But in the book of 1 Corinthians, in chapter 15, the great resurrection chapter, you don't need to turn there, but in verse 36, Paul says something that we've all observed, whether or not we've given it much thought. Speaking of a seed falling to the earth, he says, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. He was merely repeating what Jesus had said. Jesus, speaking of his own death in John chapter 12, said, Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain. And in fact, centuries before that, Job had made a similar observation In Job chapter 14 he said, for there is hope for a tree if it is cut down that it will sprout again and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its root may grow old in the earth and its stump may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant. What you sow is not made alive unless it dies. It's a phenomenon that we see in the natural world. But that phenomenon has a profound meaning in the spiritual world as well. In my last message, I said that Ezekiel, as well as the other true prophets that preceded him, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he had a two-part message for Israel. I've been reading a book by a 19th century German writer. I'm not reading it in German, I'm reading it in translation of course. E.W. Hengstenberg was from a Lutheran background and in fact he was persecuted during his lifetime for standing firm on the infallibility of scripture at a time when many of those around him, especially in Germany, were falling away. And he wrote a book called The Christology of the Old Testament and in that book he traces Christ from Genesis 3.15, all through the books of Moses, through each of the Old Testament prophets. So I found him very helpful. He sees the book of Ezekiel as being in two parts, as most commentators do. He sees it as the part of the book written before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. He sees that as chapters one through 32. and those that were written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Hengstenberg says the main design of the former, the first part, was to overthrow the foolish illusions of the people and to summon them to repentance as the only road to salvation. And then he says the main purpose of the latter portion of the book, meaning chapters 33 through 48, on the other hand, was to ward off despair. by depicting this salvation before the eyes of the people that they might be furnished with a powerful antidote to the visible circumstances around them which were inducing despair. To put it in simple terms, we might say the first, first the prophet must deliver to them words of doom and death even. And only then can He give them words of hope and life. Last time in my first message on the Gospel in Ezekiel, as we focused on Ezekiel chapter 33, verses 7 through 20, I pointed out three ways in which that hope was expressed. First of all, that hope would be extended to them individually, no longer as a nation or as an ethnic group. The old kingdom was gone. The earthly nation was passing away and final age, which was coming, hadn't gotten there yet, but that would be an assembly called out one by one from all the tribes, tongues, and nations of the earth. Secondly, their hope could be found as they let go of their love of the sacrificial system, the external system which God had now taken away from them. And by the way, which in fact in God's time would pass away altogether. And with that system taken away, instead, they must acknowledge and submit themselves to the superiority of God's unchanging moral order. That's where the true beauty of holiness could be found. Not in the externals of the religion where they had falsely placed their trust, but rather in the inner world of the spirit and that personal relationship with their Lord and Savior. And thirdly, their hope would be found in personal repentance and pardon. Verses 14 through 16, why don't you go ahead and turn to Ezekiel 33. And let's read once again, beginning in verse 14, where he says, in verse, Ezekiel 33 in verse 14. He says, when I say to the wicked, You shall surely die if he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right. If the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, and walks in the statutes of life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live. He shall not die. None of his sins which he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is lawful and right. He shall surely live. Really, that was a beautiful offer of pardon to the individual soul who walked in an attitude of repentance and faith in the God who is willing and able to forgive sins. They were still under the law, yes, but God was using the law for a saving purpose. So here's the summary of the message, the same as last week's. This is found in your bulletin. The prophet Ezekiel foreshadowed the coming of the gospel and the new covenant in his message of doom for hardened sinners, but hope for the penitent. Once again, let us look to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, once again, we come to you. We ask that you would be with us now as we seek to understand your word more deeply. We desire also, Lord, to be drawn closer to you in our personal relationship with Christ. We desire to be more and more in awe of your wonders, of your wonderful forgiveness that you have extended to us through Christ. We ask that you would open our eyes as we see it, even in this Old Testament book, that your pardon was offered to sinners who repented, who turned from their sin and lived in that attitude of continual repentance. So we ask Lord that you would bless us now. We pray also for Nancy who has not has not joined us this morning. We ask that you would be with her and we pray that she is okay. We ask your blessing on her as well. Please bless us now we pray in Jesus name. Amen. I've always said this about the Bible and I've said this as one who's read enough of ancient literature to form a valid opinion. Believe me, reading most ancient literature is, I don't know if the word torture is too strong, but one of the things that completely separates the Bible from all other ancient literature is the Bible's total honesty about man's condition. 