want you to picture a quiet farm in Pennsylvania. A man named Graham Hess wakes up to find a strange crop circles carved into his cornfield. At first he thinks it's a prank. Kids are messing around. But then his dogs go wild attacking his children. A baby monitor picks up eerie clicks and whispers. A news report shows an alien at a child's birthday party, green and scaly, slipping through an alley. His little girl, Bo, leaves half-drunk glasses of water everywhere, saying that it tastes funny. His son Morgan struggles with asthma. His brother Merrill keeps a baseball bat on the wall, a reminder of his failed career that could have been something. Graham, a former pastor, sees these as random annoyances. They're proof of a world that is cruel and God is absent. He's lost his faith after becoming bitter and angry at God after his wife's tragic death in a car accident where she remained alive for a short while, impaled, conscious, but about to die. Her dying words were jumbled, garbled, incoherent babble. See, she said, and swing away, Meryl. By the end of the movie Signs, these signs, these circles, the water, the asthma, the bat, the last words of a dying wife, come together to save his family from aliens. What seemed like chaos was God's predestined plan that eventually restored Graham's faith in God. Now, imagine Ezekiel. He's a priest in ancient Israel called by God to do some very bizarre things. He must lie on his side for 390 days, then flip over for 40 more, tied up, barely eating. He must build a model of Jerusalem under siege like a child's war game, but deadly serious. He's to cook bread over human feces to show the filth of exile. He has to shave his head and burn his hair, scattering it to the wind. To Israel, these acts look crazy, pointless, and even disgusting. But they were God's signs of predestined judgment while implicitly pleading for their repentance. Like the crop circles in Graham's field, Ezekiel's acts were strange, shocking, and deliberate. They were God's way of saying, wake up, I'm still here for better or for worse. Today we're gonna see how God uses wild signs of his prophet to grab our attention and break our stubbornness and point us to hope. So Ezekiel three, starting verse 16, all the way through chapter five, verse 17. At this rate, we might be through Ezekiel in a month. This is a long single literary unit. It begins in verse 16. At the end of seven days, the word of the Lord came to me. The next unit will likewise begin the word of the Lord came to me in chapter six. It takes place seven days after the massively important first three chapters which saw Ezekiel being brought into the heavenly divine council through a vision where he saw one like a human being who's seated on his divine chariot throne being attended and guarded by these bizarre cherubim creatures. Ezekiel has now, as Jeremiah puts it, stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and to hear his word. He's been greatly humbled by his encounter. He's been set apart for a particularly daunting task, and now it's about to unfold. Our passage takes place at the beginning of a series of chapters dealing with judgment being proclaimed upon Israel. The text itself seems to me to best fit a simple outline. It's four parts. First, Ezekiel is commissioned to be a watchman, and then he's bound and he becomes mute. Then there are sign acts of Jerusalem's siege and judgment. That's what we read earlier for the law. And then finally, God's explanation of the judgment. Now the sign acts are by far the most dominant feature of this story. They've been discussed by a lot of scholars. Some suggest that there are four of them. Others say five. Dr. Heiser thought that there were nine of them, and I'm gonna go with this because of how it relates to a prior series of signs in the book of Exodus at the very end of our sermon. What is the function of these signs? Well, there are five suggestions out there. First, sign acts are efficacious in and of themselves. They create the reality that they express by the power of God. Second, sign acts are prophetic dramas which express reality. Third thing, sign acts are used to legitimate and authenticate a prophet's status. Fourth, sign acts are a form of a street theater, a way to attract attention through vivid actions. And then finally, sign acts are a type of nonverbal communication used to persuade an audience of the prophet's message. Now, I see no reason why these can't be complementary things. And for today's sermon, I'm gonna be following a few portions of the only person I've ever heard preach on these chapters, D.A. Carson, in his amazing sermon that he's delivered on a number of occasions. I heard it at Denver Seminary 25 years ago and couldn't believe that he preached it. So we're gonna begin in verse 16 of chapter three. At the end of the seven days, the word of the Lord came to me. Now this follows the pattern that began back in chapter one, verse three, where the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel. The first time this ever happens in the Bible, the word of the Lord comes to Abram in a vision. The word then speaks, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great. Abram immediately