If you'd open your Bibles please to Ezekiel chapter 5. Ezekiel chapter 5 as we continue on in our journey through this great prophetic book. Here's what we read beginning at verse 1. As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword, take and use it as a barber's razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair. One-third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one-third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And one-third you shall scatter to the wind and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire from it a fire will spread to all the house of israel thus says the lord god this is jerusalem I have set her at the center of the nations with lands around her, but she has rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations and against my statutes more than the lands which surround her, for they have rejected my ordinances and have not walked in my statutes. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have more turmoil than the nations which surround you, and have not walked in my statutes, nor observed my ordinances, nor observed the ordinances of the nations which surround you, therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations. And because of all your abominations, I will do among you what I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again. Therefore, fathers will eat their sons among you, and sons will eat their fathers, for I will execute judgments on you and scatter all your remnant to every wind. So as I live, declares the Lord God, surely because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominations, therefore I will also withdraw, and my eye will have no pity, and I will not spare. One third of you will die by plague. or be consumed by famine among you. One third will fall by the sword around you, and one third I will scatter to every wind, and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. Thus my anger will be spent, and I will satisfy my wrath on them, and I will be appeased. Then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my zeal when I have spent my wrath upon them. Moreover, I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations which surround you in the sight of all who pass by, so it will be a reproach, a reviling, a warning, and an object of horror to the nations who surround you. When I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath, and raging rebukes, I the Lord have spoken. When I send against them the deadly arrows of famine, which were for the destruction of those whom I will send to destroy you. Then I will also intensify the famine upon you and break the staff of bread. Moreover, I will send on you famine and wild beasts, and they will bereave you of children. Plague and bloodshed will also pass through you, and I will bring the sword on you. I, the Lord, have spoken. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. All scripture is inspired of you, and all scripture is profitable. And I pray that you would allow this text to minister to our minds and hearts tonight, Lord, and we'll thank you for that in Jesus' name, amen. If you are ever in a discussion with someone about God who doesn't necessarily believe in God, typically one of the arguments they'll throw at you is an argument that goes something like this. With all of the sufferings that are going on in the world, where is your God? That was actually one of the big arguments that was used by Madeleine Murray O'Hare. Why are there so many destructive things? Why are there wars? Why are there hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and famines and people starving to death? Why are these tragic things that happen? Why doesn't God step in and do something? When you go through the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel said God is doing something. In fact, Ezekiel says God sovereignly controls every bit of it. He's in sovereign control even over the negative disasters that are hitting the entire world. He's operating a sovereign plan. What most people do not realize is that all of the suffering and disaster is also sovereignly orchestrated and controlled by God in order to try to get people to turn to Him. Now, people typically just sail along in life and don't much care about God. They don't think too seriously about him. They don't much care about his words. So at times God says, I'm going to send a series of negative, devastating things to try to get your attention. And if people would turn to him and learn the lessons they ought to be learning, they would see God do some amazing things. But herein lies the problem. Most, including God's own people, don't. Now this is a context in which God is using some odd signs to communicate truth to Israel. Those signs are specifically revealed by his prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel was not politicking to get a job as a prophet. He was not looking for this assignment. In fact, he was a priest, and then God made him a prophet, then God made him a watchman, then God said, I'm gonna shut your mouth, but I'm gonna have you do some really strange things. You'll remember last week, first you take a brick. I want you to draw Jerusalem around it and I want you to play war against it. I want you to set up these sieges all around this brick, and I want