Well, about a year ago, we began a journey through the book of Ezekiel.
We've stepped away from that for a while, but I'd like to resume that today and pick up where we left off. If you would please turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 33. We'll be walking through the entire chapter this morning and I'll be reading much of the chapter through the course of the sermon. But let's begin by simply reading verses 10 and 11 because these verses are really central to the entire theme of the chapter. In verse 10, the exiles there in Babylon ask a question of God and in verse 11, God answers that question with a life-giving answer. And the answer God gave to the old covenant community of Israel as many centuries ago is the same answer he gives to us this morning.
Ezekiel 33 verses 10 through 11, would you please stand with me as we read. Hear now the word of the Lord. And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, thus have you said, surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us and we rot away because of them. How then can we live? Say to them, as I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live, turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?
Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are holy, holy, holy, and we are sinful. And the wages we deserve our death and eternal separation from everything that is pure and beautiful and good and true. But Lord, you have told us that you take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. You would have us turn away from our sin and receive life in place of death. And Lord, the only one to whom we can turn is you. So I ask that you would expose our black hearts, that you would soften our stubborn wills, that you would grant us the grace of repentance today. May we walk out of this building in a few moments convinced that our sin is destructive and not worth it. And certain of the joy that proceeds from a faithful life. Holy Spirit, take these words now and use them to do in us what we cannot do on our own. Your word is living and powerful and able to recreate us in the image of Jesus Christ, our savior. And so it is in his name that we pray and in his name that we hope. Amen.
You can be seated. Well, since we've been away from Ezekiel for a while, it might be helpful just to give a quick overview of the historical setting of the book. And if you want to catch up, all of the previous sermons in this Ezekiel series can be found on our church's sermon audio page. But Ezekiel was an Old Testament prophet who carried out his ministry as a prophet among a community of Jewish exiles who had been deported from Judah to Babylon a few years before the city of Jerusalem actually fell to the Babylonians. The southern kingdom of Judah, just like the northern kingdom of Israel had grown apathetic and disobedient toward the Lord. And just like God did in the northern kingdom, God raised up a godless foreign nation, in this case the Babylonians, to chasten his people, to chasten the southern kingdom. But God would preserve a remnant of his people, as he always does, who would one day return from Babylon and rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And that remnant would be the descendants of Ezekiel's audience. And so for 32 chapters now, Ezekiel has been warning the covenant community of the dangers of unfaithfulness.
But he's also been preaching to them about the mercy of God. And the chapter we come to today is really the hinge of the whole book. Much of what precedes chapter 33 focuses primarily on themes of warning and judgment.
Most of what follows chapter 33 focuses primarily on restoration. And then chapter 33 itself then is about repentance. It's about turning away from sin and turning back to the Lord. And in calling God's people to repentance, Ezekiel addresses several obstacles to repentance here in chapter 33. Things that distract or confuse or deter sinners from walking away from sin and turning back to God. Now whenever the Bible addresses a particular sin, it means that we have a tendency to commit that sin.
That we are susceptible to the dangers God warns about. If God must tell us of the necessity of repentance and of the obstacles that prevent repentance, then we should assume that the proverbial shoe fits. We can assume that we must be prone to not repenting like we should.
And so we do well to listen. The message of Ezekiel 33 is simply this. If we neglect repentance, we will miss out on the life that God offers. If we neglect repentance, we will miss out on the life that God offers. The Jewish exiles of old had made a mess of their lives through covenant breaking, disobedience, infidelity, and yet God was ready to forgive and restore. In fact, he would forgive and restore. We'll see that loving kindness of God demonstrated in numerous ways in the remaining chapters of Ezekiel, but first his children must repent. Turn back from your evil ways and live, he says in verse 11. So if God is ready to forgive and restore his children when they repent of their sin, why would we ever not repent? What would make us so stubborn as to choose death over life? Well, Ezekiel alludes to several tendencies or habits that keep us from repenting of our sin.
There are three, in fact, here in the chapter. And the first one is that we mishandle the word of God. We mishandle the word of God. We don't repent because we mishandle what God has said. Our sin is generally not due to a lack of information. God has told us what is good and what is wicked. We have his law.
