00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
So let's open up our Bibles to
Ezekiel chapter seven. I think we'll read here through
verses 10 through 13. In fact, I'm gonna impose on
Ken there. You've been volunteered. Would
you read verses 10 through 13 for us? Sure. Behold the day. Behold, it has
come. Doom has gone out. The rod has
blossomed. Pride has budded. Violence has
risen up into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, none
of their multitude, none of them, nor shall there be wailing for
them. The time has come, the day draws near. Let not the buyer
rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is on their whole multitude. For the seller shall not return
to what has been sold, though he may still be alive, for the
vision concerns the whole multitude, and it shall not turn back. No
one will strengthen himself. who lives in iniquity. Amen. Thank you, brother. As we were
mentioning last week, even though we're getting more specifics
here in chapter 7 about God's judgment on the city of Jerusalem,
we're seeing that he's adding, so to speak, it's fair to say
that, maybe for lack of a better term, I'm saying that he's adding
here in the sense that he's bringing about a richer, deeper dimension
as to what this judgment on Jerusalem entails, and giving a deeper
dimension and understanding of just how sinful these people
are, and once again, just how holy and righteous he is. And
we've been saying throughout this book of Ezekiel, when we
see the power and the might of God, when we see Him displaying
His glory, when we see Him displaying His righteousness and His judgment,
yes, we should be in awe of that. We should be in fear of that. We should have a quote-unquote
healthy fear of God. We should have a healthy fear
of His righteous judgment. But we also need to keep in mind
we should not be imposing on God's just righteousness and
wrath our human view on wrath and anger. I think that's the
mistake a lot of people make. We look at our sinful selves
and see how we get angry, how we get vindictive, how we get
wrathful, how we want to get back at people. We need to remember
who God is. We need to understand His wrath
and His judgment in light of His holy, holy, holy character. You know, the Apostle John told
us God is love. The very essence of who He is
is love. And then we need to understand
what that love is. When we see how God describes
love and how He carries out love for people, the Bible doesn't
describe it in some sort of sentimental, ooey-gooey, warm, fuzzy kind
of way. Really, God's love is expressed
by His righteousness. God loves in the sense that He
does what's right. He does what's good. He does
what's right and good before Him, and He does what's right
and good for other people. Now I'm not trying to take away
from the affection and the warm feelings I'm sure God has and
the personal intimate affection he has for his children because
we do see that described in scripture. We read about this in Matthew
last week, about how Jesus wanted to take Jerusalem under his wing
like mother hen takes her chicks. So yeah, God has compassion,
God has affection, but that's really a manifestation and an
outgrowth of his holy righteousness. Because God in his very character,
his very nature, is to be right, is to be good, is to bless. And that also applies in the
exercise of his judgment and wrath. God is not just simply
getting back at people here. Oh, those people were mean to
me, so I'm gonna be mean to them. No. God is righteous, and he's
holy, and he's putting an end to evil. And believe it or not,
that's for the benefit of the evil people. He's keeping them from storing
up more wrath for themselves. He's keeping them from perpetuating
any further evil in the world. and infecting other people with
evil. When God puts an end to evil,
when he exercises his just, righteous wrath and anger on a sinful world,
he's doing it because he's good. He's doing it because he's love.
He's doing it because he's righteous. He can't be both love and allow
for sin. Because sin is hatred for God
and hatred for his ways. It's just evil, and that evil
has to be stopped. So yeah, is God pressing this
point home here now in chapter seven and giving us a sort of
a deeper, like I said, I wanna be careful about saying God adding
on here. I think it's more of a question
of him giving a deeper insight as to what his wrath is about
and why he's pouring his wrath out on Jerusalem. He really wants
us to get this. He really wants us to apprehend
this and appreciate this. And he wants us to understand
it in its full context. And so last week when we started
reading through chapter seven, one of the contexts or one of
the dimensions that God is giving about his wrath is he said, this
is a day certain. This is coming. And once again,
this ties in with God saying, you people have not been listening
to me. I've been telling you what the right thing to do is.