you just to go out as it were on your front porch and do this and show people what I'm going to do to Jerusalem. Then I want you to lie down bound with ropes for 430 days, 390 on the left side, 400 on the right side, and I want you to show both Israel and Judah that they're going to be enslaved as a judgment of me. Then I want you to take a small ration of unclean bread and water and eat and drink it every day. And this will show Israel that they're going to go through a famine because they're filthy. Now apparently Ezekiel is doing this in front of his house. We must assume at this point Ezekiel had the attention of the people who were in the Kiber area and they certainly were living in the captivity of Babylon. Ezekiel must have been the talk of the town. Probably every day people said, let's go over to Ezekiel's house, see what he's up to today. I'm sure the people were interested because he's doing some odd things. They were about to see something else strange. He's going to shave his beard and hair. Probably some of the people thought, man, Ezekiel's kind of lost his mind. And many would check in with him daily just to get a good laugh. Look, he's lying down there again. He's on that side. He's been doing that for days. And they probably got a good laugh, just like when Noah was building the ark. Most of the people thought it was funny. There's no water here. What's this guy doing? He's crazy. But there was nothing funny about it. They were about to experience the judgment of God. What we see here is God told Ezekiel to cut his hair and beard to show Israel the humiliation she would experience because of the horrific judgment that he would send. This final sign in the series is designed to show Israel what is about to happen to Jerusalem. You remember that the people of Babylon living in the River of Keber area were enjoying life. Things were relatively good. Jeremiah said, build a house. and lived there for a while, and the people were just floating through life, and they figured that the people back in Jerusalem would have life good. They figured nothing bad would really happen to them. I mean, life was just kind of drifting along. God said, but you're not dealing with your rebellion problem, and life's about to get a whole lot worse for you. According to verse 1, God addresses Ezekiel again, son of man, That's that term that means you are a man who's a human, but you're on a divine mission that is sent by Almighty God. Ezekiel, in many ways, is an illustration of Jesus Christ. For example, we saw last time he was told to do something physically that illustrated he was bearing the iniquity of the people. Well, Jesus Christ would do something physically and would bear the iniquity of the people. He would die on a cross. Now the assignment given to Ezekiel is very odd. He publicly is told to do seven things. First of all, take a sharp sword and cut off your hair and beard. That's what he says in verse one. Ask for you, son of man, take a sharp sword, take and use it as a barber's razor on your head and beard. I have never liked getting haircuts. I used to cry when I had to get a haircut. Till Mary said, you're gonna hurt Helen's feelings. So about a year ago, I quit. Now this would be something a priest typically would never do. In fact, if an Israelite priest were to shave his head, he would be defiled and no longer considered to even be holy to God. If he were to cut off his beard and his hair, I mean, he would be considered to be unholy. We read in Leviticus 21, they shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God, for they represent the offerings by fire to the Lord, the bread of their God, so they shall be holy. No priest was ever to shave off his hair. If he shaved off his hair, he would be considered unholy. That's exactly God's point. Ezekiel, this nation's defiled, so I want you to cut off your beard, cut off your hair, and go out there and show them that. And use a sword. Use a sword as a barber's razor. Now what I think is noteworthy is that the noun sword that's used there in verse one, sharp sword, is the same noun used in verse 12 as a military weapon. And so this is obviously a razor sharp sword. Military swords were so sharp they could cut hair. He basically says take your sword, razor sharp sword, and give yourself a haircut. And when Israel as a nation had their heads shaved, It was a sign of horrible judgment. It was a sign of terrible humiliation. We've seen pictures of poor Jews that were captured by Hitler with their heads shaved. I mean, scenes that make you cry. And when you look at those poor Jews, those are not signs of happy blessings. They're signs of horrible humiliation. And this illustrates that God was going to literally humiliate this city and bring it down. So he says to Ezekiel, cut your hair and beard. Secondly, he says, I want you to weigh the hair and divide it into thirds. Verse one says, I want you to take the scales for weighing and divide the hair. The point of weighing the hair is show Ezekiel, I carefully weigh the works and the life of every human being. Obviously, we can say this, God does know the number of hairs on a person's head, which Jesus testified to. He knows everything about everyone. He knows the good and the bad. His judgment against his own people will be carefully weighed. It