Ezekiel 33–39

0:00 Well, here's a thing that I bet you have done a hundred times without ever really giving much thought about it. You have sat down with your phone, just kind of absentmindedly scrolling, you've gone to YouTube, everybody finds their way to YouTube eventually in those times, and you scroll and watch a cat video, and then you watch a bunny video, then you watch some psychedelic 3D optical illusion thing, and then you come to a video where somebody has taken a camera and they've videoed something breaking.

0:32 So a glass falling off a table and shattering on the ground or a bullet going through an apple, right? And the apple explodes. And then they play that backwards and you've chuckled as you've watched the shards of the glass jump back up onto the table and reassemble into a glass. Or you watch the bullet suck back through the apple and the apple sucks it all together or the balloon, right, comes together and then expels the pin out of it. And you probably don't give it much thought, but it's funny and interesting because it is so obviously fake.

1:06 It all goes backwards, and we all know that it goes backwards. Now, here's the funny thing about that. Most of the laws of physics, I'm not a physicist, but I have in fact watched enough physics YouTube videos to know this. Most of the laws of physics work perfectly well in both directions. If you film most things in the universe, it doesn't really matter whether you play it forward or backward, it all makes sense. So if you throw two billiard balls together and film that and they bounce off of each other, you can play that backwards and you can't tell which one is going forward and which one is going backwards.

1:41 Nothing looks wrong or odd at all. But there is one law that will not and cannot run backwards. And that happens to be the law that tells you which direction time is going. what is that law? It's entropy. In other words, things come apart. They do not come back together. A pile of ashes never becomes wood again. You can watch a house burn down on a video for an hour, but you'll never once in your life watch a house burn together again. It just doesn't happen. And of course, that's not just true of things like glasses and water balloons and apples being shot with a bullet and houses burning down.

2:25 It's true of everything. Even things that matter a whole lot more than glasses and broken eggs and burning down houses. There's the word that you said that you would give anything to have back. But it'll never come back. There's a friendship that somewhere along the way cracked. And now there's just a cold politeness It's where the warmth, the friendship used to be. There's a decision that you made years ago that you'd give anything if you could just change it.

3:02 And yet now here we are. Everything in the universe runs in one direction. Things come apart. And so do our lives. And the fact is every single one of us, if we're really honest about it, every single one of us is carrying around some rubble that we would love to reassemble. But we can't. And that's the world we live in. But now, let me show you what our God does with rubble. Turn with me to Ezekiel. We're going to be looking at chapters 33 to 39. So again, a pretty sizable chunk of text. I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, though I am going to read certain pieces of it as we make our way through it. If you're using one of these Red pew bibles you can find ezekiel 33 uh that's the first chapter we're going to look at uh on page 720 721 so i i don't know if you're familiar with the bible or not uh we often have guests here at third avenue that have just kind of never known anything about the bible and so we like to

4:06 to take a minute to just kind of orient you to what we're doing uh basically this is one book that christians have used for 2 000 years to understand god and to understand what god requires of us. It's made up of 66 different sections. Ezekiel, the prophet, being one of those sections, or we actually call them books. Ezekiel prophesied about 2,600 years ago, something like that. And so we have, from 2,600 years ago, his book of prophecies, which is what we've been studying for the last few weeks. If you look at Ezekiel on page 720, you're going to find yourself at chapter 33. That's that big number 33. If you look down inside chapter 33, you'll see little verse numbers inside there. So you'll have to kind of distinguish between footnotes. There aren't a whole lot of them, so that's helpful. The one you'll see a whole lot of, though, we call those verse numbers. That doesn't mean we sing this. It's just the word that we use. So if I say something like, look at chapter 34, verse 10, you'll be able to find chapter 34, go down to 10, and you'll be able to follow along with what I'm saying. Just one word about that. You're going to be really

5:10 helped, like a lot, over the next few minutes to have a Bible in front of you and actually look at those places that I tell you to look. In fact, if you don't do that, if you just intend to kind of sit there and let the words roll over you, guess what's going to happen? The words are just going to kind of roll over you. You're just not going to get it. So pull out a Bible, look at what I'm telling you to look at, and I promise you, not only will you understand it better, this next few minutes will be a whole lot more enjoyable to you as well. So if you're new, let me give you a running start on where we are because today we're coming to one of the great hinges in the book. There are basically one, two, three big sections and we're sort of at the, we're sort of at this next big hinge in the book. So if you've been with us through this series in Ezekiel, you know that chapters one to four are this one long drumbeat of judgment and all of that judgment lands in chapter 24 when Nebuchadnezzar, the emperor of Babylon, lays siege to the city of Jerusalem.

6:07 Ezekiel's been telling him from the very beginning, from chapter 1 on, he's been saying, Jerusalem's going to fall, Jerusalem's going to fall, Jerusalem's going to fall. And then in chapter 24, that's when it happens. Well, then in chapter 25 to 32 that we looked at last week, basically the tenor of the book starts to change. And God's judgment is no longer falling on Israel and Jerusalem. That's already happened with the fall of Jerusalem. Now, in 25 to 32, he turns his sword on all of the enemy nations around Israel.

