In your Bibles this morning, in Isaiah chapter 6 is recorded the prophecy of Isaiah wherein he was shown a vision of the glory of this holy, holy, holy God. And as he stood in the presence of that temple and in the presence of that glory and the presence of this God, he was undone. He was made to look upon and see the sin of his own heart and to confess it and to repent of it before the Lord and to receive from God cleansing. and forgiveness. He says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. And the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two, He covered His face. With two, He covered His feet. And with two, He flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. and the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of Him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And He touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." God has certainly done, as amazing as that experience was, far more for us in Christ Jesus. We have beheld His glory in the person of Jesus Christ. We have seen His holiness and the sharp contrast of our sinfulness. But He has not only touched our lips, He has poured out blood to cleanse our hearts and our souls and our lives from our sins. So this morning as we come into His presence, as we ascend into the heavenly sanctuary and stand before His glorious throne of grace, bow your heads, look upon your sinfulness, confess it to the Lord, and praise Him for His amazing grace. Father, as we come into the presence of Your glory this morning, We confess that by ourselves, by our own merits, by our own strength, we don't deserve to be here. We confess, Lord, that we are sinners. That we have fallen far short of Your glory. That we have not esteemed You as the God that You are. That we have not worshipped You. That we have not bent the knee and bowed down before You in our lives. Father, we confess that we have rebelled against You. that not only in deeds, but also in thoughts and in words, in attitudes and dispositions of our hearts, that we are idol worshippers, that we are self-worshippers, that we are not lovers of You. But Father, we confess what an absolutely amazing grace that You have shed abroad in our hearts in Jesus Christ, that You have given Your own Son to take on human flesh to live a fully righteous life, to shed His own blood that we might be cleansed, that we might be forgiven, and that our hearts might be purified. Father, again, we confess how lightly we take the glory of this salvation. We confess that sometimes we take it for granted and we minimize its significance in our hearts. Father, we ask this morning as we come into Your presence, that by Your Spirit, You would cause our hearts to repent of this. that we would be full of awe and reverence and adoration for You, because You are a great and glorious God and You have sent Your Son to die on our behalf. You have redeemed us. You have reconciled us. You have saved us. You have given us life in Jesus Christ. And Father, we ask this morning that in our hearts we would have the passion to sing Your praise because of all that You have done and all that You are and all that You have made us to be. We love You, Lord. And we praise You. And we ask that You would continue this work of sanctification within us, transforming us by the renewing of our minds and causing us to reflect the glory and the holiness of Jesus Christ in the way that we live. Father, may this bring You glory. May this bring You praise. As people see us, may they see through us and past us and see Your own Son. And Father, may they give You praise as well. And we come before You also this morning, Father, because we confess that we are weak. We are needy. We are dependent upon You and we trust You. You are our loving Heavenly Father. You shower down blessings from Heaven and You take care of us. And Father, we confess that we need that providential care. We need that strength because our lives are full of circumstances and situations that are beyond our control and beyond our measure of strength. But Father, You are a great and holy God and You are a God who strengthens. And so we come before you this morning and we acknowledge our need of you and we lift up our voices to pray on behalf of those who are in need of you. Father, we love you. We praise you this morning for all the good things that come down from heaven. We know, Lord, that in this room are represented many, many needs. Many, many requests. Too many to name even now. Some that cannot even be named aloud. But you know them, Lord. You know what is needed. You know the hearts. You know the weakness. You know the despair that sometimes settles into hearts and minds of your people. And so we pray for your strength and your comfort. We pray for the presence of your spirit and your grace this morning. And that as we come into your presence, you would fill us with that strength and cause us to be able to have peace in it. We ask in Jesus' name and unto your glory. Amen. Please rise for the reading of God's Word. This morning's text is chapters 8 and 9 of Ezekiel. This is the word of God. In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, the hand of the Lord God fell upon me there. Then I looked, and behold, a form that had the appearance of a man. Below what appeared to be his waist was fire, and above his waist was something like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming metal. He put out the form of a hand and took me by the lock of my head, and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem. To the entrance of the gateway of the inner court that faces north was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoked to