God With His People

Prayer for Guidance, Forgiveness, and Sanctification

Well, let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, once again in these difficult times, we come to you, gathered together, far apart from one another, we're bound together by your Spirit and by the love of Christ that we have for one another because of Him.

We pray, Father, once again, your blessing upon us as we meet as we are able. We pray, Father, that by your Spirit, you would guide us and direct us, convict us of our sin, give us faith, Lord, to repent and remind us once more of the forgiveness that we have in Christ Jesus because of the cross He bore on our behalf.

Lord, we once again come together to the proclamation of your Word. We pray, Father, that as we do so, that you would drive your Word into our hearts, that your Spirit would use it to our good, to our sanctification, to once again convict us and to mold us more and more into the image of Christ Jesus.

Father, we are before you as individuals more than we would wish, looking ahead and just yearning for that time when we will again be able to meet in each other's company. Father, pray your blessing upon what we're about to do as we sing your songs, as we pray to you in the name of Jesus Christ, as we proclaim your Word and hear it.

Father, in all this, be blessed by our obedience to you and bless us, Father, with greater strides towards the image of Christ. In whose name we pray, amen. John will now lead us in Speak, O Lord. The lyrics will show up in a moment.

Speak, O Lord, as we come to you To you, King of your holy Word Speak the truth that you came to us Speak the truth that you love us That the light of Christ may be seen today In our acts of love and our deeds of faith Speak, O Lord, as we come to you O your glory, speak, O Lord, as we give you praise To be prevalent through humility Test our thoughts and our attitudes In the radiance of your purity Cause our eyes to see your majestic love and your purity Words of power that can never fail Let their truth prevail over unbelief Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds Help us grasp the heart of your plans for us Truths unchanged in your power and purity Praise we love you, Lord Jesus Christ

Ezekiel 11 and the Question of Exile

We'll turn, if you would, in your Bibles to Ezekiel chapter 11. Ezekiel chapter 11, we've taken a short detour in our regular preaching through Philippians during this time that we're apart, to go through Ezekiel.

And we began at chapter eight, and we've been doing one chapter per message, which has been quite a challenge for me to prepare, and I would imagine an equal challenge for you to hear, as we've been going rather quickly through a great deal of theology and history and the like, but looking for this one vision in these four chapters to help us through and apply these to our times that we are now living in.

Let's see what chapter 11 of Ezekiel has to say. We'll read all 25 verses. "'The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate "'of the house of the Lord, which faces the east. "'And behold, at the entrance of the gateway, "'there were 25 men, and I saw among them, "'Jazaniah, the son of Azur, and Pelletiah, "'the son of Benaiah, princes of the people.

"'And he said to me, son of man, "'these are the men who devise iniquity "'and who give wicked counsel in the city, "'who say the time is not near to build houses. "'The city is the cauldron, and we are the meat.

"'Therefore prophesy against them. "'Prophesy, O son of man. "'And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me, "'and he said to me, thus says the Lord. "'So you think, O house of Israel, "'for I know the things that come into your mind.

"'You have multiplied your slain in the city "'and have filled its streets with the slain. "'Therefore thus says the Lord God. "'Your slain whom you have laid in the midst of it, "'they are the meat, and the city is the cauldron, "'but you shall be brought out of the midst of it.

"'You have feared the sword, "'and I will bring the sword upon you, declares the Lord God, "'and I will bring you out of the midst of it, "'and give you into the hands of foreigners, "'and execute judgments upon you.

"'You shall fall by the sword, "'and I will judge you at the border of Israel, "'and you shall know that I am the Lord. "'This city shall not be your cauldron, "'nor shall you be the meat in the midst of it.

"'I will judge you at the border of Israel, "'and you shall know that I am the Lord. "'For you have not walked in my statutes, "'nor obeyed my rules, but have acted "'according to the rules of the nations that are around you.

