Amen. Let us turn to our text this evening. Ezekiel chapter fourteen. Are you reading the whole Page 832 in Self-Review, ESV Bible, Ezekiel Chapter 14, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Let us hear the Word of God. Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, these men have taken their vitals into their hearts. and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Shall I indeed let myself be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I, the Lord, will answer him, as he comes with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, Repent, and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations. For any one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who separates himself from me, taking his idols into his heart, and putting a stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to a prophet to consult me through him. I, the Lord, will answer him myself, and I will set my face against that man. I will make him a sign and a byword, and cut him off from the midst of my people. And you shall know that I am the Lord. If the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. And they shall bear their punishment. The punishment of the prophet and the punishment of the inquirer shall be a life, that the house of Israel may no more go astray from me. nor defile themselves any more with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people, and I may be their God, declares the Lord God. And the word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, when a lamb sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread, and send famine upon it and cut off from it man and beast, Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they would deliver their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord God. If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they ravage it, can it be made desolate, so that no one may pass through because of the beasts? Even if these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the land would be desolate. For if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Let a sword pass through the land, and I cut off from it man and beast, Though these three men were in it, as I live and declare as the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they alone would be delivered. For if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood to cut off from it man and beast, Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness. For thus says the Lord God, How much more would I send upon Jerusalem my four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast? But behold, some survivors will be left in it, sons and daughters who will be brought out. Behold, when they come out to you and you see their ways and their deeds, You will be consoled for the disaster that I have brought upon Jerusalem, for all that I have brought upon it. They will console you when you see their ways and their deeds. And you shall know that I have not done without cause, all that I have done in it, declares the Lord God. So far, the reading of the Holy Word of God. congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The elders likely at least some of these being the same as those elders who are mentioned at the beginning of chapter eight, their presence implied at the end of chapter twelve. Here they are again in chapter fourteen and certain of the elders of Israel came to me and the appearance of what they are doing. first glance looks to be good. They are sitting before the young prophet and they have come to have some kind of dialogue with the prophet. They come to pray through the prophet Ezekiel. They come to hear his word, something like that. They are sitting. You might say it's almost like they've come and they're sitting in church, something like that. The appearance is good. but then we look at the text and notice that it's verse four and following which is the word of the lord to Ezekiel and what Ezekiel is to say to that but verse three and two of the very brief verse before it verses two and three are the lord telling Ezekiel what the situation is and what the lord says to Ezekiel is this Romans verse three. These elders have come to sit before you. but their hearts are still set upon idolatry. Indeed, in their hearts, what they really have come to do is to consult me. and should I allow man to the Lord God. In other words, however appropriate the outward appearance is, however promising the outward appearance of these elders who have been mentioned before is, they still have idolatry in their hearts and they are not coming before the young prophet of the Lord in an appropriate way. The Lord knows the heart. The Lord sees us, the Lord knows us, and so the Lord will bring the word by his prophet to them. Verses 4 and following could be divided into a series of legal cases, legal judgments that God brings against them by his prophet. In short, God has turned the tables on the elders who thought that they had come to consult the Lord God. God immediately turns the tables, and Orson Welles summarizes it this way, it is as though, quote, by the use of legal language, God transforms the scene into that of a suit against those who would inquire of Yahweh. They must answer to God, not God to them. That's the end of the quote. So our theme tonight is this, that we must see the righteous purposes of the acts of god or we say that with the word here as the very first audience received it. We say it this way here. God declare the righteous purposes of his actions. We begin with a purposeful accusation. It's especially the first eleven verses that are spoken to the spoken to the elders even as they are representatives of the people but then it is certainly speaking to the whole land in in verses 12 and following Wilkins bed for a second and third point but we begin with a purposeful accusation and our points tonight are going to get aggressively shorter. Each point is going to be a little bit shorter than the one before. And so we begin with this purposeful accusation. And again, the outward appearance is good. And there may even be an implication here that in exile, these elders don't have the physical idols that the people of Jerusalem have. That may be an implication of the text. And so that would be another indication of the outward appearance is good. They're sitting before the prophet. They don't have