Ezekiel 4–7

0:00 On June the 24th, 2021, at 1.22 in the morning, a 12-story beachfront condominium in the town of Surfside, Florida collapsed over the course of exactly 12 seconds. The center section of the building went first, and then the east wing followed, and by the time it was over, half of the entire building was a pile of rubble, and 98 people were dead.

0:34 Most of them didn't even know it because they were asleep when it happened. It was a devastating story. Probably some of you remember it from about five years ago, but here's what makes the whole thing so devastating. It wasn't just the accident. It was the fact that before the building collapsed, The owners of it had been warned that it was going to happen. There was no doubt about it. It was not a matter of if. It was just a matter of when. In 2018, a structural engineer had flagged major, major damage to the concrete underneath the pool deck.

1:07 Water had been eating through the pool and corroding the rebar underneath the building for years. And he put it in writing. This is major structural damage, he said, and it's going to get significantly more expensive and more dangerous if you wait. But they waited. A follow-up inspection in 2021, just before the collapse, found that it had gotten worse. The condo board was, at the time of the collapse, soliciting bids for the repair.

1:37 They were going to repair it when they got around to it, but they hadn't started the work yet. And so people went to bed that night on June 24th, 2021 in a building that had been quietly dying underneath them for years. A building that somebody had warned them about. A building that nobody had done anything about despite knowing the danger. And at 1.22 in the morning, the floor gave way. That's what our text this morning in the book of Ezekiel feels like. Let me invite you to take a Bible, if you have one, and turn over to Ezekiel chapter 4. We're going to be looking today at four chapters of the book, 4, 5, 6, and 7. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles that you have in front of you or under your seat, you'll be able to find that text on page 694. If you're here this morning and you're new to the Bible, let me give you just a little bit of sort of a user's guide to how the Bible works. The Bible is divided up into two sections. This whole big book, it divides, I don't know, right about

2:40 there, maybe, right? So you have the much larger Old Testament, and then you have the much smaller sort of New Testament. Today we're looking at one of the 39 books of the Old Testament, one of the prophets of the ancient nation of Israel. And that book, Ezekiel, about a thousand years ago or so was divided up into what we call chapters and verses. So Christians, because they want to do this kind of thing together, they want to talk about books of the Bible, they took each one of the 66 books of the Bible, divided it up into chapters, and then divided each one of those chapters up into what we call verses. So if you look down on page 694, you're going to see a big four, five, six, and then seven. Those are the chapters that we're looking at today. And then if you look down inside each one of those chapters, you're going to see tiny little verses that are sort of superscripted at the beginning of each sentence or so. Those are what we call verses.

3:29 Doesn't have anything to do with music. It's just what we call them. So that's what we're going to be doing today. If you hear me say something like, look at chapter 4, verse 2, you'll be able to look inside chapter 4, find verse 2, and you'll kind of know what we're doing. But that's what's going on. We started this series in the book of Ezekiel last week, where we looked at the first three chapters. Basically, Ezekiel's commissioning by God on the banks of the Kibar Canal, where he was in exile with most of the leading citizens of Israel at the time. And we looked at the whole broad swath of Ezekiel. Well, today, in verses, or in chapters 4 through 7, the message of Ezekiel really begins in earnest. So you got chapters 1 to 3, which is kind of the commissioning of the prophet Ezekiel. Starting in chapter 4, you have what's going to go on, really, for the next 20 chapters or so, which is just a series of judgments that are laid out against Israel, against the city of Jerusalem for their rebellion against God. And what God is doing in the midst of those chapters

4:33 is basically just dismantling everything that the Israelites were relying on for their confidence before God. They had a number of sort of theological arguments that they were relying on, and God is just sort of knocking the feet out of every single one of those theological arguments as we go along. So what we're about to read here is basically God, I mean, to put it in terms of Surfside, Florida, it's basically God sending an engineer's report to Israel, telling them that the structure they're trusting and living in is compromised.

5:08 And this building is one day coming down. And here's the devastating part about it. And you start to realize this as you read these chapters. It's not the Babylonians, ultimately, who are tearing it down. I mean, yeah, it's the Babylonian army who's going to go over the desert and invade Israel, invade Jerusalem. It's the Babylonian army that's going to knock down the walls of Jerusalem and defile the temple. Yes, historically, that's what's happening. But ultimately, it's not the Babylonians who are knocking this whole thing down.

5:40 It's God Himself. Because the ultimate structural damage isn't in the walls of Jerusalem. It's not the foundations of the temple. the structural damage that's taking it all down is the people themselves it's their hearts it's their rebellion against God it's their sin it's their settled presumption that God would never actually follow through on what he had warned them he would do if you look down at Ezekiel 4 5 6 and 7 we're not going to read all four of these chapters we're going to we're going to read certain parts of it as we go along but I do want to kind of work through these chapters I I want to show you what you're dealing with.

