In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Come as far as verse 31. We're just going to back up to verse 30 to keep it in the context and read verse 31 again, and then we'll get into the rest of chapter 20. Very interesting things are going on here. We're almost done with that section from chapter 12 to chapter 24 where God is giving us reasons in his word as to why it is necessary for him to discipline his people.

Through the book, you're going to find out in a couple places that he's going to say things like, "Turn ye, turn ye. Why will you perish?" saith the Lord of Hosts. "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked." And so in like in no other book of the Old Testament, especially among the prophets other than Ezekiel, do we really get a sense of the heart of God and how our idolatry—now I'm going to make a distinction between idolatry and sin—because every one of you in this building probably struggles with sin. Other than Alice, she's arrived, but the rest of us probably struggle with sin.

You're in the fight, you're in the fray, but there's still a battle there. That's not what he's disciplining his people over. He made provision in the Levitical law for sin and transgression. What he is disciplining them over is idolatry. They are worshiping other gods. They are attributing the things that should be attributed and worshiped to the true and living God to idols of stone and of wood and of metal and of jewelry, of gold and of silver. To God, that is a form of adultery.

Every marriage can have squabbles. We men can be quite irritating from time to time to our wives, and we have to repent from our sins. Amen, Gary? You know what I'm talking about. Bill's got both hands up. He knows what I'm talking about. But we are not unfaithful. We'll see that tonight. So let's pray and we'll dive in. Father, we thank you for your word tonight. Speak to our hearts, we ask, and then give permanence to those things, Lord. May we take to heart this warning, and may our hearts always be owned by you even though we struggle with the flesh.

That's what you're after, Lord, the heart. It's the devotion, it's that consecration, it's that love, it's that intimacy. So help us to understand it tonight, we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus we ask, and all God's kids would say: Amen. Now we started chapter 20. Some of the elders of Israel had come to visit Ezekiel because they recognized Ezekiel to be a prophet. Ezekiel would have been a priest, interestingly so, if it hadn't been for them being brought into captivity on Nebuchadnezzar's second journey back to Jerusalem.

This time he brings all the priests back as he quells the uprising. He brings all of the vessels of worship back with the priests. Ezekiel would have been a priest, but as he gets to Babylon, God refits him and makes him a prophet. So he is a prophet and a priest. He's not a king. Jesus is the only prophet, priest, and king, but he is a prophet and he was slated to be a priest. He's there and he's recognized to be so even by the elders of the nation of Israel that are now in captivity.

They come to seek the Lord through this prophet. As they're seated, the Lord says to them, "Now listen, I want you to give it to them." From verse 1 all the way through to verse 31, God is rehearsing their history, their failures, their idolatry, their wandering hearts, and he's giving them reasons as to why he should not be inquired of them until they get rid of this idolatry. And rightly so. When we came to verse 30 last week, he says to them, "Wherefore says he unto the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God: Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers as your fathers went after other gods?"

We saw in the only place in scripture that it's mentioned that when they were even in Egypt in bondage, many of the people of God fell into idolatry. God had tucked them safely away in Egypt until the Promised Land was ready for them, until the sin of all of those -ites that lived over there—the Canaanites and Hittites and Jebusites—had reached a point where God would judge them because God was even being gracious to them. He tucked them away in a place that they could have been safe.

The Egyptians despised the Habiru people, the shepherd people, the Hebrew people. So they put them in the land of Goshen and they wouldn't interact with them and they wouldn't intermarry with them. God put them in a place although it was in a secular place that the secular place didn't want anything to do with them, but they sought the secular things. God had to break them and many of them didn't even come out of Egypt when God led them out through Moses.

Now he's saying you have followed in the footsteps of your fathers in that you have polluted yourselves with idols. You've committed whoredom after their abominations. Again, I want to make this distinction and I'm hoping I can make it as we're going through here because I know some of you are sitting here thinking as we get into chapter 21. Chapter 21 is known as the song of the sword. Nineteen times he's going to talk about the sword of correction that he's going to bring against Jerusalem.

Maybe some of you are sitting here going, "I'm in trouble if God's going to bring the sword of judgment." No, he's judging because of idolatry, which to him is a form of whoredom. It's the form of what we would call physical adultery. God can deal with our imperfections, he can deal with the battles that we have, he can deal with the sin and the transgression in our life as the spirit man is struggling with the flesh man. But what he will not tolerate is your worship of another god, that anything else would own your affections.

He will not tolerate another rival throne in your heart. He will not tolerate that because to him that is the thing that breaks his heart because it is being unfaithful. In the Old Testament, the Lord said to Israel in the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God is one." That doesn't mean just one, it means it speaks of the unity of the Godhead. There's complete unity there. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, absolute one. Oneness is actually how that can be interpreted in the Hebrew.

