Pastor Jonah preached from Ezra and Nehemiah. He said that politics, religion, and social reform cannot, address matters of the heart. But men and women with new hearts can. Lector: Lindsey Blair
Pastor Jonah preached from Ezra and Nehemiah. He said that politics, religion, and social reform cannot, address matters of the heart. But men and women with new hearts can.
Lector: Lindsey Blair
The Supreme Court has been in the news lately as hearings for nominee Judge Brown Jackson
Incredibly qualified. Ivy League educated. Experience as a clerk/judge.
But her opponents attack her on abortion. For roughly 60 years, a large portion of our country’s strategies for ending abortion have been legal. Make it illegal.
The promise of every new judge, and every new R. politician, is to end abortion.
In 2018, republicans had the house, the senate, the White House, and a SC majority
A bill was on the docket to ban abortion after 20 weeks…and it failed.
To make matters more complex, did you know abortions went down during the Obama administration? It went down twenty six percent. The real question is why…
Anyone who says “abortion went down because of Obama” is making the same mistake as the people saying, “gas went up because of Biden”.
All of us face the temptation of reductionism…simplify something complicated to feel safe/good/right.
If we can say “the president”, we have someone to blame or celebrate. Easy answer.
But there are very few easy answers in life, and we must avoid reductionism.
Should we make abortion illegal, like the republicans think, or unnecessary, like the democrats think? Should we care for life in the womb like R’s, or address the circumstances that lead to abortions by caring for lives outside the womb like D’s?
Simple answers rarely work, and simple answers often create enemies of others.
In Ezra and Nehemiah, historically read as one story, we see a complicated problem.
God’s people are exiles in Babylon, prisoners of war.
Not permitted to worship, no political power, culture not permitted to flourish.
They have political, social, and religious problems. All of them.
Is it because they were unfaithful or Babylon tyrannical or God had a sovereign plan?
We’re going to do a flyover of both Ezra and Neh this morning to see how we can enter into life’s complexities with confidence when we have the heart of Christ.
Ezra begins with an empahsis on political turmoil…
Solomon’s temple is gone. Jews in Exile with no political voice/influence.
A Babylonian Jew named Zerubbabel is sent to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.
He becomes the governeor of Judah. Political position.
He was in the line of David, so a great choice.
What’s our problem? POLITICS! How do we solve it? GET OUR GUY IN OFFICE!
In Ezra 6, you’ll notice someone is absent in all the joy around the temple…God.
When the first temple was dedicated, 1 Kings 8, a thick cloud filled the temple.
They had to stop all their sacrifices and worship…
For the glorious presence of the Lord filled the Temple of the Lord.
-1 Kings 8:11
For Zerubbabel’s temple…they sacrifice, have some feasts…and go home
Under Zerubabbel, they get political power, but no presence!
No thick cloud overwhelming the people…what’s more, the people keep on sinning.
They got the political power they wanted, but it was too simple of a solution.
Along comes Ezra. Ezra was not a political figure, but a religious one
He was a scribe, well versed in the Bible (ez. 7:6). He goes back to Jerusalem…
To study and obey the Law of the Lord and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel.
-Ezra 7:10
We don’t need politics, we need religion! Read the Bible, memorize it, obey it.
The people love the Bible studies…but they keep on sinning!
He gets so upset, he spends all night weeping and mourning at one point.
His big solution? He demands that everyone who married a non-Jew get a divorce
After yelling at them to obey God, after passionate sermons, his big conclusion is to get a bunch of divorces and the Jewish men are to abandon their wives and children.
Simplistic solution to a complex problem.
Have you ever heard the verse from Malachi about God hating divorce?
Malachi was a prophet while Ezra was preaching in Jerusalem.
This is what God is talking about there…this exaggerated zeal for religious propriety that lead to wives and children being abandoned.
A simple solution led men to see their wives and children as enemies.
It blinded them to the heart of God and only INCREASED suffering.
Political action leaves them without the presence of God
Religious action leaves them abandoning their children and displeasing the Lord…
Neither changed the sins of the people.
But perhaps it’s another problem all together. Nehemiah, a Jew raised in Babylon, gets word that the walls of Jerusalem are torn down, gates destroyed by fire.
What good is our political power and religious zeal if the borders aren’t secure?
We can’t be safe or set apart as a society if we can’t even defend ourselves!
So let’s rebuild the walls so our culture can thrive.
Nehemiah goes about rebuilding the walls…and it’s a fascinating, exciting story.
I want you to hear how it ends, though. The walls are rebuilt, the gates are secured…
But what do they do with their new-found security?
In those days I saw the men of Judah treading out their wine presses on the Sabbath…Some men from Tyre, who lived in Jerusalem, were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise. They were selling it on the Sabbath to the people of Judah—and in Jerusalem at that!
-Nehemiah 13:15, 16
They were not obeying the law.
They had the temple, they had a governor, and they had secure borders.
It was not enough.