6:40 So that's what happens for those eight chapters, 25-32. Now, from 33 to the end, we're going to look at about half of it this morning, everything changes. The whole rest of the book is no longer judgment, it's hope. Because everything is broken, the judgment has fallen, the covenant has been executed. and so what you get now is hope. But I want you to see how it changes, because the story of kind of how all of this goes about is really remarkable. So the first thing I want you to look at, before we even kind of get started good, is in chapter 33. So turn to Ezekiel chapter 33. So in the first half of that chapter, say verses 1 through 20, you can sort of look at the subheadings of your of your bible there ezekiel is israel's watchman and then why will you die oh israel for the first 20 verses there you're basically just getting some old themes that we've already talked about

7:42 in the book of ezekiel so if you were here a couple of weeks ago you remember ezekiel being the watchman well here comes that again you remember this appeal to israel like if you sin you're gonna die and why would you say it's all been said before it's the same beats showing up again. It's the same message, and I think at the beginning of chapter 33, the whole thing is supposed to feel tiresome. It's almost like, you know, you've got this, you've got the judgment that falls in chapter 24, then you have the sword sweeping around all the enemies of Israel, and then with chapter 33, it's almost like a sort of meanwhile back on the farm in Babylon, right?

8:19 Meanwhile, back on the canal at Babylon, and the camera zooms in on Ezekiel, and he's just saying the same exact stuff and you're supposed to go wait this is tiresome we've heard this for 24 chapters and I thought things were going to change but they don't it's like you've heard it all before but then there's one sentence that lands in the middle of it and from that moment on nothing is ever the same again so look at verse 21 of chapter 33 in the 12th year of our exile Now, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month, a fugitive from Jerusalem came to me and said, The city has been struck down.

9:01 Now, the hand of the Lord had been upon me the evening before the fugitive came. And he had opened my mouth by the time the man came to me in the morning. So my mouth was opened, and I was no longer mute. So this guy who comes from Jerusalem, right? Jerusalem's fallen under the armies. He's a fugitive. So he escapes the city, escapes the fires. He sort of stumbles across the desert somehow, 600 miles, makes it to Babylon, stumbles in off the desert road, and he collapses in the dirt, and he gasps out four words, the city is fallen.

9:34 Big news. And then look what happens in verse 22, because this is a payoff that is now 30 chapters in the making. So think back to chapter 3. Remember what happened at the very beginning of Ezekiel's prophetic ministry. It was a very strange thing. But God takes his prophet and says, you're going to be mute. Your mouth is going to be closed. And the only time you're going to be able to speak to anybody is to say the prophetic words that I give to you. And so for some long amount of time, it's been 30 chapters for us, Ezekiel has been utterly mute until he's been speaking the prophetic words of God.

10:10 Well, now, right here in chapter 33, the moment comes. The fugitive shows up. He delivers the news that the judgment of God has fallen and is complete on Jerusalem. And all of a sudden, Ezekiel's tongue is loosed and he's able to speak. So what does he say? Well, over the next few chapters, his message comes in really three kind of sections or movements. And before we get into the details, I want to tell you the shape of them.

10:42 Because it's really the big macro structure that matters here. So 33 is the chapter where you get the opening of Ezekiel's mouth. The word comes, the covenant has been executed, judgment has fallen, and Ezekiel's mouth is open. That's 33. In 34, from 34 all the way through the middle of 36, you basically get two pictures of God's people being ground down into the dust. So they get ground down into the dust first by their own spiritual leaders, the people who are supposed to be their shepherds.

11:14 They grind them down from within. And then you have this neighboring nation that we'll talk about called Edom that also grinds them down into the dust and mocks them and oppresses them and all the rest. And God in 34 all the way through the middle of 36 just tells you, here's what I'm going to do about these oppressors of yours, your shepherds and your neighbors. Here's what I'm going to do about them. Then, if you look from the middle of 36 all the way through chapter 37, you get this series of promises. And then in 37, this one incredible vision in which God shows that he alone can give life where there is nothing but death.

11:53 So you can see the progression already. Here's what God is going to do with the oppressors. And now here's what God is going to do with death. Then finally, in 38 and 39, this is where things get odd and strange. But basically in 38, 39, you get two chapters about somebody called Gog from the land of Magog. And then you get two rounds, 38 and 39, of telling the story of a war that frankly has given readers fits for about 2,600 years because we just don't know what it means.

12:30 mostly. We'll deal with that when we get there. There's a lot of detail. There's a lot of things to talk about, as usual, when we're looking at this much text and in an unfamiliar book. But here, when you pull it all together, I think is the main idea. Here's the main idea that Ezekiel and the Spirit through him is trying to get across to you. You, listen, I'm talking to you, you cannot reverse what your sin has ruined. You cannot reverse what your sin has ruined.