jealousy. And behold the glory of God! The God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the valley. Then he said to me, Son of man, lift up your eyes now toward the north. So I lifted up my eyes toward the north, and behold, north of the altar gate in the entrance was this image of jealousy. And he said to me, Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing there, to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations. And he brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, Son of man, dig in the wall. So I dug in the wall, and behold, there was an entrance. And he said to me, Go in and see the vile abominations that they are committing here. So I went in and saw, and there engraved on the wall all around was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel. And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jeaz Zaniah, the son of Shaphan, standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up. Then he said to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land. He said also to me, You will see still greater abominations that they commit. Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord. And behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshipping the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the House of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? Behold, they have put the branch to their nose. Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them. Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, Bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand. And behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand. And with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing-case at his waist. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. Now the glorious God of Israel had gone up from the chair of on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called the man clothed in linen who had the writing-case at his waist. And the Lord said to him, Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it. And to the others he said in my hearing, pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark, and begin at my sanctuary. So they began with the elders who were before the house. Then he said to them, defile the house and fill the courts with the slain. Go out. So they went out and struck in the city. And while they were striking, and I was left alone, I fell upon my face and cried, Ah, Lord God, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel and the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem? Then he said to me, The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice. For they say, the Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see. As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. I will bring their deeds upon their heads. And behold, the man clothed in linen, with the riding case at his waist, brought back word, saying, I have done as you commanded me. And God's people said, Amen. Well, it's hard. as the book of Ezekiel is. And it is hard. And by hard, I don't mean that it's just difficult to understand. I mean that even when we do come to understand and lay hold of and grasp the meaning of Ezekiel's message, it isn't an easy message to grasp. It isn't an easy message to swallow. So much of it, as we've seen so far, and even again in these chapters that Joe read, is a message of God's anger with His people. But as hard as Ezekiel is in that way, I hope that you've been enjoying this book. And I hope that you've been enjoying it as much as I have, because again, as hard as it is, and as full of themes of judgment and anger as it is, this is a book that is chock full of God's unbridled, unveiled, raw glory, is it not? Because you see, that is precisely what these rebellious, hard-hearted, sinful Israelites needed. That's what these defeated and discouraged and downtrodden exiles needed more than anything else. In all of their sin, in all of their weakness, in all of their discouragement and despair, they needed to come face to face with the unclothed, full-fledged glory of God. Because in their minds and hearts, they'd sidelined it. They'd minimalized Him. They'd thought of Him as far, far too small of a God. And it's when they forgot just how glorious and just how awesome God is that they stumbled and that they wandered from Him. It was when their minds and hearts concluded that this great, awesome, transcendent God is a small God. An insignificant God. that they pitched headlong into idolatry and immorality and wickedness and violence and injustice. And it's when they experienced great weakness. That's why, see, as hard a book as this is, I love it so much because in my mind, in your mind, in our minds, God needs to be becoming bigger and bigger and bigger every single day of our lives. My heart and your heart needs to be consumed with the glory of God. My soul needs to be filled and overflowing with the holiness of God and with the love and with the mercy of God's Spirit. Doesn't yours? Because in and of ourselves, we're weak. But don't forget that Ezekiel's name means, God will strengthen. And He strengthens His people by confronting us with the greatness and the splendor and the majesty of all of His glory, not only in judgment, but also in great mercy and love, which we will, I promise, come to in the book of Ezekiel. In these opening chapters, He's doing that by showing them His jealousy. He's showing them His glory by showing them how provoked He becomes when His creatures ascribe His glory to something or someone other than Him. And that's what's been going on. And for all of the frankly horrific proclamations of God's wrath and judgment that we