1 Peter 4 and verse 18, in that verse, Peter says, if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Jesus, in fact, said, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And in fact, when Jesus said those words, his disciples were amazed and troubled, and they said, who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them and said to them, with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. What Jesus is saying and what Peter is saying is that man has so many obstacles to his own salvation and the allurements of the world and of the flesh and the powers of Satan and self-delusion are so strong that aside from a miracle of God, man doesn't stand a chance. That's why the scripture is so brutally honest about the problems that man faces, which are many. For the message this morning, I'd like to point out a few of those problems that man faces, and then try to make an application to our own times and our own generation. Let's begin with this first very broad category, and I would call it the problem of false trusts. The problem of false trusts, remember those words of Paul, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. That's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, 36, and it's a principle that has many applications, including the context in which Paul used it which was the resurrection of the body. But it also had meaning for the Jews in the days of Ezekiel. They were still placing their trust, not in the Lord, but in their nation, in Jerusalem, their city of misplaced dreams, and in their polluted temple and priesthood and sacrifices where the Spirit of the Lord no longer dwelled. They were indeed, as the Lord called them, When speaking to Ezekiel, they were a rebellious house. All of these false trusts needed to die before there was any hope of new life. After all of the lies that the false prophets had told them, especially the big lie that they would cast off the Babylonian yoke and be free once again, that wasn't going to happen. Time to face reality had come. But what they hear, Well, up until now, they'd had a very bad record of not hearing very well. Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter three. Because in Ezekiel chapter three, we have a record of what happened between the Lord and Ezekiel shortly after Ezekiel was commissioned as a prophet. The Lord appears to Ezekiel to prepare him for his prophetic ministry to come. And the Lord is very honest with Ezekiel about what he was to expect. Notice, beginning in verse one of Ezekiel chapter three, Ezekiel is given an experience that he'll never forget. Notice in verse one, moreover, he said to me, son of man, eat what you find, eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he caused me to eat that scroll. And he said to me, son of man, feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you. So I ate and it was in my mouth like honey in sweetness. Then he said to me, son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. For you are not sent to a people of unfamiliar speech and of hard language, meaning you're not sent to Gentiles who have no knowledge of the law and of the Lord. You're sent to the house of Israel, not to many people of unfamiliar speech and of hard language whose words you cannot understand. Surely had I sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the house of Israel will not listen to you because they will not listen to me. For all the house of Israel are impudent and hard-hearted." Wow, what an indictment against the people who should have known the truth that Ezekiel was speaking. Well, in the next few verses, beginning in verse 12, the prophet continues to describe his experience. of being in the immediate presence of God, which really began in chapter 1, but notice chapter 12 of Ezekiel 3. Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a great thunderous voice. Blessed is the glory of the Lord from his place. I also heard the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels beside them, and a great thunderous noise. So the spirit lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit, but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me. And then I came to the captives at Tel Abib, who dwelt by the river Kibar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there, astonished among them, seven days." I remained astonished. Well, it seems to me from reading scripture, multiple places where individuals have had a vision of the immediate presence of God. But those who have been in God's presence probably aren't hooting and hollering and engaging in holy laughter and rolling on the floor like in some churches where they claim they're filled with the Spirit. But notice what happens to Ezekiel. For seven days following this experience, he is astonished. He is stunned. He is overwhelmed. He is numb, stupefied, amazed. All of those words could be used to translate that Hebrew word. And after those seven days in that condition, what was the prophet supposed to do? Notice in verse 24. He says, Then the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet and spoke with me and said to me, Go, shut yourself inside your house. And you, O son of man, surely they will put ropes on you and bind you with them so that you cannot go out among them. I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth so that you shall be mute and not be one to rebuke them, for they are a rebellious house. But When I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God, he who hears, let him hear, and he who refuses, let him refuse, for they are a rebellious house. So he's told that certainly for a time, you are not the one to rebuke them. They've been rebuked over and over and over and over. The Lord says, I'm going to bind you, in a sense. Now how literal those words of restraint are to be taken, even good commentators aren't sure, but they're generally agreed that because of the hardness of the people's hearts, as one commentator says, the