I want to also thank everybody for coming out
this morning, our visitors especially, and
everybody else. The message this morning is a
message that I really thought on long and hard about
delivering. It's a hard message. concerning sinners by nature and our condition
by nature. And we as believers, we know
we come to trust Christ and His righteousness alone for salvation. But why do we do that? Because
God has convinced us that there's no other hope and no other way.
because of our condition by nature. And we understand that we're
sinners, but we don't really understand the extent of our
sinnerhood by nature as we're born into this world. And this
morning I'm going to go over some things and pray that God
will be glorified in the message. I begin my message this morning
with the following verse where Christ is speaking to religious
people, of which men are by nature and practice. You see, God must
convince sinners of their sinful condition before they see their
need for salvation and a need for a substitute, one who can
stand in their place and provide a righteousness that they must
have to stand before God at judgment. Look with me at Matthew 23, 27,
verse 27. This is where Christ is speaking
to religious leaders of his day. He says, woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like unto whited sepulchres. You know what sepulchres are.
They're tombstones in a graveyard. It says, which indeed appear
beautiful outwardly. Outwardly, that is, in their
appearance, they look clean and look beautiful outwardly. Then
it says, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all
uncleanness. This morning I ask these questions.
Have you been slain by God's law or His revealed will by way
of of all his perfect commands. Has God brought you to a point
of seeing just how holy and how righteous he is? Has God brought
you to a point of seeing that by nature and practice, you were
just like these scribes and Pharisees that Christ is speaking to here
in Matthew? If you answer yes to these questions,
I believe that you'll be able to appreciate this message this
morning. I'll be speaking on Ezekiel 16, chapter 16, the cast
out infant. An old writer, gospel writer,
John Gill, says of this chapter, Ezekiel 16, and I quote, the
whole is an emblem or a picture of the state and condition the
elect of God are in when they are quickened by Him, who are
by their first birth unclean, under the pollution and power
and guilt of sin, wallowing and weltering in it, not under the
wrath of God, but deserving the wrath of God, trodden underfoot,
quite neglected, and despised in all outward appearance, and
are both hopeless and helpless to save themselves." Close quote. A while back, I had a couple
of messages on knowing the true God through his attributes, Well,
this morning we're gonna get a good look at the true nature
of all sinners, all men born of Adam, and this includes God's
elect, before God regenerates and converts them by His Holy
Spirit. In Romans 5 verse 6 says, for
when we, that is God's elect, were yet without strength in
due time, Christ died, for the ungodly. So you see, even the
elect of God are by nature, and naturally speaking, which simply
means that we're born into this world spiritually dead, not knowing
the true God. But as we'll see this morning,
there's hope for all those that the Father chose that the Son
came and shed his precious blood for, and for those that God the
Holy Spirit calls by the preaching of the gospel. I believe that
our natural sinful state's made clear in this book of the chapter
16 of Ezekiel. Here we have a picture drawn
by divine inspiration of the sinful state that all of God's
elect are in by nature. and of the time of God's love,
describing for us what God does for chosen sinners when he saves
them by his grace. God is speaking to Ezekiel when
he tells him to cause Jerusalem to know her abominations. Like
so many other things that we see in the Old Testament, this
has a physical application as well as a spiritual application
to spiritual Israel. God's elect. Our pastor had a
message a couple weeks ago in Isaiah chapter 1, where Isaiah
had a vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem. As I listened
to the message, I thought to myself, here Isaiah is speaking
about physical Israel, but it was also a message to spiritual
Israel. God's elect because Everything
that he said about physical Israel was exactly what God's elect
do by nature, before God regenerates and converts by spirit. The first
task of every one of God's preachers, messengers, like Ezekiel here,
is to make known to every sinner their abomination before God
as they're born into this world. This abomination is mainly speaking
of their worshiping of false gods. And you know, by nature,
all of us do that. If we don't know the true Christ
and the true God of Scripture, if we don't know him, we have
to be in our own imaginations worshiping a false god, a false
god of our imagination. Ezekiel here is in Babylon. with
the Jews in captivity, so he's not speaking just to Jerusalem
in a physical sense, because Jerusalem was already destroyed,
the Jews were taken into captivity, and Judah was in bondage. God
is also speaking to his spiritual people, a remnant according to
the election of grace, and he's saying to Ezekiel here, you tell
my people in plain words the reason for their bondage and
the reason for their captivity is their abominations, worshiping
false gods. Their abominations, which is
abominable before God, and is that which characterized their
behavior in their lives. This is the reason they're in
bondage. You've heard of bondage of the will, haven't you? You are in this condition And
in your loss, ruin a state because of your abomination. Not just
your little mistakes or your errant ways. It's because of