calls the word Lord God. The word of God that comes to Ezekiel is a person. The word is God, that's what John 1 says. The word speaks, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. The Jewish Targum says, when you hear a word from my memra, or literally, when you hear a word from my word, That's strange, right? But it confirms that the Jews themselves believed that the Word is God. Ezekiel's being made a watchman over Israel, that is, over the totality of the nation, wherever they happen to be at the moment, whether it's in Israel or in exile. Daniel Bloch explains that the noun derives from a common root meaning to look out, to spy, or to keep watch. Persons chosen for sentry duty were generally stationed on lookout towers, strategically placed on walls of the city, the roofs of the gatehouse, or towers outside the city. The watchman's charge involved paying careful attention to the enemy's movements. In the face of an imminent attack, he would blow his horn, his shofar, summoning the soldiers to arms, then the civilians to take cover. In other words, Ezekiel is being given a military commission by the king, who apparently is about to go to war. So who is the enemy? Well, the enemy is Israel and her sin. God has a warning for Ezekiel. He says, if I say to the wicked, you shall surely die, and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. This is a great burden, and if Ezekiel is representative of any of those in our own day who are likewise given the calling of faithfully proclaiming God's word, that is the holy scripture, to the people, woe to those who refuse to speak the truth. God will hold them accountable. But there is good news in verse 19. If you warn the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from the wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. So if he tells the people what God says, their blood will not be on his hands. However, this is such a serious charge that the Lord basically repeats it in the next verse, only this time, rather than go after the wicked, he goes after the righteous, who turns from his righteousness and commits injustice. God says he's going to, quote, lay a stumbling block before him and he shall die. So we're getting the first taste of an entire six-course meal of judgment that is to come in the following chapters. And when we read these first 11 chapters a few weeks ago, we all felt how overwhelming it was. This is not the God we often hear about in today's churches, but it is the God of the Bible. He tells the prophet that because you have not warned him, he will still die for his sin and even his righteous deeds will not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. However, if you warn the righteous person not to sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warning and you will have delivered your soul. So this gives us one of the rare glimpses of grace and the possibility of repentance that will only be implicit as we move along. It's important to remember something that we will come to in a later chapter, that God does not delight in the death of the wicked, but that he should turn from his evil ways and do good. If you do not have this as your anchor, then you may not be able to handle the God that you are about to see. We come to the second of our four main headings in our text. In it, quote, the hand of the Lord comes upon Ezekiel and he said, arise and go out into the valley and there I will speak with you. Notice that the hand speaks because it's the military hand of God, his right hand, the divine warrior, the word of God. Ezekiel doesn't know what's in store, so he rises and goes into the valley and says, Now the tendency of the majority of theologians, when they read a verse like this, is to anthropomorphize the Lord standing here. Now that's a big word. What is an anthropomorphism? Well, it's attributing human characteristics, behaviors, or forms to God that describe him in ways relatable to human experience. Now, it's quite true that God in his essence does not have human attributes. God is spirit and he's omnipresent. However, God has just manifested himself to Ezekiel as one like a human being. This was God coming to him as a person, particularly the second person, the son of God who somehow appears to him like a human being. Human beings are quite capable of standing. This is a real embodied presence of Christ before Ezekiel. Not of the divine essence of God, which would have incinerated Ezekiel on the spot. This is God clothing himself for the prophet's sake. And yet the result of seeing this is still that Ezekiel falls on his face. He knows whose presence he is now in. But it's happened in chapter two, verse one. It says next, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet. This is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, now interceding for the prophet who sees the living word of God. And the Spirit now speaks to him. He says, go shut yourself within your house. So the Spirit now speaks as if he is God, just as the second person did earlier. People ask about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. He's right here, right in front of us. We'll see much more of him throughout this book. Why must Ezekiel