Returning to Ezekiel, Ezekiel
16. So after the Psalms, you have
the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel 16. The prophet here is speaking
first to Israel. describing them using things
that clearly speak of Israel. But brethren, the gospel is one
gospel for both Jew and Gentile. And what captured my eye here
in this chapter is the outline of the sovereign grace of God. It's for the grace that our Lord
shows to all his people. And that's what I want to look
at with you this morning, the gospel that is revealed here
in what the Lord gives to the prophet Ezekiel for the people. And the first thing He tells
them, he calls them son of man, it's a term used for Ezekiel
here, and our Lord used that term as well, that he is the
son of man, and these are the things which he makes known to
us. He's the revealer of the Father
unto us. And it says, son of man, cause
Jerusalem to know her abominations. In verse 2, cause her to know
her abominations, and this is what the Lord does for us. He
makes us to know our abominable ways, our wicked works, our dark
ways, our false understanding and false ways and lying ways. He makes us to know what we are
in ourselves. Now some of the things he says
here, they are specific to Israel in many ways, such as the calling
of Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, or of Israel's time spent in
Egyptian bondage, in the bondage there to Egypt. but idolatry. Abraham was an idolater when
God called him. That's us by nature. We're all
idolaters. Just as Abraham and Sarah were
idolaters when they were called, so are we by nature. We worship
a stump of a God. We worship the God of our imagination
by nature. And the Lord makes us to know
that, to turn us from our worship of God in idolatry. of the worship
of a false god, and that bondage that Israel was delivered from
in being brought out of Egypt, well, that's true of us. By nature,
we're in bondage to sin. We're in bondage to darkness. We're locked up in a prison from
which we cannot free ourselves or get ourselves out of. And
so the scriptures make known to us that all of us, if we're
saved, it's because God quickened us. It's because God gave us
life to raise us from the dead. Dead how? Dead in trespasses
and sins. We have no spiritual life in
Adam. We're in darkness. There's none
that seeketh after God. There's none good. There's none
righteous. We all go after our own way. the Lord makes known
in his word. It describes us. We're like that
woman at the well who had five husbands. Five husbands. How is that a picture of us?
Well, we're spiritual adulterers going from one sect of religion
to another sect of religion to another sect of religion, trying
to find something to satisfy ourselves, and it never works.
It never works. That's us, spiritual adulterers
in death and in darkness. were described as walking according
to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air. That spirit which is over the
world was over us. We were among that, those people,
those children of disobedience. That's where we were when the
Lord came to us in mercy. And so the Lord is making known
to us through the gospel, in kindness, our abominations, lest
we should think that everything's okay with us. And it's a mercy
that he makes us to know our filth and our wicked works and
abominations. And the Lord tells us in Ezekiel
16, 5, that none I pity thee. He says, you know, you're, You're
wicked, your ways are wicked, and no one pities you. No one's
looking after you for your good. To do any of these things unto
thee to have compassion upon thee. He's talking about what
was mentioned back in verse four. You mothers, you that have had
children, you would You would see this as a merciful thing,
what should be done to any child. It would be very natural to you
to cut, to sever that belly button that's attached to the placenta.
A father would remove that. You'd have the doctor or nurse
or father or somebody would remove that. A midwife would cut that
and sever that. And a mother would wash her child,
would want to see her child washed and cleaned of the blood and
the filth on them. It's described here as salting
them, but I think today they put maybe some oil or something.
I don't know, maybe some oil. I always see them combing their
hair. You stick them under a heat lamp now because we have those
things and they're swaddled up all nice and cute and bundled.
That's pity. You wouldn't just say, well,
that's great and just put it aside and tend to something else. You'd
make sure that child was well cared for before you did anything
else. That's your primary responsibility. And the Lord says, no one pitied
you. No one did these things to you. No one took care of you.
They just tossed you out in the field, left you there crying
and whining, and no one took care of you. Just left you there
to die. And that's what he makes known
here to us in order that we would listen. and say, you know, this
is true. This is true of how the Lord
describes me. I have wicked thoughts. My ways
are not perfect. I know my ways aren't perfect.
And he shows us and exposes us to what we are in ourselves and
how we're an offense to the true and living God by our works and
words and thoughts and deeds. We're wicked. That we would hear
the sovereign grace of God. And it's not because we're desirable.