"'And it came to pass, while I was prophesying, "'that Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, died. "'Then I fell down on my face, "'and cried out with a loud voice, and said, "'Ah, Lord God, will you make a full end "'of the remnant of Israel?'.

"'And the word of the Lord came to me, "'Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, "'your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, "'all of them are those of whom the inhabitants "'of Jerusalem have said, go far from the Lord.

"'To us this land is given for possession. "'Therefore say, thus says the Lord God, "'though I removed them far off among the nations, "'and though I scattered them among the countries, "'yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while "'in the countries where they have gone.

"'Therefore, thus says the Lord God, "'I will gather you from the peoples, "'and assemble you out of the countries "'where you have been scattered, "'and I will give you the land of Israel. "'And when they come there, they will remove from it "'all its detestable things, and all its abominations, "'and I will give them one heart, "'and a new spirit I will put within them.

"'I will remove from them the heart of stone "'from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, "'that they may walk in my statutes, "'and keep my rules, and obey them. "'And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

"'But as for those whose heart goes after "'their detestable things and their abominations, "'I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, "'declares the Lord God.'. "'Then the cherubim lifted up their wings "'with the wheels beside them, "'and the glory of the God of Israel was over them, "'and the glory of the Lord went up "'from the midst of the city, "'and stood on the mountain "'that is on the east side of the city.

"'And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision "'by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. "'Then the vision that I had seen went up from me, "'and I told the exiles all the things "'that the Lord had shown me.'".

Jerusalem Had Become the World

So during these extraordinary times that we find ourselves in, many of you are asking yourselves, and I've heard this question from many of you, and I'm asking myself as well, just what is God doing? Why is he allowed such a time as we are in, knowing what it would do to his son's church, even for Lord willing what is a short time, knowing the harm it is doing, and the anxiety is causing us, and the hurt that we are feeling from not being together with each other, why would God allow such a time as this, knowing all that, which of course he does?

Will we be devastated, or will we emerge a stronger and a more purified people from all this? Will we ever assemble again, and if so, when? At what point do we go in resistance against the authorities and say we must meet?

Are we right to not meet now for safety's sake, or have we given in to the fear of the virus and quite possibly man? I think Ezekiel 11 is going to help us sort this out. It's going to help us sort this out because the people, as I've been saying throughout this vision series that we've been in, that the people in Chaldea, those in exile, those departed or moved apart from the temple and everything in Jerusalem, are like us, removed from that which we know to be the proper, the traditional, the strictly biblical way to worship God.

I think Ezekiel 11 is going to help us sort this out because of that. See, in Ezekiel 11, there are really these two peoples, these two peoples, one in Jerusalem and the other in Chaldea. Those in Jerusalem are there because they listen to the words of false prophets, prophet after prophet after prophet.

They had a whole company of prophets, all of whom disagreed with the lone prophet Jeremiah. Now, we're not going to go into Jeremiah very much, but remember, please, that Jeremiah was a contemporary of Ezekiel, and as Ezekiel is ministering and preaching to the people in exile in Chaldea, which is another name for Babylon, so Jeremiah was preaching and ministering to those in Jerusalem, those who stayed in Jerusalem.

And Jeremiah preached to them that Babylon's subjugation of Judah was God's will, that God sent Nebuchadnezzar, he was the king of Babylon, sent his armies to conquer and bring into exile the people there in Jerusalem because of their sins, primarily, as we learned in Ezekiel chapter eight, their idolatry.

So there are a people in Jerusalem who listened to the false prophets, those who called peace when God said, no peace, and those in Chaldea are those who heard Jeremiah and obeyed him, his word, as a true prophet preaching the word of the true God and went into exile.

Now, neither people in Jerusalem or in Chaldea could really worship God properly. In Jerusalem, they were continuing the very sins that had brought this punishment in the first place. We saw that in Ezekiel eight.

In Chaldea, they had no temple, and so it was impossible to conduct the proper worship of Yahweh in accordance with Yahweh's word. And that's a dilemma which, by the way, led to the beginning of the synagogue movement.

