Chaps. 6-10
“Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon. And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written:-In the first year of Cyrus the king, the same Cyrus the king made a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, Let the house be builded” (6:1-3). That was enough for Darius; so accordingly he says “Now therefore, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which are beyond the river, be ye far from thence.” He gave them a rebuke, “Let the work of this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of God in his place.” And so far from listening to their adversaries he puts honor upon them—makes fresh commands, carrying out still more fully what had been already proclaimed in the first year of Cyrus. “Also, I have made a decree, that whosoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled down from his house, and being set up, let him be hanged thereon; and let his house be made a dunghill for this. And the God that hath caused his name to dwell there, destroy all kings and people that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy this house of God which is at Jerusalem. I, Darius, have made a decree; let it be done with speed.”
Thus the adversaries were completely refuted, and stopped in their evil work, and the house of God received—I will not say an impulse, but-its completion; for the beautiful fact, as we have already seen, is that the Jews had faith to resume the building of the house before they got this fresh decree. “And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered [not through the commandment of the king, but they prospered] through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo: and they budded, and finished it, according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia.” For now that God had given them power, God also controlled all the powers to be now in their favor. “And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. And the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.”
In the 7th chapter we have a very important and fresh feature in this book, and that is the mission of Ezra, who comes, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, to visit the children of Israel. “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of Jehovah, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments” (7:10). this is a most important thing, beloved brethren, for those who are in the place of the remnant now. It is not the vain asking for power—a great snare in a broken state of things. When the church began, it began with power, but now it is in a state of ruin. It is not power that we want, but self-judgment—self-judgment and the heart to obey—to do the will of God, which always goes along with self-judgment: Whereas the difference is this. If people think that the great want is power, they virtually throw the blame upon God. They say that there is such weakness now. “It is no use to meet together to worship the Lord or to do anything else: we have not power.” Vain foolish thought! Most peculiarly so to those who know that the very essence of what God has wrought in the church is to send down the Holy Ghost to be therein forever, and if the Holy Ghost be not power I know not what is. But, beloved friends, what we really want is faith in the power that we have got, instead of these murmurs and complaints, as if God had taken away the power, and as if our business was to go on in our own poor and wretched way crying out for power. Not so. What we have to do is to put our hand upon our mouth, and ourselves in the dust, and to take the place of real humiliation where there is that which hinders the action of the Spirit of God. But the great point is to seek in humiliation to do His will.
Some years ago there was a working among certain persons who bore the name of the Lord, and they took, formally, their position upon this need of power; and they cried to God for power. At any rate they cried for power. What was the consequence? They got power; but I am persuaded that that power was really of the devil, and not of God; and although there seemed to be most remarkable things done, and even a sort of painful imitation of the gift of tongues, it was only a sham it was a non-reality: it was of Satan. It began, and it ended too, with the most frightful departure from the truth of God, and the most complete dishonor that was ever put upon the name of the Lord up to that day. There never was such systematic dishonor of the Lord Jesus in the church, as far as I know, as that which took place as the result of all this. Whereas, beloved friends, what should characterize us—that true work of God in which, through the grace of God, we have our part, is this—not the crying out for power, and staying in disobedience till we get power, but ceasing from the evil, and seeking of God to learn to do well—the acknowledging of the sin of the church and of our own sin, in particular our own failure, and separating, at once, according to the light that God gives us, from what we know to be offensive in His sight.
This was exactly what filled the heart of Ezra.
He comes with his heart set upon doing the will of God. This is the great thing. “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of Jehovah and to do it and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. Now this is the copy of the letter that the king Artaxerxes gave unto Ezra the priest, the scribe.” On this I need not dwell. Ezra is empowered to act then; but the grand point, you observe, is the purpose of his heart to do the will of God.
And this we are entitled to expect now, that is, our heart should be towards the Lord, as we find, for instance, was the case with the church in Philadelphia. How does the Lord introduce Himself to us there? What does He speak about His action? “I have set before thee an open door.” He has power to open, and none can shut, and to shut, and none can open. But the way He here uses this power is to set before us an open door. In the book we are considering, king Artaxerxes is the figure of one that sets an open door before Ezra. Yes, but Ezra's heart was set to do the will of God. God works all outward circumstances, and opens the way when our heart inwardly is set to do the right thing in the sight of the Lord. We have no ground ever to complain of circumstances if only our heart be right with the Lord. The Lord can and will take care of all else.
