Ezekiel Part 38

All right, let's pray, and then we'll get into our text. Lord Jesus, as we open up your word, we humbly ask you,

Holy Spirit, to help us uprightly understand what is revealed there, for apart from you we can do nothing. Then may the knowledge that you impart to us through the power of the

Holy Spirit and written word help us to rightly believe, confess, and do all according to your word we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, we've been working our way through the book of Ezekiel, and we are to a part which deals with the intermediate state, and last week we did a little bit of a discussion about Sheol and its importance, and then how

Christians are no longer in Sheol. When a Christian dies, they go to be with Christ.

How does Paul put it? He says something about to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, or something like that?

I think so. Correct me if I'm wrong on that. Let me just look for a word, absent. Okay, and I'm not talking about myself, so hang on a second here.

Though absent body, no, no, that's a different thing. Let's see here. Absent body and knowledge, too.

All right, present. Gotta find the text.

Let's see here. If you don't present yourselves. All right, let me look for one more word, a phrase, with the

Lord. There we go. Here we go. Yes, we are of good courage. We would rather be away from the body and at home with the

Lord. So Christians, now since Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and ascension,

Christians are with Christ, okay? To live is Christ, to die is gain.

When, you know, we don't, as the Seventh -day Adventists, we don't go into soul sleep. You know, they believe that those who are dead are not conscious of anything.

And the beatific vision of the saints worshiping before the throne of Christ in the book of Revelation also bears out that that's wrong.

So when we die, we are out, away from the body, and we are home with the

Lord. Note the word home, okay? Note the word home. I think a good, good mentality for Christians to take regarding our sojourning here on planet

Earth. And you'll note, Scripture is clear. We are sojourning here. We are passing through.

Our lives are not described in terms of concrete and stone. They are described in terms of mist, all right?

They are described in terms of grass. And I would note here in North Dakota and Missoula, that analogy works really well, you know, because how many weeks have we been able to enjoy green grass?

Just a few so far. How many weeks do we have left? Just a few, okay, all right?

Green is this wonderful color, and I wish it stayed around a lot longer here, but it doesn't.

And so the grass metaphor works really well with us because somewhere in May we get green, and somewhere in October, it's not, right?

And it doesn't come back for a while. That being the case, that's a good metaphor regarding our lives. But notice the phrase, we would rather be away from the body and at home with the

Lord. As for Christians, we have dual citizenship.

Keep that in mind. Everyone in this room, well, not everyone, so we have some Canadians here. Yeah, Canadians from the land of Canadians.

But they do not have an American citizen passport, okay? A Canadian passport.

But we all have American passports, that being the case. They are dual citizens with Canada and the kingdom of Christ.

We are dual citizens with United States and the kingdom of Christ. But that being the case, which is the citizenship of note?

I think about Casey Barnett. Casey Barnett is a fellow who joins us online from Japan.

He and his wife, they attend our services, and Casey has been a faithful attender of the

Conglomerate now for a while. And Casey grew up in California, spent some time in Texas, got a degree in culinary arts here in the

United States, met the love of his wife, life in Waco, and now he lives in Japan.

For him, what's the country of note? United States. For her, what's the country of note? Japan, okay?

For you, what's the country of note? It's not the United States. Your home is the kingdom of Christ.

So since we are admonished in scripture to take up the armor of God, using the metaphor, you think of it in terms of something like a long deployment.

We are all soldiers deployed behind enemy lines in a hostile country.

In some places, it's getting more hostile by the minute. And that being the case, we have yet to go home.

We had the funeral for Linda Jean Fettersfield yesterday. Linda Jean Fettersfield, I got to pastor her shortly after she got word that she was scheduled for a trip to go home and got to pray with her, got to hear her confession, got to assure her of Christ's forgiveness, and she was absolutely joyous and confident because she was finally getting to go home, right?

So when we talk about the intermediate state for us, the intermediate state, although it's not our permanent residence, because when

Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, we will be raised from the dead. You're not gonna spend eternity as a disembodied spirit.

You will spend eternity after the resurrection with a physical human body, glorified and sinless, okay?

I'm just, I'm trying to prepare you guys now. You're gonna be in shock when you see me, okay?

You're gonna go, wow, I thought it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad, okay, when you see what

Christ is going to be doing. But good news is is that it's gonna take a lot of getting used to some of you as well, you know?