The Lord your God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. All of it. Not part of it or most of it. All of it. Because God is jealous in a good way for your affections, and he will share your affections with no one. He knows in this flesh you're going to struggle with sin, he's made provision for that so that there wouldn't be broken fellowship. No, he's made provision for that. But he will not tolerate what he's given you for you to take it and give it to somebody else.

In chapter 16, Spurgeon wouldn't teach chapter 16. Most pastors of the day wouldn't teach chapter 16. In fact, most pastors of today won't teach chapter 16 because it's just so crude as God is describing how you are breaking his heart with the things you're doing with idolatry. It's the chapter where he says, "When I found you, you were rejected, you were an outcast and you were out in the field as a newborn, and you were floundering in your own blood. You were dying in your own blood. And when I found you, I took you, I cleansed you, I washed you, I rubbed you down with salt, I put swaddling clothes on you, I blessed you, I fed you, I nurtured you, and I raised you up."

When you became a woman so that you could be my wife—and this is the gross part of it—he said, "But you opened your legs to every other person." This is what God is saying to Israel. "And the things I gave you, you offered and sacrificed to other gods. And should I not be upset? Is this a little matter?" God says to you, "Is that a small matter that you should do that?" When we read about King David—and King David gets a lot of bad press—but I'm going to tell you about King David.

King David may have sinned and he sinned horribly, he sinned in a major way. But God said King David was a man after my own heart because King David, among the kings of Israel, was one of the few that never committed idolatry. He never worshiped another god. In fact, when he sinned, he was broken that he had hurt the heart of his God. With sackcloth and ashes, he was broken. As we come to this, the scene is that these elders who are there at the Temple in Jerusalem on Sabbath worshiping the Lord, but on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they're up in the groves and the high places.

They're sacrificing to gods of stone and gods of wood and gods of gold and gods of silver. They're worshiping idols and they're taking the things that God blessed them with and they're sacrificing them in oblation to these other gods. He says in verse 31 where we left off last week, "For when you offer your gifts"—the things, by the way, I gave you, every good gift comes from the Father of Lights in whom there is no shadow of turning, that he's immutable—he says, "I gave you those gifts and you took those gifts and you offered them to other gods. When you make your sons to pass through the fire..."

This is a form of abortion because they worshiped—the pagans that were around there—the thing that Israel was entering into. One of these pagan worship things was that because you had an unwanted child or you had a child out of wedlock or your mistress had a child, the way you would get rid of that child is you would offer it to the god of Molech. Molech was a statue that was heated up because it was hollow brass until it was glowing hot, and you would place the baby on the open arms.

He said, "That offspring didn't belong to you, it belonged to me, and you aborted it. You murdered it." I wonder if God doesn't think the same thing that's going on in this nation. You offered your gifts, you made your sons to pass through the fire, and you polluted yourself with all your idols even to this day. Even while my judgment is coming. Even though for a hundred years Isaiah warned you, then Jeremiah, then Daniel up in the Tabernacle and Ezekiel now down here amongst the common people, and much of the minor prophets—Amos and Joel, all of these—they're warning you.

Even to this day, you have not turned. In fact, he says you've become firm of face, hard of heart, and stiff of neck. You continue to commit idolatry, and he's going to tell them, "And now you're here seeking me while you're still doing that?" He says, "Even to this day, and shall I be inquired of of you? Should I entertain you? Should I listen to your prayers? Should I answer your questions? Should I interact with you while you're committing whoredom against me?" This is what he's saying.

Then he says this: "O house of Israel, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be inquired by you." Even we as Christians, before the worship team and myself come up, we huddle over here and we start our prayer by saying, "Father, forgive us. We never want to take advantage of your grace." Before we step up here to allow you to minister through us, we want clean hands and a pure heart. So if we've done anything in word, thought, or deed today or this week, cleanse us, Lord.

It's not our desire to be disobedient. We love you with all of our heart. We want to be obedient, Lord. And if we've gotten angry in traffic... I went all the way to Yuba City and back and didn't even get angry. I was so stoked after witnessing to Avan. I'll tell you, I thought my truck's wheels weren't even touching the ground. Thank you, Jesus. But we don't want to come here and presuppose upon the grace of God because we love him. He said, "But you come before me when you have idols in your heart, and should I be inquired of you?"

Then he says this in verse 32, and this is the best part of it because before he goes any further—and I love this about how the Holy Spirit does this, I love this about how our Father is speaking to Ezekiel to remind us—because chapter 21 is tough. Chapter 22 is tough. 23 and 24, pretty tough because he's going to lay out the punishment and the other destruction that's going to happen in chapter 21 to Jerusalem because the first time that he sent Nebuchadnezzar, his servant, there to discipline them, they resisted.

