in Ezekiel chapter 9. 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 as they went in and stood beside the bronze altar, and the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called to 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 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 eyes 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, O Lord God, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel and the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem? And 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 writing case at his waist brought back words saying, I have done as you commanded me. And this is part of the great horror of the judgment that takes up so much of Ezekiel's prophecy. Brothers and sisters, I want to begin by talking about the mark of the beast. Today, it's an infamous phrase that carries with it the symbol 666, as well as nearly endless speculations on what it is and what it means. So the actual phrase is only found in Revelation 16, 2. It says, Now I want you to notice just three things here. that I think are important for where we're going to go here in Ezekiel. First, an angel is pouring out wrath upon those with the mark. Second, those with the mark are worshiping the image of the beast. In other words, an idol of some sort. Third, this makes those who have the mark non-Christians. And of course, that mark was labeled with the number 666 back in Revelation 13, 16. where it was called, curiously, the number of the beast or the number of a man. And importantly, this mark is put on the right hand or the forehead. Now, I asked GrokAI to give me some of the recent speculations on Twitter for the Mark of the Beast. And it gave me the following. It said, the Google logo. Now, when I preached on the Mark of the Beast a few years back, I actually told you about the Google logo. COVID-19 vaccinations, European microchips, Israel's flag, the Sabbath, and consumerism. Now, some of these you've surely heard of, like the idea that goes back to the 80s that the mark is going to be a barcode. or to the 2000s that it will be a microchip that they'll put under your skin. Others, though, you probably have never heard of those ideas before. Now, as I was listening to probably the most recent blurry creatures on my bike this week, my friends Luke and Nate interviewed a very interesting fellow who has rescued tens of thousands of children from human sex and ritual trafficking from nations all around the world. He actually has over a thousand children that go by his last name. For some reason, they got onto the tangent to the Mark of the Beast. he gave an interpretation that felt relevant for my introduction here. He said, if I can bring up something here, we were talking the seed war, Nephilim things, the hybrid thing, all that kind of stuff. One of the things that will happen in the end times, he says, specifically during the tribulation, is that a big portion of the world will be attacked by quote-unquote beasts. Beasts in the Old Testament are not animals. They are this hybrid thing. When it comes to the beast, here's what he says in Ezekiel. And then he goes to Ezekiel five, which we did a month ago. It says, so I send up upon you famine and all evil beasts, and they shall bereave you, and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee, and I'll bring a sword upon you. I, the Lord, have spoken it. Then he goes on to say this. One of the judgments that God brings is this beast. Now, we know the mark of the beast, 666. We know that to be the Antichrist, the ultimate hybrid fusion, so much so that they, these beasts, can claim humanity no longer was created by You, that is by God. Now humanity has been created by us, and I actually think the mark of the beast makes you unredeemable. I think it changes your DNA to the point where you're no longer of the bloodline of Adam. And I was just about stopped in my bike. This highly, highly speculative view of the Mark of the Beast is now being fused with the Nephilim eschatology. And whatever you make of that, and there's a place for a discussion of it, friend, there's just nothing in the text that says the Mark of the Beast changes your DNA and makes you a non-human. He's just making that up. Then there's the idea that the mark makes you unredeemable, as if you were redeemable prior to the mark, then you get the mark and you're no longer redeemable. That is, you're no longer savable. I kind of grew up with that stuff. I'm telling you about this mark of the beast to set you up for the sermon, not from Ezekiel 5, which we already went through, where we actually did note that the beast could be demonic entities of some sort, but Ezekiel 9. But to do this properly, I need to take you to the counter mark in Revelation. The mark that isn't nearly as much fun to talk about, and so hardly anyone does. And so some of you are saying, there's another mark in Revelation? Yes, there is. It's referred to on four occasions, the first of which is Revelation 7.3. John sees an angel ascending, quote, from the rising of the sun And I thought, well, that's interesting. That's the very same language we saw in the worst of the four abominations near the end of our last chapter when they were worshiping the sun to the east. And