I've been telling you how to live your lives. You rejected
my teaching. You rejected the life I gave
you and the way of life I gave you. You didn't listen to me. Now I'm giving you over to the
consequences of your actions. And you need to know that my
word is true. So this is not so much about
God getting revenge, as it is about him saying, my word is
true, and defending the truth of his word. God doesn't lie. God is truth. Jesus said, I'm the way, the
truth, and the life. We can equally refer that to
the Father. The Father's the way, the truth,
and the life. The Holy Spirit's the way, the truth, and the life.
God is about the way, the truth, and the life. But if you doubt
God or question God, you're calling Him a liar and you're not trusting
Him for how to live your life. Hence Adam and Eve. Didn't take
God at His word and destroyed their lives. That's the same
point he's making here in Ezekiel 7. You have to take me at my
word. And he's being very specific here and very pointed here. There
is a day coming. in God's eternal counsel, he
knew that day. He knew that day when he was
going to destroy Jerusalem in 586 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar
and destroy the temple there. And bring about the famine and
the pestilence and the bloodshed by the sword and the scattering
of the people. He's now adding this dimension
or giving us a deeper understanding of this wrath by saying, this
is definitely happening. Don't doubt me. Don't second guess me. And that makes it that much more
chilling then when we read Jesus in Matthew chapters 24 and 25
and now he's discussing about the second destruction of Jerusalem
and the destruction of the temple. Because once again, the people
of Israel didn't take God at his word. Particularly, they
didn't take him at his word about their means for salvation and
their means for righteousness through his son, Jesus Christ. They rejected Christ. They now
have not only murdered all the prophets, now they've murdered
his greatest prophet, Jesus Christ. And he's saying, you've rejected
the life I was gonna give you through my son, Jesus Christ.
You rejected the abundant life, the eternal life, the way, the
truth, and the life found in my son Jesus Christ. So now Jerusalem,
you're gonna be destroyed. And we looked at it a little
bit last week as we read here through chapter seven, then we
also read there in Matthew 24 and 25, we saw the striking parallels
between what God is saying to Jerusalem here back in 500 B.C.,
around that time period. And then what Jesus is then saying
sometime around 30 A.D., later on. I'm rounding off figures
here. But we learned last week, God
is definite about His Word. Now, He doesn't tell the specific
day. He's just saying there's a day
coming. And believe me, that day is coming. And we now know
from history, we have the benefit now in the 21st century to look
back and say, yeah, God did definitely carry this out. And once again,
586 BC through Nebuchadnezzar. We look back and say, yeah, God
definitely did this in 70 AD and destroyed Jerusalem by Rome
and destroyed the temple. We have that benefit. But let's
also remember that makes us now that much more accountable before
God. I've heard a lot of people say,
oh, it's great to be able to live under the New Testament.
I say, oh, I wholeheartedly agree. But do you also realize it makes
you that much more accountable before God? Because now we've
seen God fulfill his word through his son, Jesus Christ. We know
God's word is true because Christ is risen, risen indeed. I don't object to us taking one
day a year to recognize Resurrection Sunday, but there's also a sense
where we should be praising the Lord for the Resurrection every
day. We should be celebrating Christmas and Easter every day.
Christ came into this world. Christ was crucified and raised
up for us. We should always be mindful and thankful of that.
But we see God's Word is true. And that's why he's giving us
these specifics. Now, even though God didn't give Ezekiel the specific
date when Jerusalem was going to be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar,
even though Jesus didn't give the specific date to his disciples
when Rome was going to destroy Jerusalem, they both made it
clear, this day is coming. And once again, God's Word is
sufficient. Our Reformed and Puritan church
fathers made that clear when we're looking at scripture. God's
word is sufficient for what we need to know. What we need to
know about God, what we need to know about his son Jesus Christ,
what we need to know about salvation, and we should be content in that.
We should be happy with that. God knows what we need to know. Adam and Eve knew what they needed
to know. Don't eat of that tree. That's what they need to know
for life. Because once again, God has always been testing us
as a race. Do you take me at my word? So
God gives us enough information, first of all, that we have reason
to believe him. We have reason to live for him.
God's word is sufficient for that. But he doesn't tell us
everything. Because we can't have a relationship
with God unless we trust him. And unless we take him at his
word. So God has been teaching us as a human race throughout
all history, trust me and take me at my word. That doesn't mean he's given
us blind faith. In fact, I was talking before about how I can
get angry about things. One of the things I get angry
about is when people say, you Christians have a blind faith. I hate that
phrase. Our faith is not a blind faith.
