So, I’ve been reading Ezra lately, and I realized I had never read it before now. Well, let me tell you, it’s an overlooked story. It’s only 10 chapters, but a whole lot happens. The book starts out with them rebuilding the temple and King Darius of Babylon giving them the money and supplies they need to build it. And that’s really cool. This king, who was a pagan, basically paid for this elaborate temple to be built in Jerusalem. But, the book continues and transfers into a book about the tribes of Israel, as most Old Testament books focus on. And, naturally, they screwed up again. Which seems to happen to them a lot, because human nature and sin and all that ;). The book is particularly focusing on the men marrying women outside of their religion, and the women being given to men outside of their religion. Ezra confronts them and tells them how wrong it is and how angry God is about it, and they are trying to figure out how to fix it, and God tells them they have to separate themselves from the people who are not Jews. Many of them had children with these people, and God says they have to go. All these husbands, wives, and children have to be exiled because they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. When I was first reading this, I was shocked that the punishment was that harsh and intense. But, then I thought about it some more, and, dang, these people disobeyed God. They deserved much worse and, while, yes, losing those relationships was extremely difficult, I think it’d be worth it to be right with God. I think that a lot of people, including myself, overlook the justness of God. We like to focus on the love and mercy of God, but in order to understand your need for God, you have to understand how you broke His law and need His grace.
Pepe, who we are living next to this month, is a teacher. We had a meeting with him one day and we talked about the gospel and what it actually means to share it with somebody. A lot of people in Peru are influenced by Joel Olsteen and preachers who say that God will give you only good things, when, in reality, if you break His law, there will be consequences. And that’s the truth. There’s no way around it, and, obviously, we love the idea of God only being loving and merciful, but that’s not real love. Just like parents have to discipline their children, God has to discipline His children that have broken His law. Also, if He wasn’t just, imagine how angry a lot of people would be. Their would be no consequence to those who have hurt us or hurt those we love.
Pepe reminded our team about showing all of the different aspects of God with others and I thought I’d just pass it along!
Thanks for reading!
Announcement:::My squads route got changed just a little. So now for month 9 of my race we will be going to Nepal instead of staying in India for 3 months!!
