Judgment of the Nations

There's a story of a man called Robert Wilson, Doctor Robert Wilson, who is an Old Testament professor at Princeton University, but especially in the theological university they had there, which is a very prestigious Bible college in the US. And one day, a Presbyterian pastor by the name of Donald Barnhouse was invited back to Princeton to preach at the chapel service, the weekly chapel service that they have there. It had been about twelve years since he had graduated from that very university. When he got up to preach, he noticed that his great old testament professor, Doctor Robert Wilson, was sitting right in front of him at the service. Now after the service, the young pastor was greeting and meeting people at the back of the chapel, and Doctor Wilson came up to the pastor and said to him, young man, I came here this morning to hear you preach.

I won't be back, however. I only come to hear my boys preach once. But I come to see whether they're big Gods or little Gods. And when this young pastor wondered what that meant, Doctor Wilson explained. Well, some of the students that come back after training have a little God understanding.

He can't quite handle very big things. He can't provide for the inspiration and the accurate recording of the scriptures, for example. So they can't trust the Bible. Some of these students, when they come back, they don't believe that God can do miracles, and so they don't trust the things that are actually recorded in the Bible. Some of them don't believe that this God really intervenes in life today, and so their sermons reflect that.

I call them little Gods. Some of my students, however, have a big God. This God speaks and it is done. This God commands and it stands. His will is the law of the universe.

And you, son, you have a big God. And this God is going to bless your ministry. And that is the last time that Doctor Wilson was at the chapel service for this pastor. Are you a little God or a big God? Do you believe that God could be interested in your life?

Or do you think sometimes God lets things slide in your life? Can you say truly that you believe that not a single thing has happened in your life that hasn't brought you to this very place this morning? Well, I want to propose that God is far more involved and invested in our lives than we may think. We live in a world that talks about chance and luck. But this morning, we will see a God who moves the heart of both enemies and friends alike for His purposes.

A God who overthrows entire governments and holds very powerful individuals to account. This morning, we'll see that the biblical God is a God who cannot sit idly by and watch the world spin on its course. We'll see that all from this morning's reading from Ezekiel 29. So let's turn to that this morning. Ezekiel 29:1.

In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me, who is Ezekiel. Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. Speak and say, thus says the Lord God. Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams, that says, my Nile is my own.

I made it for myself. I will put hooks in your jaws and make the fish of your streams stick to your scales. And I will draw you up out of the midst of your streams with all the fish of your streams that stick to your scales. And I will cast you out into the wilderness, you and all the fish of your streams. You shall fall on the open field and not be brought together or gathered.

To the beasts of the earth and to the birds of the heavens I give you as food. Then all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord. Because you have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel, when they grasped you with the hand, you broke and tore all their shoulders. And when they leaned on you, you broke and made all their loins to shake. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will bring a sword upon you and will cut off from you man and beast, and the land of Egypt shall be a desolation and a waste.

Then they will know that I am the Lord. Because you said the Nile is mine and I made it. Therefore, behold, I am against you and against your streams. And I will make the land of Egypt an utter waste and desolation from Migdol to Syene, as far as the border of Cush. No foot of man shall pass through it, and no foot of beast shall pass through it.

It shall be uninhabited for forty years. And I will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of desolated countries, and her cities shall be a desolation for forty years among cities that are laid waste. I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them through the countries. For thus says the Lord God, at the end of forty years, I will gather the Egyptians from the people among whom they are scattered, and I will restore the fortunes of Egypt and bring them back to the land of Pathros, the land of their origin. And there, they shall be a lowly kingdom.

It shall be the most lowly of the kingdoms and never again exalt itself above the nations. And I will make them so small that they will never again rule over the nations. And it shall never again be the reliance of the house of Israel, recalling their iniquity when they turn to them for aid. Then they will know that I am the Lord God. In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, made his army labour hard against Tyre.

Every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare. Yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labour that he had performed against her. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. And he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it, and it shall be the wages for his army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his payment for which he laboured, because they worked for me, declares the Lord God. On that day, I will cause a horn to spring up for the house of Israel, and I will open your lips among them.

Then they will know that I am the Lord. So far, our reading. Now last week, we looked at Ezekiel chapter three, that gave us a bit of an example, a summary of a section from chapters three through to twenty-four that focused predominantly on the judgment of God against Israel. But there's a new section. So this one here, judgment on Israel, chapters three to twenty-four.

We saw here on the screen, sign acts, the physical representations of judgment against Israel throughout those, and I hope you've had a chance to read them. They are fascinating. Today, look at this third section here, the judgment on the nations, which range from chapters twenty-five through to thirty-two, oracles or prophecies of judgment against the nations. And what we have just read in chapter twenty-nine is, again, just a snapshot of some of the recurring themes that God shares and talks about in these few chapters between twenty-five and thirty-two. Here we find God taking aim at one of Israel's neighbours, the nation of Egypt.