your abominations before this holy God. You see, we all by
nature come into this world worshiping a false God. We just don't know
the true God of scripture by nature. And this is an abomination
to God. This chapter of Ezekiel is also
a divinely inspired picture of every sinner's conversion and
salvation by the grace of God, a divinely inspired picture of
God's church and what the Lord God has done for us by his grace. There are three things in these
verses that I want to speak to this morning. First of all, we're
told here what we were by birth and by nature. Secondly, the
Lord God, our savior, tells us what He did for us when He saved
us by His grace. And thirdly, He tells us who
we are in Him, in Christ. First of all, let's look in these
verses one through five here, where we're told what we were
by birth and what we are by nature. What we were when the Lord Jesus
came to us, came to us, This is the state and condition of
all men by nature. Look at Ezekiel 16, beginning
verse one. Again the word of the Lord came
unto me, saying, Son of man, call Jerusalem to know her abominations. And say, thus saith the Lord
God unto Jerusalem, thy birth and thy nativity is of the land
of Canaan. Thy father was an Amorite, and
thy mother was a Hittite. The word of the Lord came to
Ezekiel, and he said, Ezekiel, you go tell my people what they
are, and call Jerusalem to no abominations, and thus said the
Lord God to Jerusalem, this is how you started, this is how
you begin. Your birth and your nativity
is of the land of Canaan. You've heard of Canaan. He was
the son of Ham, Noah's son. Ham, you remember, uncovered
his father's nakedness, His father Noah's nakedness and therefore
was cursed by God. You remember what Noah said to
his son Ham in Genesis 9, 25. It says, and he said, curse it
be Canaan. A servant of servants shall he
be unto his brethren. Now the Israelites did not descend
from Canaan. But this is a picture to show
us that just like the Canaanites who lived in the land of Canaan,
before the Israelites, we are by nature and practice sinners
and our birth and our nativity was from a Curset people just
like Canaan. Your father was an Amorite and
your offspring of Lot's adulterous affair with his own daughter. Your mother was a Hittite, one
of the Curset of the Amorites. Now Abraham and Sarah who were,
properly speaking, Abraham, the father, and Sarah, the mother
of the Jewish nation. They were both Chaldeans. They
were neither Amorites or Hittites, yet because they dwelled among
them, or so called, and especially since before their conversions,
they too were idolaters. Beginning in verse three of Ezekiel
16, Says, and say, thus saith the Lord God of Jerusalem, unto
Jerusalem, thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan.
Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother was a Hittite. And
as for thy nativity in the day thou was born, thy navel was
not cut, neither was thou washed in water, and to supple thee,
thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None I pity
thee to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion
on you, but thou wast cast out in an open field to the loathing
of thy person in the day that thou wast born. As relating to
the cast out infant, normally when a baby is born, the navel
is cut and tied, the baby is washed from blood, in which it's
surrounded and it's made clean. But not you, God said. You were
not salted nor swallowed at all. Swallowing is an age-old technique
of wrapping your baby in cloth to help him feel safe and secure.
Why was the infant not swallowed and not salted? Well, it says,
because none eye pitted thee. No one wanted you, no one cared
for you, no one was interested in doing anything for you. Nobody
had any concern for you, but thou was cast out into an open
field. Now by nature, that's a picture
of our beginning. As pertaining to the Israelites,
they were loathsome to the Egyptians. Every shepherd was an abomination
to them. And all this may be applied to
the state condition of all men by nature. even of God's elect,
whose birth is from fallen parents, fallen man. We descend immediately
from sinful, fallen parents. We are conceived in sin and shapen
in iniquity. Our parents or anyone else can
help our condition. We, by nature, are in a hopeless
and helpless condition, just like that poor infant. By nature,
we don't know the true God. We are ungodly. And by nature,
we are like all men born of Adam. Our acts by nature are abominable
to God, which means that by nature we all worship idols. We worship
gods of our imaginations before God saves us by his grace. The sad thing is we don't recognize
our condition until God the Holy Spirit brings us to see our condition. You must be born again. And when
our eyes are open to this reality, we're able to see our wretched
condition, and what do we do? Well, we flee to Christ for our
only hope of salvation. The picture here of this cast-out
infant is almost unbearable. What a terrible image we have
before us here, but God says that's our beginning. We were
by nature the cursed children, of cursed parents, and of a cursed
race. We're all by nature in action
as we're born into this world ungodly, despicable, unwanted,
and outcast. This is, by nature, our abomination
before this holy God. God commands his messengers,
like Ezekiel here, to show you your state by nature and practice,
and it's not a pretty picture. But this is what God's word says,
a sinner will never see Christ until you know your selfishness
and your pride. And you will never seek mercy
until you know your misery. You will never see grace until
you know your guilt before God. And you will never seek help
until you know that you are helpless to do anything in order to gain
salvation before this true God that we must stand before judgment.
