At Work for His Glory

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Well, I started thinking several weeks ago about what I was going to preach on next after we got through some of those hot-button issues that we covered in January, if I still had a pulpit. What was I going to talk about? And something told me that I needed to talk about the sovereignty of God.

And as I started working on outlining some things, I was really drawn in the direction of talking about the sovereignty of God from a standpoint of how He intervenes in our lives. I think we’re all okay with the idea of God being sovereign, sitting on His throne, and He rules over heaven, but sometimes when we get in earthly circumstances, things feel just a little bit different, and we wonder, is God really in control of all of these things? And what a week to be starting this subject with everything that’s gone on with Carly Jo.

But, you know, at the same time, I can’t think of a better time to start this subject, as I’ve said that my whole week has been an exercise in trusting the sovereignty of God to take care of my family, especially my little girl. But I wanted to look at the sovereignty of God as it applies to our lives. And the fact that God is never caught off guard, God is never absent, God is never at a loss for what to do next.

On the contrary, God is always at work in our midst, even when we don’t see it. And so over the next few weeks, I’d like to look at that aspect of God’s sovereignty, how He’s always at work in our midst. that God has his plans and God has his will, and he’s always at work in our midst to carry those things out, even when we don’t see it. Again, we’re good with the idea of God’s sovereignty, God sitting on his throne, but then we look around at our real life, at our circumstances, and we say, well, he’s not doing anything here.

God, why won’t you intervene here? God, why won’t you do this? And the reality is, God’s always at work.

We’re just often too busy looking somewhere else to notice what he’s actually doing. You know, I came across a circumstance like this this week. You know, they’ve been concerned all week with Carly Jo’s oxygen levels, and that was what they first noticed was problematic that caused them to look for other things in ADA and realize this is beyond our capability and to send her to OU.

They were concerned about those oxygen counts. Even after she got to OU, you know, as they’ve been trying different treatments, They’ve been keeping a close eye on those oxygen counts, and at some points they haven’t been just great. And there was one day this week, the cardiologist told me, with her condition, we would like to shoot for around 75% oxygen saturation.

75%, which I would have thought was really bad, but with her condition, they said that would be a good number to shoot for. I said, okay, and I started praying, God, would you let her oxygen numbers come up to 75? And shortly after that, you know, I think that was the day my dad was there.

We went down and had some lunch. And actually, I was stressing about her oxygen numbers because they were 59 and 60. And so we went down to have lunch, and I decided I wasn’t hungry.

Dad ate, and I sat there and watched him and stewed over those oxygen numbers. And we came back in, and I’d been praying the whole time we were down there. The oxygen numbers were still at 59 or 60.

I said, God, could you please give us to 75? Carly Jo needs 75. God, would you give us 75?

And then I got absorbed in something else I was doing. I took work up there with me to do sermon preparation, other stuff. And I got absorbed for a few minutes in what I was doing.

I look over at the monitor, and it’s 59, and then it goes up to 60. And I was like, okay, it can move up. God, can you give us 75?

A few minutes later, I look at it again. It’s still at 60. God, can you give us 61?

And I sat there staring at the monitor for a good 15 minutes, Just, I don’t think I even blinked. God, can you just give us 61? Carly Jo needs 61.

God, I know you can do this. I’ve been saying all along, the God who spoke the universe into existence can move and strengthen the valve in her heart without surgery and leave them wondering what happened. Nothing is going to surprise me at this point.

Well, it still might, but when I stop, initially it might surprise me, but when I stop and think about it, why would I not believe God could do what I’ve been asking him to do? But I sat there and, God, can you give us 61? Can we start there?

God, I know you can do this. Can you give us 61? And I’m stressing about this all afternoon because those numbers never moved above 60.

And I finally asked the nurse about it because I’m thinking, I know God can take her to 75. God could take her to 150%, I’m sure, if that were a thing that happened. God can take her to any number he wants to.

And I started to wonder, why isn’t he? I won’t say I was mad at God, but I was, okay, God, there’s some reason here. I don’t know why you’re not doing it.

I don’t know why you’re not doing this, but whatever. And I asked the nurse about it. I said, you know, is there something else they need to try?

I said, the oxygen numbers look so, they haven’t moved. They look so bleak. And she said, no, those are good numbers.

And I said, no, no, the doctor, the cardiologist said we need to shoot for 75. And she looks over, she said, that’s the percentage of oxygen we’re giving her. The numbers had risen to the high 80s and low 90s and been up there all afternoon.

And I said, okay, God, I’m sorry. You were working on this. I was just too busy looking in the wrong spot to know what you were doing and wondering why you weren’t working.

