Desperate Times

Brian Carroll / General Adult

Work in Progress / Ezra 10:1-44

Introduction - Tham Luang Rescue

• In the summer of 2018, the world watched a story unfold that felt almost impossible.

• Twelve boys from a youth soccer team in Thailand — along with their coach — wandered into a vast cave system after practice.

• It was supposed to be a quick adventure. A fun moment of team bonding.

• A chance to write their names on the wall to celebrate a birthday - kind of a local tradition.

• But while they were in the cave, it started raining. A LOT. And the cave began to flood.

• Before they knew it, their escape route was gone.

• Walls of rushing water filled chamber after chamber.

• The boys and their coach were pushed deeper and deeper inside the mountain, scrambling up narrow ledges until they found a pocket of high ground nearly two and a half miles from the cave entrance — in total darkness, with no food, no clean water, and no way out.

• For nine days, no one even knew if they were alive.

• Nine days.

• Imagine being trapped in a place where even light could not reach you.

• The thought genuinely makes me shudder.

• Then — unbelievably — two British divers surfaced in their cave chamber, shining headlamps right into the faces of boys who looked more like ghosts than teammates.

• The divers shouted, “We’re here. Many people are coming. You are safe.”

• Except… they weren’t safe. Not yet.

• The rescuers quickly realized something terrible: there was no way to bring the boys out safely if they were awake and conscious.

• The path to freedom wasn’t a stroll through the cave — it was a labyrinth of submerged tunnels, jagged rock passages, zero visibility, and swirling currents.

• Even expert divers had to remove their tanks and push them through narrow openings too small for a normal person to squeeze through.

• If a healthy, trained adult couldn’t swim it without panic… how could a terrified child?

• The lead doctor — an anesthetist and expert diver — sat with the team and made a gut-wrenching recommendation.

• The only way to bring these boys home alive was to put them to sleep.

• Literally. Each boy would be given anesthesia, fitted with a full-face mask, strapped to a rescue diver, and carried unconscious through nearly four hours of underwater tunnels.

• And here’s the dilemma these rescuers faced:

• If the anesthesia wore off too early, they would drown.

• If the dosage was wrong, their heart could fail.

• If the mask leaked in the slightest, they wouldn’t make it.

• There were no good options.

• Every path carried terrible risks.

• Every choice had the shadow of tragedy hanging over it.

• But desperate times… sometimes call for desperate measures.

• The doctor later said, “I prayed — not just for wisdom, but for mercy. We were about to do something no one had ever done before.”

• And somehow — miraculously — all twelve boys and their coach made it out.

• Delivered not because the choices were easy, but because the choices were necessary.

• When we turn to Ezra 10, we meet a moment that carries that same kind of moral weight.

• Not in the physical sense — but in the spiritual and covenantal sense.

• Ezra is confronted with a problem so deep, so dangerous, so spiritually catastrophic, that there are no “clean” solutions left on the table.

• God’s people — freshly restored, freshly blessed, freshly returned from exile — have fallen right back into the sins that wrecked their ancestors.

• We talked about the problem last week when we looked at chapter 9.

• They’ve married into idolatrous nations.

• They’ve ignored God’s commands.

• And some of the very leaders who should’ve known better are the worst offenders.

• And Ezra — the scribe, the teacher, the man who trembles at God’s Word — is suddenly standing at a crossroads.

• There’s no easy fix.

• There’s no painless solution.

• There’s no way forward that doesn’t hurt.

• Just like those divers, Ezra is forced to choose between options that all feel terrible — but doing nothing would be far worse.

• Because doing nothing would allow sin to take root again.

• Doing nothing would undo the revival God had begun.

• Doing nothing would sabotage the holiness of God’s people from the inside out.

• And so Ezra does the hardest thing he’s ever done.

• Not because he wants to.

• Not because he enjoys it.

• But because desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.

• And with that in mind, let’s turn our attention to the final chapter in the book of Ezra…

Scripture Reading

Ezra 10:1–12 ESV

¹ While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly.