Nehemiah orders the new gates shut so no one can come in on the sabbath.
BUT THEN he sees Jews are marrying non-Jews again, and he loses it.
So I confronted them and called down curses on them. I beat some of them and pulled out their hair. I made them swear in the name of God that they would not let their children intermarry with the pagan people of the land.
-Nehemiah 13:25
Listen. If your pastor starts cursing at you, beating you up, and pulling out your hair…that’s not good.
Step back with me now:
Are political problems real? YES.
Are religious problems? Social problems?
Yes. They’re all real and all need to be addressed. (REPEAT)
Do you know the common theme in Ezra-Nehemiah, though? Sinful people.
And you need to see that the personal sins of individuals impacted communities
It impacted the way they interpreted the Bible.
It impacted the way they viewed politics and power.
It impacted the way they sought to build their society.
And none of their simple solutions worked.
Personal and corporate repentance didn’t work, rebuilding the temple, studying the Bible, securing their borders…none of it worked.
The solution is not to abandon political/religious/social engagement. The solution is to abandon simplicity and instead honor life’s complexity.
The Bible Project has an 8 minute video that tells this story better than I could, and here’s how they put it:
Ezra-Nehemiah teaches us that what God’s people need is a holistic transformation of heart if they’ll ever love and obey their God.
-The Bible Project
Holistic transformation of heart. That means a renewed heart that changes how we live.
This is the consistent message of Jesus, the one who came to give us new hearts.
Remember Nicodemus? John 3 says he is a religious leader who was a pharisee.
He had incredible political, religious, and social power.
He comes to Jesus, says, ”God is with you!”
Jesus says to him:
I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.
-John 3:3
Maybe you’re asking “what does that mean?” That’s what Nicodemus asked him.
Listen to Jesus’ response:
I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.
-John 3:5
This has been the message since the garden of Eden!
If you wanted to try and summarize the single message of the Old Testament it would simply be this: you need to be re-created.
A new governor won’t heal you. More religious effort won’t heal you. Safer communities won’t heal you. You need a new heart. You need to be born again.
This does not mean we stop caring about political, social, or religious problems.
It means we address them differently. We address them as citizens of God’s Kingdom
life with God as we wait for the city of God, as a new creation.
For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
-John 3:16
The promises of God are not fulfilled by striving and taking, but by giving and receiving.
And the grace of God always comes to us so it can move through us.
Let’s think about abortion again. What might it look like to honor the complexity there?
What might it look like to think about abortion Christian-ly?
Well, how does Jesus teach us to think about people?
The first commandment is this: love the lord your God, and a second is just like it; love your neighbor as yourself.
If you were faced with an impossible decision, how would you want to be loved?
Maybe first you’d want someone to understand what all you’re facing
Have you ever sat with someone contemplating an abortion? Or someone who had one? Have you asked why? Have you looked at who gets abortions, where they do?
There’s a social, cultural component here. If we love people, we’ll love people.
That may mean visiting some of our ministry partners here in New Albany, choices for women or hope southern indiana. Learn the names of real people, and care.
The goal stops becoming ending abortion, and instead becomes loving people.
If we love people, we enter into their worlds to address the complexity of their problem
With a transformed heart, we can say, “yes, there is a social problem here, time to get to work.” With a transformed heart, we can love, support, and listen to some of the most vulnerable and voiceless people in our society.
Perhaps some of that curiosity will lead you to the history of organizations like Planned Parenthood, though
Maybe you’ll read the horrific motivations behind the founding of that organization, written by the hand of its founder.
Targeting specific groups she perceived to be less than, hoping to shrink their population by aborting their babies.
And that’s not the only industry that has done this!
Maybe you’ll see that and realize there’s a political component here, too.
Yes, we should engage the law. We should advocate for laws that hold predatory organizations accountable.
We should call our politicians and defend the rights of the most voiceless in our society
When you see the complexities, when you hear the stories, I promise you you’ll find yourself more willing to celebrate the cause of life, not just the cause of your side
You’ll find yourself moved with compassion for women faced with these choices
You’ll see people who need to know they are loved and pursued by God in Christ.
King Jesus came to restore and ultimately re-create our world.
The Christian life is not one where we shy away from challenges, but neither does it mean we become a simple, one-size-fits-all people.
We enter into politics not to save us, but because we are saved.
We can lay down lesser allegiances and enter the complexity of our world as citizens of heaven.
We pursue religious devotion not to save us, but because we are saved!
We study the scriptures to know the one who loved us so much he would die for us.
And we strive to make this world better, not to save us, but because we are saved.
So the church moves forward, joining Jesus in his work of making all things new, because in him we have are heirs of all of God’s promises.
Politics, religion, and social reform do not, CAN NOT, address matters of the heart…
But men and women with new hearts can.
We are free of the vain hopes offered by the world, set free not by our efforts, but by Christ’s, not by our faith, but by Christ’s.
so let’s remember now the source of our hope and confidence:
COMMUNION