Ezekiel 34-37: …But God — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

Transcript

Well, once again it’s a great pleasure and a privilege to take part in this service, and we are following on the Sunday mornings, we’re going in a journey through the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. I have to warn you that the book of Ezekiel is, if we’re likening it to a television programme, it’s more like the SBS News than it is like a commercial comedy.

It’s not a lightweight, frothy type of book, it’s a solemn sober sort of book because it’s recording God’s servant Ezekiel in captivity with God’s people.

And what needed to be said, and Ezekiel’s role was a bad news, good news message. The bad news of course was to persuade the people that they were in captivity, they were in exile because they had turned their back on God, and they had gone their own way. And what a very difficult thing it is to get people to confess and admit that they have turned their back on God and gone their own way.

Those of you who watch occasional confession on television in the news. You’ll see a sports player who’s been caught doing something and his moment will come to say a few words. And instead of abject apology so often, as you know, this is a very difficult time for me, this has been a very hard time. And there’s no apology. There’s no confession.

I met with a man this week who is basically running his marriage, it seems to me by getting his wife to do all the confessing in the marriage. That’s the way he controls it. She’s wrong, he’s not.

And to get a prayer that goes up from a person that simply says to God, have mercy on me. It’s very difficult

That’s the bad news Ezekiel has to bring to the people. You’re in this exile, you’re in this captivity because of you’re turning your back on God. Now the second thing of course is the good news. He is able to tell the people that there is going to be a return to the promised land. It will be by the grace of God, who’s the only one who can rescue. He’s the only one who can help a people who don’t deserve it and are not able to do it, but God will do it, and so he has this wonderful piece of news to be able to tell them.

Hope 103.2 is proudly supported by

Now in the last century there was a great preacher who I’ve mentioned quite often, Welsh preacher called D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and he said on one occasion, and perhaps on many occasions that the whole of the Bible could be reduced to two words. And the two words he suggested are but God.

…But God

And he used to say it with a great Welsh growl, which I will not attempt to imitate for you. But uh he would say, for example, you know, here’s the man and the woman in the garden, and they take the fruit that they shouldn’t take and they turn their back on God, and it looks as though there’s a total disaster, but God comes in and works out a way to restore them.

Or there’s Abraham and he and his wife are too old to have children, and yet he is expected to have a child in order that there would be a dynasty and a nation, and it’s impossible, but God is able to create and bring about a child and a family and a nation.

And then the Israelites are in Egypt and they’re caught, they’re trapped, they’ve got no way of getting out, and then but God makes the way for them and leads them out under Moses, and they come to the Red Sea and when they get to the Red Sea, once again they’re trapped and they’ve got the Egyptians behind them and they’ve got the Red Sea in front of them, and there’s no way of they’re gonna survive but God.

And he separates the sea.

And then in the very dark world which looks as though it has no hope and no answers, but God, Jesus Christ comes into the world, and then they nail him up on a tree and it looks as though it’s all over, but God brings through the cross salvation and resurrection, and the world still looks as though it’s in a bit of a mess, but God, we’re told in the scriptures is in total control and total care.

And so this wonderful message of but God rings out through the pages of scripture, and you get it again here in Ezekiel 34. It’s pretty well been bad news up until now, but God, he’s going to do some something very wonderful, he’s going to get rid of the old shepherds.

And he’s going to himself take up the job of being the shepherd. So I want to divide Ezekiel 34 into two parts this morning. First of all, the crime of the shepherd kings. And then the second point this morning is going to be the gift of the shepherd king. Now this is totally appropriate for this situation.

I don’t know what is on your plate at the moment. I don’t know what you think of this service, I don’t know what you’ve come in for, I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but I want to tell you that what we’re gonna look at today, although it is 25 or 600 years old, it is totally important for you.

And when I shake your hand at the door at the end, I’m going to ask you, what was the point of this message today so that you’ll be able to say, boy, that was, that was relevant. Even if you don’t understand what I was talking about, you’ll say it just to cheer me up.

And you’ll say yes that was a very, very timely message from God’s word.

So first of all, the crime of the shepherd kings

Will you turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel chapter 34.

And you’ll see that the passage begins like this, the word of the Lord came to me, Ezekiel. Prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says, woe to the shepherds of Israel, who only take care of themselves should not shepherds take care of the flock.

