Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Text: Ezekiel 2:1-5
Goal: That the hearers repent of their ignorance.
Outline:
1. In his grace, mercy, and love, God speaks to a rebellious people.
2. God, in grace and mercy, changes people through His Word.
Sermon
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Today we hear about the call of Ezekiel. It is a sad call. God calls Ezekiel because the people of Israel have become Insolent. Do you know what that word means? It means to be rude, disrespectful. Are you that way with mom and dad sometimes? Yes, you are. Sometimes, we still are even in old age because of our sinful natures. The people of Israel were rude. They broke God’s commands. They did not respect or honor God. Do we still do that today? How does God act when we are insolent? How does God still speak to an insolent people today? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
By the time of the Prophet Ezekiel, the nation Israel had divided into two kingdoms: the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom (Judah). Both kingdoms were brought to an end by a foreign power at different times. After the fall of the Northern Kingdom, the Southern Kingdom continued for another 136 years. But by Ezekiel’s time, the Babylonians from Mesopotamia dominated the Southern Kingdom and had taken many of its people into exile. One of the captives was Ezekiel himself, who lived among the exiles. Eventually, the Babylonians would end the Southern Kingdom.
Why were Israelites in exile in Babylonia, and why did the Northern and Southern Kingdoms come to an end? This happened because the large majority of people in both kingdoms were wicked. They engaging in false worship of idols and in many other ways going against the will of God. They were unfaithful to the covenant God had established with them through Moses; they rebelled against the Lord.
Our text from Ezekiel is about God and a rebellious people, specifically the Israelites, mainly those from the Southern Kingdom, but not entirely excluding descendants of those from the Northern Kingdom. We’ll focus on how God Deals with Rebellious People,
Amazingly, in His Grace, Mercy, and Love.
This will lead us to consider God acting in the same way with rebels of all times and places.
I. In his grace, mercy, and love, God speaks the Law to a rebellious people.
God spoke to the rebellious Israelites (vv 3–4) in exile in Babylonia through the prophet Ezekiel. God called and prepared Ezekiel to be his prophet—his spokesman or messenger, who would receive messages from the Lord and deliver them to the people (vv 1–3). He warns Ezekiel from the very beginning that the people will not listen to him.
Ezekiel in his prophetic ministry spoke to the people God’s Law, showing them their transgressions. He explained to them that they were in exile because of their violations of God’s commandments. God was chastening them because of their many sins against Him, because they constantly broke His commandments. Because of the continuing wickedness of their countrymen back in the Southern Kingdom, that kingdom would be terminated by the Babylonians. Their political authority, wealth, and prosperity would come to an end.
1a. Ezekiel in his prophetic ministry spoke God’s Gospel to the people.
That was not all that Ezekiel said. He reminded them of God’s promises that someday a Savior, the Messiah, would come. This deliverer would be an Israelite and would save his people from their sins. In fact, he would make atonement for the sins of the whole world. Even though the people do not want to hear it, even the rebellious Israelites would have to admit that a true prophet of the Lord had been among them (vv 4–5).
God speaks to rebellious people of all times and places through his Word, Scripture. God caused Scripture to be written—both the Old and New Testament—through his inspiration of prophets and apostles. They wrote the very words God wanted to be recorded.
Through Scripture, God speaks to a rebellious people his Law. He spoke though Ezekiel to the people of his day and God continues to speak likewise to us today. All people by nature are rebels against the Lord, his enemies, including you and me. Every day, we evidence our original sinful nature with our evil thoughts, bad words, wrong actions, or lack of proper action. The Law shows our sin and that, left to ourselves, we would be damned forever in hell. We could never earn our salvation because God is holy and demands perfection. Through Scripture, God also speaks to all people the Gospel. He announces that his Son became a holy human being and lived a perfect life in the stead of everyone else. This God-man, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, also took on himself all our sins and those of the whole human race and made full payment for those transgressions with his suffering and with his death on a cross. His resurrection from the dead proves that he is truly the Savior of the world who has done all that is necessary for our salvation.
Scripture—Law and Gospel—is presented and proclaimed throughout the world today by the Christian Church, which is used by God as his instrument for the preaching and teaching of his Word and the administration of the Sacraments.
