and the cherubim. The angels have Ezekiel saw, Ezekiel 1. The angels sees again, and Ezekiel 8. I think that vision continues. I think we'll probably jump ahead, maybe to chapter 10. But I have to be a little bit careful in my plans for Ezekiel. They keep changing. Some things stay the same, but some of the things as I think about how we may work through it keep changing, including tonight's sermon, Ezekiel chapter 7. We're not going to make it to the fourth point. last week's sermon should have been two sermons and uh this week's sermon, we have the same thing and and now we will put it in two. So, this week's uh sermon, we're not going to make it to the fourth point. Uh we're going to uh dive into that and uh certainly, uh we will we will speak the name of our one and But it was especially in the fourth point that we were going to look at that. So, next week we'll especially see how Jesus Christ is the answer to the sins of the people exposed. And we'll come back. The plan now is, if we're willing, we'll have basically two parts. This is Ephial 7, sir. And we'll come back next week on Christmas evening. evening of Christmas Day but for now, we'll read the whole chapter. We will look especially at verses ten to twenty-four. That's the fourth point was especially twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven but we'll read the whole chapter. Ezekiel chapter seven. Beginning or reading at verse one, let us hear the word of God. The word of the Lord came to me, and you, O son of man, thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel, an end. The end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end is upon you, and I will send my anger upon you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will punish you for all your abominations. and my eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity, but I will punish you for your ways while your abominations are in your midst. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Thus says the Lord God. Disaster after disaster, behold, it comes. An end has come. The end has come. It has awakened against you. Behold, it comes. Your doom has come to you, O inhabitants of the land. The time has come. The day is near, a day of tumult and not of joyful showering on the mountains. Now I will soon pour out my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you, and judge you according to your ways. And I will punish you for all your abominations, and my eye will not spare, for all I have pity. I will punish you according to your ways. While your abominations are in your midst, then you will know that I am the LORD who strikes. Behold the day, behold it comes, your doom has come, the rod has blossomed, Pride has budded. Violence has grown up into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, nor their abundance, nor their wealth. Neither shall there be preeminence among them. The time has come. The day has arrived. Let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon all their multitude. The seller shall not return to what he has sold while they live. For the vision concerns all their multitude. It shall not turn back. And because of his iniquity, none shall maintain his life. They have blown the trumpet and made everything ready, but none goes to battle. For my wrath is upon all their multitude. The sword is without. Pestilence and famine are within. He who is in the field dies by the sword, and him who is in the city, famine and pestilence devour. And if any survivors escape, they will be on the mountains like those of the valleys, all of them moaning, each one over his iniquity. All hands are feeble and all knees turn to water. They put on sackcloth and armor covers them, shames on all faces and baldness on all their heads. They cast their silver into the streets and their gold is like an unclean thing. Their silver and gold are not able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the lord. They cannot satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. for it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. It is beautiful ornament they used for pride, and they made their abominable images and their detestable things of it. Therefore, I make it an unclean thing to them, and I will give it into the hands of the foreigners for prey, and to the wicked of the earth for spoil, and they shall profane it. I will turn my face from them, and they shall profane my treasured place. Robbers shall enter and profane it. Forge a chain, for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence. I will bring the worst of the nations to take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the pride of the strong, and their holy places shall be profaned. Anguish comes, they will seek peace, but there shall be none. Disaster comes upon disaster. Rumor follows rumor. They seek a vision from the prophet while the law perishes from the priest and counsel from the elders. The king mourns. The prince is wrapped in despair and the hands of the people of the law are paralyzed by terror. According to their way, I will do to them. And according to their judgments, I will judge them. And they shall know that I am the Lord. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our Lord endures forever. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the coming judgment is emphasized, and especially emphasized is that this judgment is imminent, and that God has prophesied The coming judgment, the coming destruction of Jerusalem before, he has spoken it by a number of prophets already. But now, he's saying, it's not just a future thing I prophesied. This is happening. It is happening soon. The end has come. So, Ezekiel is the prophet very near the dead end. Indeed, it is five years or so at this point now to the very end and it's less than that when the siege will begin, the long siege of Jerusalem. And so, as I've said before, ancient Hebrew, it has no command I to italicize. It has no command V to put into bold. It has no caps block. Every letter was a capital letter, essentially. And so, what do you do for emphasis, then? Well, you repeat. You repeat. You repeat. And that's exactly what chapter 7 does. It emphasizes this imminent day. Look at the language in chapter 7. telling us the end has come. Verse 2, an end, the end has come. Verse 3, the end is upon you. Verse 5, behold it comes. Verse 6, behold it comes. Verse 7, your doom has come and the time has come. Verse 10, behold the day, behold it comes, your day has come. And then in verse 12, the time has come, the day has arrived. And you see that especially through the first part of chapter seven. And then what is our main focus tonight? Our main focus now is really what comes after that. Verses 10 to almost the end, because we're going to have to come back for part two next week. But what's the emphasis there? It's, well, this is the reason why it's coming. Because the people have sinned. This is the reason why it's coming. and then the sins are described in a little bit of detail here and then God will essentially go into more detail on each of these sins in later chapters. And so we're looking at those sins and the reality that Yahweh, Lord in all caps, in our chapter Yahweh exposes the sins of his people. And again, we're not going to make it to the fourth point, but we're going to look at the sins exposed materialism, the sins exposed idolatry, and then the sins exposed violence. All of this with that theme that Yahweh exposes the sins of his people. So we start with the sins And now it's not called materialism by the prophet, that's not the word that they used back then. But what is materialism? It's simply the love of money, the love of things. And that is not a new problem, it is an old problem. And so Ezekiel, by the prophetic word of the Lord, and remember that is the only word that Ezekiel can speak during these years, uh by by the prophetic word of the lord, Ezekiel speaks of this materialism, this love of things uh and we see that in verses eleven to thirteen uh but the danger and the final worthlessness of level is especially described in verse nineteen. Uh let's think of of the final worthlessness of gold with Ezekiel in verse nineteen. It says, they and their gold is like an unclean thing." Why would this be? Well, it's because the judgment is coming. Remember, for those who were here last week, the small little bits of food that Ezekiel measured out for 390 days. Remember that the supply line of bread will be broken. Well, what is one time when gold is worthless, when it becomes worthless, when it becomes like an unclean thing, when it's something you don't even want to look at. Well, it's when the supply line of bread is broken, and you are all starving, and anybody would trade all of the wealth of the city for one loaf of bread. What does that do? It exposes the sin of materialism. By putting the people in a position where they see that wealth is absolutely useless, Yahweh, the Lord God, will expose this sin of loving their material goods. And indeed, their silver and their gold, in verse 19, it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. So, we're putting the beginning of verse nineteen together with the end of verse nineteen and that language that the silver and gold of the people was the stumbling block of their iniquity and that that language of stumbling block. Now, that's going to lead us to our first big application for tonight. Our our bigger applications, we're going to we're going to number. Uh we're going to have one or two for each point and the first application is this that we should know uh the sins uh spoken of in this chapter are not new sins. Uh Ezekiel seven verse nineteen is basically stated in just another way by the apostle Paul 600 years later when he said, for the love of The language of the apostle Paul is that it's the root of evil. The language of the prophet Ezekiel, by the word of the Lord, is that it's the stumbling block that's causing their iniquity. Those are two different ways to say the same thing. The sin of loving things was a sin New Testament was written and it remains a sin to this day and this also takes us to our second application and this one, we're going to, we're going to kind of, we're going to stop and we're going to zoom in on three different verses from three different chapters because our second application is this that when the text of When a text of scripture is difficult, keep reading. And to demonstrate this, we're going to look at Ezekiel 3 verse 20, Ezekiel 7 verse 19, and Ezekiel 33 verse 13. The difficult text... that we for those who are here in Ezekiel three, a few weeks ago, we really just kind of skipped over this verse. Although I don't expect anybody to remember this, but I believe I said if there's anything confusing in Ezekiel three, read Ezekiel 33. But I don't expect that we really remember that small detail from a few weeks ago. But the difficult verse that we essentially skipped over at the time is Ezekiel three verse 20. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteousness that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require of him. Well, that's not an easy verse. We have God bringing this stumbling block. We have God requiring the wages of sin, which is death. And we have a person who's described as being righteous in some sense. Well, that's not an easy verse to put together. But remember, if the verse is difficult, keep reading. and we take that language of stumbling block and we go to seven verse nineteen and seven verse nineteen is describing all the sins of the people that's bringing this judgment. So, what happens when we put those two verses together? Who does god give a stumbling block to? God gives a further stumbling block to those who have already created their own stumbling Even more important is Ezekiel chapter 33, verse 13. And now maybe we say, well, hold on, Ezekiel 3 and 33, those two chapters are a long ways away. Why would we go to the two to make sense of each other? Well, they are a far distance from each other by word count, but literarily, they are very close together because they're the two watchmen passages that form the bookends in Ezekiel. for all the words leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem. So, chapter 3 and 33 are very closely related. And what is Ezekiel 33? We'll start reading that verse 12 and then we'll read verse 13. What does it say? And you, son of man, shall save your people. The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses. And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness. And the righteous shall not live by his righteousness when he sins. And here is especially the explanation in verse 13. No, 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. So how is the word righteous used in Ezekiel 30? It's used in this sense that you cannot trust in your own righteousness. And so, here's an example of a difficult verse that's explained by the use of the same language in later passages in the book. And it's a broad principle that applies to many different texts. If the text is difficult, keep reading. Or we can even put it this way, just in terms of last Sunday's sermon and now this Sunday evening's sermon. Ezekiel 4 is not the easiest text. But what do we do? We keep reading. And what do we see in Ezekiel 7? The people are bringing this judgment upon themselves by their own sins. The text of scripture is difficult to keep on reading. Well, now let's look at our second point. Sins expose idolatry. The sin of loving wealth, loving material luxury, and idolatry, they're tied together in verse 20. The people of God make abominable images and many idols, and they use beautiful things to make their idols. the treasury of the people is actually in the temple. So there's an implication here that they're taking luxurious things out of the temple and making idols with them. But not only that, they are making abominations with their idols. Ezekiel chapter eight further explains Uh one of the one of the ways this happens, look with me at eight verse five and then eight verse ten. He said to me, son of man, lift up your eyes. This is eight verse five. Now, to the north. So, I lifted up my eyes to the north and behold, north the altar gate in the entrance was the image of jealousy. This is the vision. First four verses where god takes his ego by vision to see the temple in So what does it mean when in this image Ezekiel sees at the entrance of the Temple an image of jealousy? Another way of saying this is that people are taking idols and putting those idols inside the Temple of Jerusalem. And then we have more language about this in verse 10 of chapter 8. So I went in, verse 10, and saw, and there engraved on the wall all around was every oar of creeping things, and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel. What was supposed to be engraved on those walls? palm trees and other things, reminding them of the first Temple in the Garden of Eden. But instead of that, they have desecrated it, they have made it an abomination, and they have literally placed and drawn idols into the Temple of Jerusalem. They have not only desecrated God's treasured place, which is how God describes the Temple of Jerusalem in verse 22, They have also built up their own holy places, in the plural, in verse 24, the holy places, the end of verse 24, that they purvey. So we put this together, what's the overall picture? They've put idols into the Temple of Jerusalem, and then they've built their own shrines all around it as well. What's going to happen to all of these things? Well, God says, verse 22, even though it's my treasured place, because of what you have done to it, I will allow robbers to enter and profane it. So once again, the sins of the people are exposed because what's gonna happen when the temple is destroyed? Well, the ideology of the idols that you put there and the trust that you place in the temple itself and all