Now friends, the question we’re asking is, who got the Israelites into trouble? Who caused them to head off to captivity and into Babylon?

Because last week, if you were here last week, we saw that a person who ignores God, their blood will be on their head, you ignore God, you pay.

Ezekiel chapter 18 says, don’t blame your father, don’t blame your grandfather, the soul who sins is the one who will die. So everybody’s responsible, the whole of Judah, the whole of God’s people are responsible, but some people are more responsible than others, namely the leaders. And Ezekiel identifies in verse 2, the shepherds of Israel, and the shepherds of Israel, he says, are self-seeking, and they are irresponsible because if you look at verse 5, the sheep were scattered.

There was no shepherd, and when they were scattered, they became food for all the wild animals.

Now if you’re like me, you’ll read this word shepherd, and you’ll think, as I do, by nature, pastoral leaders. And I want to point out to you that when the Bible talks about shepherds, it is not talking about pastoral leaders. It’s not talking about priests and clergy.

That’s not to say that a minister or a church worker shouldn’t read this chapter and be extremely concerned for good pastoral care.

But when Ezekiel spoke and said woe to the shepherds, he actually meant woe to the kings.

It was the kings of Israel, the kings of the nation, who were the shepherds, because to rule or to shepherd was basically the same thing. And you may be interested to know that God is described in the first book of the Old Testament as almighty God and shepherd.

Because he’s the ruler and the shepherd. It’s not an accident that when God decided to choose some people to rule his people, he chose, for example, Moses, who was a shepherd, and then later on he chose David, who was a shepherd.

In the book of Jeremiah, God says, woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter my people, I will raise up, and then you expect it to say, I’ll raise up a good shepherd, and he says, I’ll raise up a king who will reign wisely. Psalm 23, known to everybody in this building, the Lord is my shepherd. It goes on to say, his rod and his staff, they comfort me. The word for rod is literally royal sceptre. His royal sceptre and his staff, they comfort me, see the king and the shepherd combined. So Ezekiel is not ignoring the kings and going after the clergy.

He’s speaking to the kings, he’s speaking to the decision makers of God’s people, and there were apparently 43 kings in the history of Israel.

And it is estimated that probably 3 of the 43 were consistently good. Not perfect.

But it’s hard to find kings who come to mind of all the kings apart from David and Hezekiah and Josiah, who were consistently good. And so when Ezekiel turns to the kings and rebukes them as a historical group, he’s pretty right. Now he’s not against kings per se, but he’s against godless kings.

And what was it that these kings did or did not do? Well, the answer is in verses 2 to 6, as we’ve seen. They thought about themselves more than the flock. They took what they wanted in terms of food and wool.

But they didn’t verse 4 strengthen the weak or heal the sick or bind up the injured. They didn’t bring back the strays, they didn’t search for the lost. They they ruled them harshly and brutally. As we say, verse 4, they were harsh, they were brutal. Verse 5, they allowed the sheep to get scattered and go into exile, and all the time they were doing this to the people who were God’s people, and they were meant to be looking after God’s people, and so he was going to call them verse 10 to be accountable.

Now there’s another group in Israel who the prophet speaks against in verse 17 to 22. It’s obviously a group among the flock who Ezekiel the prophet calls the fat. This has got nothing to do with the physical fatness, this has got to do with the spiritual fatness. This has got to do with a kind of a lethargy and a laziness spiritually.

And uh it’s quite obvious that whatever the kings were doing which was infecting the flock, it was quite quickly spreading down into the flock, and so there was a whole group within the flock who were also causing many, many others to suffer. As one writer says, it’s probably the self-serving lay leaders of the community.

So God speaks to Ezekiel, and he tells the people that he can see their irresponsibility, he can see it in the palace, and he can see it in the ranks of Israel. Now there’s something very important for you to notice.

And that is this.

When Ezekiel talks about all the things that the shepherds are doing. Serving themselves, neglecting the flock, not feeding, not binding, not caring, not looking for, he’s actually talking about symptoms. He’s talking about the effects.

He’s not here talking about the cause or the reason why these things are happening. What’s the cause, what’s the reason?

What’s the disease behind these symptoms? And the answer we know from the rest of Ezekiel, because we’ve been working our way through Ezekiel, is that these leaders had replaced the living god with some kind of idol.

Either half the truth about God or none of the truth about God, they had replaced the living God with an idol, and you cannot replace God with another god.

