Violated God in Violent Land

We live in a day, friends, where evil is called good and good evil. We live in a day of terrible violence in the land and tremendous upheaval in the natural elements through natural disasters. And we live in a day where the church has gone silent on sin and man's duty of repentance, where the blind lead the blind and both look up from the spiritual ditch they are in.

I want to read us a striking passage of scripture this evening, friends, for I fear it mirrors our day. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Ezekiel. We will be in chapter 22 and in verses 26 through 31.

I want us to take a look and see the sad and tragic picture of a violated God in a violent land. And that's the title of my message this evening, friends, a violated God in a violent land. Let's look at the passage now.

Here now is the word of God and may the spirit of the Lord be pleased to attend the reading of his holy word. Her priests have violated my law and have profaned mine holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and profane.

Neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean and have hid their eyes from my Sabbaths. And I am profaned among them. Let me pause here, friends.

This solemn proclamation from a profaned God concerning his own priests who do nothing but violate him. They call unclean good and clean unclean. There is no difference, God declares among them, between right and wrong.

It's a sad and tragic picture of a people of God who have turned away from him. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey to shed blood and to destroy souls to get dishonest gain. We see here the blood in the streets as the leaders of the nation are violent men who will kill you if you get in their way.

They're like wolves, God says, ravening the prey to shed blood. My, oh my, if the priests are corrupt and violate God's law and if the leaders are bloodthirsty men selfish for gain, surely the prophets, the messengers of God are upholding God's word and being faithful to him and crying out against all this sin and corruption. But no, we see in her text they're even worse.

And her prophets gave dob them and her prophets dobbed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord, when the Lord hath not spoken. The preachers are all fakes and frauds, preaching smooth messages to the sinful people, by lying to them, saying God was saying a thing when God was completely silent. Well, if the priests and princes and preachers are all corrupt, then what does society look like beneath all of this? The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery and have vexed the poor and needy.

Yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. In other words, they are nothing but a bunch of thieves. Self-interest and self-preservation rule the day and nobody better get in their way.

Friends, does this sound like America? Beneath all this vice and corruption in the land and all the profound spiritual decay in religious leaders of the people of God, the people themselves fall into great and grievous sins. But what is a violated God doing through all this black smog of evil and apostasy and violence in this sin-loving society? What's he doing? He is searching for someone. He is seeking someone.

He is looking for someone. And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it. God says in all this spiritual and sinful chaos, he is looking for a man of prayer, a man he can count on, a man who will honestly represent him and who will intercede for the sin-corrupted land, a man, a spiritual man, a man who walks with God in integrity before him, a man who knows the heart of God and who hears the voice of God in a land in moral degeneracy that has become deaf to God.

Oh, well, God looks and looks and looks for this man, this man who will stand in the gap. But what is the result of his search? But I found none. Oh, what is the dire consequence to a sin-loving society when there is no God-fearing praying man? Therefore, have I poured out my indignation upon them? I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath.

Their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God. Here in our text, God lists the catalog of the sins of Judah and Jerusalem and the common judgments upon them for violating a holy God. Listen, friends.

Sin makes a gap in the hedge of protection and the land. Sin makes a gap in the hedge of protection and a family. Sin makes a gap, such a gap in their welfare and chasm in their relationship to God that good runs away from them and evil runs all over them.

When the cry from wicked Sodom made it up to the ear of God, he began his search. He began looking for a man who would stand in the gap, and he found that man in Abraham. And he spared Lot and his family before overthrowing Sodom to smoking ashes and burning rubble.

Almighty God hears the cry from the blood in the streets on every corner of God-hating America. Most religious denominations in our country that once held up God to sinful man have fallen into the most grievous apostasy, to where spiritual corruption reigns supreme, as the blind lead the blind into one ditch after another, a violated God in a violent society. God looks down from his throne room in heaven.

He looks and he looks and he looks for a man, a man who will stand in the gap on the behalf of a nation. Will you be that man? Let us pray.