have seen so far in the first seven chapters of Ezekiel's prophecy, we are now coming, I think, to one of the most traumatic depictions of the full extent of God's displeasure with His people. Until this point, throughout their history as a nation and as God's chosen covenant people, Israel has enjoyed something absolutely unique among the nations, and that is that they, and they alone, have been blessed by the literal, visible presence of the glory of God dwelling in their midst. First in the tabernacle, you remember, and then in the temple of Solomon where the Shekinah glory cloud of God that led them out of Egypt as a cloud by day and a fire by night, they could see His glory. And that Shekinah glory, that visible glory of God dwelt in the tabernacle and then in the temple as God took up residence in the midst of His people as a man living as with a neighbor. Now the books of Kings and Chronicles record how beautiful and how spectacular the temple that Solomon built and dedicated to God was. It was built out of the best materials. It was all adorned and overlaid with the finest gold. The temple was 60 cubits long by 20 cubits wide by 120 cubits tall. Now a cubit is about the length of a man's forearm, about 18 inches. So the temple that Solomon built was approximately 90 feet long by 30 feet wide by 180 feet tall, and by ancient standards, that's a big building. And Solomon overlaid that entire temple complex with 600 talents of the finest gold. And understand that a single talent of gold weighed 75 pounds. So picture this huge building with 600 talents. That's about 45,000 pounds of the finest gold available anywhere on the planet covering every surface on the inside of the temple. Can you even imagine the glory of that building? Even the nails that Solomon used were made of gold, each nail weighing about 20 ounces. What is that? About a pound and a quarter. each nail that went into the building of this temple. And on top of that, Solomon adorned everything with precious stones and precious jewels, and inside the temple, of course, at its very core, at its very heart, was the Holy of Holies, the most holy place, separated from the rest of the temple by that big thick veil, again, a full cubit thick, where the Ark of the Covenant was placed, where God literally dwelt. Listen to what 2 Chronicles 3 says. Solomon made the most holy place, and its length, corresponding to the breadth of the house, was 20 cubits. And its breadth was 20 cubits. And he overlaid it, just this part of the temple now, with 600 talents of gold. That's another 45,000 pounds of gold just to cover the Holy of Holies. And in the most holy place, Solomon made two cherubim of costly wood and overlaid them with pure gold and the wings of the cherubim together extended 20 cubits. That's 30 feet. These were massive angelic symbols of power and of the holiness of God that guarded this most sanctified, most holy place from any impurity, from any defilement, from any intrusion. This temple was magnificent. Solomon spared no expense. 45 tons of gold went into overlaying the temple itself and the Holy of Holies. The price of gold today is $655 per ounce as of last night. 16 ounces in a pound, about 95,000 pounds of gold. That's the equivalent of about a billion dollars worth of gold alone that went into the building of Solomon's temple. Just this one building. Not to mention all the other precious building materials. But of course, by far, the most precious article in the whole magnificent complex of the temple was the Ark of the Covenant. Where God sat enthroned upon the mercy seats. 2 Chronicles 7 says that as soon as Solomon finished praying and dedicating this temple with burnt offerings to God, that fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offerings and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord, that visible fiery glory filled the temple. And the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house. And when all of the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord fill the temple, they bowed down with their faces on the ground and worshipped and gave thanks to the Lord saying, for He is good and His steadfast love endures forever." You see what that means? In the Old Testament, the presence of God, the physical, visible presence of God was their source of mercy. It was their source of strength, of protection, of provision, of atonement, and this enduring, steadfast love of God towards them. And the year that the glory of God came and filled that temple was 976 B.C. And His glory remained there enthroned upon the Ark of the Covenant for 390 years until the year 586 BC, and it was in that year that Nebuchadnezzar's armies finally breached the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the city and tore that beautiful temple of Solomon to the ground and burned its ruins and left it nothing more than a heap of smoldering rubble. Now, it was about six years before that that Ezekiel began to prophesy. He was exiled with his countrymen in Babylon. And you remember from chapter 4 that he was told by God to lay on his side for 390 days. Every single day signifying one of the years that God's glory had filled the temple since Solomon dedicated it. And the significance of that is that at the end of the 390 days, Ezekiel was told to roll over and to lay on His other side for 40 days. And that signified two things. First of all, that Jerusalem's fate would be the same as the unfaithful generation who wandered in the wilderness to their death for 40 years. But also, rolling over signified that the days of God's glory filling the temple were over. And that is the traumatic event that we're going to see next