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 – w...

Released on 6 Dec 2020