Keep sharing good news without ads.
Reading Ezekiel 6:1-14 where God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the land that judgment is coming, but God promises a remnant, and through this they would know He is the Lord. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
God will be glorified through you. Will it be because he has saved you by his mercy and grace, or will it be pouring judgment out on you? God is glorified even through judgment when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.
Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in the book of Ezekiel. And picking up where we left off last time, that will put us in chapters 6 and 7, where God gives oracles to Ezekiel to prophesy against the land.
Now this will affect the people as well. The bodies of the people will even be laid upon the land, but it is as if Ezekiel is speaking to the land as though the land were a person. Remember that God has made Ezekiel a watchman for the people of Israel.
Ezekiel, who is descended from priests, and he himself would be a priest if he had still been in the land of Judah, but he is among the exiles that have been sent into Babylonian captivity. The people of Israel still in rebellion against God, he has warned them that if they do not repent, judgment will come upon them.
Now these oracles are coming at a time when even though the exiles have already been sent out, there are still people living in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem. And if they do not repent, God's judgment will sweep them away.
And this serves as a call to us as well. There is a warning to many who claim to be Christians, who claim to be followers of Jesus, but are they really walking in holiness or are they still behaving as with the rest of the world?
And God's warning extends even to his own church. We see that in the book of Revelation chapters two and three, particularly where Jesus addresses the seven churches to five of those seven churches. He gives a warning, repent, go back to the works that you did at first, or else I will come and remove your lampstand from you.
So the same sort of warnings that we will see here in Ezekiel chapter six and seven could serve to warn us today as well. Let me go ahead and begin by reading all of chapter six. This is the shorter one.
Seven is a little bit longer, but I'm reading from the English standard version here, the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them and say, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God.
Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys. Behold, I, even I will bring a sword upon you and I will destroy your high places. Your altars shall become desolate and your incense altars shall be broken.
And I will cast down your slain before your idols. And 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. Yet I will leave some of you alive when you have among the nations, some who escaped the sword and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols.
And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed for all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them.
Thus says the Lord God, clap your hands and stamp your foot and say, alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel for they shall fall by the sword by famine and by pestilence. He who is far off shall die of pestilence and he who is near shall fall by the sword and he who is left in his preserve shall die of famine.
Thus I will spend my fury upon them and you shall know that I am the Lord. When they're slain lie among their idols around their altars on every high hill on all the mountaintops under every green tree and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to all their idols.
And I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste in all their dwelling places from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am the Lord. Now this chapter can be broken down into three parts in verses one through seven.
We have the Oracle against the land itself. Verses eight through 10, God promises a remnant. The land will not be completely purged of its inhabitants, but there are those who even when carried away will be convicted and they will repent and they will come back to the place that God had driven them from.
And then finally, verses 11 to 14, it is still being said, though there will be a remnant, this is going to be the view of destruction that you are going to see in the land when it comes upon the people.
So coming back to the top of the chapter, God gives this Oracle to Ezekiel and says, you are to testify to the mountains and you are to say, this is verse three to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys.
Now that's four descriptions of the land, mountain and hills, ravines, or also rivers in some translations, and the valleys. The number four is a number of creation. So oftentimes where you see the number four in scripture, it is something about or to creation or something to that effect.
So this is speaking to the land and all parts of the land, the mountains, the highest places and even the lowest places, the river, the riverbeds and the valleys. And everything that is going to be affected by this will of course affect the people.
The way that God had blessed his people, Israel, was through the land. And likewise, the way that he cursed them would be through the land. The land would not yield its produce. They would not be able to make a living off of it.
They would not receive blessing from God when he brings a judgment upon them. He had said this even in the covenant that he made with the people when he gave them the land. Remember when Solomon had prayed to God and had asked that he would dwell in the temple that Solomon had made to God.
The Lord had responded to Solomon and said that if this people will not listen to me and obey my commandments, then I'm going to bring famine and pestilence and the sword against them. And this is that same sort of thing that God is saying right here.
The people have not obeyed God. And so he is bringing these very judgments that he said he would bring against them is exactly the judgments that are coming. This one is specifically dealing with the land.
And addressing the land, Ezekiel says, your altar shall become desolate, your incense altar shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain before your idols. So where previously you had Israel coming before idols and bowing down, well, they are going to be bowing before those idols, but they will be bowing slain.
They will be put to death, slain before the idols. That is the picture that's being painted here. You want to bow before these false gods, I will bow you down, slain, and I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars.
Pretty terrifying stuff. And the wrath of God should be terrifying to us. It should cause us to tremble. I was just preaching about this with my congregation this past Sunday evening as we've been going through the book of Revelation.
In verse eight, though, God promises a remnant, yet I will leave some of you alive when you have among the nations, some who escaped the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols.
They will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed for all their abominations. So the people would be cut to the heart, and they would grieve over the fact that they have done such evil, which is why God brought this judgment against them.
Part of being broken in our sin is recognizing that God did not do this to me. I did this. It's taking personal responsibility for our sin. This is me. And when we face the consequences for our sin, it's our fault.
It's not God dealing with us too harshly. We deserve far worse than this. But whatever consequences we must face for the evils that we have done, we need to acknowledge this is what I deserve and worse.
Remember that when we had just read through the book of Lamentations before we got to Ezekiel, in chapter 3, it says, why should a man complain about the judgment over his sin? Why should a man complain about that?
We deserve it. We deserve judgment and worse. And praise be to God when he doesn't deal with us as harshly as we deserve. But by his grace and mercy, he has given forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ, Jesus who died in our place, God pouring his wrath out on him so that as an atoning sacrifice for us, we will not perish under the judgment of God, but we'll have everlasting life if we have faith in him.