And he promises to bring judgment against Egypt for a number of reasons, and we're going to explore some of these reasons today. Firstly, see God saying or showing that he burns with jealousy over his number one position, his primacy as God. Verse three of our passage, God says, have a look. Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams, that says, my Nile is my own, for I made it for myself. God says he has heard and seen the pride and the arrogance of Pharaoh, that he thought he had the power to create the Nile, and God says he will not leave this idolatry unpunished.

What we find here is God punishing Egypt, not Israel, but Egypt, for breaking the second commandment of the Ten Commandments. Way back in Exodus 20:4, God gives this commandment to Israel. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. A jealous God.

Now it's a bit of a shocking statement to hear, a surprising statement to hear that God could refer to Himself as jealous. How can God be jealous? Isn't jealousy a sin? But God's jealousy is not a jealousy over us or a jealousy over the other gods or a jealousy over Pharaoh, the man god of Egypt. It's a jealousy over His own honour, His own glory.

He is not like some overprotective boyfriend that gets jealous when some boys look at his girl. He is jealous for His own glory. And when the Egyptian Pharaoh, the Egyptian king, says in Ezekiel 29:3, my Nile is my own, I made it for myself, it is the height of idolatry because it is the unqualified claim of having a power that only God has.

This backs up what we know from archaeology. If you are an ancient history buff, Egyptians claimed their Pharaohs were gods on earth. But God says to them He is jealous over His own glory. And this is a theme that is repeated in all these chapters twenty-five through to thirty-two on the judgments of the nations. If we, if you have your Bibles, let's go to chapter twenty-eight where God gives a judgment against the nation of Tyre.

Verse two reads this. Twenty-eight verse two. Because your heart is proud and you have said, I am a god. I sit in the seat of the gods in the heart of the seas. Yet you are but a man and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god.

And we skip down to verse six. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you make your heart like the heart of a god, therefore, behold, I will bring foreigners upon you, the most ruthless of the nations. And they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendour. Why is judgment coming to these nations? Because they have put themselves forward as gods, and in doing so, they have set themselves up against the living God. And this is the core of idolatry.

You see, we think idolatry is some quaint, old fashioned thing belonging to some ancient people bowing down to some statue. But idolatry is far more complex than that. Idolatry, in fact, is something that you and I and every single person wrestles with. You see, idolatry is taking anything other than God, anything other than God, whether philosophy or creature or concept, taking that and making it your highest pursuit, your heart's desire, making it the thing that will save you from a meaningless existence. It is the thing that if you were to lose it, you would be left devastated.

Like a Christian who lost Christ. If there is any person, if there is any concept, if there is anything like that other than God in your life, you have got yourself an idol. And idolatry is a sin because it is the attempt to steal God's glory and His place of primacy, His number one position, and giving it to something or someone else. And John Calvin, the great reformed theologian, wrote that by breaking this second commandment of the Ten Commandments, we show that God's honour isn't precious to us. But as God Himself says in that very same commandment, God's glory is very precious to Him, and He will defend it.

He is a jealous God. But this is a righteous jealousy. If there was ever a jealousy that is called for, it is God's jealousy over His own glory. Because you see, human jealousy is linked to breaking of another commandment, the tenth commandment. You shall not covet.

You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, because it's not your wife. It is someone else's wife. You shall not covet their house. It is not your house. God hasn't given you that house.

But unlike our jealousy linked to the tenth commandment, God's jealousy is His desire to protect something that is His by right. Who created the Nile? Not Pharaoh. Isaiah 42:8. Who also, as a prophet, is very strong against idolatry, sums it up in this verse so well. He says, of God, I am the Lord.

That is My name. My glory I give to no other, nor My praise do I give to idols. And so because Egypt idolised the Pharaoh and because Pharaoh himself thought himself to be a god, the living God vows to bring judgment. And friend, if you ever doubted whether God really does bring judgment, listen to what He promises in verse fifteen. After having said, you know, they'll be taken away, they'll be slaughtered by the Babylonians, they'll be taken into captivity for forty years, verse fifteen says, Egypt shall be the most lowly of the kingdoms when they are restored after forty years, and never again exalt itself above the nations.

And I will make them so small that they will never again rule over the nations. Never again will Egypt be the superpower that it was. And again, if you know your ancient history, you know that this is the case. The power and the influence of Egypt just did not recover after this point. The Pharaohs and the dynasties faded and faded and faded, and today, no economist and no politician would even come close to considering Egypt a political or economic superpower.

