The text this morning is from the prophet Ezekiel, the second chapter:
And he said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.” And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. And he said to me, “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them.Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
For many of you, you may be wondering why I chose the name of a 24-year-old movie for the title of this sermon: ‘Stand and Deliver.’ Or perhaps many of you have no idea what I’m talking about. To be honest with you, I had already chosen the title from the Biblical text, even before I remembered that there was a movie of the same name. You see, the movie was so good, it made such a difference in our culture, that the name is now ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. It’s so deep in our psyches that we don’t even know where it comes from.
But hopefully, you remember the movie. Edward James Olmos played the teacher, James Escalante, who wants to teach computers to a struggling, inner-city, Latino-based high school. The only problem: they have no computers. Instead, Escalante ends up teaching math to them. And he does it well. After struggling for a while, fighting them at almost every turn, he gets through to these kids. They take the state test. They pass. They have Escalante to thank. But their fight isn’t done. The state doesn’t believe them. The state thinks Escalante and the kids cheated. The state fights them and fights them, and ends up testing them again. The kids pass.
It’s a glorious story; it’s the way stories should be told. The underdogs fight against the man. They win. It’s why the story has lasted so long. It’s why its name, ‘Stand and Deliver,’ has lasted in our culture, even though most of you today still probably haven’t seen. Rent it. It’s worth it. It’s how stories should be told. But the ending, well, the ending… it doesn’t always happen that way.
That’s what’s happening in the text today. We have Ezekiel, a man, who, if you read chapter 1, is with the Jewish exiles in Babylon. He’s hanging out next to a river, and all of the sudden, he’s taken into the wind. He see beings with four faces each, one as an ox, one as an eagle, one as a lion, and one as a man. He sees a huge wheel in the sky turning and turning and turning. He sees crystals hovering over the creatures. He sees creatures flying, and with every bat of their wings, the sound of an army coming straight at him. And then he sees a throne. It comes down towards him.
At this point, we have to decide: this is either a very scary drug trip, or this is the beginning of an amazing prophetic vision. Ezekiel interprets it for us. At the end of chapter one, he says, “Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.” Seriously? This is what the glory of the Lord looks like? It’s a little trippy, don’t you think? It sounds like the guy was on some kind of nightclub drug trip. But that’s me. I expect the glory of the Lord to look like fire burning my enemies. I expect it to sound like thunder that knocks me to my feet. I expect it to smell like the sweetest incense, overpowering me, stronger than anything I’ve ever smelled before but recognizable as God’s own scent.
I don’t expect strange four-faced angels. I don’t expect to hear tales of what we would say sounds like a UFO in the sky. And really, truly, honestly, I don’t expect God’s glory to look, sound, taste, smell, feel anything like what I expect it to. God’s glory is His own. It’s not mine. And it’s something I’ll likely never truly understand because it will always belong to God and not me. But Ezekiel saw this. I didn’t. And Ezekiel says to us, ” And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking.”
GET UP!!! Son of Man, stand on your feet! Now THIS I definitely don’t expect. Why? Because I know who I am, a sinful being. And I know who you are, sinful beings. And by extension, I know who Ezekiel is, a poor sinful being, a man unworthy of standing before the Lord, a man who shouldn’t speak to the Lord, see the Lord, hear the Lord, feel the Lord, taste the Lord. And that’s exactly what Ezekiel is. A poor sinful being. He can’t stand up. He’s in the midst of the glory of God, remember? A sinful man before a righteous and holy God? It just doesn’t work. He can’t do it even though God has now commanded him to do so.