13:06 But God can. And listen to me. His commitment to his own glory is what guarantees that he will. You got that? You cannot reverse what your sin has ruined, but God can reverse it. And it's his commitment to his own glory that guarantees that he will reverse it. All right, so I want to walk through these chapters, those three big sections in three points.

13:38 Each one of these points is, and there's really no better way to say it, but it's a testimony. Every one of these points is a testimony to God's determination to reverse what seems hopelessly destroyed. You basically have three helpless groups of people, and God reverses each one of them. So here we go. Number one, looking at that first big section I gave you from 34 through the middle of 36, he shepherds the oppressed. He shepherds the oppressed. Second section, middle of 36, all the way through chapter 37, he raises the dead.

14:09 And then number three, 38, 39, picture of the big war, he vindicates the defeated. So let's take a look at it. Number one, he shepherds the oppressed. Looking at all of chapter 34, all the way down through 36, about 15 or so. So after the fugitive arrives in 3321, it takes a minute to realize that things have changed. In fact, it's almost like the fugitive comes, gasps out the words, the city has fallen. In other words, the covenant's been executed. There's no more judgment coming in.

14:41 It's almost as if Ezekiel just kind of keeps talking for a second. And then he goes, huh? Because you get a little bit more of the same thing through the end of chapter 33. And then it's in 34 that everything changes. So chapter 34 opens with God basically going after the men who were supposed to be taking care of his people. And the charge God makes against those people is as clear as it could possibly be. So look with me at the beginning of chapter 34, verse 1. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.

15:15 Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus says the Lord God. Ah, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? But you eat the fat. You clothe yourselves with the wool. You slaughter the fat ones. But you don't feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened. The sick you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up. The strayed you have not brought back. The lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them.

15:50 Now think about that for a second. These are the shepherds of Israel. These are the kings and the priests and the nobles and the leaders. They're the people who are supposed to be taking care of God's people. And when God confronts them, his complaint is not that they were incompetent. It's not that they were stupid leaders. It's not that they didn't have skills in leadership. It's that they were eaters rather than providers. They were those who consumed rather than giving to the sheep.

16:22 You eat the fat. You wear the wool. You slaughter the choice ones. So they were supposed to be the ones who cared for the flock, but the flock had become a food source for them. Then you get that incredible list in verse 4. The weak you've not strengthened. The sick are not healed. The injured are not bound up. The strayed are not brought back. The lost are not sought. And he's just bam, bam, bam, bam. There's five things a shepherd literally exists to do. And yet five things that these shepherds did not do.

16:54 And then there's that last little line of verse 4, which is really the worst one of all. With force and harshness you have ruled them. In other words, all the other things in verse 4 are really about neglect. You've not done this. You've not done that. You didn't do that. You basically just sat on your keister and did nothing. But then the last little phrase of verse 4 is not passive. It's active. You have done this. You didn't just neglect the sheep. You were hard on them. You rode them into the ground. And what was the result? Well, you look at verses 5 and 6.

17:25 The sheep are scattered. There's no shepherd, so the flock just scatters all over the countryside, and they ended up becoming food for the wild beasts. So that's the problem. what does god do about all this well just let your eye roll roll down to verse 11 here's what he does for thus says the lord god behold i i myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out as a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among the sheep that have been scattered so will i seek out my sheep and i will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. You see that? You see how the words just kind of pile up there? That's not just the ESV translator kind of getting overexcited. It's literally in there in the text of the Hebrew. It's not just, behold, I will search for my sheep. It's not even just, behold, I myself will search for my sheep. It's, behold, I, I myself will go search for my

18:29 sheep. Three different ways that God refers to me, me, me. I'm going to do it if you're not. He's kind of pounding the table, isn't he? And he's pounding the table in the face of these bad shepherds. He's saying, you wouldn't do the things that you're supposed to do, so I'll do it myself. He says it again in verse 15. Look at that. And then he starts making promises. Verse 15, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. You're not doing it, so I'll do it. I will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong. I will destroy. Now hold up. I want you to look at verse 16 really carefully, and then I want you to look back up at verse 4. So compare them, right? So verse 4, here's the problem. The weak you've not strengthened, the sick you've not healed, the injured you've not bound up, the strayed you've not brought back, the lost you have not sought. Verse 16, I will seek the lost, I will bring

19:34 back the strayed, I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak. Do you see what God is doing there? He's taking verse 4 of all the failures of the shepherds of Israel, and he's put every single piece of that in reverse. And he's saying, you didn't do A, B, C, and D. I will do D, C, B, and A. You see what he's doing that? He's taking the rubble that the bad shepherds have created, and he's reversing it. He's fixing it. Friends, that's what God does with rubble.

20:09 That's what he does with wreckage. Well, as the chapters go on, down through 35 and 36, it's not just the shepherds inside the fold that are crushing the sheep. It's also the beasts outside as well. So chapter 35 and the first half of 36 are really God's judgment against this one particular nation called Edom. So if you look at the subtitle or the subheading of chapter 35, Prophecy Against Mount Sire. Mount Sire was famously this big mountain that sat right in the center of the nation of what's called Edom.