And I don't mean any offence to any Egyptians who might hear this message. It is just one of the facts. God promised and He's stuck by that promise. His word stands. It doesn't mean that nothing great can come from Egypt, but it means that it will never be what it once was.

God burns with jealousy over His position in our lives, and He will defend it. The second thing we then see is God also burning with a protective love over His church. Have a look at verse six of our passage where God says, because you have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel, when they grasped you with a hand, you broke and tore their shoulders. And when they leaned on you, you broke and made all their loins to shake. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will bring a sword upon you and will cut off from man and beast, and the land of Egypt will be a desolation and a waste.

Then they will know that I am the Lord. Egypt is found guilty of failing Israel. That is the judgment against Egypt here. We know that Egypt had entered an alliance with Israel when the Babylonian armies were coming down. Israel quickly scurried to the far more superior and powerful nation of Egypt and said, please, we'll, you know, we'll pay you some money, but just help us when these guys come down from the north.

In May, we know that Jerusalem, rather, is besieged by the Babylonians for a whole year. They're outside the city gates, outside the walls. And the Egyptians come, and they have a half-hearted attempt to attack the Babylonians, but the Babylonians push back and they run away. They flee. And the Babylonians, after that victory, they just turn back and go towards Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is eventually, six months, twelve months later, crushed by the Babylonian army.

And God promises in verse sixteen that never again shall Egypt be the reliance of the house of Israel. Now this again is a theme against these neighbouring countries of Israel. It was Ammon and Tyre and all these places that are right around the nation of Israel. They have failed, and they have revelled at the sight of Israel being destroyed. Have a look at what God says to the nation of Ammon in chapter twenty-five verse three.

Ammon is now modern day Jordan, so it's on the west of modern day Israel. Say to the Ammonites, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus says the Lord God, because you said over my sanctuary when it was profaned, and over the land of Israel when it was made desolate, and over the house of Judah when they went into exile. Therefore, behold, I am handing you over to the people of the East for a possession. And they shall set their encampments among you, and make their dwellings in your midst. They shall eat your fruit and they shall drink your milk.

Ammon will be conquered as well by their enemies. And friends, what this tells us is that our God is invested in His people. God burns with a protective love for His church. You see, we could look at this judgment of Israel and think God is done. We've just had, what, twenty-one chapters of God's judgment against Israel, and we think that's it.

God's wiping His hands off the whole thing. But His judgment is only going to be for so long. Meanwhile, the great defender of Israel is roused to bring Israel's enemies to account. Both the ones who rub their hands together in gleeful delight at the suffering of Israel, but also, like Egypt, those who couldn't really bring themselves to care. Both Egypt and Ammon would be judged for their hatred of God's people.

But that brings so much comfort to Israel. That brings so much comfort to God's people, because boy, oh boy, what enemy does the church not have today? How fragile and how weak is the church? There are people who are making their life's purpose the bringing down of the Christian faith today. And before we feel sorry for ourselves because we have done a pretty great job at bringing it down ourselves, we hear that God is eternally invested in the perfection and the victory of His people.

He won't allow anyone to suppress her, at least not forever. You have said when the land of Israel was made desolate. You have said when the church fell into sexual abuse claims. Therefore, I will make you desolate, says the Lord Almighty. When you promised to help and it was an empty promise and you turned tail and ran, therefore, says the Lord God, your enemies shall draw their swords against you.

This fragile thing, which is the church, with so much reason to be snuffed out. With all that internal fighting. With all those false prophets. With institutionalised sexual abuse, corruption at its highest levels. Those are just the enemies within. Outside the enemies bite at her heels. A militant faith of Islam takes the lives of hundreds and thousands of believers. Political lobby groups vow to rid their countries of the scourge of the so called white colonial church.

And perhaps what's more, most painful is our friends and our family members chip away at a voiceless church through those Facebook memes and those gutless cheap shot comments. But there is a God who sees every action. A God who knows what is happening for His church, in His church. And He cares about it, and He is jealous for His own glory. And as jealous as He is for His own glory, so jealous is He over His church.

And He doesn't sit back and say, well, you've gotten yourself into this mess. Let's see you get out. We have a God who is roused like a warrior to protect His people. A God who is eternally invested in the victory and the perfection of His church. Ephesians five, and you know this likens this love to the love of the most perfect husband.

Think of the most charming prince charming. Where Paul says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. So that now going forward, He might sanctify you. He might beautify you. He may perfect you.