will be accurately measured. And the point of Ezekiel going out in front of the people and weighing the hair is to show that God is right now evaluating and analyzing what you're doing. He's weighing everything, which teaches us a lesson about the Lord. There is no judgment of God that's haphazard. When God does something even against his own people is precisely measured and executed. Ezekiel was to cut off his hair and weigh it and put it into three equal piles. Third assignment is he was to burn one third of his hair in the center of the city. Verse two says, one third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city when the days of the siege are completed. Apparently after the 430 days illustration, He was to go burn one third of his hair in the center of the city to symbolize that that's what God would do to people in the city. That's how he was going to kill them by fire. Now it is possible that after he was done with his 430 days of lying down he was to burn this on the brick which would be illustrative of that right in the center of that brick or perhaps he was to go literally into the center of the city that they were living in and ultimately burn one-third of the hair and that is exactly what happened when Nebuchadnezzar went into Jerusalem back up to 2nd Kings 25 hold your finger there because I want you to see a couple of passages from there. Now there are some parts of this that were fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar, but we will present to you the thesis that not everything's fulfilled in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, but a lot of it was. But we read in 2 Kings 25 and verse 9, he burned the house of the Lord, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house he burned with fire. So Nebuchadnezzar obviously went into the city and burned a lot of things that were right in the middle of the city. So God says to Ezekiel, I want you to take 130 your hair and burn it in the center of the city. The fourth assignment is I want you to strike one-third of the hair with a sword around the city. Notice back in chapter 5 and verse 2. One-third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one-third and strike it with a sword all around the city, and one-third you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe the sword behind them. Now go back to 2 Kings 25 again, verse 18. then the captain of the guard took Sariah the chief priest and Zephaniah the second priest with the three officers of the temple from the city he took one official who was overseer of the men of war and five of the king's advisors who were found in the city and the scribe of the captain of the army who mustered the people of the land and sixty men of the city of the land who were found in the city Nebuchadnezzar The captain of the guard took them and brought them to the king of Babylon at Riblah. Then the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was led away to exile in the land. Yeah, about a third of the people that were trying to get out of Jerusalem when Nebuchadnezzar was trying to destroy Jerusalem didn't make it. They caught them and they struck them down. The fifth assignment is you scatter one third of your hair in the wind. That's what he says at the end of chapter 2, I want you to take a third of your hair and scatter it in the wind. Now a third of the hair, just throw it up in the wind, let it scatter. And that will be illustrative of the fact that my people are going to be exiled all over the place. My Jews are no longer going to be in this promised land, they're going to go to all kinds of areas. Various nations will house them and God did let the nation blow out away from her land into exile of other nations and in many ways that is the reality tonight. The nation Israel is not as a nation in her land enjoying peace and prosperity in her land. She basically has been blown all over the world. He gives him a sixth assignment. He said, I want you to take some hair and bind them in the edges of your robe. Verse three, take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robe. Apparently there are a few committed to what you're doing, Ezekiel. There are a few committed to the word you're teaching. I want you to take a few strands of hair, and those will represent those people who love the Lord, and they love the word, and they love what you're doing as a prophet. They're close to you. They're close to your goals of communicating the word of God. They want to be right with me. They love Ezekiel's teaching, and I want you to take a few strands of hair and just tuck it in your belt. But he gives them a seventh assignment. And then, take some of that hair and throw it in the fire. He says, therefore, take again some of them, and throw them into the fire, and burn them in the fire. From it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel. And again, he's basically saying, when this judgment that I'm going to send ultimately comes, I mean, even some of those who have been dedicated to me, some of those who've been on the side of Ezekiel are going to be killed. When the fires of judgment come against Israel, some of the faithful are going to suffer. Now we know specifically what he's referring to, because he says so in verse 5. Thus says the Lord God, this is Jerusalem. I have set