The book of Ezra does not really end on a positive note. In the last few chapters, Ezra finds himself dealing with Israel's infidelity in the form of intermarriage, something God had explicitly forbid them to do. Initially expecting he could deal with the problem in about a day (Ezra 10:13), it eventually took two months to set things right. The focus seems to shift from the problem of intermarriage itself to just how widespread the problem actually was.

While the whole tenor of the last few chapters is negative, I find Ezra 10:18-44 the most disturbing. You might find that odd considering it is just a list of the names of those who had married foreign women, but you have to do some math to discover why it is troublesome. The proportion of men who had intermarried was significantly higher among the priests and Levites—the religious leader—than among the rest of the people.

Here are the numbers—roughly 10% of the Israelite people as a whole were priests and Levites. Yet their names at the end of chapter ten account for 25% of the offenders (I owe the mathematical work here to Charles Dobbie, the pastor at Holy Trinity Lyonsdown in north London, who spelled it out in a sermon I found online). It does not take a mathematician to realize that the religious leaders were far more susceptible to falling into sin than the rest of the Israelites.

There are two things we should take from this, I think. First, this should be a sobering revelation for us who find ourselves in leadership in the Church. If the statistics are true—and I suspect few would argue that what we see in Ezra is an exception, rather than the norm—we are far more likely to fall away than the people in our churches. All of God's people are called to pursue holiness, to be sure, but the reality these statistics present should especially press upon those in leadership the need to always be seeking after the Lord. It is no secret that the challenges of ministry often greatly inhibit one's pursuit of godliness. The posture of ministry really must be the posture of prayer.

However, it should also be remembered, as someone once quipped, that "as goes the pulpit, so goes the church." Leaders in the church bear an enormous responsibility in guiding the flock in righteousness and holiness. The Old Testament is rife with examples of Israel's unfaithful leaders bringing the people down with them. In a very real sense, God places upon the leaders of the Church a responsibility not only for their own holiness, but for those whom they lead as well.

All this makes that final portion of Ezra 10 a little hard to swallow. The temptation is to look at it through a lens of discouragement. The challenge is to learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before us. The reality is that the dangers still exist for us today. The comfort is that in the power of the Spirit we can overcome.