Disclaimer:
Due to the large amount of sermons and topics that appear on this site I feel it is necessary to post this disclaimer on all sermons posted. These sermons are original to the author and the leading of the Holy Spirit. While ideas and illustrations are often gleaned from many sources including those at Sermoncentral.com, any similarities and wording including sermon title, that may appear to be the same as any other sermon are purely coincidental. In instances where other minister’s wording is used, due recognition will be given. These sermons are not copyrighted and may be used or preached freely. May God richly bless you as you read these words. It is my sincere desire that all who read them may be enriched. All scriptures quoted in these sermons are copies and quoted from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Pastor James May
GOD’S MESSAGE TO HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE
Ezekiel 2:3-3:11
Sunday, December 01, 2002 AM
Surely we are living in a time when God is doing everything He can to reach out to the souls of men. Those of us who are called and chosen of God to bring the message of the Gospel to whole world have a feeling that we are coming down to the last hours of the last day of the Age of the Gentiles. Looking at our newspapers and TV news we both quake in dread for the things that are coming upon this world and we shout with great anticipation of the soon coming of our Lord to take His Bride away.
As I watch the news I am often reminded of the condition of the church. In every church, across America today, those people who are called by the name of Jesus and who claim to be Christians are gathering. Just as you and I came to church this morning, they are in God’s House and God is wondering why many of them are even there.
As you look around, and look inside your own motives and your own heart, can you say, with all honesty, that you came to church this morning expecting a mighty move of God in your heart and life and that you are hungry and searching for more of Him?
I think that all too often we come to church, sit in God’s House, at his dinner table and then refuse to eat what He has set before us because we don’t like the taste of it.
ILLUSTRATION:
Our attitude toward God’s table, and God’s Word, reminds me of the little kids, and sometimes, not-so-little kids, who refuse to each their spinach, or mustard greens or most types of vegetables because they are too used to eating the sweet tasting junk food.
There are too many Christians who live on the junk food of the Word of God! They love the teaching on prosperity, faith, miracles of healing and deliverance, of the outpouring of the blessings of God upon their live, of the promises that God will deliver us through every trial and temptation, and the power of the Blood of Jesus to cleanse us from all sin.
But, like those little kids who refuse to eat their “greens”, we refuse to take that part of God’s Word that makes us feel bad or leaves a bad taste in our mouths, even though that part of God’s Word is often the spiritual food that we need the most to make us strong and healthy in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel’s message was a lot like the message that the true ministers of the gospel and of the Word of God are trying to cram down the throats of the lukewarm Christians of our modern day church.
Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year, we sit in the presence of God in the sanctuary of His House, listening to the Word of God come forth, and yet there is so little difference that it makes in our lives because we refuse to it because of its bitter taste to our flesh.
Looking out over the church world and observing God’s People, it becomes all to obvious that most of them don’t really hear the message that God is trying to send out. They continue in their lukewarm condition, still doing the things they have always done, still going the places they have always gone and still living the same lifestyle that they always lived.
If you try to talk to them about the condition of their soul you find out that their heart is as hard as a rock. They have set their face like flint to go their own way and they don’t want anyone to tell them different. They don’t want to hear the truth much less obey it.
God sets the face of His ministers as flint also to preach His message that must be heard. When they begin to preach to those who are hard hearted it’s like flint striking against flint. How many of you know what happens when two pieces of flint strike against each other? That’s when the sparks are going to fly and perhaps the fire is started.
That’s what God is attempting to do in each of us this morning! He is striking our hard head with His Word through a “holy hardened head” of a minister to start a fire in your life that will never go out!
I want you to know that true repentance, true salvation, a true knowledge of the Word of God and a true relationship with Jesus Christ will always bring with them an absolutely changed life. Jesus will accept nothing less than our all, our total commitment, and our complete surrender to His will.
God called Israel a rebellious, impudent, stiff hearted people in the 3rd and 4th verses of chapter 2. We also see in verses 8 and 9 of chapter 3 that God described Israel as stone faced and hard headed. If that isn’t a description of many of the Christians that I know, I don’t know what is!
Christians are the hardest people to reach with the real message of repentance and of living a holy life before the Lord. It seems that once we accept Jesus as our Savior that we, all of a sudden, become so super spiritual that we refuse to hear what God is trying to say us anymore because we have arrived and we think we know it all.
