"THE FAITHFUL GOD OF THE COVENANT SNATCHES HIS OWN FROM THE FALSE PROPHETS."

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 55:9,10
Psalm 25:9,10 (Hymn 59:2)
Psalm 52:1,2,3
Psalm 12:1,2,3,4,5
Hymn 43:1,2,3

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

It is this week a full year ago that the Lord God reached so dramatically into the lives of so many people in this world. Understandably, the first anniversary of the attacks on the World trade towers and the Pentagon is receiving considerable attention.

Many years earlier the Lord reached dramatically into the lives of His people Israel, when He permitted the Babylonians to capture Jerusalem and bring King Jehoiachin and many Jews with him into exile in Babylon.

The two events, of course, are not connected. Yet it is remarkable that the reactions of the peoples touched most acutely by these two separate events is so similar. Years ago the exiles in Babylon declined to acknowledge that the capture of their city and their subsequent exile had anything to do with God’s wrath on them, and so they made no effort to repent of their sins. So too today; the western world in general and Americans in particular refuse to acknowledge that the events of September 11 last year could have anything to do with God’s judgment on the west’s love affair with Mammon and pursuit of pleasure and sheer worldliness – and so ignoring the God who created us. Consequently the past year has seen precious little, if any, of repentance or a change in lifestyle; the west in general –Australia included- continues merrily on its path of unbelief. And that’s encouraged by the movers and shakers of our world.

That parallel between the response of the exiles and the response of the western world makes the Lord’s words in Ezekiel 13 particularly relevant. For the Lord God responded to Israel’s hardness with His word of further judgment. At the same time, His severity comes complete with mercy.

I proclaim to you God’s Word using this theme:

Our text this morning, brothers and sisters, has in it a most remarkable term. "My people," says the Lord here to the false prophets; "I will deliver My people out of your hand." This term ‘My people’ appears no less than seven times in chap 13. Yet in the previous 12 chapters of the book, the phrase has not appeared once. In the remainder of the book it appears five more times, three times in the first half of chapter 14 (vss 8, 9, 11), then once in chap 21 (vs 17) and once in chap 25 (vs 14). That’s it’s used so often in our chapter, then, makes the term really stick out, and begs the question Why. Why does the Lord use this term here?

The term, of course, is loaded with covenantal wealth. It speaks of the bond of love God established with Israel. God saw this people burdened and oppressed by the Egyptians, and in mercy the Lord took them out of their slavery, brought them to Mt Sinai, and established with His covenant. Said God to Israel at Mt Sinai: "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:4ff). That’s the concept caught in the phrase ‘My people’. It speaks of God’s tender love, of His rising to deliver Israel, of His providing for their every need.

But precisely that makes the abundant use of this phrase in chap 13 so remarkable. Recall: the people about whom God speaks in this chapter were precisely those who had broken God’s covenant through their persistent service of other gods, yes, and that was exactly why the Lord had sent these children of His into exile. In fact, in the half dozen or so years since this exile had begun, these Israelites-in-bondage had not at all repented of their sins. We’ve heard that repeatedly in the 12 chapters we’ve studied so far; time and again the Lord comes with His accusation that His people are a rebellious house (2:5,6; 3:26; 12:2), that they are impudent and stubborn (2:4; 3:7), unwilling to heed the voice of His prophet Ezekiel (3:9,11; cf 12:22). Even though Ezekiel had to tell these exiles all about the glory and majesty of their God –think of the vision of Ezekiel 1, repeated in chap 10- the people simply did not repent of their sins; they continued in their sins, continued to go their own way. We would expect the Lord to become most impatient, spew them out of His mouth. As we heard God say last week, in 12:25: we’d expect God to pour out His judgment promptly, no more to postpone the wrath Israel certainly deserves.

But see: seven times in a row in this one chapter (and three more times in the next), the Lord refers to these rebellious exiles as ‘My people’! Why, we wonder, why does God do that? Are we to conclude that His threats of punishment are not so serious after all?

