The seriousness of sin

In reading the book of Ezra the last two weeks, the main thought that I came away with was just how serious sin is. The people of Israel had violated God's laws regarding marrying foreign women and had suffered God's wrath as a result. But it was not until Ezra and others mourned over that sin, that they finally decided they needed to repent and take some very serious action to deal with their sin. It certainly could not have been easy to free themselves from their foreign wives and children.

I think there is an important lesson for us here. Notice that Ezra and the other leaders did not focus on the sins of the surrounding foreigners, but rather on the sins of Israel. It seems that this teaches that the church ought to be more concerned about mourning over our sins and repenting of them than in condemning the world around us. And that is often going to require doing some things that might be very difficult to do.

I'm certainly not suggesting that we just "cocoon" ourselves and become isolated from the world around us or that we quit promoting a Biblical worldview. We are to be salt and light, after all. I'm just suggesting that as the church, we follow Jesus' teaching and get the log out of our eyes before we go around trying to take the splinters out of the eyes of others.