We don't just simply believe because we believe. God has given
us reason to believe. He's given us every reason to
believe. He's given us every sufficient reason to take Him
at His word. What more does he have to do
than to send his son Jesus Christ into this world to be crucified
and raised up for us? What more does God have to do
to prove himself to us? We should take him at his word.
And this has been our problem throughout history. We don't
take God at his word, even though he has sufficiently explained
to us what we need to know for life and to worship him and serve
him. So yes, even though God is not
giving the specific date, He is saying a specific date is
coming. Same thing with Jesus. He doesn't give the specific
date for the destruction of Jerusalem, but He says it's coming. Once
again, so that we grow in our faith, and we take God at His
Word, and we take His Word seriously, we take it to heart. That's the
other element, that's the other deeper dimension here. You know,
it's not only to intellectually believe what God is saying, it's
also to let what God is saying change your heart, and bring
you to faith and repentance. and to truly trust Him and to
love Him, to know how loving and caring and compassionate
He is, how righteous He is, how holy He is, who He is. Take that
to heart. Don't just know that up here
in your head. Yeah, once again, the old saying, head knowledge
and heart knowledge. Let this knowledge change your heart,
change your life, so that you do worship Him now and you trust
Him now with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Once
again, God has given you every reason to worship Him, to trust
Him, to obey Him, to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind,
and strength. And then also to touch upon,
this applies to us as Christians as well, and then in terms of
the ultimate return of Christ, and the ultimate day of judgment
when Christ returns and brings an end to human history of this
sinful dying world. And he creates a new heaven and
a new earth. And I think there are a lot of dimensions that
we're not going to go down that rabbit trail tonight about the new dimensions
or the dimensions and all the aspects of a new heaven and new
earth. Suffice it to say for tonight, Jesus made it very clear
in all his teachings, this age is coming to an end. Yeah, Jerusalem
was coming to an end, but then the entire human race, all the
other nations, and their sovereign existence as nations is also
coming to an end where Christ reigns and rules over all the
nations and establishes his authority over all men. And every knee
bows and every tongue confesses Jesus Christ is Lord. It's not
just the believers in Jesus who are going to bow down and confess
Jesus is Lord. Every tongue, every creature
in heaven and on earth every generation, every age, every
tongue and tribe and nation, every race and religion, male,
female, young, old, black and white, everyone is going to confess
Jesus Christ as Lord. That's all coming to this culmination. There is a last day. There is a day of judgment coming. And once again, when we look
at this, what God was saying to Ezekiel, to Jerusalem in his
day, when we look to what Christ was saying to the people of Israel
in Jerusalem in their day, how much more so do we need to take
it to heart, the last day, that date certain, when Christ comes
to judge the living and the dead. And as we were saying, when you
look at these parallels, what's said here in Ezekiel, it's the
same thing that Jesus was saying to Jerusalem, And it's the same
thing that the apostles and what Jesus says to us in the book
of Revelation about the last days for all of the human race.