² And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “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.

³ Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law.

⁴ Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.”

⁵ Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take an oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath.

⁶ Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib, where he spent the night, neither eating bread nor drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles.

⁷ And a proclamation was made throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the returned exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem,

⁸ and that if anyone did not come within three days, by order of the officials and the elders all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from the congregation of the exiles.

⁹ Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain.

¹⁰ And Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have broken faith and married foreign women, and so increased the guilt of Israel.

¹¹ Now then make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.”

¹² Then all the assembly answered with a loud voice, “It is so; we must do as you have said.

• Last week, we saw Ezra interceding for his people.

• He learned about the grave sin that they had been involved in and it absolutely wrecked Ezra.

• The first half of chapter 9 detailed Ezra’s physical response to this news.

• The last half was Ezra’s confession of the nation’s sin.

• We get to chapter 10 and though there is a chapter break, there is no real break in the action.

• V. 1 begins and lets us know that Ezra’s prayer wasn’t just heard by the Lord.

• While he was praying, people gathered around him.

• It was a whole community of the concerned and convicted.

• It was men, women, and children.

• And they were feeling the same remorse that Ezra was feeling, because it says that they wept bitterly.

• Out of this community gathering, a man by the name of Shecaniah shares his heart with Ezra.

• He doesn’t say anything new.

• We have broken faith with our God.

• He names the specific sin.

• But he clings to the hope that there might be a pathway forward out of this predicament.

• Shecaniah gives us a model of how what repentance looks like.

Repentance isn’t just guilt, but should also carry with it a sense of remorse. (vv. 1-2)

• Let me explain what I mean.

• Guilt is a universal human experience, which tells me that it is something that God has given to us as a kind of spiritual warning light.

• When I experience guilt, that comes from a place of recognizing that I’ve done something that is morally questionable or have caused some kind of pain toward another person.

• I don’t like that negative emotion, so I’ve got to figure out what to do with it.

• While guilt may lead to repentance, guilt isn’t the same thing as repentance.

• How many times have we been able to live with guilt, and just manage it’s effects?

• Children are excellent at this.

• They don’t want to get into trouble for whatever it is that they have done, so they just try to manage the guilt.

• Some are better at this than others.

• Remorse is different.

• Remorse is not just a recognition of the wrong that has been done.

• Remorse is a recognition of the damage that wrong has caused.

• Shecaniah not only recognizes that they’ve broken God’s law, he recognizes that there is a bigger problem here.

• We’ve broken faith with God.

• In Psalm 51, David is pouring out his heart after his relationship with Bathsheba comes to light.

• There is no doubt he lives with guilt for a while.

• David knew that he had done wrong.

• It wasn’t until he was confronted by the Nathan, the prophet, that he expressed remorse.

• Ps. 51:4 gets to the point:

Psalm 51:4 ESV

⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

• This is more than just, “I broke the law.”

• This is the recognition that the wrong I did was offensive to God.

• There was relationship damage that needed to be repaired.

• That’s what repentance looks like - assuming that remorse leads to change.

• We can continue to embrace sin if all we ever experience is guilt.

• Remorse causes us to turn from sin because we recognize the relational damage our sin has caused.

• Shecaniah names the sin and recognizes the spiritual cost, but then he proposes a solution there in v. 3:

• We read this and hopefully we find ourselves shocked by the suggestion.

• A wise man once said, if you find that you’ve dug a hole for yourself, the first thing you have to do to get out of the hole is to stop digging.

• That’s essentially Shecaniah’s suggestion…

• The only way we can fix this problem is to remove the problem.

• Shecaniah said, “We must put away all these wives and their children.”

• I must admit, this is one of those places where I’m left speechless.

• You read it and then flip the book over and make sure that you’re actually reading the right book.

Sin frequently forces us into situations where we have to choose the least worst option. (v. 3)

• The reality is that God has given us the right pathway for our lives.

• We know how we should live.

• We know how we should act.

• We have countless godly principles that we can apply in all kinds of circumstances.