So, what happens? The Holy Spirit enters into Ezekiel. The Holy Spirit propels him to his feet. The Holy Spirit sends him up off his knees, brings his whole body to bear, and opens his ears, letting Ezekiel hear the words of the Lord. Now, THIS is interesting. Ezekiel certainly hears the Lord speak to him, but until the Holy Spirit comes into him, it is only words of command, words of Law, never words of Gospel, never words of fatherly direction. But when the Holy Spirit enters into Ezekiel, Ezekiel’s ears are opened. He can see that God loves him, that God cares for him, he hears that God is not going to condemn his people, he hears that God is sending Ezekiel to God’s own people. He hears love. He hears the message he is to bring to Israel.
Why is this important? Why must we study this? Think about it. For you, much like Ezekiel, you CANNOT stand in the presence of the Almighty God without the benefit of the Holy Spirit. It just can’t be done. You’re a sinner, a grievous sinner, a heinous sinner, and you love being that way. You love your sin. You love your anger. You love your hatred. You love your gossip. You love all that it is that you are rebelling against God. You love it so much, in fact, that even had you been at the crucifixion of Christ, even if you had watched Him walk up those steps to Golgatha, even up to the cross, you would have been the one to pound the nails into His hands. Do not think too much of yourselves, sons and daughters of man. You would have shouted, “Crucify Him!” along with all the rest.
So would have Ezekiel. And yet, the Lord has purposed him for other things. He does not rebel against the Lord. It does not mean that he stops being sinful. It doesn’t mean that he never sins. It means that the Holy Lord has seen fit to cover him with His own righteousness. It means that God Himself no longer counts Ezekiel’s sins against him nor does He count your sins against you, for just like Ezekiel, you are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You are innocent in the Lord’s eyes on account of Christ Himself, and not by your own works or doings. And the Lord has claimed you as His own.
Son of man, stand on your feet. And the Holy Spirit enters in and sets him up. The Holy Spirit has entered you as well. In your baptism, you were baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In your baptism, you were blessed by the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit. In your baptism, you were granted the forgiveness of the Father that was achieved by the Son and delivered by the Holy Spirit. In your baptism, you were given faith created by the Father, lived by the Son, and grown by the Holy Spirit. There is nothing that you can do to gain any of this. The Spirit, even if you were a child, the Spirit drew you to baptism. He cast His lasso out there, He grabbed hold of your heart, He grabbed your sinful, struggling self and tied him up, drowned him in the water, holding his head under until he passed out, and brought YOU up out of the water. And not just you, but you IN Christ Jesus. This is the same thing as Ezekiel.
See, we often forget that our New Testament faith, our hope which is revealed in Christ Jesus, it didn’t just start with Jesus and the Apostles. No, our faith, our hope, our eternal life, it was started with the promise of the Messiah from the very beginning. Our faith is found in the Old Testament. The promise was given to Adam and Eve that they would bring forth a seed to crush the serpent’s head, the Messiah to win us all back from sin, death, and the devil. The promise was given to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Judah, to Ruth, to David, to Solomon, to Jeremiah, to Isaiah, to Ezekiel. They had the promise of the Messiah, and in that promise is your promise.
The promise given to you in your baptism, the promise to save you, the promise to forgive you, the promise to set you free from your sins, the promise to bring you into everlasting life, the promise to always be with and NEVER forsake you, these are the promises given to Adam and David and Isaiah and Ezekiel. This is Ezekiel’s baptism. The Spirit enters him, just as He has entered you in your baptism and is with you even now.
And for what purpose? For Ezekiel, it is to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Gee, can you imagine a man standing in the midst of a rebellious and sinful people, preaching to them that they must repent of their sinful ways and their sinful hearts and their sinful thoughts and their sinful words and their sinful deeds? … Oh… Hello. Yes, the vicar standing before you this morning is charged with preaching the same thing that Ezekiel was charged to proclaim to Israel. Turn from your wicked ways! Turn back to the Lord! Repent! Receive the forgiveness of God! You and your fathers, you have sinned harshly and stupidly against the Lord, and for this He will judge you harshly! Repent and receive His forgiveness!
