Well, good morning. May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Let's pray. Oh God, who wonderfully created and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature, grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity. your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Well, it's good to be back worshiping with y'all. It's always nice to get to see family and friends, and it was especially nice to get to enjoy a week of 75 degree weather and sunshine in the middle of winter, but much longer than that, and I get to feeling kind of out of sorts, particularly given how much we miss worshiping with you all on the Lord's day. Last Sunday, the kids and I had the privilege of worshiping at this little old country Baptist church with my stepmom and her dad. And it was cool to see the Spirit of God working among those people. By the time brother Randy finished his sermon and got to the altar call, man, I wanted to raise my hand and go down the aisle and accept Jesus into my heart. The joy of those folks was absolutely evident. And you could feel the passion of the preacher and his desire to make sure every single person in that room knew where they stood with God. Not based on some experience they had in the past or some group of people they were a part of, but based on where they stood in relation to Jesus. Now having... spent years in that world, that constant week in and week out pressure exhausted me, but it was nice to be reminded that I have a responsibility and you have a responsibility, in Peter's words, to make our calling and election sure. And in Paul's words, to work out our own salvation with fear and tremble. Jesus himself said to a group of very religious people, unless you repent, you will perish. Now, this morning, we're not gonna make the mistake of taking a one-for-one leap of what God has commanded Ezekiel and what he commands of you. And once you see what that is, you'll actually be quite glad that he doesn't do that. But we are gonna take a cue from Brother Randy and our Baptist brothers and see how the flow of Ezekiel declares not to just groups, but individuals, that they must pay attention. So saints of RCC, if you're willing and able, I invite you to stand to honor the reading of God's word from Ezekiel 24 and Matthew 10, where we will see where God ought to stand in relation to our love for everyone and everything else. Hear God's word. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, Excuse me, yeah, that's right. Son of man, behold, I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you at a stroke. Yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. Sigh, but not aloud. Make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban and put on your shoes on your feet. Do not cover your lips nor eat the bread of men. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died, and on the next morning I did as I was commanded. The people said to me, will you not tell us what these things mean for us, that you are acting like this? Then I said to them, the word of the Lord came to me. Say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearning of your soul. And your sons and your daughters, whom you left behind, shall fall by the sword. And you shall do as I have done. You shall not cover your lips nor eat the bread of men. Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet. You shall not mourn or weep, but you shall rot away in your iniquities and groan to one another. Thus shall Ezekiel be to you a sign. According to all that he has done, you shall do. When this comes, then you will know that I am the Lord God." And now Matthew 10. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever finds his life for my sake will find it. This is the word of the Lord. Oh God, add your blessing to the reading and the hearing and the preaching of your word and grant us all the grace to trust and obey you and all the church said. Amen, please be seated. Well, this is the last of Ezekiel's sermons against Jerusalem while he's in Babylon. In chapters 25 through 32, Ezekiel will turn from the people of God to the nations and prophesy against them for what they do to God's people. And then he will close out his book with promises of restoration in chapters 33 through 48. And so while we didn't read all of Ezekiel 24, because this is a two-fold prophecy that sort of explains everything else, we're gonna go ahead and cover the whole chapter. So first, in verses one through 14, we are going to see a parable of what God had done to his people and how they responded. And then in verses 15 through 27, or really, what would it be? It's not 27. It'd be probably 24. We're gonna see a real life prophetic sign act where Ezekiel's wife dies and how his response is to reflect that of God's response. In verse, One, we actually get a very specific date of these events, and it actually lines up perfectly with the dates that we find in 2 Kings 25 and in Jeremiah 52, which recount the siege, the fall, and the captivity of Jerusalem and the Judahites at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The Psalms that we sang together during Advent were actually written about 50 years after the events that we have here in Ezekiel 24, Jeremiah 52, and 2 Kings 25. That would be around 587 or 588 BC. Kings and Jeremiah tell the historical account of these events, but Ezekiel is prophesying as to the why behind them, how to make sense of the events. And so the word of the Lord comes to Ezekiel right around this time, December or January, about 2,500 years ago. And God gives Ezekiel a message, an act to perform, and then the explanation of it. In verses two through five, God tells Ezekiel to get a pot of water, fill it with the choicest portions of meat, the best bones for broth, the choicest lamb, and boil it over fire. Now this is a direct allusion to the statements made by the wicked leaders in Ezekiel chapter 11. There, even though Ezekiel and Jeremiah were prophesying about the coming judgment of God upon these people for their rebellion, the false teachers were going around rebutting those