it says, he sees an angel ascending from the rising of the sun with the seal of the living God. And he calls out to the four angels of death who had been given great power to harm the earth and the sea and said, do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. Second reference is a couple chapters later where locusts are told do not harm the grass or the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 14, one is the third, I looked and behold on Mount Zion stood the lamb and with him 144,000 who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads. And then finally near the end of the book, they will see his face, his name will be on their foreheads. In each instance, there is a mark or a sign placed on the forehead exactly like the mark of the beast is. What's going on with these marks and why might I bring them up when we're looking at Ezekiel 9 of all places is what we're going to look at now. So as we enter our chapter, I want to remind you that we're in the center, really the second half of the center, of the first 11 chapters that began in chapter 8. Now you can read chapters 8 and 9 as a single unit of thought that really centers on our first seven verses today and the execution of God's judgment. But since we did these separately, and chapter 8 is self-contained, you can also notice that chapter 9 is also self-contained, and it's going to center on the defilement of the temple that takes place in the middle of our story. So, what we'll see as we go through our chapter is a couple of things. The way that it's written underscores God's justice in distinguishing the righteous who are marked from the wicked who are judged with the temple's defilement symbolizing the broken covenant and it's framed by the divine presence and a sense of agency of these creatures that are carrying out God's will. It further demonstrates God's omniscience in distinguishing the righteous who are marked from the wicked who are judged. The very curious link to the Passover, which will even more amazingly point us forward through the mark in Ezekiel 9 to the New Testament work of Christ. The whole chapter is going to teach us that proper worship matters as idolatry, even if well-intentioned. Some people will say, can it ever be well-intentioned? I'd say some people think it is, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So Ezekiel 9, it's only 11 verses. You're going to think, well, we're going to get out of here early today. Nope, not going to happen. It begins, then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, bring near the executioner of the city. of the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand. So who's the he that's saying this to them? It would refer back to the Holy Spirit, who lifted Ezekiel up in that amazing passage where the Spirit and the one like the man, Christ, seemed to be blurred together at the beginning of chapter eight. And it needs to be pointed out here that he's angry. He's crying in Ezekiel's ears with a loud voice, it says. This is God and he's mad. Now, the prophet is still in the middle of his vision. So what's happening here is not actually happening in Jerusalem. It's happening in his mind. And yet it's important of things that will be coming soon enough in the city. It says that the loud voice told someone to bring the executioners of the city. These executioners are agents who are charged with the execution of a sentence. They come with their weapon, called here the destroying weapon, and we know nothing about what that weapon might be. Whatever it is, it's deadly. Now, I want to make a theological point here. Recently, American evangelical pacifist and social justice advocate, who co-founded something called the Red Letter Christians Ministry, with Tony Campolo posted on Twitter, And he said, growing up, we were taught to ask, what would Jesus do? Sure, it got a little cliche and commercialized, but it's still the right question. I pray that every Christian in America and around the world would ask that right now. What would Jesus do? Who would Jesus starve? Who would Jesus bomb? Who would Jesus turn away? And subsequently, he went on to name not individuals he saw on a street, but governmental policies that the left doesn't like, such as helping Israel against the Palestinians or having a border wall. Obviously, the post implies Jesus never would do any of this stuff, and I was struck by what he wrote. Because now, in Ezekiel 5-8, we literally see God directly tell us that he will execute the judgments of, one, starving his own people, in Ezekiel 5.10, two, warring against his own people in the ancient equivalent of bombing them, also in chapter five, and then three, turning his back on his own people, not even hearing their prayers in chapter eight. And ironically, these are the exact same three things he said Jesus would never do, and yet here, God is literally doing all three of them. But there's more than that, and this is why I mention his red letter Jesus ministry, because to these kinds of people, the only thing Jesus ever spoke in the Bible is those red letters. That is a few words of the Gospels. And I often tell people in this context that I want my own red letter Bible, where I get to make the entire text of Genesis