What, you went to Congregator? It's like, oh my goodness, right? Don't even barely recognize you.

That's kind of the point, right? Yes, why is that?

Yeah, yeah. Yep. And that's the terrifying bit.

When you talk about ratios, you're gonna know something here. We don't know how many people in the end, compared to those people who've lived, all of humanity, from Adam and Eve to the last infant born on the last day or conceived on the last day.

We don't know what the percentage of those who are saved is gonna be. We don't know.

But Christ describes it in terms of the path to hell is a highway, and the path that leads to life is a tiny little thin trail, okay, and few find it.

And that's the terrifying bit about it, you know, when we talk about ratios. But then Jesus does this funny thing. I like how obnoxious he is about this.

In the parables, when Jesus talks about things where you can kind of work ratios out, sometimes it's 50 -50, sometimes it's 2 3rd to 1 3rd, and then it's 1 3rd to 2 3rd, and he flips it and stuff like that.

It's none of our business how many people are ultimately saved. We have a job of proclaiming

Christ and him crucified, and it's the gospel that is the power of God and to salvation. So we have a gospel to steward, we have a gospel to proclaim, and it's not our job to worry about how everything gets sorted out in the end.

That's above our pay grade, and I'm kinda happy about that. You know, I always make it very clear,

I make a terrible deity, and so I just will leave the deity bits to God, and if at the end of the day

I'm able to steward something and that it's manageable for me, then I'm perfectly okay with that, right?

So, coming back then to our text in Ezekiel. Ezekiel 32, verse 17.

In the 12th year, in the 12th month, on the 15th day of the month, the word of Yahweh came to me.

Son of man, wail over the multitude of Egypt, and send them down, her and the daughters of majestic nations, to the world below, to those who have gone down to the pit.

That's a terrifying description, okay? And one of the things you'll see here as we're reading this section, is that death is not only not a respecter of persons, and Sheol is gaping wide open for people who we would consider to be mighty and powerful.

At the end of the day, is anybody truly mighty or powerful? You know?

They're just not, and so you'll note that in talking about the multitude of Egypt, those hearing this in Ezekiel's time would be thinking, that's a great, huge amount of people.

You're gonna take all of them down to Sheol? You betcha, right? Whom do you surpass in beauty?

Go down and be laid to rest with the uncircumcised. Well, there go the

Kardashians, goodnight, right? That's kind of the point, is that we foolishly look at outward appearances.

We look at somebody's strength, we look at somebody's handsomeness, somebody's beauty, somebody's wealth, and we somehow think that this makes somebody better, stronger, more fit, whatever, all this kind of nonsense.

Think of eugenics and the survival of the fittest and that stupid Darwinism thing, right? So here, who's going down to Sheol?

The beautiful of the beautiful. Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down, be laid to rest with the uncircumcised.

They shall fall amid those who are slain by the sword. Egypt is delivered to the sword, and drag her away and all her multitudes.

The mighty chiefs shall speak of them with their helpers out of the midst of Sheol.

They have come down, they lie still, the uncircumcised slain by the sword.

Assyria is there and all of her company. Its graves all around it, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, whose graves are set in the uttermost parts of the pit, and her company is all around her grave, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who spread terror in the land of the living.

Huh, kind of work this out, you know? In our lives, not the lives of some of the kids here, but in our lives, we've seen terrorists, right?

The mighty Osama bin Laden and others, right? Where's he at right now?

Yeah, you kind of get the point, okay? Elam is there, all her multitude around her grave, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who went down uncircumcised into the world below, who spread their terror in the land of the living.

They bear their shame with those who go down to the pit. And you're gonna note here, the pit, the

Sheol, the portion that they go to, Christ describes it as in hell fire type of imagery.

Is there any hope for them there? None. None. All the things that they were doing in this lifetime, they were living large, they had might and power, they were terrorizing everybody, they were conquering, they were taking names, and all that kind of stuff, right?

That all amounted to a hill of beans. Didn't get them anywhere except for hell.

They have made her bed among the slain with her multitude, her graves all around it, all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword.

The terror of them was spread in the land of the living, and they bear their shame with those who go down to the pit.

They are placed among the slain. You think of Adolf Hitler, the terror of the

Nazis spread through all of Europe. Where's Adolf Hitler now, right?

Where's the SS? Where's Goering, Goebbels?

Where are they, right? Sheol, they're down there with the other bits, with Assyria, with Egypt.