20:43 If you translate that, it means red, but that's really neither here nor there. The point is that Edom was a kind of close cousin of the Israelites. You go back into the Old Testament, you can see how the family tree kind of branches off. But they're like a close cousin of Israel, but they are not the good fun cousin. Edom is more like the cousin that can't stand to have this upstart little dude up in his business. And so he's jealous. And every time something bad happens to his cousin Israel, Edom mocks.

21:16 And sometimes Edom's soldiers are even among the nations that are raiding and invading Israel. They help out the Assyrians. They help out the Philistines. They do all kinds of stuff to try to bring Israel down. In fact, when Babylon comes across, finally, and takes the city, you know, completely destroys it, carries off exiles in the land, it's kind of empty. Guess who waltzes in to take the land for themselves now that it's empty? It's Edom. So look at 35.10, and you can see that.

21:48 God's speaking to this nation, this cousin nation. He's saying, because you said both these nations and both these countries, in other words, my own and Israel's, Both of them will be mine, and we will take possession of them. See, that's what they're doing. They moved into the house while the nation of Israel was being carried off into exile. But God says that is not going to stand. So look at 36, because now God turns from prophesying against this central mountain of the bad cousin Edom, and he turns and he prophesies to the mountain ranges of Israel.

22:26 You can see it all over the place, but just look down at verse 8. I think you can see it pretty clearly in 8. But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people Israel, for they will soon come home. For behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled. And it just goes on and on and on, saying how Mount Sire in Edom is going to be desolate, and the mountains of Israel, which are now desolate, are all of a sudden going to bloom and become green. So it's the same thing, excuse me, it's the same kind of reversal.

23:00 Edom goes desolate, Israel goes green. Same thing we saw, same kind of reversal with the shepherds, but this time it's worked out on the level of geopolitics. All right, now, so you get the reversal in two different ways, oppressors inside, oppressors outside. Let me ask a question, and this is what I'm going to ask at the end of all three of these points. Why does God do this? Why does he perform this reversal? Well, there's a hint in chapter 36, verse 6.

23:35 And it's really easy to just kind of skate past. But I want you to notice it. Look at 36.6. Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel. Say to the mountains and hills, the ravines and the valleys. Thus says the Lord God. Behold, I have spoken in my jealous wrath. because you have suffered the reproach of the nations. And therefore, thus says the Lord God, I swear that the nations that are all around you shall themselves suffer reproach. Now, what's the reason? Why does God decide to rescue his people?

24:10 It's in my jealous wrath. See, it's not just, it's not just that his people have been hurt, though it is that. That's included there too. But it's not just that. It's that his own name and his own reputation as God has been dragged through the street while they were being hurt. Now hold on to that. We're not going to talk about it much right now. But hold on to it because it's going to get louder as we go on.

24:42 But before we do, I want to just stop and think about this. I want to think about the fact that God promises to shepherd and defend the oppressed. What can we learn from that? Well, one thing that we can learn is to understand that God is not neutral about people who use other people. God is not neutral about people who use other people. Like, I know there's enough of us in this room to know that some number of you have been on the wrong end of this, not just in your job or because of the government or something else, but you've been on the wrong end of this when it comes to a church.

25:20 Some of you in a room this size have had somebody with a Bible and a title who used you or exploited you or was harsh with you in a way that's kind of made the word shepherd all by itself just kind of give you chills ever since. Friend, if that's you, I want you to hear not what I have to say, but I want you to hear what God says about the person who does that. Look at 34.10. Look at 34.10.

25:55 Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds. He's not just disappointed in them. He's not just slightly upset with them. He says, I am against that kind of person. Some of you, I know, really desperately need to hear this. matters enormously because basically after that happened to you, you've been kind of silently assuming that God himself is basically like the last leader who hurt you. That God himself is demanding and cold and out to get something from you. In fact, you hear now maybe the gospel of Jesus Christ or you hear people talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ and your first instinct, just a kind of reaction to what you've experienced is to say, hold up, what's the catch?

26:45 What's this going to cost me? What do these people want out of me? If that's you, I want you to listen to me, please. There is no catch with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's its whole point. There is no catch. I mean, look at this chapter. Read chapter 34. If this is your experience, read it this afternoon again. The heart, the divine heart that runs through chapter 34 is not a heart that wants to take something from you.

27:21 It's a heart that says, I myself, I, I myself will go get them when shepherds have failed. Yeah, sure, there's no denying it. There's no getting around it in a fallen world. People are going to disappoint you. People at times are going to treat you badly. People at times are going to hurt you. But brothers and sisters, don't mistake people for God. Don't reject God because some people who have claimed his name have dishonored it.