through Revelation red letters. Remember that man on the throne in Ezekiel that we saw in Ezekiel 1 and again in Ezekiel 8? Well, that's Jesus in his pre-incarnate form. Same Jesus, same God. Now, I'm not saying this to take anything away from Jesus' very important teachings on turning the other cheek and fighting for peace and being a good Samaritan and all of that, but the two things these mean wellers like this fail to comprehend is that Jesus was talking to individuals, not the state, And God, that is Jesus, gave the sword to the state, but he gives individual disciples a different ethic for their own personal lives and a different mission to the church. People like this confuse the church and the state and individuals all the time. More, they seem to have no idea that it is Jesus who is executing his judgments throughout Ezekiel. Johnny Cash put this well, there's a man going around taking names and he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reaching down when the man comes around. The hairs on your arm will stand up. that the terror in each sip and in each sup, you will partake. Will you partake of that last offered cup or disappear into the potter's ground when the man comes around? Friend, to be a biblical Christian, you must fundamentally come to understand that Jesus is the God of Ezekiel, and that His Spirit, or as Paul calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, is the God of Ezekiel, because they are one God, and when God judges in the Old Testament or the New Testament, you cannot divorce the Spirit or the Son from the judgment of God. Father, Son, and Spirit all speak as one and all decree the judgments together as one. Any less than this is idolatry. At any rate, the vision continues in verse two, 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 a man clothed in linen with a writing case at his waist, and they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. So they're going into the courtyard. Now here we're going to see the executioners arrive, and there are six of them. These are called Ish-men, not Adam-men in the Hebrew. Both are words for man, but it's Ish that's chosen. If they were Adam, we would know without question that these are humans. As it is, that's actually a question we will want to keep in the back of our minds. They are coming from relatively the same place that Ezekiel has just been as he entered the temple at the north gate, the direction of evil, and they come with their weapons, and this time the weapons are called the weapons of slaughter. So whatever that is, it appears that there's going to be a bloodbath taking place in the temple. Then it says that there was one more man with them, and I find that interesting. Six plus one. It's like creation. forming a perfect seventh. This man, also an Esh man, is clothed with linen and he has a writing case at his waist. Now, being clothed in linen is how the priests were clothed in Exodus. However, it's also how angels are clothed in the book of Daniel. Both priests and angels are ministers to God. One is in the earthly court and the other is in the heavenly court. We both can act as God's agents of judgment, such as when the Levites go to Moses' side to destroy their brothers at the Golden Calf incident. So which is this man here? Notice that he has a writing case. The term here is borrowed from an Egyptian word and it refers to a scribe's writing equipment. It's a pen, an ink horn, a wax writing tablet, those kinds of things. So it could be a priestly scribe, somebody like Ezra. And yet in the Bible, in extra biblical Jewish literature, there are also angelic scribes. Daniel 8, 13 is a curious case of, quote, the one who spoke, which in the King James is rendered that certain saint. But strangely, the word is palmoni. It appears only twice, once in the Bible, and it might mean a certain one, but it likely comes from a root meaning to number or to count. along with the word for wonderful. So a wonderful counter. In other words, he's the accountant extraordinaire. And so older commentaries called him the wonderful numberer of secrets, and many actually linked him to Jesus himself. Why bring up counting? Well, as we keep reading, we see that the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. So it's going out from the most holy place to the threshold while they're out in the courtyard at the bronze laver. This is all supernatural language. And it's such an important event that you see here with this glory moving that we're going to come back to it next time and look at it in much more detail. For today, I will simply have you notice that the mention of these seven persons are in direct association with the glory, and that sounds very much like something Isaiah 6, with the glory of God that fills the temple and suddenly he sees the heavenly beings, reflects. In fact, the glory of God is now called a hymn, which is interesting. In fact, in the beginning of verse four, he is called the Lord or Yahweh. So in other words, the glory of God is God. And he calls to the man clothed in linen who had the writing case at his waist. This is written in such a way so that you have an ABA structure, a man with linen in a case, the glory of God calling to the man with the linen in a case. So