Here God is specifically speaking in history to the people of Israel
in their day and their age. That's the prime understanding
of this text. Some people say, oh no, this
is talking about the future coming of Christ. No. The prime meaning
of this text, this is what God was saying to Jerusalem in his
day. This is what Jesus was saying
to Jerusalem in his day. Now, yes, we clean from that
and we learn from that and we apply that to the last day where
Christ is returning. But first and foremost, this
message was to the people of Jerusalem in their day. And then
we should take it to heart what Jesus has said to us about the
last day for all the nations when he judges the living and
the dead. Before we go any further, I think we're all up to speed
now from last week, but any thoughts or comments or questions about
that? Yeah, Angela. I don't know the exact scripture,
but in the passages that we just read, when he says, the seller
shall not return to that which is sold, it's kind of the same
language to the way he's speaking about how people are going to
be working in the field, and it's just going to be any other
day, and no man's going to know the hour, but it's going to come. You're jumping ahead, but it's
a good jumping ahead. So let's turn to that text. Let's
turn to Matthew chapter 24. Because yeah, there's nothing
wrong with jumping ahead, because if you brought it up, if the
Spirit put that on your heart to bring that up, let's not argue
with God here. Let's go right to it. Matthew
chapter 24, verses 36 through 44. In fact, Angela, would you
read that for us? Because you're right, it's dead
on parallel. And once again, now this is Jesus
speaking to the people of Jerusalem sometime around 30 AD. But of that day and hour knoweth
no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But
as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the
Son of Man be. For as in the days that were
before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving
in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark. and
knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall
also the coming of the Son of Man be. Then shall two be in
the field, the one shall be taken and the other left. Two women
shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the
other left. Watch therefore, for ye know
not what hour your Lord doth come. And we can see that here. People are going to be going
about doing their day-to-day business, the buyer and the seller. We
mentioned last week, too, that when we read this text here in
Ezekiel 7, it is really written in a poetic literary style. We see certain stanzas, certain
metaphors and descriptions, things that kind of sum up what's going
on in people's day-to-day lives. And so we see here this illustration
of the buyer, the seller. which refers to our day-to-day
business, our day-to-day economy. And then we see the same type
of illustration then being given by Jesus there in Matthew. And once again, I think those
texts, I guess it's called the Mount Olivet Discourse, where
Jesus is talking to his disciples and to the people of Israel right
before his crucifixion and his resurrection, and he's trying
to prepare them for the future kingdom. We see a transition
there. We see that Jesus is using the
illustration of the coming destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, to also
explain to them, once again, then His coming for all the nations
and to judge all the nations. So, once again, we see this parallel
here. But yes, the same idea. People
are so hard-hearted to God, they're comfortable and complacent in
their sin and their misery, and they're not turning to God. They
think they're God in themselves and they can run and control
their own lives. And there's a day of reckoning
coming. where God is gonna shake them up and God's gonna say,
you're not God, you're not in control in your lives. Even though
you're running about and doing your business and taking care
of your family and doing your job and buying and selling and
doing this and doing that, you're not gonna be in control on the
day of judgment. You're gonna have to bow down
before the Lord Jesus Christ and know that he is God. That's
one of the things God is saying here. You think you're God running
your lives, going about doing your buying and your selling
and your day-to-day business, and you think life is about you
and who you are, what you're doing? You're gonna find out
that I'm God. You're living your life totally
outside of who I am. You're ignoring my word. You're
ignoring my truth. You're indulging your own selfish
pursuits. You're seeking your own gain
and glory. You're not worshiping me as God. You're going to find
out I'm God. You're going to find out you're
not in control of your life. So, excellent jump ahead. But
I do want to back up a little, though, because, yeah, behold
the day. Let's pick up there in verse
10. Behold the day. Behold, it has come. Doom has gone out.
The rod has blossomed. Pride has budded. Once again,
this is poetic language. Once again, the rod. Rod is always
a symbol, an emblem of discipline. Yeah, that's how parents used
to discipline their children. You know, the old saying. Spare
the rod, spoil the child. They would take a whipping stick
and smack your kid on the butt. I like to say the good old days. But there's this point here that
this is God going to now discipline the people. And why is the rod
now coming? Why is it now the full time to
use the rod? That's the significance of what's
being said here. Why is this doom coming on Jerusalem? Why
has it now come to a head and come to fruition here? That's
what he's saying here, that the rod has blossomed. It's come
to the full time when God has to now exercise his judgment
and his wrath here. He says, why? Because pride has
budded. Once again, we're using these illustrations from agriculture
and horticulture to help us understand we grow in our sin. And we, quote, unquote, blossom
in our sin. And then God's wrath also blossoms
and comes into full play. And he hits the nail right on
the head here. At the heart of all this is your
pride, is your arrogance. You think you're God. It's not just that you're offering
up prayers to Asheroth and Baal and all the authors in the high
places and your idolatry, because what's at the heart of that?
