Sovereign Grace Chapel, located
at 135 Annabel Lane in Beaver, West Virginia, invites you to
listen to a gospel message concerning Jesus Christ our Lord. Alright, if you have your Bibles,
turn with me to Genesis chapter 1. Begin here in Genesis chapter
1. There are many times in the Word
of God where God Almighty takes something withered and makes
it beautiful, takes something empty and fills it, takes something
broken and heals it, even takes someone that is dead and gives
them life. It's here in Genesis 1 that we
see God Almighty speak the universe into existence. Look here in
verse 1 of Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form,
and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said,
Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light,
that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day. He created
absolutely everything. Where there was once darkness
and nothing, now there's beauty, there's life. It's amazing. In John 1 verse 3, we read, All
things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything
made that was that made. God created everything where
there was absolutely nothing. And that brings us to our text
this morning here in Ezekiel. Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter
16. Here in Ezekiel 16, we see another
picture. of where our Lord takes nothing
and gives it everything. We see a picture of how God saves
sinners by His grace. Let's begin reading just these
first few verses here in Ezekiel chapter 16, beginning in verse
one. Again the word of the Lord came
unto me, saying, Son of man, cause 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 an Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the
day that thou wast born, thy navel was not cut, neither was
thou washed in water to supple thee, thou wast not salted at
all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee to do any
of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee, but thou wast cast
out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the
day that thou wast born. Now in these first five verses,
I believe we see our first point here this morning, and that's
what man did. What did man do? What happened
to man? We died. Man died. We are dead
in our sins. Now, no picture is perfect. When
we look at a picture, it's not perfect. But in this picture,
we see a child who was born and taken from her mother's womb
and thrown out in a field. And she's been left there for
dead. She's dying. And the difference between us
and this child is that we've already died. We are already
dead. There's no hope in us, there's
no soundness in us, there's no life in us. We are dead. In Adam,
we all died. In another place, in Ezekiel,
we're referenced as a valley of dry bones. And in Ephesians,
we're told that we are dead in trespasses and sins. Look again
at verse three. I want us to see this here. Verse
three says, and say, thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem. Who's speaking here? The Lord
God, God Almighty is speaking here. We should listen. We should
listen. God Almighty is speaking. Let's
read on. was cast out into the open field
to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou was born."
Now again, to understand what's going on here, because this is
something we don't really see, but back at this time in history,
in some of these unbelieving nations, there was this horrific
practice of taking unwanted, deformed babies, taking them
straight from their mother and throwing them out in the field.
Not cutting the cord, not patting them, not even holding them for
a minute, just throwing them out into the field. And that's a sad and
terrible sight. I mean, that's just awful to
even think about. But that's a true picture of
us, as us, as fallen sinners. We're just like this baby. We
were born in sin of fallen parents. This child, her father was an
Amorite and her mother was a Hittite. Our father's Adam. Our father's
Adam. We didn't come into this world
having a chance to stand or fall. We came into this world already
fallen. We are told that we come forth
from the womb speaking lies. We're totally depraved. We're
totally unable. We cannot do anything to help
ourselves. We are wicked. There's no hope of goodness in
us. There's no soundness in us. This baby, she's helpless. She's
hopeless. She has no power. She can't do
anything to help herself. All she can do is cry until she
perishes. We're just like this child, we
cannot help ourselves. Yet for some reason, today in
false religion, all around this world, the common theme is to
try and fix ourselves up, to do something, to do something
to help ourselves. All over, right at this moment
in time, right now. All across this town, all across
my town, across this country, across this world, people are
standing up saying, you need to straighten up and fly right.
You need to do this and God will be happy with you. You need to
do this and God will save you. Those are lies. All of those
people are lying. That is not the truth. Well,
how's that so? Man can't do anything. Well,
how come? What did man do? Man died. A
dead man can't do anything. A dead man can do nothing. Man
can do nothing but sin. Yet for some reason, we want
to look to the law as a refuge. We think, well, I'll just do
the best I can and, you know, that'll make God happy with me.
That's not the case. And listen, I'm not, I'm not
against being good moral citizens. We should, we should be good
neighbors. We should be good friends, but that's not going
to save us. Salvation is not in anything
that we do. Salvation is in a person. Salvation
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. We read in verse five, none I
pitied thee. There's no outside help available.