We're undesirable, if the truth be told. But it's because God
will be merciful to whom he will be merciful. And this is to make
us to hear what we're going to see here, outlined from verse
6 through verse 14. It shows us the sovereign grace
of God who does all things for his child. It's not the child
doing something for God. It's not the children laying
up for the parent, it's our God laying up for his children. It's
our God doing all things sovereignly out of his own grace and love
and mercy for us to be kind and merciful to us. There's a passage
before we begin over in Exodus 33. This is where Moses had asked
the Lord to go with them into the promised land. And he asked
the Lord to show him, to reveal himself to him. And in verse
33, it's verse 19, the Lord answers Moses and says,
I will make all my goodness pass before you, all my beauties pass
before you, all that is good pass before you, and I will proclaim
the name of the Lord before thee, and listen to this, and will
be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy
on whom I will show mercy. The Lord's beauties, the Lord's
goodness, is sovereign grace. And that only sounds mean and
cruel to the self-righteous, because any sinner knows that
if God doesn't save me, I'm not saved. I can't save myself. If
God does everything but one little bit and leaves out one little
bit to me and my goodness and my righteousness, it's over for
me. I won't. I won't be righteous
before God because I'll fail. I'll come short of what I got
to do. And so the Lord says, I'll be
gracious to whom I'll be gracious. I'll show mercy to whom I'll
show mercy. It's speaking of his sovereign grace to save whom
he will. And the sinner who knows him
rejoices in it because we know if he didn't have mercy and grace
on me, I wouldn't be saved. If it was something desirable
in me, I'm out. I'm out. Before I even start,
I'm already finished and won't hear, won't believe, won't be
brought under the grace and mercy of God. And so you'll notice
as we go through these, everything is initiated by God. Everything
is done by the Lord who chooses to do it in sovereign grace and
mercy. He chooses to do it. So let's
look at this beginning in verse six. And here it begins, and
when I passed by thee, when I passed by thee and 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, same thing, live, live. And so we're given
to understand that God is the first mover. He's the one that
draws near to us. We don't draw near to God first.
God draws near to us first. When I passed by thee, man wasn't
even looking. But God chose to draw near, to
come near to his child, to the sinner, to do them good. And
this is what the Lord does. When we get to speaking of the
birth, you think about creation. Did God consult you and say,
do you want to be created? Do you want to have some time
on the earth here? No, we were never consulted. God did it sovereignly. Well, just as we were created
the first time by sovereign grace and power, so we're created the
second time. As new creatures in the Lord
Jesus Christ, it's his sovereign choice to save whom he will.
in the time that he appoints. And so he passed by whom he would. There's a sense in which we sing
that hymn, pass me not, O gentle Savior. Don't pass me by. Don't
come near and then keep on going to someone else. Come to me,
Lord. But that's because he stirs us
up. It's because he gives us life so that we feel him and
know him and cry out, Lord, save me. I'm in trouble. I need your
hand. I need your mercy, Lord. Save
me. And so he passed by to be gracious
to this one. That's what he's saying here.
I saw you in the field. I passed by and I looked on you. Meaning, I chose to be merciful
to you. I looked upon you. You know,
you think about when the Lord was speaking to Abraham to give
Abraham and Sarah a child, a son of promise. He said, for this
is the word of promise at this time will I come and Sarah will
have a son. When the Lord draws near, when
He passes by you, sinner, He creates life in you. He forms
the seed of Christ in you, making that new man of grace in His
child so that we live. We live by Him, by His grace,
by His sovereign grace. And this is His pity, I saw thee
polluted in thine own blood. And what He's saying there is,
I know your sin. I know your pollution. I know
your condemnation. I know what you are in Adam.
I was there. When you fell, I know exactly
what you did. I know the rebellion. I know
the enmity that's in you because you're of Adam's seed. You're
of his blood. I see it. I know it, the Lord
is saying. And so the Lord knows what we
are. He knows our thoughts. He knows
what we think. He knows what we would do and
what we do, what we say, what we don't say to be crafty. He
knows what's in us. We can't hide it from Him. He
knows all things. But the grace in that is that
He knows our nature. He knows exactly what He's undertaken
when He's merciful to us. There's nothing that you need
to hide or hold back and hope he doesn't find out, because
he already knows it. You can confess it to the Lord and say,
Lord, save me, because he already knows it. You're not bringing
out anything new. But he makes us to know him,
to cry out to him, to seek him. And he gave this promise to his
people in the garden. He said, I will put enmity between
thee. He said it to the serpent. Because
as soon as we rebelled against God, we aligned ourselves with
the wicked one. And we were subjected to bondage
to the enemy, to the wicked one, and sold ourselves for nothing.
