Sunday Morning Sermon Series - Pastor Josiah Shipley (Date: 03/28/2021)

But you trusted your beauty and you played the whore because of your renown

And you lavish your whorings on any passerby your beauty became his That is the book of Ezekiel Chapter 16.

I know we have a lot of new Christians in here Please do not be ashamed if you don't know where Ezekiel is ask somebody

Go to the middle of your Bible and keep going to the right. It's past halfway Ezekiel chapter 16 is where we're going to be today

Today we are going to talk about the covenant of God the Bible speaks of many

Covenants today. We're going to be speaking of the unconditional covenant of God a

Covenant is an agreement between two or more parties. That is legally binding

Okay, two types of covenants Conditional and unconditional a conditional covenant is where God will keep his into the bargain

So long as the other party keeps their end of the bargain So think of 2nd

Chronicles if my people right who are called by my name humble themselves Pray seek my face turn away, then

I will turn hear them and heal their land, right? But there is another even more beautiful covenant of God and that is the unconditional covenant and the unconditional covenant of God says this

No matter what you Satan Demons or anyone else on this planet or in this universe do

I will be keeping my covenant? That is the unconditional covenant of God in a few moments

We will be performing a symbol of that covenant through the Lord's Communion and hopefully today through this chapter in Ezekiel You will have a better understanding of what that truly represents marriage is a covenant between a man and Woman and God as the arbiter of that covenant.

That's what it is It is a vow a promise that is legally binding between two people but marriage is not and Was not upheld

By any government by the state of Tennessee or anyone else? It was created and ordained by God and he is the arbiter of that covenant

Ezekiel chapter 16 is a symbolic Representation of the marriage covenant of the people of God with God In Ezekiel 16, we are specifically referring to his people

Israel of which Paul makes clear in Ephesians and Galatians refers to us as well Here we're going to see how we have dealt

Unfaithfully with God with our end of the bargain and we will see God's response to that in his unconditional covenant

If you will Ezekiel chapter 16 starting in verse 4 Dalton, am

I doing this, right? Sweet thank you, sir Read with me.

I am reading out of the ESV if you care As for your birth on the day you were born your cord was not cut

Nor were you washed with water to cleanse you or rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling clothes

No, I pitted you to do any of these things out of compassion for you, but you were cast out in the open field

You were abhorred on the day you were born Then I passed by you. I saw you wallowing in your blood and I said to you in your blood live

To you and your blood I said live Sometimes And you may be in this room

We have Christians who are insecure about the covenant of God Because they think that God entered that covenant with you because you had something to offer him

That he needed something from you so we enter that covenant with you Ladies and gentlemen read again

We had nor have nothing to offer God He is not made by human hands nor nor needs anything that we make for he gives life and breath to every creature on this planet

He saw us dead spiritually dead

Wallowing in our blood and he said live That is how you entered the covenant with God That's how parents

When did you start loving your children Did you wait until they started loving you

Today my second daughter Rachel my second daughter Naomi there She is is a month old and I make you a promise in the grand scheme of things in reality.

She does not love me That's just a reality She doesn't Do you think that keeps me from loving her or do you think

I loved her even before she was born? God did not await

For you to start loving him before he set his love towards you For if he had that day would have never come but we only love him because he first loved us

That's how you enter the covenant with God. We read on in verse 8

When I passed by you again and saw you behold you were at the age for love I spread the corner of my garden over you and covered your nakedness.

I made my vow to you and Entered a covenant with you declares the

Lord and you became mine Then I bathed you with water and washed you off your blood from you and anointed you with oil

I clothed you with embroidered cloth and I provided you with fine leather and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk

But God's love and grace in his covenant doesn't simply stop By resurrecting you by raising you from the dead.

No guys grace continues on You need grace to serve

God we've said here before and it is by grace that you are being matured into the image of Christ but sometimes

We Use and abuse that grace as a license to go back into the blood that we were once wallowing in Look at what he says.

Oh And please notice as you entered this marriage covenant with God that we here are pictured as the bride of God and The rest of the

Bible speaks of us as the bride of Christ and that is not a typo That is not a mistake because we have always recognized and yes, we will do a side note here

Once again that Jesus has eternally existed as God and if you don't understand that you will not be able to make heads or tails of the

New Testament you can be called the bride Of God and the bride of Christ and that be synonymous and that's not a mistake continuing on though Look at what sometimes we do with this grace and this is a long chapter.