So what was God doing? What is God doing? We don't want to be like Jerusalem, like the people who were there way back then, pretending to be in worship when God's word defines worship differently than what we're able to do.

Nor do we want to fail to worship together without some assurance that what we are doing now, this very moment, and have been doing these past weeks, and will be doing for some more weeks, it seems, we want some assurance that this is God's will, or at least not against his will.

And these are the kind of questions that have stirred me up. They stir up Pastor Owens, and I know they're stirring you up because of the different questions that you have been bringing to me. Well, I think Ezekiel 11 is going to help us sort this out.

I think in Ezekiel 11, we will find what the exiles found, which is the strength to wait on the Lord while they're forced to be apart from all the mechanisms of proper worship. And God willing, we can do the same.

Let's look in some detail, as I said at the beginning, not in complete detail, at Ezekiel chapter 11. Let's see how we can sort this out. The first thing we see in Ezekiel 11 is that Jerusalem had really become the world.

And I'll read again just a few verses, verses two through four, and then verse 12. And that's the first section. Jerusalem had become the world. Not like the world, they had become really the world. And we need to protect ourselves against this.

We need to read this as a warning. As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, these things were written. The Old Testament was written for our encouragement and for our warning. Look again at verses two through four, and then verse 12.

And he said to me, pardon me, son of man, son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity and who give wicked counsel in the city, who say the time is not near to build houses. This city is the cauldron and we are the meat.

Therefore prophesy against them. Prophesy, oh son of man. And now skip your eyes down to the last verse of this section, verse 12. For you, which is those men, Pelitia and Jeazaniah, for you have not walked in my statutes nor obeyed my rules, but have acted according to the rules of the nations that are around you.

They had followed the ways of the nations around them. They had followed the ways of the Gentile. They had given into the world. They had incorporated worldly wrong worship, pagan worship by a process of what we call syncretism, incorporating things from outside God's word into the worship of God according to his word.

That's called syncretism. And this is just what they had done here. Jerusalem had not walked according to God's statutes, but had followed the ways of the world. They took on the practices, the worldview around them.

The vision here that Ezekiel has is of the princes, the civic leaders. The worship was more the purview of the priests. We know that, but we're all still responsible for the way we worship. And the leadership in ancient Israel, these princes of the people were responsible to be a right example to them, to follow the ways of Yahweh, to know the law of God and to support the priests so that the worship of God would be done rightly.

As James says, though, those who presume to have authority over God's people are held to a stricter judgment. And as we read, Pelletiah will die far outside the camp. He will be held to this stricter judgment because of this sin.

And Jerusalem itself will be held accountable for the sin, having followed Pelletiah and Jeazaniah and the others. You gotta look at what these princes were saying. The time is not near to build houses.

The city is the cauldron and we are the meat. And we need to sort this out a little bit to see what they were doing, what this worldly view was that they had. What they were doing was they were directly contradicting what Jeremiah had said, where Jeremiah had said that it is time to surrender to Babylon, it's time to go to Babylon.

And then in chapter 29 of Jeremiah's work, there's a letter that he wrote to the exiles in Babylon. We're gonna come to that in a few moments. Just understand for now that these two sayings, not time to build house and the city's the cauldron, directly contradict what God's word for Jeremiah was.

Jeremiah preached over and over and over that God's will was for them to surrender to Babylon, which as it was God's will that Babylon should come and conquer them, to surrender to them was God's will.

They were the instrument of God's wrath and they were to accept the punishment that was coming. It's not time to build houses. The time is not near to build houses. And now you can turn to Jeremiah chapter 29.

And we're only gonna take a couple of verses there. We're not gonna read the whole chapter. But in Jeremiah 29, we have this letter that Jeremiah from Jerusalem wrote to the exiles who were in Chaldea.

This is directly to them. It's by God's direction. It's an inspired word of God from the prophet Jeremiah in Jerusalem to the exiles in Chaldea. So look at chapter 29 in verse five in Jeremiah. What does he tell them?