Man by nature is nothing but sin, which is an abomination before
God. You find no better picture of our state at birth than in
this picture given to us in this story in Ezekiel here, where
we were born in sin and born of fallen parents. Look at what
the Psalmist King David says about our beginning back in Psalm
51, 5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me. David's not saying that he
was born from some kind of illicit affair. That's not what he's
saying at all. He's saying at the very instant
I was conceived in my mother's womb, I was corrupt. Man is not born on probation.
and then sometimes later becomes accountable at an age of accountability,
and then chooses to become a sinner. Psalm 58, three says, the wicked
are strange, and that's all men by nature now when you say that,
are strange from the womb. They go astray as soon as they're
born, speaking lies. So we're all like this unclean
baby from the beginning. Look at Isaiah 64, 6. But we
are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are
as filthy rags. And we all do fade as the leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. Ours
was a state of total depravity and total inability with regard
to all things spiritual. We all come into this world spiritually
dead, this poor outcast infant in its helpless and hopeless
state and without any power or ability to help itself. So man
is born that way, totally depraved. God must do a work. He must come
to you in time and regenerate and convert. Look at Romans 5.12. Wherefore, as by one man's sin,
Sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. This infant is dead. It couldn't do anything for itself.
It couldn't even cry out for help. That's all men's state
by nature. And the sad thing is that none
of us by nature will see our sad state until God does his
great work by spirit. in the new birth. So we are all
by nature dead and so much so that we can't even cry out because
we're spiritually dead. That's the nature of an unregenerate
man. A spiritually dead person cannot
receive the things of God because he's spiritually dead. But there's
hope. There's hope. Ephesians 2, 1
says, and you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and
sins. God in his great power must do
his great work by spirit. Christ told Nicodemus, you must
be born again, born from above. Ephesians 2, beginning at verse
2, wherein in time past you walk according to the course of this
world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the
spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among
whom also we all had our conversation in time past in the lust of the
flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even as others. But God,
who is rich in mercy, For His great love wherein He loved us,
even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with
Christ. By grace you are saved. Isaiah
describes us well in Isaiah 1, beginning at verse 5. Why should
you be stricken any more? You will revoke more and more,
the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole
of the foot, even unto the head, there's no soundness in it. But
wounds and bruises and purifying sores, they have not been closed,
neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. If there's any
help for man by nature, it has to come from outside of man himself. If there's any help, it's got
to come from someone other than the center. Look at what Isaiah
says in Isaiah 6. Then said I, woe is me, for I
am undone because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell
in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen
the king, the Lord of hosts. Isaiah said, I'm a man of unclean
lips, And everybody around me, my mother, my daddy, my brother,
sister, neighbor, and friends and so forth, they're in the
same condition. They're sinners just like me.