what does he tell him? Verse four, 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. Now essentially, this man in linen is commanded to count all the people in Jerusalem that hate idol worship that has taken over the city and the temple. He's a great counter like Pallome. Indeed, it seems to me as with most others that this can be none other than a heavenly angel. But this verse takes us back to the introduction and the marks of Revelation. Now the word for a mark of the beast and the sign on the forehead of the righteous in Revelation is not the same Greek word that's used here, but they are all synonyms. The Mark of the Beast is a word that evokes a Greco-Roman practice of branding slaves or making royalty to earthly powers or loyalty to earthly powers, while the word used for the sign of the righteous is more of a word that aligns with divine authority and protection. Different concepts both go on the forehead. Ezekiel's mark also goes on the forehead, but it uses a third word, and it appears to be a word chosen as the broadest possible kind of mark that someone could make, or the most generic, maybe, you would like to say. And this takes us to one of the most interesting little rabbit holes you will ever find in your Old Testament. The Hebrew word for a mark here is the word tav. Now, tav is literally the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, like our letter Z. But it's essentially our letter T. They only have 22 letters, so they don't end it in Z, they end it in T. Now, today, if you see the symbol of a tav, it's written in something called block Hebrew script. And as Heizer puts it, the tav looks like a kind of a doorway with a little appendage on one leg at the bottom. But the way the top was written in Ezekiel's day was different. It looked like our letter X. Or when you shift it 45 degrees, it looks like our letter T. Now amazingly, all three of these are theologically relevant. First, let's consider the modern look of the symbol for the letter, a doorway with a little appendage on one leg at the bottom. You can rephrase this such that it looks like a doorway with two posts and a lentil. Does that sound familiar? Two posts and a lintel. If not, maybe the next verse might jog your memory. Verse five. 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. Do y'all remember Exodus chapter 12, verses 12 through 13? It says, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. The blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are. And when you see the blood, I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. See, passing through and striking and an angelic messenger are all ideas shared in these two stories. Further, God does not spare even a single of the firstborn of Egypt, showing that he also shows no pity. This is why our passage right here reminds so many scholars of the Passover story. But the modern letter Tav also reminds me of the Passover story. Verse 22 says, take a bunch of hyssop and dip it on the blood that is in the basin and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that's in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. Now I get it, they didn't have the block letter Tav in Ezekiel Day, but it still stands as a great analogy for the connection between Exodus and Ezekiel. God is marking those who hate idolatry with a mark that strongly resembles the Passover in modern script, when he refused to kill those with the blood on their door, the blood of the sacrificial lamb. Now, of course, the Passover had direct tie-ins to the Lord's Supper and Jesus' death, which for Ezekiel is still future, as in over 600 years in the future. And incredibly, the letter drawn on those who hated the idols in their hearts in Ezekiel's day would have looked like the letter X. Now, even in English, We have had people who couldn't spell their own names simply make their mark. And this has always been with the letter X. X marks the spot. Right? In fact, this practice actually goes back to maybe our earliest written book of the Old Testament, the book of Job. Job 31, 35 says, Oh, that I had one to hear me, that here is my signature. Let the Almighty answer me. Now, the word signature is the word tav, exactly like it is here. His X is his signature, his mark. In the context, he's saying, give me an official affidavit. I'll swear that my testimony about myself is true, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. My mark is my oath. The mark in Ezekiel 9, 4 is similar. In marking these righteous, it is the numbering angel who is giving a legal document to the heavenly court that this person, who actually becomes the living document, is innocent of the crimes that are about to be punished. But here's the remarkable thing about this. You've all surely heard of Xmas, right? Many well-meaning Christians wrongly think that Xmas is a secular way of mocking Christianity by crossing out the name of Jesus with an X. Actually, the X is simply a shorthand for Christ. since Christ in Greek begins with the letter K, which in our English is the letter X. Christos. In other words, the X isn't just a mark. It's the mark that Christians began to use for Christ and Christians as a shorthand that you see, for example, in the famous Ichthus Acrostic, which