The law is not gonna pity you and say, well, you did the best
you could, so it's okay. No, the law demands absolute
perfection. That's the opposite of us. I'm
the opposite of perfection. The law demands the perfect righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The only thing the law can do
is condemn us. God is holy, and we have offended a holy God. And the truth of the matter is
this, we are dead, fallen sinners, and all we deserve is death.
God's justice demands that my sin be punished, that your sin
be punished, that this whole world's sin be punished. And
that's a scary thing to think about. And the law can't do anything
about it. We can't keep the law. In Romans
3 verse 20, Paul says this, Therefore by the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the
knowledge of sin. We are this filthy, dying infant. We can't save ourselves, and
no one around us can help us out either. That's a sad, terrible
sight, but listen, this is the truth. This is the truth. This
is a true picture of us as fallen sinners. Isaiah said this, from
the sole of the foot, even to the head, there is no soundness,
but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. If there is any help for
such fallen creatures as we, it must come from our God. That's
our condition. That's what man did. What did
man do? Man died. We can't walk an aisle. We can't
make a decision. We can't even believe. Our Lord
said, you will not come to me that you might have life. And
if we stop right here, that would be the truth. But listen, we'd
have no hope. We'd have no assurance. But that's
not the case. And aren't we thankful that that
is not the case? We are not without hope. We cannot
do anything, but our God is able. Our God is able. And that brings
us to our second point this morning. First, we see what man did. Let's
see what God did. Let's see what God did. Well,
let's look at verse six and seven of Ezekiel 16. Verse six says,
and when I pass 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, 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 breasts are fashioned,
and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. Just
a moment ago, we spent about 10 minutes talking about what
man did. What did God do? Here in verse 6 and 7, we see
what God did. What did God do? He does it all.
He does every bit of it. In these verses, we see what
God has done for His people. Not what we did for Jesus, as
everybody wants to say. No. This is what God has already
done. We are unable. He is the only
one that is able. In verse 6, our Lord said, I
passed by thee. He passed by us. We weren't seeking
Him. We're dead in the field. How
could we seek Him? We're unable. He sought us. We didn't choose Him. He chose
us. In divine election, He chose us. We didn't come to where He
is. He came to where we were. He was mindful of us and He set
His love upon us before the world even began. In 2 Thessalonians
2 13 we read this, but we are bound to give thanks always to
God for you brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath
from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief of the truth. He chose his people from
the beginning to be saved. Before time had even began, he
chose a people. And people get so upset about
this matter of election. I mean, you see people blue in
the face upset about this. It's the most loving thing that
there could be. Our Lord said this, Jacob have
I loved and Esau have I hated. Everybody wants to say, no, he
just loved Esau less. No, Jacob have I loved, Esau
have I hated. People say, well, that's not
fair. That's not fair. Everybody gets so upset. They
wonder how in the world could God hate Esau? That's not what's
surprising. The great wonder is how in the
world God could love Jacob. How could he love Jacob? How
could he love and be merciful to a sinner? That's what God
did. That's what God did. He chose. He saves. In the book of Jonah,
we read of a man who was swallowed up by a great fish. How's that
man going to be saved? What hope is for this man in
the belly of a great fish? Can he do something for himself
to get out of there? No. Remember what man did. Remember
our condition? We're dead. Dead man can't do
anything, but God can. In Jonah 2 verse 9, Jonah says
this before him being spat out on dry land. He said, salvation
is of the Lord. Not salvation is of Jonah, not
salvation is of my works, salvation is of the Lord. The Lord had
revealed something to Jonah. The Lord showed Jonah, Jonah,
you can't do anything. But I'm able. God is able. Brother
David Edmondson, I've heard him say this. He said, have you ever
noticed what comes after that statement that Jonah makes? Salvation
is of the Lord. What comes after that? A period.
A period. The end of a sentence. Completing
the thought. You can't add anything to this.
Salvation is of the Lord. Period. Not only that, He came
to us where we were in the person of His Son. This baby wasn't
seeking the Lord, just like we weren't seeking Him. He took
our nature. God Almighty became a man. Think on that for a little while.