His will has been clearly communicated. Scripture is replete with divine warnings against sin, but a word of warning is only beneficial if it is heeded. And so chapter 33 begins with an illustration that the covenant community there in exile would have been all too familiar with. Ancient cities were protected from attack by a wall that went all the way around the city. Citizens of a city would post a sentry, a watchman on the wall to be on the lookout for invading armies. If the watchman saw a threat on the horizon, he would warn the city by blowing a horn and everyone could make quick preparation for the incoming danger. But as the illustration goes, if the people of the city ignored the warning, they would be destroyed and their destruction would be on their own heads.
It would be their own fault for not heeding the warning. God then says in verse 7, so you son of man, speaking to Ezekiel, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, oh wicked one, you shall surely die and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.
But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. These verses that I just read, verses 7 through 9 are almost a word for word echo of Ezekiel's call to the prophetic office back in chapter 3 of Ezekiel. And for seven years now, from shortly after Ezekiel's deportation to Babylon to the fall of Jerusalem, Ezekiel has been faithfully heralding God's words of truth, warning the exiles, but without much to show for it.
The trumpet has been sounding, but the people are not listening. A word of warning is only beneficial if it's heeded. But not only had God adequately warned the exiles to the prophet Ezekiel, he went a step further and actually confirmed the warning signs, the predictions. But in chapter 3, back in chapter 3, when God first called Ezekiel to the prophetic office, God had silenced Ezekiel's tongue. In other words, for the previous seven years, Ezekiel could not speak a word unless it was an official prophetic word from the Lord. No small talk, no how's the weather, no casual conversation with his family and friends, just preaching, just heralding the divine warning for seven years. And in chapter 24, God predicted that on the day that news of Jerusalem's fall arrived, Ezekiel's tongue would be loosened.
He'd be able to speak normally again. And this loosening of his tongue, Ezekiel 24, 27, would be a sign, God says, to the exiles. It would be irrefutable proof that what God had predicted through his prophet was true and that Ezekiel was truly a prophet called of God.
God would confirm his word and vindicate his prophet who had been ignored and ridiculed and dismissed for years. And then the day finally arrived. The exiles were going about their business like they always had, dismissive of that crazy prophet Ezekiel, dismissive of his message of doom and gloom when all of a sudden a road weary fugitive from Jerusalem arrives in Babylon. And Ezekiel 33, 21 says, in the 12th year of our exile, in the 10th month, on the fifth day of the month, a fugitive from Jerusalem came to me and said, the city has been struck down. Now the hand of the Lord had been upon me the evening before the fugitive came and he had opened my mouth by the time the man came to me in the morning.
So my mouth was opened and I was no longer mute. The confirming sign that had been predicted all the way back in chapter 24 had finally come true. But you know what's so interesting about this earth shattering news of Jerusalem's fall is the fact that the fall itself doesn't really get that much attention. Instead, the focus is on Ezekiel's vindication as a prophet, as proof that God's word is true. The fact that Jerusalem's fall triggered the release of Ezekiel's tongue meant that God's word is true so you better listen to him.
This is a sort of a you deserve it moment from God and an I told you so moment from Ezekiel. The news of Jerusalem's fall is almost just sort of incidental to the whole thing. The real news of the day is that God's word is not something to be trifled with. Heed it and live, ignore it and be destroyed like Jerusalem was. The exiles were being chastened by God and part of that chastening was the devastating news that their beloved Jerusalem had fallen. But the call to action in response to that news was not be sad for Jerusalem, it was listen to the warning, heed the watchman, obey the word of the Lord or you will likewise perish. You see, discipline is really not about the spanking but about the correction.
If the disciplined person comes away only mourning the devastation and the pain of the spanking, he's missed the point. And the intended corrective in this case was for the covenant community to realize that God means what he says and that God does what he says, therefore fear him above all. If Yahweh can predict unlikely events like the fall of Jerusalem, then Yahweh, not Marduk, the Babylonian God is sovereign. Yahweh was responsible for Babylon's military success.
Yahweh was responsible for Jerusalem's demise. Yahweh determines the crisis and appoints the watchman and raises up the enemy and pronounces the sentence and calls everyone to account. He speaks, he confirms what he has spoken, he means what he says, so you better listen to his word. But when we like the exiles just sort of smile and give a polite nod to God's word without actually heeding what it says, we're playing the fool.