I was looking at the wrong monitor. And I thought, well, that’s a perfect illustration right there. We tend to do that with all sorts of things that God’s at work.

We’re too busy looking at one monitor when God says, no, I’m over here doing this. And yet we’ll get mad at God, we’ll get frustrated, we’ll blame God, and sometimes we’ll think God’s just not working. God doesn’t do miracles, God doesn’t intervene in human history the way he used to.

I beg to differ. God’s will and God’s plans and God’s intervention in the affairs of man are just as they’ve ever been. And this morning we’re going to look at the first of what I have planned out, four topics that we’re going to look at about the ways that God works and the reasons why God works in our midst. And today we’re going to be in Ezekiel chapter 36.

If you’re not familiar with Ezekiel, it’s in the Old Testament. It’s toward the end of the Old Testament. It’s about halfway through your Bible probably.

If you can find Matthew, turn back about 14 books and you’ll find the book of Ezekiel. You might have a table of contents in the front of your Bible that would help you find it as well. The book of Ezekiel, and then we’re going to be in chapter 36.

And Ezekiel wrote during a period we call the Babylonian captivity. Ezekiel was one of the Israelites who had been carried off into captivity by the Babylonians. The Babylonians came in and took over what was the southern kingdom of Judah, the southern two tribes.

came in and took them over and really did what we’d call today a brain drain. They took the best and the brightest of society in Judah back to Babylon to put to work for them in their philosophy and their technology and all that. They carried them away.

And they carried them away in several waves, and it just really created chaos in Judah. And he was one of these who was brought out into the captivity. He was in Babylon when he was writing.

And one of the things he’s writing about throughout this book is he’s talking to people especially who had been born in the captivity. Now when I say captivity, they weren’t necessarily slaves. But they were born during this Babylonian captivity.

Some of the people who weren’t there when their parents were carried off into Babylon, they were just born in Babylon. They might not understand why we’re here, what all this meant. The prophets had said why God was going to let them be carried off into captivity in Babylon, but some of the people might have missed it.

They might have not understood. Why are we in captivity in Babylon? You know, why doesn’t God do something about this?

And the whole book of Ezekiel is written to explain God’s judgment on Judah and also the glory of God and his future plans to restore the nation of Israel. And when we get to chapter 36, we’re going to start in verse 16, we see where he explains, really, he’s been explaining up to this point, but in chapter 36, we see where he gives the explanation for the thick-headed people like myself, you know, that need God to come up with the frying pan for us to get what he’s trying to say. And so we’ll look at Ezekiel 36, starting in verse 16.

And it says, Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own ways and deeds. To me, their way was like the uncleanness of a woman in her customary impurity. I want to stop there for just a second.

I was talking to Charla about this passage on Monday. I said, I really need this first part to help explain what he’s talking about. I said, but I don’t necessarily want to go into a discussion of what this is about, either because of the graphic nature of it or, I mean, the personal nature of it, or because I don’t want it to sound like God is anti-women.

And so I was explaining to her what this passage is talking about. I was saying, help me put this in terms that explain what he’s saying without it being offensive to women. And as we talked about what he’s saying, he was telling the nation of Israel that because of their sin, before they were carried off into the Babylonian captivity, because of their continued sin, their egregious sin, just their constant rebellion against God, he said, you are to me as a woman in her customary impurity.

And what he’s talking about is time of the month issues. And the reason for that is that in their culture, in the ancient Israelite culture, along with a lot of other ancient cultures, that was considered to be unclean. Really, anything that, especially with the Israelites, anybody who exhibited any kind of symptoms of any kind of sickness, anything out of the usual, was considered unclean.

If you were not clean and fully functioning and perfect working order and everything, you feel great, then you’re set aside, and they were kind of concerned about you. In some cases, you were put out of the camp. And for one thing, men and their wives had to be separate during that period of time, during each month.

And not only that, but women were not allowed to come into the tabernacle or the temple during that period of time. And so what God is saying here, he’s not putting women down. He’s putting this in terms that the Israelites would understand.

Because a woman during the customary impurity would be separated from her husband physically, might have to go live in another part of the house or another building altogether, was separated from her husband, but was also separated from the tabernacle. Now, by the way, those laws don’t apply any longer. If anybody’s saying, well, God is anti-women, the Bible is anti-women, no. Those laws were unique to the nation of Israel.

They were part of God’s plan to make Israel different from everybody else and to help them understand his holiness, And they don’t factor into New Testament Christianity. But God wanted the people of Israel to understand this picture of being separated and cut off. And they would understand that because that’s how they treated the women.

