- It’s worth noting as I get started this evening that this is a wild chapter with a lot of interesting and unusual details. Those parts of the chapter are worth a Bible study unto themselves to unpack those meanings. This sermon, though, is not that Bible study.
- Instead, we will be focusing exclusively on the unquestioned biggest thing that happens in this chapter: the departure of the glory of the Lord from the Temple. It’s a breathtaking development, tragic in its implications.
- Why did it happen? Was it a surprise? And what relevance does this event have (and not have) for our faith today? What does it have to teach us about the way we should be walking forward in our faith?
IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN: God’s glory would never depart His temple, right?
- Ezekiel 10:3-4, 18.
- Deuteronomy 28:1-68.
- This is a stunning moment. The glory of God, which is an aspect of the presence of God, departs the temple. Israel was God’s people and the temple was the centerpiece of that faith. God had long been present there and here we find this unbelievable moment when God “walks away” from His own holy place.
- I am confident many Israelites were certain that this would never happen. “God will never leave us!”
- But when you go back to the original statements by God, you find that God specifically warned of this.
- Turn with me to one of the most famous of these passages: Deuteronomy 28. In that passage, God showers Israel with overflowing promises of what will happen if they obey and keep their part of the covenant. It’s truly an awe-inspiring list.
- But then the second half of the chapter issues a warning. God tells them: here are the punishments that will come your way if you disobey and walk away from My promises. It’s also an awe-inspiring list, but this time for different reasons. It’s a frightening list that should inspire careful attention to God’s instructions, but, of course, it won’t.
The very reason that God shares that list is to warn Israel up front about what will happen. It’s like a professor on the first day of the fall semester who warns his class about the implications of turning in papers late, but every year has students incensed in November that the professor dared to fail them and not give them a chance to turn in the paper three weeks late. He laid it all out at the beginning but he also knows that some will somehow be stunned anyway.
- All of this leads to a simple fact: God’s glory departing the temple should have been an incredible shock to Israel, at least not to the ones who were paying attention to the spiritual condition of the nation.
God has promised serious repercussions for Israel’s disobedience. And that's exactly where they were.
- This particular occasion in Ezekiel 10 is the Babylonian overthrow on Jerusalem in 586 B.C. This is the big one historically.
- This came at the end of a long line of “Israel behaving badly.” They were doing exactly what they’d been warned not to. It comes to a head when God’s glory departs the temple. A horrible moment, but not one that should have been a complete surprise.
- Now, this doesn’t mean (as you know) that God is done forever with Israel. His covenant with them continues. God will work with them even in their foreign captivity. But there are practical implications to their sin that cannot be overlooked.
ONE APPLICATION FOR TODAY: Sometimes individual churches die.
- Revelation 2:4-5.
- Let me talk first about an application that I don’t think we can make to today: the individual Christian’s loss of salvation.
- I believe in eternal security and so it would be theologically wrong to say that one way this truth rolls forward is that if a Christian disobeys long enough then God will remove the Holy Spirit from that person and His glory will depart from them.
- That is not true and would be a horrible situation to have to contemplate if God worked that way.
- Another application we can’t make is saying that God will remove His presence from the church universal. That will not happen - the church will continue to be God’s people and God’s witness throughout the Church Age.
-I do believe, though, there is a parallel here to individual churches.
-We all know that individual churches die from time to time. We prefer not to think about that because we know that we would never want our own church family to go through that. But it’s worth thinking about a little and I want to do that tonight.
- Let’s look at Revelation 2:4-5. This is perhaps the clearest NT statement on this issue. We see a church that is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing and Christ makes a striking threat to them.
- The problem is a substantial one: they are not living for their first love (v. 4). This is not to say that the church had accomplished much in the past or didn’t have a distinguished history (vv. 2-3). You might say this is a “once great” church. (There are a lot of those around, aren’t there? Churches who were powerhouses 50 years ago or 20 years ago but now have fallen on hard times.)
- Jesus then makes an alarming threat: He will remove their lampstand from its place. There are multiple interpretations of what exactly this means but I want to argue tonight I think it means that He will take away their opportunity as a church to be the light. That is, they will die. (I recognize there could be less harsh interpretations that could be correct but I think this interpretation has a lot to recommend it.)
- As I stated, it’s not that the church universal ceases. But it’s that an individual congregation does.
- This leads us to a simple and painful truth: every year in America thousands of churches close.
Years ago I heard the number 4,000 a year but I don’t know if that’s accurate today.
- This is painful to look at but we need to ponder the truth here: every year there are thousands of places where the congregation closes the door for the last time and it ceases to be a place of worship, prayer, and evangelism.
-If I can use the Ezekiel language poetically here: the glory of God leaves that place.