Like the person who casually goes about his business while the watchman is sounding the alarm. When we give greater credence to man's word than to God's word, as if Babylon and not Yahweh is the real threat, we're playing the fool. Take a moment and ask yourself, how do I handle God's word?
What is my interaction with it? Am I dismissive of it like the exiles were dismissive of Ezekiel for all those years? Do I just live my life as if nothing will ever change, as if the wisdom of this age, the rulers of this world, current events have more import than the word of God? You may even read your Bible every day, but does it alter the course of your life? Do you rely on scripture to actually order your steps and shape your values and determine your beliefs and priorities and steer your choices?
Or is it more just a sort of pick me up that you start your day with? When was the last time something in scripture drove you to alter the course of your life in a specific way? As goes our understanding of and attitude toward and submission to the Bible, so goes our lives. Beloved, when we mishandle God's gracious words of warning and instruction, we are choosing death instead of life. We're saying, I know better than God. We're loving our sin more than we love righteousness. So we fail to repent and we forfeit life.
The second reason we don't repent is because we misunderstand the character of God. The exiles had a beef with God, a dispute. In fact, they had two beefs with God. The first dispute shows up in verse 10. We just read it a few moments ago. And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, thus have you said, surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us and we rot away because of them.
How then can we live? And by the way, this is the first admission of guilt on the part of the exiles in the whole book of Ezekiel. But we'll see in a moment, it's a pretty lame admission of guilt. They're disingenuous about their confession. They're not willing to actually repent of the sin they've admitted to. Instead, they just use this confession of sin as a veiled opportunity to question the mercy of God.
Their confession is more of a reflection of their own emotional state than it is a reflection of their commitment to holiness before God. Poor pitiful us, we've sinned. We're just going to rot away here in Babylon and now Jerusalem has fallen.
We don't even have a home to go back to. Poor pitiful us. They're not repenting. They're simply mourning the consequence of their sin.
They think they have no hope because they feel like they have no hope. But what they're overlooking is the incredible infinite mercy of God, a mercy that's going to come into crystal clear focus in the chapters ahead. But for now, the exiles are in the unenviable and miserable place of being aware of their sin but unaware of God's mercy. They misunderstand the depth of the mercy of God and so they remain in their sin. So God says to them, verse 11, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. I don't enjoy death and wickedness and judgment. I want my people to repent and live. Why are you doing this, Israel? Why are you going that way when the way to life is this way?
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Come to me and live, God says. But the exiles, like us so often, misapprehend the mercy of God in order to continue wallowing in our own sin. There's a second dispute with God.
That's sort of the flip side of that coin. They first question God's mercy. Now they question God's justice in verses 17 through 20.
Verse 17 says, yet your people say the way of the Lord is not just when it is their own way that is not just. So out of one side of their mouth, the exiles admit to being sinful. But out of the other side of their mouth, they say God is cruel because he judges sin. Evidently, they want a world in which they can sin however they want to without God's pesky judgment interfering with that sin. That's their definition of justice.
Leave me alone, God. Let me sin without consequence, which is neither a genuine confession of sin nor an accurate definition of justice. But this is the logic of an unrepentant people. It's poor, pitiful us in verse 10 and it's God is a big meanie in verse 17. They're misunderstanding the character of God by questioning his mercy and by questioning his justice.
You ever find yourself doing what these exiles are doing? Questioning the character of God as a veiled attempt to just excuse your sin. On Monday, you're down in the mouth about what a bad person you are. I'm so rotten. I'm a nobody. God doesn't want me.
I'm awful. And then on Tuesday, you're angry at God. Why does God make my life so difficult? Why doesn't he ever give me a break?
Why doesn't he listen to me? And back and forth we go questioning God's mercy one moment, questioning his justice the next. It gives the impression that we're serious about God and his dealings with us when really it's just our way of putting off repentance by blaming God. He's not merciful. He's not just. The church God is merciful and God is just. Look with me at verses 12 through 16. And you son of man, say to your people, the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses. That's justice. And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness.
That's mercy. And the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. Again, that's justice. Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered. But in his injustice that he has done, he shall die.
That is perfect divine justice. Again, though I say to the wicked, you shall surely die, yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he's taken by robbery and walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustices, in other words, he repents, he shall surely live. He shall not die. None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right.