shut himself in his house? Well, it prepares him, not only him, but also as a warning for Israel. The Spirit commands, behold, cords will be placed upon you. and you shall be bound with them so that you cannot go out among the people. And I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth so that you shall be mute and unable to reprove them for they are a rebellious house. This seems to contradict his watchman role to warn the people. How can he warn if he's mute and bound, right? As the son of man, Ezekiel embodies Israel's priestly intercessor. Remember, he's a priest in chapter one. His cords symbolize the coming captivity in Babylon. However, these cords also echo priestly garments that bear Israel's tribes to the ephod and the breastplate back in the book of Exodus. As a priest, Ezekiel's binding is thus tied directly to Israel. He is a living example of them. Furthermore, God ensures Ezekiel that he can speak divine words. His muteness is only selective. Verse 27, but when I speak with you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God. He who will hear, let him hear and he who will refuse to hear, let him refuse for they are a rebellious house. And thus the binding makes him a living sign, proclaiming judgment non-verbally. His body, not his voice, is going to warn the rebellious house, setting the stage for the shocking sign acts that are coming in chapter four. Now this rebellious house, I don't know if you noticed it, but it has already appeared a lot. You cannot understate this phrase. This is the seventh time that it appears up to this point in the book. One of the great burdens of Ezekiel ministry was that Jerusalem and Judah were far more wicked than anyone thought, D.A. Carson says. And thus God has determined to destroy them. And Carson adds, can you imagine what that message sounded like to the exiles? If Ezekiel was right, they were not going home because pretty soon there was not going to be a home to go to. And Ezekiel will say nothing at all except the specific revelation God has given him. His silence is speaking volumes. I will say nothing, no comment, no salutations on the street, nothing until God gives me something to say, and then I will say it. This will have the effect, you see, of making these words astonishingly weighty. You know, some people speak and speak and speak even more. Have you met them? They can't help but talk. Frankly, it's rare to find someone who will actually ask you questions and then listen to you. This is the opposite. How much more to today's world where everyone feels the need to speak about everything? This is the definition of social media, as people unload absolutely anything they can on anyone willing to read them. And in a world where everything is important, well, then nothing actually is. But God still has weighty things to say today. He's speaking them right now. Are you listening? We're only continuing to speak. Now we're coming to the sign acts properly speaking in chapter four. These things probably take place at or near his house. I imagine Ezekiel living in close quarters with all the other exiles to Babylon. It was a small community, around 10,000 at the time, and what he will do would surely have garnered an ever-growing audience. The first sign is verses one through two. Basically, Ezekiel's going to play army men on his front porch. It says, and you, son of man, take a brick, and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem, and put siege works against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it, set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. Ezekiel takes a large sun-baked clay tablet, and he draws the city of Jerusalem on it. Now we actually have examples of such a thing from the city of Uma in the ancient Near East. He clearly makes it so that everyone watching knows what it is. Then he starts playing model war. He makes siege ramps. If you've seen Lord of the Rings, you have a pretty good idea of what this is. In a siege, people inside a walled city are first starved out, if possible, by cutting off the food supply. As you do this, you might build siege ramps, such as the incredible ramp still preserved at the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada, where 6,000 to 8,000 Roman soldiers camping throughout the local desert took anywhere between a month to a year building it just so that they could attack the poor souls hiding out on top of the fortress. Imagine Ezekiel, your neighbor in exile, saying absolutely nothing, starting out with this dramatic scene, which he himself could have taken weeks to build up. You've already been taken from the land as an exile, but now your thoughts can't help but think about all your loved ones still in Jerusalem. What is this prophet trying to tell you? The second sign act begins in verse three. Ezekiel is to take an iron griddle, something akin to a wok. He then is to set his face toward it, glaring at it as he holds the pan precariously over the city, saying nothing. For how long? For how many days? For how long each day does he do this? We have no idea. But the point is, a huge iron pan over a city made of clay with siege works all around it represents a massive, merciless