The Man God Hates — Chuck Smith

Ezekiel’s Prophecy of Jerusalem’s Destruction

This morning, I'd like to draw your attention to the fifth chapter of Ezekiel, especially verse thirteen, where the Lord declares, Thus shall my anger be accomplished, and I will cause my fury to rest upon them, and I will be comforted, and they shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it in my zeal, when I have accomplished my fury on them.

God is speaking of the destruction that's going to come upon the city of Jerusalem, and He'll give us in this chapter the reasons for the destruction. Ezekiel was a prophet unto the people who were in exile in Babylon.

There in Jerusalem, Jeremiah was still prophesying to those people of Judah that were in Jerusalem. But there in Babylon, Ezekiel had been taken in the second siege of Jerusalem, 596 B .C., And this is about the year 595 B .C. that he is giving this prophecy.

And Jerusalem will be destroyed fully, and the prophecy will be fulfilled nine years later in 586 B .C. This particular prophecy will be fulfilled. Ezekiel was a very colorful prophet. He did a lot of things to illustrate his message.

Ezekiel’s Symbolic Actions and Prophetic Message

In chapter 4, we find him taking a tile and drawing sort of the diagram of the city of Jerusalem and then building little mounts against the walls and illustrating the destruction that was going to come when Babylon would return and set siege and destroy the city of Jerusalem.

He was told by the Lord to lie on his right side for 390 days, in which he was exemplifying that a day for a year in the 390 years that Israel had turned their back upon the commandments of the Lord. When that was completed, he was to roll over on his left side and lie on his left side for 40 days, representing the 40 years of Judah's turning against the law and the commandments of the Lord.

And then here in chapter 5, the Lord tells him to take his hair and shave it off of his head, separate it into three piles, measure it out with a balance scale, and then take a part of it, the third part, and burn it with fire.

Take the second part of it and chop it up with a sharp knife. Take the third part and throw it into the wind that it might be scattered with the wind. And as the people watched him shave his hair and beard and measure it out and do these things, he then preached to them of the destruction that was going to come upon Jerusalem.

Very colorful prophet. Sort of reminds me of a fellow that used to go there in Los Angeles in Pershing Square, and he would have a little stepladder and he would sit on it with a fishing pole. And he would just have his line there on the sidewalk, and people would come up and say, what in the world are you doing?

What do you think you will catch here? And he said, I'm fishing for souls, and I'm hoping to catch people who need to have their sins forgiven so I can share with them God's remedy for man's sin. And then he would use that as a basis to witness to people about the Lord.

That's pretty much like Ezekiel was. He was colorful, and he would do things to attract attention, and then he would declare to them the word of the Lord. And God's message to the people was this. Because of the wickedness of the people who had inhabited the land before God gave it to Israel, because of their wickedness, God took the land from them and destroyed them out of the land.

But Israel had become even more wicked than those people that had been driven out before they occupied the land. They had turned against God's laws, the judgments of God. They had changed them, and they had become wicked and corrupt, more than the people that were driven out of the land, and thus God's judgment was going to come upon them.

Applying Ezekiel’s Warning to Modern Society

As I look at our land today, I am fearful that much of this is true of us, in that our land established on godly principles, the Constitution, and all based upon God's laws, we have gradually turned away from the laws of God.

We have gone our own ways and in our own directions, and we have opened the door to wickedness. I look at how abortion has been legalized by our courts. The flood of pornography that fills our land today is protected by our courts.

Criminals have had their sentences overturned in the appellate courts because the judge in giving the sentence quoted a scripture, and thus the appellate court freed the guilty because of a scripture being quoted in the giving of the sentence.

The government is giving special privileges to the homosexual community that are not enjoyed by the straight society, and thus, in a sense, it's penalizing us for not being queer. Israel had not walked according to God's laws.

They had not kept his judgments, and now God was going to set himself against them, was going to bring his judgment upon them. Now the Bible affirms all the way that to sin against knowledge is worse than sinning in ignorance, though ignorance of the law is no excuse, yet to know to do good and not do it, or to know what is wrong and to do it, is worse than doing things that are wrong but you don't realize they are wrong.

James warns, don't be eager to be a teacher of God's Word because you will receive the greater condemnation. You're held to a higher standard because you know. In Luke chapter 12, beginning with verse 47, Jesus spoke about that servant which knew his Lord's will, and yet he did not do according to his will.

He will be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not the Lord's will, but committed things that were deserving of many stripes, will be beaten with few. For unto whom much is given, much is required.

To whom men have committed much of them, they require the more. Again in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus said, Woe unto you, Chorazin! Woe unto you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you have been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

But I say unto you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, you shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which have been done in you have been done in Sodom, it would have continued until the present day.