Oh, you're going to know good and evil. We don't know nothing.
What we know, we can't even make ourselves do. And that perfectly. We don't even have the power
to make ourselves good and keep ourselves good and righteous.
And the Lord said, I'll put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed. It shall crush thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel. That head-crushing seed is Christ,
who crushes the head of the serpent and delivers his people. So that
Christ says to the prisoners, go forth. I've opened the door.
You that are in darkness, come out into the light. Confess your
sins to the Lord. Confess to Him. Cry out to Him,
Lord, save me. Save me. And we'll see. It's
all His work that does this. So this is the glory and power
in these words. I said unto thee, when thou wast
in thy blood, live. Yea, I said unto thee, when thou
wast in thy blood, live. Think of Lazarus in the Gospel
of John. Dead in the tomb for four days,
stinking, wrapped up in grave clothes until the Lord said,
Lazarus, come forth. And then he got up and he came
forth. And the Lord had them unwrap
the grave clothes that were about his face. A picture of how the
Lord takes the grave cloths off our eyes and off of us through
the preaching of the Gospel. through the ministration of these
things, the Lord removes the darkness, removes the grave clothes,
takes away that deadness, and gives life. Because he speaks
it, he reveals it, he gives the power. And so we're his new creation,
born of the seed of Christ. He's washed us of that blood
of Adam in the blood of Christ. Verse 7, 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 breasts are fashioned,
and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. And so right here, of course
this speaks of the children of God being added to the number
of the kingdom, but it's also true in a individual sense in
which the Lord's grace and power breaks forth in us. It buds and
it becomes fruitful in us. We see this here, that our fruits
multiply as the bud of the field. Why? Because his spirit dwells
in us. He gives us his spirit, he gives us life, he gives us
power in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he bears fruits of righteousness
in his people. Ephesians 5, 8 and 10 says, for
ye were sometimes darkness, But now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Walk
in that understanding. Seek to walk in that understanding
of your God and what He shows you and teaches you and reveals
to you in you by His Spirit. For the fruit of the Spirit is
in all goodness and righteousness and truth proving what is that
acceptable will of the Lord. He's revealing to you through
the gospel, you know what he says, what he teaches, what he
reveals. Walk in that light. Walk in that
light. And our Lord's, by His Spirit
and power, there's a growth in grace, there's a growth in the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and what He's done for us. And
He brings forth these excellent ornaments fashioned upon these
pillars, grace and truth, described as these breasts, grace and truth,
brethren. We stand upon these pillars,
our Lord Jesus Christ, and there's beauty, the beauty of holiness,
as a beautiful head of hair, the beauties of holiness on our
head of the Lord Jesus Christ, when before all we were was naked,
naked and bare, and had none of these things. And with such
beauty that we see, lest we should be puffed up, right? Because
when you're young and you start thinking that you're something,
you look in the mirror and you say, wow, you're beautiful. Yeah,
well, you get puffed up with pride. Well, the Lord is able
to humble you and to show us it's not you. It's my work. It's my work. Verse 8, now when
I passed by thee and looked upon thee, when I did these things,
behold, thy time was the time of love. And I spread my skirt
over thee and covered thy nakedness. Yea, I swear unto thee and entered
into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamest
mine. And so here, the Lord reminds
us, it's not your decision to get yourselves saved. He says,
I passed by. I looked upon you. He's saying,
I determined it was the time of love for you. It was God's
choice. It was God's decision to save
you, to bring you out of darkness in that hour. And so he revealed
his grace and mercy to us. He brought us into the experience
of his love. He chose it, saying, I spread
my skirt over thee and covered thy nakedness. Where have we
seen that, the spreading of the skirt over someone? in Boaz,
right, the kinsman redeemer who put his skirt over Ruth. And what it was was a token saying,
I will undertake for you all that you need. You'll be barren
and poor and naked no more. I cover you with my skirt. And
he had something to do, because there was one nearer that he
had to take care of, just like our Savior had to come and take
care of the debts we owe, to be the surety for his people,
the Nearkinsman Redeemer, who spread his skirt over us and
said, everything you need, I'm providing you. Everything. And
that's what Christ does. Everything that we need to stand
before God, faultless before his throne, Christ provides it
all. He provides it. He provides it
all. And so the Lord has done for
his children to clothe us, to provide for us, and he establishes
us in that covenant of grace. He does it, right? He says, thou
becamest mine. You think of Abraham in Genesis
15, where it talks about God making a covenant for Abraham. What did Abraham do when the
covenant was established? He was sound asleep. The Lord
put him into a deep sleep. And it pictures us in Christ
who carries us in his body when he goes to the tree. Paul says
we were crucified with him. Only I have no memory of the
stripes and the whippings and the beatings, because I was asleep
in Christ. And he went through bearing all
my sorrow, all my suffering, all my beatings that I deserved. He bore them, and then he was
buried. And when he rose again in the
day of his grace, in the time of his love, I rose too and woke
up under the covenant of his grace, by his grace and mercy.
