Make War, Not Peace

2,000 years ago, Jesus stood atop a mountain. The Devil stood next to him, tempting our Lord. And what did the fiend, who loves to steal and kill and destroy, tempt our master with? Peace. As they looked across the earth, Satan gestured to the land stretching to the distant horizon. “All the kingdoms of the earth I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.” Stop the fighting. You can have it. I’ll give it to you. Just make peace with me.

Satan and his imps have continued to tempt us who bear the name of Christ in much the same way. Just make peace. Stop the fighting. You can fit in and have your peaceful, quiet life. Isn’t that what God wants you to have?

One of the sins that sadly characterizes Christians in our day is laying down our weapons when God takes up his. We sign peace treaties when we should be writing declarations of war. Why? That’s what we will examine today from Ezra 9–10. This is a story about how God’s people sinned by making peace, and how they dealt with their sin. We’ll learn from it by asking four questions:

1. Why are God’s people at war?
2. Why do God’s people make peace when they should make war?
3. Where do God’s people make peace instead of war?
4. How should God’s people deal with their sin?

Why God’s People Are at War

Before we can appreciate how evil it is for Israel to intermarry with the pagans of the land, we need to remember that God’s people are at war.

There are two armies in the world, and only two: the seed of the serpent (who looks to steal and kill and destroy), and the seed of the woman (who will one day crush the head of the serpent). These two are engaged in an all-out total war for the cosmos. Both refuse to forfeit any land. They fight over every nation, institution, business, city, even every household. The seed of the serpent used cunning and deceit to hold the world captive to sin. But when our Lord came, he launched an all-out assault against the kingdom of darkness. The kingdoms of the world belonged to Satan, which is why he could offer them to Jesus. But Jesus came casting out demons, healing sickness, restoring sight. He deceived the deceiver and just when Satan thought he’d won by killing the Christ, Jesus disarmed him (1 Cor 2:8). Jesus rose again and put the devil to open shame (Col 2:15). God pronounced, “The kingdoms of this world are now become the kingdom of our Lord and Christ” (Rev 11:15). Some theologians have called this two-sidedness “the Antithesis.” It means there is only light and darkness, good and evil, right and wrong, those with God and those against God. We don’t choose to be at war. We are born into it whether or not we want it or even realize it. God’s people are at war because God is at war.

This war has sometimes been a military war, as when the iniquity of the inhabitants of the land of Canaan was full and God sent the Israelites to make a full end of them. It has sometimes been political, as when the people of Israel struggled under their gentile overlords in the days of the latter kings. But underlying it all, it has always been spiritual. That is, it is a war for the heart and soul of each man, woman, and child. We fight against the principalities and powers who would deceive the world.

God fights to save the world. God didn’t look at the broken world and consign it to be torn down and start over. “God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world would be saved through him” (John 3:17). As a master general he’s ordered his troops to arm themselves with the terrible weapons he has provided: especially the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. He is the head, and we are his body. Our Lord has been given dominion of the whole earth, from sea to shining sea. And it’s our privilege as the body to be the primary way he exercises his dominion. The great high king rules the cosmos including our households and families and businesses and churches through us, his appointed representatives.

That’s why we are at war. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, and our king is at war. We are soldiers living on the field of battle, whether we like it or not. And so were the Jews in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah.

With this backdrop, the sin of the Jews to intermarry with the pagans is truly awful, isn’t it? Talk about a new level of fraternizing with the enemy. Let’s get clear here from the beginning that the issue was not the pagans’ ethnicity—it was their religion. Their allegiance to false gods, not their skin color. Rahab and Ruth converted and joined Israel, even marrying into the line of the Messiah. But Ezra 9:1 makes it clear that Israel is marrying and joining the pagans in the abominations. Israel isn’t converting their neighbors, they are being converted by them.

How did they get here? Two societies at odds with each other don’t just wake up one morning and start giving their daughters in marriage to each other. It starts with some friendly gatherings, a party on the weekend. And then they start experimenting with their religion. Finally, marriage is the end of a long line of compromises. Marriage formally joins two ways of life. Light and darkness mix as closely as they can.