stood for Jesus Christ, there's your X, God, Son, Savior. Now it gets even wilder because this Tov X mark was often written as our lowercase t, which looks exactly like a Roman cross. In fact, many church fathers believed this marking was a type of the death of Christ that would cover the sins of the righteous by the cross. Tertullian said, he foretold that his just ones should suffer equally with him. So he foretold this, both the apostles and all the faithful in succession, and he signed them with that very seal of which Ezekiel spoke. The Lord said to me, go through the gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the Tav upon the foreheads of the men. Now the Greek letter Tav and our own letter T is the very form of the cross, Tertullian says. which he predicted would be the sign on our foreheads in the true Catholic Jerusalem. Cyprian said, God says that only those can escape who have been reborn and signed with the sign of Christ when sending his angels to lay waste to the world and to destroy the human race, he threatens more seriously than the last time. He's referring to Ezekiel 9. So guess what? This is where the superstition of crossing yourself originates. I just saw Putin cross himself at the grave sites in Alaska this week. It comes from Ezekiel 9, and it actually began to be used in some places pretty early on in baptismal rites. Now, I looked into this, and most reformers didn't like that, of course, because superstitions are rarely good things. But it was also clear that their skepticism of the basic idea stemmed more because by their time, Hebrew was written in the block letters and they had forgotten all about the earlier script, which the fathers still knew quite well. We've rediscovered the ancient script and the tav really did look like a cross. Nevertheless, Calvin, who clearly didn't understand this, he still relates the mark to Christ in yet another way. He says, the faithful were marked with the last letter because they were last among men and as it were the offscoring of the world. Since therefore from the beginning the world has treated the sons of God as if they were castaways, therefore I have said that they may be signed with the last letter. Like Jesus says, the first will be last and the last will be first. In all these, we have clear links of true believers in God, sons of God, alone being marked, and it is, in my estimation, a remarkable thing that in one letter you could have tithes of the Passover, to Christ's name, to Christ's death, and to the first being last, and the last being first. Surely, God alone knows the end from the beginning. And when he marked off people 600 years before Christ came, he did this as a type of the greater marking to come. Now let's continue. The command of the Lord here is truly sobering. He tells the others, kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women. Now that's the God of the Bible. He hates sin that much, especially sin that defiles His sanctuary, that's literally done inside of it during worship as worship. And that's important to keep in mind because those are the sins that were called out in the previous chapter. They were sins of idolatry and worshiping the gods in the temple. This isn't merely sin that people commit day to day, although he hates that too. This is worse. In fact, not all sin is created equal. Now just as someone in our day might be tempted to throw the Bible across the room because they just can't accept that this could really be the God of love who's commanding this, Just as he does that, God throws us a curve ball, telling the executioners, but touch no one on whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. So God is clearly distinguishing and he is able to distinguish between those who love him and those who don't, those who obey him and those who don't, those who hate what happens in their midst and those who go along with the sin. It reminds me of Righteous Lot, who was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked in his midst. God saw him and sent two angels to come and rescue him, delivering him and his family from the fires that were about to engulf Sodom and Gomorrah. Friend, God knows those who are his. He sees them. He sets his mark on them. He knows those who are his. He's the one who gives them a heart of love in the first place. It isn't a guessing game with God. He rescues the righteous and does not treat them like the wicked ever, from the first pages of the Bible to the last. His nature is consistent and his love is real. Nevertheless, judgment begins in the temple. And I wonder, is this where Peter gets it when he says judgment begins with the household of God? The holy places must be the cleanest, and if they become defiled in any way, they must be purged. Peter goes on, and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And his point is rather terrifying if he really does get it from Ezekiel, then it's even more so because Ezekiel says, so they begin with the elders who were before the house. And the elders are the leadership of the people. God knows that the people are like sheep without a shepherd. So he begins with those who have the greater responsibility. Remember James, when James says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. That's why I can't, for the life of me, understand the nonchalant, carefree, whimsical, light, unconcerned, laid-back, jaunty attitude that so many preachers have when they come into the pulpit. They don't prepare, they don't exegete, they don't often even talk about the Bible at all, if they even believe it in the first place. Judgment starts with those who go to the house of God to lead others in worship. That is a terrifying thing to have to live with if you take it seriously. In fact, I've told people this before. It's why I read my sermons, so I don't say something stupid. It helps mitigate my own foolishness, which I have a lot of even when I write a sermon. This verse takes us to the very center thought of the chapter. 