Without suffering the consequences, the greatest sin, the greatest blunder which the kings of Israel made was that they turned their back on the living God and they went after something or someone else. And in the early chapters of Ezekiel in chapters 5 to 7, it describes the idols, and in chapters 8 to 9, it describes the effects of the idols, and it says that where God should have been worshipped in the temple, the idol was in the temple.

And even the leaders were worshipping the idol, and this was spilling over into the community and so that there was injustice and there was bloodshed and there was dishonesty going on right through the people.

And the cause, you see, the reason.

Is a new god, not the biblical living God.

Many of you have been around this church long enough and have heard me enough to have heard me talk about the fictional story of the businessman who goes down to North Sydney and then he’s got an office somewhere on the 80th floor or something like that, but instead of getting the lift to the 80th floor each morning, the first thing he does every morning is he shoots down to the basement, opens his briefcase, gets out his trowel, and he chips out a little brick and puts it in his brief.

It’s a fictional story because I hope you know that big buildings are not made with little bricks. But uh there is this guy, he’s picking a brick every morning and he’s putting it in his briefcase and he’s taking it home because he’s building an extension to his garage or something like that back home.

And after a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, the cracks appear on the 80th floor right where he is and he looks at the cracks in his office, and he calls in the interior decorators and he says, you know, can you plaster this up, can you paint over this, can you wallpaper for me?

But of course when the structural engineers arrive, they don’t go up to the 80th floor and look at the cracks on the wall, they go down to the basement because they know perfectly well that the problems are in the foundations. It’s the removal of the foundations which has caused the cracks on the 80th floor, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Ezekiel here.

There’s been a removal of the foundations of the living God’s truth, and now the effects are being seen in the lives of the people, and God is against them.

Now friends, whenever you ignore the God of scripture, whenever you ignore the scripture of God, there will be consequences. In the short-term or the long-term, there will be consequences. You can get away with it for a few decades. You can appear to be a good citizen. You can appear to be a good parent, a good husband.

Ignoring the living God and then suddenly everything will unravel.

We see this in the garden, don’t we, with the couple, they turn their back on God and things unravel, we see it in the promised land with the Israelites, they turn their back on God, things begin to unravel. We see it in the news every day, the consequences, the symptoms of the disease of our world, we see it in the people who live around us, lovely, lovely people who live around us, but still we see the consequences of people who take no note of the god who is living and powerful.

And even if you choose another god who is quite popular to be your number one devotion, maybe your family or maybe yourself or maybe some new religion, it will in the end fail you.

And fail you most miserably. Once you break down the vertical relationship with God, it has horizontal spillover. It may be that there’ll be more exploitation.

It may be that there’ll be more selfishness, it may be that there’ll be less compassion, it may be that there’ll be less service going on in the world, but in the end, we desperately need the relationship with God and the love which flows from God. It’s the biblical God, you see, who is able to dry up selfishness. It’s the biblical God who’s able to unleash sacrificial love.

And when he gets rejected for idols, no wonder the effects are like the beginning of Ezekiel 34.

But when God is on it, he begins to gather people together and tend them and feed them and look after them and rule them with justice and in peace. So it is no small issue. No small issue, who you serve.

Bertrand Russell, who wrote the book Why I’m not a Christian, says in the book, this is what it is like when you are living consistently with life as an accident. There was nobody who was prepared in many ways to face up to.

Life as an accident, like Bernard Russell.

And this is what he said.

Nothing and no one can preserve an individual beyond the grave. So all the labour and all the devotion and all the inspiration of your life and of human genius is destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system.

Everything is to be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. And then he said this, only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

See what he calls you too?

The place is a black hole.

You’re just here by accident and you’re just flashing through, so just build yourself on nothing. That’s what he calls you to. And once you begin to think like that, that really has effects. It’s no wonder the people who’ve run with that have caused huge damage in our world. And once you replace the god of the scriptures, you end up with a tyrant much worse than him, as you know, those of you like me who know what it’s like to serve someone or something which is not God, it ends up quite quickly becoming a terrible tyrant.

It’s only God who is able to be served and to free you at the same time, every other god you serve will enslave you, sooner or later. And even friends if you serve or give yourself to or devote yourself to or get a fixation on something which is good, like a loved one. A hero.

Even a good part of creation, in the end, it will fail you and you’ll find that you’ve been so terribly mistaken.