force that is set to strike at any moment, smashing the city to ruins. With but a word, Jerusalem will be obliterated. Now verses four through eight see a dramatic shift in the imagery composed of three things. The first is that the prophet is to lie on his left side and so place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. Now if you are facing north, the direction of the incoming army, and of the northern kingdom of Israel, now already in ruins from the Assyrian captivity 100 and so years earlier, then his whole body would have been facing Israel from Babylon from its front porch. He's to lay this way for 390 days. In the words of Fran Tarkenton long ago, that's incredible. Did you guys ever watch that show? I can remember the first time I read this, I was like, he's supposed to do what? Again, for how long each day? Well, we aren't told, but you can bet it was for a long time each day. 390 is a number that no one understands. Some of you were asking me about this a couple weeks ago. I said, I'll get to it. and I found out nobody understands what this number means. Counting backwards from Ezekiel's time, it comes close to the onset of the Northern Rebellion under King Jeroboam in 931 BC, which is perhaps the meaning of verse five when it says, I assign to you a number of days, 390, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel. But Israel wasn't actually being punished for that long. The Septuagint actually reads 150 years, maybe tying it to the floods 150 days that the waters prevailed. However, it's possible that this is a kind of symbolic year gone wrong with 360 times 12 monthly cycles plus an extra 30 days maybe representing a kind of final month of grace before the hammer falls. Whatever the case, in verse 6 it shifts. Now imagine this. You're an onlooker. Every day, walking by this guy's house, wondering at what this strange prophet is doing, and every day after work, you walk past his siege works, and now he's laying on his side saying nothing. Day one, day two, day seven, 10, 20, 50 days pass. Then 100, then 200, it's the exact same thing. 300 days, then 350 days, 360, 380, 385, 86, 87, 88, 89, 390 days, nothing changes for over a year. Suddenly, the next day, you discover the prophets change directions. And now he's lying on his right side, likely facing south, and it says, and when you have completed these, you shall lie a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. 40 days I assign you, a day for each year. He's to set his face towards the siege of Jerusalem now, with his arm bared, and he shall prophesy against the city. His bared arm is the second sign of this section, and the fourth overall after laying on his sides. Now again, 40 is a number that doesn't make a lot of sense. 70 is the number we might have expected because Jeremiah predicted they would be in captivity for 70 years. However, we know that 40 is a number deeply tied to periods of testing and judgment. 40 days of Noah's Ark, 40 years in the wilderness, 40 days of Jesus' temptation. The text says that Ezekiel is to, quote, bear their iniquity. Now, unfortunately, the Hebrew here is ambiguous, and we don't know if he's actually bearing their sin or bearing their judgment. If Ezekiel were bearing Israel's judgment, it would mean he symbolically endures the consequences of their sin, such as exile and having to go through with these signs. If he were bearing their sin, it would mean he acts as a priestly mediator, ritually carrying their guilt before God, akin to atonement rituals, to highlight their moral culpability. Because he's a prophet, it could mean the former. Because he's a priest, it might mean the latter. The reality is these are not mutually exclusive things. The fifth sign appears. God is placing cords upon Ezekiel again, but so that he cannot turn from one side to the other until he's completed the days of his siege. He appears to somehow be bound up, suffering on his side, unable to move. Now clearly, not 24 hours a day, because it would make eating and drinking and personal hygiene impossible. Nevertheless, reading it, we get the impression that this would have been a brutal siege on Ezekiel. No wonder he had to have the vision from chapter one to keep him pressing ahead. This likely complements the chords of the previous chapter that identify the priest with the people. Verse nine gives us a sixth sign act. We will call it the Rations Act. At Masada, the story goes that the night before the Romans finally penetrated the fortress, after let's say a year of watching these guys build a ramp to come up to your to where you're at, to kill you. The night before, all but a handful of women and children committed suicide so that the Romans could do nothing more to the poor people. Israel won't be so lucky. Ezekiel now is commanded to take wheat and barley, beans and lentil, millet and spelt, and put them into a single vessel and make bread from them. This is where the so-called Ezekiel bread comes from. More on that in a minute. He used to eat this nasty concoction of disgusting quasi-flour vegetables dried together with grain to represent the bare rations for every day that he lies on his side. And you don't usually make bread from more