Last Friday evening at the Youth Rally, Bro. Colin told of one man on his job who claimed to be a Christian and already knew everything there was to know about the Bible! What a foolish statement! What a dangerous place to be in! There is a man whose very soul is teetering on the edge of Hell and he refuses to grab hold of the lifeline of God’s Word that is his only hope for salvation. There is a man who matches the description of Israel of Ezekiel’s day.
God told Ezekiel that he was being sent to preach, not to people who spoke some foreign language that couldn’t understand what he said. No interpreter was needed to speak to them.
They were the chosen people of God, the nation of Israel that God had brought forth as a fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, and had preserved through so many of their good times and bad times. (Most of those bad times were a direct result of the judgments of God upon them for sin.)
Yet, through it all God had been faithful to them and desired them to hear His Word. But they would not listen. They would not turn from their rebellious heart to worship and serve God. They continued on their way, oblivious to the destruction that lay ahead. Their faces were set like flint and no preaching, no prophetic utterances, no pronouncement of judgment to come, no warnings of impending doom could sway them. They were hard headed and stiff hearted and refused to change their ways and follow God.
What end would they deserve other than Hell itself? What more could God do to persuade them to turn back to Him? How many more prophets would God have to send? How many more sermons would they have to hear before they really heard?
The time of their judgment was so very near and yet they remained just as they always were, rebellious and sinful, living in direct disobedience to the will of God.
Never has there ever been a people who God loved more and tried to reach more! But because they remained hard hearted, they would also be a people that would deserve the most severe punishment that any people could get. God would eventually utterly destroy all of Israel and banish them to the four winds of the earth. They would not even have a nation for nearly 2000 years. I wonder how many times they thought about God when their nation was no more. How many times did they say to themselves, “Oh, if only I had listened, but it’s too late now.”
The ministers of the gospel that stand in the pulpits of America are not preaching to people who can’t hear or can’t understand what God is trying to say to us! As I stand here this morning, preaching to you that Jesus is coming soon and you had better be ready, I wonder how many really hear, really try to understand, and even more important, I wonder how many really, honestly care? Are we really hearing the message that God is sending to us?
In Matthew 3:12 and in Luke 3:17 we hear the warnings of His soon return, "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable."
At least 4 times in the Book of Revelation alone we hear voice of Jesus as He speaks through the writings of John and Jesus says, “Behold, I come quickly…” Do you hear that warning? Do you understand what Jesus is saying?
It’s the same warning that has been flashed across the heart of every chosen vessel of God since the dawn of time – “Get ready, live in obedience to my word and hear my voice because your life is but a vapor, your time on earth is nearly done and you will face my judgment one day soon!”
Sometimes I feel like Ezekiel! I am commanded to devour the Word of God, “the roll of writings from the mind of God”, and then go and speak those words to God’s people.
As I prepare for sermons, and study, read and meditate upon the Word of God it tastes so sweet to my heart and soul as it is going down. Oh but after a while it begins to upset my spirit for I see my own short comings and my own sin. Then I see the same in other people and I wonder if we will ever be where God wants us to be.
Then, after I have eaten and digested the Word of God in my own heart, I have to turn around and preach it to you and to anyone who will hear. That’s when it becomes bitter to my spirit, for I never want to bring condemnation upon the church, I never want to be the one who gives out the spiritual whippings to disobedient Children of God.
But God’s Word says in Proverbs 22:15, "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” It also says in Proverbs 23:13-14, "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell."
Now if there was ever a less popular message to the world of our day who allows children to do just as they please and condemns anyone who lifts a finger against hard-headed, disobedient, insolent, impudent and rebellious children, this is the one. It’s no wonder we are raising generations who grow increasingly more rebellious and less open to the message of repentance!
But Children of God, you can rest assured that God isn’t concerned with what the philosophers of this world think about His methods of correcting His own children. God still uses the rod of correction and He knows how to get our attention!
God sends forth His true ministers to preach the truth in love and the rod of correction starts swinging. If your heart is right with the Lord and you are walking in obedience, you don’t have to fear that rod, but if you are among the hard-hearted, hard-headed, rebellious children, then watch out because that rod is coming right at you and you will feel it when it strikes your heart.
Can you sit in this service this morning and feel perfectly comfortable while I attempt to preach to you like this? If so, then the condition of your heart is in one of two places in God. Either you are living right and have a good relationship with Jesus, or perhaps your heart and head is so hard that God is having a really hard time even getting through to you! Only you and God know which one it is.
