It’s amazing how on the one hand, we head into Christmas wanting it to be full of peace and rest – yet so often, there’s turmoil … what’s going on.

 

The Mother of All Wars

I don’t know what your December generally looks like, but for a lot of people it’s rush, rush, rush, getting things done at work, its presents, its parties, it's getting ready to have a bit of a break, its anticipation and for some people its despair. And into that special time that we call Christmas - no matter where we live, it seems to be a special time.

December tends to be a month of preoccupation with other things, with something, and so often we get to Christmas and we’re exhausted and the whole Christmas experience can be empty and hallow. Sometimes it doesn’t live up to the expectation – to all the hype. "Why did I do that?" Have you ever felt that? You go into Christmas and you look back on that busy month that we’ve just been through and you think, "my goodness!", there’s this turmoil where there should be peace; there’s an unrest.

Sometimes you can feel so far away from the "peace and the goodwill to all men" thing, that’s supposed to be happening at Christmas time. Because peace is what Christmas is all about. Christmas, as we are going to see over the next few weeks on the programme, is God’s declaration of peace with us. Peace from what? Peace from all the turmoil; peace from all the war; peace from the mother of all wars because until and unless we come to know Jesus Christ, there’s a war happening between us and God. Maybe your have never thought of it that way but at Christmas we celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace. Everybody’s life has a sense of turmoil sometimes and our lives can feel like a war zone.

We need peace so over these coming four weeks – this week and the next three weeks on the programme "Christianityworks", we are going to be working our way through a teaching series that I’ve called, "Peace beyond all understanding". Today we are going to start and say, “Well, peace from what?” We need to look at this war between God and humanity. Not God’s initiative but our initiative – our rebellion.

If you have a Bible, I’d ask you to grab it and open it up to the Old Testament, to the Book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is, in a sense, a strange book. It’s a book of God’s judgement against His people. The situation is that Israel, they did the whole, "get out of Egypt, go through the Red Sea, forty years in the desert with Moses then they made it into the Promised Land and they had some judges overseeing the Nation of Israel and then they had three Kings and then the Nation of Israel split in two. Israel, the ten tribes to the north, Judah and Benjamin the two tribes to the south in Jerusalem and it all went down hill from there."

Centuries went on and God’s people rebelled against Him, even though He had a covenant with them; even though He promised them this land that He’d given them; the land of the Canaanites, and yet they still rebelled against Him. So God’s judgement fell on Judah and Benjamin and Israel and they were exiled – the temple was destroyed. It was about five eighty six, five eighty seven BC. The temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was raised to the ground, many, many were killed and those that were left were exiled as slaves in Babylon.

And the Book of Ezekiel was written just a few years into that exile. It is written to the exiles to explain God’s judgement. You can imagine! Israel was saying, “Hang on, aren’t we God’s people? Didn’t we have the temple? Wasn’t God present in the temple? And all of a sudden now we have been defeated by the Babylonians. The temple is destroyed, there’s no more sacrifice, how do we get our sin forgiven? Where’s our God? Is Babylon stronger and more mighty than our God?” And so the Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel was one of God’s prophets who was called to explain God’s judgement to His people - to those that were left, to those who lived.

And so we are going to go to chapter 5, beginning at verse 5 and just have a bit of a read. The first twenty-four chapters of the Book of Ezekiel are God’s judgement against His chosen people. We’re going to read just a small part of that. This is what the Lord God says:

This is Jerusalem, I’ve set her in the centre of the nations with countries all around her. But she has rebelled against my ordinances and my statutes, becoming more wicked than the nations and the countries all around her, rejecting my ordinances and not following my statutes.

Therefore thus says the Lord God: “Because you are more turbulent than all the nations around you and you have not followed my statutes or kept my ordinances, but you have acted according to the ordinances of the nations that are all around you, therefore thus, says the Lord your God: “I myself am coming against you.

I will execute judgements among you in the sight of all the nations and because of all your abominations, I will do to you what I have never yet done and the like of which I will never do again. Surely parents will eat their children in your midst and surely children will eat their parents and I will execute judgments on you and any of you who survive I will scatter to every wind. Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God: “Surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will cut you down. My eye will not spare and I will have no pity.

One third of you shall die of pestilence or be consumed by famine among you. One third shall fall by the sword around you and one third I will scatter to every wind and will unsheathe the sword after them. My anger shall spend itself and I will vent my fury on them and satisfy myself and they shall know that I, the Lord God, have spoken in my jealousy when I spend my fury on them.”

