God’s Word for You
Ezra 9:1-4 a least common denominator faith
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, July 27, 2025
9:1 After these things were done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons. They have mingled the holy seed with the peoples of the lands. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.” 3 When I heard this, I tore my clothes and my cloak. I pulled hair from my head and beard, and I sat down appalled. 4 Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.
Half of Paul’s epistles warn against sexual sins. Jesus talks about sexual immorality and adultery in each of the Gospels. Moses warned the Israelites that God promised to drive out the nations (a list very similar to the one Ezra lists in verse 1) with the warning that if the Israelites “choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and then those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same” (Exodus 34:11).
Now, Ezra tells us, just about the first thing that happened when he got to Jerusalem was to be confronted with the whole nation having fallen into this sin of intermarriage causing the people to abandon their faith. Nehemiah reports: “Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod [Philistine, a Phoenician dialect] or the language of one of the other people, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah” (Nehemiah 13:24). These families had fallen into what I call a “least common denominator faith.” This means a faith that is only permitted where it causes the least friction in the family. The unbelieving spouse makes it seem as if they should tolerate one another’s beliefs, but inevitably this means one of them no longer being permitted to worship in the way God would have us worship. To respect two faiths means to give no true respect to either. What does God, the true God, say about worshiping him? “I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols” (Isaiah 42:8). And again: “How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another” (Isaiah 48:11). And he condemns trying to mix his worship with anything else (a practice called syncretism): “My people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols” (Jeremiah 2:11). For to give any worship to any other god is to violate the First Commandment, indeed, the first three. And a marriage where God’s commandments are ignored will only choke out any faith that remains, like the hands of a murderer strangling his victim to rob him of his life. The faith of the children of that marriage is robbed by that unbelief, no matter if it is their father or mother. Whichever one kills that faith has murdered their souls and condemned them to hell for all eternity. This is why Ezra says, “They have mingled the holy seed with the peoples of the lands.” He does not mean that other races or nations are inferior or should be destroyed; he is not promoting genocide like the maniacs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did (and, alas, some still do), but he is talking about a people of faith, a nation of believers, in danger of losing everything on account of unwise marriages that do not please God at all. One of the great purposes of marriage is for believing men and women to produce “godly offspring,” as Malachi says: “Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring” (Malachi 2:15).
Ezra’s response was not to stand and make an immediate speech. He did not race through the city, house by house and tent by tent. Perhaps his reaction surprised everyone. He tore his shirt, tore his cloak, and sat down, and said nothing at all. He remained as silent as Job’s friends until sundown (Job 2:13).
When one of us sins, we want to repent, repair what we can, and lay our guilt before the Lord, begging his forgiveness. But Ezra was confronted with a sin that was not his own, but a sin raging throughout all of Israel like a plague. What would the answer be? What was his responsibility? How would he lead people to repentance? Forgiveness was possible, but where there is no repentance, when the sin is not recognized as a sin, there can be no true repentance.
The gospel teaches that repentance includes the grief of the soul over sin, true fear of the judgment of God and the following punishment. Christ said to Paul on the road to Damascus: “I am sending you to the Gentiles to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:17-18).
The reason that Christ came into the world was to rescue humanity from our sins; not only the sins of Judah, but of all mankind, Jews and Gentiles alike. Only the blood of the Son of God shed on the cross could and did atone for all sin. As Jesus prayed to his Father: “This is eternal life: That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, who you have sent” (John 17:3). Sorrow over sin followed by faith in Christ is repentance indeed. And faith in Christ alone means everlasting life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.