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Now, so far in our survey studies, we have studied briefly two books from the Pentateuch, the first division in the Old Testament, namely Genesis and Leviticus. And then we have passed on to study two books, First and Second Kings, from the former prophets. Now, tonight, I must fulfill my promise and select a book from the latter prophets, and I promised you at the beginning that that book would be the prophecy of Ezekiel. I intend tonight, God helping me, to honor that promise, and we shall be considering the prophecy of Ezekiel. Once more, we shall not be able to do anything other than pick out one of its major themes. And the theme I propose to pick out from the prophecy of Ezekiel is what you might call the gospel according to Ezekiel. But so that we might see the more sharply and in its context what the gospel according to Ezekiel is, I'm going to ask you to bear with me while I also map in very briefly for you the gospel according to the other two major prophets, so that we shall have in our mind the gospel according to Isaiah, and the gospel according to Jeremiah, and the gospel according to Ezekiel, and having them all three at once, we shall be able the easier to see the differences between them. Once more, I say, as I said when we were discussing the creation stories. The three different creation stories do not contradict, they supplement each other. They tell us of creation from three different points of view. Similarly, when I talk about the gospel according to Isaiah, and then the gospel according to Jeremiah, and the gospel according to Ezekiel, and say they have differences, I do not mean that they contradict. I mean to say that each one of these prophets preaches God's glorious gospel to us, but each one from a slightly different point of view. So now let us read just a very few verses from each of the three major prophets that may serve to sum up what their gospel message is. First of all, the prophecy of Isaiah and chapter forty nine. Isaiah forty nine verse five. ah It is Messiah who speaks. Isaiah forty nine verse five: And now saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and that Israel be gathered unto him. For I am honored, honorable in the eyes of the Lord, and my God is become my strength. Yea, he saith, it is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation until the end of the earth. And then we shall read from Jeremiah and chapter thirty one. Jeremiah chapter thirty one And verse thirty one. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Je- Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they break, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more. And finally, the, uh, uh, prophecy by Ezekiel. The prophecy of Ezekiel. And we shall read here from chapter thirty six. Ezekiel thirty six verse twenty four. For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean. From all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. And a new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and I will call for the corn and will multiply it and lay no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more the reproach of famine among the nations. Then shall you remember your evil ways and your doings that were not good, and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. Not for your sakes do I do this, saith the Lord God, be it known unto you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. Now saith the Lord God, in the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places to be builded. The Lord give us good understanding of his word. I cannot tell, but it may have occurred to you at some time or other to ask yourself a question. And the question is this: Why didn't God send Jesus Christ, our Lord, into the world to save us? Immediately Adam sinned. Wouldn't it have made life very much more simple if when Adam and Eve sinned and fell, God had immediately sent his son forthwith into the world to save us sinners by dying for us. Well, the first thing to notice is that God didn't do it. And the second thing is to say that perhaps the reason why he didn't do it at once is that we shouldn't have been prepared for him to do any such thing if his son had come immediately Adam sinned. And for this very good reason, that when Adam sinned, while it was obvious that something very serious had happened, man was far from realizing what an intricate, what a complicated, what a terrible thing sin is. For when Adam sinned, it was but a little seed, so to speak. And no one then had the slightest idea into what a vast tree that one little sin would grow. And therefore God waited to send his son into the world. It was no use sending a, a, a, a salvation to people that didn't realize what it was they needed to be saved from. And therefore you will find in the Old Testament the following pattern of things. When Adam sinned, God forthwith announced part of the program of his salvation that met