God Almighty became a man. And He obeyed that law perfectly,
which again, that's something we can't even imagine. We can't
even imagine that. And then He took our sin and
our shame, and He took that on Himself. And He redeemed us. He redeemed His people on Calvary's
tree. And by His obedience, He made
that perfect righteousness, which again, something we can't even
imagine. And then He gives that to His people. He gives that
to His sheep. We are nothing but complete dead
and destitute sinners. And He took all of our sins,
He bore it on Calvary. In 2 Corinthians, we read this,
Again, in verse 6 of our text, he said, and saw thee polluted in thy
blood. He saw us polluted in our blood. He saw us as we really are, dead,
filthy sinners. Yet he loved us. Brother Henry
Mahan, he said this, mercy is for the miserable, grace is for
the guilty, and salvation, that's for real sinners. But God commended
His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. He didn't love us because something
good in us. There is no goodness in us. There's nothing lovable
about us. In fact, by nature, we hate God
Almighty. And yet He chose us and loved
us simply because He would, all in His grace and His mercy. Then
we read this, I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood,
live. I said unto thee, when thou wast
in thy blood, live. In the same way that our Lord
stood before the grave of Lazarus, a man who had been in the dead,
he'd been in the grave so long he was stinking. He'd been in
the ground four days. Our Lord raised that man from
the dead. The same way he called him to life, he gives guilty
sinners life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's turn there and
look at that for a moment. In John 11, John chapter 11,
we'll read this account real quick. John chapter 11, verse
39. Jesus said, take ye away the
stone. Martha, the sister of him that
was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh, for
he hath been dead four days. This man Lazarus had been in
the ground dead for so long that he's stinking. I mean, imagine
driving down the road and we've all seen a dead animal on the
side of the road after a couple days. You roll your window up,
you don't want anything to do with it. Is Lazarus going to
be able to do anything to help himself here? No. Why? What did man do? Well, just as
we saw earlier, man is dead. Man died. Well, let's read in
verse 43. Let's see what happens here.
Verse 43. And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud
voice, Lazarus, come forth. What did man do? Man died. What
did God do? He commanded. This wasn't an
invitation. He didn't say, Lazarus, if you
take the first step, I'm gonna call you to life. Lazarus, if
you can just wiggle your fingers, I'll call you to life. No, what
did God do? What did the Lord Jesus Christ
do? He commanded and cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. What happened? Look at verse
44. And he that was dead came forth. Our Lord raised this man
from the dead, a man who had been in the tomb stinking for
four days. What did God do? Just as we saw
earlier in Genesis, where our Lord said, let there be light,
and there was light. God Almighty says to his people,
live. And by his power, he causes us
to live. And that brings me to my last
point here. What is the result? What's the result of all this?
We saw what man did. We saw what God did. What's the
result? Well, let's look back at our text in Ezekiel in verse
eight. Read verse eight through 14 of
Ezekiel 16. Verse eight says, now when I
passed by thee and looked upon thee, 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. Then washed I thee with water,
yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed
thee with oil. I clothed thee also with broidered
work, and shod thee with badger skin, and I girded thee about
with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. I decked thee
also 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 thy renown went forth among
the heathen for thy beauty, for it was perfect. Why? Through
my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord God.
Man died, God does it all, and what's the result here? He causes
us to live. He gives us His righteousness.
He makes us beautiful in Him. Don't forget that, it's in Him.
We just read, it was the time of love. Not our love for Him,
but His love for us. We only love Him because He first
loved us. He said, I covered thy nakedness. He took away our sin, our shame,
our guilt, and he made us righteous in the Lord Jesus Christ. He
covered us in his robe of righteousness. We read, I wash thee with water. He cleansed us with water and
the blood, the double cure. That songwriter wrote, let the
water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be
of sin the double cure to justify, to sanctify, save from wrath
and make me pure. He said, I clothed thee, I decked
thee, I adorned thee, I made thee beautiful. I put a beautiful
crown on your head and you became mine. Aren't we glad that we're
His? If you're one of His, aren't
you glad? You know, everybody today says, well, I want to be
my own man or I want to be my own woman. I'm strong and I'm
independent. No, I don't want that. I just
want to be His. You became mine. Oh, that gives
me rest. By His grace, through His work,
He has brought us from death to life, from that pit of corruption,
that pit of sinfulness, to a perfect righteousness in Him. In the
book of Jude, verse 24 and 25, it says this, now unto Him that
is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless.
Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only
wise God, our Savior, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power,
both now and ever. Amen. He keeps us. He keeps us. Salvation is of the Lord from
beginning all the way to glory. And in verse 14, we read, your
beauty is perfect through my comeliness, which I have put
upon thee. We are precious in his sight
because of what he's done, not anything in us because of what
he's done. And I'll say this, even though our Lord has made
us to be this way, his people, he gives us life, even though
he causes us to live, this is still true. There's two natures
in us. There's two natures in every
child of God. There's an old man, this old
man of the flesh that wars against the Spirit, and there's that
new man, Christ in you, the hope of glory. And that civil war,
that starts, and it is a miserable, miserable thing. We're not just
a saved person who used to be a sinner. That's not the case.
We're a sinner saved by the grace of God Almighty. And we're in
this body of sin until we die. But we live because of what He's
done. And this Civil War, as hard and painful as it may be,
this is the evidence that God has given us inner life. If you're
dead and there's just an old man in you, you're gonna be right
as rain. You're gonna feel great. You're
not gonna have any problems as far as that goes. It's when that
new man gets in there, that's when things start getting shaken
up. And that's a reason to rejoice. Well, lastly, let me ask you
this. In all of this, in this account, in what we've read and
talked about, who gets the glory? Who gets the glory in all of
this? Well, let me tell you a story first. There was once, there
was a father and a son. And this father, he was a sailor,
he was a fisherman. Spent his whole life fishing
and being out in the sea. And his son, kind of the opposite.
This was a kid who went to college and got real smart and educated.
And one day his son, he said, Dad, why don't you take me out
on the boat? Let's go out on the boat for a day. So he goes
out on this ship out in the ocean, and all of a sudden the clouds
get real dark. And a storm comes and they're
far away from land and they start getting a little nervous. And
all of a sudden the waves get real big and the rain starts
coming down real hard and that ship is being tossed to and fro
throughout that ocean. And I mean this dad and his boy,
they're trying to do everything that they can to keep this ship
afloat. And all of a sudden, this giant rogue wave comes in,
and it knocks that son off the boat. Again, that son had no
experience out in the water. He didn't even know how to swim.
And so he falls into that water, and he starts flailing his arms
and screaming. He's drowning. He's drowning.
As far as this son's concerned, there is no hope for him. And
that father, because of his love for his son, he jumps in right
after him, and he swims down to the depths of that water,
and he reaches his arm around him, and he swims back to that
boat, he throws him on the boat, and then that dad steers the
ship to safety. Now let's think about this, okay? Should that
boy that had almost drowned, should he get credit for anything
here? Should he get credit for accepting
his father's help? Did he do anything? No, he was
going to drown. He was going to kick and flail
to the depths of the ocean. But that, or does that father,
that great father who reaches down his hand for us and saves
us, does he get all the credit? Does he get all the glory for
saving his people? Man died. God does it all. He gets the job done and he causes
his people to live. And listen, he gets all the glory
for it. He gets all the glory. In closing, I'd like for us to
read a passage from Ephesians chapter two. Turn with me to
Ephesians chapter two. Ephesians two, verse one. And you hath he quickened, who
were dead in trespasses and sins. wherein time past you walked
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 our flesh, fulfilling the desires
of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children
of wrath, even as others. What did man do? Children of
wrath. Verse four, what did God do?
But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith
he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened
us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved, and hath raised
us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding
riches of his grace and his kindness toward us. through Christ Jesus. Verse eight, for by grace are
you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it's
the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. What
did man do? Man died. What did God do? He did it all. What's the result?
We live in him, and he gets all the glory. All right. in ages past, our hope for years
to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home. Under the shadow of your throne,
your saints that dwell secure. Sufficient is your arm alone,
and our defense is sure. ? Before the hills in order stood
? ? Or earth received her frame ? ? From everlasting you are
God ? ? To endless years of same ? ? Our God, our help in ages
past ? our hope for years to come. Oh, be our guard while
troubles last, and our eternal home.