If you are listening to me this morning and you feel like God’s rod is striking you, then thank God that you can still hear when He speaks. Turn your life back to Jesus and fall on your face before Him in true repentance so that your heart and head won’t get as hard as the person next you.
Sometimes it is hard to stand in the pulpit and preach to God’s people a message of correction. It is far easier to preach a message of joy, peace and comfort or a message of praise and love.
Yes God loves you! He loves you too much to allow you to continue on the path that leads to destruction.
Yes God will bring you peace, but only when you have a good relationship and you are walking with the Prince of Peace.
Yes God will bring you joy but only in the Lord and the Joy of the Lord will be your strength to stand against the devil.
Yes God does comfort, protect and provide for His people but the key is that you have to be “HIS PEOPLE” and live like you are His people and not like the devil’s crowd.
Yes God does praise, or exalt those who are His children but only after they have humbled themselves in the sight of God, not while they are living in a rebellious condition.
Even though the message seems hard at times, I am reminded of what God said to Ezekiel so long ago, Ezekiel 3:8-11, "Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads. As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, all my words that I shall speak unto thee receive in thine heart, and hear with thine ears. And go, get thee to them of the captivity, unto the children of thy people, and speak unto them, and tell them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear."
God has to give His true minister a “holy hard headedness” and “holy stone face” to stand and preach the truth to people who won’t hear!
We cannot allow the true message of the Lord to go unnoticed or unheard! It must go forth. Woe unto me, and woe unto you, if we do not carry the message the way that God wants it carried! We will suffer a greater punishment than those who would refuse to hear because we know better and we still refused to listen. If we don’t preach the truth then we join the ranks of rebellious, hard headed and stiff hearted children and we will face the same punishment in the end.
Have you noticed that there is a great revival going on around the world right now? I am hearing of thousands on the mission fields that will walk for hours to get to hear the Word of God. God is doing great things and those who are lost, in the world, are more open to hearing the voice of God than God’s own children!
Would to God that such a revival could begin in the House of God! If ever there was need for revival it is within our own church, and not just ours, but every church in our nation. We have fallen so far from where we began. Where are the miracles of salvation, healing and deliverance that we once saw? Where are the altars that are filled with tears of the repentant as we cry out to God? Where are the praying people who once cried out to God for lost souls and for the needs of the church? God help us to get back to the place where all of this can be a part of our church every time we come together. I want us to come together to meet the Lord and, like the black folks say, “Let’s Have Church!”
How can we preach the message where the People of God will hear it? How can we deliver the Word of the Lord to a hard hearted and stiff necked church?
We can only do so in the same manner that Ezekiel did!
It is not the power of our speech that matters, nor is it the manner in which it is delivered that strikes at the heart of a man trapped in rebelliousness and disobedience. It is the Power of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Almighty God, that carries the message and pierces the heart like an arrow. It is the Word of God that is “quick”, or alive, and is able to cut into any crusty layer of sin like a sharp double edged sword.
It’s not the messenger, it’s the message of the gospel that makes the difference.
Right now, as we sit hearing the Word of the Lord, God has already swung that sword of His Word and shot the arrow of His gospel into the hearts of everyone here. What has the Word of God said to you this morning? What has He prompted to your mind concerning your own life?
Have you heard the message of the approval of God stamped upon your life? Is everything right between you and Jesus? Are you living for Him and learning more of Him everyday? Praise the Lord if you are because that’s where we all need to be.
Has God brought things to your heart and mind that you know are not pleasing to Him? Has His rod of correction struck you this morning?
I want you to know that, if you have felt the Holy Spirit check you this morning and you feel that there are some things in your life that need correcting, thank God for that touch in your soul! That means that God still considers you as His own. God looks upon you and says, “My child I love you, but now its time to get some things right. Behold, I come quickly, so don’t wait, do it now!”
Sometimes the writings of the roll of God’s Word are bitter to our spirit but they are meant to cleanse us from sin just as a lot of the medicine that we take tastes bitter but is meant to bring healing to the body.
The greens that we have to almost force feed our children become better tasting as we grow up. Sometimes we even begin to like them. In either case, they are better for building a strong body.
God’s warnings and messages are same way. They may be bitter to the taste if we aren’t living where we should be but they are what we need to be strong and to get right with God. If we are living right, then the messages are sweet and nourishing because they let us know that God still cares and that He is really coming soon.
How does this message taste to you. Does your bitter heart need sweetening and strengthening? Then this message was meant for you!