He had to go back the second time. And the second time, he destroyed the temple basically, took all the instruments of worship and the priest. He took the lineage of the kings with him, Jehoiachin. The third time he's going to go back, and he's about five years from that as this is being written, he'll go back and this time he will burn Jerusalem to the ground. When you go to Israel to this day, you will see in the excavation over there by the City of David and the old parts of the town as they've excavated down, you'll see two black lines.

It's interesting. They're notable in the excavation layers. The first of those lines is when Nebuchadnezzar burned it to the ground. The second of those lines is when Titus Vespasian rode into Jerusalem to quell an uprising and he burned the temple to the ground and the Jews were dispersed. Those two lines are a record. Just below the first burn line, they've unearthed many thousands of little idols. Because God said if you worship another god, I'll burn it to the ground.

But there's always hope. Here's what I love about the rest of this chapter. We may not get into chapter 21 tonight because next Wednesday night, we're not going to be here. It's fair week, we always take that off. I want to end on a good note, and then we'll get back to swords and judgment and death and mayhem and correction the following week. But listen to what God says here. They're still in idolatry. They're still not turning at his correction.

They're not listening to the prophets. He says, "Now you come to inquire of me like this?" Then verse 32, "And that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all that which you say: We will be as the heathen." That's what they're saying in their heart. "We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone." What God is saying is I'm going to put an end to that thought in your heart. When I'm done, you won't think that anymore.

Aren't you glad that God doesn't give up on us? In the New Testament—because we're under a different covenant, we're not under the law, we're under grace—but even under grace, the Bible says when we are unfaithful, he remains what? Faithful. Faithful to discipline us when we are unfaithful. Isn't that cool? In fact, the Bible says that he only disciplines those that he loves. How many got a few love taps this week? Just Bill.

He disciplines those that he loves and he disciplines those that are his. His wrath is reserved for the ungodly, and that's punishment. But to those who've come to Christ by faith, born again of the Spirit and become a son and daughter of God, there is no punishment. There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ. In fact, Romans 5 says because we have been justified, we now have peace with God. He's at peace with us, he's not angry with us, but he will correct us because he loves us.

Aren't you glad for that correction? I've had people in my office complain about the correction, and I said, "Don't complain about the correction. Be worried if God gives you up." In fact, he tells us one of the things he will do to these people is just give them up. Make a choice, and if you think it's better to go serve the gods of this world, then go do it. See how it works for you. As we're looking at this, we want to understand that God is a God of grace, of mercy, of restoration, and forgiveness.

All he's ever looking for—listen carefully—all he's ever looking for in our lives when we go astray is repentance. He will send the prophets, he will send the Spirit in the New Testament, he will convict us of sin and of righteousness and of the judgment that is to come. All he's looking for is repentance. The moment you repent, he says your sins and your iniquities I remember no more. The correction will stop. If you're being corrected tonight, all you have to do is stop, turn, repent. Stop it.

God will receive you and accept you and he'll be your Father, and you'll be his sons and daughters. That's all he is after. He's not trying to destroy you, but he'll keep upping the ante until he gets your full and uninvited attention. Now watch what he says here, very interesting in verse 33. As I live, God is raising his hand because he can swear by no higher, he's swearing by himself that this is going to take place.

"As I live, saith the Lord God"—and by the way, he is the Lord God, and if you don't think that to be so, find out when you try to be the Lord God. He'll jerk you up in a hurry. He says, "Surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with fury poured out will I rule over you." I'm going to do whatever it takes to get you back into a place where I can bless you. I'm going to do whatever it takes. You're going to eat those quail till they come out your nose.

Whatever it takes. I like this promise. It tells me is that just give up early. Just quit. No man has ever successfully wrestled with the Lord and won. Jacob wrestled with the Lord, walked with a limp for the rest of his life and God gave him a new name, Israel: who is ruled by God. He'll take a Jacob. In the Old Testament, many times he's called the God of Jacob. There's a lot of Jacobs in here. But he's also the God of Israel.

After Israel got his name changed to Israel, isn't it interesting from time to time even after that God would say, "Hey Jacob," because you're acting like a Jacob. Other times he would call him an Israel. The question is were you a Jacob this week or were you an Israel? He's still the God of both. Jacob gets corrected, Israel gets blessed. So you choose. Do you want blessing or cursing? Do you want the throne room or the place where the rod of wisdom is applied to the seat of understanding? The discipline room.

It's our choice. Listen to what he says here: "As I live, listen, you are going to serve me and I will bring you out from the people." The idea is I'm going to bring you out from among the heathen. In the New Testament we read as Paul's writing to the church at Corinth, he says, "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you as a father does to his sons and daughters and I will put my hand of blessing upon you."

That's the promise in the New Testament, same as the old. But God says you're going to repent, you're going to come to your senses, I'm going to take you out from among the heathens. You're not going to have that thought anymore in your mind that you're going to live like they are living. You're just not going to because I'm going to restore you back to fellowship with me. There's a couple of Old Testament verses that kind of go along with this and I want to read them to you tonight.