Meshach Tubal is there, all her multitude, her graves all around it. All them uncircumcised, slain by the sword, for they spread their terror in the land of the living.

And they do not lie with the mighty, the fallen from among the uncircumcised who went down to Sheol with their weapons of war, whose swords were laid under their heads and whose iniquities are upon their bones.

Oof, that's a bad thing. What does Isaiah 53 say?

God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. You don't wanna be forgiven? You don't have to be forgiven. You don't wanna be forgiven?

Your iniquity is on your own head. You can have it follow you for all of eternity.

The terror of their mighty men was in the land of the living but as for you, you shall be broken and lie among the uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword.

Edom is there. It sounds like a roll call of who's who, right? Edom's there, her kings, all her princes, who for all their might are laid with those who are killed by the sword.

They lie with the uncircumcised, with those who go down to the pit.

The princes of the north are there, all of them. Not just some of them, all of them.

And all the Sidonians who've gone down in shame with the slain. For all the terror that they cause by their might, they lie uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword and bear their shame with those who go down to the pit.

When Pharaoh sees them, he'll be comforted for all of his multitude. Pharaoh and all of his army slain by the sword declares the

Lord Yahweh, for I spread terror in the land of the living. He shall be laid to rest among the uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword.

Pharaoh and all of his multitude declares the Lord Yahweh. You need to note here, the vast majority of the people on this planet, they live for the moment.

You only live once, YOLO, right? They live for their bellies, they live for their fame, they live for their glory, and how long are they here?

Okay, and one of the things that really disturbed me, and I'll talk about this.

When I was a boy, I loved the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The team that my grandfather introduced me to, my grandfather was a Brooklyn Bums fan. The team that my grandfather introduced me to,

Davey Lopes, Ron Say, Steve Garvey, Dusty Baker, right? It was just an amazing team.

And what was really, really disturbing for me is after watching this team that I loved win the

World Series against the Yankees, and boy, that was a glorious year, okay? That was a glorious year when they finally beat the

Yankees in the World Series, 81. After watching them do that, them starting to trade off all the players that I had come to idolize, okay?

In my office, among my pirate paraphernalia, if you ever come up into my office, there is an autographed photograph of Steve Garvey, number six, swatting a home run from home plate at Dodger Stadium.

Man, I remember going to Dodger Stadium with my friends and just thinking,

Steve Garvey, he had these muscular arms and he was just a man's man, and he played first base, and oh man, he'd get up to the plate and we'd go, okay, he's gonna hit a home run now, he's gonna hit a home run now.

And one time when we said that, he actually did. It was just glorious. But you know what happened to Steve Garvey?

He got old. They traded him to the San Diego Padres. This was heresy of the highest degree, right?

How do you trade Steve Garvey to those flea -bitten San Diego Padres?

What a stupid name for a baseball team, right? And back in the day, whenever we played the

Padres, well, that was like an automatic win. We knew we were gonna sweep the series because we were that good and they were that bad.

But then they got rid of Ron Say, they got rid of Dusty Baker, Davey Lopes became a base coach and they started getting gray hair.

And if you've seen video of Dusty Baker, he's a famous coach now, he looks nothing like he did back in the late 70s, early 80s.

He was muscular, he was fantastic. Now he looks like me, okay?

God has cursed him terribly, okay? The point is this, is that even as a kid,

I saw the hints that this life is short. And for a baseball player, if they're able to play 10 to 12 years, by the time they hit 12 years, they are considered an old veteran on the verge of retirement.

And I've learned now as somebody who's 56, right, and my wife's older than me.

I've learned that somebody who's 56, you know how long 12 years takes? It's like this.

It was just yesterday I was installed as the pastor of Kongsvinger. But we celebrated the 10 year anniversary of it just a few weeks back.

Which means that if God continues to give me breath and I continue to serve

Kongsvinger, the next 10 years are gonna go faster. And I'm gonna look even worse, okay?

Things are not looking up. They're not getting better, they're getting worse. And so all that being said, people put their trust in their youth.

They idolize youth and power and strength and money and beauty and handsomeness and all this kind of stuff, and it lasts for a second.

And here's the thing. We're starting to see the generation of guys that I used to watch playing baseball, some of them are starting to die.

I remember my parents being a little bit upset because the movie stars that they had grown up with started dying.

And that whole generation, the golden era of Hollywood, ain't none of them left. Not a single one of them.

