Ezekiel | Week 2 | Bill Bush | Full Service

hey. On on on on to the message day. Got back from being over in in England, and and and I have lots of stories I'll share as we go along, but one was interesting is how do you react when when you wanna be some place, but you're some place else?

Like, you know, Bill, I've told you before, I like being places I don't like getting there.

And coming home is even the worst, not that coming home is the worst. But after you've been on a long trip and you're tired, you just wanna get home. And so the nice thing about this trip is the way it all traveled. My last trip was it was just a direct flight from Heathrow to Phoenix. I like that. It's ten hours. Some of you ten hours long. I've gone so many flights now so long around the world. Ten hour flight. Get on one plane. Get off your home. Seems easy to me. So I was looking forward to that, But then our team started getting sick along the way. I thought I'd avoided it. I started to feel sick right as we're at the airport, and I got the chills and all that stuff. I got sick on the plane, so that was terrible.

So Bill's already not happy. But at least it's just one flight and I'll be home. We're flying. We're almost home. I'm watching a little flight tracker. We're actually just about over at Flagstaff.

It says we're gonna be down on the ground in about thirty five minutes. I'm super happy. And all of sudden, I happen to look back up at this thing a few minutes later. Now it says we're not gonna be on the ground for fifty minutes. And I'm like, what is going on? And then it goes up to an hour,

and I and I keep looking at how many miles away we are. And at first, it says a 122, goes down to a 118, then goes back up to a 124, then goes I was like, what is happening? So we get the little map thing up that shows the little plane kinda flying on the map, and it shows it going in circles. We're like circling

Flagstaff. Now a a a pilot friend of mine let me know last night, when you're in one of these holding patterns, you don't go in circles, you go in ovals. And I said, thank you. Now that I know it's ovals, it makes me so much happier about the whole process. So we were ovaling Flagstaff

for like twenty five minutes, and I noticed it. Jeff Larson, one of our pastors with us, we all noticed. I'm not sure if the rest of the plane noticed it. I think we were the first ones to realize we're going nowhere fast. And and then finally, the pilot excited says, if you haven't already noticed,

we're kind of in a holding pattern because it was last Friday. There's a big thunderstorm in Phoenix. The winds are so high, planes can't land.

And I'll let you know what we're gonna do next. Got off got back on like twenty minutes. So now we've been flying around for like forty minutes up there, and he says they don't think it's gonna clear out for at least the next thirty to forty minutes, and we can't stay around here any longer. We need to go refuel.

So then I look and the map all of a sudden goes to over 200 miles away and I watch the little dot that says Phoenix, move to Las Vegas.

We were over Flagstaff. I could've give me a parachute. I could land and rent a car and be home faster. He says, let me off this plane. And and and and and so as we're going to Las Vegas, it was like, I just wanna be home and now I'm going somewhere different. I don't know how you react,

but I know how we reacted because we when we went on this trip, we took a couple college students that were supposed to go to the internship this last summer, but their visas didn't come through in time. So we took them with us on this trip so they could experience over there. Well, one of them, Jordan, she's like Little Miss, like, Instagram story every day, so she actually posted Instagram. So she had her phone out, and she took pictures and captured our responses to this moment.

I don't know why, but she caught. So the first picture I wanna show you is that was me. She literally looked over and snapped the picture of me right against us. So we're going to Vegas,

and we're gonna land there, and we're in contact with our company. He said it with that awesome British accent, which made it seem not as bad. But but he he says he goes, and we don't know what's happening next. So we have no idea what's gonna happen when we get there. Does this mean I live in Las Vegas now?

So my reaction was, this is the worst thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I I I'm just I'm done. Then she turned to the other side and there's Jeff Larson, one of our pastors. This pretty much explains the difference in his personality and mine. He's smiling because he's happy about this. The guy's a psychopath.

He likes chaos. Actually, was excited. And you know what he said? I want almost wanted to punch him. He says, I hope when we get to Vegas that we can't fly back and we have to find another way home.

I'm like, keep talking like that. You're not even gonna get off this plane, man. So he's excited about it. He thinks it's an adventure. I'm like, okay, Bilbo Baggins. And then if you wanna know a third response, if you didn't notice right beyond his shoulder right here, the guy that's like wrapped up in a blanket,

that's Dave Sutherland, executive pastor here at Rock Point Church. He got sick too. He's asleep. He's just checked out. He's just out cold, zombified, whatever. I'm done.

That's I think that's really the way we respond a lot of times in life when we're we wanna be somewhere that we're not, and now we're we're either frustrated, we're either excited about the journey, or we just check out completely. How about you? And how about when it comes to where you're at in your life

in relationship to your relationship with God? How do you act when when God has you somewhere and you don't wanna be there? What do you do in those moments? And I think we do one of these three reactions. We either zombify, check out, we're either just fighting it and we're fighting the whole time, we're angry,

or we get excited about it. And I can't believe I'm saying this because if you know me and you know Jeff and the competitive nature of our relationship, I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm gonna throw up a little bit of my mouth. He's kind of the hero in this story.