6:22 And I want to warn you up front, this is a heavy text. I mean, there's just no doubt about it. This is meant to be, by the prophet, four chapters of just unrelenting judgment. It's a carpet bombing of the people of Israel from start to finish. There's one little flash of grace in it, kind of tucked up under the folds of the prophet's robe. It's just like right in there, this tiny little bit of grace. I'm going to show that to you a little bit later. But this is one of the heaviest chapters in the entire Bible.

6:53 So let me orient you before we start. Here's what's coming. In chapter 4, if you look down at it, you don't have to read the whole thing. Just kind of let your eyes flow over it. You can look at the sort of subheadings or subtitles in your Bible. In chapter 4, basically, Ezekiel acts out the coming siege of Jerusalem. He knows, because God has revealed to him, that the Babylonian army is going to come across the desert, invade Judea again. They've already done it once, but they're about to do it again. And he knows that they're about to lay siege to Jerusalem. So God commands him, Ezekiel, I want you to take a brick, right? Just a normal brick. And I want you to, he says, draw Jerusalem on the brick, engrave Jerusalem.

7:34 So it was either a map or the skyline or something. He draws Jerusalem on the brick so that it looks very much like Jerusalem. And he sets it down. And then he builds basically little toy siege works around it. I mean, he probably, you know, put some dirt up against it or maybe took some sticks and made some little catapults or, you know, whatever they had at the time. And he basically lays siege in a toy-like way to this brick. And then he lays down against it and puts an iron wall between himself and the brick that is under siege. We'll talk about what that means later. And he lays there for over a year. Now, why does he do that? Why would he lay there with this iron griddle, basically, between him and the city. We'll talk about all that later, but that's what you've got throughout chapter 4. In chapter 5, you've got another acted out parable, another acted out judgment, where he takes a sword, the prophet takes a sword, he shaves his head, and then he divides the hair very carefully that he's cut off his head. He divides it up into three different parts, and in a very

8:35 sort of detailed way, shows what's coming for the population of the city of Jerusalem. And then God explains why. And chapters 6 and 7 are the reasons why all of this judgment is happening. And at the end of it, chapter 6, basically you've got a judgment against the mountains of Jerusalem. Then in chapter 7, you've got a judgment against the land of Jerusalem. It's as if nothing is getting away from the judgment, not even the dirt, right? Not even the shrubs out in the desert. Nothing is escaping. Mountains are falling under judgment. The land's falling under judgment. And at the end of it, The lens widens out until the verdict is total.

9:13 And God basically says, an end, an end has come upon the four corners of the land. So that's what happens. You've got the brick, then you've got the hair, then you've got the judgment on the mountains, then the judgment on the land, and finally an end has come on all of it. It's just unrelenting judgment. Except for one little thing, which I'll get to later. So here's the main idea, and I think what it is basically is the call of that watchman that we talked about last week.

9:47 It's the call of the watchman sounding over these chapters. He's standing on the walls of the city, and he's saying, watch out, the judgment is coming. I see the torches on the horizon. It's out there, and it's coming. The main idea that he wants to get across to his people is this. Everything that you're leaning on, instead of God, will give way. Everything that you're leaning on, other than God, will give way.

10:21 But even in the collapse, His mercy is there. Even in the collapse, His mercy is there. Three points to the sermon. Number one, God's judgment is horrifying. And we just need to face up to that. God's judgment is horrifying. Number two, God's judgment is right. And then number three, but God's mercy is sweet. Number one, God's judgment is horrifying.

10:53 Number two, God's judgment is right. Three, but God's mercy is sweet. And brothers and sisters, my prayer this morning is that God would open your eyes, if he hasn't already, to the reality and the imminence of his judgment. My goal today is not so much to terrify you just for the sake of terrifying you, but it's to show you the judgment of God. It's to show you the unrelenting, inescapable reality of judgment because it's only by seeing the danger, it's only by hearing the words of the watchman saying, Wake up that you'll be able to see your need to be rescued from it by Christ.

11:36 That's what Ezekiel's doing. That's what we're doing this morning. So point number one, God's judgment is horrifying, really looking at chapters four and five. So if you look at chapter four, it starts out with this acted out prophecy. That's really the best way to say it. I mean, there are different ways that God tries to get his word across to us in the Bible. Jesus uses parables. Paul basically uses straightforward preaching. Ezekiel uses these sort of acted out prophecies, but they're not acted out prophecies that just last, you know, five minutes or ten minutes, like a skit you might see at a conference or something like that. No, these acted out prophecies last a long time. In fact, this first one with the little brick lasts over a year. 430 days is how long this thing lasts, but he's making a point with it. Let's look at what he says. Look at 4.1. Chapter 4, verse 1. Here's what God says to him. You, Ezekiel, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem, and put siege works against it and build a siege wall against it and cast up a mound against it. Set

12:39 camps also against it and plant battering rams against it all around. And you take an iron griddle and place it as an iron wall between you and the city and set your face toward it and let it be in a state of siege and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel. So he gets a brick and he engraves the city on it, probably a map of the city. It definitely would have been something that was immediately recognizable to anybody who looked at it. They'd be like, oh my goodness, that's Jerusalem, right? So however you might draw the city of Louisville, maybe it's the shape of the river or the skyline with the buildings and all the rest of it.