Did you read in the paper the little article about Lest we forget. I’d never heard this before, but the article pointed out, and somebody may need to check this and tell me if it’s correct, but apparently the lest we forget, which comes from the Kipling poem written in 1897, was written by him in the face of the great success of the British Empire, calling on the bridge empire not to forget and be humble before God, thankful for the great things that had happened, but not forgetting the God before whom we live.

And therefore, his concern was lest we forget God, to give him thanks and to live humbly before him.

So we need the God you see who frees us, and the second half of the chapter, the second issue is God says he was going to take back the role of being the shepherd, the gift of the shepherd king.

The gift of the shepherd king

He says in verse 10, I’ll remove them.

This is gonna be the end of the kings of Israel, this is gonna be the end of the monarchy, the monarchy system is over. Now of course God had always been their king and the human kings had meant to recognise him and honour him and serve him and get the people to do the same, but they didn’t, and so now the king’s system is over and the theocracy is back in place. And you’ll see from verses 11 to 16, God says what he will do. And this little phrase, I will, I will, comes in.

This is what God says he will do, and this is what it’s like if God is your shepherd, your king. First of all, he will gather the lost.

Verses 11 to 13.

This is what the sovereign Lord says, I myself will search for my sheep, and I will look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock, so will I look after my sheep. The people who have wandered away from God.

The people who feel their distance from God, the people who feel their separation. God goes looking for those people. And he goes right around the world. He’s not just looking for one little group, he’s not just looking for one little type. He goes right around the world looking for his people. And the people who could not find their way back to God even if they wanted to.

He will go looking for them, he will go seeking them, and he will go rescuing them. So there won’t be any hopelessness left in the world in this sense that there is a way back to God from the dark paths of sin.

There’s a way that is open, and you may go in.

There is no more hopelessness, you see, because God goes looking for his people, and there’s no more excuses for separation from God. There’s no reason why you now need to invent a religion to keep yourself happy, you don’t need to invent a religious ritual in order to keep sort of turning wheels.

Because God’s son, Jesus Christ has come into the world and said, I’ve come to seek and to save the lost. I can do it and I will do it. He gathers the lost. The second thing he does, verses 14 to 16, is he tends and feeds his flock.

Verse 14.

I’ll tend them in a good pasture. And they’ll lie down in good grazing land and they’ll feed in a rich pasture. I myself will tend my sheep, he’ll look after his people, he knows what you’re going through, he knows what’s on this week for you.

He knows what’s going on in the home, he knows what’s going on in the diary, he knows what’s going on in the medical issues, he knows every issue that’s going on in your life, and he knows how to look after you.

He knows how to repair the damage between you and God and so he is able to repair so much of the damage which is in your life. He’s able to help you with relationships, he’s able to help you with trouble, he’s able to give you the resources for tomorrow and for next month and for next year. He’s able to help you in your grief. He gives you food that is promises on which you can stand. Jesus said, my sheep listen to my voice, I give them eternal life.

And so all the doubts that you may have about eternal life, you just turn your mind to the cross and you say, there at the cross, he made eternal life possible.

And bear in the promises he makes eternal life sure.

He tends and feeds his flock, and the last thing, verse 20 to 31, is that he’ll rule justly and peacefully. When he’s your king, I’m not saying lack of suffering, but so much peace flows.

He says in verses 20 and following that he will put somebody on the throne called David. This is not of course the ancient King David, he was long dead, but it’s somebody who would be in the line of David and so somebody is gonna come and take the throne, and this person, verse 11 is going to be God himself, but he’s also going to be from the historical line of David, and we discover in chapter 37 verse 25, he’s going to be on the throne forever. Now friends, who do you know?

Who could come and sit on the throne of the universe and run it forever, who can be God Himself, and of the line of David, we only know one person and that person is Jesus Christ.

We read in this chapter that the covenant is going to be renewed, God will be their God. Verse 30, you will be my people. It will be a covenant of peace, verse 25, the beasts will be removed, the enemies will be removed, fear will be removed, and there’ll be blessings, there will be showers, there will be produce, there will be safety.

Now some of this of course comes true in this world.

There is peace, there is protection, there is blessing, there’s reassurance, there’s joy, there’s fellowship, there’s relationship, some of this comes true in this world.

But a huge amount of what Ezekiel is talking about is actually gonna come true in the next world, because Ezekiel is describing in these verses a perfect world, not a fallen world.