Sentence I never thought I would ever say in the history of knowing Jeff. I'm just kidding with him. Jeff's awesome. But why you know why he was excited? Because he cared more about who he was with than where he was at. We had a good trip. This was a great team. We were having a great time and he was loving it. So to him,

it wasn't about where he was, it was about who he was with.

And I think that's what we're gonna see in Ezekiel today. We're gonna be looking at Ezekiel five, but Ezekiel four and five are a section that that I think what we're gonna see is is what was happening to these these these Israelites that have been taken into captivity when the Babylonians took over

ran over Israel. And God, it says really clearly. I mean, I don't to go into much background because Daniel did a great job last week of of laying out the whole book. Go back and watch that. But we know that God is pouring out divine punishment discipline upon his people,

and and and and and they got invaded and this group got taken into captivity. And now they're sitting in Babylon, and the problem is they're hearing they're listening to false teachers say, don't worry. We won't be here very long. God would never destroy

the city. God would never let the temple get destroyed. We're going home, but that wasn't God's plan, And and and and they're all upset. They're all like, we just wanna get home. We're gonna be out of here. No big deal. And and they're missing the point. And what we're gonna see today that still applies to us today is this big idea, who you are with matters more than where you are.

And this is in regards to our relationship with God. You see God all through Ezekiel says, I was there. He was with his people. The problem was the people weren't with him.

And so they were so caught up in wanting to get back to the the the temple, back to Jerusalem, back to all these things that they were listening to these false teachers. They didn't realize the reason they're where they're at is because they said they were God's people. They went to the temple.

They they they they did. They went through the motions.

But in the reality, they weren't with God. They were not on his side. They weren't connected to him. They were disconnected. And so he's letting these things happen, and the false teacher is saying, don't worry. We're good. This is an attack from the outside. This is an affront. We're God's people. We'll never be. We'll be fine. We're gonna get back. And that's not what they needed to hear.

And what we're gonna see is we look at this passage that that goes pretty dark. Be honest. It's pretty throat punchy, man. Even by my standards. It it it's it's jersey throat punch today. It's throw pull your jersey up over, put you in the corner, and then punch away. I'm just warning you, and it it it throw punched me this week as I looked at it, as we look at how this applies. But here's the thing we gotta understand about what we're about to read is is pleasure shows you what you want.

Pain shows you what you need. And they were listening and they just wanted the pleasure. They wanted the good thing. They wanted to feel good. They wanted to be back. But God was allowing the pain because they needed to see what they needed. And that was they needed the Lord.

Not just the blessings from the Lord, not just the stuff. And it's who you're with. Are you with God or are you more worried about where you're at? Is your relationship with God about playing a game so God will get you where you wanna be? Or is it about surrendering to a journey like Jeff did

and enjoying being on the journey in relationship with a God who loves you? And I think that's if you hear nothing else, remember that's really kinda what we're gonna see through this story. But let's unpackage this here. So like I said, chapter four and five is here's this guy, Ezekiel. This he became a prophet. He had trained to be a priest, and all a sudden, he's in a foreign land. He got carried off. He's trying to be faithful, and he's still there. He wanted to work at the temple, and now he's realizing God comes in and says, no. You're not going home soon. The I am wiping out Jerusalem. It's gonna be destroyed. The temple is gonna be destroyed. So the thing that you drew up loving, wanting to serve me, and working you're never gonna see that temple

again. And and and but the god still called him into a role of leading god's people, speaking god's word. He became a prophet in a in a dark time.

And and so what he's called is to give this message in opposition to these false teachers that are just telling them what they wanna hear. He says, no. This is bad, and this is the judgment of God, and we need to listen to the Lord. And God even says, you're gonna say it, and they're probably not gonna listen. Most of the people aren't gonna listen.

But then the way he told them to say it, he tells them how to give these illustrations. It's really dramatic. It's kinda funny if someone comes to church and go, why didn't you like that rock point? Know, the guy tells a lot of stories and he's bouncing around and and there's lights and it's it's kinda showy. You don't think that God's showy and dramatic? Read the bible.

He tells them exactly what to do. And he gives them all these, like, object lessons and physical things to do. So chapter four, he's like, hey. They don't get it. It's gonna get wiped out. So here's what you're gonna do. And he tells Ezekiel, you're gonna do you're gonna get a brick. You're gonna draw a map of Jerusalem on it. You're gonna put it in the middle of the city square. You're gonna build a siege around it.

And then before you act out the siege on it and literally attack the city, like, I don't know what I don't know how he did it. I'm gonna act like

I don't know. But he says before you do it, he's like, you're gonna tie get tied up, and you're gonna lay part of the day each day for three hundred ninety days on one side of your body. Then when you're done with the three hundred nineties, you're gonna flip over and do forty days on the other side,

while the whole time you're gonna dole out only a certain amount of food. You're gonna live on a really low ration of food. It's all symbolic. And he goes, and you're gonna cook it over your own poop,

of which he protested that in chapter four. He says, my uncle poop, that would defile me. I've never defiled myself. Don't make me do that. He said, alright. Alright. You can use cow poop. Now it's all symbolic. What he's trying to say here is what he's doing. He says, you don't think it's gonna be destroyed.