13:16 Whatever it was that made Jerusalem recognizable, that's what was on the brick. Look at verse 2. He's to build siege works around it, mounds and camps and battering rams. It's just like a miniature skit or show or diorama of destruction down in the dirt of Jerusalem. But look at verse 3. See what he does there? God commands him to take an iron griddle, which is exactly what you think of when you hear about a griddle. It's like a flat piece of metal that you would cook eggs on, right?

13:47 Or meat or whatever it is. You put it over a fire. It's flat. There's no holes in it. Nothing at all. You can't see through it. There's nothing like that. And he says, Ezekiel, I want you to put that iron griddle between you and the city. Now, what's going on with that? Why does he do that? Well, in this little acted out parable, Ezekiel is in the place of God. And God has decided to let the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army go on. That's what the whole, you know, toy battering rams and all the rest of it is about. and the iron griddle between Ezekiel playing God and the city means God is not going to change his mind. The prayers of Jerusalem, the pleas of the people, the cries of the women and children, nothing is going to get through that griddle, that iron wall to God. He's not going to change his mind no matter how much they plead with him. That's what that means. There's no prayer. There's no plea. There's no repentance that's going to penetrate that iron plate because it is God himself who has set his face against Jerusalem. And even though it's the armies of Babylon that are

14:52 coming, it's God himself who's pressing the siege. You see that in verse 3? Put the griddle between you and the city, set your face toward it, or even you could translate that against it, and let the city be in a state of siege. And you, he says, you representing me, press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel. See, it's not the Babylonians ultimately who are doing this. It's God who is using the Babylonians to press his judgment against Israel.

15:29 Then it gets worse. Look at verses 4 through 8. He says, then lie on your left side and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. Place it on your side, in other words. For the number of the days that you lie on your side, you shall bear their punishment. that's a funny word in in Hebrew it could mean punishment but it could also mean their sin so so at any rate Ezekiel is to take on himself the sin or the punishment of Israel now it's important to understand what's going on there because when when you and I as Christians see words like that our minds immediately go to Jesus bearing the sin of his people on the cross right so when when when God says to Ezekiel you were to bear the sin or the punishment it's probably kind of both of them. You, Ezekiel, bear the punishment of the people on you. We think, oh, that's grace. Thank God Ezekiel is bearing their punishment for them. That's not what it means.

16:26 It's just not. So if you were feeling hopeful, I just, that, you know, just don't. It's just not what it means. When Ezekiel bears the punishment of the people or the iniquity of the people, What it means is that he displays it for them. He suffers for them in a way that they can see it. Because of their sin, he suffers, but it doesn't do anything to get them out of the trouble. This is not an atoning bearing of sin and iniquity.

16:56 It's just a displaying of sin and iniquity. So then lie on your left side, place the punishment of the house of Israel upon yourself. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their probably iniquity. So long, 390 days, shall you bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when you've completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but this time on your right side. And you shall bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year.

17:29 And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared. That is your strength, your wrath bared. And you shall prophesy against the city. And behold, I will place cords upon you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege. So you see what's going on. He sets up this little toy. He sets up an iron wall between him and the city. And then he bears in himself, he displays, in other words, the sin of the city, the iniquity and the punishment of the city. So he's got 390 days, representing 390 years on this side.

18:04 And then he turns over, and he's got 40 more days of bearing the iniquity and punishment on this side. Now, what does that mean? What is that 390 days? What is that 40 days? And you add it all up, you get 430 years. What is that? Well, after hours and hours of studying this, reading Hebrew, Greek, scholars of every language you can imagine, French, Sanskrit, not really. Here's the answer. I have no idea, and neither does anybody else.

18:44 Literally no one knows what the 390 years are, and nobody knows what the 40 years are. But here's the best guess that we've got. The city of Jerusalem fell in 586 BC. That's when Nebuchadnezzar invaded for the second time, and it's when the temple was destroyed and all the rest. That happened in 586 B.C. So that's probably, our best guess is that that's probably the dividing line between the 390 and the 40. So if you go backwards from the fall of Jerusalem, 390 years, guess where you land? Nowhere very important. You really don't land anywhere very important, but you do land kind of in the vicinity, and sometimes the Bible will round numbers like this, you sort of land in the vicinity of Solomon's building of the temple. So it may be a rounded number that says from the time Solomon built the temple and God took up residence among his people in his permanent place of dwelling, the temple, to the time when the temple was destroyed, you got 390 years, roughly.