In Joel chapter 2, verses 25 and 26, we all know about the promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the latter days. But before that, he says this, and this is Joel writing as a contemporary of what's going on with Israel. He says, "And I will restore you the years that the locusts have eaten." When you went astray, it was bad times. But God says there's a time that comes when I'm going to restore you. This is what he's promising right now through Ezekiel to Israel who's being disciplined.

He says, "I will restore the years that the locust have eaten, the cankerworm and the caterpillar and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you." That which I disciplined you, the things I had to remove from you, the hurt that I brought on you. Not harm. God will never harm us, but he'll hurt us in the process of getting our attention. Those things I brought to you, the idea is when you repent, he said then you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied.

You shall praise the name of the Lord your God who hath dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be ashamed. When he repents—this is such a beautiful thing—some of you are dealing with shame and guilt. We talked about this Sunday morning about forgetting those things that are behind. Some of us, the enemy likes to take our past and bludgeon us with it in our present. Or he tries to make us fearful of our future.

If he's trying to make you condemned by your painful past or he's trying to make you fearful of your future, it's because he's trying to rob you of your present joy. Here the Lord is saying he's trying to tell us that not only will I deal with your sin, but I'll remove the shame. When the Bible says that Jesus went to the cross, he went to the cross not just to remove the penalty of sin and the power of sin, but he said he bore the shame of the cross.

So many of us are captured by the wicked one because he wants us to become shame-based. He wants to constantly remind us of our failures. And yet God wants to say, "Those failures, listen, that which the enemy meant for evil I use for good because all things are working together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose." All things, not some or most, all things. Maybe you had a little pride in you, maybe you thought you were better than that.

Maybe you were a little self-righteous. Maybe you thought, like Peter, "Man, I wouldn't have chose these other 11. You and me, we're good forever. I'll never fail you." Maybe some of you have that legalistic self-righteous religious spirit like Peter did. Jesus looked at Peter and said, "Listen, Peter, before the cock crows to bring in the morning, you will have denied me three times. You're going to fail, Peter. But I prayed for you. And when you come to your senses, continue the ministry that I called you to: feed my sheep."

That event happened and historians tell us that when Jesus was being taken from trial to trial, when the cock crowed the final time, Peter actually blasphemed the name of the Lord. At the moment he blasphemes, he catches eyes with Jesus as he's being taken from one trial to the next. They lock eyes, and shame and guilt come over Peter. So what does Peter do? He says, "I'm done, I'm toast. I'm going back to my old profession. I'm going to go back to fishing."

They go back to fishing. When Jesus meets Peter after his failure, he meets him in the same way he met him when he was a failure before, when he was fishing. He remember, he said, "Take me out." Peter said, "I just came in, man, there's no fish out there." He said, "No, just launch off a little ways, drop out your nets." He did and made a catch of a bunch of fish. Peter's fishing all night long and they catch nothing.

Jesus is on the bank after the resurrection, he calls out, "Hey guys, catch anything?" Of course, being good fishermen, they said, "Well, you should have saw the one that got away." No, empty nets. Jesus said, "Cast them on the other side. Turn the other way." *Metanoia*, repentance, is to turn from one side to the other. Cast your net on the other side. They did, and the nets began to break. They couldn't hardly get the fish.

Peter says to John, "That's the Lord." Peter girds himself and he jumps in. He comes up on the bank and he has a conversation with the Lord. The Lord says to him, "Peter, do you love me?" Peter so ashamed, he said, "Lord, you know that I *phileo* you." That's not what Jesus asked. Jesus says, "Peter, do you *agapeo* me? Do you love me with a divine love? Do you love me with your whole heart? Everything that's in you, Peter, do you love me?"

Peter said, "Lord, you know I'm fond of you, I *phileo* you." Jesus asked the second time, "Peter, do you *agapeo* me? Do you love me with your whole heart?" Peter responds the second time, "Lord, you know I'm very fond of you, I *phileo* you. We're friends." Then Jesus says to Peter—you don't get it in the English, you have to read it in the original language—then Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, do you only like me? Do you only *phileo* me?"

I believe at that moment Peter lost it. I'm going to tell you where we get to the end of this chapter we're going to see that he's going to tell them when I'm done disciplining you, you will mourn for your sin. You will loathe your transgression. How many loathe your transgression? How many loathe your sin? How many loathe the fact that you could ever do that? Yeah, we do. But Peter no doubt loses it. Tears, big fisherman bawling like a baby, said, "Lord, you know I love you."

Then Jesus said, "Peter, feed my sheep. I still trust you. We're still together in this. The gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. Feed my sheep." Jesus said before he failed, "I have prayed for you because Satan has sought to sift you." Satan's not a respecter of persons either. He wants to sift you, grind you up. But Jesus says, "I prayed for you that your faith faileth not." Amen? That's called restoration.