What we, then, have to do is to judge ourselves. I am persuaded that this is the great want at the present moment of the remnant in Christendom, not to be asking for Power which, if it were given, might be the ruin of us. We want rather ballast to carry the truth we have got than to have full sails to carry us (I fear) in a more uncomely way than we are even doing now. For do not we all know, beloved friends, that our knowledge is far beyond our grace; and do you think, that we want something more to make us top-heavy? I am persuaded the very contrary—that what we want is rather the spirit of self-judgment instead of giving ourselves greater airs than we are apt to assume even now. We should seek to carry the truth of God in lowliness of mind, and in love, and in a deep sense of our shortcomings. This is the thing which becomes us. This is what we ought to seek. Power in such a state of things would be ruinous to us, I am persuaded, and therefore I thank God that He is not pleased to give more power of that sort. What we need is the action of the Spirit in our self-judgment, and if that were the case our blessing would flow like a river.
Well, Ezra proceeds; and he gathers together out of Israel chief men. “And I gathered them together to the river that runneth to Ahava: and there abode we in tents three days: and I viewed the people, and the priests, and found there none of the sons of Levi” (8:15). There was a lack in the work, you observe, a lack of energy for the work. “Then sent I for Eliezer, for Ariel, for Shemaiah, and for Elnathan, and for Jarib, and for Elnathan, and for Nathan, and for Zechariah, and for Meshullam, chief men; also for Joiarib, and for Elnathan, men of understanding. And I sent them with commandment unto Iddo the chief, at the place Casiphia, and I told them what they should say unto Iddo, and to his brethren the Nethinims, at the place Casiphia, that they should bring unto us ministers for the house of our God. And by the good hand of our God upon us, they brought us a man of understanding, of the sons of Mahli, the son of Levi, the son of Israel,” and so on. “Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God.” That is the point. It is not asking for power, but it is afflicting themselves before God. It is humiliation of spirit before the Lord, that the Lord may be able to entrust us with a blessing. “I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance. For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers” —it was not outward power: that was not the thing— “and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him. So we fasted and besought our God for this: and he was intreated of us.” And instead of a band of soldiers protecting them, God protected them, which was much better. So they came up through all their enemies.
When Ezra found himself in the midst of the people, there was a solemn and painful sight that met him (chap. 9.). There was this humiliation even in the captivity before he entered the land; but when he comes into the land it is a most painful sight. Those that had already returned from the captivity—those that were gathered towards the name of Jehovah in Jerusalem—he found in the most painful circumstances. He found sources of shame and sorrow. He found cases of evil. He found the most grievous sights and sounds among them.
Oh, beloved friends, what a sad thing for the heart of the man that had been afflicting himself before God away from the land among some of the people that were there. Now he came up and found that those that ought to have been so impressed with the sense of the grace of God, and so resting upon His protecting hand, were themselves in a state of carelessness, laxity, departure inwardly from His ways. They are outwardly near Him, but inwardly far from Him. So we are told. “Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel, and the priests, and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites” (9:1). It was not even so with the Samaritans. Positively, here were persons that were in Jerusalem, and not only people, but priests, doing after the abominations of the Canaanites. And you are sometimes surprised, beloved friends, that among those that are gathered unto the name of the Lord Jesus there should be distressing developments of evil. Why, it must be so. They were not walking with God. The very worst forms of evil will be found where you are closest to the Lord if you are not walking with Him—if you are not kept by Him; because Satan's great effort is against that. It is that which he hates above all that is on the face of the earth.
When people are walking hand in hand with the world, Satan can leave them. He knows where the world will lead them, and if flesh and spirit are joined hand in hand, it is always flesh that gets the uppermost. The only way to walk in the Spirit is to judge the flesh—to have nothing to do with it, but denounce it—to, mortify our members that are upon the earth. But all attempts to have a friendly harmony between the flesh and the Spirit is vain. Therefore Satan can leave that harmony to take, its course. He knows right well that that which is fleshly will always break down in the things of, God, whatever there may be of the Spirit connected with it. But where persons come, out from the world and are on the professed ground of the judgment of the flesh, if the world is allowed by the heart, or the flesh is tampered with, and, above all, in the worship of God—in the meeting of His people—if we indulge any personal feelings, or allow our own thoughts to govern us or our own feelings-what can it come to but the most distressing and unnatural sights? It is even worse than in the decent world. The decent world will, at any rate, keep an appearance; but where we have learned the vanity of appearance, and where it must be either Spirit really or flesh really, if there is a tampering with evil there, and the allowance of it there, flesh will come out in its worst form and Satan will bring the deepest dishonor on the name of the Lord.