than half of this. It would have been disgusting. And Ezekiel will not be allowed to eat much, only 20 shekels a day along with just a sixth part of a hint of water. That equates to eight ounces of bread a day, or just a small loaf, and 16 ounces of water. You ever been to Iraq? Ever been to Iran? You know what that place is like? This is barely enough to stay alive, and he must do this for over a year while lying tied up on his side. You see the symbolism when taken with the siege? If you still don't, you will soon enough. So how is he to cook it? Here's where things get the most memorable in the Seventh Sign Act. When you're under siege, you eventually run out of firewood, so what is left to use? Ezekiel's to bake it in their sight so that they can see him do it on human dung. That's not how they're making Ezekiel bread in the stores today. Now, I haven't done this in 23 years, but I'm gonna do it right now. To quote D.A. Carson, you use shit. It's the same word for both cows and human beings. We use excrement for one and dung for the other because we're polite, but at point in fact, you're using manure because it burns. Now, of course, that's not a word we're supposed to use in a sermon. I'm sorry if that offends you, but we need to be offended somehow by this story. What Israel has done is much more offensive than this word, which bothers you more, the word or their sin. People need to feel this in their bones, as Israel would have when they read verse 13. And the Lord said, thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations, where I will drive them. For Ezekiel the priest, this is too much to bear. After all this, this is what's too much to bear. He is kept utterly silent until now, but this demands a word. He tells the Lord God, behold, I have never defiled myself. From my youth up until now, I've never eaten what died of itself or was torn a beast, nor has tainted meat come into my mouth. He's referencing a passage like Deuteronomy 23, verse 12 through 14, where human feces is considered unclean in the law. Ezekiel has been a strict follower of Mosaic law, as all priests were to be. And then, in my opinion, one of the funnier lines, albeit darker humor, in the Bible comes next, as the Lord concedes, fine, he says, I assign to you cow's dung instead of human dung, on which you may prepare your bread. It's a concession to a priest so that he may still remain ritually clean, but it's not much better, it's still poop. What's the point of all this? The last two verses of the chapter tell us, moreover he said to me, son of man behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay and I will do this that they may lack bread and water and look at one another in dismay and rot away because of their punishment. Do you have a problem with worrying in your life? Try that on for size. This is only the beginning. Summarizing verses one to three drive home the inevitability of the siege of Jerusalem under the judgment of God. Verses four to eight drive home the duration of the banishment. Verses nine through 17 drive home the famine conditions of siege and exile. And we have two more sign acts to go before finishing off with the larger explanation for those Israelites too dull to figure out what pictures are already in front of them. The eighth sign, the Son of Man takes a sharp sword. Uh-oh, is he gonna strike somebody down with it? No, he's to use it as a barber's razor, passing over his head and his beard. He's shaving himself. In other places in the Bible, this is a symbol of mourning, captivity, and punishment. But this is shocking and awful symbolism for a priest's dignity, because Leviticus 21.5 forbids priests from doing this. It thus exposes him to public disgrace and mockery, all while he's not allowed to say anything back in return. Remind you of anyone in the New Testament? Like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. It's Jesus. He's then to weigh and divide his hair evenly and to put it into thirds. On the day of his siege, when it's completed, he's to take a third and burn it in the fire in the middle of his army man's city. He's to take the next third and in the act that would make him look like a wild lunatic, take his sword and start whacking the pieces of hair as they fall to the ground throughout the model city. Slicing and dicing, cutting, thrashing the hair until all that's left are these little tiny pieces. The last third takes us to the final sign act. He's to tuck away a small number of remaining hairs into the skirts of his robe. He then waits for a windy day where he throws most of that into the air, scattering it to the wind, for God, quote, will unsheath the sword after them. of those few hairs that remain, he's to pull some out and cast them into the fire and burn them. For, quote, a fire will come out into all the house of Israel. And this leaves only a small handful of remnant hairs left. And this takes us to the fourth section. It's at this point that we finally begin to learn what all this memorable play-acting of signs in total silence from a haggard, bald, half-starred prophet was for over a year and a half after it all began. Thus says the Lord, this is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations with countries all around her. This describes Israel's station in the land of Canaan, surrounded by foreign peoples, on a track of land that is central to all commerce between Egypt and Babylon, What will in a century or two also become known as Europe? This is the main route between it all. Verse six, she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her, for they have rejected my rules and not walked in my statutes. Friend, God is not doing this because he's capricious or vindictive. Rather, this is the hand of justice coming down on people who utterly deserve it. Israel has become worse than the nations around her, having not walked in God's statutes or rules, nor even according to the rules of the nations around her. This is truly evil. Those nations followed law codes like Hammurabi's law code. given by treacherous gods, as he himself says, permitting the worship of almost any god, no laws against things like homosexuality or temple prostitution. They gave pardons for adultery, lighter penalties for incest, mere fines for some forms of rape and bestiality, and they neglected widows and orphans, offering only narrow inheritance protections for them. Israel's worse than that. And thus God tells him in no uncertain terms, behold, I, even I, am against you and I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. God is against his own people? We are told today that Israel is incapable of doing anything wrong, no matter what it is, much less that they could ever be out of God's favor, much less be on the receiving end of his wrath. God's chosen people, that's what they are, and yet here it is, plain as day. God says, and because of all your abominations, I will do with you what I have never yet done and the like of which I will never do again. It's a warning that tells us that this is as bad as it can get. So what exactly will happen? Well, the truly unthinkable, they will become cannibals. Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in your midst and sons shall eat their fathers. This is explicitly predicted, by the way, in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy in the curses of the covenant. It's been as few as 684, perhaps as many as 860 years since those predictions were given. After all that time, go back 800 years in our time and imagine what you would think. People surely thought God had forgotten. Make no mistake, God does not forget his promises, for judgment or for grace. He says, and I will execute judgments on you, and any of you who survive, I will scatter to all the winds. So what have they done specifically? He tells us here only that they have defiled God's sanctuary with all manner of detestable things and with all their abominations. These refer to idolatrous practices that they literally brought into the temple. Ezekiel will tell us later of an example about, quote, an image of jealousy set up at the northern gate of the temple. Could be an image of Baal or Asherah or someone else. This is just one example and we will see many more as we continue through the book. Jeremiah also notes that they have even practiced human child sacrifice in the temple precinct. But for now, this was the big crime, now bringing the hammer down. Their time is nearing an end. God continues with a very important statement, therefore I will withdraw. This foreshadows the glory departing the temple, something unthinkable to ancient Jews who believed their status as the chosen people was absolutely unconditional no matter what they did. They were sorely mistaken. And the reason so many today continue to teach this nonsense is because they refuse to read God's word. My eye will not spare and I will have no pity. A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst. A third part shall fall by the sword all around you. A third part I will scatter to the winds and will unsheath the sword after them. So that explains the hair signs. Thus shall my anger spend itself. I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself and they shall know that I am the Lord, that I have spoken in my jealousy when I spend my fury upon them. Now our confession of faith speaks about God being, quote, without body, parts, or passions. This would seem to deny what's before us because here God is angry, furious, and jealous, but the confession speaks of God in his essence, in his nature. It says nothing about God and his persons. Think about the son of God who wept and laughed and mourned and got angry. As before, Jesus was not consumed by these things nor controlled by them, but they were part of him for he was fully human. This is why we must remember that we are dealing here in Ezekiel not with the divine nature, whatever that would even mean, but with the second person of the Trinity. This is why exegesis is so vital. It's not God in his bare essence, but the image of God to man, the word and the arm and the glory of God. He perfectly embodies proper emotional reactions then as he does in the New Testament, never controlled by his passions, but nevertheless embodying them in his person. A further word about God speaking in jealousy is important. For what is there to be jealous of regarding offenses like idolatry if