Peter had to go through a very difficult time to be broken. He had to go through a time where he had to come face to face with his shame and his guilt and then in the face of Jesus he gets what he always needed: humility, brokenness, forgiveness, grace, and mercy. You see, that's the gospel message. That's why I could look at this young man this morning and say Jesus loves you. He goes to Chico State, party capital of the world. He's a young man.

I had to talk about sin because I'm sure that young man not saved is in sin and I said, "You know Jesus died for your sins." I said our sins, my sins too. I said I was pretty stupid the first 20 years of my life and I've been pretty stupid afterwards too. But Jesus loves you and he died to forgive you. Is that not the message of restoration? Watch what he says here before he gets into the spanking again in chapter 21. He wants to talk about grace in the end of the chapter 20.

There's one more verse I want to read in Psalms 30. This is a good one. In Psalms chapter 30 verses 4 and 5 it says this: "Sing unto the Lord, O you saints of his." Are you saints of his? "Give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness, for his anger endureth but a moment." His anger, when he has to discipline us, even though it feels like anger in the New Testament he's not going to be angry with us, but it can feel that way. His anger is but for a moment but his favor is life.

Weeping may endure for a night. Brokenness, contriteness, repentance may endure for a night. But the joy comes in the morning. He's a restorer of our souls. This is what the rest of this chapter is about, him restoring. He says, "As I live, saith the Lord, surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with fury poured out I will rule over you. I will bring you out from the people"—and the idea is I'm going to bring you out from among the heathen.

"I will gather you out of the countries wherein you have been scattered." There is a near and a far part of this prophecy. The near is that although they've been scattered, in 70 years he will gather them again. Ezra and Joshua and Zerubbabel will go back and rebuild the temple. Nehemiah will come and reconstruct the walls. They will find the book of the law and from the rising of the sun to the setting, the priests will stand, read it distinctly and give the sense of it.

The people will stand with their heads bowed, their arms raised, and they will worship the Lord when the reading of the word has come back to their hearts. He said you're going to be restored. But then we know there was another scattering. That's why there's those two black lines, Nebuchadnezzar and Titus Vespasian. They were scattered again. They have been brought back to the land. When we get into chapters 36, 37, 38 and 39, the second far part of this vision we're seeing happening today.

God is saying, "I will gather you again out of all the countries." He did that in 1948, did he not? Then in 1967, what did he give them in the Six-Day War? Jerusalem. What did Jesus say about that? The generation that sees that will not pass away till all things be fulfilled because once I put my people back in the land and I give them the Holy City of Jerusalem, then the church doesn't need to be here any longer.

I'm going to remove the church and I'm going to deal with Israel again. That's why that last seven-year part of Daniel's 70 vision is called Jacob's Trouble in Jeremiah. Because God will deal with Israel. He's going to stand them up like he's going to tell us as we get to those chapters. They're standing up today, but they're as secular as we are in the United States. But he's going to put his breath in them.

I think Psalms 83 is going to do that, and I think it's about to kick off soon. This has a near and a far fulfillment. I'm going to gather you as it were from where I've scattered you and I'm going to do it with a mighty hand. How many have watched the miracles? I used to have a book on the Six-Day War. When we studied Israel, we got to go up to the Golan Heights where they had the tank battle. I would challenge you, you can look up the Six-Day War and the miracles of the Six-Day War.

They should have never won that battle. They defeated three air forces—Syria, Jordan, and Egypt—in a matter of hours. They destroyed the armies of three greater countries than them that surrounded this little bitty country in six days. On the seventh day they rested. There are stories of Jordanian tank brigade commanders saying that there were angels standing in the road and we had to stop the tanks. The tanks were delayed long enough for the Israeli to get into position.

One of the engineers that built the Israeli tank will tell you that God spoke to him to make the turret of the gun go low. You don't do that because if it loses hydraulics, the turret of the gun goes low and it runs into the ground when you're driving. But he said make it low. What they found during this battle, because of the hills, they would run their tanks up where none of the tank was visible, lower the turret, and the enemy had no shot and they were taking out the tanks left and right.

Angels standing in there. God said, "With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm I'm going to deliver you. I'm going to gather you from the countries that I scattered you and with an outstretched arm and with fury I'm going to pour out upon those people. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people." This phrase is, I'm going to take you back to what lays waste that belongs to you. In 1948 when they were given by the British and had to fight to earn that land, they're still fighting a battle to stay in the land.

He said, "I'm going to bring you into a land that's a wilderness, but I'm going to meet you there." You go to Israel today and it's no wilderness. They lead the world in hydroponics and irrigation. They got oranges over there that look like grapefruit. Blows my mind. They grow bananas because you need bananas to make banana bread. So they have bananas over there, lots of them. It's a green and lush place. God said, "I'm going to bring you out of the places you've scattered, I'm going to bring you into a wilderness like the land of Egypt, so I will plead with you face to face."