He says, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Pelitiah, following the false prophets that they had there in Jerusalem, says that the time is not near to build houses. Don't do this.

As Jeremiah, preaching the word of God says, build houses and live. They say don't. It's a direct contradiction of the word of God. The cauldron and the meat are gonna take a little more explanation. Being the meat and the cauldron to us doesn't sound good.

And I have to admit to my ear, it doesn't sound good to be a piece of meat stuck in a pot that's gonna get cooked. But what they're saying is something different than it looks like or sounds like at first blush.

To be the meat and the cauldron back to them, to their ear, was to be protected. To be the choice piece that was in this cauldron, that was in this pot, not being cooked like a frog that's put in water and it boils slowly so he doesn't know he's being cooked, but to be the choice, to be the premier piece that was there.

The piece that is reserved for God, if you will. So there's a sacrificial sound to it. And what they meant was that they were well protected behind Jerusalem's massive, never before breached defensive walls.

They're the ones who stayed bravely in the city. They are the choice piece of meat because they show their faith in God. Now we know they showed what they're calling faith in God by disobeying God, so that can't be.

But this was their position. Their illusion is to that portion of the sin offer and reserve for God. That's what they mean by we are the meat in the cauldron. They think God likes them best. Not those faithless ones who skedaddled to Babylon.

Not like those who didn't think God could save them from Nebuchadnezzar. We stayed here because we trusted God to protect us. Don't worry about that doomsday character, Jeremiah. We've got prophet after prophet who says something different.

So what does God say here? Well, we understand already from verse 12 of Ezekiel 11, that they had followed the ways of the world. And this is simply a part of it. This is part of that slippery slope, as we call it, that once you disobey God's word, once you allow worldly wisdom to come in and infuse your understanding of Christ Jesus, what he has done for us, and how God has made us a people in him, once the scripture is allowed to be corrupted with silly and sometimes ridiculous interpretations, it's a slope that is hard to get off of.

It just keeps its own momentum going and going and going until next thing you know, you have this avalanche. And this is what happened here in denying the word of God through Jeremiah. What does God say to the people in Chaldea?

He said, build houses and live in them and plant your gardens and eat the produce of them. In other words, God will take care of those people who had obeyed. This is not to say that we're guaranteed that everything's gonna be smooth and easy just because we obeyed as though God owes that to us.

But in this case, we do have this direct promise from God to that people that when they obey him and go into exile, he will watch over them. God willing, as we are in exile from each other, as we are not able to come to this church for any number of reasons, we're gonna talk about those reasons in a moment, God willing, he is still watching over us.

God willing, because of our faith in Christ Jesus, his son, our repentance for our sins. God willing, because it is Christ Jesus who is still building his church, he's watching over all of us, you and your homes, as you hear this message, all of us being cared for by God's presence as we go through this difficult time.

Pelotai and his cohorts were saying something very different, that God wouldn't take care of them, that they were gonna take care of them in Chaldea, he's taking care of them in Jerusalem. Not time to build houses.

Don't act like those people exiles, building homes and settling down in Gentile lands, the time is near to stay where God is near, Jerusalem. Now at the end of the chapter, as you heard in the reading, God's near presence, his glory, is not so near as they thought, because he leaves, and we'll come to that at the end.

The Remnant in Chaldea and the New Heart

Does this relate to our day? Many of us have heard of pastors in different parts of the country, and now starting here even in California, who are holding and will continue to hold, to have held full services.

And I believe they're coming dangerously close to being in Jerusalem's camp there. Our times need to be addressed with wisdom, with care, with scriptures rightly handled as the word of truth. We don't have a passage that directly addresses this exact situation, as Ezekiel 11 addressed theirs back then.

But we do have principles. We do have things that we know. We know, first of all, that every detail of history is directly and actively from God's hand. And so this pandemic that has forced us apart, we know is God's will that it should occur.