19:48 Okay, from 586 B.C., 40 years forward, do you know where you land? Nowhere important. Like, again, nowhere important. So what do you do with the 40 years? Well, in the Bible, in Numbers, do you remember how many years in the wilderness Israel was wandering back in the book of Numbers? 40 years in the wilderness, right? And the whole point of the 40 years in the wilderness was to basically get rid of, to kill off, to die off a whole generation of sinful Israelites so that the new generation could go into the promised land.

20:22 Well, you may have here a kind of symbolic reenactment of the wandering in the wilderness as a whole generation of faithless Israelites die off in exile in Babylon. Now, it actually lasted a little bit longer than 40 years, but it may be symbolic. Again, the Bible does this all the time. It uses numbers symbolically, and 40, because of that story in Numbers, the wandering in the wilderness, represents a generation dying off. So my best guess, and it's not a good one, I'll be straight up honest with you about that. If it is the best guess that I've come up with, is that the 390 represents the time of the temple, from God filling it with his presence to its destruction in 586.

21:00 That's what the 390 is, right? That's almost 400 years of iniquity building up. And what Ezekiel's doing as he's lying on his side is that he's displaying that iniquity. He's showing the people of Israel just how awful their sin was even in the time God was dwelling among them. I think that's what he was doing. Then he turns over onto his other side and he displays their punishment now. He displays for them the exile that they're going to endure in Babylon until a whole generation of them dies off.

21:34 I think that's what's going on. Look at verses 9 to 17, because it spends a lot of time then talking about what he's going to eat. You, Ezekiel, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them in a single vessel. Gross. Can you imagine doing that? Y'all have no idea what that's talking about. But I'm telling you, in the ancient Near East, that was gross. You don't take all six or seven of these different grains and put them in one vessel and make bread out of all that stuff. It would be like going into your kitchen and taking, you know, you did it as a kid.

22:07 You know, you just take every cereal you've got and ketchup and mustard and, you know, you put it all in there, right? And then you stir it all up and you stick it in the microwave and you see what comes out. That's basically what God tells Ezekiel to do here. Just take the leftovers. Take everything you've got, stuff it in one vessel, and make some bread out of whatever comes out. And then you have to eat it, he says. You know, it's interesting. there's, in the sources, there were some people in the third century A.D., so we're talking like 250s A.D., like that 250, 1800 years ago or whatever, who did an experiment, and they took all of these ingredients, and they did this very thing. They made some bread out of this stuff that Ezekiel did, and you know, it's not Ezekiel bread that you can see, you get at Trader Joe's, that's, it's not it. They literally made this stuff in the third century, and they put it in front of their dogs, and the dogs wouldn't even eat this stuff. This is not meant to be delicious and healthy and, you know, fat losing for you. That is not the point. The point is that it's

23:11 disgusting, and yet he's supposed to eat it, but not much of it. Basically, if you took a slice of bread, I mean, you've got the, you know, your food, verse 10, your food that you eat shall be by weight 20 shekels a day. From day to day, you shall eat it. Water, you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hen. So in terms of the water, it was about two-thirds of a quart of water. So, you know, that much water. That's all you get every single day for 430 days. The bread, the 20 shekels or whatever it is a day, if you took a slice of, you know, just white Wonder Bread and you cut it in half and then you cut it in half again, your daily ration would be one piece of that quartered bread.

23:54 One quarter of a slice of Wonder Bread was what Ezekiel got to eat. What's the message there? The message is, this is going to be bad. Israel, this is going to be bad for you. Ezekiel's displaying your iniquities, displaying your punishment, and it's going to be bad. Move forward a bit to chapter 5. because it's kind of the same image.

24:28 God tells Ezekiel to shave off his head and his beard. So we're still talking about the siege of Jerusalem here and what's going to happen to the people during the siege. So we're still in the 390 days. We haven't moved on to the 40 days yet. In chapter 5, God says, take a sword, shave your head and your beard. Now, the first thing you need to know about that is that it's a profound humiliation for anybody, But especially for a priest to be shaven with his head is a profound humiliation. I know it's another word picture for Israel.

25:00 But then he says, take the hair that you've shaved off your head and divide it into three parts. And here's what you're going to do. You're going to take a third of that hair, one part of it, and you're going to throw it into the fire. The other part of it, you're going to take your sword and just whack it to death until it's cut up and it's gone. And then a third of it, you're going to take it and just scatter it to the wind among all the nations. That's the population of Jerusalem. A third of them are going to be burned by the fire. A third of them are going to be hacked to death by the sword. And a third of them are just going to be scattered to the winds.

25:33 God's describing to them what's going to happen to them because of their sin. And the reason comes in verse 5 of chapter 5. Thus says the Lord God, this is Jerusalem. This hair that you've scattered and cut and burned, this is Jerusalem. I've set her in the center of the nations with countries all around her. And yet she's rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her. For they have rejected my rules and have not walked in my statutes.