the idols of wood and stone in their home, as there are too many idols of wood and stone even in the very temple of Jerusalem. But while the outward appearance may be good, God knows the heart. When you come before God, you come before the judge, not only of that which can be visibly seen, you come before the judge of the heart. Brothers and sisters, this is one of the many texts in the Old Testament that reminds us that even though material idols was a huge part of the issue for the Old Testament people of God, finally, the problem of to sin is whenever there is any idol of the heart. God sees this. God knows this and god will not tolerate this. Uh if they're sitting before Ezekiel is a desire to bring their own kind of inquiry, their own kind of prayer to God through the prophet, then we can make this immediate application. Even if they're sitting before us and dealing with a little different purpose, it still leads to this application. Brothers and sisters, be careful how you pray. Come before the Lord in prayer, yes and amen, but know that God knows our heart when we pray. Know that your prayer must be sincere. It must be an honest prayer. And so, as the idolatry of the heart is finally, in so many ways, just the same issue that sin continues to be today. The call is the same. In the days of Ezekiel and in our own day, what is the call? It's the call of verse six. It's the call to repent. It's the call to turn away your faces from all your abominations. And the language of the text is that they have set their face on the idols of their heart. Which is another way of saying they have set their hope. They have set their desire in some person, place, or thing other than God. They have set up in the number one place in their heart something other than the Lord God. That is the very basic definition of idolatry. And God calls for repentance. God calls us to turn away from such a setting of the desires of our heart and mind. God calls us to turn away from that and to do the 180 and to come back to him and to turn our eyes to him and away from all the person, places, things of the world. And then there are a number of ways that the warning is given in verses eight to ten. We're just gonna highlight a couple of them briefly. Let's mention this, that we have this word, bi-word, in verse eight. That's not how we always speak, but we see that word in the middle there. I would make him a sign and a bi-word. What is a bi-word? Well, if I give you a handful of examples, I think you'll recognize the examples, even if we don't always call them a byword. What is a byword? A byword is a name that comes to be associated with the just judgment of God. So a handful of examples would be Cain, Jezebel, Sodom and Gomorrah. That's two. That would be a handful of examples of a byword. It is a word when the name of a person or place comes to be associated with the just judgment of God. What the Lord is saying is that you cannot continue to fail to give your heart to me and think that all will be well. No, it will not be well. I will expose your idolatry. I will make you a Bible, a name that stands for my just judgment. And then let's look at verse nine. What is the phrase there? I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet. Who is that prophet? What's going on in verse nine is this. You really want false teachers. You don't want to hear the truth that condemns the idolatry of even your very heart. And so what am I going to do? I'm going to give you false prophets. And I, the Lord, am the one who is doing that. I am the one who is deceiving that prophet. I will give you the false teachers that you want. Now, it has been said that verse 9 is the most difficult verse in this chapter today. But it was not the most difficult verse to the first hearers. For the first hearers of this prophecy, of this chapter, the destruction of Jerusalem would have been the hardest thing to hear and understand. Because for all of the theological issues and the heart problems of the people of Israel at this time, One thing they did not struggle with was the fact that divine power rules over human agency. That was something that the people of Israel generally understood. They sometimes assigned that divine power to God. Again, there was all kinds of idolatry and issues going on. But the general idea that divine power rules over human power. That was understood. And so, for them, the hard word would have been Jerusalem is going to be destroyed but for us, what's the hardest verse in this chapter? The hardest verse for us is verse nine because what is the age that we live in? We live in the age of free will. We live in the age of you either deny the divine completely or maybe you believe in some non-sovereign So, for us, we read verse nine and we say, how can it say that the lord is so in control of even false teaching that god says, I myself have deceived him. Brothers and sisters, scripture makes it clear. God is the sovereign agent over all things. Even the Does that make God morally responsible for Paul's teaching? No, it does not. And I think that the illustration from Ian Duguid is a helpful one. He gives us the illustration here of a zookeeper and a captive lion. And Duguid says, The zookeeper has authority, in a certain sense, over the diet of the lion. A captive lion does not chase his own prey and get his own food. The zookeeper provides his meals for him. And what does the zookeeper do? Does the zookeeper set before the lion a meal of vegetables and a meal of meat? No. The zookeeper usually always just gives the lion meat. Why? Because the nature of the lion and the taste of the lion is such that the lion will always choose meat. It's not that the lion couldn't be fed by vegetables. The lion can be perfectly well sustained by vegetables. Many of the largest animals in the world are sustained by vegetables. But it is that the lion chooses to eat meat. In the post-fall, pre-New Jerusalem world, that's the only thing the lion has a taste for, has a nature for. Now, does anyone ever say, well, it's the zookeeper's fault that the lion doesn't eat vegetables? No, we never say that. It is the lion's choice, even though the zookeeper really has authority over what's set before him. But the lion will always choose the meat. It's the only thing the lion has taste for. So then Duguid said it this way. So now we, we know that lions are