prophet would feel as he stood in the presence of the rebellious house as tongue-tied, bound hand and foot by their hardness of heart. And so he would teach by strange and startling signs only, or merely by writing his prophecies. So for a time, his tongue would be tied in the presence of the people. Whatever the exact meaning of that, the Lord would make a promise to Ezekiel, and turn over a few chapters to chapter 24, Ezekiel 24. And the Lord is This was the day, by the way, I pointed out last week, that the day Ezekiel's wife died. And on that day, the Lord would make a promise to Ezekiel. He says, in verse 25, he says, And you, son of man, will it not be in the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy and their glory, the desire of their eyes? that on which they set their minds." What's he talking about? He's talking about their temple, their holy city of Jerusalem. He's going to take it away. He says, on that day, on which they set their minds, their sons, their daughters, and on that day, one who escapes will come to you to let you hear it with your ears. He's talking about the day that Jerusalem falls. On that day, verse 27, your mouth will be opened. to him who has escaped, and you shall speak and no longer be mute. Thus you will be assigned to them, and they shall know that I am the Lord." Now that day, the day of Jerusalem's fall, would come in Ezekiel chapter 33. So let's turn ahead to Ezekiel 33. And we actually looked last time at verses seven through 20. We ended with verse 20. And immediately after that passage that we studied last week, a messenger comes to Ezekiel to announce that Jerusalem's time had come. This is really the climax of the entire first part of the book. Notice verse 21. came to pass in the 12th year of our captivity. In the 10th month, on the fifth day of the month, that one who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said, the city has been captured. Now the hand of the Lord had been upon me the evening before the man came who had escaped, and he had opened my mouth. So when he came to me in the morning, my mouth was opened and I was no longer mute. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, They who inhabit those ruins in the land of Israel are saying, Abraham was only one and he inherited the land, but we are many. The land has been given to us as a possession. Therefore say to them, thus says the Lord God, you eat meat with blood. You lift up your eyes towards your idols and shed blood. Should you then possess the land? You rely on your sword. You commit abominations, and you defile one another's wives. Should you then possess the land? Say thus to them, thus says the Lord God, as I live, surely those who are in the ruins shall fall by the sword, and the one who is in the open field I will give to the beasts to be devoured. Those who are in the strongholds and caves shall die of the pestilence. For I will make the land most desolate, for arrogant strength shall cease, and the mountains of Israel shall be so desolate that no one will pass through. Then they shall know that I am the Lord, that I have made the land most desolate because of all their abominations which they had committed. That was a day of infamy. Apparently they had listened to many false prophets who had soothed them with the sound of their voices and their words. But sadly the people were so dull of hearing, they couldn't even discern Ezekiel's true words from the words of their false prophets. But here in verse 33, chapter 33, was a dose of reality. When this comes to pass, surely it will come, then they will know that a prophet, a true prophet, has been among them. The unthinkable had happened. Now that the unthinkable had happened, the tearing down of what the Jews had come to take for granted, a sovereign nation, a capital city with a great history, a body of sacred wisdom that had once caused the Queen of Sheba to marvel that the half had not been told her of the wisdom and prosperity of that nation whose God was the Lord. The temple that once, that when it was in its prime, it was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. All of this and more was now gone. It was fallen, conquered by a heathen nation of Gentiles that were so low they were viewed even as dogs, less than human. The process of building back up could never begin until their false trusts were removed. But that brings us to a second problem that the children of Israel faced. And that was the problem of discernment. Even then, after this announcement that Ezekiel was about to make to the people, would they have ears to hear the message of mercy that the Lord would have for those who would repent and turn to Him? The book of 2 Timothy, you don't need to turn there, but the apostle gives a charge to Timothy, his young companion, that's sort of reminiscent of what God had said to Ezekiel. When God told Ezekiel he'd be speaking to a rebellious house and it would feel like he was dwelling among briars and thorns and scorpions. People with dirty looks, that's what the Lord had told Ezekiel. Really, Paul had kind of similar words for Timothy. Paul had said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter four, Timothy, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom. And then Paul says to Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. Why? And he says, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. And they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned to fables. It's really a problem with people in general. People hear what they want to hear. They reject what they don't want to hear. And when that happens, Reason and logic go out the window. I think we're all dealing with people in our own experience that are saying and doing the most irrational things and the harder we try to figure them out, I think the more amazing it appears. You could be like Ezekiel and sit astonished for seven days and still not figure them out. Because we're really dealing with warfare in the spiritual realm. We're not really dealing with the rational realm at that point. Now notice in Ezekiel 33 what comes