They're all gone. But back in the day, you go back to the 50s, go back to the early 60s, these people were top of the world.

Who's top of the world right now, right? Just think about it. Who's top of the world in sports, top of the world in their game?

Tiger Woods back 20 years ago, man, nobody could beat the guy, okay? At the 2000

USGA, US Open, man, he smoked everybody at Pebble Beach under terrible conditions.

It was glorious to watch, okay? He didn't even make the cut at the Masters this year.

He's thinking about retirement. The mighty Tiger Woods. So note, a passage like this, you don't read it and sit there and go, look at that Pharaoh's getting what's coming to him, right?

You read this and you sit there and you go, oh, because what does

Christ say? Unless you repent, you'll suffer the same thing. This is the fate of all of humanity aside from Christ and faith in him.

It's a call for repentance and a call to remember that your life here is brief.

And just because you're young doesn't guarantee you're going to be here tomorrow. There's plenty of children who have died young and died tragically.

And don't think that can't happen here, it can, right? So again, as sobering as this text is, that's kind of the point.

It's to sober you up. It's to get you to realize where you are and what the real circumstances that you're living under currently are.

Tomorrow you will stand before Christ and I am not exaggerating. You sit there and go, well, you're gonna call me up on Tuesday and say, well, you said

I was gonna see Christ today. It's like, you know what I mean.

It's gonna be like that. Chapter 33, the word of Yahweh came to me. Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, if I bring the sword upon the land and the people of the land take a man from among them and make him their watchman.

And if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.

He heard the sound of the trumpet. He did not take warning. His blood shall be upon himself.

But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life.

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet so that the people are not warned, the sword comes and takes anyone of them.

That person is taken away in his iniquity by his blood. I will require it at the watchman's hand.

Oh, God here isn't talking about real watchmen. He's talking about watchmen warning people about the devil's schemes.

So I happen to be in the unenviable position of being one of these guys who does what is called discernment ministry.

And oh my word, over the decade and a half that I've done this,

I can tell you I have received some inflammatory emails, okay, about what a complete arrogant booger head that I am, okay.

And that is a theological term. I just wanna keep that in mind, okay. And who do you think you are?

You think you understand everything. You don't leave any opportunity for people to have a different interpretation than you do.

You think you're God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So I get called a heresy hunter and things like this.

And I'm not the only one. There are other people out there who are doing this similar work. I would note the watchman metaphor fits because here's the thing.

If I didn't warn the body of Christ and say, that person's twisting up God's word.

That person is making merchandise of their Christians. He's not teaching what's sound.

He's making things up and he's ingratiating himself on other people. If I didn't warn people, who's

God gonna hold responsible for this at the end? Me. Okay.

And here's the thing. Why you, Roseboro? Well, it just so happens that God saw fit to make it so that I received the proper training to do the job.

I know that's gonna sound weird, but some of the people who try doing this, they're not qualified to do it.

But I can legitimately say through this weird surreptitious route of people who mentored me along the way in my theological training,

I specifically received the correct training to be able to do this work.

And my wife would tell you, if I tried getting out of it, it would drive me so crazy

I'd have to get back into it. I can't not not do what I'm doing.

Is that right? Too naive. Yeah, anyway, you get the idea, okay? But that's not everyone's call.

But Ezekiel here is going, you're gonna see that Ezekiel is actually a watchman on the wall. He's doing a prophetic work.

And the prophetic work is designed to warn Israel, to call them from their idolatry, to bring them to repentance.

And only when somebody is repentant do they hear the comforting words that God has forgiven them, pardoned them, taken their iniquity, removed it from them, has made peace with them.

God doesn't make peace with those who persist in sin and rebellion against him. And those who are doing the work and saying you need to repent, that person is teaching falsely, that person's not the one at fault, it's the person who's being deceived and defending the deceiver that's at fault.

You see what I'm saying? And that's kind of how this works in the metaphor. There was a verse that we got to see in the men's Bible study.

Let me see if I can hunt this down real quick. It was at Hosea 6. Hang on a second, it was Hosea 6.

Here we go. All right, listen to this text. Israel and Judah are unrepentant is the headline in the

ESV. Come, let us return to Yahweh, for he has torn us so that he may heal us.

He has struck us down and he will bind us up. What is

Hosea talking about here? How does God tear us? How does God strike us down?