I was knocked out in Christ who bore the whole thing and established
the covenant for me so that now I enjoy the covenant mercies
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 9. Then washed I thee with
water. Yea, I throughly washed away
thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil." These are manifestations
of Christ's redeeming grace. This is what our Lord does for
us in giving us His Spirit. The anointing of the oil there
is the giving of His Spirit. We see here the application of
Christ's blood which washes away our sins. As pure water washes
away the filth, so the blood of Christ has put away all our
sins. And he also speaks of being throughly
washed away from our blood. What blood? That relation in
Adam, so that the image of Adam, that corrupt, fallen image of
Adam, has the image of Christ stamped in its place. We're being
conformed to the image of Christ. His image is there now. We're
his new creation. That blood, that tie in Adam,
that inheritance in Adam is not our inheritance. We stand in
the inheritance of the Lord Jesus Christ by his grace and power. He gives us his spirit, he gives
us that confession, he gives us that hope that Christ is all
my righteousness and he leads us and keeps us and reveals himself
more and more to us. And then this work, is justified
by God, whereby we come in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Look at verse 10. Here again,
I clothed thee, I washed thee, I clothed thee with broidered
work, and shod thee with badger skin, and I girded thee about
with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. And so the righteousness,
our righteousness, is Christ's righteousness. This is his garment
of righteousness, which is given to us so that we are righteous. It's our righteousness, which
is imputed to us by the Lord and what he did for us. And we're
made kings and priests unto our God, whereby we now worship him
in spirit and in truth. Not trying to get ourselves saved,
but we worship him because he has done these things for his
child. He has delivered us from that
bondage. Listen to this description from
Psalms 45 of what the Lord does for us. The king's daughter,
that's you that believe him, the king's daughter is all glorious
within. Her clothing is of wrought gold,
that precious, enduring metal that survives the fiery indignation
of God. She shall be brought unto the
king in raiment of needlework. That means that thing didn't
just come together. Somebody labored for that. Someone wove
that garment. Someone provided that beauty.
that is given to you and put upon you. That one who did that
needlework is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who gave
us this garment by his own self. And this description of badger
skim, John Gill says it's probably not the animal of the badger
that we know of here. It's probably something else.
But it's a remarkable word, because there's many ideas about what
that means. And all of them are good. Pick
one. They all speak of Christ. One
says it's the color purple. It's speaking of our feet being
shod with footwear that's of purple. And what would that describe?
Our royalty, our nobility by the Lord Jesus Christ. We're
a royal priesthood, kings and priests. unto our God. Another
says, no, it's scarlet. It's a scarlet color. And it
speaks that our feet are walking in the paths of righteousness,
washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, who put away all
our sin and washed us. We walk in that. Others think
it's adorable skin. It's a skin that doesn't wear
out. So it's a footwear that's not going to wear out, which
we know of when Israel went through the wilderness, their clothes
and their shoes never wore out. Well, that's us. That's a picture
of us in this wilderness. That hope of the gospel, which
our feet are shot in, it never wears out. It never wears out. That's the hope of the brethren.
That's our confidence, is that Christ is our salvation. Christ
is our righteousness. We're not looking for another
righteousness. I don't need another garment. I don't need another
stitch. I don't need another pair of
shoes. Christ is sufficient, durable, from start to finish.