claims, saying, the people of God are the choice portions and the city of Jerusalem is our cauldron. their blatant disregard of the Word of the Lord through His prophets, these men arrogantly presumed upon the grace of God and thought that just because they were God's chosen people, He would never judge them for their sin. And so, They continued for years in their rebellion. And now, as the judgment is coming upon them, God mocks their earlier claims by giving them a final sign of the coming judgment. They were indeed, the people of God, were indeed His chosen portion. Jerusalem was indeed the pot in which they could have been safe, but that would have only been the case had they responded to God's means of sanctification by repenting of their sin and turning to Him. You see, one of these uses of fire imagery in the Bible is as a means of purifying that which is burned. And that's not just an Old Testament theme. Peter picks up on the same imagery when speaking to New Testament, New Covenant exiles. In his first epistle, he begins by praising the triune God. for causing these people to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. He says that we've been granted an inheritance, an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, and we're being guarded by God's power through faith for salvation. Peter says we are to rejoice in that reality, even though we're gonna undergo various trials. And we're undergoing those various trials so that the tested, fire-tested, fire-purified faith might be found to result in the praise and glory and honor of Jesus. So Peter picks up on this sanctifying fire theme for new covenant believers, and so does James. He alludes to the heat of the sun after calling his hearers to count it all joy when they undergo testings and trials of various kinds. The implication is that these trials, these testings, these burnings bring sanctification for the faithful, but the same heat scorches those who refuse to respond faithfully. And so they wither and they perish like the wicked in Psalm 1. And so this trying-by-fire language that we see here isn't limited to how God treated people way back then, but it is rather a consistent depiction of God's means of sanctifying his people is through the fire of affliction. He rewards those who trust and obey him, and he judges those who don't. As Malachi explains, the Lord is like a refiner's fire. He sits as a refiner and a purifier of his people to remove their impurities so that they will be pleasing to him. And so you and we have options. We can either view our hard times and our sufferings and our trials and our pain as opportunities to become more holy and more pleasing to God, or, like the men in Ezekiel's day, we can refuse to do so. These stubborn, hard-hearted men did not view the tests and trials and sufferings they were going through as opportunities for sanctification. Instead of receiving their hard times as God's disciplining them as he does as a loving father for his children, and instead of allowing him to burn away their impurities, they refuse to repent. And that means the same fire that could have been used for their purification is now gonna be used for their destruction. Verse six through 14 is the explanation of that very thing. God tells Ezekiel to boil the choicest pieces of meat. the bones and the choicest lamb from the flock, and to keep them boiling until there is nothing left. He's to let the stew boil. And as the water begins to be boiled away, Ezekiel is to reach into the pot and take out piece after piece, bone after bone, and throw them into the fire. He's even to let the fire roar until the very cauldron, the pot itself, is consumed. That's exactly what happened in the accounts we read of in Jeremiah and 2 Kings. Not too long after this prophecy, we are told that the captain of Nebuchadnezzar's army burned down the temple, the king's house, and every great house in Jerusalem. The armies of the Chaldeans broke down all the walls around Jerusalem, and the rebellious people of God were taken out of the frying pan and thrown into the fire, as it were. As always, God keeps his promises. In verse 13, he explains that had his people allowed the fire to cleanse them of their sin, they would have been clean. But because they refused, this fire would be used for their destruction. This is covenantal language through and through. Those who respond to God's grace in faith receive the blessing of his salvation. Those who ignore and refuse his grace receive the curses of his judgment. God had been so gracious to these people. He had been so kind and so merciful and so patient. For centuries, he had delivered them from their enemies. He had provided for them on every side. He had even dwelt with them. He spoke to them, he sang to them, and he pleaded with them. He even loved them enough to wield the rod and discipline them for centuries so that they might please finally grow up in wisdom and return. And yet they refused. Now make no mistake, they didn't refuse everything he offered. They gladly took from him that which they liked, that which they wanted, and that which made them feel They enjoyed his grace, they benefited from his mercy, but they took that to mean he wasn't serious about sin. They listened to his words, they sang his songs, and they worshiped him in his house, but their hearts were far from him. When he disciplined them, rather than run to him, in their pain, they ran farther from Him. They didn't allow the fire of God's Spirit to cleanse them. Instead, like spoiled children, they refused to obey God's messengers and they continued to only do what was right in their own eyes. And so when God finally brings judgment, when the fire finally gets turned up such that they're not refined but destroyed, it's not because God hadn't done enough for them. It's because no matter how much God had done for them, they didn't think it was enough. And so after being treated, with such disdain, such ingratitude for so long. After watching these people take his name and his glory lightly, after watching them refuse to heed his word for so