And so when God says, Israel, because of your sin, you’ve become to me like that woman, that was something they would have understood. And the way they viewed the women, God says, that’s how I look at you. So don’t take this as an anti-woman thing.

Take this as an anti-sin thing that God’s saying, I want nothing to do with you just like you want nothing to do with this woman. And hopefully that’s not too awkward for us to cover. But that tells us how God viewed the sin of Israel.

He said, therefore, I poured out my fury on them for the blood they had shed on the land and for their idols with which they had defiled it. So I scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed throughout the countries. I judged them according to their ways and their deeds.

When they came to the nations, wherever they went, they profaned my holy name. When they said of them, These are the people of the Lord, and yet they have gone out of his land. But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations, wherever they went.

Now today we’re going to look through verse 38, but I want to stop there for just a second. We see here that God is at work. We already begin to see that God is at work in Israel.

And one of his motivations, one of his motivations, as we’re going to see several motivations this month, several things that factor into God’s plans, one of his motivations, and maybe his primary motivation, is his own glory. That God deserves to be glorified, and God is going to be glorified in and among his people. And I had a teacher when I was in high school, that occasionally we would sit around and talk about things after class, who was real bothered by the idea of rewards in heaven.

and people getting a crown. And she’s like, so you Christians are, you’re not really altruistic. You do good things so that you can get a reward in heaven.

So you can get a crown. You’re really just after the reward. And I said, no, you know, it’s not like that.

I think of that song, Holy, Holy, Holy. It says we cast down our golden crowns around the glass. The rewards we have are things that we then have to have available to us to offer to Jesus out of thankfulness, out of gratefulness for what he’s done.

And the teacher said, well, then isn’t that kind of self-serving of God? He rewards you just so you can reward him right back. And I said, it’s not self-serving and it’s not inappropriate and it’s not selfish if he deserves it any more than it’s inappropriate or self-serving of you to expect your paycheck or, you know, something that you’ve earned.

God, by nature of who he is, God deserves glory. He all the glory that we could ever give him, and then some. We are imperfect vessels for bringing him glory, and yet it’s still our responsibility as his people to do the best we can with the help of his Holy Spirit to bring him all the glory that we can, because he deserves it.

And I know as I’ve talked to Benjamin about God being a jealous God, he, wait a minute, we’re not supposed to be jealous. It’s okay, because God is jealous of the things he deserves. You’re jealous when Madeline gets a toy for her birthday and you didn’t.

Well, you didn’t earn one. That’s not a right form of jealousy. But when God deserves glory and doesn’t get it, he’s jealous for that.

It’s only just that he should receive what he deserves. And so God is very concerned about his glory. And if that sounds to you, I hope that doesn’t sound to you like it’s self-serving of God, God is entirely just. God can’t sin.

God can’t do anything wrong. God can’t have bad motives. But if you’re still sitting there and say, I don’t get it.

It just sounds wrong. I don’t know. Some people are just determined to think, it’s probably nobody in this room, but some people are just determined that they want to think God has bad motives and acts in bad faith.

That’s not what’s going on here. But God is very concerned about his glory because he deserves it. And so we see God acting, God moving in the history of Israel in the first place, chastening Israel because their sin had dishonored him.

And any sin that we commit dishonors God, because any sin we commit, we’re looking at God and saying, I know you want this, I know you expect this, I know your holiness requires this, but I’d rather do this, so God, I don’t care what you say. We’re shaking our fist at God, even in a little sin. But these weren’t little sins, these weren’t what we would call little sins, these weren’t isolated incidents.

Over and over and over throughout the history of Israel, they had followed after idols. Some of the false gods they had fallen into worshiping even required things like child sacrifice. I mean, it was just bloody, awful stuff that God had said, don’t do this.

What’s wrong with you? And they’d do it anyway. And we see this cycle all throughout the Old Testament where they would fall into idolatry because they’d forget about God.

They’d want to do what felt right to them, what seemed right in the moment, and so they’d fall into idolatry, they’d reject God, go after these false gods, and God would say, I’ve got to do something to get their attention. And so God would allow another country to come in and allow this other country to take over and persecute them a little bit, to chasten them, you know, to discipline them, and that doesn’t always feel good in the moment, but it’s done for our good. Just like when a loving parent, I don’t like disciplining my children.

It’s not a fun thing for me, and yet it needs to be done if I don’t want them to grow up to be entitled serial killers, you know, that sort of thing. They need to be lovingly disciplined, and that’s what God did. So he’d allow this country to come in, he’d allow these other countries to come in, take over for a little bit, until the people realized, wait a minute, we really do need God.

And then they would repent, they would be sorry over their sins, they would call out to God, and he would restore them. And they’d walk with him in this relationship until they didn’t again. There’s just a nasty cycle.