God is saying the three hundred ninety

days on this is the three hundred ninety years that he had been sending prophets to Israel to say, you may call yourself my children. You may have the blessing like Daniel said. You have the land. You have the law. You have the temple. You have all this stuff. But you are idolaters who are not following me. You're not with me, and now you're becoming my enemy, and I have waited four centuries.

I've been patient with you. And you are worse than the than the than the people around you. Matter of fact, if you go read the book of Jonah, God sends his prophet Jonah to Ninevites. He didn't even wanna go because he knows that I know God will forgive them if they repent.

He goes and gives one message, walks through the city, they all repent. God's been sending his people to his own prophets, to his own people for four centuries. And they're like, oh, we're good. So now he's like, that's why everything's getting wiped out. So you're gonna do 03/1940 to represent the Southern Kingdom.

The food thing, eating the food is gonna say, hey, this lay siege. It's gonna get terrible. They're gonna run out of food. And the and the reason he said burn it, eat over that, because now he's saying is you're gonna run out of so much food. And he says, he said, you can't even go through the motions anymore cause you won't be able to properly even do the sacrifices in the temple. You're not even gonna be able to do those things.

It's gonna be terrible. So here's and then he then where I'm gonna read chapter five is he says here's the results. And it's another crazy thing. He tells him to shave his head. So basically, Ezekiel wanted to be a priest and God made him a youth pastor.

I mean, what youth pastor isn't said, I'm gonna shave my head if we get a 100 kids in this youth group?

So he's doing this crazy stuff to kinda illustrate what's really going on that this is actually a divine discipline of God trying to get your attention. And what you're understand is when God brings discipline, he brings judgment. Young man, because he's God and we're not. He is sovereign. When I read chapter five, knows how many times he says, I, the sovereign Lord. He puts sovereign for the Lord to let you know that I'm God, you're not. And he talks about idolatry, he talks about trusting him, and he's talking to supposedly his own people.

And I wanna read this and I'm gonna unpackage kinda how we cannot make the same mistake and how it's some of this message still applies to us today even though that's old testament. God was mean. Now he's nice. That's not God's the same. He hasn't changed. So here's what's going on. Chapter five. Let's just read it.

He says, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a razor to shave your head and beard. Not only do you need to shave, now you're not getting your razor out of him. He takes a sword. I'm like, what is going on here?

And people like, I've seen you do worse, Bill. He goes, use a scale to weigh the hair into three equal parts. That's weird. He's weighing it in equal parts. Place a third of it at the center of your map of Jerusalem. After acting out the siege,

burn it there. Scatter another third across your map, chop it with the sword. Scatter the last third to the wind, for I will scatter my people with the sword. Keep just a bit of the hair and tie it up in your robe, then take some of those hairs out, throw them onto the fire, burning them up. A fire will then spread from this remnant and destroy all of Israel.

This is what the sovereign lord says. This is an illustration of what will happen to Jerusalem. I placed her at the center of the nations, but she has rebelled against my regulations and decrees and has even been even more wicked than the surrounding nations. She has refused to obey the regulations and decrees I have her to follow. Therefore, this is what the sovereign lord says. You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations.

You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you. Therefore, I myself, the sovereign Lord, am now your enemy. It's not a popular sermon we wanna hear that God would actually say, I'm now your enemy.

I will punish you publicly while all the nations watch because of your detestable idols. It was idolatry, we'll see that in a moment. I will punish you like I have never punished anyone before ever will again. Parents will eat their own children and children will eat their parents.

That actually happened during the siege. They ran out of food and they resorted to cannibalism. I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few who survive. As surely as I live, says the sovereign Lord, I will cut you off completely.

I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my temple with your vile images and detestable sins.

A third of your people will die in the city from the disease and famine. A third of them will be slaughtered by the enemy outside the city walls, and I will scatter a third to the winds chasing them with my sword. Then at last, my anger will be spent and I will be satisfied. And when my fury against them has subsided, all Israel will know that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my jealous anger. So I will turn you into a ruin, a mockery in the eyes of the surrounding nations and to all who pass by. You will become an object of mockery and taunting and horror. You will be a warning to all the nations around you. They will see what happens when the Lord punishes a nation in anger and rebukes it, says the Lord. I will shower you with deadly arrows of famine to destroy you. The famine will come more and more severe until every crumb of food is gone, and along with the famine, wild animals will attack you and rob you of your children. Disease and war will stalk your land and I will bring the sword of the enemy against you. I, the Lord, have spoken, and they all lived happily ever after.

No. That's a brutal story, isn't it? And it shows some attributes of who God is that I think in our culture where we embrace the love of God, which we should, to the extent that we turn Jesus into some vegan, crunchy, hippie love love love. And love means everything's okay. But there is the sovereign Lord.

The Lord God Almighty who is holy, he is just, he is righteous, and he makes promises. He promised to love us, he also promises to judge sin. And he keeps those promises.

And it's no mistake, the old testament does say the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. It's not an abusive fear, it's healthy respectful awe. And I think sometimes because of the blessing we have in Christ,

we forget the fear of the Lord.