her at the center of the nations with lands around her. God says, I want you to know this specifically all refers to Jerusalem. Every bit of this. And there are three facts that you can let Jerusalem and the Jews know. Number one, I originally set up Jerusalem to be at the center of all the nations. He says in verse 5, I have set her at the center of the nation with lands all around her. He'll later say in chapter 38, she was the center of the world. Israel should have been the best display of the power and blessings of God in the entire world. All nations of the world should have been able to look at Israel and say, man, there's the presence and power and greatness and glory of God. There's a nation that has all the blessings of God. God had given her a rich land, lands all around her. Jerusalem was that special chosen city by God. God put her in a location, a very special location. He set his name on that city. He displayed his glory in that city. He designated that Jerusalem would be a place where his name would be honored and he would be worshiped. I mean, his presence was, think about it, in that very city. That's what he set up that city to be, the center of the nations. But look at her tonight. Look at her. If you look at Jerusalem, you can't help but step back and say, where is God? There are no rays of the glory of God shining from Jerusalem tonight. In fact, it pretty much looks like any other city in the world. It looks kind of worse than any other city of the world. There are some nice buildings there, but it's certainly not blossoming like a rose. Before we get too critical of Jerusalem, maybe we should take a look at our own lives. Does the glory of God shine forth from us? Are we radiating what we should be radiating? Or do we just look like any other person in the world? The second fact is God's people rebelled against God's word more than the surrounding nations. Verses 6 and 7 are troubling, but she's rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations and against my statutes more than the lands which surround her. What a legacy she's leaving. The nation Israel so rebelled against God's word that God says my weighty assessment of her is she's actually more wicked than the nations and countries around her. And God says in verse 7, because you have more turmoil than the nations which surround you and have not walked in my statues. God has literally sovereignly allowed turmoil just to plague her. Instead of her becoming a great light for the glory of God, she has become one of the darkest blots on the face of the earth. And the real issue was the people of God refused to respond to the written word of God. They rebelled against God's word. And our nation, that was founded on certainly a reverence of the Lord, is a nation that is rebelling against the Word of God, and if God would judge Israel for her rebellion, he'll judge us. And he actually says, you're worse than heathen nations. You're worse than Gentile nations. Can you tell me any other nation in the world that doesn't know a male should use a male restroom and a female should use a female restroom? Can you tell me any other nation in the world that doesn't know that? We're deranged here. We're making mockery of the Word of God. We're making mockery of the ordinances of God. And it's a sad day. When God assesses his own people and says, you're worse than the heathens. That's what he says of Israel. You're worse than the Gentiles. But again, as we look at Israel, let's look at ourselves. We're called to be a light and salt in this world. And if our light does not shine, we're a failure just like Israel. Sometimes we cringe when we watch the news because people who supposedly were Christians do things that are so corrupt most lost people don't do them. I mean every now and then we hear of corrupt church members, corrupt leaders, corrupt ministers are locked up in jail because they're doing things that even the lost world doesn't do. That was God's assessment of Israel. Thirdly, he warns his people of a ferocious judgment that he's going to send against them there in verses 8 to 12. Now let's say that some of these kinds of things happen during various captivities. I'll tell you, as we go down through these things, not all these things have happened yet. Israel has experienced some horrible things, some judgments of God, but there are things mentioned here that have not yet occurred. Verse 8 says, Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Behold, I, even I, am against you. God makes it clear, I'm the one who's going to execute judgment against my own people in plain view of the nations of the world. And what he says in verse 8 is scary. He says concerning his own people, I am against you. I'm against my own people. Now God is graciously on the side of his people most of the time. But if they persist in rebellion and sin and they do not deal with it, they do not face it, they do not turn from it, he can and will turn against blessing his own people. And God's people need to know that. I would say we happen to be right now in a wonderful time of blessing in this church, but we don't want to lose our focus. We want to tighten the belt and keep straight focus on what is causing this. Because Israel once had the blessings of God and those catastrophes began to hit because