What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." --2 Corinthians 6:16-18
We live in interesting times. If you have been keeping up with politics, you may have seen a politician who was relatively unknown until recently try to introduce himself at a political rally. He caught the nation's attention by calling the other side "weird."
It's funny what will catch on in popular media. "Weird" became a watchword, a meme, a political catch-phrase. In response, the other political party began making speeches with a theme, "I know you're weird, but what am I?"
While this has been going on in the real world, I have been watching reruns of a politically themed TV series from about a decade ago. In one particular episode, the main character, a female attorney, is running for office in Chicago. Her opponent, a divorced man, was fending off accusations that he was gay because he was not dating women and had not remarried. In one particularly candid moment, he confessed to our heroine that he was not gay, but that he was devoutly religious. The reason that he had not remarried was because he believed the Bible teaches it would be sinful for him to divorce his wife and marry another. When asked why he didn't explain this to the public, he said the public would think him weird. Anyone who took the words of Jesus that seriously, he said, would not be understood by the masses.
All throughout Scripture, God has called for His people to be set apart. To be separate. To be weird.
In my daily Bible reading I have been going through the book of Ezra. Even though it shares the story of a small part of Jewish history, I think it has practical application for the Church today. The story begins at the tail end of the Babylonian exile, a period of 70 years that Hebrew men and women were forced to relocate to a pagan capital, while Jerusalem was dismantled, brick by brick. God had done this, or had allowed it to happen, because His people were unfaithful. As a nation, they had turned their backs on God and had given themselves to idols. God, in turn, had banished them from the Promised Land and had sent them, in chains, to the Capitol of Idolatry, Babylon. There may be a sermon there--you know, about the fact that if you reject God's call and follow sin, God will show you the consequences of sin. "The wages of sin is death"--or an eternity in hell, not because God did not call them to repent, but because they rejected his call.
70 years. To some, this may have seemed like an eternity. If there were any faithful remnant--and we know there were, because we read of Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (better known by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meschack and Abednego)--they would have died off during this time. The Jewish children born in exile may have been assimilated into Babylonian culture.
When the time came for Jews to be returned to Jerusalem, Ezra witnessed a miraculous reversal of a political reality. Babylon had fallen to Cyrus the Great, who issued this decree found in Ezra 1:1-4.
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: "Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all His people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel--He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem."
Not only were the conquered people allowed to go home to Jerusalem to rebuild, but reparations were made. For all the gold and silver and precious stones that he been removed from the temple when Jerusalem fell to the Chaldean army, Cyrus commanded it be replaced. But wait, there's more! Cyrus also decreed that those who chose to return to Jerusalem should also be given beasts of burden to help them carry back their possessions, their tools, the gold and silver that had been stolen, and that a freewill offering take place to help them on their journey.
Within two years of their return, the people of Israel had laid the foundation of the temple that had been destroyed. As construction of the temple proceeded, there were enemies of Israel that opposed the building of the temple. They thought the Hebrews were weird, and if Ezra and his people were successful in restoring worship of the one true God, then their idols would be banished or at least diminished in importance in the local culture.
These enemies of God tried three times to thwart the building of the Temple. The first was with kind words of encouragement. We want to help, they said. "Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to Him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here." (Ezra 4:2). This was, of course, a lie. They did not serve the same God, and they had not been keeping up the temple sacrifices. They only wanted to come alongside and change the plans a bit, perhaps to make the temple more inclusive.
Church, beware of those who preach a message of inclusion. "We all worship the same God. We're all God's children." How many times have we heard this in our own culture? It is a lie! We have allowed a message of hyper-grace to permeate our thinking, so that when the culture says things like "love is love," we smile and nod like the specific sin of homosexuality is perfectly normal and acceptable to God. We celebrate "Earth Day" with the prevailing culture, not as stewards and care-takers of God's creation, but instead as if we are worshiping nature itself.
When offers of kindness were refused by Ezra and the elders of Israel, the next level of resistance was to "discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to build," bribing counselors against them to frustrate their purpose (Ezra 4:4-5). The message changed from, "we want to be a part of this" to "you're so weird." Again, we see this in our culture today. Devout Christians are called names and ridiculed, which leads to government regulations being passed against us. Do you remember regulations passed against in-person congregational meetings a couple of years ago in the name of public health? If Christians meeting together was counter-cultural before Covid, then it was downright criminal during Covid restrictions. Don't you think that as time goes by the restrictions against the Church won't become more normalized until the State can shut it down completely?
The final attempts by God's enemies were to write letters to the emperor, the ruler who succeeded Cyrus. If Cyrus could reverse the edict by the ruler that had exiled Jews to Babylon, then couldn't his successor just as easily reverse course again, and outlaw the rebuilding of the temple? As it turns out, that's exactly what happened. As a result, construction was stopped for a time. After a thorough investigation, a letter came from Darius, king of Persia allowing construction to continue. Again, reparations were ordered, and more gold and silver were apportioned to the Israelite people, and construction could begin again, according to the will of God.
In the ninth chapter of Ezra, there was one more obstacle found to being faithful to God. It was brought to Ezra's attention that some of the faithful had intermarried with the idolatrous pagans around them. When he found out, Ezra tore his clothes and fasted, and he prayed that God would forgive them. Then he gathered all the people together and demanded that they dissolve these sinful relationships.
In order to dedicate themselves to God's service and to dedicate the temple completely to God, Ezra recognized that they must follow God's law to the letter. To be fully used by God, one must fully trust Him and His word. The psalmist said, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."
I am not advocating divorce if you are married to an unbeliever, although Paul addressed this in 1 Corinthians 7. I will say that this would be an important issue when searching for a spouse. You see, every one of the obstacles thrown up by the enemies of Ezra could be evident in an unequally yoked relationship. An unbelieving spouse could kindly ask you to be unfaithful to God. He or she could discourage you with derision or even use fear to keep you from fulfilling God's purpose in your life. Finally, an unbelieving spouse could place legal hurdles in your path to slow you down or stop you altogether from following God fully and faithfully.
I think this principle is not limited to a marriage relationship. It could apply to your business dealings or even close friendships. Yes, we are called to evangelism, to sharing Christ with people. We must remember, though, that when Jesus sat with tax collectors and sinners, it was not He who was changed. Jesus told His disciples that if they go into a place where their message was not received with joy, they were to shake the dust of that place off their feet.
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