I believe that many of those folks feel like Israel did back then. “How could this happen?” “How could God have failed us?” “Why did God let us down?” Now, let’s be clear: I don’t think those things are true. God did not fail them. God did not let them down. It’s like we saw in the Ezekiel situation: the people have forgotten what God originally expected of them. They got to the place of expecting God to hold up His end of the bargain while forgetting that they had obligations and responsibilities within that covenant as well. And, importantly, that there had always been consequences promised for a failure to keep their end of the bargain.
HARSH TRUTH: Most churches that die deserve to.
- This sounds terrible but let me explain.
- I freely acknowledge that there are situations where a church is faithfully and fruitfully serving the Lord only to find that circumstances change through no fault of their own and the congregation closes.
- An easy example for us in WV would be coal camps. Down in southern WV there are hundreds of coal camps with houses that over the decades of abandonment have fallen in upon themselves. The church building now has holes in the roof and high weeds surrounding it. I’ve had numerous conversations with people who grew up in a coal camp. It was a thriving little community but then it was abandoned. Maybe the mine played out. Maybe the company went bankrupt. But everyone left because all the jobs vanished and there was no other reason to be there.
- Obviously in that situation there is no way for a church to continue to operate. When everyone leaves town, that’s going to impact your Sunday morning attendance! So there are a few situations like that.
- Having acknowledged that exception, we need to talk about the hard truth about the vast majority of situations where a church closes its doors. The hard truth is that the closure is usually deserved.
- Now, I do not mean that everyone involved in that congregation did wrong. Undoubtedly there were people trying to do the right thing within the mess. But the majority of people were doing things that shouldn’t have been happening: gossip, power politics, turf wars, spreading rumors, demanding their way, etc. The focus shifts from glorifying God to maintaining power. The focus shifts from defeating Satan to conquering the one in the church who disagrees with you. The focus shifts from doing right to winning the argument.
- You see this, sadly, all the time. Churches that become toxic.
- What happens as a consequence? People leave. Outreaches die. The budget contracts. Visitors don’t stay because they quickly can tell something is not right. Blame is spread far and wide within the congregation. There is no joy in worship. Baptisms drop to zero. Going to church becomes a duty, not a joy.
In that declining situation, a few churches do what they should: they repent. The people acknowledge they’ve done wrong and ask God to change their hearts. It happens but not often.
- More often, the church goes into a slow decline. New pastors who try to move things in a better direction quickly step on land mines and find people mad at them for reasons they don’t comprehend because they don’t know all the poisonous history. The age of the congregation gets older and older. Each year’s budget is an exercise in finding new places to cut. And the whole time everyone blames others for the problems and never accept any of the responsibility.
- Right now (and we’re obviously not going to do this out loud) if I asked everyone in this room to think of one congregation we know of that no longer exists or is about to close and that fits the exact pattern I’m talking about, we could go around the congregation tonight and I am confident that every single one of us could name at least one (and most of us could name multiple congregations).
- All that leads us to acknowledging the reality of this.
- This happens all the time.
- Too often when congregations close the people involved will put the locks on the door acting as though they were faithful and obedient to the end just because they are still showing up. And, no doubt, some of them may be.
But many there are guilty. Guilty of all those things I enumerated earlier.
- In quiet conversations, they may question why God hasn’t come through for them and why He allowed this moment to happen. I think God’s answer to them would echo His answer to Israel in this passage in Ezekiel: “I haven’t failed to keep the promises - in fact Me doing this is exactly keeping the promises I made. You failed to be faithful to do what I asked of you.”
- In most of the situations, the church deserves to close because they were not doing the things of God.
Often being “faithful” is altered to mean “showing up.” “We’re the ones who show up when the doors are open so we are the faithful remnant” when in fact most of those people are the very ones who have been guilty of putting aside the things of God for the things of man.
WHAT DOES THIS TEACH US: This church’s future is not guaranteed - our faithfulness matters.
- To go back to the beginning, we noted how dumbfounded the Israelites would have been by the presence of God leaving the Temple. Hadn’t God promised? Wouldn’t He always be right there with them? Actually, not when you read what He actually said.
- In a similar way, there are many individual churches who have acted for years as though their doors could never close, only to find themselves facing that very situation.
- It’s worth spending a moment what the implications of that are for this church . . . or whatever church you happen to attend. It means that the future of this church is not guaranteed. It means our faithfulness matters.
- There could well come a day when this church falls into disrepair, with paltry attendance and perpetual budget cuts. There could well come a day when the leadership meets to ask sad questions like, “How can we keep this church going with so little money coming in?” We don’t have a special pass from God that ensures that no matter our behavior we will never see that happen here. Our faithfulness matters.
- There is another side to that, though - a side that is encouraging. That’s the side that reminds us that God is ready to bless and that He is eager to move among us. He wants to see lives changed and hearts transformed. He desires for the Kingdom to grow in this place, not barely but abundantly.
- This is our call: to leave a church to the next generation that is Christlike and impactful and thriving. The Israelites saw the glory of God depart; may we see the glory of God exalted.