nothing is real on the other side? Too many people have so de-supernaturalized the Bible that they think that gods are not real. Is God really getting jealous of the flying spaghetti monster? That's absurd. He's jealous because real created heavenly fallen beings have led Israel astray and caused them to commit spiritual adultery with the God who has taken them to be his spouse in covenantal marriage. Adultery only works if there's someone to commit it with and that's why God is so jealous and full of wrath. His wife has been unfaithful for 800 years and it only continues to get worse. He would go on to promise that he will make them a desolation and an object of reproach among the nations in the sight of all who pass by. They will become a taunt and a warning and a horror to all the nations around as he executes his judgment in anger and fury. The nations will see their God is real and they will wonder at what Israel has done to deserve such a violent desolation, death, and captivity. Now verse 16 has a fascinating reference to deadly arrows of famine and arrows of destruction, for which God sends to break their food supply of bread and starve his people. But as Heizer points out, this is a strange metaphor. Certainly we associate arrows with a siege and with death, but with famine? But an Israelite would have understood, and it's ironic, given that they have given themselves over to the worship of the gods. Enter someone named Resheph. Though not a word used here, the word is translated as plague in places like Deuteronomy 32 and Habakkuk 3. In Deuteronomy, it appears alongside of the word keteb, bitter destruction, and ra'ab, hunger and famine. That's the word used here. The thing is, Resheph is a deity, and possibly so is Keteb. He could well have been among the abominations that they set in the temple in the form of an idol. The thing specifically about Resheph is that his symbol was the arrow. In Habakkuk, he seems to come as part of God's heavenly entourage, his counsel, a subordinate created entity that must carry out God's judgment on those whom it has been decreed. So it would be truly ironic if God used the very gods Israel worshiped to carry out judgment against them. The next and last verse in our passage takes it a step further. In Habakkuk 3.5, Resheph is accompanied by Debor, pestilence, a kind of nocturnal demon that is also found in the very supernatural, Psalm 91 verse six. And thus it ends, I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they will rob you of your children. Pestilence, Debor, and blood shall pass through you and I will bring the sword upon you. I am the Lord, I have spoken. Now obviously these signs and their purpose are singularly targeted at God's people because of the vile wickedness that they've been committing for so long. The time of that rebellion is now over. God's patience has run out. He would tolerate no more as his own bride has now become worse than the nations around them. Carson explains that It's a constant principle throughout God's Word that to whom much is given, much shall be required. Jesus told Bethsaida and Capernaum, woe to you. If the gospels and miracles performed in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, the pagan cities up the coast, they would have repented. If they had been preached in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would still be here today. It is a burdensome responsibility that comes to a people when the gospel has been spread so widely through its civilization. Listen carefully. Beloved, this is precisely what has happened more to Europe and America than anywhere else on the face of the earth. And oh, the depths to which we have fallen. Specifically, there is no other language on earth that has been granted such good gifts of the gospel and a Christian heritage than English. Nothing even comes remotely close. The Puritans, the songs, the commentaries, the churches. Where do you suppose the nation like we have become will be that has risen to such heights through the gospel, even having boldly dared enter into a covenant with God as they crossed an ocean in order to start a new society and a new world? A nation that laughs at justice, that warps sexuality, that makes truth relative, whose leadership is bribed and perverted and launders money, whose industry sells sex and pharmakia and hedonism, whose churches look exactly like the world in their worship, in their dress, in their speech, in their conduct, and in their private lives. Yes, it is especially to the church that such a warning as this must be heeded. For who is the covenant community in the New Testament? It isn't America, as much as the Puritans wanted it to be. It isn't Britain. It isn't even the nation of Israel, much to the dismay of some. It is the church. We are those now in covenant with this God, same God. Israel's rebellion, like a festering wound, had grown worse than the nations around her, and God's patience was spent. As Carson notes, God's judgment had four purposes. To vent his righteous anger against sin, to make Israel know he is the Lord who acts, to humble them as a reproach before the nations, and to destroy the unrepentant. And as we have seen, this includes