28:00 That's the first thing. Second, and this is kind of where this whole thing has been going since the beginning. Look at what God says he's about to do. regarding the shepherd problem in the long run read chapter 34 verse 23 he says in the long run i will set up over them one shepherd my servant david and he shall feed them he shall feed them and be their shepherd and i the lord will be their god and my servant david shall be prince among them i am the lord i have spoken in the long run he's going to set up one shepherd that he calls my servant david now the problem of course is that david the great king has been dead for like 400 years at this point so when ezekiel writes this what he means is a son of david a descendant of david somebody who's in the in the kingly dynastic line of david well who is that? Well, here's how the New Testament answers it. Look back at that amazing verse,

29:05 34, 16, where God reverses verse 4. Verse 16, look at it and just follow along with me in verse 16. God says in 34, 16, I will seek the lost. Jesus says the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. God says, I will bring back the strayed. Jesus said, what man of you having a hundred sheep, if he lost one of them, doesn't leave the 99 in the open country and go after the one that strayed until he finds it. God says, I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. Jesus said, a bruised reed I will not break and a smoldering wick I will not quench. Do you see what's happening there? Do you see what Jesus in his ministry is deliberately doing over and over and over again? Every single item in Ezekiel's list of what a great shepherd ought to be, of the kind of shepherd God will be, our Lord Jesus walks into the world and starts doing with His very physical hands. That's why in John 10, Jesus can stand up in the midst of the

30:11 elders of Israel, the Pharisees, those who were supposed to be shepherding God's people, but were actually dealing with them harshly, and He can say, I am the good shepherd. He's basically quoting ezekiel there but then but then i mean as if that weren't enough then he adds something that is not on ezekiel's list at all see ezekiel's shepherd the shepherd that he describes this great son of david that that shepherd does a lot of stuff he searches and he gathers and he binds up and he feeds he does it all but there's something that he never does doesn't really even enter ezekiel's mind at this point that shepherd never dies but jesus says i am the good shepherd and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep see jesus didn't just read ezekiel 34 and fulfill

31:11 the job description. He overshot the job description entirely. He cared for the sheep in a way nobody else ever could. So that's the first point. They couldn't fix it. So God said, fine, I'll do it myself. And then he came and did it in person. But you know, as bad as it is to be crushed under the foot of somebody else, as bad as it is to be abused and oppressed, that is not the worst thing that can happen to you. There is something far worse than being pushed around, than being oppressed and even abused, and that's the second point. Number two, looking at the next couple of chapters, God raises the dead. If you look at the middle of chapter 36, so verse 16, this is where a new kind of prophetic oracle starts. You can see it there in the words, the word of the Lord came to me. And this chapter, I think, really brings us to the theological summit of the entire book of Ezekiel. If you want to know where the high water mark is theologically of what Ezekiel's trying to

32:11 say, it's here in chapter 36. So in verses 16 to 19, you've got this pretty, I would say, unremarkable setup. Just a kind of rehash of where we've been. The people have sinned. They got thrown out of the land. It was really bad for them. But then look at verse 20, because that's where things start to change. So they get thrown out of the land, scattered among the nations. But look at 20. when they came to the nations wherever they came they profaned my holy name not by sinning now pay attention it doesn't say they profaned his name by sinning some more that's that's not what it means they profaned my holy name in that in other words by which i mean people said of them these are the people of the lord and yet they had to go out of his land what kind of god is that did you see the logic they profaned my name not by doing anything in

33:14 particular but just by getting booted out of their land that god had promised to them and so people looked at them and they didn't necessarily see anything wrong with the people they saw something wrong with the people's God. These are the people of Yahweh, and yet they can't even stay in the land? Some God that is. Couldn't even hang on to his own people. In other words, God's name is being kicked around in the streets of Babylon. People are mocking God and laughing at him. But look what he promises. If you skip down a little bit, we're just going to read. It goes on and on, but I want to read a couple of verses. Let's just look at verse 24 of chapter 36.

33:51 Look what he says he's going to do. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses. And from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Do you see what he's promising there?

34:22 Clean water, a new heart, a new spirit. He says he's going to take out a heart of stone. It's not even beating anymore. It's just dead. And put in a heart of flesh. See, what God is offering his people there is not just a fresh start so they can try really hard to get it better next time. And there's so many people who think that Christianity is all about just doing better in your second chance. That God will just start things over for you, just reset, and I'm going to buckle down and I'm going to do it better this time.

35:00 I think Christianity is basically a self-improvement program. You decide to do better. You turn over a new leaf. You get your act together. You stop doing these things and you start doing those things. And that, people figure, is what Christianity is about. But it's not. And look what God's actually promising here. He's not asking anybody to just behave better. He's describing surgery, clean water, a dead heart taken out, a heart of flesh put in, and then his own spirit moves into state.

35:31 Everything's different. It's not a new leaf. It's not a New Year's resolution. It's not behavioral reform. It's resurrection from the dead. Friend, if you're a Christian, that's what's happened to you. You have been resurrected from the dead. All this is underlined in a beautiful way in chapter 37. Easily the most famous story in the book. Look with me at 37, verse 1. Here's a vision that God gives Ezekiel. The hand of the Lord was upon me.