So it was here. It was not in Babylon, but in Judea, that they were doing after the manner of the Canaanites. It was not the persons that were far away from Jerusalem. It was the people, and the priests here who had slipped away from the will of the Lord, It was they that were “doing according, to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the, Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so, that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the head of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass.” Oh, think of that! “The head of the princes and rulers have been chief in this trespass.” And do you suppose, beloved brethren, that we are clear from such dangers? In no wise. Let us then look earnestly to God; but let us remember this, that all true blessing for us must begin with individual blessing, and that the secret of individual blessing will always be found, to have its root in self-judgment before God. We shall find that this is exactly so with Ezra who had been afflicting his soul and getting others to afflict their souls dawn in the captivity. So also in Jerusalem,
“And when I heard this thing I rent my garment, and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied. Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been carried away; and I sat astonied until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto Jehovah my God, and said, Only God. I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day; and for our iniquities have we, our kings, and our priests, been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, and to a spoil, and to confusion of face, as it is this day. And now for a little space grace hath been showed from Jehovah our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail in his holy place.” And thus, you see, Ezra takes a place of deeper humiliation than that. It was not merely a fast now, but there is this sign of more profound humiliation—the rending his garments—the sitting astonished even till the evening sacrifice, and only then spreading out his hands to the Lord to pray for his people as well as to confess.
But he is not content with this; for in the next chapter (chap. 10.) we read, “When Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God” —not telling other people to do so, merely, but doing it himself “there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children: for the people wept very sore. And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing” (vers. 1, 2). They were right: they looked to God. They saw that it was a question between God and His people, and they apply it to their own selves, and the work of repentance goes on, and works meet for repentance. The result is this—that Ezra rises in answer to their call, “and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel, to swear that they should do according to this word. And they sware. Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God, and went into the chamber of Johanan the son of Eliashib: and when he came thither, he did eat no bread, nor drink water: for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away. And they made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem unto all the children of the captivity, that they should gather themselves together unto Jerusalem; and that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited, and himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together” (vers. 5-9).
And Ezra stands up again, and now taxes them plainly with their sin. “Ye have transgressed,” says he, “and have taken strange wives” —the great mark of apostasy for an Israelite, as far as the people were concerned-apostasy from God in taking a strange god, and apostasy from the people by taking strange wives. It was a complete giving up of their holy place of separateness to the Lord. “Now, therefore,” says he, “make confession unto Jehovah, God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives” (vers. 10, 11).
Now, we know what this must be, because we know how the wives would appeal to their husbands' love, and how the poor children would be on their knees to ask why their fathers should disown them. We know what a scene of grief and of entreaty this must have been, and what a time of agony to many a father and mother in Israel that had been thus found out in their sin. But the truth is that there is no real repentance without deep grief and pain. More particularly is it so where it is the sin, not merely of a sinner, but of the people of God—where they have a deep sense that, as God's people, they have brought His name into such contempt, and where this has gone on, it may be, for years. There cannot, therefore, be steps taken in that path of repentance without its costing much to the heart on every side, and so it was at this time.
The congregation are grieved, and they begin with putting away, as it is said— “And Elm the priest, with certain chief of the fathers, after the house of their fathers, and all of them by their names, were separated, and sat down in the fast day of the tenth month to examine the matter. And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the month. And among the sons of the priests there were found that had taken strange wives: namely, of the sons of Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren; Maaseiah; and Eliezer, and Jarib, and Gedaliah. And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives; and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass” (vers. 16-19). And so with others. “All these had taken Strange wives: and some of them had wives by whom they had children” (ver. 44).
Thus the deeper the departure from the Lord, and the more fruits there were Of that departure, the deeper the pain. So it always is. Still, here we see that the grace of God is equal to every difficulty. All that we want is a single eye all that they wanted was the same. But we, beloved brethren, are now concerned. We are those, or among those, to whom God addresses such words as these now, and may the Lord give as to be found faithful; but faithfulness, in such a day as this, never can be separated from a willingness to see wherein we have been wrong, and a readiness to see it—a disposition, through the heart being subject to the word of God, to search and see it continually, and may God give us grace to be true to His own word. Amen.
W.