And so great as it is to be a believer and to have the sins forgiven, and to be in fellowship with God and have the future secure, in actual fact, as we’ve been told again and again, the best is yet to come.

the best is yet to come.

Now can you imagine with all of that in the background of the Jewish brain, Ezekiel chapter 34, can you imagine a shepherd who gathers and who feeds and who rules? Can you imagine the impact of Jesus walking into the Jewish world and saying, I’m the good shepherd.

Read your old Testament.

I’m the good shepherd.

And he’s not announcing himself to be a cuddly person.

There is something that’s cuddly about Jesus, but he’s not actually announcing himself to be cuddly, he’ll pick up little lambs and cuddle them. He doesn’t get a reaction, gee, that’s lovely. Soon as he says I’m the good shepherd, do you know what they do?

They get angry.

Why did they get angry?

Because he’s claiming to be God who will gather from the world and feed his people and rule from the throne. And who will get rid of the proud. And welcome the humble.

And that makes the, the proud angry, and I can prove that to you because in John chapter 10, when Jesus said, I’m the good shepherd, do you know what they did? They picked up stones, they picked up rocks, and he said to them, for which of my miracles are you going to kill me? And they said, it’s not for your miracles that we’re gonna kill you, it’s for blasphemy because you make yourself to be equal with God.

And they picked up, you see exactly what Jesus was saying, that when he said I’m the good shepherd, he says, I’m the man of Ezekiel 34. I’m the man of Psalm 23. I’m the one, I’m the one who’ll gather from around the world, and friends, Jesus can gather from around the world.

20 years ago I went to the conference in Manila of nations, representatives from the nation churches, and I sat there with more nations represented than can get together at the United Nations.

And there were men and women from churches right around the world, we were listening to the believers, even in that stage, we were listening to the believers from China and from Russia.

Telling their stories, God’s people gathered from right around the globe.

And Jesus, of course, is able to truly tend and feed his flock, he’s able to give you a life which will last. He’s able to give you promises that are trustworthy, and he’s able to rule and grant you peace and covenant relationship with God, so that although the world is moving into a terrible sunset,

You the believer are moving into a wonderful sunrise. Not because we wish it’s true, not because we’re in fairyland, but because Jesus Christ has proved it and promised it.

Well, you see, he’s identified himself as being the person in charge. I want to ask you as I close this morning whether you’re still vague. I want to ask you whether you’re still vague about God.

You know, you say, yeah, I do believe in God, I tick the God box.

That’s way too vague, way too vague.

You say I yeah, I’m reasonably religious. Way, way too vague.

In the end, it’s Jesus Christ who says,

I’m the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me.

You’ve really got to do business with Jesus Christ, and there are some here today, many here today who know exactly what that means. He’s the one who’s in charge.

Now that will either make you joyful, or it should make you angry. Jesus Christ is in charge. You’ve really only got two choices.

Either you say yes, and that’s joyful, or you say no, and you’ll be judged. And he says he’s the only one who really cares, he’s the shepherd. He knows how to gather the lost, tend his sheep, and grant peace.

And again, I want to hope today that there will be not too many who’ll be vague about that. Don’t say, you know, I’m good. I think I’m good enough. No, no, no.

When Jesus died on the cross, he provided a 100% rescue salvation.

So that you might give up on talking about yourself and what you’ve done and what you’ve not done and you might turn and you might say, there is Jesus Christ, he is the secret. He’s the key.

Somebody said once that the key to Christianity is personal pronouns, it’s to be able to say the Lord is my shepherd, not just the Lord is a shepherd. But the Lord is my shepherd.

And Jesus Christ stands up in the wake of Ezekiel 34 and says there’s no king who’ll really look after you.

But I will.

Let’s Pray

Our gracious God, we thank you today that in the face of the failure f the world and the failure of ourselves, you have sent into the world the faithful, obedient, loving, gracious, merciful, effective, Jesus Christ.

And we pray that you would give to all who are gathered here today such encouragement of his power and his goodness. That we might be drawn to him.

And we might trust him and we might obey him. And we might find him to be one who welcomes and one who sustains and one who guards and guides. All the way to his presence.

So we give you thanks for this chapter today and pray that you would help us to receive it and rejoice in it, and we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Subscribe to the ‘Christian Growth’ Podcast

Feature image: CanvaPro