No, beloved, that is not the point. Rather, God sees that His rebellious people are under attack. And that attack awakens God’s jealousy for His people so that He arises to defend His own – weak and straying though they are. By way of comparison: a husband devoted to his wife may need, when she gives herself to sin, may need to speak very stern words to her. But the minute a third party comes along to lure his wife to further sin, the husband –if he’s worth his salt- will make very plain to this third party that he’s to leave his wife alone, precisely because she is his wife. That covenant of marriage that’s caught in the phrase ‘my wife’ will certainly feature in his conversation with that third party, and the emotions that belong to the phrase ‘my wife’ will be obvious also.

So it is in our chapter here. God’s bride, His people-by-covenant, is under attack. That is what prompts God to speak here so often of ‘My people’. Behind the repeated use of the surprising phrase ‘My people’ is God’s bond of love for Israel, a bond of love God put there years ago because He wished to bring His Son into the world through the people of Israel. That Son had not yet come, and so the Lord God could not tolerate that His people be so attacked as to block altogether the way for the Son of God to come in the flesh. That is why the language of chapter is so different about Israel than in the previous chapters.

That brings us to our second point:

God’s people-by-covenant, I said, was under attack. What, then, would God do for His people? What action would flow from His tender feelings for His own?

Says the Lord in our text: "I will deliver My people out of your hand." The English word ‘deliver’ is actually a rather weak term in the circumstance. Literally, the Lord says He will ‘snatch’ His people from the hands of the attackers. These attackers have somehow ensnared the people of God’s love, and so He will make powerful work of delivering them, snatching His own from the enemy.

How, then, was God’s special people under attack? Who is this enemy from whom God will snatch His own? The chapter has us know that persons from whom God will rescue His people is actually a band of false prophets. In fact, chap 13 tells us that these false prophets fall into two groups. Vss 1-16 relates the work of certain men whom God calls foolish prophets (vs 3), while the vss 17 –23 relates that some women were dabbling in witchcraft. Yet these are not two isolated groups, for the witchcraft of these women was the natural extension of the spinelessness of the men – as we’ll see in a moment.

How were these two groups attacking God’s people? As to the foolish prophets, they took it upon themselves to speak words from their own hearts. That is: they spoke, spoke whatever their sinful hearts desired, spoke whatever their hearers wanted to hear, and then even had the audacity to add that their words came from God.

Do we have an example of such foolish prophecy? Indeed, we do. Ezekiel 13 has to be dated around 6 to 7 years after the exile began. Now I read in the book of Jeremiah, chap 28, that half way through the fourth year after the exile began (vs 1) a certain Hananiah the son of Azur stood up in the temple in Jerusalem and told the crowds the following: "Thus speaks the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying: ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years I will bring back to this place … Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah who went to Babylon,’ says the Lord" (vss 2ff). "Within two years," Hananiah had said, and that places us exactly at the time of Ezekiel 13. As it turns out, Jeremiah challenged Hananiah on the point, declared his prophecy false, and predicted that Hananiah would die within a year (vs 16). In fact, Hananiah died a brief two months after his false prophecy.

You say: yes, but that happened in Jerusalem, but the exiles lived some 700 kms away in far off Babylon. True. Yet, congregation, the exiles knew about this false prophecy in Jerusalem, and were influenced by it. I say that because Jeremiah wrote them a letter, warning them against false prophecy and telling them that their exile would last seventy full years, and therefore they’d better settle down and plant gardens and buy houses in Babylon. You can read Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Jeremiah 29. The letter adds that in Babylon a certain Ahab the son of Koliah and a certain Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah were prophesying lies in God’s name (vss 21ff). More, there was a certain Shemaiah the Nehelamite in Babylon who sent letters back to the people of Jerusalem to oppose the work of Jeremiah and urge the people of Jerusalem to put Jeremiah in prison (29:24ff). My point is: there were various Israelites, both in Jerusalem and in Babylon, who dreamed up –no doubt under the inspiration of the evil one- words that pleased the ears of their hearers.

