God With His People

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, 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 are 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, to you,

Lord ♪ ♪ Speak the truth that you came to us, came to us, came to us ♪ ♪

That the light of Christ may be seen together ♪ ♪

In our acts of love and our deeds of faith ♪ ♪

Speak, O Lord, as we come to you, to you, to you,

Lord ♪ ♪ Ever -perpetual for your glory ♪ ♪

Speak, O Lord, as we come to you, to you, to you,

Lord ♪ ♪ Through humility, test our thoughts and our attitudes ♪ ♪

Through humility, on our faith you rise, 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 hearts ♪ ♪

Help us grasp the heart of your pledge for us ♪ ♪

Truths unchanged in your glory ♪ ♪

Your deepest praise we love and adore you,

Lord ♪ ♪ We love you,

Lord, we love you, Lord, we love you, Lord ♪ ♪ We love you,

Lord, we love you, Lord, we love you, Lord, we love you, Lord, we love you, Lord ♪ 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're 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 east. And behold, at the entrance of the gateway, there were 25 men.

And I saw among them Jazaniah, excuse me, 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 this 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 this 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 this 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. 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've 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'll 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'll 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 division 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." 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? And at what point do we go in resistance against the authorities and say, we must leave?

Are we right to not meet now for safety's sake, or have we given into 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 listened 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.

Now, 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, the

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, O 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 have followed the ways of the nations around them. They've followed the ways of the Gentile.

They've given into the world. They've 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 it 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 are 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 right.

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 his 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 is 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 offering reserved 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 to 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.

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 pastor 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 culture and 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 cried out, 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 Pelitiah, the son of Benaiah, died.

Pelitiah, the name means God delivers. Benaiah, that name means

God builds. So God delivers, son of God builds, had died.

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 peculiar possession, that prized 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, 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 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 his church, me and Pastor Owens as ministers of this church, he is building us up through this hard providence 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 a 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 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 has 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 at any pulpit, "'beware, because that's the day that I or Conley "'or anyone else needs to be driven away from this pulpit.

"'The day we preach that your sins are forgiven "'and everything's nice and cozy "'and you don't need to make a lot of effort "'to be rid of your sin, "'you don't have to mortify your sin, "'we're in deep trouble.'"

I believe the answer that the false prophets that Palatine of the Jasonite gave to Jerusalem was that easy answer, just stay put, just stay here, we'll take care of you,

God will take care of you. Does our answer demand faith in Christ?

Does the answer that you're hearing, the answer that you're following from the scripture, does it demand of you to divest yourself of you and be filled instead with Christ's spirit?

Does it elevate you or does it help you in becoming, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, excuse me, to help you in becoming the scum of the earth, what the new

King James calls the off scouring. That's the way the world sees the church.

Some try to make you feel good about you, the exiles didn't feel good about them, but in hearing

Ezekiel's preaching, they might feel good about God. Ezekiel's vision from chapter eight, as he went through those abominations, as he saw them again and again and again and again, for them in Chaldea, it must have been like a whole movie of what they had once been, what they had been rescued from, what they had once participated in, in the church.

Does not Ephesians chapter two, verse two, say that you were dead in trespass and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world?

That's Ephesians 2 .2 and Colossians 3 .7. And then Paul asks us in chapter six, verse 21, what of those things which you were once proud and are not ashamed, what profit did you have from them?

And first Peter chapter four, verse three and four says that we as God's people in Christ Jesus are a distinct people, distinct from the world around us, no longer giving in to those, that flood of dissipation, excuse me, that Peter calls it, surprising those around us as we hold to our faith in Christ and not participate in those old ways in which

Ephesians 2 .2 we once walked, of which Romans 6 .21 we are now ashamed and from which first Peter four, three and four, we are now distinct.

Jerusalem represented the world, that's the indictment of verse 12. The easy way out was to think that they deserved

God, that their status as God's people was ultimate protection. That was the easy path, the harder path for them, the harder path for us as we try to hold together now in this exile that we're suffering under is to humbly accept

God's judgments and endure the humiliation of exile. Again, we don't have anything so direct as Ezekiel 11.