This is why I'm trying to move fast Here we are in verse 15 But you trusted your beauty and you played the whore because of your renown and you lavished your whorings on any passerby

Your beauty became his You took some of your garments. Remember the ones he clothed you with You took some of your garments and made for yourselves colorful shrines

You played the whore you took the beautiful jewels the ones he gave you

Of my gold and my silver which I had given you and you made for yourselves images of men

And with them you played the whore We have broken our end of the covenant ladies and gentlemen

We have broken our end of the covenant We have gone back into the very pile of blood that he raised us from That's what we've done

We've broken that covenant We do not keep our end of the bargain and yet we still don't

And sometimes we use the very gifts of grace. He has given us here the jewels and the garments

With which to use sin In other words, we take that grace as a license for liberty to do that, which we will

And it doesn't stop there because then in our arrogance we'll think something like this

Well, the sin only affects me Look at what israel started doing

As they whored themselves out to the nations. It says this You took your sons and daughters

Whom you unborn to me and these you sacrificed for them to be devoured Well, you're whoring so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them

And in all your abominations and your whorings You do not remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare wallowing in your blood

Be not deceived church Your sin will always affect more than just you

It always will It always will And the beautiful thing about it is so will your obedience

And we've said it here before if we're sin abounds grace abounds even more How much more can god spend the blessings of your obedience to others including to our children

We don't remember where we came from sometimes We don't and then we go one step further

We're different from other women verse 34 in our whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore and you gave payment

No payment was given to you. Do you hear what god's saying? And Not only have we whored ourselves out.

We didn't even get paid for it And i'm not trying to be vulgar on purpose. I'm trying to show you the image that god is using here

We didn't even receive payment for it instead it cost us something

It cost us something. We didn't get a return on our investment instead.

It took us further than we wanted to go And it cost us The almost irony is this

That the lord will discipline those he loves And punish every sin he receives here

Is with israel and you can go back and read in verse 26 God lays it out for him.

You played the whore with egypt. You played the whore with assyria You played the whore with babylon verse 29 And guess what god used to discipline his people

The very things that they were doing in their sin He used that sin to discipline them to bring them back to repentance

He used assyria and babylon to bring them back to repentance ladies and gentlemen

Sometimes the things the sin that you hold so dear That will be the tool god will use to discipline and bring his child back to a state of repentance

So he gathered all the lovers with whom they took pleasure And all those you loved and those you hated and I gathered them against you from every side and they won't cover your nakedness before them

And they may all see your nakedness So, what is god's response

We have broken the covenant time and time again He has disciplined us and this is his response

Verse 60 if you will Yet But nevertheless

I will remember the covenant with you in the days of your youth And listen here

And I will establish for you an everlasting covenant now listen

What does everlasting mean? If it lasted for 20 years, was it everlasting?

And a thousand it would still not be everlasting in a billion It would still not be everlasting in a trillion years.

That would still not be everlasting, but he establishes an everlasting an unconditional covenant with us

And I will establish my covenant with you And you will know that I am yahweh That you may remember and be confounded and never open your mouth again because of your shame

When I atone for you for all that you have done declares the lord god

God When I atone for all that you have done

Remember atonement Is a blood sacrifice covering sin.

It's a blood payment for sin Hebrews chapter 9 says without the shedding of blood. There is no forgiveness

There is none What we're about to do here is representative of that covenant that you're reading right there the one we opened with That he establishes a new covenant in his blood

When he atoned for the sin of all of us that we have ever done

Blessed is the man whom the lord does not charge with sin Ladies and gentlemen

The unconditional covenant of god is this that we're when we are faithless. He is still faithful Remember You did nothing you had nothing to offer to enter the covenant in the first place

Ergo, nothing you can do Can revoke the promises of god for the promises and callings of god romans 11 are irrevocable

They're irrevocable He has made a covenant with his people and that's us and there will be consequences for sin

And prolonged sin will extend past just us And will affect those around us

That is why part of his covenant is this That not only does he atone for all we have done

But he justifies us now listen to me here In a u .s.

Court of law The best the judge can do is declare you not guilty

Not guilty not guilty does not mean innocent It means I can't prove that you committed the crime that i'm saying you prove you committed

Innocent is a different category And no court can say that but when we say we are justified that means we have been declared innocent before god

We've been declared innocent before god Brother christian is teaching on revelation 19 tonight.

I don't want to steal any of his thunder But I want you to hear this one thing When god presents his bride to jesus christ

The bride in revelation 19 at the end of all things is presented spotless and blameless

In marriage counseling when we have a couple who maybe Has not always stayed faithful or Maybe has messed up sexually

We rightly tell them that they can be a virgin on their wedding day And of course we don't mean that in the biological sense but in the spiritual sense absolutely when god

When god atones for your sin, he didn't forget it happened He doesn't charge it to your account because he already charged it to jesus's account

And he will have his bride spotless without blemish in pure white clothing

With no mark of sin and no stain Because that all has been removed That is god's unconditional covenant that yet nevertheless

When we are faithless, he is always still faithful and finally here Jeremiah chapter 3 i'll just turn here jeremiah chapter 3 verse 22

Returned oh faithless sons, and I will hear heal your faithlessness. Let me read that again

Return oh faithless sons. I will heal your faithlessness If this describes

You in this room. I want you to listen again And i'm not referring to the lost i'm referring to the children of god

Who feel and maybe rightly so that they have been faithless to god That maybe they

Like the rest of us have whored ourselves out to the world and we have been faithless

Faithless, excuse me To the one in the marriage covenant Return oh faithless sons and I will heal your faithlessness