26:05 Do you see what's happening there? I mean, look at what he says in chapter 5, verse 5. This is Jerusalem. I have set this city, God says, in the center of the nations. This is the most divinely favored city on earth. The place that God had chosen to live in. And now, against all odds and all expectations, God himself is besieging her. Now why? Because you look at verse 5 or verse 6 of chapter 5.

26:37 She rebelled against God's rules. She rebelled, in fact, more wickedly than the nations rebelled. More than the pagans who had never known God's law at all. You look forward to chapter 6, and it's not just the city that falls under judgment. Even the mountains fall under it. In seven, it's the whole land. Like every shrub, every little bit of dust falls under the wrath of God. I wonder if reading passages like this, thinking about passages like this makes you uncomfortable.

27:19 I think it should. And sometimes we Christians get kicked for believing in a God that would do this kind of thing right here. Sometimes we get dinged for believing in a God that would actually keep his promises to rain down punishment on sin. But friend, if that makes you uncomfortable, I want you to know a couple of things.

27:50 I want you to know, for one thing, that we Christians don't say those things about God because we particularly like the thought of it. I mean, you can tell that just in the kind of silence that falls over the room when I start talking about the judgment of God. Nobody, even in this room, likes to talk about it. We don't believe these things because we like them. We don't believe these things because we came up with them. We believe them because God has told us in his word that they are true. We believe them because Jesus said that there is a place called hell where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die. We don't believe that because we enjoy the thought. We believe it because Jesus said it is true. But we also believe it because it is, whether we feel it or not, profoundly just and right.

28:52 Ancient theologian Anselm once said to a debate opponent of his, I do not think that you have considered the true weight of your sin. I do not think that you have considered the true weight of your sin. Friends, I think that's true of all of us. I think that's true of our society. I think that's true of most of the people sitting in this room right now. We have not considered the true weight of our sin.

29:23 And if we did, if we could ever understand the weight of it, the horrificness of sinning and rebelling against the gloriously majestic king of the universe, hell would not seem so odd to us. When you understand the gravity of your sin, you understand the meaning of hell. You understand why the great God of the universe would not be content with anything other than eternal punishment because he himself is of eternal worth.

29:58 And to reject that deserves eternal punishment. Friends, if hell seems odd to you, and I kind of think hell will always seem odd to us on this side of heaven, because I'm not sure that our minds are big enough. I'm not sure that our minds are infinite enough. They're not infinite at all, but I'm not sure they're big enough to contain the true weight of our sin. But friends, if hell seems odd to you, don't doubt the word of God. Consider the weight of your sin. Consider the meaning of the fact that you have raised your hand in rebellion against the king of the universe.

30:36 And maybe, just maybe, the gap will close just a little bit. You see what's going on in these couple of chapters? Israel was relying on a few things. She was relying on the fact that God had put his presence in Jerusalem. She was relying on the fact that God had put himself in covenant. with her. She was relying on the fact that God had given them this promised land with all its shrubs and all its mountains. And now one by one by one, God is taking it all away. Everything that they're relying on is being burned and scattered and destroyed. So the question for you and me is, what are you relying on what are you what are you leaning on in this life I mean my guess is if you just kind of think through it you're leaning on exactly the same kinds of things that Israel was

31:39 leaning on I mean maybe you get your spiritual security from a thought that you know what I grew up in church or I was baptized when I was six years old or I walked down the aisle and I made profession of faith. And that's relying on a false covenant just as much as Israel was. It's relying on a false presumption of covenant. It's the exact thing that Israel was doing. Maybe you comfort yourself with the thought that, I just don't believe it. I just don't believe that there is this God. I don't believe that there is this Jesus. When you're doing the same thing Israel was. You're just presuming on the idea that God actually will not judge as he said he will. Maybe your confidence is something different. Maybe it's financial. Maybe it's the things of this world. You got a good job. You got a retirement account. You got insurance and you've never seriously reckoned with the fact that God can make all of it worthless with a whisper.

32:39 You can take it all away. Maybe it's political, sociological. Maybe you're leaning on institutions or government or a political party, the way Israel was leaning on the walls of Jerusalem. But none of those things, that's the thing, that's the devious thing. None of those things that I've just mentioned are bad in themselves. The things that Israel was leaning on, covenant, city, land, wealth, those were real gifts from God.

33:15 Your financial situation is a gift from God. The fact that you're an American is a gift from God. The fact that you grew up in a Christian home is a gift from God. But the horror that Israel committed was turning the gifts into gods. Be careful, friend, That you don't do the same thing. Because God tore all those things down. Out from under Israel. And he will do the same to you. And the judgment is horrifying.

