whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (Hosea
1:2). Hosea becomes a walking parable of how the Lord feels about his people
and their flirtation with idols. The people felt that they could worship Yahweh
and mingle pagan idolatry on the side. They probably felt that they were covering
their bases in this way.
But this
is what we call syncretism. It has always been a problem for God’s people. We
don’t deny Christianity, but we add to our faith the beliefs and practices of
our culture. Then, in a rather short time, we are virtually indistinguishable
from the world in how we think and live. We want so desperately to blend in and
not stick out in the crowd by being too holy.
God
calls this infidelity. We are married to God, but we want to date the world. We
say we are happy with God, but we can’t shake the allure of the world and its
temporary pleasures and satisfactions. But John said, “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the
world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
Renewing our Covenant Promises with God
After 25 or 50 years, some married couples will have a
little ceremony to renew their wedding vows. They haven’t forgotten their
promises per se, but they want to remind themselves and everyone that they are
committed to loving each other. That’s a good thing.
When we
have broken our promises of faithfulness to God, and we do often, there is only
one way to come back to God: confession. And then we can renew our promises.
Ezra’s
response to the sins of his people and his prayer are an outstanding model in
the OT of renewal. Check out Ezra’s response to sin:
a) First, he is appalled at sin. Twice it says that Ezra
“sat appalled” and pulled hair from his head and beard (3-4). One writer said,
“Rare is the soul who is so shocked at disobedience that he is appalled.”[i]
Does sin shock us? We see the tabloids at Sobey’s or Superstore while checking
our groceries and we see that a superstar couple has split. Are we horrified or
curious? What about when a step-father shakes his baby to death? Are we
horrified to the point of dropping to our knees in confession before God? Ezra
was beside himself with shock over the sin he witnessed.
b) Second, he mourns the sin. The source of this mourning
was the realization that God’s commandments had been broken. “Then all who trembled at the words of the
God of Israel…” (4). A distinguishing mark of a true Christian is that he
mourns over sin, both his own sins and the sins of others. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall
be comforted” (Mt. 5:4). He wasn’t talking about people at a funeral; Jesus
meant that the person who grieves sin will be blessed.
c) Third, he confessed the sin. Ezra makes no attempt to
separate himself from the transgressions of the people. He doesn’t go before
God and say “Look at these people; look how sinful they are.” No, he includes
himself in the guilt of the people and says not “they” but “our.” “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” (6). Ezra was ashamed and yet did
not hesitate to go directly to God and confess this breech. Adam and Eve tried
to hide, and who wouldn’t? But the guilt and shame are too much of a burden for
us to bear, why wouldn’t we go to God.
d) Fourth, he makes no excuse. Ezra recognized that God
had punished the people less than they deserved even though God knew they would
sin again. But Ezra plainly says, “we are
before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this”
(15b). Ezra doesn’t cover up the guilt but throws himself on the mercy of God.
Should a
husband and wife have a severe disruption in their marriage, denying the
existence of this issue between them would begin as a wedge and grow to become
a chasm. Only confession and repentance could heal the marriage.
So too
with God, the lover of our souls, we find one who would show mercy and embrace
us once again, if only we would agree with him that sin is not just
law-breaking but is relationship-destroying.
This OT perspective changes our understanding of sin. Now
we see that sin is personal, it pains the One who loves us and rejects the One
who adores us. Sin can no longer be seen as a dusty law journal in a lawyer’s
office. Sin can no longer be swept aside as culturally irrelevant. We cannot
scorn our marriage vows with God.
The
marriage analogy continues in the NT. Paul speaks of Christ as the bridegroom
and the Church as the bride in Ephesians 5. All at once he speaks of how a
husband ought to treat a wife and vice versa, and then says “This mystery is profound, and I am saying
that it refers to Christ and the church” (32). What you do affects your
spouse; if you hurt your body, you hurt “our” body. And when you sacrifice
yourself for the other, you show the same crazy love that Christ showed on the
cross.
But just
like a good marriage, with open communication, readiness to admit fault, quick
to repair the hurts, God is gracious and merciful and ready to hold us close.
So let’s not date the world and flirt with its toys. Christ is the lover of our
souls and he died to set us free from the world.
AMEN
Prayer:
(This
prayer sounds like a wedding vow. It is a call to renew our covenant with God
just as a couple renews their wedding vows at 10, 25 or 50 years)
O Lord,
Our God,
I,
Darryl (______insert your name), take you God , to be my God, to have and to
love you from this day forward, in good times and in bad times, believing that
you want my best, whether I am sick or well, poor or rich, I accept that you
love me and I will not give myself to another, till death takes me and I enter
into your eternal presence,
In Jesus
name, Amen.
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