Are You Separate and Distinct From Them?

Ezra 9:1 (NIV) –  After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, HAVE NOT KEPT THEMSELVES SEPARATE from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites.

As Ezra and other leaders worked hard to restore life back to Israel, they faced many challenges. Our passage today records that one of the challenges was that as life came back to normalcy in Jerusalem and Israel as a whole, the people didn’t do what God always expected them to do. They were not separated from the communities around them that didn’t worship God.

Many years before Ezra’s time, when Israelites left Egypt, God repeatedly emphasized what He expected of them. They were to be separate and distinct from the people of Canaan. They were not supposed to copy or be like the people of the land they were inheriting. God wanted them to be separate and distinct.

Leviticus 18:3 (NIV) – You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices.

God told them through Moses that, they were not to copy the lifestyle of Egypt where they came from. God also tells them through Moses that they are not to copy the life of Canaan where they are going to. God tells them and us to be separate and distinct.

Just follow the lifestyle God has recommended. The past where you came from is unacceptable. The traditions and cultures. Abandon them and do what God says. The lifestyle of the people around you is contrary to God’s will and purposes. Be separate and distinct!

Israelites were punished by God because they copied the lifestyle of Egyptians and Canaanites. They languished in Babylon for seventy years. After the seventy years in Babylon, by God’s grace they return to Israel led by Nehemiah, Ezra and others.

As they settle back in Israel after so many years, Ezra is shocked to receive news that these guys are again copying the lifestyle of the people around them. The very sins that led them to be punished for seventy years. They were not separate and distinct!

The people and priests alike, were marrying and intermarrying with locals. The marriages that God forbade. The marriages made them to copy the lifestyle that God had told them not to copy. Ezra was very angry because the people were not separate and distinct!

Marriage and other relationships can easily cause us to cross lines of separation and distinction that God asked us not to cross. Review your relationships and examine yourself. Are you separate and distinct as God expects? Have relationships misled you?

Revelation 18:4 (NIV) – Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “‘Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;

God’s message to us who live at the end of time, is the same message, come out of Babylon. Come out and be separate. Babylon is the coalition of all systems, organizations, beliefs and lifestyles that are contrary to the biblically revealed will of God. Therefore God asks us to be separate and distinct from Babylon!

God wants us to be separate and distinct. Our daily lives and worship style must be separate and distinct from what happens in Babylon. Our relationship at home, at work, at school and even in the neighborhood, should be separate and distinct from what happens in Babylon.

Without separation and distinction we fail. Without separation and distinction our faith makes no difference. Without separation and distinction we have no evangelistic purpose to invite people to something better. Without separation and distinction we are not truly converted. Without separation and distinction it means we love the world more than God. We need to be separate and distinct!

Products sell more when they are separate and distinct. There is less competition for that which is separate and distinct. God wants us to stand out, by being separate and distinct! May God help us to be separate and distinct, in Jesus name, Amen!

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