2. God, in grace and mercy, changes people through His Word.
God changed many of the rebellious Israelites in exile in Babylonia through the Word proclaimed by Ezekiel and through his written Word as it existed at that time (36:22–36; 37:1–28). Through his Law, God caused rebellious Israelites to recognize their sins and to feel sorrow over them. Through his Gospel, God changed many Israelites internally. He brought them to faith in the one true God and in the Messiah that he would send, or God restored them to such faith.
Through faith, they had forgiveness for their rebelliousness, for all their violations of God’s will. They were transformed from God’s enemies into his dear children. They became true Israel, a purified remnant from the whole nation of Israel. These believers had fellowship with God and everlasting life. As new people, they in the power of the Lord, lived the life of faith. They were obedient to God’s commands and eager to serve the Lord. God ended their Babylonian exile and brought this purified remnant to Judah, where they settled and lived.
God changes rebellious people of all times and places through his Word. He changed you and me. Through his Law, God caused and causes us to recognize our sins, feel genuinely sorry for them, and sincerely confess them. Through his Gospel, God brought us to saving faith, and he preserves us in this faith through the same Gospel that we read and hear, and through the Lord’s Supper. We believe in the triune God and in the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Through faith in Christ, we have forgiveness for all our transgressions, all the ways we go against God’s holy will. God has changed us from being enemies and rebels into those who love him. He is our dear Father, and we are his dear children. We have blessed fellowship with the Lord here on earth, and this will continue forever in heaven and the new creation. God strengthens us to live as his children, willingly obeying and serving him. Our life of faith is characterized by good works, done in gratitude and praise to God, to honor the Lord, and to help other people.
How blessed we are to be living for the Lord!
As God dealt with the Israelites in exile in Babylonia, so he has dealt with us. God spoke to us through his Word and changed us from a rebellious people into his loving children who will live with him forever. We have everlasting life through faith in Christ. Let us, then, keep on living for the Lord, in thanks and praise to him!
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Text: Ezekiel 17:22-24
Sermon Outline
3. In a foreboding context, Ezekiel delivers God’s promise of a “tender sprig” to inaugurate a wonderful new world.
2. To our very similar context, God promises the same “tender sprig” for the same wonderful new world.
1. The “tender sprig” is Jesus, and in him God graciously positions you in that wonderful new world.
In Christ, the “Tender Sprig,” You Are Living a New Life in His Wonderful New World.
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Old Testament lesson of Ezekiel chapter seventeen verses twenty-two through twenty-four.
Boys and grils, I pray that you are doing well today. What do I have here? I have a plant. This plant sits in my office. I water it. I tend to it. I make sure that it has everything that it needs. In our lesson for today, the Lord says the same thing through the prophet Ezekiel. There is a young sprig that the Lord Himself tends to. That sprig is a symbol of God’s love and care. Who is that sprig? How does God use that symbol to help us today? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
Symbols, we see them all around us. For example, Apple’s logo evokes a whole world of technology: iPhones, iPads, and computers with all the enhancements and complementary devices that attend them. Apple’s logo also denotes success and enormous wealth in view of Apple’s performance in the marketplace. It’s hard to imagine a world without Apple . . . and Samsung . . . and Dell.
Our text uses a symbol or an icon, namely, a “tender sprig” from the topmost shoots of a cedar, to communicate a whole world of meaning. To understand how it invites us to see and to enter a world more lasting and wonderful than the world of technology, it is important to consider the context. If we understand the meaning of a “tender sprig” in context, far greater anxieties will be relieved than those we experience when we lose our cell phone!
3.
The context is very significant. The prophet Ezekiel utters these words from exile in Babylon. God had warned his people through the prophets that their continued apostasy, their continued wandering away from Him, would bring judgment. This is not a new proclamation, Amos and Hosea had warned the leaders and people of the Northern Kingdom that their idolatry and worship of Baal would result in their destruction. They warned that the holy and righteous God of Israel would not tolerate idolatry and rebellion indefinitely. The kings and the great majority of the people refused to heed these prophetic warnings. God’s promises are always fulfilled. Samaria and the Northern Kingdom were conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC.