That's exactly what they were doing. God had blessed them. He gave them the land. He gave them the law. He gave them the temple. You know what they thought? We're the chosen ones. We're fine. And they wouldn't listen to God how they live their life. They took the blessing,

but then wouldn't listen the rest of their life. And they started getting involved in all kinds of other stuff. They went to the Moses. They showed up at church and then they did whatever they wanted. We still have that temptation today. We still wanna do that today. And God will bring divine discipline

to get our attention. He will. So what does that mean for us? Because I know we don't live in Ezekiel five. We have the whole story. We have the rest of the bible. Have so what does that mean? What does that even look like? What's really going on here? Well, the first thing is

if you look at a keyword here, it's in verse 13 where he says, my jealous anger.

You understand what that means? It doesn't mean like God just was in a bad mood one day and got jealous. He's like, I saw you talking to Tim. It says he spent four centuries having loved these people,

having cleared the way for him, and that jealous anger is a term in the Hebrew that's denoted of a of a of a covenantal marriage, a relationship, a covenant made between two people to be faithful to one another. And the jealous anger is meaning one of the spouses, in this case, he's called the the the the the the

of Israel. In the New Testament, we're called the bride of Christ. So as Christians, it's still kind of the same thing that we are in a covenantal relationship, and it's the jealous anger means him, in his case, the husband, has been absolutely faithful. He has kept his word. He has done nothing but love sacrificially.

He has provided. He has done everything he would say. He has been 100% faithful and then some, and now the spouse has done nothing but continually cheat. That's an ongoing theme. Go read the book of Hosea. That's the whole story of the book of Hosea.

And it's about so it's the idea of my people whom I have faithfully and completely loved are cheating on me nonstop. You are adulterers with what you're doing with your life. You've accepted the blessing. You said you're married to me, but then you live your life like you're not.

And I'm going to judge that. My discipline is driven out of my love as we'll see later on to bring the remnant back. But it's still true. And basically, to be an adulterer in a relationship with God's love is what the definition of what idolatry is. Idolatry. God takes idolatry very seriously.

Very seriously. Matter of fact, this is what idolatry way I kinda define it if you wanna know it's if you take anything, even a good thing, and make it a god thing. Anything that you put in place that I need this more than god

is an idol. You wanna know how you have an idol in your life? Even a good thing. Like, if you'll do stuff with your kids, you won't honor God because it's because of my kids. I have to do that. I can't listen to God's word because of my kids. Your kids are your idol.

If you're like, well, I'm gonna start in a relationship with this person and go down a relationship that God's word says bad relationship, either they're not a believer and you're just but I'm lonely or it's it's the way you look at sexuality. You go against God's word. He says, why? Because I have to have this,

and I'm not gonna listen to God idle. And and and so it's not just making a carved image. It's anything you put in between,

and it could be good things. And that's what the Israelites said. They had taken the temple, the law, the law itself, the old testament. They had it, and they actually somehow took the words of God and turned it into an idol. They said, we're safe because we have the law. We don't actually listen to it. We don't do what he says,

but we have it. That would be like you coming to church and go, I have a Bible at my house. I never read it. If it disagrees with something I wanna do, I'm not gonna do it, but I go to church every week and I have a bible.

That's idolatry. You think that's keeping you safe.

And so he's saying, gotta judge that. I gotta get your attention and God still does that today.

Some of us are in this room and and life isn't working right for you and you keep getting mad and you keep getting mad and you think, oh, it's so unfair. I'm just being attacked from the outside and really the attack is coming from the inside.

The results are on the outside, but the truth is God's letting your life fall apart because he's trying to get you to live life in the way he died for it. Why on earth would we think the gospel is Jesus died for the darkest parts of how we live in order to give us a life that we can now go back to living that way?

How was that the gospel? He died so we can be on his side. So we can live in the power of the holy spirit, the life he called us to. He didn't just die to say keep living in sin, be okay with it, and just say I'm forgiven.

That's really what the Israelites were. They thought they're safe. We're God's chosen people. We're fine. He would never let these things be destroyed. And that's the thing. When it comes to idolatry, God will destroy anything. Anything that we make into the God thing. He will. He still does.

So how did they end up in this position? How do we not make this mistake? How do we become the church and and and how do we live as Christians and not fall into that same mindset?

That, oh, I got Jesus, I'm fine. I got saved by Jesus. Okay. Well, you get saved through power of Jesus, but you after you're saved, you still need Jesus. You still need to live with him and for him because that's what he died to give us. How do we avoid? I think the biggest mistake they made,

and I see it all through scripture, it's why a lot of the New Testament letters keep talking about this thing called legalism. You're saying, wait, if I'm supposed to listen to God, it's not legal. We live from his love not for it. But we don't just take his love and not live for him at all.

And legalism is I do things and then God will love me. In other words, if you wanna word it this way is I think what they were trying to do is they thought they were safe because they believed God was on their side.

In a lot of us, that's how we it's just a natural error we make. It's so easy to fall in this trap of you think that my living for God is all about getting him on my side. You know we do it all the time. You do it whether you wanna do it or not.