• But when we walk away from that path, things start to get complicated.

• The further you get from that path, the more complicated things become.

• In this situation…

• You’ve got a large number of Jewish men who have built families with pagan wives.

• The way this is handled in the text is pretty clear - we’re not dealing with situations like Boaz and Ruth.

• If you remember that story from earlier in the old Testament.

• Ruth was a Moabite.

• But after tragedy struck her family, she commited herself to her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi.

• She essentially renounces her Moabite citizenship and pledges herself to the people of Israel and to the God of Israel.

• She then gets married to an Israelite man named Boaz.

• She’s significant because it is her bloodline that leads to King David, and eventually to the messiah.

• Their marriage isn’t questioned because she renounced the paganism of the Moabites.

• That is clearly not the case here in Ezra 10.

• When we find ourselves departing from the straight and narrow pathway that God has laid out for us, then we had better get back on track sooner than later because the bigger sin mess we make, the moral clarity of our return grows more and more complicated.

• We don’t have to work too hard to see how this works in our contemporary moment.

• For the last decade, same-sex marriage has been legal in the United States.

• For most of that same period of time, it has been legal for same-sex couples to adopt children.

• Of course, there are also other options for same-sex couples to have children with various surrogacy and/or IVF arrangements which has it’s own share of moral quandaries.

• Just to be clear - this is a significant departure from the standard God put in place.

• But, now just imagine that one of the members of that marriage comes to faith in Christ and comes to recognize that their marriage is in opposition to the Word of God and the order of creation.

• How do you fix it?

• Do you get a divorce? Do you co-parent? What do you do?

• You’re now in the business of looking for the “least worst option.”

• In Ezra 10, the community comes to the conclusion that the “least worst option” is for all of the guilty to “put away” their wives and children.

• The implication is that they divorce their wives and send them back to their people.

• What happens next may be one of the most relatable things in the whole book.

• Shecaniah makes the suggestion.

• Everybody gets behind the idea.

• And then, Shecaniah hands the whole mess over to Ezra to fix.

• That’s what v. 4 is saying, “Arise, for it is your task and we are with you.”

• I feel that with every fiber of my being.

• I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had this conversation as a pastor.

• “Pastor, here’s the problem. It’s yours to fix.”

• So Ezra takes all of this an exits so he can work through what has just unfolded.

• We’re told in v. 6 that he withdrew and went to spend time fasting and praying.

• This has taken a tremendous toll on this leader, but throughout this, you never see Ezra taking a heavy-handed approach.

• He never diminishes the problem, but he leads and brings the people along with him.

• Change happens because hearts are changing, not because Ezra was forcing the change to happen.

• I think that gets to the heart of something we all need to understand today.

You can’t legislate repentance. (vv. 9-12)

• You can pass all kinds of laws and make all kids of things illegal, but laws don’t bring about repentance.

• The exiles knew God’s law, but that didn’t stop them from doing what they wanted to do.

• But there was a law!

• But their hearts were compelled to pursue their own ends.

• Christians, we need to understand this today.

• We think having the right party in office passing the right laws is going to make our nation this great beacon of moral uprightness.

• But that’s not how a nation is changed.

• A nation is changed like this nation was changed in Ezra’s day.

• When they gather in the pouring rain and shudder over the reality of their sin.

• And that’s the church’s job.

• Part of preaching the Good News is making sure people understand the bad news.

• God is holy and we come up short in so many different ways.

• It isn’t unloving to point people to the truth of God’s standards.

• And then we have to trust the Holy Spirit to do his job.

• I’m not saying that we should just let libertarianism run free where there are no laws, no regulations, no requirements.

• I am saying that we are sorely misguided if we think that the key to fixing our society is through the political engine.

• We have a political problem because we have a heart problem.

• And the only way to fix the heart problem is through our prevalent Christian witness.

• What happens next is kind of the logistical details of how the plan comes together.

• In vv. 7-8, they call together all of the exiles for a mandatory “town-hall meeting”

• Verses 9-12 talk about the meeting that happens in front of the temple in the pouring rain and Ezra lays out the charges. All the guilty agree to comply.