Now Ezra’s reaction in 9:1–4 makes more sense, doesn’t it? They have forsaken their God and made peace with the enemy. So much so they’re ready to settle down and raise a family with them.

Why would they do this? God has been so kind. He rescued them and assisted them! Why would they turn their back on him? It doesn’t make sense. Well, on one level, sin is never rational. It doesn’t need to make sense. But, there are clear routes the enemy walks many of God’s people along so that they make peace instead of staying at war. That’s what we will examine in our next question.

Why God’s People Make Peace

If you fight on the side of God and his Christ, then the goal of your enemy is to convince you to forsake your master. Convincing a Christian to outright deny their Lord can be done (there are many apostates). But it is much easier to trick a Christian into laying down their swords and joining the infidels in the name of peace, for the sake of fitting in and going with the flow. Here’s how it’s usually done, and what we see happen in this story.

The enemy has two main tactics to convince you to make peace:

1. Forgetfulness. If they can make you forget you are at war, you’ll happily make peace. You won’t treat them like an enemy at all. And as you enjoy one another’s company, over time, you look for opportunities to fit in. You forget that God has bought you, laid claim to your whole life, that you only have one master and dare not serve another. You forget that there is only light and darkness, and so you make the world into one massive grey area where you can do as you please. You use nuance to make neutral ground where you can have peace and partnerships with the enemy. When we forget we are at war, we will quickly join our enemies because we want to fit in and have fun. And so, our forgetting makes us forsake God. This is why a constant refrain of the Old Testament is, “Remember!” When tempted to forget, remember God’s word, “You are not your own, for you were bought at a price” (1 Cor 6:19–20).
2. Fear. If you won’t forget you are at war, your enemies will force you to the table with fear. They threaten your comfortable life with violence or inconvenience. They threaten your good reputation with unwarranted slander. This is a temptation especially suited to conservatives, who love our way of life and don’t want to fight or change. Our fear of losing what we hold dear becomes a wedge that convinces us it’s worth compromising just a little so that we don’t lose what we hope to conserve. And when once we give in to fear, the wedge is set. And it’s only a matter of time before enough pressure brings you to forsake your God. When tempted to fear, remember God’s word, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31)

Both of these pressures were used against the Jews in our story. The intermarriages probably started in Ezra 4:5 when the opposition to their project began in earnest. Their enemies started by trying to make false peace, offering to build with them (Ezra 4:2). No doubt, they continued this lie so that some in Israel forgot that they were fundamentally at war with these people. Instead of serving God alone, they allied themselves with their enemies, ostensibly to serve God’s mission. Instead of having faith that God would help them, they try to make peace their own way. Like Abraham trying to get his promised son through Hagar instead of trusting God’s promise to Sarah. God is not served by unfaithful compromises.

The Jews were also subject to the temptation of fear, which is clear from 3:3. They were afraid for their lives and well-being. It doesn’t take a genius to know that your pagan neighbor is less likely to kill your family if you’ve married their daughter.

“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.” When the Jews choose to serve other gods from fear or forgetfulness, they forsake the worship of the one true God whether or not that’s what they thought they were doing. So do we.

The cult of Ba’al may be no temptation to us, but our national religion of secularism applies these same pressures to us today. Living our comfy, middle-class lives, they make us fear losing our material comforts to litigation or job loss if we stick out or fight back. They threaten our reputation if we will not toe the line on their evil ideologies. Too often Christians shy away from the battle because they lack faith that God will triumph. Like the spies Moses sends (and the Israelites in this story), we believe defeat is inevitable. In our faithlessness, we’re happy to come to the table and negotiate a compromise. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” And since we don’t have faith to beat ‘em, all too often, we join them.

In addition to sowing fear, our enemies cast a spell over us to forget the war. They preach to us that many other Christians and religions have put away their radical claims to live at peace and strive for unity. We are being unreasonable, they say. They teach us that everything outside the walls of our churches or our prayer closets is secular ground on which we can live God’s way if we want, but we must not mind if others choose a different way. Jesus can’t own it all—what would that do to religious freedom? And so they tempt us with a false peace. “No one is fighting here. It’s ‘public ground,’ a ‘neutral zone’ that is free of religion.” Satan’s old trick of offering false peace makes us fall again into his service.