33:49 There's no doubt about it. Everything these people were leaning on. Is giving way. And there's nothing that can stop the collapse. But here's what makes the judgment. Not just terrifying. But inescapable. It's not arbitrary. It's not by accident that this happened to Jerusalem. God doesn't just look down through time and see what's going to happen by accident to Jerusalem and warn them about it. That's not what's going on. Nor is it that God is just getting in a fit of anger and lashing out against Jerusalem.

34:23 No, every single bit of this judgment is earned. For 390 years, it's earned. And that's the second point. God's judgment is right. I think maybe the most important thing to learn about the judgment and the wrath of God in this passage is that it was indisputably, unassailably correct. It was right. It was just. And besides the horror of it, which you get a whole lot of in these chapters, that's the one thing God most wants his people to understand.

34:58 All of this that's happening to you, you deserve every single bit of it. it is all coming to you because you have earned it that's a critical thing to understand about god's wrath all over the bible it's not just like a rage-fueled tantrum wrath is not just god lashing out uncontrollably that's what your wrath is often like and mine but that's not god god's wrath is is a settled opposition to sin and evil it is god's settled determination to destroy evil from the earth. It's justice. And it's coming, he says to his people, because of what you have done.

35:34 And what have they done? What have they done? What's in the 390 years? Well, it's kind of threaded throughout this whole passage. They're guilty of basically four things. First of all, they're guilty of disobedience to God's laws. If you look at chapter 5, verse 6, Israel has rebelled against my rules even more wickedly than the nations. So the people who had the most light, the people who knew the most about God's character produced the most darkness in the world. They've become worse even than those who never knew God at all. They're guilty of disobedience to God's law. They're also guilty of violence and oppression of each other. Look at chapter 7 verse 23. Forge a chain. In other words, you're about to be carried off into captivity. Exile. Forge your own chain. For the land is full of what? Bloody crimes. And the city is full of violence. You're guilty of being violent against each other. You're guilty of oppressing one another. Third, I mean you can see this kind of just all over the place. Arrogance. Just absolute total cockiness. God is not going

36:40 to judge us. It doesn't matter if we're breaking his rules. It doesn't matter if we're filled with violence and justice. The city of Jerusalem is inviolable because this is where God lives. they're guilty of that kind of arrogance, thinking that God would never actually follow through on his warnings. And then fourth, above all, they're guilty of idolatry. Look at chapter 6, verse 1. The word of the Lord, this is where he rains down judgment on the mountains. The word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them.

37:16 But why? Why in particular the mountains? Well, verse 3, say, you mountains of Israel, Hear the word of the Lord God. Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, the ravines and the valleys. Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you and I will destroy your high places. That doesn't just mean the tops of the mountains. That means places of worship. They would put altars and poles and all kinds of worshiping things up on the top of the mountains. And those were called the high places. I will destroy them. Your altars, verse four, shall become desolate.

37:46 Your incense altars shall be broken and I will cast down your slain before your idols. I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste, and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out, and the slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord. He's judging them for their idolatry, For worshiping other things instead of him.

38:23 The word Ezekiel uses there for idols is interesting. So this word shows up 40 times, I believe, maybe 41 times in the whole Old Testament, the whole thing. And 38 times it shows up here in Ezekiel. 38 out of 40. So it's likely that this is kind of Ezekiel's special word for idolatry and idols. In Hebrew, the word is gilulim, and it's interesting because in Hebrew, basically, the consonants of a word and the vowels of a word are separate from each other.

38:55 You kind of thread them together like this. So you can take the consonants of one word and the vowels of a whole different word and stick them together, and you get all kinds of interesting things that you can do with words. So, for example, you could take the consonants for ball, B-L-L, and you could stick them together with the vowels for red and basically what would come out is a word that means red ball right so that's that's kind of what Ezekiel is doing here with this word and he's playing with it so he takes the normal word for idols which would be an offensive thing and he puts it together with the vowels for the word dung that's what he does he takes the word idol sticks it with the word dung and basically what he ends up with is a word that literally means round little detestable things that roll around and that's what he calls the things that we worship instead of God. Now

40:02 I challenge you to come up with funny words to describe the idols in English. I've come up with about six of them, and I have been forbidden by my wife to use any of them here today. But I challenge you to come up with some. That's how God sees the things that we worship. They're not reasonable alternatives to God. They're not understandable choices. It's not like you can say, but God, this thing that I gave my life to, this pursuit of wealth, this pursuit of happiness, this pursuit of whatever it was, it was worth it, God, because it was so reasonable no no no ezekiel saying all of that get to lean round little things that are detestable and roll around all the things of this life that we pursue so ezekiel they're just something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe look at 513 also 513 thus shall my anger spin

41:08 itself, and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself, and they shall know that I am the Lord, that I have spoken in my jealousy when I spend my fury upon them. Now the word, the word jealousy there may not be the best translation of, of the Hebrew word. Basically what it means is passion. It's not jealousy in the sense of like a bad sort of envy, like you're wanting something that somebody else has that's rightfully theirs, and you want it. That's not what, that's not what the word jealousy means there. It means something more like passion. In other words, God is not acting here as a judge that's just handing down a, you know, feeling less sentence, like, oh yeah, you're all guilty, just go to jail, you know, off to gulag with you. It's not that.