Not something he allowed to happen passively, something that he meant for a purpose, ultimately the good of Christ's people. We know that COVID -19 spreads easily from person to person, as well as from person to surface back to person.

We know that it is especially dangerous to seniors with underlying conditions. Those last two words, underlying conditions being key. And we know that COVID -19 is even now surprising the experts as it begins to ravage portions of the populations they had thought were relatively safe.

We know that the projection models have proven overly pessimistic and alarming. And we know that there's a lot that we don't know, and there's a lot that the experts don't know. And we know that meeting in person right now could cause unnecessary and possibly deadly consequences for some of us, extreme illness for others.

So are we worshiping properly according to God's word? The exiles are being told by those in Jerusalem, no, you're not. We're the meat, we're in the cauldron, we're the ones who faithfully stayed while you skedaddled, while you ran in retreat to Babylon because you were too afraid, you were too faithless.

Are we in one or the other camp, are we worshiping properly according to God's word? Well, the first answer is no, of course we're not. We're supposed to be together. The bigger question is whether we're sinning by not meeting.

The question is whether Christ would say to us as he did to the churches in Revelation two and three, but I have this against you. Does the scripture help us here? You don't need to turn there, but I want to explain to you from another passage of scripture and a portion of history that we have in 2 Chronicles chapter 30.

You can look at that later for your homework, read that chapter sometime this afternoon. In 2 Chronicles chapter 30, we have King Hezekiah, a king of Judah who followed the ways of his father, David, like no other king.

He was one of the greatest kings that Judah ever knew. And he held a Passover like no other Passover. And he invited Israel, the 10 tribes, the ones who had gone north, the ones who were in exile, if you will, there, to come south, to come to the temple and to worship properly at the temple.

And he held then a Passover like no other. And you read in 2 Chronicles chapter 30 that it was improperly done, that the people were not prepared. They hadn't cleansed themselves as the scripture demands.

And you read there also that Hezekiah prayed for them. He prayed for God to forgive them, to pardon them. And it goes on to say that God didn't forgive them. He didn't pardon them. The scripture says, and God healed them.

He took it a step further. It's the heart that matters. So I believe that for now, not by submission to government, our modern Caesar, not by that, but by love of neighbor, by concern for each other, we are right to hold off on our in-person gatherings, to do what we are doing as best we can.

I believe that this honors God's word, if not specifically to us as exiles in our homes, then in principle to the demands of our time. When we can open our doors with reasonable safety, we shall. In the meantime, we meet as we can.

So what does this mean to us while we're sheltering in place? Must you wait for our old pattern to return before you can know again God's presence? Is God's presence bereft from us as we're separate from each other?

The Jews in Chaldea, the exiles, they had this dilemma. And in the Psalms, especially in Psalm 137, they crowd, how long, O Lord, will you forget us forever? In another Psalm, they say, will you be angry forever?

Has that been you? I have to tell you, it has been me. How long, O Lord, how long will we have to meet like this? How long until we can meet together as we all so desire? I was talking to a fellow pastor earlier this week.

I told him, I don't know how much more of this I can take. Not being near the people I love, not seeing the children playing, not singing the great hymns together and hearing each other. I sing these hymns along with you, but all I hear is me.

And I tell you, I'm not as good alone as I am with the rest of you. How long can I take this? How long can I preach to this laptop? I told my fellow pastor, this dear friend of mine, that I despair the strength to carry on.

And then he asked me, what was I preaching this Sunday? And before I even answered him, I thought to myself, ouch, I'm preaching Ezekiel 11. I'm preaching this message to these exiles who are apart from all the mechanisms, all the accoutrements, all the tradition of their worship.

The exiles, the remnant. And I want you to see them as a remnant in verses 13 to 21. Again, I won't read those again for the sake of time. We went through those. We'll repeat parts of it. God's dispersed people could not worship in the temple as the law itself required.

So were they then bereft of his presence? Were the Jerusalemites right that they had done wrong? I mean, was it correct? When they said that they were the ones who were right and you're the ones who are faithless.

