THE SOUL THAT SINNETH, IT SHALL DIE

Text: EZEKIEL 18:4,20,23,24,30-32

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INTRODUCTION:

1. The prophet Ezekiel was taken away into captivity by the Babylonians during the reign of King Jehoiachin. It was about 595 years before Christ (Scofield).
2. Ezekiel was young man at the time, and his was a very difficult ministry. For one thing, he was far from home in a heathen country. Secondly, the false prophets kept telling the captives that they would soon return to Jerusalem and that the city would not be destroyed.
3. But Ezekiel knew they wrong. God allowed the Babylonians to chastise His people because of their sin.
4. The false prophets kept preaching a "Don’t worry, be happy message." We have a lot of these fellows around today. The prophet Isaiah called them "dumb dogs, they cannot bark" (Isa.56:10).
5. These false prophets, these dumb dogs, said Jerusalem would not be destroyed. The prophet Jeremiah, a contemporary of Ezekiel, preached that Jerusalem indeed would be destroyed.
6. In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed Jerusalem. He and his army burned it to the ground.
7. Amid all of this sin and disaster, Ezekiel preached to a sinful and indifferent people. They simply would not listen to Ezekiel just as they would not listen to Jeremiah, and they would not listen to Isaiah.
8. The book of Ezekiel is a sad book. It is so sad that I often find it difficult to read. I tried an experiment a couple of months ago. I drove around in my car listening to the book of Ezekiel on tape. It is even painful to listen to!
9. It is a sad book – it is written to a sinful people rooted out of their land, their beloved city destroyed, their king blinded, their princes killed, and many of their women ravished in a cruel heathen country, far from home.
10. And they had brought all of this upon themselves because of their sin. Oh, if they would only listen to the prophet Ezekiel.
11. If only people today would listen as well!

1. THERE IS A PENALTY FOR SIN (18:4b).

1. Many Jews had misunderstood Exodus 20:5b and 34:7. They thought they were suffering for the sins of their fathers. And by doing this they were denying their own guilt. They refused to repent and get right with God.
2. A proverb became popular among the Jews (Ezek.18:2; cf. Jer. 31:29). What they meant by this proverb is that their forefathers had committed sin but they themselves were innocent.
3. This unscriptural thinking was a delusion, a wicked invention to sustain them in their lost, sinful condition. They were actually dulling their sense of individual responsibility for their sins and the just judgment due them.
4. It is amazing how some sinners twist the Bible in order to justify their sin. I have had sinners say to me, "It’s all Adam’s fault! He got us in this mess!" No, my friend – you cannot blame Adam because you yourself have sinned over and over again and God holds you responsible for your sin.
5. Now the LORD answers them and tells them to stop using this proverb because it implies that God is unfair (Ezek.18:3; cf. 18:25,29). They were suffering for their own sins, and if the sins of the fathers come upon the children, it is only because oftentimes the children followed after the wickedness of their fathers.
6. Children do have a tendency to repeat the sins of their fathers, but it does not have to be that way. The blood of Jesus Christ can break any bondage to sin.
7. I have seen this time and time again: A drunken dad has a few sons, some of his sons become drunkards but some will not touch alcohol. Or an adulterous dad has two sons: one turns out to be a whoremonger like his father but the other is a happily married man.
8. They say the apple does not fall far from the tree, but thank God sometimes it falls far away from the tree.
9. Some of the most wicked kings had godly children, and visa versa. Study it out some time. Ahaz was a wicked unbeliever, and his son Hezekiah was a saved man, one of the greatest kings of Judah.
10. And who was Hezekiah’s son? Wicked Manasseh.
11. So what God is telling them here is not a new doctrine. The LORD is telling them they just misunderstood the old doctrine. They just did not properly understand the Word of God (Deut.24:16; II Kings 14:6).
12. And many people today still misinterpret the Word of God. For example, some churches teach "generational curses." This is foolishness. It does not matter what your father did or your grandfather or your great, great grandfather, etc. If you repent and receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour, God will save you.
13. Each man must answer for his own sin. God keeps accurate records. People think they can get away with adultery, reading dirty magazines, stealing, lying, etc. But they’re not (Ezek.18:4).
14. This is taught all throughout the Bible. Moses warned, "behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23).
15. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezek.18:4,20). Many people fear death. An old man read an article in the newspaper that said 81% of people die in their bed. So ever since he read that article he has been sleeping on the floor.
16. But beloved, when the Bible says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" let us look at it, not in the context of the Mosaic law, but in the progressive revelation of the NT. "For the wages of sin is death" (Rom.6:23). In this context, it is not just physical death, but what the Bible calls "the second death" (Rev.20:14,15).
17. There is a penalty for sin. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezek.18:4). "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ out Lord."
18. What a contrast – death or eternal life; wages or free gift. Which will you choose?