Well now, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Ezekiel compares such persons to "jackals among the ruins" (13:4). As jackals feed themselves from the dead buried under the ruins of a destroyed city, so these false prophets were feeding their ego on the spiritual corpses of Israelites. That’s so different from what they should have done. Those who would speak in the name of the Lord should stand in the breech to fight the enemy, wherever there may be a gap in the wall. And there was such a huge gap in the wall of Israel’s spiritual defenses, for the people did not live in humility before the Lord, did not repent of their sins that prompted the exile in the first place. Now along come these prophets who claim to speak in the name of the Lord, and instead of urging repentance and humility they say that the exile will soon be over! Sure, those are words the people want to hear; who, after all, wants to hear that calamity is God’s curse on sin and therefore you need to repent?!

That’s the point of the analogy Ezekiel uses about the wall. The prophets built a wall of poor quality material, and in the circumstance that means that they let Israel think that all was OK with their spiritual health; the exile was no punishment on sin, it was just the result of Babylon being a bully, and God would surely destroy Nebuchadnezzar soon and let His people come home again…. And when Ezekiel comes along to tell them of God’s infinite holiness and His covenant wrath on a sinful people, and when Jeremiah’s letter reaches the exiles telling the people in God’s name that the Lord has not sent these false prophets, then these would-be leaders don’t admit that the arguments they used in building their wall were pathetic, but they instead get out the plaster to hid their shonky product! That is: these foolish prophets stay with their delusions, they do not admit that their words to the people did not come from God after all. So God’s people are led astray, and that’s what prompts the Lord to declare in our text that He will deliver His own from their hand.

As it is, hand in hand with the waffle of the foolish prophets arose also a new trend amongst certain women. And that’s so understandable: if the leaders of the exiles do not bow themselves humbly over the Word of God and listen to the prophets who speak in agreement with the Bible they had to date (and that’s how both Ezekiel and Jeremiah spoke), then the people have no restraint and can do what they want, believe what they want. If the men can prophesy out of their own hearts, so can the women. That, says Ezekiel in vs 17, is what a number of women did. Specifically, certain women sewed magic charms on their sleeves and made veils for their heads, and the point of it all was that through these charms and these veils they thought to be able to influence the spirits of the air and so to cast spells on persons or to compel the deities to act in a certain way. Here, brothers and sisters, is nothing else than witchcraft; these women thought to manipulate the powers of the air for their own purposes. Were they influenced by the religions of Babylon? Whatever the case might be, the fact of the matter is that they exerted an influence amongst the people of God that distinctly led God’s people away from the Lord God. The men failed first of all, for they permitted false prophecy, and then the women didn’t straighten them out; no, the women went a step further, went completely to practices of heathen religions – and now the men did not straighten them out! The picture is so very modern; the men of our western society, so many preachers included, do not call the people of the western world to repentance in the face of God’s judgments, but declare Peace, Peace when there is no peace – and so they build a wall of straw that can never stand when God attacks. But tell the leaders so, and they coat their poorly-constructed wall with smooth-sounding arguments…. And all the while witchcraft grows; New Agism draws our society back to the principles of heathendom.

Observe, then, beloved, what God’s reaction was to the apostasy tolerated and preached amongst His people of long ago. Says He in our text to these men and women who lead His people astray: "I will deliver My people out of your hand." Unworthy though they are, He sets to work to snatch His own out of the hands of these deceivers.

How God will do that? He tells the foolish prophets that He’d cause a stormy wind to break forth on the wall built through false prophecy, and the floods would wash their low-grade plaster from the wall, and the poor workmanship underneath would be evident for all to see. More, because the wall was made from such poor workmanship, that wall itself would also collapse….

What the storm is that God would unleash against the false prophets? No doubt we’re to think of the further exile that would come within another half dozen years, when Nebuchadnezzar would surround Jerusalem and destroy the city altogether. Then indeed the falseness of the foolish prophets’ message would be evident for all to see. All their talk about the exile not being punishment on sin and requiring repentance, all their talk about peace with God when in fact they retained sins between themselves and God - the Lord God would expose this gibberish for the hogwash it was.