41:51 This is a passionate husband who has watched his wife commit adultery, and now, and now, he comes after her. The fury that he's executing against his people comes, he says, from love. He burns this hot because he loves that deeply. When you look at 6 and 9, he says it again. Those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they were carried captive. How I have been broken over their whoring heart that's departed from me. And over their eyes, they go whoring after their idols.

42:22 And they'll be loathsome in their own sight for the evils they have committed for all their abominations. I have been broken, he says, because they have departed. from me. See, the wrath of God and the heartbreak of God aren't contradictory. They're two sides of the same love. I think there's a phrase in chapter 5, verse 8, that basically captures all this.

42:54 In 5, 8 there, God says, behold, I, even I, am against you. Now, you won't necessarily catch it in the English but in the Hebrew that's exactly the opposite of the great covenant promise that God has given to his people that I am with you instead of the covenant promise I am with you it's now I am against you you see the point that the opposite of I am with you isn't I'm ignoring you. It's I am against you. I have set my face against you. I myself am carrying out this wrath.

43:37 Friend, that's where rebellion against God takes you. That's where sin takes you. It's not just that God leaves you alone in your sin. It is that he sets his face against you. It takes the most precious relationship in the universe between the creator and the one created in the image of that creator and turns the whole thing inside out and upside down. Friends, you got to see you and I are guilty of exactly the same things that Israel was guilty of.

44:13 If you think you're neutral, you've got to understand you're not neutral. You are in active rebellion against the God who created you, who made you, and who even now loves you. And every time you say, I don't care, or I don't believe it, or I'll get to it later, your denial, your delay, your apathy is just deepening the treason. So that's where we are.

44:46 That's where Ezekiel leaves it, horrifying judgment, and every single bit of it deserved. Because we are creatures in rebellion against our creator. You know, Ezekiel could have just ended it right there. It could have been a very short book. You know, seven, that's it, right? Just like he could have spoken one word of judgment in Eden and left it like that. Just like Paul could have said in Romans, there is no one who will be made righteous under the law, but all are guilty and will be held accountable to God. And he could have put the final period on it and laid the pen down and walked away.

45:21 That could have been it. Justice would be served, and nobody could say a word about it. But praise God, that's not where it ends. And even in the middle of all this devastation, four chapters of just unrelenting judgment, something breaks through. And it's so small, you'd almost miss it. Point number three, God's mercy is sweet. So where is mercy in chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7?

45:54 Did you read it in advance? Kind of been looking? I mean, where is it? I mean, it's just unrelenting judgment. You probably thought it was in Ezekiel bearing the sins of the people. Told you that's not it. Where's mercy? Well, go back to chapter 5. You got Ezekiel in this chapter shaving his head, and then you got the dividing of the hairs up, a third of them to the fire, a third of them cut up by the sword, a third of them scattered to the winds. We've already seen all that. But look at verse 3.

46:28 Right in the middle of this total destruction, you have one tiny little bit of instruction. You shall take from these a small number and bind them up in the skirts of your robe. It's just a few little hairs tucked into the folds of Ezekiel's robe, preserved and protected in his pocket. while everything else burns. Friends, that's it. That is literally the only grace in chapters 4 through 7.

47:02 And even that, if you look at it, gets qualified. I mean, look at verse 4. And of these little hairs that you've stuck in your robe, again, take some of those even and cast them in the fire. So there may be some that escape the destruction of the city, but even some of those are going to be hunted down and destroyed. But some, some, some will be saved from the fire. The mercy is thin and it is fragile, but it is real.

47:37 You know, I've wondered as I've studied this, why is that there? I mean, these chapters are doing something in the book. They're supposed to be terrifying, unrelenting judgment. That's what they're supposed to be. It's just supposed to be a napalming of Jerusalem and its people. That's what it's supposed to be. And yet, right in the middle of it, you get, and yet, take some of those little hairs and tuck them into the folds of your robe. Why is that there? Well, I mean, it's there because it's true, right? But it just strikes me that in the middle of all of this, even though it's supposed to be unrelenting judgment, It's just who God is that his compassion breaks through anyway.

48:22 He just will not go four whole chapters pouring out judgment without tucking a few of the little hairs away. His mercy just comes out of it, overflowingly, even here when the main point is judgment. You ever wonder if God will show mercy to you? He will. He can't help himself because that's who he is.