But, what’s the problem? Ezekiel preaches this, and preaches this, and preaches this, and preaches this (read the book, it’s long and chock-full of this). But no one listens. They hear, but they do not listen. The Holy Spirit has entered their lives but they kick Him out, beaten and bloodied. Just as we have done. We constantly try to reject the Holy Spirit, yet because of His work, none of us sitting here today have rejected Him quite like Israel. None of us have rejected Him so much that He can’t come back in. Because of His work, He makes us repent, He makes us turn, He makes us walk back in through the doors of this Church to hear God’s Word proclaimed and the sacraments distributed.
Did you not eat of the Lord’s Supper last week? Will you not eat it the next week? Do you not desire it in your hearts even now? Were you not baptized? Did you not start this service hearing the words of your baptism spoken over you? Did you not hear me proclaim that in your baptisms you have received the Holy Spirit? This, this indeed, is the work of the Spirit, and it is the work that is being proclaimed to you even now, even today, even forever. This work, this work that we grasp onto and cling to and never desire to let go, this work was rejected by Israel.
We are indeed different than Israel. We have repented. We have turned. They did not. And for not repenting, for remaining in their sin, for turning away from God, for continuing to whore after other gods and idols, they received, for a short time, exile. They were cast out of their land. They were sold into slavery, a slavery that they desired for themselves in their heart of hearts. In fact, they never truly returned. If you know your Biblical history, while the Jews of the Old Testament did return to Jerusalem, they lost the presence of the Lord. He did not return to them in the same way.
Their hearts were rent asunder for the presence of the Lord was no longer with His people. What had they done? To whom should they go? They had forsaken the Lord, but they still needed some type of religion, even false religion, just like all people, every single one, has false religion. This led to their hearts being shepherded by wayward shepherds, away from a religion of hope in the Messiah to a religion of works, works they themselves perform. Works that bring them nothing more than the exile of Babylon still. It is no story of conquering over despair, it is no ‘Stand and Deliver.’ It is a sad point, but they fell away from the Lord and many rejected and despised Jesus to His face and despise Him still.
But, though we are different, do not think we are better than Israel, my friends. We have seen the Lord and we know His name: it is Jesus. And while our Jewish neighbors may indeed still be in bondage to their Babylon of works, we run the same risk. When we no longer need to be in the presence of the Lord here in this place, when we no longer are convicted of our sins, when we no longer turn from our wicked ways, then we are putting ourselves into self-imposed exile. We are walking away from the presence of God. We are walking away from Jesus. And we will find for ourselves a false religion. And if we believe this false religion, if we forsake Christ for the love of bad preaching, evil pastors, life-change, whatever it is we are seeking after if not Christ, if we believe our false, heretical religion, we are intending for ourselves to go to Hell. We choose to be out of the presence of Christ, out of the presence of His Church, for make no mistake, Christ is only found in His Church. And as we are the body of Christ, preaching His Word, being washed in His baptism, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, Jesus dwells in this place.
Do not forget this. This church, this assembly, is special. Here Jesus is proclaimed, here Jesus is heard, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the action of the Son, and with the blessing of the Father, you, too, like Israel, need never question that a prophet, a pastor of the Lord has spoken here. For what is a prophet, or what is a pastor, but one who speaks the true, unyielding, absolutely clear Word of the Lord? Every time, every time, pastor and I speak to you from the Word of the Lord, it is not our voice, it is not our words, but it is Jesus that you hear. It is Yahweh. It is the Lord.
For His voice is heard in the absolution, your sins are forgiven. His voice is heard at the lectern, this is the Word of the Lord. His voice is heard from the pulpit, in Jesus’ name. His voice is heard in the Supper, on the night Jesus was betrayed. His voice is heard in baptism, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. His voice is here in this very place and it is heard. Turn and hear, hear the prophet of the Lord, hear the Word of the Lord, see that the Lord is in this place, repent of your wicked ways, and receive the forgiveness won for you in the life, death and resurrection of the Christ, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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