Well, doesn’t sound like a message leading into Christmas does it? But we need to understand what’s going on here before we can really understand Christmas. We like to ignore some Scriptures but this is about a God who is angry with His people. If we want to understand our own turmoil – that sense that something is not quite right – we need to understand the war between us and God that was occasioned by our own rebellion. Dad, God, Father, is a Dad of love but like every other father, sometimes enough is enough and sometimes rebellion leads to punishment – that’s God – that’s as much God as the loving, gentle, Father God. And when we rebel we break His wonderful plan – the plan of God, “I will be your God and you will be my people.”

And as you read through these judgments in the first twenty-four chapters of Ezekiel, God doesn’t hold back His punishment. He punishes His people to get this rebellion sorted out and until we get our rebellion sorted out, we are at war with God and our lives are going to be in turmoil. You might say, “But, me, how? I’m not that bad a person.” We are going to answer that question next.

 

Gallery of Horrors

We are looking at how God’s anger is kindled against His people when they rebel against Him. Ezekiel, the whole book – or much of the book is about God’s judgment against the people of Israel because for centuries they worshipped other gods; for centuries they did things that God said don’t do and Ezekiel is a prophet that speaks God’s punishment and judgment to God’s chosen people. And the key accusation against them is: "you haven’t followed my statutes or kept my ordinances but you have actually acted on the ordinances of nations that are all around you so instead of looking like my people, you just look like the rest of the world."

Ain’t that the truth? Isn’t that so easy to do? You start off believing in God – wonderful, passionate – and little by little we compromise. The light dims, the salt looses its flavour and it ends up, so we don’t look any different to any one else! Maybe we are keeping up appearances, but on the inside, in our hearts, our thoughts, are a gallery of horrors. We think no one sees and yet we wonder why there’s turmoil. God’s people rebel against God, there’s going to be war and there’s going to be turmoil and there’s not going to be peace.

It’s interesting! If you have your Bible open at Ezekiel chapter 5, flick on a couple of pages, just to chapter 8 verse 12. Ezekiel here is talking judgment on the elders, the leaders of Israel. Have a listen:

Then God said to me: “Man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of images, for they say: “The Lord doesn’t see us, the Lord has for forsaken us.” God said to me: “You will see still greater abominations that they are committing.

The room of images! Isn’t that a wonderful picture? The innermost part, the part of us that we think no one sees. Imagine being in a large are gallery, where the lights are dim, you have a sense of paintings hanging up on the wall, but we can’t quite see what those paintings are until someone turns on the light. Until God shines His light on our room of images and we look around and discover we’re in a gallery of horrors. A picture of us snarling at someone, of us scheming, of hatred, of dishonesty, of sexual immorality – a gallery we would never want anyone else to see, but in that dark place, God sees and He calls those things "sin". They are our rebellion against God.

God has the most wonderful plan for us – “I will be your God and you will be my people,” God is a God of such great blessing, yet we like Israel, rebel against Him. We go our own ways; we think that no one notices and we wonder why there’s turmoil, why there’s no peace and on top of that, we kid ourselves. While all this is going on in Israel and more, there were actually false prophets wandering around saying: “No, that’s alright, everything’s ok!” Have a look in chapter 13 verse 10 of Ezekiel:

Because in truth these false prophets have misled God’s people, saying, "peace", when there was no peace, and because when the people build the wall, these prophets smear whitewash on it.

We can think, "well, I can look ok on the outside, I can cover myself with whitewash and nobody will know." Adultery? No problem! Divorce your wife or your husband because it’s no longer convenient? That’s just a lifestyle choice.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. There are no consequences. No one will notice but God does and He tolerates it to a point, but ultimately there is judgment because sin is sin, rebellion is rebellion. And not only does it ruin our life right here and right now, it robs us of eternal life, and you know there’s not a thing we can do about our sin.

Look at the history of Israel. Look at the prophets that God sent to Israel – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah, Malachi.

He sent so many prophets and what was the message that each of the prophets gave to God’s people? You have forsaken your God. Either come back or God will execute His judgment on you. And they did come back for a while but they kept drifting away again. The name "Israel" means "struggles with God", just like us; they couldn’t do anything about it. What’s the answer, what’s the solution?

 

The Scene is Set

When we’re talking about the fact that when we rebel against God, we’ve declared war on God, and we all have – we all fall short of the glory of God – we’ve all sinned, we’ve all rebelled. And there’s a thing about wars, have you noticed, they seem to go on and on and on and on? Look at Northern Ireland, look at the Middle East – it’s been going on for thousands of years.

