This is Spoken Gospel.

We are dedicated to seeing 
Jesus in all of scripture.

In each episode, we see what’s 
happening in a Biblical text

and how it sheds light
on Jesus and his gospel.

Let’s jump in.

God moves on the heart of 
Israel’s new Persian overlord.

He sends a delegation of exiles to return to their 
temple and obey everything their law requires.

He wants Israel to worship
their God once again.

But Persia’s king is only hedging his bets.

He wants to make sure the wrath of Israel’s 
God doesn’t come against him and his kingdom.

But while the Persian king is being politically expedient, 
God is providing and planning a way to
turn his people back to him.

So, the king sends Ezra—an expert in Israel’s law—to
teach Israel how to follow their God after a long time in exile.

And God follows Ezra.

Anything he needs to teach obedience
and to turn back God’s wrath is given to him.

In fact, every time there is a problem God provides.

When Ezra arrives in Israel, he realizes there are 
no qualified priests who can work in the temple.

But God provides a priest.

And Jerusalem obediently offers sacrifices 
according to the law Ezra taught them.

God’s plan is working.

 But then Ezra learns that the Israelites had unlawfully
intermarried with the idolatrous inhabitants of their land.

In Israel’s history, marriages like these and disobedience
have gone hand in hand. Idolatrous marriages like

these were part of the reason Israel
was exiled in the first place.

They threatened a new wave of God’s wrath.
So, Ezra laments over his nation’s sins.

But seeing Ezra weep and lament on their behalf, 
a large crowd of Israelites gather around him.

They admit their sin and know what must be done.

Those who have intermarried must separate from their
unlawful spouses and give fidelity and obedience to God alone.

Repentance and revival break out. Israel leaves 
her sinful marriages and recommits herself to God.

God’s plan is working!

[music]

God’s laws are like marriage vows, and to Israel God is
like a husband, angry at his chronically cheating bride.

Israel’s idolatrous marriages are a 
rejection of the vows that they made to God.

God is angry, and if Israel wants her relationship with God
to be restored and God’s presence returned to his temple, 

the people must cut off their false
marriages and remember their vows.

A marriage means nothing if there isn’t fidelity 
to one spouse to the exclusion of others.

Likewise, the presence of a temple, a priest, and
sacrifices means nothing if the people have joined

themselves to other lovers and other gods.
God’s presence demands obedience.

While human marriages might end in divorce,
our unfaithfulness to God ends in death and exile.

But as Ezra pointed out, God did
not treat Israel as their sins deserved.

With full knowledge of their infidelity, 
God showed them faithful love.

God brought them back to their rightful home, 
gave them a teacher to remind them of their vows,  

and promised to fill his temple with his 
presence despite their checkered history.

And what God began with 
Ezra he finished with Jesus.

The presence Israel hoped would fill the 
temple, became flesh and lived among us.

Like both Ezra and the Persian king expected, Jesus
did not come to bring the anger our sins deserve.

But in full knowledge of our entrenched unfaithfulness, 
Jesus died to save his bride and end his wrath.

In turn, Jesus’ faithfulness to his people
makes us into the faithful bride Israel never was.

We are now filled with his loving presence.
We are new, spotless temples.

And by his powerful, loving, husbandly 
word we exclude all other spouses,  

we remain faithful to our vows, and
are blameless and pure before God.

I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your  eyes to see
the God whose wrath stands against all unfaithfulness.

And that you will see Jesus as the one who lovingly fell 
under the wrath that we deserve to make us a faithful bride.