You're creating God in your image. That's pride. That's you saying,
I know better than God. I know how to worship God better
than how God tells me to worship him. I have a better idea about
who God is than God does. Do we understand how arrogant? Sometimes I think we look at
the Old Testament idolatry and we just think of it in this intellectual
sense of, oh, how foolish that was. Because obviously a carved
stone or a carved piece of wood, it has no power in it. So these
people were just superstitious and foolish. And that's what
God is upset about. No. What God is upset about is
you think you know who God is. And you're creating God to serve
you with the God you want, which ultimately means you're making
yourself God. When people were making statues
and temples to Zeus and to Diana, Athena, Venus, you know, Jupiter,
you know, whatever Greek or Roman name you want to use. I forget
which now, which one's the Romans, which one's the Greeks. You know,
when they came up with all these names and all these gods with
Baal and Asherah, they were really making themselves God. And look how they humanized the
gods. This is why God says they exchanged
the truth for the lie. They serve the creature rather
than the creator. They make things in the image of creatures, because
that's what they knew. That's what they controlled.
There was a reason why people made idols out of the birds of
the air and the beasts of the field, because those were things
they controlled, and they knew they had dominion over. At the
heart of all this pagan idolatry in the Old Testament, it wasn't
just that they were superstitious people who believed there was
some voodoo magic in statues or carvings. What was so sinful
was they thought they were God because they were creating God
in their image and a God that they could control, a God that
could serve them. instead of a God who was and
is to be worshipped and glorified and served and submitted to. They were trying to make God
subject to them. That's pride. That's pride. There's a difference
between pride and ego. Ego just means you think your
stink doesn't stink. Look how great I am. That's your
ego. Pride is, not only do I have
an ego and think my stink doesn't stink, I think I know better
than God. I'm making myself God. Because
this applies to the person, too, who sits there and doesn't go
around and say, oh, everybody loves me. This goes to the person
who sits there and says, nobody loves me. That's just as prideful. That's just as arrogant. It's
just as prideful and arrogant to say nobody loves me as it
is to say everybody loves me. Because you're making yourself
God. You're making yourself the center of attention. You're making
life about you and who you are and what your circumstances are.
You're trying to control your life. You're trying to say to
God what your life should be about. It's pride. Pride is saying,
I'm God and God isn't, and I know better than God, and God should
be making me happy. This is why the health and wealth
and name it and claim it kind of theology that you see in our
culture today is so blasphemous, because it's people saying, God,
you have to make me happy. As opposed to saying, I need
to worship and serve God, and I need to know and understand
who this God is. See, at the heart of all this
sin, the reason why he's putting this to an end is he's saying,
I'm putting an end to their pride. Because when we make ourselves
God, we all come to the cruel realization we're not God, and
then we're dead. then life is futile, then life
is frustrating, then life is depressing, and life is deadly. If life has no meaning, this
is what the author of Ecclesiastes was getting at, it's all vanity,
vanity, vanity. If I'm just living for myself,
and trying to find my meaning in life through the wealth and
the power and all the things of this world, it's all vanity. And that's nothing. It's empty,
I'm dead. That's why the author of Ecclesiastes
says, all I can do, worship God, know God and fear God. Because
that's the only place where you're gonna find life, the creator
of life, the giver of life. The Lord God Almighty. If you're
trying to live your life outside of God and make yourself God,
you're killing yourself. You're killing yourself. So this is why God is putting
an end to the evil, because these people were destroying their
lives. They were destroying the life God gave them with their
pride. And that's why I said when you
keep then going on and reading, violence has risen up into the
rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, none
of their multitude, none of them, nor shall there be wailing for
them. The time has come, the days draw near. When you live such a prideful,
arrogant life, you bring about your own destruction. And you bring about, in all honesty,
the hatred and the enmity of others. I think this is chilling for
us to read when we look at our culture today and just look how
prideful our culture is. When we see all that divides
our country today, whether it be economically or politically
or racially or socially, can we not point to people's pride
and think, hey, life is about me? Black lives matter. Blue lives
matter. God matters. You're not worshiping God. This is why you have people killing
each other in the streets. Because you know what? Nobody
likes someone else saying life is about them when you think
life is about you. Natural consequences that for
people to kill each other and shed blood I'm not gonna let
you make life about you. No life is about me So I'm gonna
destroy you and kill you before you destroy and kill me We have over 6,000 years of history
proving that very point And all goes back to Cain and
Abel and Oh, this is about who Abel is?