But I say unto you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. John tells us that Jesus said to the Jews, If I had not come and spoken unto you, you would have had no sin, but now you have no excuse for your sin.

In 2 Peter 2 .21, Peter wrote,. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they had known it to turn from the holy commandments which were delivered unto them.

Knowledge, Responsibility, and God’s Justice

Knowledge brings responsibility. You're held to a higher standard. You know, oftentimes we have people question us concerning that poor native out there in the jungles, remote, has never had the opportunity to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Will God judge him when he's never heard? How God will judge, I don't know. What God's verdict will be, I don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us. I do know this, that God is fair, that God is just, and whatever God does will be perfectly fair and just.

For he is a just God. The Bible teaches that. And so I rest in that. I don't know what God will do with them, but I know that he'll be fair as he deals with them. They're not the ones I'm so worried about.

I'm worried about you, who have heard the truth of God. You have had the opportunity of knowing what God's word says. For you to turn against it brings you into a greater judgment than those that have never heard.

This was the problem with Judah. They knew the laws of God. They knew what God said. And theirs was a transgression. It was a deliberate, willful disobedience to what they knew God had said. A disobeying of the commandments of God.

And that is why God dealt with them with such severity. The siege against Jerusalem would be so bad, they would turn to cannibalism. God said he would have no pity on them. Like the hair of Ezekiel was divided into the three parts, so a third part of the city would die in the famine and in the plague.

They would be burned with hunger and burned in the fires that destroyed Jerusalem. A third part of them would be hacked to pieces by the swords of the Babylonian soldiers. And the other third part would be scattered through the world as they are taken into captivity.

God said thus he would accomplish his anger upon them. His fury would be satisfied. When it comes to pass, God said, you will know that I am God and I have spoken these things when I accomplish my fury upon you.

The Biblical Reality of Sin, Wrath, and Judgment

I mean, Ezekiel was not a seeker-friendly prophet. The things that he was saying were not to comfort the people in their sinful state. It was not a soft and syrupy message that he had for them. We hear of God's love and we do know that God is love.

But that's not the whole truth. He is also a God of justice and a God of judgment. And he will bring his righteous judgments upon those who have rejected his love. But you see, it isn't politically correct to talk about the wrath of God, to talk about hell and the judgment of God that will soon come upon this earth as God judges the ungodly.

So many people go to church today in order to feel good about themselves. They want to be comforted in their sinful state rather than convicted of their sin. Forty years ago, Vance Havner, who was a well-known minister and an excellent writer, wrote, the devil is not fighting religion.

He's too smart for that. But he's producing a counterfeit Christianity that is so much like the real that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it. We are plainly told in the scriptures that in the last days, men would not endure sound doctrine, but would depart from the truth and heap to themselves teachers to tickle their ears.

We live in an epidemic of this itch, and popular preachers have developed ear tickling to a fine art. Today, the art is to avoid negative preaching and to accentuate only the positive. I can remember when I was a kid, they used to sing, you've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative.

Don't mess with Mr. In-between. To illustrate my last remark, remember Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark. What did they do when everything got so dark? Well, they accentuated the positive. They eliminated the negative.

They latched on to the affirmative. They didn't mess with Mr. In-between. That's pretty much the message that the church is giving across the country today. The positive message. Oh, don't speak about negative things.

Don't make people feel uncomfortable because they are sinners. But smile and tell about the good life and all that people can have if they will follow the seven simple rules. One of the most prominent of the gurus of this new feel-good-about-yourself gospel declared, I don't think that anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and hence counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude and uncouth, unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware that they are lost and in a sinful condition.

This is the worst thing that happened to Christianity and evangelism. Let people know they're lost and are in a sinful condition. He wrote, lack of self-love or self-esteem is the scripture's doctrine of original sin.

I don't know what Bible he's reading. My Bible said that the original sin was not really a poor self-esteem, but my Bible tells me that man elevated himself and followed after the lust of his flesh and he ate the fruit of the tree of which God said, you should not eat of it lest you die.

But the message that is being preached today is watered down. It is syrupy. What is the definition of sin? Lack of self-love and self-esteem. They don't like the word sin. They seek not to use it. But what is salvation then?

Well, salvation is being rescued from shame to glory, from the feelings of guilt to pride, from fear to love, from distrust to faith, from hypocrisy to honesty. Being born again is developing a positive image of yourself according to their interpretation.

Is that why Jesus suffered on the cross? So you could feel positive about yourself? So you could feel good about yourself? I think not. I think he suffered and died on the cross in order that we, guilty sinners, might have provision whereby God can forgive us of our guilt and of our sin.

Paul warned of those that would come preaching another gospel, and the gospel that they preach is surely another gospel. We rightly preach and teach that God is love. However, we point out that's not the whole story.