36:03 He brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones, dead stuff. And he led me around among them. Behold, there were very many just laying out on the surface of the valley. And behold, they were very dry, nothing on them. He said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And then Ezekiel gives the most astute answer I think anybody could ever give. He just punts. I answered, oh, Lord God, I have no idea. You know if they can live, and I know you, so I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.

36:36 Verse 4, then he said to me, prophesy or preach over these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Okay, so I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied or preached, there was a sound. And behold, a rattling. And the bones came together, bone to its bone.

37:10 And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh came upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. It's kind of worse at that point, isn't it? Because all you've got is a bunch of bloated corpses out there now. It's just kind of disgusting. Verse 9. But then he said to me, prophesy now to the wind, the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus says the Lord God, come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet an exceedingly great army.

37:44 I mean, just like that, there's an army standing there on its feet alive in a field that was just a bunch of loose, dry bones 10 minutes ago. It's an incredible picture of God giving life to that which could never, ever live again. But there's one detail in it that I think is the most important one of all. Here it is. Exactly how does God give life to these bones? What's the mechanism that he uses to bring life to the bones? Look at it. It's in verse four and several other places.

38:22 He tells Ezekiel to preach to them, prophesy to them. That just means preach, speak the word of the Lord over them. Preach to the bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. in other words talk Ezekiel to the corpses tell the dead men to listen up it's an utterly absurd assignment but but it works it works because the word goes out and when the word goes out the spirit goes with it and brings life just by the way that that right there among other places in the bible that right there explains exactly what we're doing in this room right now every single Sunday here at third avenue some guy often me but some guy will stand up in front of a group of people that's you and preach to some people at least who are still dead in their trespasses and sins. He stands up here and talks

39:23 to dead people. It's incredible, isn't it? It's incredible that when God wants to give life, there's no hocus pocus. There's no hocus pocus. There's no bells ringing. There's no smells going through the building. When God wants to give life to those who are dead, that's the method. You preach. You speak. On paper, that's about as dumb as telling somebody to go out and preach to a cemetery and hope something happens.

39:55 And yet, friends, believe it or not, this is God's appointed way of raising the dead, and it always has been. Faith comes by hearing, and a hearing comes by hearing the Word of Christ. Christian, listen to me. Listen to me carefully. Don't ever despise the preaching of the Word. Don't ever think that some movie or some production is going to outstrip the power of the preached word.

40:30 That's not how it works. God has said, I use the preaching of the word to bring life to dead people, not other stuff. He could have picked anything he wanted to, but he picked that. Don't despise it. Don't drift through the sermon. Don't just skim the scripture reading. Don't go hunting out there for something with more horsepower than just a guy standing in a pulpit with a book. Because there's no more horsepower than what the Spirit decides to give. And this is where he's decided to give it. And for that matter, listen, if you've been telling somebody about Jesus, maybe for years, a brother, a neighbor, a friend at work, and it looks to you like nothing is happening, hang in there hang in there and it turns out it was never your job anyway to make them alive you can't do that Ezekiel couldn't do that your job is to continue to speak the word of Christ the

41:33 breath will come when God decides to give it so what do you do if you have a friend like that well I'll tell you what you do you keep talking to the bones you just keep talking to the bones and one day, God willing, a rattling. Let me ask you something else, just real plainly. Where is the death in your life? This is for you as a Christian.

42:05 This is not just for dead people in their trespasses and sins. A whole lot of you are alive, right? But like we said at the beginning, all of us are carrying around some rubble. All of us are carrying around some dead spots in our lives. Where is the death in your life? Maybe it's a sin that you've fought and lost to so many times that you've just stopped believing anything is ever going to be different. Maybe it's a person. Somebody you've prayed for, a son, a daughter, so many times over the years that the praying has just kind of gone thin and become a duty to you.

42:44 Because you've stopped expecting God to do anything. Where's the dead spot in your life? Christian, I want you to listen to me. Son, daughter of Jesus the King, I want you to listen to me. God opens graves. He brings life where there is no life. He brings into being things that are not and never could be.

43:19 That's the thing that he's known for. It's the thing he's famous for. It's the thing he brags on himself about. I can bring life. Nobody else can. So, friend, don't you dare, don't you dare decide that some situation in your life is finally past the reach of a God who does that stuff. It's not. And you, if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian and you know that about yourself, here's the most important sentence that I think I can say to you.

43:50 You can't give yourself a new heart. You just can't do it. Yeah, sure, you can improve some of your behavior. You can stop doing those things and start doing these other things. But you can't replace your own heart. But you know, the funny thing about it is that, very ironically, that's really good news, actually. Because it means that your job this morning is not to fix yourself and clean yourself up and get yourself ready so that you're moral enough and good enough to go to Jesus.

44:24 Nah, your job is just to look around and realize I am dead in my trespasses and sins and I'm going to go to Jesus, the conqueror of death, and ask him to do for me what I can never do. Okay, but again, why? Why does God do this? Why does he do this? Well, I want you to look at verses 21 through 23 of chapter 36. 21 to 23 of chapter 36.