With his law. When the law of God comes to you and says you are sinning, you are committing idolatry, you are stealing from other people, you are murdering your brothers, you are committing adultery, you are absolutely slandering your neighbors and things like this.

You're blaspheming in the name of God. Is that designed to make you feel good? Did you notice that the hymns today did not tell you how wonderful you were?

We did not sing about how mighty we are and how we're gonna tear down the walls of Jericho and all that kind of nonsense.

Jericho is like nowhere near here, by the way. Okay, and its walls are already down, just saying, okay?

When we sung about ourselves today, we were singing about how sinful we were, right?

So note here, come let us return to Yahweh. He has torn us so that he may heal us. In order for God to heal us with the gospel, he has to tear us apart by the law.

He has struck us down and he will bind us up. After two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will raise us up.

So that we may live before him. Hmm, that sounds like an allusion to Christ if I ever heard one. So let us know, let us press on to know

Yahweh. His going out is sure as the dawn. He will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

What shall I do with you, oh Ephraim? What shall I do with you, oh Judah? God is lamenting here.

Your love, your love for God is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away.

Therefore, watch what God says. I have hewn them by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth.

My judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love, not sacrifice.

The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. And who is God prophesying to, having

Hosea prophesy to? People who are religious. They have activity.

They are making sacrifices to Yahweh and they don't know anything about him. You know,

I think about Rome, okay? Go back to the fact that my grandmother was a staunch

Roman Catholic, went to the Latin Mass, okay? And I had no idea what

I was doing in those churches when she would take us. My brother and I had to sit there and the thing

I learned really quick, these people had a lot of activity, okay? Before you get in there, you would go and you would give a votive offering.

You would put some change into a thing that would give you the right to then light a candle. I don't know why we lit candles, but we had to light candles, so we lit candles, okay?

And so then when the service began, everybody stood up. As soon as everybody stood up, you know what

I did? I stood up. When people sat down, I sat down. When they kneeled, I kneeled.

And if I didn't do it quick enough, my grandmother would box my ears. And she would box my ears with the expectation that I would not cry out and let people know

I was in agony and pain, because if I did that, she would hurt me more, okay?

She was five foot two powerhouse of an Irish woman.

You didn't dare cross her, okay? She was in charge. And I was so excited when

I was, I've spent two summers in her house in New Hyde Park in Long Island. And when I finally got taller than her,

I thought that that meant that she would no longer be combing my hair. And I said, Grandma, I'm taller than you.

You don't get to comb my hair anymore. She said, get on your knees, okay?

But here's the thing. I didn't understand a word of the Latin liturgy because I don't know

Latin. And I would bet you dollars to donuts, most of the people in that Roman Catholic parish that were attending those masses along with my grandmother and us, they didn't know

Latin either. But they were sure to put money in the baskets because that's what they had, baskets on a stick.

And those baskets would come through, you know, the ushers would take them and make sure everybody put money in there.

Well, they were putting money in there. They were standing, they were crossing themselves, they were kneeling, they were sitting, they were listening, they were behaving themselves because they had learned from their grandmothers to do the same.

And I left those masses knowing nothing about Christ.

I didn't learn a single thing about him that I didn't already know and I knew nothing at that point.

Would that religion have saved me? No. What kind of religion is that?

A religion of religious activity without any knowledge of God whatsoever. In fact, knowledge of God isn't even necessary.

Understanding what you're hearing isn't even necessary. Just do the thing at the time when the thing is being done.

That's all that's necessary. What kind of religion is that? So God judges this kind of religious activity.

This isn't exclusive to people in Roman Catholic parishes. This is also part of other religions.

You know, we just had Ramadan and the Hajj, right? How many people lost their lives this year circling that stupid rock in Saudi Arabia, in Mecca?

They overheated. They died of heat exhaustion. I think it was like nine this year. Does circling a rock save you?

What is that? I desire steadfast love, God says, not sacrifice.

The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. So note then, when God sends real prophets, they're described as doing a hewing work of actually hewing stone, cleaving, cutting, tearing, breaking down.

Because we as sinners, that's exactly what we need, right? Coming back to Isaiah.

Sorry, Ezekiel. So you, son of man, talking to Ezekiel, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.

Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked,

O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood

I will require at your hand. That doesn't sound like a comfortable situation. I don't even wanna know what that looks like.

But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, that person shall die in his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul.

And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, thus have you said, surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them.