You're up for that big raise or you might be able to get that house you wanted to buy or or you're you you have that that person that you really want them to say yes to ask you out or you're you want that thing so bad that all of sudden, aren't you a little bit more careful the way you talk? Don't you make sure you show up at church?

Why? Because in your gut you instinctively think, I gotta make sure God's happy with me. Then he'll give me what I want. See the the the reason the bible talks against that so much is one, what we do doesn't save us, Jesus does. But what we do after we're saved matters.

And it doesn't matter because we do that to try to get God on our side. We make a mistake when we think we have to get God on our side. Because here's here's the reality that you'll see all through scripture. God is never gonna get on your side.

God will never get on your side. You know why? God doesn't take sides. He is a side. And Jesus died so we can get back on his side. It's not get him on yours, it's you gotta decide to go back to his side.

That's always the case. Matter of fact, go read Joshua chapter five. I'm not gonna turn there, but the book of Joshua. You know Joshua, Moses has died. There's a whole generation of people wouldn't trust God, so there was discipline. God stayed with them in the wilderness. He still loved them, but they didn't get the go into the promised land like he promised, but their kids did. And now Joshua now is leading them in. He's totally being faithful. They cross line to his the generation before failed and wouldn't trust God. They did. He's now leading this army towards Jericho,

the first objective. So he's doing all the right things, and then all of a sudden, they meet this lone figure on the road. This guy must have been incredibly intimidating because you stopped this entire army. And Josh was like, I'll talk to him. And he goes out, hey, are you friend or foe?

Basically, whose side are you on? I don't know what he looked like. I think it was just the presence that made him intimidating. There was something about him. And you know what the answer was? Neither. I'm the commander of the Lord's armies. Neither side.

He bases it on God. Matter of fact, we know that he was the angel of the Lord. It's most likely he's Jesus before he had a body. He had this theophany, and whenever you hear the angel of Lord because

Joshua fell down to worship him, and every time in scripture, it's just an angel. The the angel say don't worship me, only worship the lord. He allowed him to worship, and when he said, what must I do then?

What must I do? And he says, take off your sandals. You're standing on holy ground. Basically, this flown figure is saying, I am the sovereign lord god Almighty.

Now think about it. If when you got down and and started worshiping and stopped before this intimidating figure, and you go, wait a minute, wouldn't in your heart you think just a minute, wait, I just led the whole generation that decided to trust God. I'm leading an army towards the objective he told me to do. I just asked him whose side he's on and he said neither.

Why didn't he say he's on my side? And why did God choose to do this right as he's walking into his first major battle? Because he needs Joshua to remember something. He needs his army to remember something. He needs his people to remember something, and we today still need to remember this as followers of Christ.

God doesn't take his side, he is his side. And we make the decision, which side are we gonna be on?

The goal of your Christian walk is not to become a game of numbers to where I can do just enough good and just enough this so God will give me what I want. You need to want what God wants. You need to go where God wants you to go and you need to trust him because he loves you.

And he loves you more than you love yourself and he is the sovereign God who knows you more than you know yourself. So you need to decide. These Israelites were trying to say we're God's people but we're not on his side. And God will call that out and he will judge it and he will bring things

as a loving father does to discipline us, to get our attention for those who will turn back. So which side are you on? Are you really on God's side? Are you with him or do you just want something from him?

Because that's what's happening. And it still happens. I was reading my my devotional day before yesterday. It was second Timothy. I read the whole book because I'm a pastor and I'm more spiritual than you. It's four chapters. And I was in my read the bible through a year. I'm about to finish up year two on that goal.

And so I said, I gotta pick up the pace. No. Actually, I love reading the shorter letters all at once because you can really absorb the whole story when you read. Second Timothy is a powerful letter to me because it's it's Paul writing to a younger pastor and this is last Paul's last words.

He knew he was in prison. He knew he wasn't getting out this time. He knew he was about to die for his faith. And instead of complaining, pray that get out of here. This is unfair. I live this faithful life for God. Now I'm gonna be murdered. Look

what I did for you God. He's like, it was a joy to do what I got to do. I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I won. And he goes, and you do the same. And what he challenges Timothy to do is the same thing that Ezekiel is called in chapter three, the watchman. He says you stay the watchman, Timothy.

You stay the watchman because what is he called what's the watchman called to do? Ezekiel's called to be the watchman. This sermon, I'm called as a pastor. I'm called to be a watchman. The problem with being a watchman is is anytime you have to raise your voice and really challenge and yell at everybody and tell them something, it's never anything pleasant.

You know what watchmen did? They stood on the wall and they watched over a city. So if they start you hollering, it's not like, hey, you do you. You're doing wonderful. Great. Great. It's more like, there's an enemy out there. We gotta fight.

Or there's a fire over there. Everybody, get your buckets. It was never something pleasant. It wasn't what you wanted to hear. It was what you needed to hear. That's the watchman's job, and that's what Paul was saying. That's what I've been, and that's what you need to be, Timothy.

And just like in the Old Testament where Ezekiel was called out from God to share something that most people weren't gonna listen to,

Paul challenges Timothy to do the same thing. In chapter four, look what he says in verse three and four. For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears wanna hear.