God said I'm going to make myself known to you. It won't be through the prophets and it won't be through the priests. I'm going to plead with every person that I bring out from where I've scattered them and I'm going to plead you—and listen how he says because he gives us an example here in the next verse—"I'm going to plead with you face to face like as I plead with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt so I will plead with you saith the Lord God."

How did he plead? Mighty signs and miracles, 10 miracles, and then when he brought them out and he brought them to Mount Sinai, God manifested himself on the top of that mountain with smoke and fire and the whole encampment heard the audible voice of God recite the Ten Commandments. Even Moses was afraid. They said, "Mo, we elect you. You go up. You find out what he wants. Get it in writing, come back, and we will do it."

They should have said, "Mo, go up, find out what he wants, ask him for some grace to help us to try to keep those commandments and we'll do our best." That would have been a better statement. You know when Moses was up on the mountain, they're in a drunken orgy making a golden calf. God still spared them and restored them and led them, amazing. He said, "I'm going to deal with you when I bring you face to face."

I think that when Psalms 83 kicks off at the end of Psalms 83, it's about to kick off. It's an interesting thing that says there. It's a prophetic psalm that's never been fulfilled. In fact, the players involved in Psalms 83, they became headline news starting in 2011. We called it the Arab Spring, but it was where those radical Islamic countries surrounded Israel and it's the same ones mentioned in Psalms 83 calling for the destruction of Israel. The cry in Psalms 83 is "God help us."

There's nobody else to help us. Your enemies are forming a tumult, they have confederated together for our destruction. So do what you've done in the past. At the end of that Psalms 83, it says that when the dust settles and the smoke clears, the whole world is going to say that Jehovah alone—God alone, whose name is Jehovah—has done this. That's like Old Testament like whoa. I don't know if we're going to be here to see Psalms 83. I want to be here.

You talk about witnessing to people. It will get everybody's attention real quick and in a hurry. It'll be easy. You won't have to buy something to witness, even though you get a cut rate, you won't have to do that. You won't have to put your yarmulke cap on, let your nose get long and start dealing to witness. You'll be able to witness because the whole world's going to know. God says, "Listen, I'm going to bring you out," and I think that he's not just referring to that but he's referring to what's going on right now.

"I'm going to do it with an outstretched arm. And when I do it I'm going to plead with you the same way I plead with your fathers there at Mount Sinai in the desert. You're going to hear my voice. You're going to see me manifest myself in power and in an authority. The mountain is going to rumble, the flame and the smoke is going to billow, and you're going to hear my voice." Verse 37 says, "And I will cause you to pass under the rod."

This is an interesting idiom. When we were in Israel, we got to go down in this spot where they had the sheepfolds. They're little dugouts in the ground and they have rocks built up and there's a gate. The shepherd sits at the gate at night after he brings the sheep in. That's what Jesus said, "I'm the door, I'm the only door. I'm the door into the sheepfold." So they would bring them in. What the shepherds would do is they would take their rod and as the sheep pass under, he would count each one to check and make sure he's got Sam and Suzie.

The sheep named their sheep and they would tap each one with the rod as they went in. Also the tapping of the rod would spook them a little bit to make sure that they're not limping or there's nothing wrong that he might have to take care of. So they would pass under the rod. You can read this example in Jeremiah 33 in verse 13 that talks about the passing under. He's counting the sheep. He says, "I'm going to count every one of you that none of you will be lost. I will bring you into the bond of the covenant."

I will bring you back into this covenant relationship, back into this marriage that I have with you. "I will purge out among you the rebels, them that transgress against me." I'm going to separate the sheep from the goats. The wheat from the tares. "I will bring them forth out of the country where they have sojourned, they shall not enter into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord." Now he offers a decision. I think he offers it to us.

We're daily in this valley of decision. He says, "As for you, O house of Israel, thus saith the Lord: Go ye, serve ye every one his idols if it doesn't seem good to serve the true and living God." Isn't it what Joshua said before they went into the Promised Land? "Choose you this day whom you're going to serve." Joshua says choose, make a choice. How long will you be halt between two decisions? Make a choice and if it doesn't seem right to you to serve the true and living God, then go serve the gods of this world and see how it works for you.

I've had people come here and they want to continue to live in open unrepented sin. I've had to tell them, "Listen, we love you. But what you're looking for is not here because we want to serve the Lord. Sin is grievous to us. It doesn't mean we don't mess up, but we hate it. We who are here pursue with all of our might the Lord Jesus. We love his word, we love his presence. That's what we're about."