of those things, it literally goes up in flames. So that sin is exposed. Here's another way to put it. It's going to be hard to continue to put idols into the temple when the temple is no longer there. God is going to completely expose He will literally put an end to it. They will not be able to continue in this sin anymore, just as they couldn't continue in the sin of materialism anymore. You don't want gold anymore. You're so hungry that all you want is a little bit more. So, this brings us to our third application. That's who much is given. The people of Judah had so much. They had been warned of this before. They had been given the Law, the Prophets, the Kings and the Lion of David. They had been given the One Temple, which was God's treasured place, which did have His presence in a special way. And so, when God's people sin in this way, well, here's something else God did. He also gave them the lesson of patience, because they were already committing sins through the centuries. And so, on top of all those gifts, God was patient with them one century after another, and finally God says, do much as good and much as expected, and you are my people, and you have sin against me. is going to disappear. Ezekiel is giving one example of the biblical principle that to whom much is given, much is expected and let me state it in those terms that brings it into today. How much have we been given? We have so much more in the Temple. We have the Good News. Christ is coming with all that He has done. We have everything that the Temple could only look forward to. We have been given much. We have been given even more than the people of Israel. who is Jesus. He is our savior. He's also the very one who said the words in Luke twelve verse forty-eight to whom much is given much will be required. Now, let's come also to our fourth application which looking back at verse twenty-four, So it wasn't just that they put idols in the temple. It was that they built all kinds of their own holy places in the plural. Verse 24 is again where we see that language. In other words, this was a widespread problem. This was not, I mean, a few temples and the idol is an abomination, but it was not just an isolated abomination done by a few people in one city in Jerusalem. This was a widespread abolition. And so this brings us to our fourth application, which is this. Corporate sins will bring corporate punishment. There were still some true believers in Israel, but this is how Habakkuk describes it in Habakkuk 1. The righteous are surrounded by the wicked. When God's people, on the whole, are falling into idolatry and unfaithfulness. It will make life difficult for everyone, including those who are still faithful. God does not just deal with us individually. G.I. Williamson, who was preaching a sermon on Ezekiel chapter 7 in 1974. He was a gifted preacher of those decades. He wrote a commentary on Heidelberg Haptism and on the Westminster Confessions. He preached in Reformed churches and Presbyterian churches. I believe he was preaching in a Presbyterian church at this time. And actually, our third and fourth application were both basically, I took those straight from his sermon on this past. And when he spoke about the application and that corporate sin is great corporate punishment, he brought it right to America. What happens when faithfulness wanes? and the church as a whole begins to not only fail to stand against him, but to celebrate sin. Does it make it difficult for everyone? Yes, it does. Or let's just get very specific in relation to our little town, which in many ways we could speak of upon as being founded by Christians Does it become more difficult to be a faithful church when all of the businesses are now open on Sunday? Does it become more difficult to be a faithful church when sins are celebrated by flying LGBTQIA and yes, they've now added those letters, that LGBTQIA plus flags, not only in the public library, but also on the steps of a church. You see, when sin is celebrated, and especially when the church would celebrate sin, everyone suffers. And it makes life more difficult for everyone. Before we move on to our third point, I just want to say, Persecution does not make life more difficult in the church in the same way. We often see, now persecution carries all of its own difficulties and the severe persecutions that the church in China faces right now and et cetera, et cetera. But persecution does not bring this difficulty in the same way. But waning faithfulness, the loss of faithfulness brings brings its own kind of difficulty to everyone. Let us stand on the word of God. Well, now let's come to our third point. Sins expose violence. We see this especially in verses 23 and 24. And so after describing the city of Jerusalem as full of violence, in verse 23, the language of pride is then tied to this. In verse 24, where God says, I will put an end to the pride of the strong, We can also look back at verse 20 and we see the word pride there as well. This beautiful ornament they used for pride. And actually that verse 20 is really tying the idolatry and the materialism together. So now we have the word pride tied to all three of our points between verses 20 and 24 of our text. And so that leads us right to our fourth application, which is this. Our fourth application, we