No, life is about who I am as Cain. Who does that Abel guy
think he is? I'm taking him out. It's Cain's
pride. Pride leads to violence. When
you make life about you, anything that's a threat to that, you're
going to destroy. This is how deadly the sin of
pride is. That's why pride has been called
the deadliest sin. it leads to bloodshed and violence. And then God is saying, I have
to put an end to that. And the only way I can put an
end to that violence is violently, forcefully, powerfully, overwhelmingly. So, yes, Ken, you had your hand
up. I actually heard today in, it was actually a political podcast,
but they were talking about how our culture and our country in
particular has turned pride into one of the greatest attributes
around to push out. You should be proud of yourself.
You should be proud of gay pride, white pride, black pride, whatever. You need to be proud of yourself.
You need to push yourself up more. And it's being lauded as
one of the greatest things you could do. It just shows that
the degradation of our culture is so rotted. Right. And it proves the point. Those
who seek to gain their life lose their life. Yeah, finding pride in yourself.
And don't get me wrong, this doesn't give us justice to hate
someone else, to say, oh, well those people are just prideful
and arrogant, so let's just hate them and discriminate them. No,
now you're being prideful. No, the world needs Christ. Young black men need the Lord
Jesus Christ. Police officers need the Lord
Jesus Christ. Men need the Lord Jesus Christ.
Women need the Lord Jesus Christ. People who are confused whether
they're a man or a woman need the Lord Jesus Christ. They have to die to themselves.
They have to die to their pride to know that they were created
in the image of God. that they were created to glorify
God. They were created to worship
and serve God, to know God's love, his blessing, his goodness,
who he is, his righteousness, his holiness. You can only know
life by being holy like God is holy. God, when he was telling
us to be holy as he is holy, it's so that we could know who
he is. and know all of his goodness,
know all of his love, and have that change our lives. Now don't
get me wrong, we can hear that verse, and God said it to the
people of Israel, Peter reminds us of that as the church in his
epistles, be holy as he is holy. I think sometimes we tend to
look at that just strictly in the moralistic sense, oh, I better
live a clean life. Now that's true, but it goes
much deeper than that. You should be holy so you're
like God and you can know His power, His presence, who He is
and what He's about. And you can be like Him and know
all of His goodness, know all of His blessing. And you can
glorify Him and worship Him and carry out the purpose He had
for you and carry out His will so that you can know life and
know life abundantly. It's not just about being good
and moral. Don't get me wrong. We need to be good and moral.
I'm not taking away from that. But to understand the motivation
behind being good and moral. It's about knowing who God is.
And seeing God at work in you and blessing you. And you're
glorifying Him, because that's why He created you. He created
you to make Him known, to make His truth known, His love known,
His righteousness known, every aspect of Him known. That's where
life is found. Life is found in the Creator
and in His goodness. So when we get prideful and we
make ourselves God, that's the most unholy thing you can do.
And you're right, we call evil good now. Oh, it's good to be
prideful. Where does that ever end? Oh, I take pride in being a Jew. Well, the problem there is the
Germans took pride in being Nazis. See the problem? I'm not justifying
what the Nazis did, but I'm not justifying what the Jews did
either. If you're making pride, you're a god, you're making yourself
god and making life about who you are, that's going to result
in bloodshed and hatred and violence. and neither one of you are worshiping
and serving God, and neither one of you are glorifying God,
and you're destroying yourselves. We have to see everything in
light of who God is, not in light of who we are and how we relate
with one another. The only way we can really know how to relate
with one another and deal with one another is to first understand
who we are with God. This is why Jesus says, you love
one another as I have so loved you. The reason we love each
other is because Christ has so loved us and we're showing Christ
to one another. And I've said this before and
I'll say it again. If we make our relationships
as Christians just based on who we are and our own personal attitudes
and our own personal philosophies on life, there's gonna be nothing
but division and discord and hate. But if we recognize, wait a minute,
I have nothing to be prideful about. I'm just a terrible, wretched
sinner saved only by grace, by Jesus being loving and forgiving
of me. and because he's been loving and forgiving of me, I
gotta be loving and forgiving to all my brothers and sisters
at Grace Reformed Baptist Church, because of who he is and what
he's done. That's the only way I can truly
love any of you, is if I'm taking to heart who Christ is and how
Christ has so loved me. Because otherwise, all you guys
get on my nerves. And then I know how much I get
on your nerves. No, it comes down to who Christ
is. This is why so many marriages
fail. People in the marriage, what's in it for them? Oh, this
is how this person makes me feel. Oh, and this is how this person
makes me feel. And Christ isn't even in the