week in chapter 10. The vision that Ezekiel has given there is absolutely profound. Four centuries, God's presence, God's glory has dwelt in that temple, and now chapter 10 depicts the cloud of that glory lifting up off of the mercy seat and departing the temple altogether, never to return. God has left His people. They are no longer in the presence of His mercy. They have been abandoned to the mercy of their enemies. But before we get to chapter 10, these chapters today, chapters 8 and 9, give us the reason why God removed His presence from the temple in Jerusalem. The reasons why God abandoned His people. Now verse 1 of chapter 8 gives us a very precise date for this passage. In the 6th year, in the 6th month, on the 5th day of the month, the 6th year is the 6th year of King Jehoiakim's exile, which began in 598 B.C. So the date here in terms of our calendar thinking in terms of our months, would be equivalent to September 18, 592 B.C., and that is 14 months after the opening vision that Ezekiel was given of the glory of God in chapter 1. And very soon after the sign acts of chapter 4, remember where he was required to lie on his side for more than a year, and so now having done that, he sits in his house, and the elders of Judah, The leaders of the community, also having been exiled to Babylon, have come to the house of Ezekiel to pay him a visit. And the reason that they're there is that they're looking and they're hoping that Ezekiel can give them some good news. They're hoping that Ezekiel, having said all of these horrible things for seven chapters, might have something good to say about the future of Jerusalem. that maybe God has changed His mind, that maybe God will turn back His favor upon His people and spare them. In fact, in Jeremiah 28, Jeremiah records that two years prior to this point, two years prior to the elders showing up at Ezekiel's house, at the beginning of the reign of King Zedekiah, the last king in Judah, that a prophet named Hananiah who was the son of Azur, the prophet from Gibeon, came to Jerusalem and visited Ezekiel, or visited Jeremiah rather, in the temple in Jerusalem in the presence of all the priests and all the people. And listen to what Hananiah said two years earlier. He said, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon, and within two years I will bring back to this place, to the temple. all of the vessels of the Lord's house which Nebuchadnezzar took away and carried off to Babylon, and I will also bring back to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, and all of the exiles from Judah who went off to Babylon, I will bring back, declares the Lord, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon." Within two years, Hananiah says, this is going to happen. And now, in Ezekiel chapter 8, it's been two years. since Hananiah made that prophecy to Jeremiah in the temple in Jerusalem. And so, the elders want to know what's up. Was Hananiah right? They're coming to Ezekiel because Ezekiel has contradicted Hananiah. He's just finished prophesying that Jerusalem won't be spared. That it will be destroyed. And they're hoping that he's the wrong one and that Hananiah's prophecy is the one that will be fulfilled, but as it turns out, Hananiah was a false prophet. Jeremiah says it at the end of that chapter in Jeremiah 28, that the Lord, after Hananiah spoke, appeared to Jeremiah and told Jeremiah that Hananiah had caused the people of Israel to believe in a false hope. to put their confidence and put their hope in a lie, and that he was requiring Hananiah's life, and within that same year, Hananiah was dead. So Ezekiel doesn't have any good news to give to the elders of Judah. In fact, what he has is very bad news. While he sits here with the elders, the hand of the Lord fell upon him, and once again he saw a vision of God in all of His glory. Verse 2, Then I looked, and behold, it's the same thing as he saw in chapter 1, a form that had the appearance of a man. Below what appeared to be his waist was fire, and above his waist was something like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming metal. The holiness of God is so profound that he has no way to qualify it except to compare it to gleaming metal and brightness. God's glory appears on display in front of Ezekiel. And as he looks on, this hand reaches out from the presence of God's glory and falls upon Ezekiel and literally takes him and grabs him by the hair, it says, and yanks him up The Spirit of God grabs him and pulls him up to a place between heaven and earth. And from that vantage point, Ezekiel is given visions of glory of God, visions of Jerusalem. He's given four visions of what's going on in the city of Jerusalem. An inside perspective into the abominations that have brought the wrath of God raining down from heaven. against his own city, against his own temple. The first thing that Ezekiel sees is this. Verse 3 says that he's brought to the entrance of the gateway of the inner court of the temple that faces north. That gate was known as the altar gate. It was the gate that separated the inner courts of the temple from the outer courts. Only the Jews were allowed inside access to the inner courts of the temple. Everyone else, all of the Gentiles, were required to remain outside in that altar gate. And if you looked through it, you could see the great sacrificial altar on which all of those animals would be killed for atonement. That altar gate was guarded day and night. to prevent any unauthorized access, to prevent any defilement of the temple courts, to preserve the sanctity and the holiness and the purity of the altar and the courts of God. And you see, that is exactly