44:57 This is coming on the heels of the Babylonians mocking God because he couldn't keep his people in the land. Look what he says in 21. But I had concern for my holy name. which the house of Israel profaned among the nations, just because they were out of the land to which they came. 22, therefore, say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I'm about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you've profaned among the nations to which you came.

45:28 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them, and the nations will then know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. You see that? I'm going to do this. I'm going to bring you from death to life. I'm going to save you and show you kindness and grace and mercy. But it is not for your sake. And that's bracing to us because that is not how we're used to hearing this, is it?

46:00 And we are used to hearing sermons and hearing the gospel where God gathers us up in his arms and tells us that he just couldn't bear the thought of eternity without us. It puts the value on us and our name. But God says, nah. I'm going to do something enormous for you. I'm going to do something that nobody has seen in the entire history of the planet. But I want to be very clear with you that when I do it, you are not the reason. You want to know what the reason is? It's my name.

46:31 It's my reputation. It's my glory. that's why I'm doing it. So why? Why does he do it? He does it for the sake of his own name. I've heard that twice now. Point one and now point two. Seems to be a kind of theme, doesn't it? But on to the last bit, point three. He vindicates the defeated. Looking at chapters 38 and 39. So in chapter 38, everything kind of goes weird.

47:04 We've just seen all this wonderful stuff about God giving a new heart, taking out the heart of stone, putting in a heart of flesh. We've seen chapter 37, this incredible vision about the bones. And then at the beginning of chapter 38, out of literal nowhere it seems, you get two chapters about this man named Gog from a place called Magog in a war that as far as we can tell doesn't match anything that we've ever seen in the history books. Now, these two chapters of Ezekiel have given people fits for a very long time.

47:35 I mean, people have done all kinds of stuff with them. So they've tried to figure out who Gog is and what country Magog is. There's a Hebrew word in there at one point that talks about a place called Rosh. Well, guess what people have done with that? They have turned it into Roshah. That's what they've turned it into. And then there's another word, another city in there called Meshech. Meshech, which, you know, if you literally replace pretty much all the letters of it, except the M at the beginning, it sounds like Moscow.

48:16 But all of that stuff, all of that is totally wrong. It's totally wrong. That is not how you're supposed to deal with prophecy in the Bible. Instead, what you're supposed to do is line it up and figure out what it's saying. Now let me show you what this, let me show you just one little thing about how that works. So look at the first few verses of 38. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. Prophesy against him and say, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out and all your armies, horse and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great host, all of them with buckling sword and shield wielding swords. Now, here's what you're supposed to get from that. You're not supposed to say, I got to figure out who Gog is and whether Meshech is Moscow or not, right? You're not supposed to do that. What you're supposed to see is what's going on in the story, that God puts

49:20 hooks in the jaws of this great ruler, whoever he is, and drags him up along with his army and sets him against his people. And what are you supposed to learn from that? What are you supposed to learn from that? You're supposed to learn that the last great enemy of God's people does not sneak up on anybody. He gets summoned by the divine Lord exactly so the Lord can destroy him. Okay, so how are we supposed to understand it? Well, here's a rule. Here's how you do this.

49:54 This will serve you in every prophecy you come across in your Bible, this one included, and especially next week when we get to the rebuilt temple, right? This will help. You can't read these things in the Old Testament flat. You can't do it. You can't build walls around them and say, I am only going to look at the details of this thing right here and not think about the rest of the Bible. No, what you have to do is you have to read them in Ezekiel 38, 39, 40 to 48, whatever it is, and then you have to see, Okay, does this prophecy in Ezekiel get picked up anywhere else as the Bible goes along?

50:29 What happens to it in the Gospels? What happens to it in the letters of Paul? What happens to it, particularly here, with Revelation? How does this prophecy develop, and what does that tell me about what it means? Okay, so this one, it's not even really subtle. I mean, listen to Revelation chapter 20, a couple of verses in Revelation 20. This is what John writes. Gog and Magog. Straight out of Ezekiel.

51:01 Listen to how they're identified. Gog and Magog. The nations of the four corners of the earth. Do you see what that's doing? It's trying to tell you in like bright red flashing letters. Do not try to figure out who Gog is and where Magog is. It's all of them. It's the nations of the four corners of the earth. And they will gather for battle, Revelation says. Their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded. What do they surround in Revelation?

51:32 The camp of the saints. But fire came down from heaven and consumed it. So you see it? You see how that works? Do you see how it resolves in Revelation? Gog and Magog. They're all the nations of the earth. And who do they surround? Well, it's not ancient Israel. That's not who they surround. in Revelation. It's also certainly not the modern state of Israel. That's not who they surround. They surround the camp of the saints, you and me. That's who all the nations of the world threaten. Now, why does that matter? Well, just real quick, it matters because if you read this flat, if you build walls around it in Ezekiel, you're just kind of looking at a weird war that's going on somewhere sometime in the Middle East, but you don't really have a whole lot to do with it Other than just kind of applauding God when he puts an end to it.