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. Now I want you to understand what the defilement is here, okay? This is not defilement that somehow the executioners are suddenly sinning and bringing about moral defilement. Although, I won't rule that out, since at the end of the day, these executioners were, in human terms, the wicked Babylonians, who hardly did what they did with righteous, holy zeal for God's name. But rather it refers first and foremost to the defiling of the temple with strewn bodies of dead corpses of men, women, and children that would line the wall and pock the court with their dead carcasses. Their death, their bodies bring defilement to the holy places. Even touching a dead body makes you unclean. So God is basically saying, if you want to defile my temple so badly, let's deal with this defilement, shall we? And he will fill the temple with dead bodies. And the command's fulfillment has only just begun, even if it's just a vision, because once they finish with the temple, then they are to march throughout the city, picking off and taking down all they see, scampering, or withstanding, or hiding. It's another Johnny Cash song, frankly. Go tell that long-tongue liar, go tell that midnight rider, tell the rambler, the gambler, the backbiter, tell him that God's gonna cut him down. And cut him down, he does. The whole city will be strewn with the blood of the wicked, those who dared to defile God's temple and partake in the wicked worship of the foreign gods. And that, my friend, is a reality of God's nature that many need to come to grips with. He is so holy, so righteous, and so just that sin necessitates that he bring these attributes to the forefront at some time. You do well to remember that he has essentially been putting up with this evil from his people for a hundred years since Manasseh at least, and in some ways for many hundreds of years, and he never fully bared his arm. And that's because God is also kind and patient and long-suffering, and he does not delight in doing evil. But at some point, it was enough. And that's the point Ezekiel found himself living through. So the site and the problem the prophet began to see unfold with this bloodshed everywhere in the temple and in the city, it was so awe-inspiring and terrifying that he says, while they were striking and I was left alone, I fell upon my face. He cannot bear the mayhem and the pandemonium, the death and the destruction, so he looks away in horror. And yet, when you fall on your face in the Bible, it's a sign of deep reverence and worship, and in this case, of prayer, because he cries out, ah, Lord, God. Now, what do you think he's gonna say next? You think he's gonna demand that God not do this because he's the God of love? Do you think he will suppose that he will ask for mercy upon the wicked? Well, it's neither one of these things. Instead, he says, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem? See, the prophet is not so foolish as to presume to call God out for wrongdoing. Nor will he be so unwise as to demand that this angry God lessen his judgment upon the wicked. But he has heard of a mark that goes on the forehead of those whose very hearts detested the wickedness of their leaders. They were incapable and helpless to stop the evil. So all they could do was mourn privately and then refuse to participate in the ever-growing calamity. Ezekiel remembers them. He frankly believes that the wicked deserve what they're getting, but not the righteous. And this to me very strongly implies that in his vision, he was actually seeing the righteous cut down with the wicked. Or at the very least, he was not able to tell the difference in what he was seeing unfold. It causes him to remember the mark and ask if that was all for nothing. Didn't you promise, Lord, that the executioners are not allowed to touch those with the mark and yet here they're dying? Guys, that's the only way I can make sense of the language that he says, will you destroy all the remnant? Some have to have been dying, and that leads to an existential crisis that many people don't know how to deal with. And so they fall off a tightrope of God's word to the left or to the right. Some say, if God marks you, you will never have anything bad happen to you ever. And others say, God's mark doesn't do anything. See, they're all still dying. This crisis is actually brought out in the chiastic pattern in the parallel, the way it's written, touch no one on whom is the mark is parallel with, will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem? The remnant is the theology of the elect who have believed in the Lord and are faithful to his covenant. And what's amazing to me is how God answers this. What will God say? Will he say, no, Ezekiel, None of the remnant have died. Or will he say, yes, Ezekiel, I'm going to kill them all? Verses 9 through 10. Then he said to me, the guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood, the city full of iniquity and injustice. And they said, the Lord has forsaken the land. 