immediately after the verses that we just read. We just read through verse 29. Notice what immediately comes after Ezekiel hears of the fall of Jerusalem from the messenger who had escaped. And after that messenger comes, the Lord says this to Ezekiel, beginning in verse 29, that because of these things that have now come to pass, notice verse 29, they shall know that I am the Lord when I have made the land most desolate because of all their abominations which they have committed. And then he says in verse 30, ask for you, son of man. Now imagine these verses coming at this point. As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses. And they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, please come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord. So they come to you as people do. They sit before you as my people and they hear your words, but they do not do that. For with their mouth, they show much love. but their hearts pursue their own game. Indeed, you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument. For they hear your words, but they do not do them. And when this comes to pass, meaning the destruction that Ezekiel had just heard of, surely it will come. Then they will know that a prophet has been among them. Now those are some amazing verses. Ezekiel must have been quite a preacher. In verse 30, he's the talk of the town in a sense. He was the subject of their conversation. They would invite one another to hear the word of the Lord from Ezekiel the prophet. In verse 31, the people would sit before him to hear him speak his words, but they did not do that. They would speak of love just like church congregations do, but the true love of their hearts was their own personal gain. Verse 32, they even loved the sound of his voice. It was like a lovely song to them, like the music of an instrument beautifully played. But as for his words, they must not have heard them, and they did not do them. And now he needed to deliver to them the bad news that Jerusalem had fallen, just as he had been saying all along that it would. But it seems that up until now, they hadn't heard a word of it. In a sense, the Lord was preparing Ezekiel for the task. Because people hear only what they want to hear. People tend to surround themselves with those who tell them only what they want to hear. And that's why the Lord had to firm up Ezekiel for the task of truth-telling, by warning him about the generation of vipers that he would be dealing with. And that's why Paul had to do the same with Timothy, letting him know that he'd be speaking to people who had no ear for sound doctrine, but they had itching ears with a preference for fables. Sadly, we don't have a lot of Pauls or Timothys or Ezekiels who are willing to speak the truth knowing they'll be rejected. Unfortunately, the tendency all too often is to make the message just a little softer or maybe just a little simpler to make it more broadly acceptable. But I think we need to discern the spirit of our own times. The spirit of Ezekiel's times didn't allow for him to fudge on the truth and make it softer and simpler and gentler. I think our own times may be very similar to Ezekiel's. Ezekiel's day was very cynical. They were skeptical about spiritual matters. They were too cynical to respond to any simplistic presentations. They needed to hear the truth honestly and bluntly. I can remember an old church friend of ours, he's passed away a number of years ago. He used to hand out a lot of these little gospel tracts. And I remember him telling us one time, these gospel tracts just don't seem to work anymore. And my thought at the time was maybe they never worked very well, except maybe to produce a lot of false converts. Because even the presentations that aren't factually wrong may be just a little deficient because they leave out too much. I think we're all familiar with this little gospel presentation called the gospel hand. There are five points and I don't want to nitpick. I'm not questioning or impugning anyone's motives for coming up with a presentation like that, but I think when the truth is at stake, especially in matters of salvation, we need to be careful. Let me go through the five points of the gospel hand, and I looked it up from several sources, and all of them were basically the same and overly simplistic. It goes something like this. The first is God loves me. And they would quote part of John 3.16, for God so loved the world. Now when you take that by itself, I think we already have a problem, right? Not everyone hearing the gospel hand presentation will be of the elect, and it's hard to define God's disposition towards the non-elect. Certainly God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but I'm not sure that's God's love. I think we need to be careful about throwing that word love around. As a matter of fact, I don't think the apostles ever went around telling congregations of sinners that God loved them. And I checked this out one time, and if I'm wrong, please correct me. I don't think there's a single sermon in the book of Acts where the apostles said to their congregation of sinners, God loves you. You don't find that in the book of Acts. Kind of interesting. So that's the first point. Again, it needs to be at least, the very least, you need to qualify before we go around saying God loves everyone. The second finger is, I am a sinner. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And they give Romans 3.23. And of course that is certainly true, but again, it's actually much deeper than I am a sinner. No, actually you're worse than that. You're totally depraved and corrupted through and through to the core of your being. And you can do nothing even to begin to save yourself. Charles Spurgeon said, as the salt flavors every drop in the Atlantic, so does sin affect every atom of our nature. So I am a sinner, I think that's a little weak. The third finger is Christ died for me. Christ died for me. And they quote Romans five and verse eight. But God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Okay? But who was that verse written to? It was written to a church congregation. So Paul is writing to Christians in the churches who are the ones for whom Christ died, at least to those who profess to be Christians, yes, Christ died for sinners, but we should be careful about applying his death to everyone because if he died for all, then all will surely be saved and we know that's not the case. Charles Spurgeon said, I have heard it often asserted, that if you believe that Jesus Christ died for you, you will be saved. My dear hearer, do not be deluded by such an idea. You may believe that Jesus Christ died for you and may believe what is not true. You may believe that which will bring you no sort of good whatsoever. That is not saving faith. The man who has saving faith afterwards attains to the conviction that Christ died for him. But it is not the essence of saving faith. Do not get that into your head, or it will ruin you. Do not say, I believe that Jesus Christ died for me, and because of that, feel that you are saved. I pray you to remember that the genuine faith that saves the soul has for its main element, trust, absolute trust. of the whole soul on the Lord Jesus Christ to save me. And relying as I am wholly and alone on him I am saved. Afterwards I come to perceive that I have a special interest in the Savior's blood. But if I think I have perceived that before I have believed in Christ, Then I have inverted the scriptural order of things, and I have taken as a fruit of my faith that which is only to be obtained by rights, by the man who absolutely trusts in Christ and Christ alone to save. And by the way, these things I'm quoting by Spurgeon, I do have them in this little piece of literature here, which I will pass around to you later on. So I've given you three of the five. And then the fourth finger is, if I believe, if I believe. And they give you Acts 16 in verse 31. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. But the rest of the verse says you and your household. Well, the household part is certainly a problem. Tells me that those words were spoken to a certain individual. And that we should be careful about applying them to everyone without at least thinking carefully about what they mean. And then there's the issue of what does it mean to believe? That question really needs to be addressed. And in the gospel hand, I don't think it's addressed very clearly. Again, Spurgeon said, I have sometimes thought when I've heard addresses from some revival brethren who had kept on saying time after time, believe, believe, believe, that I should like to have known for myself what it was we were to believe in, in order to our salvation. There is, I fear, a great deal of vagueness and crudeness about this matter. There was in Spurgeon's day, and there is in our own day. And then the last finger of the gospel hand is, I will have eternal life. And they quote 1 John 5 and verse 13. These things I have written to you to believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. Wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard that verse quoted completely out of context, by itself, without giving you any idea what things have I written that you may know that you have eternal life. It is truly wonderful that God gives to his children the means of attaining a biblical assurance that we've been given eternal life, but certainly we need to know what things John has written prior to this verse so that we may attain to that assurance. 1 John 5.13 doesn't stand alone. And again, Spurgeon says, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. Most people's so-called Christianity can be taken off with their Sunday clothes. But a man who is genuinely saved has Christ living in him as an everlasting fountain, springing up into everlasting life. He's been born again. He's been resurrected from the grave. He has the very image of the Son of God stamped on his heart, and it cannot be moved. I wonder how many people sitting even in evangelical churches that preach the need for a new birth, if they were to be honest with themselves, would say that their Christian experience is anything remotely similar to what Spurgeon describes in that little statement. So many of these little gospel presentations can be okay as far as they go. And even this one, I think, if the missing information is filled in a little more, could be useful. But I've never seen it presented in any deeper way than that. And in fact, many of these little gospel tracts, after a few simple points like these, they go on to push the reader to make a decision for Christ and then do something, like pray a pre-written prayer to mark the date and claim instant assurance, and I think that's where they become dangerous. I know, I know, we reformed Christians, we're always so serious and dour and we're never any fun, right? We're always trying to throw everyone else out of heaven but ourselves. And I understand, I think we all struggle with the narrow restraints of reformed doctrine at times. But if we're people of the book, then we always need to let the whole book be our guide, not just little snippets of what we like that can be no more broad or narrow than the scripture. When we look at the modern, what so much of the modern church has done to make church a fun, fun, fun place, I'm not sure I see any of that modern church in scripture at all. I was thinking about our Reformation heritage and how they, the things that they did to try to include the whole family in the church's ministry. And what's the most noticeable and profound thing they did? I think it's to leave us these catechisms. They wrote catechisms in order to make the teachings of scripture understandable even to children. And if those catechisms are any indication of how highly they thought of their children, it kind of tells me they gave their children more credit for having the ability to understand a lot more than what we moderns quite often think children can understand. So I think we got to give our children more credit. We want to model our gospel presentation on scripture I would say there's probably no better