long, his patience ran out. And he resolved to give them over to the death he tried so desperately to save them from. That's where the second part of the prophecy comes in, the death of Ezekiel's wife and the corresponding response. In verses 15 through 17, Yahweh explains to Ezekiel that he is going to take Ezekiel's wife from him. And when he does, Ezekiel can be sad, but he's not to respond with all the external displays of mourning that was so common in his day. Now, it's important to point out, this is one of those examples where we encourage you not to read the Bible as though God were talking directly to you as an individual. Okay, you should be glad about that. I think most of us know intuitively that when God tells Ezekiel, I'm going to take the delight of your eyes from you, but you're not to mourn or weep or cry, that command doesn't apply to you. And we're glad it doesn't, and so we don't take it for ourselves. But we don't get to change that approach when we see God telling people things we wish he would say to us. Things like, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, teach you all things, and bring to remembrance all I've said to you. The same rules of reading and interpretation apply. As always, context is key. We allow scripture to interpret scripture. These people, this time period is unique in redemptive history. And Ezekiel's life has been and is to be uniquely and specifically reflective of God's disposition toward his people in this specific time. He always, or at least quite often, asks this sort of representative behavior of his representatives. 200 years before this, God's disposition toward his bride was to be manifest in the life of Hosea. At that time, God's disposition was such of love and continued pursuit, and so he sends Hosea, who's called to continually pursue his wife, though she's a repeated adulteress. Fast forward to Ezekiel's day, after this pursuit, and in her continued unfaithfulness, God has now decided to put this adulteress to death. So just as the desire of God's eye would die, the desire of Ezekiel's eye would likewise die. And to communicate how dead God's feelings were toward this rebellious house, Ezekiel was to not weep or wail or give any indication that the death of this bride was a regrettable event. In his role as son of man, Ezekiel was to represent God to men, but he was also to serve as a template for those under him. They were to imitate their leaders. There were still those among the people who were not the rebellious house in verses 1 through 14. There was still a faithful remnant who loved God. They loved his dwelling place and they desired that the people of God would be holy and blameless. And in verses 21 through 23, these people are instructed to imitate the feelings of their God as imitated by their leader, Ezekiel, by likewise not mourning when the destruction of Jerusalem takes place. Now this might sound to us like the supposed harsh God of the Old Testament that people like to bash on, but these words aren't any harsher than those of Jesus in Matthew 10 that we read earlier. So the explicit command not to weep or mourn the death of a spouse doesn't apply everywhere, but the principle that loving God more than anything or anyone does apply to anyone who would follow him. In Matthew 10, Jesus told his disciples that he did not come to earth to bring peace, but a sword. Now, as we've noted, the Jews expected that to be a literal metal sword that would slay the Gentile rulers who had set themselves over the Israelites. But in his coming, Christ brought a sword that would divide the world not by ethnicities, but by family. not by families of mere human blood, but by families according to the blood of Christ. Families that either have Satan as their father or God, God lovers or God haters. The lovers of God should be so devoted to him according to Jesus that their love for anyone else would so pale in comparison It could be described as hate. Now we live in a time where people are willing to bite and devour and slice and dice and hate their family for just about anything. So we probably need a good dose of the fifth commandment. But for the Jew and for the faithful Christian, the command to honor father and mother commended a loyalty and a devotion and a deference to the family that's lost on us. And yet, even to them, Jesus' words hold true. Whoever loves father or mother more than Jesus, or whoever loves son or daughter more than Jesus is not worthy of Him. Now some of you have experienced this tension in your families and you've chosen the good portion. You love them, but you love Him more. You have family members that, because of your love for Christ, because of your faithfulness to Him, and your keeping His commandments, they turn against you. Endure. Endure their scoffs. Endure their passive, aggressive comments, and even their open hostility. Count it all loss for the sake of gaining Christ. Take heart that you stand with Christ, and more importantly, Christ stands with you. You're not called to an Ezekiel-like refusal to mourn over the loss of these relationships. but you are called to continue to be faithful in your pursuit of Christ over and above all relationships, even family. Now, I know your pain. I know your agony and your heavy heart firsthand. But no one knows it more than Jesus. He's not asking you to experience anything he didn't. He was killed by his brothers. And so though it feels like you may be losing your life, losing everyone who is important to you, everyone you love, trust the words of our faithful elder brother who says, whoever loses their life for Christ's sake will find it. That is good news. Now when you heed these words, you have an opportunity that your life might shine forth like Ezekiel's did in his day as a sign. This word for sign that God says Ezekiel will be in verse 24 is the same word that we translate miracle. This is a wonder, this is a marvel that Ezekiel is displaying. This is an unbelievable act of God being shined forth. And so if and when you place Christ first and foremost above all else, your life