By the time we get to the Babylonian captivity, this cycle has gone on. This cycle has gone on for over a thousand years. And it’s only gotten worse.

Each time they go through the cycle, they spiral deeper and deeper into depths of depravity. And God says, I’ve got to do something once and for all to get their attention. And so he allows the Babylonians to come in and take them over for 70 years.

they were carried away into captivity for 70 years God said your sin separated you from me your sin cut you off from my tabernacle from my presence he said I had to pour out my fury on them for the blood they had shed it wasn’t just some people I have seen articles where some people say Christians say I don’t understand why God can’t just chill out about sin because he’s God and he’s holy there was an article years ago, I preached a whole sermon about from Christianity Today that called God a drama queen over his view of sin. And apparently I wasn’t the only one upset about it because they eventually pulled the article off the website. It’s hard to find now.

They said, why can’t God just chill out about sin? Because God is holy, and sin is the opposite of that, and it’s, you know, light and dark. How do they coexist?

They don’t. One drives the other out. Light has to drive out the darkness.

us. These were not, so I said all that to say, I know some people think, why can’t God chill out about some of these things? So they worshiped a few idols.

Okay, well, there were some other things on top of that. The worship of idols led them to do terrible things to each other. And I know some people have said, how cruel of God to destroy the world with a flood in Noah’s day.

When you look at how they were treating each other and the violence and the, stop the bloodshed is what he did. Sometimes you’ve got to just stop the madman, and that’s exactly what God did. God poured out his fury, verse 18, on them for the blood they had shed on the land, and the idols that they had defiled themselves with.

Their idols had led them to harm one another. He said, when they went out of the country, they profaned my name. And it was to the point that even the other countries around them, who did the same things, by the way, the idols that the Israelites were worshiping came from these other countries around them.

The people around them who were worshiping the same idols and false gods looked at the Israelites and said, I thought they were supposed to be different. Don’t they belong to the Lord? And yet look how they act.

And we hear the same thing from time to time as well about God’s people. Wait a minute. They’re supposed to be different and they act just like us.

Sometimes they’re worse than we are. And what they were doing, the Israelites, they were dishonoring God’s name. They dishonored him through their sin.

And so God said for the sake of his own glory, He was going to send them out. He was going to scatter them among the nations. And so he sent the Assyrians in to take the northern ten tribes of the kingdom of Israel, and they were scattered.

People talk about the ten lost tribes of Israel. They weren’t lost. They were scattered and mixed in with the Assyrian empire. And the remaining two tribes now still didn’t.

. . They saw what happened to their cousins in the north, and they still didn’t get their act together.

So God, a while later, sent the Babylonians in to deal with them. For the sake of his own glory, God said, I can’t let these people be called by my name and still live this way. And so God chastened the people of Israel because their sin dishonored him.

But then we see in the next few verses that God was willing, just as God chastened them for his glory, God was willing to restore them for his own glory. So we see in verses, starting in verse 22, it says, Therefore say to the house of Israel, God’s speaking to Ezekiel here, saying, give them a message from me. Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.

And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take from you among all the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. So God begins to talk about restoring the people of Israel, and he says, I’m not doing it for you.

I’m doing it for my glory. Now, God loves Israel. God loved Israel then, otherwise he would have just written them off a long time ago.

God is also faithful to keep his promises. And I believe God sent his son to save us and to restore us because he loves us. But there’s the other motivating factor there of saying his glory is displayed in his power to save and the love he demonstrated at the cross.

God’s glory is inextricably linked to all these other attributes. And when you think about God’s saving power, think about grace now, it’s not something we earn or deserve. God doesn’t give it to us because of something we do.

He gives it to us because he is gracious. He forgives because he is gracious. Even in the Old Testament, God said, I’m not going to restore Israel because you’ve earned it.

Okay? I’m not going to restore Israel because you’re such wonderful people and you’ve done the right thing. But God said, for the sake of my own glory, I’m going to restore Israel.

We look at these three verses, and he said in verse 22, I’m not doing this for your sake. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for the sake of my name.

He said, because I want the nations around to see the way you’ve been restored. I want the nations around to see the incredible work that I’ve done in your midst. And if you look back at the stories of Moses, it’s a good thing God and Moses never got on the same page about killing Israel, or they would have been gone. But there was always Moses saying, God, why don’t you just, these people are awful, why don’t you kill them?

And God said, no, we need to have grace. There were times when God said, I’m ready to wipe out Israel, and Moses would beg for God’s mercy on Israel. They never got on the same page about killing Israel.

But there were times that Moses would beg for God’s mercy. Now, God knew what Moses was going to say. God knew before Moses pointed it out that what he was saying was true.