That doesn't sound anything like today, does it? With the Internet and everything, if you are a Christian, you could probably find someone who'll teach any version of Christianity you wanted to be. If you hear something in this book

that doesn't jive with what you want, you'll find someone who'll teach you. You'll find someone that says, that doesn't really mean this. And I'll tell you, it's false teaching if they have to use 16 different historical vague references to go around what the Greek or Hebrew clearly says. Well, if you were there, you would've known this and this and this and this. If you gotta jump through a million hoops that the commoner of this time reading it wouldn't have understood, guess what? That's not what it meant.

But you will do that because you want to believe what you wanna believe. Same thing they were doing back thousands of years ago is the same thing we're tempted to do. Paul talks about it. I just read second Peter this morning.

And he's talking about the attacks from within, the false teachers within, and that's his last thing he wrote. And he talked about how he goes he said in in second Peter, he says, the prophets of old were like a lamp in a dark land.

They saw a bit of the truth, and they held the light of who God is the whole time. What's saying in Ezekiel still matters to us today because we still struggle with the same problem. Let's not sit there and say, well, I go to church. I believe in Jesus. I'm fine. When in fact, you might be on the other side. You might be God's enemy right now with the way you're living.

And life's never gonna work when you do it that way.

Says you'll chase and reject the truth and chase after myths. And down in verse 10, he talks about a guy that served with him named Demas. And he says, Timothy, Demas has deserted me because he loves the things of this life. So he's gone to Thessalonica.

There are people. There's some of you in this room that you think you're a Christian and you're not.

And some of you are eventually gonna be like Demus. You're gonna eventually figure that out and you're gonna walk away. Some of you won't. You'll stay in this lie and that's why these harsh paths that's why God's judgment comes because it should rock us awake. Matthew seven twenty one says it clearly.

It says not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my father in heaven will enter. Now that doesn't that sound legalist? Only those who do it. No. If you put that together with James and all the other scriptures, what it's saying is this.

If you say you're a Christian, but then have tons of stuff in your life that scripture clearly says do this, and you say I'm not gonna do that, and you consistently do that your whole life, it's saying you probably never were a Christian. Just like this group that's gonna be destroyed,

just because you were born Jewish didn't make you truly Israel. Not everyone who was in Israel was true Israel. Only the remnant was. And so the message of the prophet, this was light shining, the watch men message, the message I need to give us whether it hurts or not is some of y'all aren't Christians.

Or some of you are that are just living in an idolatrous life that you're missing out on the love that he wants and you're in danger of maybe abandoning the faith altogether.

And you need to wake up. You need to wake up because you're gonna miss out on the love that God has. So how? I just read this whole chapter and it seems bleak, doesn't it? But what Peter said about that lamp in the dark land,

that's what I love about the old testament. Some of say these books are weird, they're hard to understand. Yeah, they are. But all through the prophets, there's always the hope. And even in chapter five, right in the beginning of this chapter, there's the hope. Verse three,

keep just a bit of the hair and tie it up in your robe. How is that a hope? He said that's the remnant.

So as he the hair represented all the people, gonna burn, gonna die, not gonna get it, whatever. And now here we are in the camp. We're part of that third that got scattered to the wind. And out of us, some of us are gonna be faithful. Some of us are gonna be the remnant. God's gonna put you right in the pocket.

And you know all of us that know the Lord that are here today are here because of the remnant that God protected, that God called out. There's always been a remnant. There's always be a remnant. There's always been a remnant. So how do you know if you're the remnant?

Line up afterwards, I'll look in the face and tell you because I know things. No. It's not how it works. You know how you know if you're the remnant? Kinda what Matthew said, what James says, what the New Testament says, the remnant always repents.

All through the prophet says, turn to me and I'll turn back to you. Return to me, I'll return to you.

All the time, it says, repent.

You turn back. Repent. Repent. Repent. The New Testament says the same thing. First John one nine says this, but if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. Meaning, gotta confess. The first thing we need to repent from is sin in John. You need to turn to Christ. The first act of repentance

is to become a follower of Jesus. But even after you follow Jesus, we still are tempted. We still gotta fight our old nature. We still gotta fight those psychedemus. He was tempted to go on. We gotta fight that.

And how you know you're a pen for really the remnant is you will fight sin. Even if you lose to it sometimes, you fight it, you don't sleep with it.

You get in bed with it and you start to say, no. It's okay. I'll I'll go be good in every other way, but I'm keeping this sin and I will not listen to God. That's an idol and that could be a sign that you really, really, really aren't trusting Christ. Remnant repents.

That is why David was called a man after God on God's own heart, and Saul was completely rejected. You go read their stories, David did as bad a things as Saul did. But the key question was every time Saul was confronted, he made an excuse. Every time David was confronted, he repented.

He turned around and went the other way.

Are you willing to repent in your life? And here's what it means. I think we have a misunderstanding of repentance. Most of us think repentance is like when someone gets caught doing something illegal and they cry, but then you realize they don't really have any plan of changing. They're more sad that they got caught.