Adam's need. But then, as life went on, men began to sin more, and some new aspect of sin came to light. And when it had come to light, God in his mercy then revealed a further aspect of his salvation that would meet that particular need. When Abraham came along, of course, Abraham was a sinner, but he wasn't such a complicated sinner as later generations. For Abraham didn't have the complicated law of God, and therefore Abraham never realized, as later generations would have to realize, what a complicated thing sin is. Adam sinned, uh, Abram sinned as perhaps a little child sins and knows it's done wrong, but hasn't the developed conscience to know how deeply it is done wrong. When we come towards the later parts of the Old Testament, we must expect to find, therefore, that sin, after centuries of development, sin has become an exceedingly complicated and dark and evil and unimaginably wicked thing. The wickedness of sin has come to be such as you never would have dreamed of. For instance, Adam was in a beautiful garden and dared to sin against God in the ingratitude of his heart. Fancy sinning against God when God had given you such a lovely garden as Adam had. I tell you something worse. Israel didn't have a few lovely apples, a few pears, a few peaches, and one or two grapes hanging on lovely fruit trees. Israel had the very presence of Almighty God enshrined in his house in the middle of Jerusalem. They were allowed to go into his shrine and address Almighty God in person, and having Almighty God living on their very doorstep in Jerusalem, Israel still sinned against him and grew so careless and outrageous in their sins that they not only defiled their own houses, but they had no compunction in defiling the very house of Almighty God himself. Thus did sin develop into the arrogant and filthy sin thing that sin, when developed, comes to be. Therefore, you must expect the reading of the prophets oftentimes to be very gloomy. Don't please pro- eh, complain against God for that and say those dreary prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, what a woeful picture they paint. Well, of course they do. You might as well complain against the textbook of pathology and say those terrible medics, what awful pictures they go and put in their book, and when you read them, it makes you feel all squeamish. Horrible books. Well, yes, they are horrible books, books of pathology, aren't they? They tell us all the possible diseases that the human frame is liable to. But he would be a fool that refused to take notice of them. And therefore we must brace ourselves to read our prophets and learn how sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. But then our prophets also are glorious men, are they not? For they were inspired of God not only to show us our sin, but to show us our salvation. And that they do in the most glorious colors. So if the Isaiah diagnoses sin to be this awful thing, then he will have a gospel message perfectly adequate to meet that particular part of human sin. And if Ezekiel says, yes, but Isaiah is true, but I can tell you something more. You haven't heard half about sin when you've listened to Isaiah. You listen to me. I can tell you stories that will make your hair stand up on end. But then Ezekiel can also turn around and say, and God who foresaw it all has a salvation big enough even to meet this particular degradation of sin. Very briefly then, we shall be looking at these prophets and asking them what their gospel message is. There's scarce a book in the whole Bible, you know, but what doesn't preach the gospel? Ah, there's scarcely a comma in God's book that isn't aimed at our salvation. But as they try to put before us their gospel, they will ask us first to notice the sin of man that this gospel is designed to save him from. So now, very briefly, and traveling over ground that I'm sure you know very well, so I need only remind you of it. The gospel according to Isaiah, pray, what is the gospel according to him? Well, says Isaiah, if you want to know the gospel according to me, my gospel is the gospel of God's perfect servant, the Messiah himself, whom we in our day know as Jesus Christ our Lord. The gospel of the perfect servant. You say, what does that mean? Well, to understand what that means, you'll have to consider the background. He preaches it against the background of Israel's utterly miserable and wretched failure as the people of God to be his worthy servants. Let me remind you what Israel were supposed to have been. God called Abraham out of Ur of Chaldees and made of Abraham a nation. We call them now the Jews, in those days called the Hebrews. And please what for? Well, God called Abraham out of the Gentile nations so that Abraham should be his servant, his witness to men. Abraham was brought up in a civilization that was exceedingly beautiful, but eaten through with idolatry. God, the God of heaven, appeared to Abraham and called him out and gave Abraham