picture. That marriage is headed for divorce, because there's
coming a time when that person isn't going to make you feel
that way. Because there's romance, and
then there's real life. And as soon as real life hits,
romance goes right out the window. And I'm seeing all the married
couples nodding their heads. The only reason Jill and I have been
married for 22 years, we'll both tell you, is Jesus Christ. Otherwise, I think we would have
been divorced in the first couple of years. The only reason we have William
is because of Jesus Christ. And you know what? We're both
still learning what it is to love one another in Christ. We
still have not yet reached perfection. But we'll be the first ones to
tell you, we can't do it without Christ. We can't do it without
knowing how Christ has loved us. Because the only thing that
can really truly motivate us to keep our marriage together
is that the marriage was there to glorify Christ and to show
the love Christ has for the church. So if we're married, it's about
us showing Christ to one another. And that's the only thing that
will keep us together. We can only forgive each other because
Christ has so forgiven us. But that's what we're really
seeing going on here. The people of Israel have become
so prideful, so arrogant. They thought their life was just
their life. They could just go about and
do whatever they wanted. They didn't need God in their lives,
but they were destroying their lives. They weren't living at
peace with the other nations around them. We'll get into more
of this detail here. We're gonna find out who the
Babylonians are. We're gonna find out who the Egyptians were.
We're gonna find out who the Philistines were. We're gonna
find out about these other nations and the Assyrians. God wasn't
just dealing with, yes, he made a covenant relationship with
Israel, but that was to show the other nations who God was
and how God loves the people. They were meant there to glorify
God. They had a covenant relationship with God to glorify God, so the
other nations could see who God is and how good and gracious
and loving God was. When they rejected God, when
they weren't worshipping God, and they were just worshipping
themselves, they became worse than all the other nations. And
the other nation says, who is this Israel to get in our way? We're taking them out. we're taking them out, because
of their pride. Now that's not to justify Nebuchadnezzar. No, he's still prideful, and
he's still wicked, and he's still conquering a people. And that's
what we're gonna read on further here in chapter seven, but God's
making it very clear. I'm using those sinful, wicked people to
humble you in your pride. You have to deal with your pride.
Don't be sitting there saying, well, I'm not as bad and sinful
as these other people. No, you got to deal with your
sin. Because as we do read on, we
find out God is also bringing his judgment on these other nations
as well. He'll deal with them. He'll deal with their pride.
But we're responsible for our sin and for our pride. And if
we understand the wrath of God, and we realize how prideful and
violent and self-destructive we've become, and that God is
very serious about bringing an end to our wickedness and our
evil and our pride and our violence. That, once again, as I said,
better change our hearts where we humbly, humbly, humbly go
before the Lord and seek Him in faith and in repentance. Because
God's word is true. You better know that God is God. Our problem is, as we're living
our day-to-day lives, we think we're God. We get mad at everyone
else because they're not making us happy, they're not doing what
we want, and that's all selfish pride. And we're miserable in
our lives, and we hate everyone, and we hate ourselves. Instead of surrendering to God
and saying, God, how can I worship you today? How can I glorify
you today? How can I show your love today?
How can I show your truth today? How can I show your righteousness
today so that I can know your truth, your love, your righteousness,
so I can know who you are and what you're doing? That's why Christ came to this
world, so that we could have eternal life, so that we could
know who God is, and we could glorify him and worship him.
So, let's close there for tonight, but any other closing thoughts,
or yeah, Ken. Just real quick, what you were
saying about God's gonna be taking Nebuchadnezzar's task, reminding
me of, in Isaiah chapter 10, I'll just read five to seven.
Yeah. It was, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, and the
staff in whose hand is my indignation. I will send him against an ungodly
nation, that's the northern 10 tribes, and I will give him the
charge to seize the spoil, to take the prey, and to tread him
down like a mire in the street. Yet he does not mean so, nor
does his heart think so, but it is in his heart to destroy
and to cut off few nations. God is using Assyria to punish
northern Israel, and yet he's still gonna punish Assyria for
their actions because their heart was meant to be wicked. And this
historically ties in because Jerusalem and Judah should have
learned from what God did with Assyria to the northern 10 tribes. And once again we see that same
descriptive language. These people think everything
is okay, I can do what I wanna do, but they don't know God. And so God sent the Assyrians
to overtake and destroy the 10 northern tribes of Israel. No,
they didn't all get on boats and go out to the Southwest like
the Mormons want you to believe. As the Book of Mormon tells us.