So when we repent, we think of it as I came to church, I felt really bad, I cried over it, and then I made this commitment that's kinda like this. Alright. God, you don't want me doing this. Alright. I've been cheating on my spouse. I'll stop. I've been looking at porn. I'll stop. I've you know, it's all these bad things. You know, I'm gonna stop doing this. I'm sorry, god. So we think repentance is alright. I'll stop going that direction.

Since that's obviously wrong, I still wanna get where I wanna go, so I'll stop going that. So I'll try to go around this. But you're still on the quest to go where you wanna go. The word repent means a 180 degree turn. Repent doesn't just mean stop and go around, it means stop and turn around. It means to go the other way.

And here's the thing when it comes to that. To go the other way is this, repentance isn't just turning away from what's wrong. That most of us think it's just turn away from what's wrong. No. It's turning towards what's right. It's returning.

So if you repent, you don't just turn away from the wrong, you gotta turn back to the right road. A lot of us get stuck in the same sins over and over again because you just try to stop them. You don't just stop it. You gotta start doing what God's called you to do.

And in the new testament, the book of James talks about if you know the right thing, what we're called to do as a when God says here's what I want you to do as a follower of me, if you know the thing you should do that you don't do, he says that's just as much as sin.

And the longer we're in church, the longer we learn the game, the more I think most of us in this room, you've been a Christian a long time, your biggest thing you need to repent from is not from bad actions, it's from no action. It's from refusing to do the right thing. We need to repent from that.

That's part of what his problem was with Israel. You were supposed to be the beacon on the hill.

I made Jerusalem as beautiful as it was supposed to draw people to me and instead you took the beacon and covered it with a bowl. That's what Jesus talks about. Who would do that? Who would light a light in the darkness and then cover it?

Jesus told a parable about the servants that were given something from their master to use and the one who buried it didn't do anything with it is the one that gets the most judgment. So the question is, in your life,

when it comes to following God, not just about the things you're doing that the bible says not to do, what part of God's word that he's called us to be as Christians are you refusing to turn to? Here's where it gets really throat punchy and it's because this message punched the snot out of me so I'm paying it forward.

Like this. I'll just put it bluntly. Bible's real clear. As the body of Christ, if you're a Christian, you've been given giftings from the Holy Spirit to serve in your church. So if you come here and say this is your church and you say you're a Christian, but you are not currently serving,

you are sinning right now and you need to repent from that. Ouch. And now a lot of you have an excuse and that's exactly what it is. Where God provides a call, he provides a way.

I don't know how you're supposed to serve, might be creative, might be different. I know we all have different issues going on, but you are called to be a part of the church, and that is just as much a sin as going off and and and murdering someone.

Have you thought about that, Christians? And I know the numbers. I know how many people say this is their home and they say they're Christians. There's a lot of you in this room that are sitting right now and need to repent. And your life's never gonna get where God wants it to go if you don't.

And guess what? The same goes for money.

God says, honor me with the money. It's all mine anyways.

And you know what's a gift? When we honor them with our money, we tend to not run after the things of this life like Demus did. We tend to not get caught in materialism. It's actually a protective thing for us to give, and then God takes what we give and multiplies it in the lives of others. So if you were a Christian,

you say you're a Christian, you say this is your church, and you don't give, you need to repent.

If you don't use your story to share Jesus and love with others, loving your neighbors, repent. This is where the rubber hits the road. You gotta decide. If you wanna know Jesus, you need to follow Jesus.

And some of you, there's a reason so many people are leaving the faith or saying they're deconstructing it. It's a popular thing with the young people. You know why you're deconstructing it? It's because you never actually lived it.

So life didn't work, and it's not because of the faith. It's because of our lack of it. Trust God where it really matters and see what he does. And here, I know this is a tough message. I'm the watchman. I don't like to share this stuff. I like to be liked. And I also know some of you are probably mad at me right now.

You're irritated that I just told you if you don't give and you don't serve, you're a sinner. I didn't tell you that. The bible does. So here's the deal. If you don't believe me, go look at scripture. Talk to God about it.

I'm just bringing you the message that says you wanna live the life God really died to give you, you're gonna have to start getting real. Because you can't experience that love to its fullest unless you live the life to the fullest.

And here's the other truth. We need people to serve and to give anyways because we took God at his word. The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. Most people with churches can't grow, we keep growing. We're reaching people. So I need God's people to be a part of that.

And I know the only people right now in this room that are getting mad at me are those of you that have been Christians for a long time. This is probably not your first rodeo, and you figured out how to justify in your head why you don't have to serve or give,

and now you're mad that I told you to serve or give. And you got a decision to make. Am I gonna trust what God says and really be a part of this church, or am I gonna get mad and look for another church? Either way, that helps us.

If you decide to leave, a different creative way to give us more room for people that wanna know and follow Jesus.

I'm just being real with you. I love you guys enough. That's the watchman. I will tell you what you need to hear, not what you wanna hear. Maybe no one's ever told you that. You can get mad at me, but I'm willing to do that. Because if I don't, I didn't do my job.

And what God called me to do is more important than whether people like me or not. I want Jesus to say, well done, good and faithful servant. Not great job pastor telling me exactly what I wanted to hear because that doesn't help you or me. So where are you at on that?