a living personal experience of the reality of the living God, in order that Abraham might become a witness to the nations of the real God as distinct from their miserable and wretched idols. God then patiently took Abraham's descendants. As we have been hearing, he rescued them out of the oppression in Egypt and gave them once more a vivid personal experience of the reality of the living God and his great salvation, that God is alive, no dead idol he, and rescued Israel out of the land of the Egyptians. What for? That Israel might serve him in gladsome worship and be a witness to him to the ends of the earth. That's what he saved them for. And what happened to Israel? Oh, alas, what happened to Israel? You could have excused it if it had been people who had lived all their lives in abominable idolatries. But with Israel, having known the living God, having seen his miracles, having his presence in their midst, Israel as a whole went back herself into the same miserable old idolatries as the heathen nations around. You find it incredible, but there is the record. They hadn't been five minutes out of Egypt before they were dancing before an old golden calf. King Saul himself, once time king of the nation, before he died, was seeking after spiritism in an old witch's coven. And people that had known the love and kindness of God presently were taking their babes and sacrificing them to idols of Moloch. How could it ever be? And the answer is this: sin. Or we haven't the tithe of the concept we ought to have of sin, how it has sapped the very vitals and the sense of the human heart that will lead us always and invariably and always inevitably back to idolatry, to trust anything rather than trust God himself. And so you'll find a large part of Isaiah taking up with reprimanding God's ancient people, Israel, for their backsliding into idolatry. You say, what is idolatry? Is it loving things more than we love God? Well, it can be. But, you know, few ancient people loved their idols. I suspect few modern idolaters love theirs either. They're too hideous looking to love, aren't they, most of them? Idolatry in the first place is trusting something other than God. And the temptation always was with Israel, wasn't it? They looked at farmer over the border, you know, in Moab, and this year he happened to got luscious crops. And the temptation they found irresistible. Oh, now there you are, look at the crops that Moab has got. Perhaps there is something in his old spiritism after all. And you know, we've got to make a living, so, so why not give it a try? Daring to trust God, letting their old human heart take them away to put their faith in idols. Isaiah becomes very sarcastic, doesn't he, as he tries to show them the folly of trusting idols. Why, look at that man over there. He says he he's going to get an idol to make himself a god, and he goes to a tree, it's a beautiful tree, and he cuts it down. Well, now there's a few branches on it, so he hacks them off and he puts them on the fire and cooks his breakfast and eats his breakfast, and then he takes the rest of the wood, uh, and he makes an idol and he bows down and trusts it. Fancy worshipping the wood that cooked your breakfast. And then he grows very pathetic when he exposes the folly of idolatry. Look at these people in this village here, he says. They're living there with their old idols on their perches, and one of these days they see a cloud on the horizon, a big cloud of dust that gets bigger and nearer, and they suddenly realize it's their enemies come to take them. And in a panic, they get all their household goods, and they get the old donkey, and they put all the pots and pans and the bits of furniture on the old donkey, and the donkey's legs are beginning to sink through the, the, the, the, through the, the dust, and they're just about to run for their life to get away from the enemy when, oh, they're gods. Well, you can't leave your gods behind, can you? So here they go, and they get hold of their gods, and they heave the old gods up, and they put them on the bank of the donkey, and the donkey's legs go further down than ever, because the poor donkey has to carry the god. And instead of the god saving them and carrying them, they have to carry their god. And instead of helping them be saved, it does but compass their ruin the more speedily. When will we learn it? The old lesson of idolatry. The mark of idolatry is always this. In idolatry, you have to carry your God. The mark of the true God, he carries you. From everlasting to everlasting I am God. I have made, I will carry you. That is the secret of God's salvation. But it's one thing to show the absurdity of idolatry, as Isaiah does so trenchantly. It's another thing to cure it, isn't it? Nowadays, many of us wouldn't dream of bowing down to idols, but we are idolaters still. Our trust is not really in God. It is still in the works of our own hands. Our merit, our morality, our riches, our station