Sermon Tone Analysis

I once saw a gas station, it was a small one, 4 pumps and a little food access area.

Similar to the old abandoned one on the corner of Thornton and I think Rivara across from the 7-Eleven which is now an auto body shop.

But you know what was different about this gas station, it went through a hurricane.

The roof was twisted like one half of a fancy bow on a birthday present.

The pumps where knocked off their cement and spun, twisted broken.

I’ve seen people whose emotions looked liked that gas station.

There lives were wrecked.

I have been in a few places of tragedy.

I’m pretty sure you have been there too.

We’ve just gone through Corona time right?

Then there are the hurricanes that people have in their own lives, generational sin, unrelenting anger, overspending materialism, political or sexual idolatry

Yet there is in here many of you who are fighting to get stability in a time of loss.

This is real.

A time when everything has collapsed.

There is a part of the Bible that I find myself drawn to a lot right now.

Ezekiel.

I took a whole college class in just this book but before you get excited it was an 8 am class on like a Tuesday/Thursday.

The Book is fascinating and hard and while my grade was as poor as my ability to stay awake in the class, because oh man was that early for me as a college student, the insights God still speaks to me from this part of His word touch my life to this day.

I want to share them with you.

I don’t know why God has led me to the book of Ezekiel at this time but I can promise you that in 18 years of ministry I have never preached from this text.

Because the book is tough.

Catastrophe is tough.

Failure is tough.

Your probably not searching for your favorite Christian podcast on failure.

A person in my life stood up this week in a very powerful statement that I have to tell you I generally don’t like, but I hear often as a pastor, the statement was, “God is about to judge us.”

Then the person did what everyone else did and named their most hated sin and some bizarre news headline.

Finishing with “God is going to judge us soon.”

My friends it will take you no time to research all the books that have been written about God’s soon impending judgement, that failed to predict anything but make people fearful.

While ignoring the fact of what is happening right now, I spent about 4 to 8 hours a day this past week talking with people going through divorce, separation, financial catastrophe, homelessness, all while reading about the war in Ukraine, incredible inflation and reflecting on the Pandemic and all the damage that has been done.

A coming judgement?

A coming judgement?

My friends

We live every day working out and in judgement all around.

Where is God in it?

What are we to do in it?

What am I supposed to do in it?

A coming?

It is here.

Is God’s desire for us to run around crying, screaming, all scared, or is there something else a different purpose?

God speaks to us in the Bible book of Ezekiel, the Bible is made up of 66 books and Ezekiel is in the beginning part, called the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures.

Ezekiel covers the speaking of God to and through the prophet Ezekiel.

A lot of times we can pick up the Bible, just start reading and amazed at all the outstanding truth we quickly understand, but their are other parts of the Bible where unless you know the history and how to read it, then this part of the Bible is like picking up a piece of Shakespeare.

It’s so hard to understand that a lot can be missed and most of us put it back down and wait for the movie.

Ezekiel is like that but it, like all of the Bible

Ezekiel reveals truth and the heart of God.

Please allow me to get nerdy with you so you can understand the ancient truth in Ezekiel.

Like Josh Gates or Indiana Jones let me reveal to you what seems like a secret but really just takes a lot of learning.

It is really easy to understand when I explain it.

But first let’s start at the beginning, The first way of us for creation

Perfection.

No bad, no where.

All good.

All great.

Adam & Eve screwed up the idea that we and God would all be cool and nothing bad would happen because when they had a choice to disobey God they took it.

Then God allowed us to see why a second way will fail.

Many of us think

I will work to do good and be good, be good to everyone and then God will be good to me.

This is the second way, and it fails.

Here let me show you why.

I have a question for you,

What is Good?

Many of us think about being nice and kind to people, but what about when people do mean things to us?

Or what about when gas prices go up and we can no longer afford things so we have to make difficult choices, what about when some people work in places that make a ton of money off of charging outrageous prices for gas are they still good?

They didn’t do anything wrong?

Yet they profit off of the misery of others.

Before we get high and mighty what about all of us who have clothes and cheap products made by people who barely make any money at all.

We can keep going couldn’t I? These problems are huge and this sermon isn’t about all of the problems of our society but I can promise you

no one is good.

Most of us will make the definition of good where we are seen as nice and good.

look good and create explanations where we look bad.

Just confront someone and usually they will work hard to tell you why they are not bad but good.

Yet this is what Jesus said.

God actually stepped through that justification, he saw through all of our explaining and defined this is good and this is bad.

He chose a man, Abraham, and all his decedents through the line of Isaac as only one people who would be given the standard, the agreement.

The agreement came through a covenant much later through the man Moses,

Covenant of Moses that if the children of Abraham, the Hebrews did good as God defined it then they would receive all the blessings of God.

God would protect them from all enemies.

God would bless their wealth.

Do good, get good.

You know that question that some people say when something bad happens, “What did I do to deserve this?”

The only people that God made an agreement like that with, where they would get what they deserve is the Jewish people.

Follow the good, the laws of God, and if all the people did it than God would bless them.

They failed.

They failed miserably.

From the very beginning, they and we all know we would too but they justified their failures, didn’t take full faith in the law of God, worshipped false Gods, lacked any faith, and yet God proved faithful in that he allowed for depending on how you date it 500 to well over a 1000 years or more to determine the agreement,

The time between Moses and Ezekiel is likely greater than the time between you and the last Roman Cesears.

God is patient.

the covenant failed and it was Moses’s people, Abraham’s descendents, a people who worshipped God in Jerusalem who failed and so God allowed horrific judgement by the time of Ezekiel.

God’s patience was now turned to hand’s off judgement.

Horrific.

War and more war and more war.

With no red cross and no one bringing aid.

All of the leadership of what was supposed to be God’s people were being either killed or forced to leave the area of Jerusalem and walk to Babylon, like walking from Stockton to Pocatello Idaho.

It was bad, bad, horribly bad.

Ezekiel himself, no longer was in the area of Jerusalem but had been forced to go to Babylon

For Ezekiel this was waking up after the building was bombed out, this was life among complete failure and disaster.

For all of a 500 years the people of God worshipped him in the Temple in Jerusalem and now there was no way for many of them to worship in the Temple.

They were in Babylon, they were over 700 miles away.

Ezekiel didn’t even know if God would speak outside of the Temple.

All of us know what is like to be cut off from worshipping God in the way we know how.