The Book of Mormon tells us the 10 lost tribes of Israel all
got on boats and they all came to America and settled out West.
And they started a whole new civilization out there. Yeah,
yeah. So, no. Whether you're a Christian
or not, the history books are clear. Assyria destroyed the
10 northern tribes of Israel and assimilated them into their
race because they were so wicked. And here Jerusalem and Judah
is ignoring that, saying, oh, God's not going to bring judgment
on us. We can still live like the way
we want to live. I think that's very dangerous
for us, especially in our culture. Because I think, in all honesty,
the Christian in America today, we're way too comfortable and
complacent. And we think, oh, we're God. We even sometimes, like I said,
I don't like it when people say, America is a Christian nation.
No. America is a nation that's been
influenced by Christianity and has been blessed by Christianity.
I agree with that. But I sometimes think people
think, oh, no, we're God's people, so God will never bring anything
harm upon us. It's the same arrogance and mentality
that people of Israel had. And they really were God's people.
Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, these are
lessons for us to learn today. And like I said, this was all
part of God's eternal counsel and his progressive revelation.
We should have learned from Assyria taking over the northern 10 tribes.
We should have learned from Nebuchadnezzar destroying Jerusalem in 586 BC. We should have learned from Rome
destroying Jerusalem in 70 AD. So the more reason why we better
repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, because he's coming
on a day certain. to judge the living and the dead,
and he's gonna put an end to all the evil in this world. And people are gonna be going
about, like we read there, like in the days of Noah, going about,
oh, God's never gonna punish us. First of all, even if there
is a God, I don't think that God would ever punish. He takes
into account we're just human. He knows us. It's arrogance either way. Whether
you sit there and say, there is no God up there who's gonna
judge you. And there were people who said, well, I believe there
is a God, but I don't like the fact that God is gonna bring judgment,
so I'm gonna reject it. And then the people who also
then just say, oh, God would never do that. The days of Noah. Days of Jerusalem
in 586 BC, Days of Jerusalem 70 AD. The Jewish leadership
were saying to Jesus, you're not Messiah, you don't know Abraham,
we're the children of Abraham, God will never judge us like
that. Woe to you Pharisees. And we live in a culture today,
and like I said, even sadly in some churches, oh God isn't like
that anymore. You know, God would never bring
about judgment like that, no. In the end, we all get saved.
Because he understands we're only human. That's just as blasphemous
as the atheist who said, there is no God, and this is hell right
now, and then we all die, and that's it. Yeah. So it's not like God hasn't warned
us. We need to take God at his word.
We need to repent and believe and ask Him to be merciful to
us. We need to ask Him, humble us,
humble us, humble us. We are so prideful. We are so
self-consuming. And as Ken was pointing out before,
we live in a culture that just seems to feed that pride and
that arrogance and make it all about our pride and our arrogance. I have to be who I am. Hear me roar. You know, I am
woman, hear me roar. Helen Reddy, yeah, great hit
back in the 70s. It was the hymn of the feminist
movement. I am woman, hear me roar. OK. And now a generation, two generations
later, we have people saying, I'm whatever I feel like being,
hear me roar. I don't know if I'm a woman.
Yeah, I'm not. I'm this. I'm that. I'm whatever. Hear me roar. Every knee is going to bow. Every
tongue is going to confess. Regardless of who you think you
are, you're going to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord. Yeah. Lion of Judah. And remember,
as C.S. Lewis tells us, remember, he's
still a lion. I love that line about Aslan.
He's still a lion. Yeah, kids, I know you love him.
I know you love Aslan. He saved you guys. But remember,
he's still a lion. So why don't we close in prayers? Paul, would you close us in prayer
tonight?
Deadly Pride
Series Study of the book of Ezekiel
| Sermon ID | 5819229402272 |
| Duration | 53:40 |
| Date | |
| Category | Bible Study |
| Bible Text | Ezekiel 7 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.