God willing, we are looking at this with wisdom. We're looking at God's word and applying it rightly and wisely and circumspectly to our time.

I tell you that Pastor Owens and I have struggled over this. We've prayed over this, we've studied the scripture over this and we've second guessed ourselves so many times because the issue causes us such distress within us to tell the church we do need to stay apart.

Again, not submitting to Caesar, but listening to the experts, having concern to love our neighbor and to have safety for each other.

It's interesting to me that there's no Psalm where Jerusalem weeps for the exiles, rather it's the exiles who in Psalm 137 weep for Jerusalem.

By the waters of Babylon we wept. And that brings me to mind of Jesus' lament of that great city, that same great city where what was left was going to be destroyed.

The remnant haven't been taken out. Jesus cried out, he said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophet and stones those who were sent to it.

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.

And you would not see your houses left you desolate.

For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. Desolate, forsaken, the remnant had been removed to Chaldea.

Soon God will make his final exit from the temple in Jerusalem. In the same way, the world is forsaken when it is deprived of a member of its citizenry.

When you repent of your sins, when you put your faith in Christ Jesus as you must, if you're hearing this message, join us in our difficulties, join us in the trials that we are enduring.

Repent of your sin and put your faith in Christ Jesus and make yourself an exile, an exile from the world, an exile, if you will, from Jerusalem and a citizen of heaven.

I have a servant, a fellow servant here, just as a quick aside, holding an umbrella over my head to keep the glare away.

And that's his hand cramping up that has caused that minor interruption. So bear with us.

Don't bear with your sin, though. Repent of your sin. Come to Christ Jesus. Join us in our exile.

Leave Jerusalem, leave the world, leave the comforts that they preach which are false comforts.

To say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord is to confess and believe that Jesus is he who came in the name of the

Lord. To say with Peter from Matthew 16 that he is the Christ, the son of the living God.

Titus chapter two, verse 11 says that the grace of God has appeared to all men. The grace of God is

Jesus. The grace of God has appeared to all men, bringing salvation to all people. Can you believe a message like that?

Can you believe the word of a Jeremiah and not the false prophets?

Can you believe this man with feet of clay like yours telling you what the word of God says?

Can you believe something like this? Can the exiles in Chaldea believe it?

Why did they believe it, not those in Jerusalem? Look at verse 19. And I'll give them one heart and a new spirit

I'll put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh. You see, they had a new heart.

They had a heart that could believe. They got this promise from God, them, not

Jerusalem, the remnant, not those who stayed, not to those who were so proud of themselves who thought that they were the choice piece of meat, not to them, but to the scum of the earth, to the exiles.

It's not something they earned. And it might sound like that in our English Bible, the sequence of events is they'll remove the detestable things, the abominations, that's verse 18, and verse 19, then they get the new heart.

But in Hebrew prose, it's not really that linear. That's the Western way of thinking about it. It's not this and then that.

It's not they obeyed, therefore I will give. It's not they got rid of the detestable things, therefore it's incumbent upon me to give them the new heart.

It's not that linear in the Hebrew. In verse 19, they get that new heart.

The new heart, God's work in the exile community. We could even make the case that their obedience, even to death -like humiliation of exile, was because they were given by the

Lord a spirit to obey. Again, for your homework, look at Ezekiel, or Exodus chapter 36, when the people are contributing to the work of the tabernacle in the wilderness and how

God stirred their hearts to give. It's God who does this work first. It's God who makes you able to obey.

It's God who does this by his transforming work, by giving you this heart of flesh, by granting to you for his own glory, for his purposes, by the counsel of his own will, determined in eternity past, for all these reasons, giving you faith to believe.

Faith to believe this gospel. Faith to repent of your sins, even if it requires you to go into exile.