But what you're looking for is not that. You want to see how close you can be to heaven and still live in the world. You just need to go out until you're done. Slop with the pigs until you realize it doesn't satisfy. Then come back. There'll be shoes waiting for your feet, there'll be a robe for your back, there'll be a ring for your finger, and your Father will welcome you. But don't come in here and seek to inquire of him when you have idols in your heart. Not good for you, not good for him, not good.

Would you get an amen on that one? Not good. Again, we may mess up. There's a reason why God calls us sheep. Sheep are dumb. In fact, sheep are so dumb they'll follow a goat. Shepherds used to use goats to lead sheep. That's how dumb they are. Look how dumb you guys are, you're following a goat. Sheep, the sheep of his pasture. Dumb. He has to protect us. He counts us with the rod as we go in. He's going to separate the wheat from the tares.

But he says, "You need to make a decision." Verse 39—we're not going to get through the end of this chapter. We'll get to verse 44 because that's actually in the Hebrew Bible. Verse 44 is the last verse of chapter 20 and verse 45 is actually the first verse—if you look in the Hebrew Bible—of chapter 21. But we'll get to verse 44 because most of it is just me reading. He says, "So listen, you make a choice," saith the Lord. "Go ye, serve your idols hereafter also, if you will not hearken unto me. But pollute you not my holy name no more with your gifts and with your idols."

Make a choice. Don't have your foot in both camps. Don't try to be a Christian and live in the world. Don't try to be in the world and live in the church. You need to make a choice. He said, "If you want to serve idols, then go serve them. Don't bring them here. But if you want to serve me, then serve me. And I'll help you, and I'll be your God, and you'll be my sons and you'll be my daughters."

"For in my holy mountain, in this holy place, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord, there shall be all the house of Israel and all of them in the land shall serve me." The idea for serve there is there's a day coming when they will serve a sacrifice and offerings with oblations, with peace offerings, with wave offerings, with worship, with true worship. He says when you come, make a decision, but if you're going to worship me, come worship me with true worship.

Don't worship idols and me at the same time. Come wholly devoted to me. I can deal with your struggle. I've made provision for your struggle and sin and transgression, but I will not tolerate a divided heart. So if you want to serve the god of this world, go serve him. If you want to serve the true and living God, come serve him. But if you come serve him, serve him with your whole heart. On my holy mountain, all the house of Israel and all of them in the land shall serve me.

There will I accept them. I will accept them. Sometimes you had to bring a sin offering, sometimes you had to bring a trespass offering. God says, "When you come, I'll accept you. You're accepted in the beloved. I'll accept you. Just come with your whole heart. Bring your sacrifices. I'll accept you." There will I inquire your offerings and your first fruits, your oblations with all of your holy things. I will accept you with your sweet savor when I bring you out of those people, the heathen.

"I gather you out of the countries wherein I have scattered you, I will be sanctified in you before the heathen and you shall know that I am the Lord when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the country from which I lifted up my hand and swore to give to your fathers. And there shall you remember..." He's telling us when you have repented, when you are broken, when you are contrite, when you tremble at his words, when you say to the Lord, "I have messed up, I have followed after the idols of this world, I have lived for the flesh, I'm choosing you, I'm coming out of the world, I'm coming back."

God says, "When you come back, I will accept you. I will accept your offering. I will accept you." This is how you're going to come back. Verse 42: "You shall know that I am the Lord your God when you shall come back into the land which I swore to your fathers." He says in verse 43, "And there shall you remember your ways and all of your doings wherein you have been defiled, and you shall loathe..." There's things in my past that are so painful, B.C. and A.C., I loathe them.

Do you know that's why the Bible says it is a shame to talk about things that were done in darkness? We should never be bringing up our past. People want to give their testimony sometimes they'll spend 90% of the time telling you about how bad they were. Well, dude, we know you were bad. We were bad, we were all bad. You don't have to tell us how bad you were. Are we comparing bad now? My testimony is simple. I was a pagan. An unclean pagan.

I was an undeserving unrepentant sinner, and God broke me. God saved me. Now let me tell you about what Jesus has done. He washed me and he cleansed me. He put a spirit in my heart, he put a new heart in me. Oh, I wish I could tell you that that heart never drifted but it did. But he spanked me, he whipped me. He whipped me all the way back. He applied wisdom to the seat of understanding, those love taps, and he never let go of me even when I tried to get mean and get out of his arms and run away like a spoiled little brat.

He grabbed a hold of me by the nape of the neck and he drug me back and he looked me in the eye and said, "You're not going to be that way." He did all of those things for me. Did he do them for you? Oh, let me tell you about the love of God. Let me tell you Jesus loves you. Jesus thinks you're to die for. Oh he did, he died for you. He will accept you in the beloved. You are accepted. There's no shame in that.

