Sin is So Regrettable

I was reading from Ezra in my bible reading this morning. In the book of Ezra, God's people have been disciplined strongly for their generations spent in rebellion to God and idolatry so they have been ravaged by many wicked nations and ultimately taken captive into a foreign nation: Babylon. Now eventually Babylon is conquered by Persia and Cyrus King of Persia is providentially moved by God to send the Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of God and to re-establish the worship of God in the temple. In Chapter 3 of the book of Ezra, the remnant of Jews who have returned to Jerusalem have just laid the foundation for the new Temple (as the temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians). Scripture says:

Ezra 3:11 - 4:1 11 They sang, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, saying, "For He is good, for His lovingkindness is upon Israel forever." And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. 12 Yet many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard far away.

The old men who had seen the temple of Solomon wept when they laid the foundation for the new temple. These guys were really old: they had been in captivity for 70 years. They may have just been children when they were taken captive and deported to Babylon, but they remembered the glory of the temple. I think to myself also about how the temple had fallen into disrepair under the reign of wicked kings and though it would undergo renovations occassionally, it probably didn't ever look as wonderful and as glorious as it did in Solomon's day. I believe that the old men were weeping not just because this new temple could not compare to the old temple, but because the beauty of the old Temple was representative of God's blessing that He had placed upon it and His people in a time when they were following God with a whole heart. God's temple was glorious and wonderful and beautiful because God's presence was there. Remember when Solomon built the Temple and blessed it, God's glory filled the Temple and came to rest in the Holy of Holies. When the Temple was destroyed, the glory of God departed from Israel. And they had gone so far away from following God with a whole heart that they were now in much different circumstances then they had been in the time of Solomon. I think the old men were weeping because of sin and how it seperates us from God. I think they were weeping because of how far sin takes us away from the blessings of being in God's presence.

This passage causes me to pause and assess my own life. Are there areas of my life where I am not worshipping God with my whole heart? And do I realize it and repent of it consistently or do I make provision for my flesh to continue on in sin.

Sin may seem small to us sometimes: "it was a small lie and I didn't want to hurt their feelings" or "I'm not apologizing to him. He has to apologize to me first"or "it was just a few extra bites of food. That doesn't make me a glutton"... but it all adds up to whether or not we are worshipping God or worshipping idols. And the Israelites had to endure alot of discipline because of idolatry. May God give us grace to repent of sin before we have to look back weeping at how far we have come from the presence of God.