God said, you know, those people that I once was for, I'm against. Those people that I once blessed, I'm gonna judge. And if he did it to Israel, you can be sure he can do that to us. And what he's done to Israel is really like no other nation. What other nation have you ever seen so persecuted like the Jews from 1939 to 1945? What other nation? There is no other nation that's been persecuted like them. Those pictures, those pictures that you see of those poor Jews literally make you cry. Horrible judgments that have come from the hand of God. God's people were so rebellious that he says, I'll go to work all right, I'll weigh this all out and I'll start allowing terrible things to happen to my nation Israel right in the presence of heathen nations. Has he not done that? And whenever God does do something like this, they have reached, God's own people have reached a very depraved, non-repentant level. If you look at Israel right now, you would almost say there's no way God's even on her side. He's not blessing her. She lives in constant fear. In verse 9, God says, I'll be clear on why I'm doing this. It's because of all your abominations. I'm just sanctioning a series of horrible things to come against Israel and against Jerusalem because of a rebellion. But then he says something in verse 9 that takes it up a notch. He said, there's coming one judgment that will be like which I'll never do again. That's very reminiscent of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ who predicted in Matthew 24, there will be a great tribulation judgment the likes of which the world has never seen. And the things that he describes in the remaining verses of the chapter have never completely been fulfilled. Not during the time of Nebuchadnezzar, not during the time of Hitler. so we believe it's still out there is still to come. Ezekiel makes a prediction of six horrible judgments. Number one, fathers and sons will eat each other. Think of that. Verse 10, therefore fathers will eat their sons among you. Back up just a couple of pages in your Bible to Lamentations 4. And I want you to notice in Lamentations 4 and 9 we read better are those slain with the sword than those slain with hunger for they pine away being stricken for the lack of fruits of the field the hands of compassionate women boiled their own children they became food for them because of the destruction of the daughter of my people the Lord has accomplished his wrath He has poured out his fierce anger. He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has consumed its foundations. God says, I am going to send a severe judgment upon my own people because they refuse to deal with their sin that will be so severe they cannot get food. They're going to revert to cannibalism in order to try and survive. Mothers and sons will be eating each other. Fathers and mothers will be eating each other. I mean, it's going to be a time when they won't have any food. The second prediction is, I'll scatter the nation in every direction. He says in verse 10, I will execute judgments on you and scatter all your remnant to every wind. I believe ultimately that's when the Antichrist will sit in the Temple of Jerusalem, demand that he be worshiped as God, and Israel's gonna flee as fast as they can. The problem is they're gonna have some border problems. The border problems being established right now. And they're going to have to try to cross borders to get into another country to get away from the Antichrist. And many of them are going to die. They're not going to be able to make it. But there will be a few that will take them in. They'll understand the ramifications of this, but they're going to be scattered in every direction. The third prediction is God will withdraw all blessings from Israel and show no pity. He says in verse 11, so as I live, declares the Lord, surely because you defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominations, therefore I will also withdraw and my eye will have no pity and I will not spare. He is saying this about his own people. You've made a mockery of my worship. You've made a mockery of my word. You've made a mockery of my sanctuary. I'll withdraw all my blessings, I'll show no pity on my own. The fourth prediction is one-third will die by plague or famine, verse 12. One-third of you will die by a plague. Fifth prediction is God will cause one-third to die by a sword, and one-third of you will fall by the sword. The sixth prediction is I will cause one-third to be scattered all over the world. That clearly coincides with what Zechariah predicts that'll happen during the tribulation. Zechariah says in Zechariah 13 that during that tribulation, that time of wrath, two-thirds of the nation Israel will die. Only one-third will survive. All Jews will be chased all over the world. The world will be under an edict of the Antichrist to exterminate every Jew from the face of the earth. This world will have seen nothing like this before. And in verses 13 to 17, God describes, this is all because of my anger and wrath. He says, I am permitting all of these things to happen because my people have mocked me. They have mocked my word. They have mocked my son. And verse 13 says, when I do this, everybody in Israel will know it's coming from me. They're not going to be asking, why