God’s people often make peace instead of war for two reasons:

1. Fear: We fear man more than we fear God
2. Forgetfulness: We forget our vow to serve God alone, and carve out space to serve other gods or ourselves.

We can push deeper into this story. In this case, Israel was motivated to forget God both by a desire for peace and a desire for sexual immorality. The people of the land were renowned for their immoral sexual practices. Leviticus 18 is a whole chapter of the Bible describing the sexual practices of the Canaanites. In other words, the pull to marry these foreign wives wasn’t just the peace it would bring between them. It was also the sexual perks of worshiping their gods. I’m not guessing or inferring this. It’s what it says in Ezra 9:1. They were doing according to the abominations of the Canaanites. So, it’s appropriate now to warn and exhort against the dangers of sexual immorality.

Sexual immorality is a test of your allegiance to God. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 6:16). Sexual immorality is a way of defiling the temple of God. Just as no Jew would have ever profaned the holy of holies, you should not grieve the Holy Spirit who dwells in you and is always with you by profaning your body. For those of us who are married, it’s also a test of our allegiance to the vow we made before God to our spouse. Are we men and women of our word? Or will we break our promises for a quick pleasure? The point is simple: you cannot serve two masters. Do you serve God or don’t you?

Underneath this simple choice is the complexity of the human heart. Since God made men and women different, we are tempted to sexual immorality in different ways.

• Women are tempted to misuse their beauty. They become seducers because they want to be wanted. They might be after power over a man (or power over men generally), or access to a man’s possessions, or the status associated with having him. They may be trying to drown their own insecurities or frustrations in a man’s adoration. They may make excuses that deflect the blame onto men (it’s a man’s world and this is the only way I can get the things I want) or their own husbands (he doesn’t pay any attention to me). They don’t see that the love and protection of one man is worth more than the wealth or praise of many. There’s nothing truly feminine about pretending to seduce digital men or actually seducing out-of-control men instead of remaining a locked garden for your husband.
• Men are tempted to misuse their strength. They become fake kings gathering a harem (physical or digital) because they want to be admired as great and strong. Men may be after quick satisfaction, or building their ego. They may be trying to make up for a failure in another area of life, or be hungry for the admiration of a woman. Men are tempted to make excuses about how they are so masculine they just can’t help themselves. They don’t see that it’s boys who lose control of themselves—not men. There’s nothing manly about being out of control. There’s nothing manly about chasing digital or loose women instead of winning the admiration and affection of your own wife.

Beware the temptation to sexual immorality. It will steal your honor, kill your faith, and destroy your family. “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word” (Ps 119:9).

Why do God’s people make peace when they should make war? Because we 1) fear losing what is dear to us and 2) forget God’s claim to our life so we can do what we please.

Where God’s People Make Peace

The obvious answer in our text is with the issue of intermarriage. Ezra 9:11–12 is really clear that they should never have made this compromise. It’s as clear as can be in the law of God.

“The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.”

Many Christians still have this trouble today. They marry weak believers or unbelievers while they are high on the feelings of romance. Fathers permit their sons or daughters to “evange-date.” This is the same mistake. Christians have stopped seeing ourselves as a distinct people that must remain pure, and so we happily mix the holy seed with the profane. It shows their true allegiance.

But there are other ways we can make peace instead of war, forging partnerships between light and darkness. Time constrains me to mention only two.

Education

As you members know, your pastors wrote you a letter in April warning against the dangers of government schooling. And the principle of this text is why. What business does darkness have in training the children of light? Here is a portion of that letter relevant to our current point of making a false peace with the people of the land:

Formal education is crucial to the task of making our children disciples who glorify God in all of life. God and his glory is the great reason for education. God wrote a book so rich and made a world so treasure-laden that after we’ve been trained in his ways for decades we’ve barely breached the outer limits of his majesty. Education is not merely learning facts from the basic fields of knowledge. It is learning to see Christ as preeminent in all things (Col 1:18). Education without Jesus is like day without daylight.