So the question is, who can help me in my wretched state that
I'm born in? The answer is nobody but God. And unless God intervenes, then
I must remain in this awful condition. just like the cast out infant
laying in the field, unwanted, helpless, and hopeless. This
is how we came into the world, and this is what we are by birth
and by nature. Secondly, here in Ezekiel 16,
the Lord God declares what he's done for us by his grace. It
says in Ezekiel 16, beginning of verse 6, and when I pass by
thee, speaking of that infant, laying in the field. I saw thee
polluted in thine own blood. I said unto thee, when thou wast
in thy blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, when thou
wast in thy blood, live. I have caused thee to multiply
as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen
great. And thou art come to excellent ornaments, thy breast are fashioned,
and thine hair is grown. whereas thou was naked and bare. Now when I passed by thee and
looked upon thee, behold, thy time was a time of love. And
I spread my skirt over thee and covered thy nakedness. Yea, I
swear unto thee and enter into a covenant with thee, saith the
Lord God, and thou became as mine. As it relates to physical
Israel, the Lord preserved them and saved them alive when they
were near ruin and delivered them in the hands of Moses, which
was his life from the dead. And God did this of his own sovereign
goodwill and pleasure, and not for any worth or merit in them,
nor of any goodness or righteousness of theirs. For this God did when
they were helpless to save themselves from Egypt and the Pharaoh. Spiritually
speaking here, this is a picture of the state condition that elect
of God are in when they are quickened by Him. Who, by their first birth,
they were unclean, under pollution and power of sin, wallowing and
entangled in it, and by nature deserving the wrath of God, and
deserving the full punishment for their sin. We are both hopeless
and helpless when the Lord passes by us, not by chance, but on
purpose, knowing where we are. And this he does by the ministry
of the word, the gospel. This is where he sees the elect
and looks upon them, not merely with the eye of omniscience,
but less with the eye of scorn, contempt, and abhorrence, but
with the eye of pity and compassion. and even delight in their persons,
though not in their sin. And when he speaks life unto
them, a principle of spiritual life, and quickens them by his
word, so that they live a life of faith, which issues an everlasting
life, and which flows from divine love, and is the effect of divine
power. It is of pure rich grace, and
not of man's merit at all. Here in verse 8, God says, when
I pass by thee. God came into humanity. The Son
of God came in our flesh. The Word made flesh and dwelt
among us. He came to us where we were.
We didn't pass by Him. He passed by us. We didn't come
to Him. He found us living in sin. And He saw us. He says, I pass
by thee. He came where we were, and he
saw us by nature, polluted in our own blood, just as we are
by nature. He saw us ruined in the fall,
yet loved. He loved us even though we were
dead in trespasses and sins. By nature, we didn't see him.
We were blind, spiritually blind. But he saw us. Also, by nature,
we didn't want him, but he wanted us. By nature, we didn't love
him, but he loved us with an everlasting love. That everlasting love here, which
caused our Lord Jesus to come into this world to save sinners
such as you and me. Before this world was ever created,
God's son entered into a covenant of mercy. He entered it with us on our
behalf as our surety, this covenant of pure, free grace and salvation
by which God saves us, by which God gave us all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ, whereby God accepted us in Christ,
our surety. Look at Ephesians 1.3. Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
The Son of God came where we were. He came in our flesh and
in our nature, yet without sin. He came to obey God's law and
to pay our sin debt. It's our surety. He came and
took our sin and our guilt upon himself. and redeemed us to God
by His blood. God saw you and I and all of
His elect the way we really were. It says He saw you in your pollution. He saw you in your desperate
need. He saw you in your helplessness. And He saw you in your lonely
isolation. Ezekiel 16, 6 says, and when
I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thy own blood, I
said unto thee, when thou was in thy blood, live. Yea, I said
unto thee, when thou was in thy blood, live. In the same way
that our Lord stood before the grave of Lazarus, and the Lord
said, take the stone away. And he said, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came out
of the grave. In that same way, our Lord Jesus
comes to dead sinners and speaks by the word of his grace and
by the power of his spirit. And he says to the dead, spiritually
dead, live. And the dead find themselves
alive before God, not by their free will, not by their decision,
and not by their works, but by work of grace performed for them
and in them. So the Lord Jesus quickens whom
He will. Let's look at John chapter 5.