Now, in the heavenly registry, our sins are not held against us. We have been forgiven. Our name has been written in the Lamb's book of life. But beloved, if you sin, you're still going to have to face the consequences for your sin.
You're still going to have to deal with that. And you should recognize, as said in verse 10, when you have to face the consequences for your sin, you should see God is the Lord. They shall know that I am the Lord.
I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them. It's not for no reason. But it is so God would demonstrate that he is holy and we are not, that he is going to bring an ultimate judgment against the people, but also that we see God's mercy and his grace in the midst of the way that he punishes sin so that we would turn from that to God and be forgiven and live.
It grieves my heart whenever I see so many Christian leaders out there falling. You've probably seen this too. People that you have really admired and just suddenly they end up in some wicked sin that disqualifies them and they are removed from the pastorate, removed from the pulpit.
And it brings a shame upon the gospel. That person that I held in such high regard seemed like such a godly individual, preaching week in and week out, has done so many great sermon series that I love listening to online or wherever, and yet come to find out that guy was in adultery or he was doing something else that was wicked.
I'm going to use a couple of examples here, but if you're familiar with Steve Lawson, you know that Lawson was preaching at Shepherd's Conferences and at Ligonier and at G3 and he's traveling the world and he's training and raising up pastors through his expository workshops and then come to find that he was committing adultery with a woman much younger than him and was removed from that position, was found to be disqualified.
He has been reconciling with his wife and with his family, but then he came out with this book a month or two ago talking about what he has learned since he fell. Has it even been two years? I can't remember how long this has been, but it just kind of gets that feeling of, well, now he's just trying to capitalize on his sin.
He's selling a book for 15 bucks on here's what it is that I've learned in the midst of my fall. And then we've seen, you know, Josh Bice with G3 and then the other guys at G3 all disqualified themselves.
The G3 organization has now been disbanded. It is no more. And that's grievous to see. There were people that lost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of investing in things in G3 that they're never going to get that back.
And how sad it is to see these kinds of things happen. It grieves my heart all the time. And even the Lord says here, I've been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols.
We get these covetous hearts that go after things in the world instead of being fully satisfied in Christ. We think that we need these other things in order to be truly happy, taking matters into our own hands, telling God what you've given to me is not enough.
I need this other thing in order to be happy. It grieves God's heart. It should grieve ours as well whenever we see it. But may it be the sort of a thing that that grieves us to repentance that we will know I am the Lord.
God is on high. He reigns. He is merciful. He's just, just to punish sin. But he is merciful and gracious to us to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You know, I've only mentioned a few pastors that are in what's been my own camp among the conferences that I've promoted through this podcast and things like that in the past.
But anywhere you see a pastor fall like this, whether it's in a reformed group or it's in the charismatic group or it's in, you know, Baptist or Presbyterian. There are guys all over the place. We may not necessarily frequent those circles of faith as much as we do others.
But we'll see in many other places where there are pastors that fall. It brings a stain upon the church. It harms our witness. And we must remember the call for every one of us to be holy. As said in the book of Hebrews, without holiness, no one will see God.
It is by faith in Jesus that we are made holy. But if we are made holy, we must walk in that holiness. As said in Romans 13, 14, putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and making no provision for the flesh.
As we go on here in verse 11, thus says the Lord God, clap your hands and stamp your foot and say, alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword, by famine and by pestilence.
Yeah, exactly those same things that God said to Solomon, this is what will come upon the land. If you do not repent, sword famine and pestilence. That's exactly what is coming upon the people for their continued abominations.
He who is far off shall die of pestilence. He who is near shall fall by the sword. He who is left and is preserved shall die of famine. All of these things will come upon the land. Disease will come upon the land.
The sword, armies, enemies that come in will come into the land, will trample on the land. He who is left and is preserved shall die of famine. The land languishing because of famine. Thus I will spend my fury upon them.
And you shall know that I am the Lord when they're slain lie among their idols around their altars on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to their idols.
Wherever this was done, that's where the bodies will be laid. It's a scary thing when God is talking about the totality of the judgment that he is going to bring upon this land. I will spend my fury upon them.
And in doing this, God says, you shall know that I am the Lord. We keep seeing that phrase repeated here in this chapter, don't we? You will know that I am the Lord. God brings judgment even for the glory of his name.
Consider what we have in Romans 9 verse 22. What if God desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power has endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.
So God will be glorified both in those whom he will save and through those whom he will destroy. I had mentioned the book of Revelation a moment ago. And by the way, John borrows from Ezekiel's imagery heavily in everything that he writes in the whole Yohannian corpus, as we would call it, in John first and second, third John and in the book of Revelation.
And it's there that we see God glorified, even for the judgment that he will pour out on his enemies. God will be glorified through you. Will it be because he has saved you and shown you mercy and grace?
Or will he be glorified through you by pouring out his wrath and judgment on you? Beloved, I pray that it's the former and not the latter. May we all turn from our sin to the Lord Jesus Christ to be cleansed.
Whatever blind spots that we have, may he open our eyes to them, that we would not walk in darkness any longer, but walking in the light as he is in the light. And the blood of Jesus covers us from all sin, as said in 1 John 1.
It's also there in verse 9 where it is said, confess your sins to God, and he will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. May it be done. Amen and amen to the praise of his glorious grace.
God convict our hearts. May we turn from our sin where we have sinned, laying it down before you, asking for your forgiveness and then walking in it no longer. But walking with Christ in the light of the gospel of Christ, to which we have been called by your grace.
It is in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.
This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt .com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast, or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
And let your friends know about our ministry. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's Word when we understand the text.