in life, be it what it will, we tend to put our faith in the works of our own hands. How will you break it, that cardinal sin of man's trust in himself and in the works of his hands? And that's where Isaiah's glorious gospel comes in. Israel, as a testimony for God among the nations, failed, miserably failed. Instead of witnessing to the true God who could save mankind, Israel herself lapsed into idolatry, unfruitful servant of God that she was. But then God has he'd answer to that unfaithful servant. Behold my servant, he says, he shall do prudently and be exalted and be made very high. And Isaiah, in God's name, begins to prophesy of the coming of Jesus Christ our Lord, God's perfect servant. Lord God has given me the ear and the tongue of the learner, he says. He hath opened my ear, and I was not rebellious. For his long thirty three years, he lived in utter faith in God, unbroken. And when at last his faith in God led him to the cross of Calvary, still he trusted God. The crowds moved by, and they said, there you are. That's what trust in God does for a man. Look at him. He trusted in God. Let him deliver him now, if he will have him. Christ remained on that cross, his faith in God unbroken. But I tell you more. As we look again at that cross, let us do so with Isaiah's words ringing in our ears. And why was he there? God's perfect, sinless son and servant. Say, why was he nailed to a cross? And the answer comes back, he was bruised for our iniquities, wounded for our transgressions. The Lord hath been pleased to lay upon him the iniquity of us all, and by his stripes we are healed. Therefore, by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. The basic problem, how will you win back the human heart to dare to trust God? It is our problem here tonight, isn't it? For a human to live in this world not trusting God, that is a contradiction of his creaturely status. For a human being to pass out into the great eternity without trust in God, that is to go out into everlasting disaster. Pray, how can I be brought to trust God? There is one supreme place in all human history and geography where the human soul can find God and find the ability to trust God, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ, our Lord, God's sinless servant. It tells me that when all we, like sheep, had gone astray and turned everyone to his own way, God loved us still and would save us still. And to show us his love, his son died at Calvary to bear the penalty of the sin that we ourselves should have borne. I bid you look at Calvary. I bid you ponder what Jesus Christ is a doing there on Calvary's cross, and why God's Son so suffered. My friend, if that doesn't provoke in you a trust in God, then must you be lost forever in your unbelief. But this, I say, is elementary. We know and have long since preached the gospel according to Isaiah, the gospel of God's perfect servant, who was wounded for our transgressions to bring us back to faith in God. Hey, what is the gospel according to Jeremiah? Well, Jeremiah, so we have just read, he preaches us the gospel in these terms. God's provision of the new covenant. Behold, the days come, he says, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. That, according to Jeremiah, is the glorious news of the gospel. We shall have to ask ourselves now, therefore, what do you mean by a new covenant? What do you mean by covenant anyway? And why do you call this one a new covenant? To understand the gospel according to Jeremiah, you'll have therefore to look back in the Old Testament history to the old covenant. The old covenant was a covenant that God made with Israel, and he made it on the basis of the law of Moses. Now this is a little bit tricky. Sometimes we don't always understand clearly the difference between the covenant that God made and the law of Moses upon which that covenant was, was built. Let me therefore use a humble and a very simple illustration to get it across to you. I gather that here in Malaysia, like us in England, you have cookery books, real cookery books with lovely pictures of all the beautiful meals that could be made if only the housewives pay attention to the directions in the cookery book. Yes. I want you to imagine a young man so foolish, or perhaps so wise, as having decided that he would like to marry such and such a beautiful young lady, goes and buys a cookery book, one of those beautiful cookery books. And he says, my dear, now I am going to give this to you as a wedding present. There you are, I love you so much, uh, this cookery book. And of course, she gets the hint, hmm, I suppose he would like me to make some of these dishes. And he says, yes, my dear, I would very much like, uh, that's my favorite one on page one hundred and one. I'd like you to make that, uh, you see. Yeah. Well, that's fair enough, isn't it? She's got the cookery book, and there's all the rules and regulations, which, if she keeps them, will turn out some very good