should remember, and actually this is five. Sorry, I think this is five. Our fifth application, we should remember that basically all sins, from 2,600 years ago or from today, can be defined as a form of pride. Basically all sin can be defined as a form of pride. And so, what is the pride of violence? The city full of violence, verse 23. It's the pride of the strong, verse 24. And what is God going to do this? He's going to put an end to this. He's going to very roughly stated, we could divide Ezekiel seven into two parts, versus one to nine is especially that repetition of it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, and 10 and following is especially the description of why it's coming, in the sense of the people. Well, as that transition is happening, that's where we have the language of what that pride is budding. Prime is in bloom. That's the language at the end of verse 10. And so, you know, we think in the springtime about how that's usually when we think about plants being in bloom and flowers coming up. Some of the plants can bloom in Bud, in the summer, and in the fall as well, and even a little bit in the winter, but not really very much in the Wisconsin winter. Well, what's one thing that can bloom at any time, in any place, is pride. Pride can bloom at any time, at any place. And basically all sin can be defined as a form of pride. But God is going to expose this pride in their strength. they are going to be wiped out at that point. It's a simply stated in verse twenty-six that the people of the land are paralyzed in terror. There are also some images in the text which speak to how the sin depending upon their own strength will be exposed. Uh one of those images is in verse seventeen verse seventeen is better translated this way that all these will flow with water. That's a euphemism in Hebrew for the loss of bladder control. Uh for us all the the Lutheran commentator, he wants it this way. Uh that so for someone who's talking about how we usually translate verse seventeen and he said it this way, quote, it's probably for the sake of public reading and They're going to be completely exposed. They will not stand on their strength. They will be in terror before the Babylonians. Indeed, many of them will die, whether they die from within or without. Verse 14, and we have how afraid they're going to be in verse seventeen. There will be some moaning over their iniquity. You see that at the end of verse sixteen and then in verse eighteen, they put on sackcloth sackcloth is it's like this dark, coarse cloth. So, it's symbolized with with mourning, with sadness. When you're sad, they put on sackcloth. It does not say that they have sorrow to the point of true repentance. It looks rather to be, I'm sorry that I have to suffer, instead of, I'm sorry for my sin, which is the reason why I am suffering. Oh, that all sorrow would be the godly sorrow which leads to repentance. At this point, let's say it this way. Brothers and sisters, God is gracious. He does not usually expose our sins the way he exposed all of the sins of Israel. If we sin because we love things, God does not usually bring us to starvation to make the goal look detestable. If we sin with pride in our strength, he does not usually make us tremble in every way of fear. So, while we are thankful that God is so often gracious to not expose our sins in such dramatic ways, let us say, God exposed all of our sins. Because we all have sins of pride, one for another. And then we say, oh that as our sins are exposed, we would be brought to sorrow but not just, I'm sorry that this is happening to me, the godly sorrow of repentance. Now, the far-reaching growth of the sin of pride, that sin which can grow at any time and any place and any culture, this is part of why Jesus Christ is so attractive to the believer while at the same time being a stumbling block to the unbeliever. Because if we remain in pride, apart from the true sorrow of bodily repentance, then We will not be able to see our need of the cross, and we will not be able to see the beauty of the humility of Christ on the cross. But if we are brought to godly sorrow, as our sins are exposed, Thankfully, not usually so dramatically has God exposed the sins of Israel in these days. But if we are brought to bodily sorrow, then we look at the cross and we see the humility of Christ. naked on the cross, dying for our sins, suffering not only the physical pain, but the very wrath of God being poured out upon him, and we say, that was the humility which saves me from my pride. And it is not a stumbling block, but we see it for what it truly is, the most beautiful act of love the world has ever seen. So, by the work of the spirit, may our pride be exposed. By the work of the spirit, may we be given a humble heart ready to repent. By the work of the spirit, may our pride be slowly but surely removed. By the spirit, may we understand the beauty of the humility of Christ on the cross, where he was exposed for us to save us. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, even as we pray to do it that you would graciously and patiently expose our sins to us. We do pray that you would expose our sins. that you would expose our sins. leading us to godly and to joy and the forgiveness we have in It is in his name that we pray.