In the south, God had previously sent Micah and Isaiah to warn Jerusalem and Judah about the coming judgment upon their apostasy.
Now Ezekiel, along with his contemporary Jeremiah, was called to announce the certain destruction of Jerusalem. Like their predecessors, events would demonstrate that Yahweh’s word through Ezekiel and Jeremiah would come to pass. Jerusalem, that great and historic city, where God had chosen to dwell in his temple (1 Ki 9:3), was conquered by the Babylonians in 586/7 BC.
The depth and darkness of the Southern Kingdom’s apostasy is described in 2 Kings 23—an episode during the reform of good king Josiah: “The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the threshold to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven” (2 Ki 23:4). The governmental and religious establishments had actually set up statues in Yahweh’s temple to practice the worship of false gods. Their idolatry was abhorrent and flagrant!
Ezekiel, with Jeremiah, proclaims God’s words of judgment and destruction. Judgment will come upon Jerusalem (chs 4–7), upon the corrupted temple (chs 8–11), upon the political and religious leaders (chs 13–24), and upon the foreign nations (chs 25–32).
It is into this foreboding context that the Lord’s promise of the “tender sprig” is delivered by the prophet as our text for today: “Thus says the Lord God: ‘I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest” (vv 22–23).
The contrast could not be more compelling and stark! While Ezekiel’s horizon from end to end is filled with judgment and destruction upon an idolatrous city and people, this tender, tiny sprig points beyond to a new and wonderful epoch—inaugurated by a specific individual. A wonderful new world is promised and is on its way!
2.
How does this context apply to us today? Ezekiel’s promise speaks directly to us. We find ourselves in a very similar world today. Idolatry surrounds us as the elites of our culture embrace every form of immorality, sinful lifestyles, and refuse to consider God’s call for a life of contrition and repentance. The most horrific and visible sign of this idolatrous paganism is the murderous practice of abortion. The blood of millions of these innocents cries out to heaven! How similar to what was happening in Ezekiel’s day. We read that Josiah, in his effort to cleanse and to return the temple worship exclusively to Yahweh, “defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech” (2 Ki 23:10).
We are called to view our world through the eyes of Ezekiel and the other prophets. God delivers his holy will and word through them. Idolatry and evil seem so powerful while the position of the faithful seems so weak. Ezekiel beheld the destruction of Jerusalem. Those who confessed Yahweh as the only true God seemed so weak and marginal. So today, Christians who uphold the claims of Sacred Scripture and confess Jesus to be the only way to God’s mercy and grace frequently appear to be without respect or standing. Many voices are even brash enough to label classic Christian morality mere bigotry. Beyond such verbal abuse, thousands of Christians have been publicly martyred in recent times, and there is less notice of this tragedy than a celebrity’s birthday or a White House press conference.
But Ezekiel leads us beyond despair and the apparently victorious context of the prevailing culture to a wonderful new world where all will know that the Lord has acted to rescue and redeem his people. His people are not as weak and powerless as it seems. And the “tender sprig” will be his agent to achieve this great reversal. God’s sure word and promise provides a climax to the chapter: “I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it” (v 24).
1.
God’s promise through Ezekiel is fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is the “tender sprig!” from the house of David, from the stump of Jesse. In Jesus, God graciously positions you in a wonderful new world where there is a peace that the powers of this world can never provide.
It is a profound peace that places our hearts and souls at rest no matter what swirls around us. As Jesus says: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14:27).
At the center of such peace are the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. His holy life and his atoning death have delivered us from the world of darkness and death to his wonderful new world of life now and forever in God’s Holy Absolution for our sins and his Spirit’s presence with us. Our Baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection has bestowed a narrative of our own life that is defined by him: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).
In Christ, the “Tender Sprig,” You Are Living a New Life in His Wonderful New World.
Yes, God’s promise through Ezekiel has been fulfilled. The “tender sprig” has come. Jesus Christ is that “tender sprig.” He has lifted up the lowly and built an “eternal house in heaven” for each of us in God’s wonderful new world.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.