How then can we live? That sounds like part of what

I could, I could have put that in my sermon today, right? Okay? Say to them, as I live, declares the

Lord Yahweh, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Hmm, does

God take pleasure when a wicked person dies? Nope, not at all. But that the wicked turn from his way and live.

Turn back, turn back from your evil ways. Why will you die,

O house of Israel? And you, son of man, say to your people, the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses.

And as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins.

Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but his injustice that he has done, he shall die.

And here's, you sit there and go, well, you just said we were declared righteous, okay?

Well, watch what it says here. Here's your problem. If that one trusts in his righteousness, what is trust?

Mm -hmm, it's faith. The Greek word pistos and the verb pastuo means to trust, okay?

So the one who trusts in his righteousness, is he trusting in the right thing?

No, okay? Listen, I have zero trust in my righteousness, okay?

And if I was ever tempted to, I have a hard time remembering to put on the same, put on socks that match nowadays, okay?

No one pointed it out, but last week I was wearing Mix Max socks.

I'm glad none of you saw it, but here's the thing. I was totally oblivious to it until I got home.

And I just went, whew, glad no one saw that, okay? So if I were tempted to trust in anything within myself,

I just come back to the fact there's no guarantee I'm wearing socks that match today, okay?

Trusting in myself or my own righteousness seems like a fool's errand if you ask me at this point, right?

Did anyone notice the socks, the two different? You guys are thinking back, you're Maryland's going, hmm, maybe I did see that.

I'm just saying, the good news is, well, no, actually, this is not true.

Well, both socks had green in them. But the themes were very different.

Very, very different. One was very Irish, the other one wasn't, okay. So though I say to the righteous, he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness, as soon as you do that, your faith is pointed to the wrong thing.

Our faith is in Christ. Our faith is not in our faith. Our faith is not in our righteousness. Our faith is in Jesus. If he trusts in his righteousness and then does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but his injustice, shall he die again.

Again, though I say to the wicked, you shall surely die, yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live, he shall not die.

Now, I'm gonna point this out, okay. This is describing salvation in terms of works.

To the uninitiated, that would be the case, okay. But this is James's theology here in Ezekiel.

James says, just as the body that is not breathing is dead, faith without works is dead, okay.

I can't tell just by looking at you whether or not you're a

Christian, but there are certain things I can look at and sit there and go, hmm, that person's a Christian, okay.

And then if somebody says, I'm a Christian, and then their actions don't jive with their confession,

I can have doubt as to whether or not they're truly a Christian, because it doesn't make any sense, right. So the idea then here is that when you see a corpse, you know it's dead because there's no breath, okay.

I have yet to do a funeral with an open casket where the corpse was able to fog a mirror.

That's just, it doesn't work that way, okay. Every one of the corpses that I have seen in these coffins, they sit there perfectly still, and as a result of the fact they have no breath,

I can sit there and go, yep, that's a corpse. Same thing.

You say you're a Christian. There are no good works, none whatsoever. You're still robbing banks.

You're still, you know, you're still hanging out the bars, womanizing, you're still robbing from your neighbors and stealing them blind.

You're still, you care nothing about anybody except for yourself. You say you're a Christian again.

How, how? It doesn't make any sense because I'm not seeing any breath, right.

You're a Christian and you're gay affirming, what? Okay, that doesn't make any sense, okay.

So note here, the actions show that the repentance that has faith is real, okay.

That's always the purpose. The good works are the sign that the faith is present.

So again, although I say to the wicked, you shall surely die, if he turns from his sin, and how do

I know he's turned from it? And he does what is just and right. Not only is he turned from it, he's doing now what's right.

If the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he's taken by robbery, walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live, he will not die.

None of the sins that he's committed shall be remembered against him, not because he did works, but because he had faith that was evidenced by works, right.

He has done what is just and right, he will surely live. Yet your people say, the way of the

Lord is not just, when it's their own way that is not just. When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die, and he shall die for it.

And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this.

Yet you say, the way of the Lord is not just. Oh, house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.

Great section. And unfortunately, I have to go, so. All right, Lord willing, we will pick up from this spot next week.

I should be back, I'm flying back on Saturday, and unless we have one of those big rip -roaring thunderstorms and I can't get home.

But that could always be a possibility. I've set up Pastor Klein in reserve just in case my travel's back, don't get me back, so just keep that in mind.