Terrorism and the war on terror, each side does something and escalates against the other side and let me ask you, where will that end – with a dirty bomb – with a nuclear attack in the middle of a city? And the response of the west, how many villages can it bomb?

God doesn’t want to have a war with us, but when we rebel against Him; when we turn our backs on His love, on His goodness, we have declared war against our God. And the cry of God down through the ages hasn’t been, "make war", the cry of God to you and me, here and now, is, "I want to be your God, will you be my people?"

It’s in our nature to rebel. One of the first words a child ever learns is "no". Remember the kids how they go through "terrible twos" and it’s all about them rebelling. God is a wonderful Dad, just open the window, stick your head out and look at creation – look at the magnificent planet and universe that He has created for you and for me.

Then He puts us right in the middle of that, He wants to bless us and we rebel. Adam and Eve did it, Israel did it, you and I have done it. That’s the key problem of humanity. And God comes along and puts a stake in the sand and puts a flag on it and says, “Enough is enough! I’m going to declare peace, I’m going to send my Son, Jesus Christ,” and that’s what we celebrate at Christmas.

That’s what we are going to look at over the next few weeks on the programme. But today, today as I was preparing for this programme and praying, I just felt God calling me to speak a warning into your life. Our rebellion, our sin is an act of war against God. We can try and whitewash ourselves on the outside, but God sees straight through that and to tell you the truth, as we look in the mirror we can see straight through that.

My prayer for you right now, is that you would ask God to shine His light into your gallery of horrors, just as I have with mine and say, “Lord, let me see myself clearly. I just lay my heart open before you, Lord God and ask you to shine your light into my gallery; into my room of images. Father, show me the ones that you would remove. Show me where I have a root of bitterness; show me where I have dishonesty; show me, Father God, where I have sinned. Shine the light of your Son into my life and make me whole.”

You know the old story that, before an alcoholic can have his or her alcoholism treated, first and foremost, they have to admit that they are an alcoholic, and for some people, sadly, that never happens and the drink destroys them. The same is true with other forms of sin – bitterness, un-forgiveness, hatred, dishonesty, sexual immorality ... the list goes on.

Everybody struggles with something and sometimes we just want to hang onto that garbage and hang onto that rubbish and pretend like it doesn’t matter. It does, because God is a holy God and in His eyes, which see all things, from whom nothing is hidden, He knows our sin and He sees our sin and the cry of His heart is to be our God and for us to be His people and the only way that we can do that is by accepting Jesus Christ.

I don’t just mean with our heads, I mean with our lives, in our hearts, in our souls, in our spirits, at every level, saying: “Lord God, I lay my life down before you and I accept Jesus as my Lord. I believe that He came to this planet just for me, to make me whole. Not just to bring forgiveness but to make me whole." It hurts sometimes to admit our sin. It hurts to confront our sin. It’s so easy to blame someone else; it’s so easy to blame the hurts from the past. You know, I didn’t have a good father, so I’m insecure so now I’ll be difficult to my wife and family or to my husband and family.

Are we going to live like that? Are we going to blame other people? Or are we going to go to God and say: “God, you know something, I’ve just looked at what you have written here in Ezekiel, I see what you have preserved for me down through the centuries to read and God, I know you are a holy God. I know God that you love me but you detest my sin." Are we going to place our faith in Jesus by confronting and admitting our sin before God and are we going to let Him take it away? You know, it hurts to let go sometimes, but will you do that anyway? Will you hear His cry today? I will be your God and you will be my people.

God has a plan for our lives, for your life and for my life and it is a peace beyond all understanding, in Christ Jesus. That’s the peace that we are going to explore over the next few weeks. But today we have to admit our rebellion and confront our sin and open it up before God and say: “God, I’m not going to try and whitewash any more. Christmas is coming, I’m about to celebrate when you sent your Son Jesus onto this planet for me and leading up to that time.

Lord, I want to get my heart so right with you. I know that it may take some time, Lord, to sort things out but I’m going to lay them at your feet anyway. I want your peace, your peace Father God, which surpasses all understanding and I know that there is only one way to achieve that peace. There is only one path, there is only one door; there is only one gate and that is your Son, Jesus Christ.”

Are we are going to get real with God? I really pray that today you have been convicted by the Holy Spirit of anything that is holding you back from the most wonderful relationship with your God. Anything that’s holding you back from tasting for yourself, day after day, from now through all eternity, the peace of God that comes only from Jesus Christ – a peace that passes all understanding.