This sermon delves into the book of Ezekiel, focusing on the impending destruction of Jerusalem due to the people's wickedness and departure from God's laws. It emphasizes the importance of acknowledging sin, the reality of God's judgment, and the need for repentance and turning back to God. The message contrasts the popular 'feel-good' gospel with the biblical truth of God's justice and the consequences of willful disobedience. It calls for a return to biblical correctness over political correctness, urging listeners to heed God's warnings and accept Jesus for salvation.

Now let's turn our Bibles to Psalm 5 for the scripture reading today. I'll read the first, the unnumbered verses, and Pastor Brian will lead the congregation reading the even-numbered verses as we stand for the Word of God. Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God, for unto Thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning. O Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up. For Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with Thee. The foolish shall not stand in Thy sight, and you hate all of the workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing. The Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful men. But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy, and in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple. Lead me, O Lord, in Thy righteousness because of my enemies. Make Thy way straight before my face. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their inward part is very wickedness. Their throat is an open sepulcher. They flatter with their tongue. Destroy thou them, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against Thee. Let all those that put their trust in Thee rejoice. Let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them. Let them also that love Thy name be joyful in Thee. For Thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous. With favor wilt Thou compass him as with a shield. Let's pray. Lord, as we come before You again today, we do ask with David, give ear to our words, O Lord. Consider our meditation. Hearken to the voice of our cry. Help us, Lord, to walk in a way that pleases You. Walking, Lord, in Your law. Walking in Your paths. Walking, Lord, so as to bring honor and praise unto You. May we, Lord, be obedient unto You in all things and teach us this day, Lord, what it is to observe and to follow Your ways. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. You may be seated. Tonight we continue our journey through the Bible, Ezekiel chapters four through six. And Pastor Skip has been giving us just such wonderful expositions as we go through the Word of God, opening up the scriptures, giving us understanding, and helping us in the study. And we encourage you, read through the Bible. Think of how exciting you'll be when we get to Revelation, and you can say, I've read through the entire Bible and studied through the Bible. How important that is for us to study, to show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that need not to be ashamed. So tonight we'll be continuing our journey, Ezekiel four through six. This morning I'd like to draw your attention to the fifth chapter of Ezekiel, especially verse 13, 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've 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 BC, and this is about the year 595 BC that he is giving this prophecy, and Jerusalem will be destroyed fully, and the prophecy will be fulfilled nine years later in 586 BC. This particular prophecy will be fulfilled. Ezekiel was a very colorful prophet. He did a lot of things to illustrate his message. In chapter four 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 five 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 balanced 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. 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 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. 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 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 second Peter 221 Peter wrote for it have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after they have known it to turn from the holy commandments which were delivered unto them. 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 it? 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. I mean Ezekiel was not a secret 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. 40 years ago Vance Habener who was a well-known minister and a 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 mister 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 mister 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 you know the good life and 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 scriptures 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. 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 bit 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 chapter 6 through 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 chapter 6 through 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. 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 24th 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. 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.