52:24 Oh, but if Gog and Magog are all the nations of the world, like Revelation says, and if they're surrounding the camp of you and me, guess where that puts you? Right in the middle of chapters 38 and 39, and every promise in it becomes personal to you. That's why this is important. Okay, so what actually happens in this last battle? What happens? Well, almost nothing happens. And I'm not kidding. I mean, you would expect that the final great war of history might even be the longest chapter in the Bible.

52:58 Strategies and troops movements and this and that. None of that happens. There's no combat in it at all. He drags the Gog up onto the shore along with his army, and they're all standing there. And then God speaks, the earth shakes, fire falls. In Revelation, the whole thing takes one sentence. Fire came down from heaven and consumed them. The last great battle against God's people isn't a battle at all. It's just an announcement of the greatness of God. Turn over to 39.9. I want you to see what God's people have, excuse me, to do with this.

53:31 39.9. Then, those who dwell after the fire falls and destroys it, then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and make fires of the weapons and burn them, shields and bucklers, bow and arrows, clubs and spears, and they will make fire of them for seven years. so that they will not need to take wood out of the field or cut down any of the forest, for they will make their fires of the weapons. They will seize the spoil of those who despoiled them and plunder those who plundered them, declares the Lord God. What do they do to help God?

54:02 They gather firewood after it's all over. That's what they do. They gather firewood. They spend seven years burning the enemy's abandoned weapons, and they seize the spoil of the people who spoiled them. That's the whole contribution. The whole contribution of the saints, of you and me, to the great battle at Armageddon is clean up. Carrying off the loot. We never lift a sword. Now, what does that do for us?

54:34 What does that do for us? Well, if you're the fearful kind, I want you to hear me on this. I mean, you know yourself if that's who you are. If you're the fearful kind, you know exactly who you are. You're afraid your kids won't keep the faith. You're afraid of what's going to happen to this country over the next 20 years. You're afraid of what it's going to cost your grandchildren or your children even to say Jesus is Lord out loud. You're afraid of the medical scan. You're afraid of the phone call from the doctor. You're afraid of the fact that everybody around you is one day going to die if you don't die first.

55:06 What answer does this give to you if you're the fearful kind? It's not optimism. That's not what it is. It's not optimism. Not the way that word usually gets used. We Christians are not optimists. Not in the way people use that word. We're just not. We don't just look on the bright side. We don't just find the silver lining in the clouds and figure things will probably turn out. No, we know that it's all going to turn out.

55:40 That's not optimism. That's hope. We know it's going to turn out right. Despite sickness and cancer, despite hardship and nakedness and persecution, despite death and the sword and the grave, we know that our God is working all things for the good of those who love him. That's a promise in the Bible. All things are working together for good. The ending is already written, and it's good. And we live in the light of that promise. But one more time, why does he do this?

56:15 Why does God fight this battle and vindicate the defeated? Well, look at 38, 16. Chapter 38, verse 16. You, Gog, will come up against my people, Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days, I will bring you against my land so that the nations may know me. When through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Why does he do it?

56:46 For his own glory. For his own reputation. For his own vindication. That's three times now. Not for your sake, but for the sake of my holy name. I want you to look at one more place before we finish up. Go back to chapter 36, verse 23. 36, 23. God says there this thing that we've gotten used to. I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations.

57:18 They've kicked me around. They've mocked me, which you've profaned by not being in the land where I said you were going to be. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Do you see what that's saying? In other words, he has publicly, permanently attached his own name to his people.

57:55 And the nations are standing around going, these are the people of the Lord. And look at them now. They're out of their land. They're broken. And God says, that's right, they are. They are out of the land. They are broken. But they are mine. And I'm going to answer your mockery, not by disowning those people, but by saving them. I'm going to clear my name by clearing theirs. You want to know what I can do? You want to know what my worth is as God? Watch what I do with these broken people.

58:30 Listen to that. God's honor and his people's salvation aren't two different projects. They are one project. God cannot vindicate himself without saving you. That's big, isn't it? Because think about what that does to your security as a Christian. Think about what it does to your sense of security as a Christian. If God saved you, because you are so precious to him, then your safety with God is only ever as steady as your preciousness is.

59:15 And we all know, better than anyone in this room, how much that preciousness fluctuates from day to day. But if God saved you, if God saved you because he has nailed his own name to you, in front of the watching universe then the only way you could ever be lost is if God gets tired of being God that's never going to happen friends that that's the difference that's the difference between being merely loved and being claimed in covenant anybody can love you for a little while anybody can love you as long as you're lovable but only God has put his name on you and made your rescue a matter of his honor. He brings life where there is only death. So let him do it.

1:00:10 Come to Jesus Christ, this great shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. Come with all your rubble. Come with all your dead stuff. Let him do what he does. Let him give you a new heart and vindicate the defeated. Let him open your grave. Let's pray. Our God, we thank you that you are the giver of life. You're the one who takes out hearts of stone and puts in hearts of flesh.

1:00:42 You're the one who gives us your spirit to live in and through us. So God, we pray that you would help us to remember these things and live in the light of them. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.