not moral agents. This is an illustration of the fact that God can sovereignly give us what our sinful nature has a taste for. God can choose to sovereignly set before us that which in our sinful nature we truly desire. So Ian Duguid said it this way, quote, God's action in giving the prophet a deceitful oracle is nothing other than giving him and his hearers what they have sought, end quote. And then brothers and sisters, as we would think about if we ever see this today, Let us just say it this way. When a people no longer desire the true preaching of the full counsel of the word of God, is it hard to find false teachers? Or is it easy to find false teachers? And are there not churches, sometimes very full churches, where many will flock to hear the priceless preaching of false teachers. Well, as we leave that for reflection, we continue on and we look at verse 11. We are reminded that again and again, we have this pattern in scripture. that where there is a lengthy description of the just judgment of God, there will also be a word about the great grace of God. And indeed, what is the very purpose of God? Why is God burning such a complete destruction and desolation? God wants to drive his people back to himself. See that in verse 11. That, or so that, or for the purpose that, house of Israel may no more blow a stray from it, nor to file themselves any more with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people. Because right now they are my people, they remain my people. And I desire that they will truly be my people. They will give their heart to me, that they, in true repentance, set their hearts and minds upon salvation is found in the alone salvation which we know comes now by the very name of Jesus Christ paid for our sin by his sacrifice on the cross. Well, brothers and sisters, that's our first point. Again, each point is gonna get shorter as we go this evening. So, now, we come to our second point, the coming desolation. The first audience is the elders in exile, but there's already language about how the word that's coming is for anyone of the house of Israel, verse four, who would take his idols into his heart. And so God is speaking to all of his people, the elders as representatives there, the first hearing this word from Ezekiel. And now it's even more clear. We're just going to the whole land. Indeed, in some ways, this is a word which will have its first specific fulfillment, not for the elders of exile, but for anyone who's still in the land of Jerusalem. Because now we're moving back to the fact that Jerusalem will not be spared. are counted in a corporate way for the people of God. There are other verses which have mentioned it. There are still some who are God's faithful people who have grown over the abominations of the land. But as a whole, there is such rebellion that we can use this language, this is the language of God, in verse 12, see the middle of verse 12, the land sins against God. And as the corporate sin has reached this level, God will now judge the whole land. Jerusalem especially will literally be besieged. It will literally have its supply of bread broken. And Ezekiel has already prophesied about that with some painful details, so he's really just reminding his hearers of something he's already said. We see that again and again in Scripture. God says the same thing in many different ways and reminds us again and again of the seriousness of sin, as God reminds us again and again of the wonders of His grace to deliver us from sin. But this is going to be a severe desolation. Indeed, on a local scale, there is a sense in which it's going to be worse than the flood of Noah's day. Now the flood of Noah's day was a greater judgment because it was a worldwide judgment. But for just Jerusalem by itself, There is a way in which this is worse than what happened to Noah. There is a way in which not even Noah could preserve this land anymore from what is coming. On a local scale, the aftermath will be an aftermath of desolation. There is, if we want to say it this way, no rainbow at the end here. Other texts, we can dig into the promises of restoration, but the immediate aftermath is that there is no rainbow. It is going to be a desolate land. And the language, we're going to zoom in especially on the language of animals and how God uses that to make it clear. We see the word beast, or beasts, seven times from verses 13 to 21. In the Hebrew, there's actually two different words for beasts. Whenever you see it, four of those seven times, it says man and beast. Over there, the Hebrew word is a word that almost always refers to domesticated animals, like the sheep and the cows, and even the pigs, which have a use for man in that sense. The other three times, such as how it's used twice in verse 15, It's a Hebrew word which only refers to wild beasts and sometimes the word wild is there because it's it's actually in the Hebrew. It's the adjective wild followed by the word that's already from wild beasts. So, it's like the wild wild beasts is almost with a sense that comes across in the Hebrew and the picture we get is There will be such a desolation that the domesticated animals will be gone, and there will only be the wild animals. Or if you say it this way, instead of chickens, who are probably just being introduced into Jerusalem around this time, instead of chickens, there will be hawks. Instead of sheep, there will be jackals and wolves. Instead of cattle, there will be bears and lions. The land of Judah will be desolate. Again, if we think about this now in terms of the three men listed, what happened after the flood of Noah? Well, all of the animals, both the domesticated animals and the wild animals who were tamed by God for their time on the ark, they were all preserved. If we think about this in terms of Job, what was a huge part of Job's wealth? He owned many, many animals. And what is a big part of the restoration Uh it is that all of those animals are restored except in greater number. Uh and so we read this in Job forty-two verse twelve and the lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke oxen, and one thousand female monkeys. And what god is saying here is this is going to be different than the severe Because in the latter days, I restored this fortune to be more than it was in the beginning. But that's not going to happen. Jerusalem is