can be one of those marvels, one of those signs for a unbelieving world to look at, ponder, And so I encourage you, continue to take heart and gird up your loins and love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. For only then can you love your neighbor as yourself. Others of you desperately need to hear these words of Christ and change your life. for he's not speaking flippantly. Jesus isn't someone who says things that he doesn't mean. This isn't a call to love unlovely things less than God. This is a call to love God exceedingly more than even your love for that which is lovely. Now you'll know your loves by your actions and how you respond to God's commands to love, trust, and obey him. And so ask yourselves, evaluate, are you allowing your love for earthly relationships, even good ones, to keep you from being faithful to Christ? Would the love you have for people, even the love you're commanded to have for them, keep you from loving and obeying your Heavenly Father? Does your love for your children or your parents or your siblings or your boyfriend or your girlfriend serve as an excuse for defying your Heavenly Father? Would you cling so desperately to this life that you would be willing to lose life eternally? Would your love for family and friends reveal a relative hatred of God? Or would your love for God reveal a relative hatred for anything else? That's the kind of devotion Jesus is calling all who would follow him to. And that's ultimately what's behind this devotion Ezekiel's being called to in his day. Now sure, it was to take on a different, specific manifestation, but the ultimate question to Ezekiel and these people is would their response to God's will be met with a trust in and love for him, such that anybody who looked at them would know where their ultimate allegiance lay? Or would they waver? Would they doubt? And would they defy God when things got hard? Now again, this chapter is not filled with specific commands to every individual every day throughout all time, but these principles remain for the people of God, which you are all a part. What will you do with the heat in your life? What will you do with the trials and the pain and the suffering and the conflict? Will you endure faithfully? seeing and receiving even difficult providences from the hand of your Father who loves you. Well, you ask, in those very real moments, hard though they be, how can I respond to this heat in such a way that it sanctifies me, that I'm cleansed, that I'm more like Christ after this suffering than I was before or will you flee? Will you flee from the pain? Will you refuse the refiner's fire and bury your sin deeper and deeper until you don't know where to find it? Will you refuse the scalpel of love and choose instead the sword of judgment? Will you trust your father loves you? And he always, always, always does exactly what you need to make you more like Christ. Now I press this home, beloved, because apostasy is real. Not just for the people of God back then, Not just for the broader body at various moments in history, apostasy is real for individual people who refuse to submit to God and allow Him to do His work in their lives. The parable of the sower is about actual people. Being burned up doesn't just happen to a bunch of God-haters out there who never agreed to any of this. It really does happen to individual people, and God forbid, individual people in here even. People who for a time are glad to take from God. Glad to enjoy His grace and benefit from His mercy. People who were once faithful, who listened to his words and sang his songs and worshiped him in his house, still can end up with hearts that are far from him. And even though he would discipline them with the rod of reproof, rather than grow in wisdom and godliness, rather to run to their father from a far off land, they continue to run further away. This happens to actual people. You may know some. And so as the writer to the Hebrews encouraged his hearers, I encourage you, see that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if these people did not escape those who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven? Treasure not sin in your hearts, not a single one. Lest your love for God grow cold and his hot pursuit of you be turned to judgment. Instead, in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, for in Christ we see the lengths to which the Father was willing to go to pursue us. Had he left us to ourselves, to our own devices, to our own desires and loves and lusts, we would be without hope and without God in the world. And yet because of the great love with which he loved us, he came after us. He came after you, even in exile. This fiery judgment that we see here, you and I deserve it for our sins. And yet the sinless Son of God died and rose again so that He could pour out a different kind of fire, His Spirit, upon you to sanctify you through trials, through sufferings, through tribulations, to cleanse you from your sins so that you might be holy and acceptable sacrifices to the Father. You see, as great a sign as Ezekiel was to an onlooking people, Christ is the greatest sign of God's wonderful, marvelous, miraculous work that confirms to us that God loves his people so much, he perfects us even through suffering. Paul writes to the Philippians, for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. And this suffering is for your good. And so beloved, let's suffer for his sake. Well, let's endure the heat together until He who began a good work in us brings it to completion. And we see Him at the day of His coming, amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we have heard wonderful things out of Your Word. We praise you for revealing Christ by promise and shadow in the Old Testament and for revealing him as the fulfillment of all these things in the new. Give us your spirit that we might understand these words and the fullness of your truth as you have revealed him to us in the person and work of Jesus, who with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory now and forever. Amen.