48:53 That's what John means when he says, God is love. It just breaks out of him. Even when the sin is piled high to the heavens, mercy breaks through. I want you to see one more thing in this. Think about what Ezekiel's been doing in all these chapters. He's been doing some crazy stuff, right? He's lying on the floor. He's eating bread. He's shaving his head. And those are what the scholars call sign acts.

49:28 Strange word. You could call them acted out parables, acted out stories, skits, sketches, whatever you want to call them. Scholars call them sign acts. And what it is, is at this point in the Bible, it's God communicating, not just through words, but through actions, through a human body, through a person doing something. So Ezekiel, unlike Jeremiah, unlike Isaiah, doesn't just announce that the siege is coming. He lives it out. He doesn't just describe the famine that they're going to endure. He eats the famine. Where else do you know that God does that again?

50:02 Where else does he not just declare love? but show it. He does it when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Not just speaking grace to us, but becoming man so that He could embrace us physically, really, in grace and mercy. See, God didn't just put on a human costume. He's not just God with flesh on.

50:36 The second person of the Trinity became man so that he could show us his love. You see the thread here, right? Ezekiel's body showed their iniquity symbolically. He displayed it. He suffered because of it. But that suffering didn't save anybody. It just warned them about the coming judgment. Christ bore our sin in a whole different way. Not just displaying for us how bad our sin was, but actually absorbing our sin and then paying the penalty for it.

51:11 That's what secures our salvation. One grand sign act at the fullness of time. When God became man and dwelt among us and gave himself for us so that we might live. You know where else these sign acts show up? every time we baptize somebody every time we take the lord's supper when you put that little bit of bread in your mouth and you're nourished by it just a little bit right when it gets crushed between your teeth it's a sign act of jesus's body being broken for you when you drink the the cup the red juice right it's a sign act of jesus's blood being poured out so that you can live when somebody's baptized they go into the water symbolizing death and they come out of it symbolizing new life, sign acts.

52:02 God does this even today, literally all the time. Not just words about grace and salvation, but stuff that you can see with your eyes and hold in your hands and even put in your mouth. See, I hope that what this does for you, especially if you're a Christian, I hope it just drops the weight of the fact that you are saved right on the top of your shoulders.

52:34 I hope you feel the gigantic gratitude that you ought to, to God, that you, because of Jesus Christ, are one of the little hairs that's tucked into the folds of his robe. You, you're one of them. Jesus said the gate is narrow. The gate of salvation is narrow and few there will be that find it. Take a few little hairs. Tuck them in your garment. Friend, if you're a Christian, you didn't come to that on your own.

53:06 You were put there. You were tucked into Jesus' robe because he loved you. And the right response to that is not just theological agreement. It's not just nodding your head nicely. it's the kind of gratitude that just breaks your heart and rewrites how you live your life and what if you're not a Christian and what if you've been sitting there this whole time listening to what I'm saying and you're not quite sure what to do with it well friend if that's you I want you to hear me for just a second I want you to understand what God has done for you even this morning I want you to understand the kindness that God has shown you even this morning you realize right you realize that there are billions of people on this planet billions of them who will never once sit in a room where somebody opens up this book and explains what

54:10 God has done for them there are billions who are never going to hear it but praise God not you not you, you're one of the few that get to hear it you get to hear what God has done that is not nothing and it is not an accident there are going to be other billions who hear it and yet are thrown into the fire anyway friend, don't let that be you don't let that be you. Hear this word of grace from God and come to Jesus and be saved.

54:54 Don't be the one who was that close and walked away. See that building in Surfside, Florida? Had been rotting, dying underneath those people for years somebody had even told the owners but nobody acted they got the word but they walked away and at 122 in the morning when nobody expected it it all fell apart you know what happened after though rescue teams came 98 people died but the rescue teams pulled survivors out of the rubble not many just a few

55:54 but friend don't you want that to be you don't you when the judgment falls on the last day don't you be want to be one of the survivors that's pulled out of the rubble call out to Jesus ask him for mercy and be forgiven and saved for eternity let's pray our Lord we thank you that you are the great savior of the world We thank you that you're the one who shows grace.

56:37 We thank you that you are the one who shows mercy to those who do not deserve it. We thank you that you are the redeemer who gave your life so that we would not have to fall under the wrath of your Father. Our God, we pray that as Christians you would remind us of the greatness and costliness of our salvation. We pray, oh God, that you would remind us even of the rarity of our salvation. And Father, we pray that you would swell our hearts with gratitude because of it. And then, Father, we pray that by your spirit and by your word, you would do the work of salvation even here among us this morning.

57:14 Father, we pray for the person who's sitting there wondering if they should just finally give up and open the gates and let you in. And Lord, we pray that they would, even right now. We pray, oh God, that you would cause their hearts to topple over in faith and trust and reliance of you. And we pray that you would save them. Our God, we thank you for all these truths. We pray you drive them deeply into our hearts and change us because of them. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.