why what Ezekiel sees sitting there at the altar gate is such an absolute abomination to God. Sitting there at the altar gate of the inner court is what Ezekiel calls an image of jealousy which provokes Now, 2 Kings 21 identifies what this image is. It's a gigantic carved statue of the Assyrian goddess Asherah, the pagan goddess of fertility. She was the Canaanite equivalent to the goddess Ishtar, who was thought to be the mother goddess, the goddess of both warfare and fertility. Listen to what the Assyrians write about Asherah in paying homage to her. They write, all praise to Asherah, mother of gods, queen of all heaven and earth, from her is all life, with her is all power, to her is all praise rendered. Worshipping Asherah for the pagans meant bowing down before these giant statues of her and then participating because she's the fertility goddess. in these ritual, sexual, immoral acts in front of her in honor of the fertility that she was thought to grant. And according to 2 Kings 21, King Manasseh had a graven image of her installed right there in the temple of God. Now, that specific statue was destroyed, but by Ezekiel's day, it had been replaced. And there it stood. guarding the entrance to the inner courts of Yahweh's temple. You see why God has provoked a jealousy? It's a direct challenge to His sovereignty and His authority. It's an absolute repudiation of His holiness. Look at what God says in verse 6. Son of man, do you see what they are doing? The great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here to drive Me from My sanctuary. They're driving Him out. The holy God will not share His temple with idols and with defilements. It was the most blatant and explicit defilement of the temple of God imaginable that the gateway to the altar was being guarded by a pagan goddess, a pagan idol. And it was an abomination. It was something, remember that word, detestable to God, repugnant to God. Something that turned His stomach and provoked Him to anger. Here it's called the image of jealousy that provokes jealousy, the word jealousy in the Hebrew, kanah. It comes from a root that has to do with the color of deep reddish purple, because that's the color that people's faces turn when they become enraged with jealousy. Don't you love Hebrew words? They're picturesque. They're very descriptive compared to English words. And Ezekiel is seeing something here that causes God's face to flush. with righteous jealousy and righteous anger. At the very place where the purity of God's holiness is supposed to be guarded, here is the epitome of desecration and defilement. And by putting it there, the people of Jerusalem had driven God from His sanctuary. And that, God says, is why Hananiah's prophecy will prove false. This is why the temple is not going to be spared. It's going to be torn down and burned because it's become polluted. It's become defiled. But, God says, at the end of verse 6, you will see still greater abominations than that. And so next, Ezekiel is taken to this secret place, this secret room within the temple. He's able to see it through a hole in the wall. And God tells him to dig out that hole and to crawl through it. And when he does, he sees 70 men. And these are the elders of the house of Israel. These are the leaders and the pillars of the community. And they are standing before a wall upon which is inscribed figures of animals and idols. And each one of these 70 men has a censer, a bowl for burning incense. And they're carrying them in their hands. And they're offering clouds of incense and worshiping the images of these animals and idols. That was an occultic practice in the Egyptian false religion that was done in order to ward off evil spirits. And notice that among these 70 elders who are practicing this This spiritualistic, occultic activity is a man named Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan. And that would have been absolutely and utterly shocking to Ezekiel. Because Ezekiel knows the family of Shaphan. Ezekiel knows Jaazaniah. According to 2 Kings 22, the household of Shaphon was a prominent, wealthy family during the reign of King Josiah. You remember, Josiah was one of the best of Israel's kings. The one who, in the midst of the worst of their idolatry, tore down the high places, brought reform and cleansed the temple and restored purity in the worship of God. And the family of Shaphon helped him in all of that. And so for Ezekiel to see Shaphan's own son, Jehoazaniah, standing here in secret involved in the very things that his father worked with Josiah to banish, I mean, that only highlighted and exposed just how deep the roots of idolatry went in Israel. And look at the hardness of these men's hearts as they justify their abominations and their offering incense to images of animals in God's temple. Verse 12, Son of man, have you seen what the elders of this house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his own room of pictures? For they say, the Lord does not see us. The Lord has forsaken us." You see how they've turned their backs on God. They've forgotten about His holiness, about His glory, about His omniscience, about His sovereignty. They've concluded that He's blind, that He's powerless, that He's impotent. And so they're turning to animals for help. But once again, verse 13, God says you will see still greater abominations that they commit. The hits just keep on coming. In verses 14 and 15, Ezekiel is brought to the entrance of the northern gate of the temple and there he witnesses a Babylonian practice taking place. So you can start to see the breadth of the idolatry that is being exposed within the temple from Assyrian and Canaanite Asherah worship to Egyptian occultism and animal worship to now Babylonian worship practicing the weeping for Tammuz. And notice something here. The Israelites have not only forsaken God, they have saturated His temple with abominations from every pagan nation around them. they have become truly multicultural. And they've prided themselves with that, with their diversity and with their tolerance and with their acceptance of other cultural religious expressions, their integration of those things into their own experience. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? Like some kind of political party platform in our day. The need for purity in our day. in our worship is just as important as it was in Ezekiel's day. Now, weeping for Tammuz was a Babylonian ritual in honor of the pagan god Damuzi, or Tammuz as it's pronounced here in the English text. And it commemorated the death of Tammuz and his descent into the underworld and then ultimately his return. And they thought that that cycle of death and descent and return was parallel to the annual rhythms of nature, to the seasons. And this cultic act of weeping and mourning and lamenting the death of Tammuz was thought to hasten the return of spring, of life, of the crops growing. And maybe there might be people who think that this kind of thing is just some kind of innocent, naive sort of cultural expression like maybe a Native American rain dance or something. But God calls this an abomination. And it is third on this list of increasingly abominable things. And what makes it so abominable is that in the temple on Mount Zion, the worship of the living God was being substituted for lamentations of the dead. Rather than finding their hope in the living Lord, they're looking to false gods, dead gods, the figments of pagan imaginations, with the hope that somehow that's going to make their crops grow. And that is how dissatisfied they had become with God. That is how hard and cold their hearts were towards Him. How little they trusted Him and depended upon Him and relied upon Him. That they would turn to animals and dead imaginary deities. But once again, in verse 15, you will see still greater abominations than these. And now Ezekiel is brought directly into the center of the inner courts of the temple, and there, standing right in front of the altar, right in front of the altar where animals were sacrificed unto Yahweh for atonement, there stand 25 men, leaders again of Israel, and their posture says it all. Because they're standing there, and the temple, the Holy of Holies, is to the west. and they've got their backs to the west, and they've got their faces to the east, gazing up and worshiping the Son. Doesn't that say it all? I mean, even the modern day Jews, if you go to Israel today, the ones who don't believe in Jesus Christ, even they will press themselves up against the western wall of the temple mount. hoping upon hope. It's a vain hope, of course. But hoping upon hope that God can be found there where His temple once stood. But these Jews in Ezekiel's day had given up all hope in God. He was in there. He was enthroned on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant right through the veil in the Holy of Holies, and they didn't care. They didn't want Him. They turned their back on Him. And they looked instead to the creation rather than the Creator. And so now do you see why? You see why He picks up and leaves in chapter 10? You see why God does what He says He does in chapter 9? Why He pours out jealous wrath on the temple and everyone in it? I mean, Jesus Himself became enraged to the point of overturning tables and flogging people with a whip when they were changing money in the temple and defrauding people there. Because zeal for His Father's house consumed Him. But here, things are much worse. God has been dishonored. God has been rejected and despised by His own people. And in just these four brief scenes, God has shown Ezekiel just how comprehensive the sin of his people have become. That sin extends from outside the city gates all the way within the inner courts of the temple itself. It involves both men and women. It involves both commoners and even the elders of Jerusalem themselves. It involves idolatry that has been imported from every single surrounding nation. It involves all kinds of false gods, male deities, female deities, animals, even the worship of the sun and the stars. Every conceivable form of idolatry is being practiced inside God's holy temple. I mean, really, it's not to be sarcastic, but it's the ultimate multi-faith worship service going on right there in the Jerusalem temple. I think the Western world would be proud of this. The people of Jerusalem have realized the very thing that the people of today are touting as the answer to all the world's problems. If we could just get together all of these faiths and work together for some kind of universal, worldly peace, then God would be pleased. And they'd done it in Jerusalem. They'd achieved a true, unified, universalized, fully integrated, fully ecumenical worship service. God wasn't pleased. It didn't solve any of their problems. In fact, it was the cause of all of their problems. And so God cries out, verse 1 of chapter 9, "...bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand." And as God cries out, six men come forward. And each of them has in his hand a weapon, it says, of slaughter. And then with them is this seventh man. And he's dressed in linen. Linen is priestly clothing. And this is a priestly figure. And he's not carrying a weapon. He's got tied to his waist and to his belt a writing case. It's a small kit containing various kinds of writing instruments and various little vials and bottles of ink. And as Ezekiel watches this scene unfold, something remarkable happens. The glory cloud lifts up off of the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies and comes out of the Most Holy Place. That has never happened before in the 390 years of God's presence in the temple. He comes out to the threshold of the temple in full view of everyone, and He speaks to them, and He calls out first to this man dressed in linen as a priest with this writing kit, and He says to him in verse 4, "...pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it." And then to the others, to these six executioners holding weapons, God says, pass through the city after him and strike. Your eyes shall not spare, you shall show no pity. Brutal. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark. and begin at My sanctuary. And so they began with the elders who were before the house. And then He said to them, to these six men, defile the house and fill the courts with the slain. Go out. And so they went out and struck in the city." Now, this should all sound very familiar to you. This is a kind of reenactment of the Passover event in the book of Exodus. Now, here in Ezekiel's day, God is doing the same thing to His own people that He did to the Egyptians during the Exodus. The executioners start in the temple itself, the site of the worst idolatry, and they show no pity. They have no regard for women or children or for the elderly. And they shed their blood right there in the temple courts. In 2 Kings 11, Queen Athaliah was an idolatress and sentenced to death, but she was dragged out of the temple first so that her blood wouldn't defile the temple. But here, the courts are already so hopelessly defiled that the slaughter takes place inside. God says, defile the house and fill the courts with the slain. And so they go. And as they do their work, Ezekiel watches all of this horrific scene unfolding before his eyes. He finds himself alone. I mean, can you imagine witnessing what Ezekiel was witnessing? Seeing what Ezekiel was seeing as these six men make their way through the temple and then through the city, sparing no one. And Ezekiel cries out to God and he says in despair, Oh Lord, will you destroy all of the remnant of Israel? in the outpouring of your wrath?" And God's answer almost seems to be yes. He said to me, verse 9, the guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood. The city is full of injustice. For they say the Lord has forsaken the land and the Lord does not see. And as for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. I will bring their deeds upon their hands. God is appealing to justice. They've said the Lord doesn't care about us, the Lord doesn't see, but God does see. God has seen. He's seen it all. All of the idolatry, all of the immorality, all of the injustice and violence and wickedness and His patience has completely run out and Ezekiel fears that he's literally going to be left utterly alone, that no one is going to survive. That God is going to completely wipe Israel away. But it's precisely at that moment, when it seems that all hope is lost, that this linen-clad priest with the writing kit suddenly reappears in verse 11 saying, I have done as you commanded me. What did God tell him to do? In verse 4, God had told him to go through the whole city, and if there was anyone who sighed and groaned over all of the abominations and idolatry, anyone who in their hearts hated what was going on in Israel, loved God, and felt the same way that God did about the wickedness of Israel, then this man was to put a mark on their foreheads, right there on the most noticeable place on their body. And those who were marked would be spared. Again, like the Passover, right? Where Lamb's blood was painted on the doorposts of the Israelite homes, and as the death angel came to bring death to all of the firstborn sons in Egypt, he passed over those houses that were covered by the blood of the Lamb. And they were spared, and the death that came to the rest of them did not come to the houses of Israel. There was refuge. There was shelter. There was salvation. There was life for those who took shelter in the appointed sign. And that's the same message here. Even in the midst of God pouring out His wrath, there is hope for those who are marked by His mercy. And I want you to understand something from verse 4 here, where this priestly scribe is told to put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan." Literally, in Hebrew, it says that He is to place a tav on their foreheads. Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And oftentimes, it was used as a basic mark of identification. That's why it's translated mark here. But literally, He's to place a tav on their forehead. And in Ezekiel's day, On ancient manuscripts, the letter Tov was written by making two intersecting lines in the form of a cross. And so quite literally, God tells this priest in the linen clothes to go throughout the city and to inscribe crosses on the foreheads of the people that God will have mercy upon. Isn't that remarkable? Maybe we shouldn't make too much out of the shape of the letter, but on the other hand, even regardless of its shape in God's providence, what a wonderful foreshadowing of the Gospel that is. When God created Adam out of the dust of the ground, Genesis 2 says that he breathed his ruach, his breath or his spirits, into man and man became a living being. See, that's what we were created to be. We were created to be filled with the ruach, with the breath, with the very Spirit of God. We were created to be living dwelling places, living temples