God is a God of justice. God is a God of judgment. And surely Ezekiel speaks of God's judgment that's going to come upon the city of Jerusalem because they had the law of God, but they had changed the laws of God and were not following the laws of God.

What God Hates and the Certainty of Judgment

The Bible speaks of things that God hates. These six things does the Lord hate. Yes, there are seven that are an abomination unto him. A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, whose blood is more innocent than a baby in a womb, a heart that devises wicked imaginations, feet that are swift in running to do mischief, a false witness that speaks lies, and he that sows discord among brethren.

The Bible says God hates these things. In our text, God speaks of his fury that's going to be poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the horrible siege, when they will become so hungry that they'll turn to savagery and cannibalism and he will have no pity on them.

And that actually came to pass. The very things that God said would happen did indeed happen. And God said, when they do, you will know that I have spoken. People often say, oh, that's God of the Old Testament.

I don't like the God of the Old Testament, that judgment bed and all. I like the God of the New Testament. Wait a minute. The God of the New Testament is also the God of the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, it speaks of a day that is coming very soon when the judgments of God are going to be poured out just as he poured out upon Israel and upon Jerusalem.

God's judgments are going to be poured out upon the world because they've turned and changed the laws of God. Revelation 6 -19 gives you the details of this great judgment and called the wrath of God that's going to come upon our world.

Jesus, speaking of this time, said, and there will be a time of great tribulation worse than the world has ever seen in its history and worse than it will ever see. In other words, Jesus is saying, you haven't seen anything yet, even in the history of the failure of man to follow God and the judgments of God that came upon them.

They're not equal to what's going to happen. In the book of Revelation, chapters 6 -18, it tells us that well over one half of the earth's population will be destroyed when the cup of the indignation of the fierce anger and wrath of God is poured out upon the earth.

Again, in Hebrews 10 -26, if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of truth, there is no more sacrifice for sins. There is only that certain fearful looking for the judgment and fiery indignation of God by which he will devour his adversaries.

He that despised Moses' law died without mercy if two or three gave witness against him. How much worse punishment do you suppose he will be thought deserving who has trodden underfoot the Son of God, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified an unholy thing and has done despite to the Spirit of grace.

For we know him who has said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. And he finishes by declaring it's a fearful thing to fall in the hands of a living God. You say, well, Pastor, I don't like to hear things like that.

I came to have you tell me how nice and wonderful a person I am and how good a person I am. Well, you may be nice, you may be good, but your goodness will never get you into heaven. All of your righteousness, the Bible said, in God's eyes is just like a filthy rag.

Salvation Through the New Birth and Christ’s Righteousness

The only entrance you can hope for to get into heaven is to be born again. You've got to have a spiritual birth. You've got to receive Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life if you are to enter the kingdom of heaven.

I would much rather be biblically correct than politically correct. I want to tell you what God's word says. Warn you so that if you one day stand before the judgment bar of God and God consigns you to hell, I don't want you turning and looking at me and saying, Pastor, why didn't you warn us?

If you do, I'll say, don't you remember April 24, 2005, when I stood before you and declared to you what God's word says? This is the word of God. I've read it to you. This is God's truth. And it's important that we follow what God's word says.

Prayer for Repentance and Turning Back to God

Father, we thank you for the opportunity of having your word. But we realize, Lord, the awesome responsibility that it places upon us. The responsibility of keeping your word. And so, Lord, this day, let the word of God dwell in our hearts richly.

And help us, Lord, to comprehend just how much you do love us. So much you provided an escape from our sinful life. An escape from our transgressions, which were destroying us, so that we might, Lord, know that love and that goodness that you have for your children.

Thank you, Lord, for opening the door and allowing us to become your children. Bless, we pray, Father, your children this day. And those that have not yet accepted. Those who are outside of the family of God.

Lord, speak to their hearts today. And let them know that it's important that we repent. Turn from our sins. And to receive the help that you promised to those who would seek to follow you. Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen. Shall we stand? The pastors are down here at the front for the purpose of helping you to discover the joy and the blessedness of knowing that your sins are forgiven. Knowing that one day you can stand before God, not in your righteousness, but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Knowing that you can spend eternity with God in His kingdom. And so I would encourage you, if you're not yet born again, if you haven't had that spiritual birth, as soon as we're dismissed, make your way forward.

These men are here to pray with you and to pray for you. That you might know the joy and the blessings of becoming a child of God. May the Lord be with you, watch over and keep you this week in His love.

Strengthen you in the things of the Spirit. Guide you in the truth of His word. In Jesus' name. The Lord bless thee. And keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee. And be gracious unto thee.

And be gracious... The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee. And give thee.