He shall surely live. That is mercy. And so we see that it only takes one sin to cancel out all acts of obedience.
Why is that? Well, it's because the standard of true justice is perfect righteousness. That's what justice demands. But God also promises to show mercy when a sinner repents of his sin. He could justly condemn such a person, but he doesn't. He calls for repentance, and when the wicked repent, God shows mercy.
And we need to acknowledge that the gospel is very much implied in verse 19. God doesn't show mercy to the wicked simply by ignoring the sins he's committed. God cannot do that. God is too holy to look upon sin.
So what does he do? He pours out his wrath, not upon the repentant sinner, but upon his son Jesus Christ in order that, as Paul says in Romans 3 26, God might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. He is both just and merciful. And yet even still sinners often reject that offer of forgiveness and salvation and insist simultaneously, just like the exiles did, that they are sinners who deserve condemnation and that God is unjust to condemn them. And that's really the lie of the sin enslaved mind, isn't it? That though I am a sinner who deserves punishment, it's really God's fault that I am the way I am. I need mercy, but God is not merciful. I deserve forgiveness, but God is not just. So goes the warped logic of the unrepentant soul. It's an intentional distortion of the character of God for the purpose of excusing my sin. But the gospel on the other hand is simple. Repent and live.
Repent and live. No matter who you are, no matter what you've done, if you turn from your sin and run to Christ, you'll find mercy and righteousness. One theologian put it this way. He said, one's end is not determined by how one begins a race, but how one finishes it.
A person's past does not determine his future. Yesterday's righteousness does not excuse today's wickedness, but nor does today's wickedness prevent tomorrow's righteousness. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, but instead enter the rest that God offers to sinners.
He is just and the justifier of all who put their hope in Christ. There's a third and final reason we put off repentance. And it's because we misconstrue the promises of God. We make them out to be something they're not. And there are a couple of ways we do this.
Both are illustrated in our text. The first way we misconstrue God's promises is by relying on unwarranted presumption. Relying on unwarranted presumption. What I mean by that is that we analyze our circumstances and our standing before God from all the wrong data, from incorrect information, faulty logic.
And we draw conclusions from these presumptions that are simply wrong. And we begin to grow a sense of false security and even of self-righteousness. The Jews who survived Babylon's attack back in Jerusalem were still living there now in the ransacked Jerusalem.
They were doing this very thing. Verse 24, Son of man, the inhabitants of these waste places in the land of Israel keep saying, Abraham was only one man, yet he got possession of the land. But we are many. The land is surely given us to possess. Here in the book of Ezekiel these Jerusalem survivors were claiming rights to the land on theological grounds. Back in chapter 11 they claimed that since God had spared them from the first round of deportation they were the favored of the Lord.
Although in actuality the ones who were deported were the remnant. They were the favored of the Lord. It was an unwarranted presumption that was grounded in a misinterpretation of God's promises. But now here in chapter 33 these same rebels are still claiming rights to the land only now they're not even trying to make a theological case for it. In fact God doesn't even come into their thinking. It's a fully secular argument that they're making. Namely that if Abraham was able to possess the land as only one person then they who are many will most certainly regain the land and possess it once more. They're not appealing to God's covenant promises to Abraham or to their relationship to Abraham. They're just crassly appealing to statistical likelihood. If Abraham could do it by himself we can do it because we're many. It's pragmatism.
It's self-reliance. It's unwarranted godless presumption. So what does Ezekiel say to them? Does he say well you know you're right there are a lot of you guys and you're a lot more advanced than Abraham was so I think you've got a fighting chance go take that land back.
No. He says verse 25 you eat flesh with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and shed blood. Verse 26 you rely on the sword you commit abominations and each of you defiles his neighbor's wife shall you then possess the land? He points to their unfaithfulness to the law of God as evidence against their right to possess the land of promise. They were relying on odds and statistics when they should have been repenting of their sin.
It was presumption. And this is all reminiscent of Christ's rebuke to a group of Jews in Luke 3. Jesus said to them bear fruit in keeping with repentance and do not begin to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. God can do miracles. God can change the odds. We don't discover God's will by analyzing statistics and planning for contingencies we discover God's will by obeying his law. And the things are going badly because we are just obeying his law we don't need a new mission statement or a revitalization committee. We need a repentant and contrite heart.