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. So do you hear what he said? God doesn't actually answer Ezekiel's question. He asked if God would destroy all the remnant of Israel, and God didn't actually answer him. That's not very satisfying. I will point out that this will all return again in chapter 11, so maybe you can tuck that away for the later discussion. But let's think about what God wants the prophet to think about here. Instead of describing the physical fate of those marked, God goes back to the extreme wickedness of the guilty. He says that it is exceedingly great. They have shed much blood throughout the land of Judah. The city of Jerusalem is nothing but a den of injustice. No one gets a fair shake in the courts or in commerce nowhere. It's the exact same problem that their brothers to the north in Israel faced when the earlier prophets came to them with the covenant lawsuit complaints and God judged them with the Assyrian. Now, the tie in. is the phrase, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. See that? Well, if you go back up to verse five, it says the exact same thing. Your eye shall not spare, you shall have no pity. God tells that to the executioners. Now God's saying the same thing. I'm not going to have pity. I already told you that, Ezekiel. In fact, this is exactly what it says in the last verse of chapter 8. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity. Ezekiel, don't worry about what I do or do not do with the remnant. You've heard my declaration to the heavenly executioners, whether the earthly counterparts from Babylon follow suit is my business. Your business is to make sure you have internalized just why I'm doing this and that you tell it to the people. They are evil. They've committed gross sin and they are only getting worse. That's what you're to focus on. That and only that until you get it through your thick skull. I told you I would not hear their cries and now I'm bringing their deeds upon their heads. That's God's answer. That's incredible. Quite a way to end a chapter. And yet, the final verse takes us back to the opening in a remarkable way. It says, behold, the man clothed in linen with the writing case at his waist brought back words saying, I have done as you commanded me. Now the man in linen with the writing case has done exactly as God has commanded. That's the point, but let's remember just what God commanded the man in linen with the writing case to do. As he was commanded, he passed through the city and marked those who sigh over Judah's sins with the tav. It's saying he did that. Whether Ezekiel can understand it or not, he did it. This is the only thing that man was told to do, which is distinct from the other six men who were commanded to slaughter everyone in the city and not to touch those with the mark. So this verse takes us away from the pure slaughter and back to the man and his mission. And his mission was to mark those who hate sin so that they will not be touched by the executioners. And in this way, the Lord God, who is the Holy Spirit, reassures Ezekiel that no matter what he sees happen in the city, God is in fact remembering those whom he has marked to himself. And friend, that is good news in this chapter. Previously, we saw this mark as the letter Tav and how its three symbolic designations is a doorpost that reminds us of the Exodus, and an X reminding us of Christ and his name, and a T reminding us of the cross. And so now with our chapter fully in mind, you will be able to understand the future reality even from the coming Babylonian invasion to which our chapter points. The Passover event came about as the culmination of ten plagues that God sent upon the land of Egypt for how it had treated God's people. The final plague was the plague of the firstborn, and it was carried out by the destroying angel, whether that's Christ himself or a created angel, we can't be sure. But to keep his own people safe from this supernatural plague, God had the people of Israel put the blood of the sacrificial lamb on the posts and the lintel of the front doors so that when he saw the blood, he would see it and pass over the house, not killing the firstborn inside. That Passover would be celebrated that night with unleavened bread made without yeast, symbolizing the haste, because in the morning they would leave Egypt. Later, the Passover would be celebrated with bread and wine. And this is precisely what Jesus was doing when he took the bread and he told his disciples that this is his body broken for them. And then the wine saying, this is the blood of the new covenant poured out for you. And in doing this, Jesus was preparing them to later understand that God was about to pass judgment on the son of God. expending his full wrath and anger for our sin upon the Lamb of God, who would spill his blood so that anyone who has the blood poured onto the doorposts of their hearts through faith in Christ might have the angel of death pass over them. Friends, sin necessitates that God bring these attributes to the forefront at some point in time. And he did this at the cross when he expended his wrath on Jesus. It was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief. He bore the sins of many. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. He was punished by God, stricken, smitten and afflicted. He was forsaken. This, beloved, is the sign of the Tav. Christ underwent this, the Messiah, and his ex marked the spot. That spot is the tab, the cross upon which he would be murdered as a common criminal, though he had done nothing wrong and no sin was found in him. The true sign is not some physical mark. whether it's a mark of God's elect or the mark of the beast. It is faith or unbelief. It's being in God's kingdom versus not. If you are not in God's kingdom, then the wrath of God abides upon you. And you are marked by God as someone upon whom the wrath of God will not pass over because your sin is not forgiven, because you will not have forgiveness, because you haven't believed that Jesus did this for you. But this sin and mark is not unforgivable. Rather, by faith in Christ, you are marked with the cross. not by making some superstitious sign of the cross every time something bad happens to you, not by getting a tattoo of a cross and putting it on your forehead or your palm, but having the sign of the cross on your heart, symbolized through the mark of baptism, baptism of the spirit, giving you a new heart, baptism in water, symbolizing to the world that you've been set apart. Do you see? Those marked in Ezekiel are marked because they sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in the temple. This can only be because they truly love God and have faith in Him. Notice how all of our thoughts come together in these verses in Revelation. Whether it's this existential crisis of him seeing all these people murdered and wonder if God's going to destroy them all, but the mark is there. What do you do with it? Revelation 13 10. If anyone is to be taken captive to captivity, he goes. If anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword, he must be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. And again, here's a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. Both those verses appear right in the middle of God marking his saints in Revelation. Hear the word of God and know that he forgives all who come to his son by faith. Believe in the good news that he really and truly does forgive our sins through the cross of Jesus. It is an atonement that has been made that satisfies God's full wrath because the high priest himself has offered it and the Lamb of God himself has been slain. Then know that whatever should befall you in this world, whether you live out your days in peace or you die by the hand of some invading army, God has marked you. because it is God who's given you the faith to believe in the first place. He knows all things and he knows his people and he has marked them. They are kept safe from the executioner for eternity in the loving hand of God who gives them eternal life. And that's the good news found even in Ezekiel chapter nine. Let's pray together. Lord, would you please seal upon our hearts the word that we've been given today, a word of judgment, a word of your anger, a word of your wrath, a word of the destruction of the wicked, a word that you had no pity upon them, a word that you sent executioners into your very temple to make it defiled with their bodies. We need that sealed on our hearts so we understand the kind of a God that you are. If you only left us there, then woe to us, but you haven't. You've showed us the mark. You showed us the sign, the sign that pointed forward to Jesus himself, even as it pointed backward for them to the Passover. And it gives us confidence that when we have the blood of Jesus and it marks who we are, then we are safe from your wrath. Because the wrath you poured out on those people in Jerusalem was nothing compared to the wrath you poured out on your own son. So that we wouldn't have to undergo your wrath again. I can't even understand what I'm talking about, frankly. And yet there it is. And that you would do this and that you would make a way that people who deserve your wrath could be forgiven and not treated as criminals, but treated as family and loved and forgiven of all their sin. Who can understand grace like that? This is one of those law and gospel passages that really stand out to me, Lord, in your word. in remarkable ways because of how brutal the law is and how glorious the gospel is. Make that contrast real to those here who have not trusted in you. They need to see your judgment and your anger. They also need to see your love and your kindness and your forgiveness in Christ. Help each of us to turn again anew to the Lord Jesus and to trust only Him for the things that we have done to give us forgiveness and to bring us into a closer walk with Christ, I would ask in Jesus' name, amen.