2. GOD TAKES NO PLEASURE IN JUDGING SINNERS (18:23,32).

1. Jesus said, "And ye will not come to me that ye might have life" (John 5:40).
2. Sinners need to understand the tender compassion of God. Sinners have brought upon themselves misery and woe. Sinners have hardened themselves against God’s love and mercy. Sinners have sinned against God’s holiness and God’s grace. And yet God tenderly pleads with each and every hell-deserving sinner to "return from his ways and live" (Ezek.18:23).
3. God takes no pleasure in judging sinners. The Bible says God "is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (II Peter 3:9).
4. Let me go further: God not only takes no pleasure in judging sinners, God takes pleasure in saving sinners. I mentioned earlier that the book of Ezekiel is a sad book, but amid all the doom and gloom there are some wonderful promises (Ezek.36:24-27).
5. God promises "a new heart also will I give you" (36:26). We sometimes say, "Give your heart to the Lord," but He really doesn’t want our dirty old hearts. He wants to give us a new heart. Have you received this new heart yet?
6. Have you ever wondered why our Lord said to Nicodemus, "Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?" (John 3:10). Nicodemus should have known Ezekiel 36:26,27.

3. GOD WANTS SINNERS TO REPENT (18:30-32).

1. Some people say, "It’s hard to live for God." Yes, it is hard when you try and do it in the flesh. Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6). And, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt.26:41).
2. The apostle Paul said, "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing" (Rom.7:18).
3. But when a man comes to the end of himself and realizes he is nothing without God, and that God would be perfectly just in casting him off into hell, then that man can call upon God and cry out to God and ask God to save him.
4. In other words, he must repent (Ezek.18:30-32).
5. The doctrine of repentance is taught all throughout the Bible. In the beginning of our NT, we are introduced to John the Baptist. And the very first word he preached was "Repent" (Matt.3:1,2).
6. This was the same message that our Lord preached (Matt.4:17). And yet today most preachers will not preach repentance because they’re scared some people won’t like it.
7. Some people won’t like it, and that’s precisely why we must preach it. The only way unsaved people are going to get right with God is when they realize they are dirty rotten sinners who have sinned against a holy God and they recognize that they must repent of their sin.
8. We had a controversy around here a few years ago with a Spanish preacher who was opposed to preaching repentance. He wanted to get as many people as possible converted, but the problem is without genuine repentance there will be no genuine conversion.
9. People come in here and think, "Well, the people are friendly, and I like some of the old hymns, and the Bible preaching is interesting BUT I DON’T WANT TO GIVE UP MY SIN." But if sinners do not repent and give up their sin they will not get truly saved (cf. Acts 20:21; 26:13—21; I Thess.1:9).

CONCLUSION:

1. It is clear from Ezekiel 18:32 that God takes no pleasure in judging sinners. Isaiah 28:21 refers to judgment as God’s "strange work…His strange act."
2. Beloved, God has gone to great lengths to provide a way of escape for the sinner. When a sinner goes to hell it is only because he has willfully refused God’s gracious offer of salvation.
3. I read a story one time about a couple in Chicago long ago, whose daughter came down with an unusual disease. They heard about a specialist in Vienna, Austria and paid him $25,000 (a lot of money back in those days) to treat their daughter.
4. There was another lady in the same part of town who read about this doctor in the newspaper and was very surprised because her daughter was afflicted with the same disease.
5. However, this woman could not afford the treatment. Yet she hoped that somehow, some way she might make contact with this doctor and that he could help her sick daughter get well again.
6. The doctor was an elderly man and in the habit of going for long walks every day. On this particular day it started raining hard so he ran up the steps to a house to get out of the rain. The lady who lived there saw him coming and slammed the door in his face. He stood there shivering for a few minutes in the pouring rain and within a few minutes his chauffeur pulled up in his limousine, ran out with an umbrella, escorted him into the car, and took him back to the hotel.
7. Back in those days people used to read the evening newspaper and the paper that night contained an article about the famous physician and how he caught a bad cold but a lady slammed her door in his face.
8. One lady reading the article was shocked. She was the lady who had slammed the door in the doctor’s face, and she also happened to be the poor lady with the sick daughter.
9. She ran all the way to the hotel to apologize to the doctor and try to explain and tell him about her daughter and beg him to come back to her house and treat her daughter, etc.
10. But when she finally arrived at the hotel she was informed that the doctor had already left for NYC, and from there he would get on a ship to Europe.
11. The woman broke down in the hotel lobby, lying on the floor crying out: "Oh my God! He was at my house and I would not let him in! He was at my front door and I shut the door in his face!"
12. She cried hysterically and would not stop till an ambulance came and they took her to a mental hospital, where she stayed the rest of her life.
13. Some here today are not saved. Do not slam the door in God’s face. Hell will be so unbearable for those who slam the door in God’s face (cf. Rev. 3:20).