Text: Ezekiel 9:1-11, Title: Where are the Marked Men? Date/Place: NRBC
A. Opening illustration: words to the song by Matt Papa, Where’s the Difference?
B. Background to passage: Ezekiel 8-11 are four successive visions given on Sept 18, 592 BC. In chapter 8, God is showing the elders of Israel who are gathered in Ezekiel’s home in exile in Babylon, the gross idolatry that was provoking His jealousy (and also their violence toward each other that was provoking His anger). As I read in Deut 31 this week, God told Moses that the people would take the land, grow fat, and then turn and serve other gods forsaking the Lord, then accusing Him of forsaking them (just like in our text today). And God would judge them, turn from them, and scatter them. So here in Ezekiel, he showed them of the defilement of four groups of people covering all socio-economic strata of people, and ending with the worse the leaders in the inner court of the temple worshiping the sun god with their backs turned to God. The presence of God begins to leave the temple at this point as well, making the first of three stages of departure. And in all of these things, God pronounces judgment without mercy. Chapter 9 outlines that judgment and gives the character of the only people who will survive it…
C. Main thought: God, prepare our hearts for FCW
A. The Unseen Idols (v. 8:5, 10, 14, 16)
1. When Ezek 9 begins, God is instructing angels of destruction to kill. And so one must ask why. In Ezek 8, it is obvious. God shows Ezekiel in a vision the gross idolatries that were and are going on in Jerusalem. First was the image of jealousy just north of the altar gate. Then was the leadership of Israel worshiping animals, and probably the Egyptian pantheon in the city. Then the women weeping for Tammuz at the entrance to the temple. Then finally, the leaders of Israel, in the inner court worshiping the sun god with their backs turned on God! God says it is not a trivial thing to exalt other gods. Then to “thumb their nose” at God all the more, they then returned to God in order to have the appearance of genuine religion. “Idolatry is by far the most frequently discussed problem in the scriptures” –David Powell, Biblical Counselor.
2. 2 Tim 3:5, Matt 15:19, 23:27, Heb 10:26-31, Ezek 14:4-5, Rom 1:21-25
3. Illustration: “Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be worshiped.” -Augustine. WHAT IS YOUR GOD? "Whatever you love most, serve most, seek out most, give to the most, worship the most, and care about the most is your god. Your “god” can be your career, your bank account, the way you look, a particular position or degree, influence, power, or physical pleasure. It can even be something that is considered intrinsically good, yet you allow it to dominate your life more than God – such as your marriage or your family. Your “god” is whatever you allow to control you, to be the ultimate guide to decision making, the place of your supreme loyalty, and the source of your self-worth." –James White, “We bow our hearts, we bend our knees, O Spirit, come make us holy. We turn our eyes from evil things, O Lord, we cast down our idols! Give us clean hands! Give us pure hearts! Let us not lift our souls to another…”
4. Like Elijah on Mount Carmel, we are called to challenge people to choose between the God of the Bible and the gods of the culture. But we all say, we have no idols, it’s even strange to sing it in a song. But the whole process of sanctification is about constantly pulling doing the idols of our hearts. John Calvin said “the human heart is an idol-factory.” For God doesn’t take idolatry lightly. Most of our idols are good things that we have no intention of making idols. “We take good things, and make them God things, and thus they become bad things.” -Mark Driscoll. All sin is actually are worship issues (sex, food, appearance, attendance, smoking, internet—functional saviors). The most common idols are: money, family (and other relationships, and ways to maintain these relationships—lying, gossip, manipulation, reputation, popularity), sex, and substance (drugs, alcohol, TV, tradition, hobbies, careers, education, food, morality, music, etc.). And to put any of these before God Himself is idolatry. And in ch 8-9 the refrain is that “the Lord does not see, and has forsaken the land,” which is wrong, but fulfills Deut 31 to the letter. So what are your idols? Not, do you have any, but what are they? What do you value more than Christ according to your checkbook, your datebook, your friends, your clothing? What good thing have you let become a God thing? Ask God to turn on the lights to your idols. Be willing to gouge out the eyes and cut off the hands and burn down the altars. With an unwillingness to see our own idols, we will never see a revival in our own hearts.
B. The Certainty of Judgment (v. 8:18-9:2)
1. Just like Deut 31 promised, the anger of the Lord will be aroused upon the covenant breakers, and not only will the curses of that book be enacted, but judgment and death will come. God promises here in Ezek judgment without mercy. These angelic messengers (whom some have suggested were representative of Babylonian forces that would destroy the city in six years) were instructed to carry their battle axes into the city and strike down old and young men, maidens, women, and children. And there is one reason: God is a holy God that will not tolerate or ignore spiritual infidelity at any level. And note that judgment will begin in the house of God with those who are highest in their level of accountability.