It's forever and he's bringing us safely to the land of our
inheritance in him. And so there's no quality, whatever
it is, there's no doubt as to the quality and the beauty of
the garment which Christ has given to you that believe him. He did this. It's his gift to
us. And being made a new creature
by the redemption work of Christ, being revealed in us by faith,
the Lord adorns us with emblems of his salvation, revealing and
manifesting his work, his power in us that we are his sons and
daughters. Look down at at verse 11 through
13. He says, I decked thee with ornaments,
and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck,
and I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears, and
a beautiful crown upon thine head. Thus wast thou decked with
gold and silver, and thy raiment was of fine linen and silk, embroidered
work. Thou didst eat fine flour and
honey and oil, and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou
didst prosper into a kingdom." And it's a picture of the Lord's
work for His people. It's a beautiful work. That hope
you have in the Lord Jesus Christ, having no confidence in this
flesh, but trusting Him to fully do for you all that He promises
in His Word to do, and that continued looking to Christ, When you are
troubled, when you feel the lust of this old man of flesh that's
still here with us, and you cry out, Lord, save me. Deliver me
from these lusts. Deliver me from these wicked
ways. Deliver me from that thought. Deliver me from speaking so foolishly. Deliver me from doing these things,
Lord. Turn me. Those are all precious
emblems of His grace. Those are His bracelets. That's
His spirit. That's His work. That's His jewel,
which He's given to you, and reveals in you, and He draws
near to you. That's all His work. We're His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus, unto good works. And they're beautiful, adorning
pictures that Christ is our Savior, that the Father is our God. He's
our Lord and Savior. He's our all. Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, and we rejoice in Him. And we're humbled by these
things, that He should make us who were just infants chucked
out in the field somewhere, left bloody, that no one cared enough
to pity us, or think of us, or care for us. But He undertook
for us all that we needed to grow us in Christ, to adorn us
with this beauty. These are His beautiful works. This is His beauty which is given
to us in Christ. Isaiah 61.10 speaks of this. where it says, I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord. That's the cry that he gives
us. That's the joy he gives us in
our rejoicing. I will greatly rejoice in the
Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my
God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of my salvation. He's clothed me with these garments
of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments,
and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. That's what
he's, he's prepared us for his bride. Rejected, naked, bare
as we were, now we're beautiful and clothed by Christ, by him,
brethren. To be his bride. To be his bride. And he loves his bride. He purchased
his bride with his own blood. And so he rejoices to make these
things known to us. This is the salvation which the
Lord reveals in his people. We see this in other things.
Paul, when writing to the Colossians, said in Colossians 3, verse 12
through 14, put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and
beloved. Ready? Here's your jewels. Here's
your bracelets. Here's your marks of beauty. Put on. bowels of mercies, kindness,
humbleness of mind, because Israel forgets this. She starts looking
in the mirror and thinking, I did this. This is my beauty. I'm
appealing because of how good I am. But the Lord is saying
these things because he's showing us, I did these things. You're
taken care of because of me, is what he's saying there. Humbleness
of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving
one another. If any man have a quarrel against
any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. Not doing those things is walking
disorderly as if you were getting drunk. It's the same thing. Not doing these things, that's
a disorderly work. Being harsh to your brethren,
being cruel to your brethren, not forgiving your brethren,
that's walking disorderly too, just as any other sin. But these
are the marks. the manifestations that His Spirit
dwelleth in us. As John said in 1 John 4, that
He's revealed these things. We that love, it's because He
loved us, and He reveals this in us. And above all these things,
Paul said, put on charity. Exactly what Peter said. We saw
last week, that's exactly what Peter said above everything,
chiefly. be fervent in charity be fervent in love for one another
which is the bond of perfectness or as Peter said because love
covers a multitude of sins and that we might Be merciful to
one another. Trusting the Lord. Having no
confidence in your flesh or my flesh, but trusting that our
Lord's grace is sufficient to overcome this flesh, to overcome
this wicked world. Just as he said, I've overcome
it. I've overcome it. And so, how shall we be enabled
to walk so perfectly? Eating fine flour. and honey
and oil, right? A picture of Christ, the bread
of heaven. He's the fine flour that we eat,
the bread we eat, that strengthens us and nourishes us, that shows
us our Lord always. And so these are the beauties
of our Lord, His righteousness imputed to us and revealed in
us in the outworkings of His grace, which is seen by all.
Look how beautiful you are. It's the Lord's work. He's done
that. He's done that. Verse 14, and thy renown went
forth among the heathen for thy beauty, for it was perfect through
my comeliness. Not mine, through the Lord saying,
the Lord saying my comeliness, the Lord's comeliness, his beauty,
which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord. And so, Brethren, that's
the outline of sovereign grace, what the Lord has chosen to do
for you in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a merciful Savior. He's a faithful Savior. Believe
Him. Cry out to Him. If you cry, it's
because the Lord is drawn near to you. Cry out to Him for grace
and mercy, for He delights to show mercy to whom He will. Amen.