And so it happened too! Not that many years later the city of Jerusalem fell, its walls torn down, its houses burned, its temple destroyed, its people killed and the survivors carted off to exile. All the talk of the foolish prophets helped nothing, and the charms and incantations of the witches helped nothing either. It is as Paul said to the Corinthians: "if anyone builds… with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is" (I Cor 3:12f). It became so obvious that the work of these misleading men and women was deceptive after all.

Here is a strong message for all who would speak in the name of God today – as we all must do in our respective places in life, be it office-bearers in church, be it parents at home, be it faithful children of God in the market places of life. In the year since September 11 so much has been said around the world, and so much of it is Peace, Peace with God; He is not angry, there is no judgment, and therefore no need to repent. And all the while paganism is popularized and embraced…. But God will not tolerate the triumph of the lie. He didn’t in Ezekiel’s day, and He won’t in our day.

That’s our third point:

Why would the Lord arise to defend His people? What prompts the tender feeling in His heart that in turn causes Him to snatch His own from the clutches of foolish prophets and women who dabble in witchcraft?

The answer to that question is caught in the closing words of our text. Says God, "I will deliver My people out of your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord." This is the God who had promised to defeat the devil, that liar from the beginning, and to deliver His people from his hands. Behind the foolish prophets and the women of our chapter is none other than that liar, that great deceiver, and it’s his defeat that the Lord ultimately affirms in our text. And Satan’s defeat points up to all the world –Satan’s cronies also!- that Yes, Israel’s God is the Lord. See there the purpose of it all: "you" –that’s these false prophets and these women under Satan’s influence- "you shall know that I am the Lord."

So it happened. The righteous judgment of the Lord was poured out against Jerusalem, and so the plastered walls of false prophecy came tumbling down. The righteous judgment of the Lord was poured out against Jerusalem, and so the magic charms and veils were shown up too to be the emptiness and vanity it always was. Whether these foolish prophets themselves and these women in fact repented and acknowledged God is not told to us. But bow the knee before the Lord and confess that His Word is sure, yes, acknowledge that the Lord is faithful to His word – indeed, these deceivers had to concede that point. For the victory announced in our text was fulfilled in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, when the Son of God defeated the devil and bound him – and so set His people free from bondage to the liar-of-the-beginning.

That in turn, brothers and sisters, is why every deceiver today, every so-called prophet who would tell the public of this world that western society has peace with God, and every New Ager who would try to return society to heathen practices, will one day experience the bankruptcy of their efforts. Certainly, Satan attempts today to deceive, and the human eye sees him making so very much progress; false prophecy abounds in unlimited amounts in our society, and human nature swallows it all.

But –and this is the gospel of it all!- triumph the Deceiver cannot! The apostle John saw on Patmos that second beast of Rev 13, who "deceives those who dwell on the earth," and at first reading it appears as if he certainly succeeds in his efforts; "great and small, rich and poor, free and slave," we read, submit to the first beast, to Satan, and acknowledge him as Lord and master. But see: scarcely has John recorded that awful vision when he writes in Rev 14 that he looked, "and behold, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His Father’s name written on their foreheads." And he adds, "in their mouth was found no deceit" (vs 5). You see: these are they who were not taken in by the deceit of the devil and his false prophets. These were they whom the Lord God preserved, snatched from the fires of deception (cf Jude 23). These are they who acknowledge with gratitude that God is the Lord, that their covenant Father preserves His own for Jesus’ sake even though they are undeserving of His grace. These are they who have peace with God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

And the false prophets and the neo-pagans of society? Make no mistake, beloved: they shall see, at God’s time, the triumph of the Lamb of God over the Lie of hell, and so shall bend the knee before the Lord of lords – whether they want to or not. For the One who triumphed on the cross shall soon return on the clouds of heaven to "test each one’s work, of what sort it is" (I Cor 3:13). Amen.