This is when the Lord gives life to a sinner through His Word,
the Gospel. It says, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that
sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation,
but is passed from death to life. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. This
doesn't say, if you hear and believe, you will have everlasting
life. No, it says, he that heareth
my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting
life. If God had not already given
you life, to His Word, His Gospel, you would never have any desire
to hear and to believe on the true Christ of Scripture. Then
it says, and shall not come unto condemnation, but is passed from
death unto life. Revelation 26 said, blessed and
holiest is he that hath part in the first resurrection. On
such the second death hath no power. but they shall be priests
of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years. The first resurrection here is
the new birth. The first resurrection is God
calling sinners from spiritual death to spiritual life. The second resurrection is the
resurrection of the body in the last day, but the regeneration
of the soul. in the new birth is where God's
salvation of sinners takes place, whereby they are resurrected
from spiritual death. This is the same power that Christ
Jesus had when he was resurrected from dead physically. All of
these things is what our Lord God, our Savior, tells us what
he did for us when he saved us by his grace. Now thirdly, it
tells us what we are in Christ. Christ gave his life for his
sheep, his elect. He said, live. And we began to
live. Ezekiel 16, 8 says, now when
I passed by thee and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was a
time of love. And I spread my skirt over thee
and covered thy nakedness. Yea, I swear unto thee, and enter
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest
mine. For though the love of God to
his people is before time, yet it is manifested in time. And there are particular times
in which it is expressed to them, and the time of conversion is
one of them. The time of regeneration and
conversion is the first time that there is a manifestation
and an application of the love of God that is made to the heart
and to the soul of his people. By nature, even though we don't
realize it, we all come into this world hating the true God. We don't realize it. Now this
God of our imagination we don't hate, but the true God. The way
that this hatred is manifested there, is that we had rather
worship a false God than the true God of Scripture. We will
continue in this state of nature until the time of God's manifested
love toward us. God comes and He conquers His
elect by His grace. He loved us and called us, and
now we love Him because we're able to see how that he first
loved us. This I know for every one of
God's chosen children before the world began. God Almighty,
he set a time when he would meet his chosen and would pass by
in his sovereign power and make himself known by calling his
chosen one from darkness to light, from death to life, and for each
one of them to experience God's everlasting salvation. This is
the time of God's manifested love for his elect at conversion. This is the time that we're able
to see and understand what we are in Christ who has saved us
by his grace. God said here in Ezekiel, I spread
my skirt over thee and covered thy nakedness. Now, that reminds
me of what happened to Adam and Eve that we heard in the 10 o'clock
message with Bill. When God covered their nakedness. Look at Genesis 3, 21. To Adam
also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin and
clothe them. The Lord Jesus came to his own
when nobody would have him. when nobody wanted him and when
nobody had any reason to. And he spread his skirt, that
skirt of righteousness, over his elect and took them for himself. Ezekiel 16, 9 says, then washed
I thee with water. Yea, I thoroughly washed away
thy blood from thee. Clean the infant up. He cleansed
us by the washing of the water. by the word, in redemption by
his blood, and in redemption by his spirit through the word,
sanctifying us, setting us apart by his grace, by the water and
the blood. Then he says, I anointed thee
with oil, Ezekiel 16, nine, says, and I anointed thee with oil,
holy anointing oil, with which the high priest was anointed.
This is the oil representing God, the Holy Spirit. I poured
out my Spirit upon you. I gave you my Spirit. Then beginning
in Ezekiel 16 verse 59, God tells us that even though the Israelites
broke that covenant that He made with Him, that old covenant that
He made with them at Sinai, He says that I will establish with
spiritual Israel that remnant according to the election of
grace, an everlasting covenant, a covenant that is everlasting,
unlike that old covenant that He made with physical Israel,
which they break. Now, Ezekiel, beginning at verse
16, it says, For thus saith the Lord
God, I will even deal with thee, as thou hast done, which has
despised the oath and breaking covenant. Nevertheless, I will
remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and
I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant. Then thou
shalt remember thy ways and be ashamed when thou hast received
thy sisters, thine elder and thine younger, and I will give
them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant. and I will establish my covenant
with thee, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, that thou
mayest remember and be confounded and never open thy mouth any
more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for
all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God. Here we have God
in his great love and mercy and grace saying to the nation Israel,
who had broken his covenant with him and had done all these abominable
things. And this can be applied as well
to spiritual Israel. God says, nevertheless, the covenant
of grace made with a remnant among the national Israel and
among all of God's chosen people shall stand firm. It would be
manifested in them at the new birth and would be a means of
bringing them to a sense of sin and shame for their state of
sin and rebellion. And he would do this through
God-given faith and repentance. That's when we come to be ashamed
of all our past religion, all our work salvation. We become
ashamed of it. We repent of it. all those dead
works, those works we did in all false religion, thinking
that they recommended us to God, but they were dead works, fruit
unto death. Now, I like what it says here
in verse 63, which is a clear identification of true godly
repentance. God says that thou mayest remember
and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because
of thy shame. I thank God that he brings all
of his elect to himself through God-given faith and godly repentance,
that repentance that causes us to be ashamed of our former state
in false works religion. In Christ, God's elect have all
that's required by God, and we are complete in Him. Amen.