• In vv. 13-17, they agree to appoint a commission to investigate and dispose of the marriages in an orderly manner.

• The rest of the chapter gives us a list of the guilty - almost like an open-records request.

• These poor souls are remembered for their failures.

• And then we get to the last verse in the whole book.

• It succinctly reiterates the problem.

Ezra 10:44 ESV

⁴⁴ All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even borne children.

• Now, we’ve talked a lot about these lists and how it’s easy to get lost in the weeds, and sometimes we just skip the names until we get to something more interesting.

• Just remember, you never know what you’re going to find in these lists.

• Take a look at v. 26.

Ezra 10:26 ESV

²⁶ Of the sons of Elam: Mattaniah, Zechariah, Jehiel, Abdi, Jeremoth, and Elijah.

• Why should that verse stand out?

• If you go back to v. 2, when we met the architect of the whole plan - Shecaniah.

• We’re told right there that he was the son of Jehiel.

• This means that Shecaniah’s own father was guilty of the sin that is endangering the spiritual wellbeing of the nation.

• That means he likely has half-siblings that were going to have to leave as a consequence of this sin.

• It IS possible that there is another Jehiel…but for that name to appear twice in the same chapter…I’ll just say it is very unlikely that there are two Jehiel’s.

• This means that it is very likely Shecaniah’s own family was impacted by this rebellion against God’s commands.

• Again, it just drives hope the point of how must damage sin can cause.

• It affects real people, real families - and leads people to impossible predicaments.

Invitation - Desperate Times

• We’ve heard the phrase, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

• At first glance, it looks like Ezra and the leaders of Israel were forced to take desperate measures.

• But I believe that they recognized that the desperation of their times called for a desperate dependence on a holy God.

• When we first talked about those boys trapped deep inside that flooded cave, we felt the weight of their situation because we knew something instinctively: they couldn’t save themselves.

• Not with their strength.

• Not with their courage.

• Not with a flashlight and a good attitude.

• The only reason they made it out alive is because someone came into the darkness after them and said, “If you want to live… you’re going to have to trust us enough to let go. You’re going to have to surrender.”

• Ezra 10 ends with a very similar truth — not a physical rescue, but a spiritual one.

• The people of God finally saw the darkness for what it was.

• They saw the rising waters of sin.

• They saw that time had run out for excuses and self-management.

• And in that moment — standing in the rain, trembling — they realized what those Thai boys realized:

• “We can’t get out of this on our own.”

• That’s where repentance starts.

• Not when we feel guilty…

• Not when we get caught…

• But when we stop pretending we can navigate the flooded tunnels of our own choices without the mercy of God leading us.

• And just like those rescuers, God does what no one else can do —

• He enters the darkness.

• He shines the light of truth.

• He speaks hope into places we thought were unreachable.

• And then He invites us to trust Him enough to follow His way out.

• But here’s the catch:

• The way out is rarely easy.

• It demands surrender.

• It demands humility.

• Sometimes — like in Ezra’s day — it demands decisions that are painful, costly, and complicated.

• But they are still the right decisions, because they lead toward life instead of deeper darkness.

• So let me ask you gently but directly:

• Where have you been trying to rescue yourself?

• Where have you been telling yourself, “I can handle this,” while the water keeps rising?

• Where have you settled for guilt instead of genuine repentance?

• Because maybe… just maybe… the most desperate place you feel today is the very place God intends to begin His rescue in you.

• For some, that means returning to a path you walked off of.

• For others, it means laying down a habit or relationship or secret you’ve tried to manage on your own.

• And for some of you, it means finally saying, “Lord, I can’t fix my own heart. I need Jesus to save me.”

• Christian life isn’t about becoming strong enough to swim through the tunnels —
it’s about trusting the One who carries you through what you could never survive alone.

• Come out of the darkness.

• Come toward the light.

• Come to the God who climbs into the cave after you, not to condemn you, but to rescue you.