But I think he was waiting for Moses to beg for mercy. But one of the reasons that Moses begged for mercy for the people of Israel, when they were acting up and God said, I might as well just wipe them out, Moses said to God something very interesting. He said, please don’t do that.

Not because Israel deserves to be spared, but if you kill them out in the wilderness, if you let them die out in the wilderness, the Egyptians, the Midianites, everybody around are going to say, see, the God of Israel wasn’t even powerful enough to bring them through the wilderness like he said. And so even when you and I don’t live up to a place of earning God’s mercy and God’s promises, because he makes promises to us that we don’t deserve for him to keep. But because he is a God who by nature keeps his promises and is faithful for the sake of his own glory, God keeps his promises to us.

And God was willing to restore Israel to demonstrate his own power and his own faithfulness. Just like with Moses. I won’t destroy him in the wilderness because the Egyptians will say their God was nobody.

God’s glory is good for us. Because God, for the sake of his own glory, gives us far better treatment than what we actually deserve. Now, he will discipline us for the sake of his own glory.

But he also restores for the sake of his own glory. He restored Israel to demonstrate his power and faithfulness. He said, these nations that you’ve profaned my name in front of, he says, they will know that I am the Lord when I’m hallowed before you in their eyes.

When they see the way I’ve restored you. When they see where I’ve brought you. Because I’m going to take you out of the nations, I’m going to gather you out of all these countries where I’ve scattered you, and I’m going to bring you back into the land that I’ve given you.

They’ll see I keep my promises, and they’ll see that I’m the Lord. See, he was at work to restore them for his own glory. Let’s look at verse 25 now.

Because something incredible happens between verses 24 and 25. He says, Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the new heart of stone. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall be my people, and I will be your God.

I will deliver you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and multiply it and bring no famine upon you. So what we see there is that God was promising to be at work within Israel, not just to restore them to the land, not just to bring them back when they didn’t deserve it.

But God said, you don’t deserve it because of the spiritual uncleanness, and I’m going to take care of that too. You know what? We don’t deserve for God to come in.

We deserve in our sin for God to just write us off. But even today, that’s not what He does. God comes in and saves us and restores us to a relationship that we don’t deserve to have, but he also cleanses us from the inside out.

That’s what he said he’d do here. He said, I’m going to cleanse you with water. I’ll cleanse you from all your filthiness.

I’m going to cleanse you from all your idols. And you know what? The nation of Israel never had a problem with idols again after the Babylonian captivity to the extent that they did before.

Now, there were other problems regarding their faithfulness to God. They got really into legalism as opposed to the true spiritual meaning of the law. But they never seemed to have the problem with idols again, widespread like they had before.

He said, I’m going to cleanse you from your filthiness, from your idols. I’m going to give you a new heart. You know that old hard heart of stone?

I’m going to take that out of you and I’m going to give you an actual heart of flesh. He’s going to make them sensitive to the things of God. He’s going to give them a heart for himself and for one another.

I will put my spirit within you. That’s the most important thing. How you and I are able to, as those of you who have trusted Christ as your Savior, the way we are able to walk with Him, the way we are able to obey Him, the way we are able to serve Him at all is because of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit that draws us in that direction.

And He said to Israel, I’m going to put my spirit in you. I’ll give you my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you’ll keep my judgments. And He said, you’ll dwell in the land that I gave your fathers.

You’ll be my people and I’ll be your God. This is what was supposed to happen in the first place. This is what God had designed them for all along, for them to walk in this relationship with him.

And they had refused to, so God, for the sake of his own glory, had to chasten them, had to discipline them, had to send them away. But for the sake of his own glory, he restored them into that relationship and said, I’m going to clean you up from the inside out. I’m going to clean you up from the inside out.

That way you can do what I’ve called you to do. Now let’s continue to look at verse 29, but go a little further. In the middle of verse 29, he shifts the conversation.

From saying, I’ll deliver you from all your uncleanness, he’s talking about the spiritual condition. But then he says, I’ll call for the grain and multiply it. He starts talking about their circumstances.

But he says, I will call for the grain and multiply it and bring no famine upon you, so they weren’t going to starve. And I will multiply the fruit of your trees and the increase of your fields so that you need never again bear their reproach of famine among the nations. Because when they suffered from famine, you know, all these countries around them had their gods of fertility and their gods of grain and their gods of this and that.

And they were saying, we’re not suffering from famine over here while we’re worshiping Baal or whoever. And yet you’re worshiping this God, this one that you say is so powerful, and you’re suffering from famine. Now, sometimes the famine was there as a, hey, you nee