These people in Ezekiel 11 in Chaldea had been ripped from their homes, from their jobs, from the temple, from the land.

They were dead, really. They were the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, come to life by God's command.

And this is what Paul said in Ephesians chapter two. I alluded to it, let me read it to you now.

And you were dead in the trespass and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world.

When they followed the temple abominations of Ezekiel eight back then. When you, born by nature, children of wrath, extolled the ways of the world and rejected

Christ and his claims on you. How do we come out of this?

Well, we don't. God gives a new heart to believe. The heart of stone taken out in ancient times,

Egyptian mummification was well known and widely practiced. And what they would do was to take out the heart from the deceased and save it.

And they had a way of saving it. We won't go into that now, but they would take it out and replace it with a heart of stone.

And they did this because they thought that the actual fleshly heart would betray their sins and deny them the afterlife.

But see, they had it all wrong. You already have a heart of stone. You're born with a heart of stone. You're born by nature, children of wrath.

You're born in Jerusalem. You're born not wanting to be in exile because that's too hard.

You're born with a heart that says, I'll take this easy path. But it's that heart of stone that betrays you.

The heart of stone that actually is heard. It's the heart of stone that puts my comfort above God's word.

I wanna close with the last few verses, 22 to 25, where God's presence is known by his glory.

God's glory represents his presence with his people. And this whole vision of Ezekiel from chapter eight to chapter 11 has been about God's glory and God's glory departing in chapter 10 from the temple and now chapter 11 from the city altogether.

Excuse me. 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, excuse me, 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.

His glory went up from the place that he sent them. God's glory,

Psalm 19 says, it says the heavens declare the glory of God.

Now I understand that they don't contain it. They declare it. They don't constrain him.

They show it. God's glory cannot be contained in a place. And it is not contained in a place.

And it manifested itself back then in the temple when God's glory fell upon the tabernacle in the wilderness and later in Solomon's temple such that the priest could not minister because of the appearing of God's glory.

It was a sign of his presence. Do we have God's glory now?

As we are apart from each other, suffering in this separation? I'd refer you to John chapter 17.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night he was betrayed and the day before his crucifixion, where he suffered and died for our sins.

In his prayer, what was called his high priestly prayer, John 17 and verses 22 to 23, he said, the glory that you, praying to God his father, the glory that you have given me,

I have given to them. Speaking of the disciples, soon to be the church founding apostles.

I've given to them that they may be one, even as we're one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me.

God's glory is with his people. God's glory is with those who are in Christ Jesus.

God's glory is with those who have repented of their sins, put their faith and their trust in Christ Jesus and gone into exile from this world, even the difficulties that it would bring upon you.

Trusting God as did the exiles in chapter 11 of Ezekiel, but trusting God to watch over them and to provide for them and to bring them out of the difficulties and back into his presence, back into each other's presence.

But while apart, know that God's glory, as it left in chapter 11 of Ezekiel and went to be with the exiles, it went east and this is why it went that direction, it's why it left the east exit of the city as it had the temple to be with his people.

And God's glory will be with us according to his word so long as we are apart and so long as we keep the faith and the trust in Christ Jesus.

I trust this series and particularly this final chapter in this vision of Ezekiel from chapter eight to chapter 11 has been an encouragement to you.

I trust that you see that we are justified in the actions that we are taking and God willing, as we pray together, as we all yearn to be together, he will bring that about even as he brought this

COVID to teach us a lesson, to give us the opportunity to spend more time in prayer and together grow in the

Lord even though we're separate. Even so, we can pray to him as a people to end this exile and to bring us back together once again to hear one another's voices and to worship as we desire.

Amen. Let's pray.

Video, we don't. No, not you.

No, the video. I'm sorry,

I touched something. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, again, thanking you for this day that you've given us and for this opportunity to look to and hear your word and I pray that the word that has been preached here is a word true to your word and an encouragement to all who've heard it.

I pray, Father, that you would come soon, reverse what has happened, bring us back together once again in safety and in harmony.