meals. The cookery book is the law, isn't it, that tells you how to cook. Ah, yes. But suppose the man were so foolish as to go to the young lady and say, my dear, I propose marrying you, but on condition. You see this cookery book. Now look, I'm prepared to have you as my wife and to maintain you as my wife, on condition that you cook all the recipes in this book in their proper season, and that you cook them perfectly, you never burn the beans or spoil the tomatoes, you shall do it all one hundred percent. and if you promise that you'll fulfill all the rules in this cookery book, you may be my wife and I shall be your husband. But get it into your head now that if you ever spoil one of these dishes, I shall be obliged to divorce you. That would be another story, wouldn't it? You see, that wouldn't me- merely be the law of cookery, that would be taking the law of cookery and making it the basis of a covenant between the man and his wife. I can't imagine any woman that would ever marry any man on those terms. But you see, God gave Israel a law. It was an excellent law. It was holy and righteous and just and good. There was nothing wrong in the law. A superb law it was. And if only Israel would have kept it, they would have been superb people. But God didn't merely give them the law, you know. God made a covenant with Israel. And he said to Israel, now look here, I'm prepared to be your God and take you to be my people. And I'm prepared to grant you my guarantees that I receive you as my people, but on this condition, that you keep all this law absolutely one hundred percent, ah and if you break it, I dismiss you. Do you know what Israel said? They said, yeah, all right, very good. Oh, why not? And Moses said, have you understood it? Just let me read it. So he read it in all the ears of the people. Yes, they said, that's all right. Yes, yes. Um, we're happy to be God's people on the condition that we keep this law. Oh, said Moses, perhaps I better write it in a book and read it to you. So he wrote it in a book and read it. Yes, they said, that's all right. And then God wrote it on the tables of stone, and God made a covenant with them that he would be their God, and they his people, so long as they kept this law. The covenant scarce had been made when they had broke it, broken it in its most important point. And years of experience merely sufficed to show them their wretched inability to keep that law. They broke it uphill, and they broke it down dale. They broke the big things, and they broke the little things, and even the sacrifices that that law offered them as a way of forgiveness, they despised and rejected them and perverted them and ruined their whole relationship with God. We mustn't suppose that our hearts are any better than theirs. Jeremiah, pondering the thing, came to this conclusion: The human heart, it is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can know it? Why the sin of a few savages in the jungle is serious, isn't it, and sad? But the sin of a people who once were in covenant relationship with God and broke that covenant, how will you ever describe it? Now we know that what things the law says, it says to them that are under the law, that not merely the mouths of Jews may be stopped, but that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world be demonstrated to be under guilt towards God. Then what is the gospel according to Jeremiah? Well, it's no good making, repeating the same old covenant, is it? And saying, now look, if you'll be good boys and girls and you will really keep the law, then you can be saved. What a sad misunderstanding it has been, even in Christendom, that so very often Christian preachers have stood up and they have told the people that the way to be saved is to do your best to keep God's law. Why, they are two thousand, three thousand years too late. God has demonstrated it over centuries, that the human heart is so bad that it cannot keep that law. If man is ever to be saved, there must be some other means found. Praise God, that means has been found. Says God through Jeremiah, the days come when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. Firstly this, that God's laws now are not merely written on tables of stone, leaving it to the people to do their best to keep those laws. That says God, by my spirit, I will write them on your very heart. That is, I will put my spirit within you. I will give you a new nature, which nature has the power to do the law that God wishes us to do. Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. I mustn't stay on the details of that covenant. You know them well, most of you. For Sunday by Sunday, you gather, you who are Christians, and take the cup of remembrance from the hand of the Lord Jesus, and as you take it, you celebrate the forming of that new covenant. Christ's power to write his laws on our hearts and give us not only the command, but the power to perform the command. That leads me finally to ask, well then now, what is the gospel according to Ezekiel? We've heard the gospel according to Isaiah and the gospel according to Jeremiah. Pray, what is the gospel according to Ezekiel? The gospel according to Ezekiel is this, the cleansing of people from all their defilements and the erection of God's true and perfect temple in their midst. To understand the significance of that, you must let Ezekiel tell you once more about Israel's failure. Israel's disastrous failure, their desecration, defiling and polluting of all that was sacred, all that was holy, all that was divine and beautiful in life. How they took these lovely, beautiful things of nature, how they took the lovely, beautiful things of God's spirit, how they took his very house itself and rubbed it in the mud and defiled it with their filthy living. Their desecration and their pollution of all that was sacred and lovely and beautiful. Oh, it is an incredible story, a heartbreaking story. God saved Israel out of Egypt. He now allowed them to build him a temple in Jerusalem, and there God came and dwelt, and the glory of God was over the city of Jerusalem. For God meant human life to be glorious and beautiful. Ezekiel it is that tells us in his prophecy of those lovely, beautiful things that God intends for mankind. God has given us life, but he doesn't merely give us. Existence can be a very pale thing, can't it? God wanted life to be something beautiful, glorious. Therefore, God went after Israel, we read, when Israel were a poor, slavish people. God found her in the wilderness, found her a poor outcast girl, and God himself began courting Israel in the wilderness, and he had her washed, and he had her cleansed, and he had her dressed properly. So the prophet uses the old fashioned imagery, and he adorned her with ornaments, and he made her a beautiful queen, and he loved her. And not content with that, he brought her into the land of Palestine and bethought himself in his divine ingenuity of all the lovely things he could give Israel, his corn, his oil, his wine, his honey, his milk, his flowers. He gave them to Israel as a lover gives gifts to his bride, and sought to fill Israel's heart with joy and delight at the richness and the beauty of life. And to crown it all, God stationed himself in Israel in the temple, and there his glory was. And Israel. Why Israel daubed the very walls of the temple with their filthiness, with their debased superstitions, with their perverted sexual immoralities in the name of religion, with their old heathen idolatry. So much so that the very glory of God had to take to itself wings and fly away. It's a terrible thing about sin, you know. Do take it seriously. Sin looks so attractive when it starts, but sin will pollute and desecrate and destroy and defile everything that is beautiful in life. What is the secret of it? It is given to Ezekiel to trace in his mystical language the origin of this kind of thing. For in his chapter twenty six twenty eight, Ezekiel is given to look behind the scenes to the history of his satanic majesty himself. Few people realize that originally Satan himself was the most glorious creature that ever existed. The highest of all God's handiwork. He was the anointed cherub that covered, high and exalted and beautiful and intelligent, fit to wait upon God in God's immediate presence. And how came he to fall, this exalted creature, Satan? Why, says the holy writ, he trusted in his own beauty and fell. It means this, that there came a terrible moment in his experience when that exalted and beautiful creature, instead of continuing to make God the object of his heart and love, and take his beauty and put it again and yet again and again at the feet of God, that his beauty might charm the creator who had made it. There came a moment ins- when instead of serving God ceaselessly, so that the whole of his energies were directed to please the creator who had made him, Satan turned and made himself the goal, and used his beauty for his own satisfaction and chose to serve his own joy and his own pleasure. You must know that at that stage, Satan's joys and Satan's pleasures were the most refined kind of pleasures that anybody could have imagined. And right glorious pleasures they were when he took them gratefully from God and let the gratitude of them flow back to God and move him to serve God. As I say, there came the moment when Satan allowed himself to be the goal of everything, his beauty the goal, his enjoyment the goal, his feelings the goal, his ambitions the goal. There broke out that vast rebellion in heaven, and a creature made to serve God turned round and made himself the goal of his existence. And all of us have since done it, haven't we? The great city of Tyre in the ancient world was notorious and famous for a quality of its living. The Tyrians weren't savages. They were the great merchantmen of the ancient world. They were the people that said, like the Americans, you know, we