2. Hab 1:13, Ps 5:4-5, 11:4-7, Hosea 9:15, 1 Pet 4:17,
3. Illustration: “It was a common thing in other day, when God was the center of human worship, to kneel at an altar and shake, tremble, weep, and perspire in an agony of conviction. They expected it in that day. We don’t see it now because the God that we preach is not the everlasting, awful God, ‘mine Holy One,’ who is ‘of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.’” –Tozer, “The moon of revival has not yet risen on this hell-bound, Christ-rejecting, speeding-to-judgment generation. We don’t sit at ease in Zion anymore. We have gone past that; we just sleep. In the church, pillars have given place to pillows…surely the hour is approaching when grace is impossible and vengeance is inevitable.” –Ravenhill, Michael spoke in SS a few weeks back about the striking of Uzzah when he touched the ark, and reminded us that the same holy God who struck Uzzah for touching the ark, resides within us. “I believe we ought to have again the old biblical concept of God which makes God awful and makes men lie face down and cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. That would do more for the church than everything or anything else.”
4. How can we explain such judgment? How can a God of love bring to pass such things? Love is not His only attribute. We must get back to the holiness of God being our foundation for doing everything. And God will bring forth retribution! He will break forth upon His people. We must realize that if we are truly saved, we will be spared wrath per se, but the judgment of God upon our stewardship of salvation is sure, and to harbor idols is sure to bring us loss. We have lost our fear of God, and thus tinker with sin, and invite His judgment and chastisement. Where are the lessons on the righteousness, holiness, and judgment of God? Our God is not the emasculated mush God, but a God that will pour out wrath upon all unrighteousness among men—active and passive. And we should develop a holy fear of that God!
C. The Only Remnant (v. 9:4)
1. So bad is the judgment that Ezekiel cries out (as he does again in ch. 11) will you destroy all the remnant? But God told the one angel, who is dressed like a Hebrew scribe, and who might be the Angel of the Lord, to put a mark (Hebrew letter taw, written like an X) on a small group of people who will escape death. God says to find the men who sigh, or gasp, or shutter as well as those that mourn or weep at the abominations of the people of God. God said mark those to spare who are truly broken over the sins of the saints. These are the only remnant that will be left. We are never told how many, if any are marked.
2. Rev 7:2-3, 9:4, 14:1, Dan 9:3-5, Neh 1:5-9, Isa 57:15, Matt 5:4,
3. Illustration: To mourn means to have a broken heart. In the Greek, it means to have a deep inner pain which occurs when something tragic happens, such as a death of a loved one. It also means to have a desperate sorrow over evil and suffering, "There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love." What we need today is not anger but anguish, the kind of anguish that Moses displayed when he broke the two tablets of the law and then climbed the mountain to intercede for his people, or that Jesus displayed when He cleansed the temple and then wept over the city. The difference between anger and anguish is a broken heart. It’s easy to get angry, especially at somebody else’s sins; but it’s not easy to look at sin, our own included, and weep over it.” -Weirsbe
4. The prophet had no time to preach a message, to weep or intercede, but we do. Where are those who are weeping and shuttering that the new lows of the church of our day? I don’t mean to simple talk about how it used to be back in the day, we can all do that. Nor do I mean for us simple to write books and sermons, and lessons about the ills in the church. Repentance is a lifestyle, not a one time event. Nor do I mean the parking lot meetings, or the gossip line phone calls about what is going wrong. Where are the Daniel’s and Nehemiah’s who’s regular practice is the confess their sins and the sins of the people. Is there ever true sadness on your part when you see sin in the midst of the church? Are our hearts so hardened that we feel no pain to see brethren caught in sin? Are our consciences seared with a hot iron to the wretchedness of most people’s lives when they leave these four walls? We are used to the dark, and don’t even know it! Be afraid if you never feel the agony of conviction or pain of sin. Cry out to God that He may soften our hard hearts, lest He come in judgment!
A. Closing illustration: After commenting that our day is a day where God’s judgment is building rather than outpouring, and our job is not to slaughter our enemies but to win them with inexplicable deeds of kindness, commentator Iain Duguid says, “What gives urgency to our task is the knowledge that there is a sure and certain Day of Judgment coming. Perhaps it may be a morning like this, when people are taking their kids to school and doing the shopping. They may be planning weekend trips to Disneyland and the lake, looking forward to weddings and family gatherings, busy with the chatter of what they did yesterday and what they plan to do tomorrow. On just such a day, the heavenly shout will be heard, just like Ezekiel heard it in his vision, and the time of judgment will begin. Those spared in the judgment will be only those who, like Ezekiel’s remnant, sigh and mourn over the abominations that surround them and whose foreheads have been marked out with the name of the Lamb and of His Father. For the rest, there will be nothing to expect but eternal fire. The destruction of the idolaters of Jerusalem stands for us as an awful warning of God’s wrath to come.”
B. Ezekiel 14:6 “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…”"True repentance is when by the convicting power of God’s Holy Spirit, the sinner finally has a sense of revulsion and Godly sorrow for the condition of sin in his or her heart, and comes, empty-handed and un-defensive, without pretension or ceremony, in the most personal and submissive posture he’s ever taken, and from a sincere heart says “I’m sorry”, to the only One who can truly claim offense at sin; Holiness Himself, the God of the ages...who alone can forgive and redeem and regenerate and reconcile."
C. Invitation to commitment