place to start than the sermons of Jesus and the apostles. And if you read those sermons, those sermons were often a detailed history of God's work of redemption among men from Old Testament times to the times in which they live. Those are what most of their sermons were. One of their greatest sources of preaching material wasn't the latest books on sermon illustrations and pulpit jokes. And by the way, I do have some of those pulpit joke books in my electronic resources. I didn't buy them separately, they came in a collection, but people actually do read books like that to improve their preaching, improve. Their source material of the apostles and the reformers and so on, was often the Old Testament prophets, showing how the things the prophets proclaimed were not quaint and outdated. They were relevant and they were up-to-date. Why? Because man's nature has not changed. Because redemption is an unfolding story built upon the foundation of God's promise of a Redeemer who was promised in the Garden. He was foreshadowed all throughout the Old Testament. He came exactly as promised, and He's still the great hope of the saints, and He's still the great need of the world. None of that has changed. So I think we can put some solid stock in the preaching source material that the apostles used, and that Jesus used. I really did intend to get into a little more into actually getting into the gospel as it's presented in Ezekiel. This morning, again, this is just part of an introduction to it. Last time I mentioned the Book of Sermons by a Scottish Presbyterian named Thomas Guthrie. I'm going to go ahead and just pass these around. Just go ahead and pass those around. Guthrie, as I mentioned last week, was a Scottish Presbyterian. The title of his book was The Gospel in Ezekiel. And Guthrie points out how Ezekiel in chapter 36 lays out a fairly orderly and systematic gospel message. As I go through these points in the next couple of messages, we're not gonna stay directly in Ezekiel 36, But I'd like to use Guthrie's basic outline of chapter 36, where he says, and I'm quoting Guthrie here, as on the sheet that I just passed out, he says, this portion of scripture, extending onwards from the 16th verse, presents an epitome or outline of the gospel. Its details with their varied beauties are here, so to speak, in shade. But the grand truths of redemption stand boldly up. much as we have seen from sea the lofty headlands of a dim and distant coast. Thus it may be well, occasionally at least, to examine the gospel in the broad shadows and strongly defined outlines of the old covenant economy, and through God's government of his ancient people to study the motives, the nature, and the ends of his dealing with ourselves. In this way, the passage before us has particular claims upon our attention. Applicable in the first instance to the condition of the Jews, it presents a remarkable summary of gospel doctrines in a form approaching at least to systematic order. And let's just read through that outline as it appears in Ezekiel 36, and that's where we'll begin next time. In the 17th verse, we have man sinning. Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and by their own doings. In the 18th verse, we have man suffering. Wherefore, I poured my fury upon them. In the 21st verse, we see man as an object of mercy, but God says, I had pity. In the 22nd verse, man is an object of free mercy, mercy without merit. I do this not for your sakes, O house of Israel. In the 24th verse, man's salvation is resolved upon. I will bring you into your own land. In the 25th verse, man is justified. Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean. In the 26th and 27th verses, man is renewed and sanctified. A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them. In verses 28 through 35, man is restored to the place and privileges which he forfeited by his sins. You shall be my people and I will be your God. This land that was desolate has become like the garden of the Lord. In the 36th verse, we have our security for those blessings. I, the Lord, have spoken it and I will do it. And finally in the 37th verse, we have the means of obtaining those blessings through prayer. I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them. Now that's a pretty good outline. 10 points in systematic order. Really about the only thing missing is the name of Jesus, but what does the name Jesus mean? It means Jehovah saves. Jehovah saves. That's the gospel we see here. We see Jehovah saving his people, which in its fulfillment would be evidenced by those who would respond to God's offer of mercy and come to him in repentance and faith. So my final question this morning as we close, have you done that? Have you come to him in repentance and faith? Have you acknowledged and renounced your sin before a merciful God who is the only hope for a lost and dying world? Have you cast all your care upon Jesus, for he cares for you? Have you sought to walk in the narrow way, hating sin, loving truth, joined in heart with others who are also seeking heavenly things and not laying up their treasures on earth? If so, let's walk that way together. That's why we gather, isn't it? If you have not come to Christ, I close with these words from the song that we're about to sing. Come to his mercy seat, fervently kneel. Here, bring your wounded hearts. Here, tell your anguish. Earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these wonderful gospel truths that the prophet presents in miniature, even in this chapter that we have not really commented on yet, but I pray, Father, that you would enlarge our understanding of the Old Testament prophets and the Christ that they preached, even in type and shape. Thank you, Father, for giving us the ability to understand them. Thank you, Father, for reminding us that Christ came as a result of a promise fulfilled, and that he lives even to this day making intercession for your people. We thank you now for salvation, for that wonderful gift. We pray that you would give us a thankful heart. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.