sermonette: They That Mourn

Reviewing Ezekiel's Visions
Bill Cherry
Given 18-Jan-03; Sermon #593s; 14 minutes

Description: (show)

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Um, please turn to Matthew 5 and verse 4. So there is not, um, right, one of the beatitudes, it says, blessed are they that mourn, for they should be comforted. But does God want us to be downcast and grumbling and complaining type of people? What does he mean when he says blessed are they that mourn? Now, If we look to read the book of Ezekiel, we see that Ezekiel had many strange and wonderful adventures and visions, and one of his adventures, these adventures will teach us lessons about our God and what he wants from us. And so today we are going to see one of Ezekiel's Ezekiel's marvelous adventures and we are going to help this this adventure is going to help us understand a little bit more about what God means when he says blessed are they that mourn. So please turn to Ezekiel chapter 8. Now I want you to think about what if this happened to you. Starting with verse one, breaking in at the middle of it, it says, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me. That the hand of the Lord fell upon me. And then I beheld and lo, the likeness as the appearance of fire from the appearance of his loins even downward, has the and from his loins even upward as the appearance of brightness as a color of amber. And some, some translations say his top part looked like bright shining metal, glowing metal, as if they were burning, but his bottom looked like fire, his legs were looked like a flame. And he put forth the form of a hand and took me by the lock of the hair, and the spirit lifted me up. Between the earth and the heaven and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem. Now we will stop there. But what if you were grabbed by my hair by a bright glowing being and lifted up above the city, and you'll find out later God was angry and he wanted Ezekiel to see some fantastic things. But he, but to me I'd be shocked. I'd be in stark terror, and I have been in carolins and I have seen, I have ridden those little cars that drive ride from one place to the other, and I've been dangled over concrete. It gives me a very uneasy feeling and I do not do that. I rather walk and Skydiving would be a horrifying form of torture for me, but he was Ezekiel over the city of Jerusalem, and he said, Ezekiel, let me show you the abominations that are created in in that that the people do. And so he showed Ezekiel 4 visions, and each one he would say, I'll show you an even greater abomination after this. The first one was that he looked toward the north at the gate of the altar, and he saw an image of jealousy. It's called the image of jealousy, a statue which they used to worship. And then the second one. There was a room full of 70 elders of of Israel burning sensors and on the wall was creeping things, abominable beasts and all sorts of pictures of idols which they worshiped, and God says, look what these people do in the dark chambers of the imagery, and he said, they say, God does not see us. The God of Israel has forsaken the earth. And he says, I will show you an even greater abomination. And then he took him to the entrance of the temple where there were women weeping for Tamaz, and Tamaz was one of the religious figures that people worship, but there are women weeping in the gate of the temple, God's temple. And he said, I will show you an even greater abomination. The men are going to do the women one better, and there are about 25 men kneeling with their backs to the temple, facing east toward the sun and worshiping the sun. Now God at this point was furious. And I think when he took Ezekiel by the lock of the hair, it was not a gentle jerk where all the music in the fairy tale, I think it was a, a jerk. I think he felt a lot of pain and he had God's wrath. As if some of your friends would say, look what somebody's doing, look at this, and they were very angry. So let's read verse 17 and 18 and see what God says about this, these things that he showed Israel. And he said unto me, have you seen this, oh son of man? Is it a light thing that the house for the house of Judah that they commit these abominations which they commit? Uh, here. For they have filled the land with violence and have returned to provoke me to anger and lo, they put the branch to their nose, and I take this to mean they are suffering from their own doings. um, and then he says, therefore I will deal in my fury. My eyes shall not spare, neither will I have pity, and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice. Yet I will not hear them. And now the episode continues and in verse in chapter 9, you've probably heard this read before, but he's talking about the, the first, I mean chapter 8. And he He cried in a loud voice and called, Let the people, the keepers of the city come forward. And then it said 6 men came forward, each with a destroying weapon in his hand, and one of them was clothed in white linen, and he had a pen and ink, and this is what he said in verse 4. And the Lord said to him, this is the one with the with the pen and the ink. He said, go through the midst of the city, or go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem and set a mark on the forage of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. Excuse me. So he was to mark the people that cried inside or sighed and cried. And to the others, he said in my hearing, Go you after him through the city and smite. Let not your eyes spare, neither ye have pity. Utterly slay the young, old, both maids, little children, and women. But come not near upon the man on whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. And then they begin at the ancient men which are before the house, so. The only people that were spared were the people that cried and sighed because of the abominations. They looked through the eyes of God. They saw through the eyes of God in the stairs instead of saying ho hum. They said, what horrendous abominations these men are committing with their With their idolatrous worship. Now To to mourn is to look with the eyes of God and to look at see what the sins of our people are doing and to begin to feel and see the result of their sins and cry and sigh to God about them. So this is what God means when he says to mourn. Now I want you to consider. What We have heard for the, for by our ministers that John has given us sermons that show how people approach God with a casual manner and it's linked to idolatry, is linked to false religious worship and a false concept and how these things are reflected a man's heart and the way they feel. So we have false religious concepts. Richard's given us. Sermons about how people can take the intimate spiritual and physical relationship that God intended only in marriage to bind a man and woman together to represent him in his church and how people have taken it and dragged it through the dirt, exploited it, use it to sell commercial things and, and just Made a sham of something that God made pure and holy. And then as it says in verse 17 of chapter 8, the land is full of violence, and we've heard from Martin about how this earth has been filled with violence about the murder of unborn children and babies. It's been legalized. It's been approved, advocated, and we can look and see many, many more horrendous things in this society because of false religious worship, because of casual attitudes toward the Lord, things that God has given us. So, our society and our situation is similar. to what was going on in Jerusalem, and we have many things to cry and sigh about, the things that we can see and these people that were mourning, God spared. And it's almost like if you do not cry and sigh. You die and that's almost, well, that's what happened in this vision that Ezekiel saw. He saw many other things, but God wants us to mourn. He wants us to mourn not only for what we see in Jerusalem or let's say in our own. Society and see the horrendous things that happen and result, the tragic result that we see from people's sins, but he wants us to sigh and cry for our own and see some things that we do and, and, and be concerned about that and try to change. God does see, he has not forsaken Israel, and he knows exactly what we do, and he knows exactly what the sins of Israel are. But he is loving. He is patient. He's patient with us. He's patient with the whole world. But there is going to be a time of judgment for the abominations that are being committed by his people. And he has special people, special feelings for people who cry and sigh, who mourn for abominations that they see in Israel. So through Ezekiel's fantastic adventures, or I say through one of his fantastic adventures, um, we can gain a little better understanding of what God means when he says blessed are they that mourn.