must make everybody come to believe that refrigerators are necessities. We must raise the standard of life. We must, uh, bring in all the consumer goods and the curtains and the rugs and the silver and the gold and the chariots and all the fine artwork, we must get people to see that life is a many splendid thing, and lovely and glorious were the articles of their trade. They made a fearful mistake. They thought that life's glory lay in things, in the enjoyment of things, apart from the living God. And they fell as a society into the most brutal, brutal child sacrifice that the world has seen. And God destroyed them. And the Jews? Why, when God courted them and married them, so to speak, and gave them his lover's gifts, the corn and the wine and the oil, and thought thereby to engage Israel's heart until she served him loyally, in the end she took the gifts, but didn't care anymore for the lover of her soul, and made the gifts themselves the end and her enjoyment of them the goal of things and forgot God days on end. And who of us hasn't done the same thing? Do you know some of us could even be guilty of doing it in our spiritual experiences? Haven't there been times when we have sought God, not for God's own sake? We seek him for the joy that forgiveness brings, for the peace that he can give, and we will serve God as long as we feel good, so long as our feelings are pleasant, so long as our Christianity engages our pleasure, but let difficult times come, and we don't want to know Christ. And it becomes apparent that instead of serving Christ, we are serving our own enjoyment, our own feelings, our own satisfaction. Travel that pathway long, and you will s- destroy the bloom of life and all that is beautiful in life. For God is our creator. We were made to live for him. If we turn it round and live for For cells. self. That is to destroy the whole reason why we were made and turn ourselves into a veritable dead sea, a meaningless existence. If that be Israel's sin and our sin too, try what is the gospel according to Ezekiel? Ah, it is to build a temple and to have the temple put once more in the middle of the land, so that it shall be the middle of life, so that all man's activity shall flow to that temple, one great concert of praise. So that the marketplace shall be conducted for the glory of the God who lives in that temple. So that the arts and sciences shall be conducted for the glory and the pleasure of God who lives in that temple. So that home life shall be enjoyed for God's glory, and all that men do serve his pleasure. You say, is it possible? Not for us as we are. Creatures of clay, fallen creatures of clay, that turn so readily in upon themselves and make themselves the goal and therefore the dead end of life. But it can become possible, for Ezekiel has a gospel, and it runs like this, the message of God's Holy Spirit, I will cleanse you from your uncleannesses, and I will put a new heart in you, a heart of flesh, a heart that shall love God. Because it is a heart born of the Spirit of God, a divine nature that naturally turns to love God, because it is God's spirit in the heart. It were foolish of me, I suspect, to try and preach to you the gospel according to Isaiah in one night. To have attempted to sketch in the gospel according to Jeremiah and Ezekiel as well is perhaps the pinnacle of folly. And yet perhaps my attempt has done us something to stir your interest in these long, long books, to show that they are important, even if gloomy, in diagnosing for us our sin, to show that they are bound with the rapture of God's glory, that however dark our sin be, he has a gospel and a salvation that can meet our need and transform us into servants of God, loyal and true, that can transform us into obedient subjects of the King according to his new covenant, and that can transform our hearts and make us lovers of Christ, fit to be his bride for all eternity and live for his sake and for his pleasure alone. The Lord bless his word to that end, for his name's sake. Pray, sorry, shall we just pray before we have our break? O God, we thank thee that thou hast devised a salvation that is fit to meet our need. We thank thee that this gives us courage, therefore, to face our own hearts and their naughtiness, and to allow thy spirit to plumb the depths of our sin and depravity, and show our ugly selves to ourselves. We pray that we might thus use thy word, that we may not flinch from discovering ourselves, because in Christ thy Son we have a salvation big enough to save us from our sin, blood to cleanse, thy spirit to regenerate. And O Lord, we thank thee that as thy salvation proceeds within our heart, the future grows ever the brighter unto the dawning of that coming day when sin shall be a story of the past and there be nothing left but unsullied glory stretching before us to all eternity in the glad service of God. Thus bless thy word to our hearts, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.