My people will know and not be ashamed. Oh, you're broken because of the things you've done to defile yourself. He said, "You shall loathe yourselves in your own sight. In your own sight for all the evils that you have committed. But I'm not going to loathe you." You'll come to me and how many times have we gone to the Lord, "Oh, Lord, I'm just so sorry," and then you repent and you're broken over what you just did. Then 20 minutes later it's still bugging you.

"Lord, just forgive me." He said, "For what?" "You know the thing I just did." "No I don't." "Well, just down the street there in that traffic when I wanted to run that person over and I was shaking my fist at them." "When did that happen? Your sins and your iniquities I remember no more." You want to talk about the sovereignty of God? The Calvinists have it all wrong. God is so sovereign that he can forget sin.

God is so sovereign he can give you a free will. God is so sovereign that he can choose what to remember and what to forget and he doesn't struggle with it. Just one more verse, verse 44, because that's where this chapter actually is. Aren't you glad it ends there? In fact, when John Calvin was writing his commentary on the Old Testament, he got to verse 44. When he put his pen down for the last time, as he laid his pen down, he died right there and went to be with the Lord.

So this is probably a good place for us to stop. Let's put our pen down. Amen. Well, listen to verse 44: "And you shall know." God's not going to give up on you until you know something. "And you shall know that I am the Lord when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wickedness or your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel, saith the Lord, but I wrought with you according to my grace. And you will know."

How many are so thankful for the grace of God? Have you found it to be sufficient? Is it enough? We're going to read on Sunday morning, and it's an interesting verse that Paul writes because he's dealing with the legalists, he's dealing with the self-righteous, that whole movement of the veil-menders, the Judaizers. Everywhere Paul would go and plant a church, they would come behind and try to convince the people that you had to keep the law of Moses. You had to be circumcised in your 98th day or your 80th year.

Can you imagine that? What kind of religion would want you to do—I wouldn't join that. No way they could make me a convert to that. But in their landing he trips on these people. You know what Paul says? "They are the enemies of the cross, whose god is their belly and glory is their shame," because they trust in their efforts. They are the enemies of the cross. I'm going to tell you if you trust in anything but Jesus Christ and his work on Calvary's cross, you are an enemy of the cross.

I love that hymn we sing here: In Christ alone my hope is found. In Christ alone. The cry of the reformers and the covenanters when revival was moving in during that time and people were coming out of Catholicism and out of dead religion. The cry of the reformers was *Sola Scriptura*, get back to the word of God. Not to what the church says. The church has no authority but what is found in the word of God.

Then *Sola Gratia*, grace alone. You can't add to it. Then *Solus Christus*, Christ alone. The Scriptures alone, grace alone, Christ alone. Amen. Is he enough? Is he enough not only to remove the penalty of sin? Is he not enough to remove the emotions that God the Father would have against the sinner? Is he not enough to also remove the shame? Is he not enough? Has he not promised, and will he not perform?

I'm so glad I'm not religious because I am convinced that Jesus Christ did not come to this earth and allow himself to be crucified to start another religion. He came to bring us back into a relationship, to pay a debt we couldn't pay, to satisfy the wrath of Almighty God his Father concerning us. He took it all. He says, "I'll take it for you, but you need to come and receive my righteousness, my forgiveness. And once you receive it don't let anybody tell you it's not yours."

Amen. Well, I lied to you again, we didn't get the whole chapter done. But actually we did if you were Hebrew and you brought your Hebrew Bible. And we stopped where John Calvin died. Good place. Amen. Let's stand and we'll pray. I've already used up the worship team's time so we're not going to have them back up. Aren't you glad that we serve a God that is gracious and loving?

Because here's the deal, and I love how he levels the playing field: If you violate in one area, one... well, how many have told a white lie? Do you know that the stats say that every person lies at least six times a day? See, that's my proof right there. He just lied. Was that number six or 66? It just doesn't have to be blatant lies but it's not the whole truth.

What is the penalty of lying? It's a sin, it's death. What's the gift of God? So we're just all a mess that Jesus loves. That's why I could look the eyes of this man, and I looked right in his eyes and he actually looked back. I said, "Avan, Jesus loves you. He loves you." I want to pray for you. Avan, Jesus died for you to remove the penalty of your sin that you can be brought back into a relationship with him.

There's something about the sufficiency of God's word when the Holy Spirit takes and it cuts into a person's heart. He was cut today. Just like I was cut the first time I heard it. And it's healing. It's not a sword, it's a scalpel. Amen? I could go on all night. Let me pray. Father we thank you so much for your word and again what you've reminded us of here. That when the period is put on our lives, it will be grace, grace.

Just like you told Zerubbabel, you've set your hand to a good work and when you set the capstone and it's finished, you will cry "grace, grace unto it." We thank you for that. We thank you that we are saved by grace, we are kept by grace, we are changed by grace and one day when we stand before you, it will be of grace. So thank you, Father. I love you, Lord. Amen.