What do you need to repent from? What do you need to turn towards? Let me summarize it this way and we'll be done here because the best way I can try to explain this about this remnant and the repentance and how this really does come from God's love is the best way I can

how I get it is because I had a good father. He wasn't a perfect father, but my dad was a good dad. He got the big rocks right. And so the way I understand what God is doing in Ezekiel five, I can relate to it because I understood that my dad was the same way. Not in a perfect way like God.

But there was moments that if I disagreed with him, especially as they got towards the teen years, what I'm telling you if you're mad at me, what I told you to just do and repent from, go to God's word. Go talk to him. He'll let you talk. But at the end of the day, you gotta listen back. At the end of the he's the sovereign Lord. So I'd go with my dad. He'd say, hey, son, I think we need to do this. There'd be something I disagree. I go, I wanna do this. He goes, nope. That's not a good idea. I can't let you do that. And I'd argue, and he would let me talk and argue with him and debate it out and talk it out. Sometimes, since he's not perfect, he'd see reason and go, you know what? You're probably right about that. Okay. And, you know, sometimes he'll let me eat my food over cow poop instead of my poop. You know? There's there's things, you know? But but the reality was this,

there came a moment that when I kept talking, he might say, son, you're just gonna have to trust me on this. I'm older than you. I've had more experience. I know what's ahead. I know you. I love you. And you're gonna have to understand the reason I'm saying this, not that, is because I love you.

It may not feel like it, but it is. At that moment, I had a choice to make, to either agree with them or keep fighting. And if I kept fighting,

after the point we came to the conclusion, he finally listened and said, now it's time to go, he would look at me, and I've used this sermon before, so some of you can help me out with this, you heard it. He would say one phrase, squint his one eye, he used to be a soldier in war and stuff. He used this terminology. Does anyone know what he would say? Asked me a question.

Are we at war? I knew that that was that that just changed. That's when he said, I am the sovereign dad in this house and thus saith the Lord. And it's time for you to decide, are you on my side?

Because I'm not taking your side. The argument is not to get me on your side. It's you got a decision to make. Are you gonna be on my side?

And he'd go, are we at war? And what he meant by that is and he would say, the first time he ever started explaining to his, what do I mean by that is, son, I thought we're on the same side. I thought we're in the same family. You're my son. I'm the father. But right now, you keep fighting? It's like you keep invading my sovereign boundaries.

The sovereign boundary of me is the father and the leader in this, the one that knows more and knows what's going on, that loves you more than you even understand, and I'm telling you where we need to go, and you're attacking me. So now it feels like you're the enemy. It feels like you're declaring war on me.

And here's the problem, I gotta decide because if we're at war, the thing I do next is gonna be drastically different than if we're on the same side. And then he says, because if we're at war, you have to know something. You are a third world country coming at me with sticks and rocks.

And he goes, and I am a super nuclear superpower like the world has never seen. And I can bring down my firepower upon your life, and your life can become so miserable, and there is nothing you can do about it because everything you have came from me.

So step back. Are we at war? And I had a choice to make. Either fight a losing cause, lose privileges, lose the ability of the car, lose the ability to go out, don't get any money, get to this point. I could run away like the prodigal son, then I'm all on my own completely. I could do that.

Yeah. Proved you right, dad. Lived I did everything I wanted to as I live on the street.

Or I could surrender, repent, go the way he said. I used to get frustrated, but the older I get to look back, my dad wasn't perfect, but man, I am so thankful for how many times he said, are we at war? And he drew that line and he was willing to hold that line

and didn't just give me what I wanted because he gave me pain because he knew what I needed. He didn't just give me the pleasure of what I wanted.

And then I had a son. And then I understood it even more. Because I used the same thing with my own son and I can't believe I sat there the first time I ever had to say, son, are we at war? Oh my gosh, Lord God. Thank you, dad. Thank you. I get it now. I get it. He doesn't get it. He just doesn't get it.

I go listen to me and your father before him and the father before him, and you'll be saying this to your son someday. And if you keep it up, God's gonna curse you. You're gonna be saying it all the time. That's what Ezekiel five is. That's what these tough messages are. That's what repentance is about.

So what we need to ask ourselves, my challenge to us, including myself is this, is ask yourself this question.

Am I at war with God?

What area of your life are you actually becoming his enemy on?

And make your choice.

Keep fighting, go to destruction. Repent, surrender, trust God's wisdom, Trust his love more than your lust

and see what happens next. Father God, I thank you Lord. I thank you that you love enough, love us enough to go to war against us when we're heading towards destruction, Lord.

And so Lord, I pray for myself, everyone in this room, anyone watching online. The simple prayer that we would ask the same thing your servant David did in the Psalms so many thousands of years ago, that you would search our hearts and show us where we're at war with you. Give us the clarity of that. Give us the conviction

of that. And Lord, then give us the courage to repent, to not just try to stop, but to turn around and run after the things you've asked us to do. I thank you that you loved us enough, that you died so we can be a part of that life. Give us that courage, Lord.

And I pray especially for anyone that is really, really, really wrestling and struggling with this.

That God they would see that all of this is about your love. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. We still good? Hey, I love you guys. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io

for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.