And the question is, how could God have mandated that they stop doing that which he had mandated? Even Ezekiel didn't quite understand what was happening. Now look again at verse 13. And it came to pass while I was prophesying that Pelletiah, the son of Benaiah, died.

Pelletiah, the name means God delivers. Benaiah, that name means God builds. So God delivers, son of God builds, had died. And you know how important names are, how prophetic they were, especially in the Old Testament.

We go on. Then I fell down on my face and I cried out with a loud voice and said, oh Lord God, will you make a full end of the remnant of Israel? The remnant of Israel he thought was in Jerusalem. The remnant of Israel, that portion that God had taken out of all mankind to be that people, that peculiar possession, that prize possession, that choice morsel of meat of the sin offering that doesn't get eaten by anyone but is given over to the Lord.

Will you make a full end of the remnant of Israel? Ezekiel sees what is happening and he's horrified. If Jerusalem with the temple, with the leaders, with the prophets, with the priests, if they're wiped out, who's going to be left?

What will be left? What about God's word to the remnant? And for you today, for all of us today who worry that the church cannot recover from our now two month exile from our church or from each other, do you cry out?

Oh Lord, God has Christ stopped building his church? Have you made, are you making an end to us? If not the church as a whole, then this church in particular? Well, no more than God had vacated his promise to Israel has he vacated his promises to us.

The answer to Ezekiel in verses 14 to 21 must have stunned him as much, if not more, than the specter of all the Jews in Jerusalem being destroyed. Listen again to what he said. Your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen.

Did you hear that? Ezekiel's brothers, even his brothers, and for emphasis, the Lord adds, his kinsmen are not the wayward citizens in the city of Jerusalem. Now those there, they are Jews like him, like Ezekiel, like the exiles.

They're children of Abraham, like him. They are descendants of those redeemed from slavery in Egypt, like him, but they were not his brothers or his kinsmen. It sounds as if God is saying, and I believe he is, that it is the exiles who are his brothers, his brothers, his kinsmen.

Do you hear the repetition? His brothers, his brothers, his kinsmen are those in Chaldea, the ones that he is ministering to. The Lord is telling Ezekiel here that he's not making a full end of the remnant of Israel.

He had saved the remnant of Israel. They were in Chaldea. Ezekiel was surrounded by them. He was ministering to them there in Babylon to his brothers and kinsmen, his sisters, his mothers, if you will.

Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, go far from the Lord. To us, this land is given for possession.

That kind of emphasis, brothers, brothers, kinsmen, is unusual in the Bible. It's a threefold affirmation. It's something like what we have in Isaiah 6 where the seraphim are crying out, not once, not twice, but thrice they call out, God is holy, holy, holy.

And here in Ezekiel 11, your brothers, your brothers, your kinsmen, who is the remnant? Who is the one that God is saving and has saved and will continue to save? They are the ones who were told, go far from the Lord.

We are his and he is ours. He is here, not there. He is with us, not you. The exiles were the remnant and the Lord was saving them by his power and by the preached word through Ezekiel, his prophet. Back to Jeremiah's letter for a moment.

In chapter 29, verse 11, he says to these exiles, to this remnant, now can we say the whole house of Israel, all of them, do you hear the repetition? The house of Israel, Israel, that important name, all of them, hear this in Jeremiah's letter to them.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. This must have been as shocking to Ezekiel as it was for Jews in the Apostle Paul's day to hear that Gentiles, if they have faith in Christ Jesus, are as much Abraham's children as they were, more so in fact, truly so in fact, since to be Abraham's true child is a matter of faith in Christ Jesus, faith in him, not lineage, faith in him, not coming from a people, excuse me, his new birth, not natural birth.

I know the plans I have for you, says God, to the exiles, to the remnant, to those who obeyed, and can we say to the church today from Ezekiel 11 that God knows the plans he has for us when he sent us into this exile?