for the glory and the Spirit of God. But didn't Adam do exactly what these Israelites had done to the temple in Jerusalem? Didn't Adam turn his back on God? Didn't Adam worship the creation instead of the Creator? Didn't Adam defile the temple? that He was created to be. And didn't He receive a curse? A death sentence? And the Spirit of God departed from Him. And in Adam, haven't we all fallen short of God's glory and worshipped a creation and defiled ourselves with sin and rebellion and turned our backs on God and despised Him? And the wages of sin is death. Because in His holiness and in His perfect glory, God cannot tolerate impurity and rebellion. But by His grace, God has marked His own with His mercy. And that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is our Passover Lamb. He is the blood on the doorpost of our hearts. His cross is the seal of salvation on our foreheads. and the only guarantee of eternal life. And what that means for your life as a Christian is this. In Ezekiel 9, the defiled temple of Jerusalem was defiled further by the blood of the guilty that was spilled in its courts. And eventually that temple, defiled, profaned, polluted, was torn down and burned and destroyed. The converse of that is that by the innocent blood of Jesus Christ, God has cleansed the defiled temple of your soul. He has not destroyed it. He has not torn it down. He has purified it. He has sanctified it. And He has filled it once again with the glorious presence of His Holy Spirit and enthroned Himself upon your heart. He is present with you in a way far more profound even than He was present with the Israelites in their temple in the Holy of Holies. He's not separated by a few feet of distance between the Holy of Holies and the holy place and the inner courts and the outer courts. He's directly resident in your heart. There is no veil separating Him from you. It has been rent asunder. And you have access to the very presence of God. And that means that you must not defile His temple with immorality and with wickedness and with fleshliness and with the idols of this world. Paul says precisely that in 1 Corinthians 6, where he is exhorting Christians to live their lives in moral purity, and he does it by saying, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God? And you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. And so glorify God in your body. So this morning, I want you to consider the great price with which you were bought. I want you to contemplate the shed blood of Jesus Christ that has purified the temple of your soul and made it an acceptable place for the Holy Spirit of God to dwell. And I want you to understand the tremendous grace by which Jesus Christ shed that blood and suffered and died in your place, in my place, where we deserved to do it. And then realize, your life isn't your own. Sometimes, we're our own biggest idols, aren't we? We are our own high places. We worship ourselves. We glorify ourselves. We do what we want, when we want, how we want. But you didn't make yourself. You didn't redeem yourself. And your life is not your own to do with as you please. To live is Christ. And the Christian has got to say with the Apostle Paul, I, self, have been crucified with Christ. And it is no longer I who live. but Jesus Christ who lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself up for me." Is that what your heart says? Is that the pulse of your life? Are you seeking less and less of you and more and more of Christ's glory in you? Because that's what you were created for. To house and to put on display before the world. the glory of God's majesty. And we can either trust Him to be our soul's portion by offering ourselves to Him as living sacrifices, or we can trust in ourselves to find security and hope and comfort and pleasure in this world by doing what we want first and then giving God the leftovers. And really, is that any different from what the Israelites were doing, standing in the inner courts, pretending to worship God while they turned their backs on Him and turned their faces to the sun in the east? Let's bow our heads together today and confess our weakness and then receive from God the abundant and overwhelming grace that we need to glorify Him in our lives. Father, as we contemplate these hard words of Ezekiel, may we recognize the sinfulness of our own hearts. May we understand that we too have lifted up the high places. That we too have been idolaters. That we too have forsaken You and replaced You with the worship of the creation. And Father, we ask this morning that as You reveal that to us, that that recognition would cause us to embrace more fully this unbelievable grace of your Gospel by which you have decreed not to destroy us, not to judge us, not to give us what we deserve, but to instead take all of that unmitigated wrath and pour it out upon your own Son who hung, bleeding and dying on the cross for my sin, And Father, may we recognize that that blood has cleansed us. And that You have sanctified us as Your temples. And that You have indwelt us with Your presence. And by Your indwelling Spirit, Father, transform us. That we may proclaim and that we may manifest the radiance of Your glory to the world around us. And Father, may that bring You much pleasure. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. So let's stand together this morning and let's end on a joyous note. Amen? Take your hymnals and let's turn to number 467. And in light of the great gospel, in light of the great love, in light of the great grace of Jesus Christ, let's sing it to God. Let's proclaim to Him how wonderful that grace is. Wonderful grace of Jesus, number 467.