Right to Life Sunday
STUDY OUTLINE
1. What are your honest thoughts about the “problem passages” in the Bible?
Name a few of these.
2. How can this passage today make sense, that the Jewish men who married foreign wives were asked to send them away (divorce them), along with the children from that union?
3. Name some stories that illustrate a woman could marry a Jewish man if she was willing to C_________ or F___________ God.
4. What is another word for “convert” (in #3 above) that is even more descriptive of what it means to be a “disciple of Jesus”?
5. Are you following God? What does that mean to you?
I. This sermon series should come with a warning label [Wacky warning labels, including push here for a brief message from our pastor]. The warning label on this series would be: “Guarantee not included.” Oh, they’re guaranteed in so far as I preach the Word accurately. The Word of God is true. More accurate would be “satisfaction NOT guaranteed;” not all answers are guaranteed to satisfy. Esp the answers to the “problem passages.”
A. One reason is time limitations. I can’t detail as much as many would like.
B. Another is we’re all different places on the journey. (Progressive revelation is related.) Didn’t Jesus Himself tell His disciples: “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear…” (Jn 16:25). Not everyone has ears to hear all God has for us, evidenced by the challenge Jesus laid down many times “He who has ears to hear…”
II. (Ezra 10:1-3, 10-17) is a problem passage that begs the question: Do two wrongs make a right?
A. Background/context: Many Jewish men had married foreign (“strange” KJV) wives. Now God is commanding they be “sent away.” [warning to guys, don’t have too much fun w/ “strange wife” wording.] READ TEXT.
B. The real question is: “Can it be wrong if God is directing this?” Answer is “no.” So how can it be right?
C. Equally problematic, I see other examples of (Ezra 10) in (Nehemiah 13), and…
D. Abraham, one of the all-time Bible heroes, sent his Egyptian wife, Hagar, away to protect Isaac and the promise God wanted to fulfill through him (vs. Ishmael, Gen 21).
1. NOTE: That “wrong” of sending Ishmael and Hagar away was brought on by Abraham’s wrong (lack of faith), just like this second “wrong” in Ezra was brought on by these Israelite men first marrying foreign women, clearly forbidden by God MANY times, “lest they lead you astray after other gods” (I Kgs 11; Neh 13).
2. There are many more examples where white sheep play with dirty sheep and the white ones become dirty than that same scenario with the dirty ones becoming white.
3. The power of a wife to influence her husband is incredibly strong. If I say Samson and Delilah, you instantly see that illustrated. Another lesser known example of a wife’s influence for wrong comes out of American Revolution. This many you’ll see twice saved the Revolution for the colonies by his heroic actions at Saratoga and Valcour Island. George Washington treated him like a son and had offered him second in command of the Revolutionary Army. But his wife convinced him to take another, opposite course. [SHOW 2 MIN CLIP at start of scene 12 OF “Benedict Arnold” DVD]. His wife was a loyalist to England. She won him over with persuasive, pervasive, nagging getting him to go went against what HE thought was right. Later he laments how: “My name will forever be associated with Judas and Brutus and all traitors known to man…”
E. This raises all kinds of questions about equal yoking, unions of all kinds from marriage to business partnerships, friendships, and clubs.
1. What unions/partnerships are specifically prohibited in the command not to be unequally yoked w/ unbelievers (2 Cor 6:14)? You can’t prove it’s marriage, only marriage or any particular kind of union.
2. We assume it has to be more than a friendship, because wasn’t it our Master who was called a “friend of sinners”? And didn’t He tell us we had to be “salt and light IN the world” (Matt 5:14-16)?
3. Our separation is to be one of lifestyle, not distance and isolation. The presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life since Pentecost could possibly account for this difference between the OT command for SEPARATION and the NT one for PENETRATION as salt (and light) gets IN the soup. The Spirit empowers us to stay pure even while in contact w/ people who would pull us down into darkness. But how close can the contact be? We still have to figure out how to avoid unequal yoking/unions.
III. I believe the Ezra “problem passage” we’re looking at also gives some answers to this. I thought I had the answer when I remembered some Scripture which said foreigners who CONVERTED to become God followers were basically brought into the family of God with the same privileges as a God-fearing, following Jew. This would certainly include being allowed to marry into the family.
A. But I had trouble finding specific passages that said that. I found (Num 9:14 ; 15:13 -16; Dt 10:18 -19 “the Lord defends the cause of the alien and loves him, and you are to love him…,” Dt 28:43-44 the alien who lives among you will surpass you if you fail to obey my law.”
B. But none of them explicitly said “You don’t have to send a foreign wife away if she becomes a follower of the One true God of Israel, a convert. You have the verses in Ezra 10 that MAY indicate that’s why they were examining all these marriage, precisely to interview each couple to see what evidence there was for conversion (vs 13, 16b-17). But it’s not an airtight argument.
IV. But then I remembered Ruth, this little gem of a book plopped right in the middle of the readings two weeks ago, [which is where some may be “so far behind you think you’re running first”]
A. What’s the point of the whole story of Ruth? That God will make a way when there seems to be no way. God made a way for this pagan, foreign Moabitess, not a part of the family of God, to become a part both by conversion and then marriage.
She alludes to this when she said those words immortalized by the classic wedding song: “Your people will be my people, your God my God” (Ruth 1:16-17).
B. Not only was Ruth brought into the family of God, Israel by marriage to Boaz, so was Rahab, a pagan prostitute.
C. And NOT ONLY are they brought into the family, they’re actually brought into the ancestral lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ (Matt 1:5-6).
D. Note who’s also there: Tamar guilty of incest (1:3), and Bathsheba, guilty of adultery (1:6). Wow. If these are allowed into God’s family, do you think I and you may have a chance once we become God-followers. Make no mistake there were some changes since their sinning days.
E. There are not only allowed into God’s family, as I believe all the women of (Ezra 10) who would simply follow the One true God, these women were mightily used in God’s plan to bring His Son into the world.
V. I can say with authority of God’s Word and these stories, that God wants to use you, no matter what your background to bring His Son into people’s lives. Do you believe that? God wants to use you to accomplish His mighty purposes in the world IF you’re willing to simply trust in Him, believe in Him, and follow Him. Do you believe that? Are you following Him. That’s what conversion really means. |
