Even now there is hope

Does anyone out there feel like he has blown it so badly that he can never expect anything good from God for the rest of his life and will receive only the most grudging admission to heaven? God does not want us to feel that way, and He extends encouragement to potential despairers. Consider this:

“We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this” (Ezra 10:2, ESV).

The historical context of this verse is the intermarriage of Israeli returnees from Persia with indigenous pagan women, a situation that threatened to destroy Israel from the inside out. Intermarriage with those who do not love God was the Enemy’s final strategic ploy against the rebuilding project of Jerusalem by the band that had received permission to return to the land after the Babylonian exile. Other assorted demonic attacks included seduction by pretense of friendship, false accusations sent to the king, verbal intimidation, trickery, and demoralization and mockery.

Ezra was so depressed by the news of the intermarriages, on top of everything else, that he wept bitterly. It would have been easy for the whole congregation to throw up their hands at this point and to say that all is lost, that God cannot possibly forgive us again.

But to their credit, the Israelites resisted that particular temptation (which Satan had no doubt banked on as his ace in the hole when all other temptations failed). No false humility moved them to excommunicate themselves from the mercy of God. They faced the facts (“We have broken faith with our God”), and yet they refused despair (“even now there is hope.”).

Notice that they also took measures to extricate themselves from the wrath of God they deserved: They got rid of the pagan wives. (This is an Old Testament situation in which the purity of the nation was paramount.) It was done thoughtfully and in a sober and orderly fashion, and with much anguish, but the point is that severe action followed remorse.

The Christian who has messed up worse than anyone in the world (at least that’s how our sins can make us feel) should take a page from the Israelites of Ezra’s time and take sober stock of his condition and make the necessary changes. Then he will be able to say with all men who at all times have found themselves in such a plight and then repented:

“I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD” (Psalm 118:17, ESV).