Ezra 10

Have you ever heard this saying? You can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. That’s what I thought of as I read this last chapter in the book of Ezra. Only, in this situation, I suppose it would be more accurate to say, You can take the Israelites out of heathenism, but you can’t take heathenism out of the Israelites.

After returning from decades of slavery in Babylon, it didn’t take long for the exiles to take up with their old, wicked ways. Before long, there was an epidemic of Jews marrying foreign women from heathen nations—something strictly forbidden by the Mosaic law. Many commentators suggest that this wasn’t simply a matter of young people from "different sides of the tracks" falling in love. Rather, they suggest that—for whatever reason—Israelite men were divorcing and abandoning their Jewish wives for the express purpose of taking up with the heathen women.

Ezra recognized this as a serious problem and took serious steps to deal with it—including what amounts to the annulment of marriages and the separation of the couples by sending the women back to the lands they came from. However, this was not done arbitrarily or across the board. A council was organized to investigate these marriages on a case-by-case basis. Once again, Bible scholars indicate that what was being investigated was whether the wives had become followers of Israel’s God or if they retained allegiance to the gods of their homeland.

You see, marriage as designed by God has always required a threesome: A man, a woman, and God. And a lot of trouble ensues when the man and woman don’t agree on the God aspect. This very issue still causes trouble in modern marriages. In that regard, we’re no different than the Israelites.

God didn’t tell the Jews to refrain from marrying foreign women because He’s a snob about countries of origin. His plan was to cultivate Israel into a nation that would place God first in all things. The fact that they returned home from exile only to begin forming marital alliances with women who worshiped other gods suggested that the problems which had led them into Babylon in the first place were still there.

Israel’s problem wasn’t about geography or government. Their problem was an internal problem. It was about spiritual priorities, rebellion, and the willingness to be humble. Very few times in history had Israel actually submitted to the authority of the God they knew to be the one, true God. They knew all about Him, yet they ran after false gods anyway.

The problem the Israelites had is also the same problem we have today. It’s an internal problem. It’s a heart condition. We know all about the one, true God, yet we run in all sorts of directions, trying to control the outcomes of our lives and salvation. We still think we know better. We still think we can handle life on our own.

That’s why God specializes in internal medicine. His major concern is not over what we do as much as it is who we are. He is concerned about the state of our hearts—about those inside places that nobody else can see. Even if we can master "perfection" on the outside, God knows all about what’s lurking on the inside.

This has always been God’s primary specialty. It’s why Jesus said this to the Pharisees: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matt 5:25-28)

There’s not much we can do to clean ourselves up on the inside. In fact, the Bible says we don’t even know our own hearts; we don’t even recognize the magnitude of our problem. But we serve a God who specializes in internal medicine. He knows how to clean us up on the inside. He knows how to change us from the inside out. And if we’ll trust Him long enough to let Him do His work, we’ll find ourselves changed a little more, day by day, into His image.

God doesn’t just want to take His people out of sin; He wants to take the sin out of His people. And He alone can do it.