This is what God does not despise. But there's another way we often misconstrue God's promises and convince ourselves that he owes us something when he doesn't. That is by trusting in an insincere piety. Perhaps we don't play the part of the blatant secularist like those survivors back in Jerusalem were doing. Instead we play the part of the externally righteous churchgoer but inside we're just as full of idolatry as anyone else. In verse 30 God turns his attention to the exiles in Babylon Ezekiel's immediate audience and he says to Ezekiel your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses say to one another each to his brother come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord and they come to you as my people come and they sit before you as my people and they hear what you say.
These people sound like upstanding members of the covenant community eager to hear Ezekiel's message even discussing those sermons with their friends and neighbors throughout the week. They seem to have all the marks of orthodoxy but then God says but they will not do it. They don't obey. And why don't they obey?
God explains why. Look at the latter part of verse 31. For with lustful talk in their mouths they act their heart is set on their game and behold you Ezekiel are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument for they hear what you say but they will not do it.
Ezekiel was a gifted preacher and the exiles loved a good sermon and so they listened to Ezekiel but only because of how it made them feel not because they believed it or wanted to obey it. God also says they were greedy. Their heart verse 31 was set on gain.
The word gain here means profit spoils material increase. Their passion even in this exiled place of chastening was to get more stuff more creature comfort more pleasure but they were neglecting the more important matters of repentance of sin and obedience to God. They loved the form of religion but were denying the power thereof. They were attracted to the packaging of God's covenant the rhetoric the beauty the atmosphere the vibe the nostalgia but not to the substance of it. And so both the survivors back in Jerusalem as well as the exiles in Babylon had convinced themselves that God had great things in store for them. The restoration of Jerusalem all the success of Abraham a great church in Babylon a wonderful preacher who could sing like an angel but all of that was simply masking their need verse 11 to turn from their wicked ways and live.
They were misconstruing the promises of God as an excuse not to repent of their sin. Beloved it is possible to love the world and think you're loving the church like the survivors in Jerusalem. You may use Christian sounding sentences and concepts and categories and thereby convince yourself that your life is grounded in the promises of God when you're actually living like a practical atheist reasoning like the world acting like unbelievers loving the passing pleasures of sin. It's also possible like the exiles in Babylon to bear the marks of loving the church without actually loving the God of the church. You're faithful in your church attendance you love to talk about theology you love the aesthetic of Christianity its scholarship its etiquette its songs its structure its traditions but it's all just an empty form of religion without substance because it doesn't make any real difference in your life at work on Monday morning or in how you raise and discipline your children or in how you treat your parents or love your spouse or manage your finances.
It's a religion without repentance that loves sin more than it loves the word of God and the character of God and the promises of God. So how do we know if we love God? Jesus tells us if you love me you will keep my commandments and perhaps we're tempted to think well at least I'm not an Old Testament believer they were under the law with covenant stipulations and threats of curses if they disobeyed but church God has not changed. In fact if the exiles in Babylon were under the threat of God's wrath for their disobedience and unbelief we are under that threat all the more. Hebrews 10 says anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace for we know him who said vengeance is mine I will repay and again the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Living post-Calvary and post-Pentecost doesn't make us less accountable to God it actually makes us more accountable to God than Ezekiel's hearers were. We have the greater moral obligation to repent of our sin and return to the Lord precisely because Jesus Christ has come. Brothers and sisters because Jesus Christ has come we also have the way of escape made even more plain to us. If our obedience is lacking if our faith is weak if our hearts are more influenced by the world than we dare to admit to ourselves we have an advocate the Lord Jesus Christ who represents us before the throne of God with his perfect righteousness run to that righteousness. The invitation of God the command that God gave to the old covenant community is the same word he gives to his children this morning turn back turn back from your evil ways for why will you die old church of Jesus Christ repent and live. Let's pray. God most high you are holy and by your grace and your spirit we are becoming holy but we have not yet arrived we haven't attained to the perfection to which you're bringing us so we ask you to grant us the grace of repentance unto life enable us more and more to reckon ourselves dead to sin but alive to God. Lord subdue our sin that we might walk in newness of life for your glory and for our joy I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