Do we not know that if the Lord Jesus Christ has not returned, he is building his church, he is building you as members of this church, me and Pastor Owens as ministers of this church, he is building us up through this hard province that we have, he is giving us a future, he is giving us a hope, and I believe that this future and this hope is for you individually as you take the time during this isolation that we have, this shelter in place, which is gonna become part of the nomenclature for Lord knows how long, to grow in the Lord, to take this extra time you have to pray to God, to minister to husbands, to wives, to children, to come back here a stronger, a more purified, a more holy people, pursuing holiness without which no one will see the Lord as the apostle that the Hebrew says in that book.

He's giving them a future and a hope. How much more are we whose faith is in Christ Jesus and what he did for us on the cross, and Christ still building his church? I believe Jesus would have identified Ezekiel's exile of Jews as his true family.

You know, we read in Luke chapter eight, and this is repeated in the book of Matthew, this incredible incident where he was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you, but he answered them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

This is the exiles in Ezekiel 11, those who heard the word of God and did it. This is why Ezekiel is told your brothers, your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them are those to whom it was said by those who are not your brothers, your brothers, your kinsmen, those who are not part of the house of Israel, those who are not any of them, those in Jerusalem who disobeyed.

Jesus says, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. Does God's word say we mustn't meet during a pandemic? No, it doesn't say that, not directly.

Does his word allow for this prolonged exile? Well, within reasonable limits, yes. Love of neighbor, concern for each other, clear and obvious risks of sickness or even death, risks difficult, if not impossible to mitigate, all in the Lord's providence.

They heard the wrong message. They listened to Pelletiah, Jazaniah, the false prophets, the false priests, the ones who declares peace when there is no peace. So I wanna ask ourselves, I want us to stop and ask ourselves a moment here.

Can we tell if it's the wrong message that we're hearing? How can we tell? Pelletiah and Jazaniah could point to hordes of prophets to bolster their case. I think back in 2 Kings to King Ahab with King Jehoshaphat and Ahab called out the prophets to ask if he should go to war and he had prophet upon prophet, he had a whole company of prophets and they're all calling, go and have success, go and you will have victory, go and you're going to be glorified, really.

And then along comes a single prophet, a single Jeremiah type, if you will. Micaiah was his name. The true prophet, the lone prophet, the only one who spoke the truth. The only one who said to Ahab, no, God's will is if you go to war, you're going to die.

In Ezekiel's time, Ezekiel 11, the princes and others were opposed to Jeremiah, the one lone prophet. So again, how can we ferret it out? How can we sort it out? How can we know if it's right to stay apart from each other?

I've been asked this a lot. I've been asking myself this question a lot. Ask yourself this. Does the answer you've been given or the answer you come up with in your own study, in your own prayer time, does that answer lead you to a broad, easy path?

Well, so beware. The ones who are the remnant, the ones who went into exile, that was not an easy path. That was the more difficult path. That was the faith-filled path. That was the narrow path I believe Jesus speaks of.

The more difficult path to find, the harder path to stay on, if the answer you came up with for any of life's questions, but more especially now during these times, if that's an easy path to get on, beware.

Jesus said that the way to salvation is hard to find, hard to stay on. That's Matthew 7, 13 and 14. John 16, 33, he says, in this world you will have trouble. Paul said that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of heaven.

It was a difficult path that the exiles were on in Ezekiel 11, even having gone from Jerusalem to Chaldea. Surrendering in the first path was hard. To make yourself humiliated, to make yourself less. 1 Corinthians 4, verse 13, the apostle Paul says, when slandered we entreat, we have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

The day I promise you an easy life, the day your answer from your own scripture reading and study and prayer promises you your best life now and something easy and rich and healthy and cozy and just wonderful and lovely without any effort, without any straining, without any work towards the image of Christ Jesus, the day you have an answer like that from me, from Pastor Owen, from anyone who stands in any pulpit, beware because that's the day that I or Conley or anyone else needs to be driven away from this pulpit.