The great lie about education in our age is that schools can provide a neutral education—an education that respects all gods and religions and that teaches “just the facts.” When education tries to be neutral, it begins with the greatest lie of all: history, math, science, literature, and everything else taught in school have so little to do with God that you can remove him altogether and continue on merrily. That’s not neutral concerning God; it’s hostile. So-called “neutral education” is founded on secularism’s first principle: God is fine for your personal life, but he doesn’t matter for the world.

There is no neutrality (Matt 12:30) and certainly no neutral education. At their best (which is still very bad indeed), neutral education is what government schools in Minnesota aimed for. But now most Minnesota schools have moved far past an education that is blasphemously ambivalent toward God. Now they openly scoff at God and abhor his truth. Secularism is our state’s religion, and the schools are their seminaries. They disciple their students in the doctrines of naturalistic evolution, Marxist revolutionary history, moral relativism, gender fluidity, and aesthetic anarchy. They do this with such appallingly low standards that they produce many students without the intellectual capability to question their indoctrination. Government schools produce disciples of secularism who despise God’s word and world by offering themselves at the altar of self-expression.

Since there is no neutral education, it is not a question whether education will enculturate your children. It will. The question is, “Which culture will your children be trained in when they go to school?”

Education is a special partnership where children are brought up into the culture of their teachers. It’s not a place for us to compromise and make peace, lest our children and grandchildren forsake the ancient ways of God.

Workplace

Many men forget that when they show up to work they aren’t only earning a paycheck to build up their own house. They are building up another house at the same time: the house of their employer. Businesses and nonprofits are not neutral any more than schooling. That’s why none of you would go to work for BLM or Planned Parenthood no matter the salary. You understand that their mission is set against the Christian Worldview. You can’t serve Jesus as Planned Parenthood. You’d be a part of building up something that you actually want torn down. And so everyone should evaluate where they work. Don’t give your life to building up that which God wants to tear down—even if they offer a crazy awesome salary.

Of course, the goodness of a workplace (and schools as well) is a gradient. Some businesses do only evil (Planned Parenthood). But most aren’t so cut and dry. They do some good and they do some evil. Retail stores are a good example this month. They provide a really valuable service by selling goods and food to the community. They also probably wave the pride-flag to varying degrees this month. The service of providing food, clothing, and household goods is really important. They are the way God answers our prayer for daily bread. And sometimes they celebrate wickedness too. As we evaluate our workplace opportunities different Christians will make different decisions about what is strategic for building up and fighting for God’s city. Some will stay and try to reform what already is. Some will lean into the good and try to make it expand. Others will start new efforts. And all of that is great. What’s crucial is that we take an honest look at what we are building up and make sure we actually want it built. Your work isn’t neutral. So, ask yourself, “Am I sure I’m doing good in the world when I show up for work?” And then ask, “Do I have better options to do more good?”

For proof that these areas are not neutral, notice that our enemies haven’t stopped fighting and building in these areas. They are busy fighting to build schools to their liking and pressuring businesses to toe their line. They know they aren’t neutral because they are trying to change them to their liking. Calling them neutral is only a trick that gives them a chance to steal our soldiers and convince us to lay down our arms. They say, “You’re trying to Christianize this school/business.” Yes, and you’re trying to liberalize it. There’s no God-free zone.

This brings us to the most important question for us this morning:

How God’s People Deal with Their Sin

Well, let’s follow the example of Ezra.

First, examine your own heart. In Ezra 10:1 many others join Ezra in his weeping. They didn’t weep until Ezra showed them by his example how awful the sin was. And then they were cut to the heart and joined him. Take that opportunity, even this morning. Have you compromised because of fear or forgetfulness?

Israel was long in this sin. Ezra 10:44 says some had already had children by these wives. They got comfortable in their sin. Their conscience must have been convicting them, but they declared peace with their sin when they should have made war. The longer you leave a sin, the more it sinks its talons in deep. The more excuses it conjures up. The more justifications it produces. Do not make any excuse for your sin. Don’t say, “I didn’t mean to” or “it was an accident.” Own your sin for real. You did mean to. And it was no accident.

We say, “I’ve been struggling lately,” or “I failed again.” We leave it ambiguous and unclear because we feel ashamed of what we’ve done. In my experience, “I’ve been struggling” basically means, “I’ve been losing badly and often.” “I’ve been struggling” actually means “I’ve been surrendering.” Or sometimes we’ll say, “I fell into sin,” implying that we accidentally stumbled into immorality. The truth is we didn’t fall; we jumped.