Having cleansed her by the washing of the water of His word so that He might present the church to Himself with splendour, without spots, without wrinkles or any such thing. Paul says that she might be for Him holy and blameless. Our Saviour Jesus Christ, protective over His loving, yet flawed bride. And then we get to our final theme in God's judgment against the nations, and that is that God will use whomever He pleases to accomplish His perfect plan. In verses nineteen to twenty, verse nineteen of chapter twenty-nine. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. And he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it, and it shall be the wages for his army. I have given him the land of Egypt as his payment for which he laboured, because they worked for me, declares the Lord God.

If Egypt were to think that they had been captured by Babylon because of a poor political decision, they allied with the wrong group, or they lost a fifty-fifty battle that could have gone either way, they are to think again. The land of Egypt was handed over to King Nebuchadnezzar, and he was given Egypt to ransack as payment for being His servant. Now this is sometimes the most surprising things in scripture when we read, especially the Old Testament. As it's easy for us rather to understand that God can use people like Moses and David, people who loved God to be His servants. We understand that part. But God is so sovereign, the Bible says, that He can rule over the hearts of even His enemies, turning their greed and their lust for power like Nebuchadnezzar to accomplish what He has planned all along.

God can use even the most flawed and sinful motives, in other words, to work out His plan. What this means is that nothing in our life is wasted. Nothing in our life is wasted. Not even the bad things. Not even the bad things.

Ezekiel twenty-nine shows us that even by the work of wickedness and evil, God uses it for the protection of His people. And so there is a great comfort again for God's people, Israel, hearing and reading these words. God uses whomever He chooses and whatever situation we face to save and rescue His people. And so we find these two truths present today, again shown to us today, that God both loves His people with an undying devotion and that He also has the power to do whatever He needs to do to show His love, to preserve His people.

So why are we still anxious? If you would take God at His word and believe that He really is as powerful as He says He is, that He cares and knows you as well as He says He does, what room is there for worry? If not a single hair can fall from our heads without the say so of God. Jesus says this in Matthew 10. If not a single hair can fall from our heads without God's say so, what is there to fear?

If I haven't convinced you, then I ask you to turn your focus to the cross of Jesus Christ. Because there we find the ultimate evidence of how God's sovereignty and God's goodness work together. If you need any reason to believe that God loves you with a burning passionate devotion, listen to how the Apostle Peter describes the saving sacrifice of Jesus in Acts 2. Speaking to the crowd at Pentecost, he says, men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst as you yourselves know. This Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God, that is, God's sovereign plan.

Yet you crucified and killed Him by the hands of lawless men. But God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for Him to be held by it. And then verse thirty-six. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. See, what Peter is saying there is that the death of Jesus, which offers to the world forgiveness and acceptance by God to all who will simply take it, that moment was the worst of humanity.

The most gravest injustice of lawless men, but also the ultimate show of saving power. Because while sinful men thought that they had pulled one over against God, they had rejected Him to His face, fearing that they might lose the power that they had. The Nile is mine, for I have created it. Rejecting the Son of God in order to get rid of Him. But on the cross, it was the very action which made the salvation of humanity possible.

Because it is where God the Father would pour out all His wrath, all His judgment intended to be on you and me. His judgment on the idolatry of our hearts. His judgment when we have dishonoured His church. For the hatred we have against His rule over our lives. All that judgment was poured out on Jesus at the cross.

God so loves His church with a passionate devotion. The church of the present, the church of the past, the church of the future, that He will use the pinnacle of wickedness, the pinnacle of human wickedness to usher in His kingdom of grace, His kingdom of forgiveness, His kingdom of acceptance and power. If our God is this powerful and if He is this good, what do we have to fear? Our God is a God who cannot sit idly by. But for His own glory and for the love of His people, He will bring about everything that is needed for His plan to succeed.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this word of comfort even in the challenging, perplexing words of judgment. In a sense, we are so far removed from these events. We are so far removed from the atrocities of these wars, the abuses, the injustices of those days. And we look at these words and they are so foreign.

They are so removed. And we want to sanitise God. Oh God, you are the God of burning passion. You're a God who loves Your people to the end. And You could not sit by and watch even as Your people succumb to Your own punishment, yet were vilified or laughed at by their neighbours.

What great courage, what great comfort does that give us, this fragile little church? With so much going on. You won't leave us. You won't forget us. You won't roll the dice and see how it pans out.

We pray, oh God, that we may know even in the deepest depths of those three AM panic attacks, that you are the God who cares and the God who is in control. Help us to trust the process. Help us to believe that you have our best interests at heart. And then, Lord, may we live lives that glorify your name, breaking down the idols that are such worthless objects in our lives, making you again our God, placing you number one in our lives. And then may we honour and cherish and love this precious church of yours, which you loved with your life.

Forgive us and strengthen us, Lord, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.