Ezekiel 9

The Judgment of the Lord

I. The certainty of the judgment.

A. The wheels of justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine.

1. One of the characteristics of God is His patience or

long-suffering.

2. James exhorts us to have patience as we wait for the

coming of the Lord, for the Lord is waiting for the

complete fruit of harvest, and has long patience

for it.

3. Some have mistakenly misinterpreted this patience for

blindness and think that they are getting by with their

evil. Others have thought it to be a sign that God is

dead, or that He is so far removed from the scene, that

His judgment will never come.

B. Examples of the certainty of judgment.

1. The flood in the days of Noah. Noah was called a

preacher of righteousness, and we know that he was a

hundred years in the construction of the Ark.

2. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He waited until the

homosexuals became so aggressive that they paraded

openly in the streets, and began to rape other men.

3. The nation of Israel is an example, here in the text

we find God sending forth His angels for judgment, and

He had been patiently waiting for hundreds of years for

Israel to turn to Him in repentance.

4. When Peter was declaring that in the last days, that

men would begin to scoff at the idea of the Lord's

coming for the church and His subsequent judgment of

the earth, he said that men would begin to expose the

idea of universalism declaring that all things have

continued as the have been from the beginning. He said

that they were willfully ignorant of the fact that God

once destroyed the earth with a flood, and that the

same world is being readied for the day of judgment

which will come as a thief in the night.

5. These earthquakes that have been shaking California

lately are just a subtle reminder of the big one that

is coming. Not just to California, but to the whole

world, as God has declared that everything that can be

shaken will be shaken, and only that which cannot be

shaken will remain. Jesus said that earthquakes

would be one of the signs of His imminent return.

II. God's discrimination in Judgment.

A. The angel clothed in linen with the inkhorn was told to go

through the city and set a mark in the foreheads of the men

that sigh and are weeping over the abominations that fill

the city. These are to be spared when the slaughter begins.

B. Again examples in history.

1. When God destroyed the earth with the flood, He spared

Noah and his family.

2. When the angels of the Lord were on the way to destroy

Sodom, and Gomorrah, they met with Abraham and informed

him of their mission. Abraham questioned the Lord

saying, "Shall not the Lord of the earth be just? Will

you destroy the righteous with the wicked?"

3. When the children of Israel were being delivered from

the conditions of slavery in Egypt, in the final

plagues we see how God discriminated. When the time

came to slay all of the firstborn of the land, God

commanded the Israelites to take a lamb from their

flocks, and slay it and place the blood of the lintels

and the door posts of their homes, and that as He

passed through the land to slay all of the firstborn,

when He saw the blood, He would Passover that house.

III. The reasons for the judgment. vs. 9

A. The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding

great the land is full of blood, and the city is full of

perverseness.

1. They had been worshipping their gods of pleasure by

throwing their unwanted babies into the bonfires.

2. According to Josephus roving gangs were ruling the

streets indiscrimanently robbing and killing.

B. The attitude of the people was that God had forsaken the earth,

and that He didn't see what was going on. It doesn't matter to

God.

1. This is the attitude that people have in America

concerning abortion today. Over 25,000,000 innocent

lives have been killed in the abortion mills today.

2. We even have a man running for president who openly

declares his approval of this slaughter of innocent

babies.

3. I would never vote for a person that believed in

abortion.

4. God doesn't see and God doesn't care is also the

prevailing attitude in America concerning the practice

of homosexuality.

III. The coming judgment.

A. In the future judgment of God that is to come upon the earth

which is commonly known as the great tribulation, God will

spare His church by delivering them out of the world in an

event that we call the rapture, but He will take Israel through

this period of judgment sealing 144,000 of them in their

foreheads just as in our text He set His mark on those that

were to be spared. B. Even as in our text, as God ordered that

the judgment to begin at His sanctuary, so in the future Peter

declared that the time is come for judgment to begin at the

house of God, and if it begins at us, what will the end be of

those that obey not the gospel of God. And if the righteous

scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?

1. Many of the churches in America today have ministers

who deny the Bible as being the innerrant word of God.

2. Some churches have gone so far as to have marriage

ceremonies for homosexual couples.

3. Ministers have become the spokesmen for liberal causes.

C. Judgment must come, judgment will come. Where will you be when

the wrath of God begins to be poured out?

1. Do you sigh for all of the iniquity that fills our

land?

a. The violence, murder, adultery, the

blasphemous language.

b. Or do you watch it on T.V. and rather enjoy

seeing it portrayed?

2. Have you been crying out to God because of all of the

abominations that fill the land?

a. Have you been on your face before the Lord

weeping because of the iniquity in the land,

or has your pursuit of your own pleasure given

you a careless disregard of the abounding evil?

3. Those who sighed over the conditions, and cried out

to God because of their great concern over the

abominations, were the ones that the Lord marked for

protection from the judgment of the Lord.

D. In speaking of His return to the earth to take His church

before the great day of judgment and wrath, Jesus said to

pray always that you would be accounted worthy to escape

the things that were going to come to pass, and to be careful

that you not be so busy with eating and drinking and the cares

of the this life that you would not be ready for His coming.