sometimes through created agents like Resheph. These synax, Ezekiel's brick and griddle, bound body and shaved hair, they actually echo the plagues of Egypt where God judged that rebellious nation. Just as Moses' staff brought blood, frogs, and darkness, Ezekiel's silence suffering warns of famine, pestilence, and exile. Like the blood on Egypt's doorposts sparing a remnant, Ezekiel's few hairs tucked in his robe whisper of hope, a promise of survival for those who repent. Death comes as judgment against sin. It's why we all die. It's why everyone died in the flood. This was the cumulative judgment of God upon the entire world. It's why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. It's why Egypt was destroyed. Curiously, there's a virtual parallel with Ezekiel's synax and the plagues of Egypt. Both begin with the prophet's mouth. Moses stutters and Ezekiel's not allowed to speak. And then come a series of nine things which can be bunched into a three by three weave. The plague ends in the death of the firstborn. Ezekiel's sign acts in the death of the remnant, but with hope for survival. Listen to this poetic vision of Ezekiel's call. In Babylon's dust, Ezekiel stands. A Moses reborn, his mouth sealed by heaven's hand. His brick is Egypt's Nile, red with shame. His griddle, a darkness no lamp can tame. Arm bared, he lies bound as Israel's sins weigh down, like boils on Egypt's prideful crown. His bread defiled, his locust feast reversed. His hair scattered as hail's curse. Yet his robe, a remnant, hides like blood on doors where mercy bides. The firstborn fell, Egypt's heart was rent. Israel's hope lives in hairs God sent. Ezekiel weaves the plagues anew, for Jerusalem's Egypt judged but true. His silence sings what Moses spoke. God's voice will mend what rebellion broke. And we could trace these kinds of themes of dying and judgment all the way through the Old Testament and on into the new, especially with Jesus in his Olivet Discourse using a phrase that comes right from our passage when he says, there will be distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now and never to be equaled again. In my understanding and reading of that passage, this is apocalyptic and cyclical language first found here. in Ezekiel, then in 70 AD, and then throughout history as nations fall on up to the final short season of Satan in the very end. The warnings to the churches in Revelation 2 through 3 are part of this cyclical reading. But it's not to the second coming and final judgment that our hearts must finally turn, but rather to the first coming. like Graham Hessen's signs who saw chaos in crop circles and strange water glasses and a dying wife's words, you might miss God's plan in Ezekiel's shocking acts. But just as those signs ultimately were predestined to save Graham's family, Ezekiel's signs point to a greater hope. Jesus, the ultimate son of man, became the greatest sign act on the cross. That's what we read in John 3 verses 14 through 15 when he is lifted up like Moses' pole in the wilderness and a sign of his death and resurrection like the sign of Jonah. Jesus bore our iniquity like Ezekiel's cords and faced the sword of God's wrath like the scattered hairs. He was smashed to pieces like Jerusalem because of our sin. but his death satisfied justice, sparing a remnant, us who trust in him. In 2025, as our world and churches mirror Israel's rebellion, his people called by his name must heed Ezekiel's warning. Repent and turn from your sin and look to the cross and find restoration in the God who judges and saves in Jesus Christ. Judgment and salvation. Wrath and grace kiss at the cross. God judges our sin and gives grace to us because of what his son did. As Graham's faith was restored, so can ours be through Christ, the sign that never fails. Let's pray together. Lord, I do ask that you would put into our hearts deeply the words that we have read in Ezekiel today. More is coming. But here we are dealing with these signs and the silence of the prophet who could only speak by doing these things in silence. And I pray, Lord, that you would help us to see what he did and what you did these things for, that we would know deep in our hearts that we are sinners just like Israel and that sin must be judged. And Lord, your grace has shown us that you judged sin once and for all, not in Israel's rebellion, or in the fall of nations one after another, but in Christ. That's where your wrath was poured out. And Jesus willingly took that wrath while he was on the cross, and he willingly died. Taking your judgment the judgment that we deserve upon his body. How could he have done such a thing? And if we want to understand truly the hope that is there with the remnant of hairs Everyone needs to look to Christ and I pray that you because you alone able to do it would open hearts and minds and make people recognize their own sin and the glory that you went to and and the lengths that you went to to save us from it, that if we would turn to Christ, as you tell us in John 3, we will have eternal life and be forgiven of all of our sins, once and for all, justified, declared not guilty, even though we are. I pray you would hear this prayer in Jesus' name, amen.