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

The Covenant of God in Ezekiel 16

But you trusted your beauty, and you played the whore because of your renown. And you lavished your whorings on any passerby, and 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 do not know where Ezekiel is. Ask somebody. Go to the middle of your Bible and keep going to the right. It's passed 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 end of the bargain, so long as the other party keeps their end of the bargain. So think of 2 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 as a Picture of God's Covenant Love

Marriage is a covenant between a man, a 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 are 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 in 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 He entered 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 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, and 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 garment 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.

The Bride of God and the Bride of Christ

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, and 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 did 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 are 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 unbored to me, and these you sacrificed for them to be devoured.

Were your 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 did 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 have said it here before, if where 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? 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.

Nebba, 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 them. 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 gather them against you from every side and they will uncover your nakedness before them and they may all see your nakedness.

God's Everlasting Covenant and Atonement

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? In 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. 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 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 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. It 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 a 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 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, and 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 atones for your sin, He didn't forget it happened. He doesn't charge it to your account because you already charged it to Jesus' 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.

Return, O Faithless Sons, and I Will Heal Your Faithlessness

And finally here, Jeremiah 3. I'll just turn here. Jeremiah 3. Verse 22. Return, O faithless sons, and I will heal your faithlessness. Let me read that again. Return, O 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 to the one in the marriage covenant. Return, O faithless sons, and I will heal your faithlessness.

Return, O faithless sons, and I will heal your faithlessness.