Don’t make any excuse, as though the Holy Spirit living within you wasn’t enough power to resist the temptation (1 Cor 10:31).

Second, be convicted. Ezra is so appalled he rips his clothes and spends a whole day in stunned silence until he prays in shame. God gave his people a little space, a chance to return and repent (Ezra 9:8). He gave them a second chance. And instead of serving and obeying God, they’ve gone right back to the same old sin that has plagued them since the day of their great-great-great grandfathers. From the days of Joshua when they left some alive during the conquest, they have disobeyed God’s clear commands. They squandered God’s grace. God delivered them from bondage, and they went straight back to the sin that sent them to bondage.

So, when Ezra comes before God he says that we cannot stand before you (9:15). You might wonder why Ezra is so ashamed. Why does he feel so bad? He didn’t marry a pagan. That’s true. And since he didn’t sin, he can’t confess his own sin and has nothing to repent of. But he knows that he’s part of a body that has terribly sinned, and so he laments.

And the sin of others has an effect on the whole group. That’s what it means to be part of a body. When one part is sick, the whole body suffers. In the Bible, we see examples of the whole group suffering for one man’s sin (Achan) and for a group’s sin (intermarriage here) and for the congregation’s sin (grumbling in the wilderness). Sin in the body calls for God’s judgement on the body.

Third, confess your sins. Ezra and the rulers gather the people and Ezra calls them to confess their sins (Ezra 10:11). Make confession to God. Do not hide sin or make excuses for it. If you are caught in the grip of sin, the example of Israel is a good one for you. They confess their sin to God and they confess it to another person and let them make a judgement about what to do. The Israelites entrust the elders to work through the people and make sure the sin is thoroughly addressed. If you are in the grip of long-term sin, if you’ve tried to defeat it but have only healed it lightly for years, let today be the day of confession and repentance. Don’t just confess and feel better for a while. Confess to someone who will make sure you kill it dead.

Fourth, repent promptly. Repentance is different from confession. In confession we bring sin to light. In repentance we decisively turn away from our sins. We divorce them. Whatever your sin, send it away. Separate yourself from it. And not tomorrow, today. Notice that when Israel is convicted of their sin, they gather immediately to deal with it. They say that anyone not there by the end of three days is forfeiting their claim to their ancestral land (10:8). Follow their example and deal with sin now.

Israel agrees to divorce their pagan wives, to put them away and have nothing to do with them any more. Some people question why the law of God permitted divorce here. They think this is a pretty hard penalty for the women and children who are turned away. This misunderstands what’s happening. First, these women could have joined Israel and consecrated themselves to God, like Rahab and Ruth did. If they had, they wouldn’t have needed to be divorced because they would have become Israelite. It’s not an ethnic problem, it’s a religious worship problem. This is why the elders take each marriage on a case-by-case basis, not judging based on mere ethnicity. Second, the law actually permits them to be stoned. Divorce in this case is mercy.

How do God’s people deal with their sin?

1. Examine your heart
2. Be convicted
3. Confess your sin
4. Repent promptly

Hide No More

God’s people far too often make peace instead of staying at war. And so, from fear and forgetfulness, we forsake God. The sins of compromise and fear leave us embarrassed by our own cowardice and hypocrisy. Sexual sins force us to live in shame, hiding like Adam and Eve in the garden. Hide no more. Come out and face your God in your sin and shame. Our king forgives traitors, rejoices over prodigals, and invites a whole host of forgiven sinners to his table each week. Your sins are many. You are worse than you dare imagine. But God’s mercy is still more. He receives the humble, and forgives the penitent. Do not leave this morning without his forgiveness. Entreat him for mercy, and then come to his table to eat and drink forgiveness in his name. Amen.

Lord, please forgive us for our compromises, our fears, our forgetfulness, our cowardice. For any way that we should have stood by you in battle but instead lay back as if at peace, forgive us. Make us brave and valiant for your sake. Please root out our hidden sins so that we can live faithfully as children of the light. And give us victory over them in your name. Amen.

“And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body” (Col 3:15).