going to be so desolate, it's going to become the place of wild animals. And again, this was the word that would have been very difficult for the first hearers to understand. How could this happen to Jerusalem? in the middle of the promised land. Where the kings have ruled, the kings of David have ruled for centuries. A prosperous and beautiful city, you're telling me wild dogs are going to be running through the streets? And little creatures are going to be living in the crevices of the jungle? And that's what God says, and that is exactly what happened. Brothers and sisters, Jerusalem will become desolate. Jerusalem will become a Bible. Not even Noah, not even Job, not even Daniel. This Daniel is probably a Daniel that we don't have a record of. The biblical Daniel has not gone to the lion's den yet. He's probably younger than even the young prophet Ezekiel. Maybe it's a reference to him. Maybe the account of his stand for the dying to the Lord in the courts of Babylon has already spread, but probably this is a reference to a Daniel that we no longer have a record of. But whether it is Noah or Daniel or Job, the destruction coming is going to be, in its own way, worse than the destruction that they incurred. Well, brothers and sisters, all of this leads to a seldom-considered consolation. A seldom-considered consolation. After all of these judgments, and it's the four disastrous acts of judgment, the four main disasters of the ancient world that were listed all the way back in the curses of Leviticus 26, for all those who had great thoughts coming in, the disastrous judgments which are symbolically linked with the four horsemen in Revelation chapter six, all of these are going to come And notice then that the destruction of the wild beasts is not only a description of what happens, but then the wild beasts become one of the judgments, because wild beasts are dangerous. That's something that we sometimes forget. living in a world where most of us are only familiar with lions through something like Disney. But the wild beasts are one of those four judgments listed there in verse 21. And then what happens when all of this occurs? And when Jerusalem is destroyed, but a few stragglers are brought into the exile as a second wave of exile. That's what's being described in verse 22. There are going to be some who survive. They're not going to survive in Jerusalem. They're going to be brought out to you who are already in exile. What's going to happen when you see that? You're going to see that this has not brought them to repentance. You're going to see the sinfulness of man. And you're going to say, God is fair. God is fair. God is just. If you have the eyes of faith, you will see that the destruction of Jerusalem, the desolation of Jerusalem, is exactly what was needed. That the act of God is just and fair. and that in the purposes of God, there needs to be desolate Jerusalem before there can ever be restored Jerusalem, before there can ever finally be the golden Jerusalem, which was really what Abraham was looking forward to as it says so beautifully in Hebrews chapter 11. We do not normally think about this as consolation. We do not normally think about seeing the justice of the wrath of God as consolation. But this is. In the eyes of faith, we learn to see this. In the eyes of faith, we learn to see that God is fair in all His ways. With the eyes of faith, the exiles will see that Jerusalem didn't have to be destroyed, that it was necessary for God's judgment to come upon this wicked people. With the eyes of faith, we will always know that God is fair in all of His dealings. It's a seldom-considered consolation. But brothers and sisters, let us lean upon the Lord to learn even this consolation and His absolute fairness and goodness. And we're going to add to this unusual consolation, this seldom-considered consolation, we're going to add to this Because really that consolation is itself an application. We're going to have another application, another unusual application. That the best thing for the spiritual health of a people may include the loss of material security. And just as with the eyes of faith we can learn to be consoled by the fairness of God to this very day, so also this is true. Brothers and sisters, this is a biblical reminder that the modern American dream is not the actual ideal that we should ever chase after. What is the modern American dream? The modern American dream is, you know, if everybody has enough material things, we'll all be happy. That's different from the American dream of the pilgrims who came and suffered material loss in order to gain religious liberty. The original Cross of the Atlantic Puritan American Dream, that is a biblical idea. But we must examine ourselves and be sure that we are not influenced by the mindset of our nation. By the modern American dream, I would say a material security is the end that we should pursue. No, it may well be that the loss of material things will be for the spiritual health, greater spiritual health of God's people. And then, brothers and sisters, let's look at one more word as we come to our conclusion. And that is a word in verse 19, and it is the word blood. Because the just judgment of God includes blood. And maybe even some of our younger members already know where we're going when we talk about that, when we talk about blood. Who should we think about? What picture should we think about? We think about the wine of communion. We think about the blood of Jesus Christ. And when we say that God is fair, we see that word blood. And we think of the fairness of God who sent his own son. to bear the wrath of sin, to have his blood poured out, not because he deserved that, but in order to take that punishment for sinners. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. The shedding of blood is the just punishment for sins. And finally, the fairness and justice of God has a beautiful climax in the blood of Jesus Christ poured out for others. With this final word, brothers and sisters, let us say amen to all the acts of God. Let us pray. Lord. Remove from us. the idolatry of our hearts. and show us your purposes of restoration. Make us to truly be your people. in the blood of Jesus Christ, poured out for our sins, which demanded such a price before your holy name. O Lord God, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.