is this happening? I'll make it very clear why it's happening. We know from studying Revelation that there will be 144,000 protected by God, Jewish evangelists who will be telling the world exactly why it's happening. And in verses 14 and 15, he explains when this judgment occurs, not only will Israel know why it's happening, but so will the nations. The nations of the world will stand in awe of the sovereignty of God. And God says, I'll make a statement. Verse 15, when this judgment occurs, not only will the nations know this, but they'll realize Israel's a reproach. She's a reviling nation. She's a warning to the nation. She's the object of anger and wrath to the nations. And the nations may be saying, well, that's just too bad for her. Well, I want to tell you, the same God that's pronouncing judgments on Israel, believe you me, later in this book says, and let me tell you what I'll do to the nations who mock me and my word. All the Arab nations ought to take a good read of Obadiah. All of the nations, Arab nations, ought to take a serious look at the book of Obadiah and what God promises to do to the Arab world, who has mocked Him, mocked Israel, and made a mockery of Jesus Christ. And God says in verse 15, I'm going to target Israel. I'm going to bring my judgments against her. There will be horrible famines that will kill. I'm going to raise up predator animals that will kill people. I'm going to bring up plagues that will kill people like viruses, the Zika virus. I'm going to cause war and bloodshed. That's going to kill people. All of this will be a judgment from me. And what we know is a lot of those things are mentioned in that fourth seal judgment that's found in the book of Revelation in chapter 6. Now you may go through this chapter tonight, just thumb your nose at it. You may say, well, that's crazy talk. I don't like a God that acts like that. I don't like a God who would judge like that. You know what we say to you? Too bad. too bad you better understand this this is truth about the god of the bible you don't have to like it you better hate it because i can tell you this if god would do this to israel he certainly would do that to any person who would persist in rebellion i want to leave us tonight with six parting principles. Number one, if God's people remain disobedient, God will judge. You have his word on it. God will not let his people get away with rebellion forever. He'll give them a grace period, but he won't let them get away with it forever. Secondly, obedience to God can be a life or death matter. It can be more than, I just think I'll do this. This can literally have some real far-reaching ramifications, whether we obey or disobey God. In fact, it does have far-reaching ramifications. Thirdly, there are serious and deadly consequences to persisting in rebellious sin. And again, I remind us, God is allowing Ezekiel to do these physical things to show that this judgment was pending, this judgment was coming. So he didn't just, when they did the sin, give the judgment. He gave them time, but his judgment did come. Fourthly, God gives warnings to his people to turn from sin and turn to him. And you may think, well yeah, but that's just for Israel, it's Old Testament stuff. Well, look at those seven churches in Revelation. Do you realize that Jesus Christ gave warnings to five of the seven churches in Revelation? Fifthly, God never totally abandons his people even when they are a disaster. He may chastise them. He may break them down. He may kill them. But He doesn't totally abandon them. The truth is, Israel still belongs to the Lord. And if you know Christ tonight, no matter how whacked out you may be, so do you. But you ought to heed this text. The sixth principle that I see from this is when God has blessed you or me or us, We need to stay focused on what's bringing about those blessings. Never lose sight of that. Because that's what happened to Israel. Let's pray. If you're here tonight and you've never trusted Christ as Savior, the wrath that God pours out on one who rejects his son is scarier than what we've looked at here tonight. It's an eternal wrath. If you reject Christ, you will burn in everlasting fire forever. So you can solve that issue tonight right where you sit by just inviting Christ to come into your life to save you. If you've never done that, just invite him in right now to be your savior. Our Father, this is an interesting passage. It's a introspective text. because all of us need to continually analyze ourselves in light of the indwelling Holy Spirit. We realize, Lord, that we are the temple of God and we have responsibilities to pursue that which is holy and righteous and just and good. We realize that you know us intimately. You monitor us. We also see from this passage that you will weigh out carefully who we are, what we are, what we're doing, what we're not doing, and your judgments will be based on that. We are grateful for grace, grace in Christ that takes away our sin and takes away the wrath of God. But we also are reminded of responsibilities we have with those churches in Revelation to make adjustments and make changes in our lives that we would never get on path of destruction and of sin where you would ever have to say concerning any of us, I'm against you. We pray that in Jesus' name, amen.