11/23/25 Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 “Christ the King!”

20 Nov 11/23/25 Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 “Christ the King!”

11/23/25    Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24         “Christ the King!”

Once again, I would like to say to you, “Happy Christ the King Sunday!”  This is not only Christ the King Sunday but it is also the last Sunday of the church year.  I guess that would make this coming Saturday New Year’s Eve.  Go and celebrate!  Also, this is the time of year that you make your New Year’s resolutions.  Then you can see how you are doing and tweak them on the next New Year’s in a month.  You may think I’m crazy but maybe, just maybe this was meant to be the New Year.  It wouldn’t be the first time that we have been in error.  We live in the error of false gods.  We live in the error of modern weapons which we use to kill each other in mass quantities while we stand by and do nothing.  I suppose that a better word for error is sin.  I know that most people don’t like it when we call things a sin but that is something that we will all have to take up with God when we meet Him.  There is no such thing as a sin that is ok.  Today, we are going to take a look at the prophet Ezekiel as he tells us about Christ the King long before the Gospel writers were even born.  Let’s see if this King is for us.

As we begin, I would like us to take a look around at the various kings we have in today’s world.  There aren’t many left.  There is the King of Jordan for example who has been oppressing his people for years.  This is what we usually find in modern kings who are still in power.  The royalty of England has no real power so I won’t include them.  We have self-declared kings who are what we call dictators.  They are everywhere and wherever they are, there is usually tremendous oppression of the people and especially anyone who stands up to a dictator.

Then we have all our presidents and prime ministers around the world.  This is just my opinion but I think that the only difference between these leaders and actual dictators are that people elect them.  Just take a look at Russia.  They have elections but there are no real choices.  This is what has happened in many countries today.  Many think that this is our country also!

But regardless of how these people come to power, the point is ‘what do they do with their power?’  In just about every case, these leaders are authoritative and abusive just to name a few of their negative traits.  In this country it usually means we get laws or rules where the few will make lots of money.  It is a sad fact of life in this world.  As I was thinking about this, I was wondering if that is what God had in mind when He set us up with kings in the beginning.  Is this the formula for a king or should we have kings who follow the example of Jesus?  Have we gotten yet another thing wrong?  Think about that because I think that it might be very important.  Just because governments tell us something, doesn’t mean it is right according to the Bible.  We have many examples of this in our country.  Kingship might just be another mistake on our part.

I want us to go back and remember how our glorious God came to this earth.  He came to us as a baby.  Now you may be thinking that all kings and presidents have their beginnings as a baby.  Once again you would be right but there might be more to it.  We can read many times in the Old Testament, including today’s reading, where God tells us in advance that He is sending us a Savior.  He tells us it will be in the line of King David which is exactly the lineage of Jesus.  I’m not going to talk about how the wise men came or the shepherds came from the fields after the angels had talked to them.  I’m not going to talk about the virgin birth or how many prophecies were fulfilled just at His birth.  If I’m not mistaken, no one foretold that Mohammed was coming or Buddha or any of the other false gods.  And no other religion has witnesses to their false gods.  I’m just going to say that Jesus came as quietly as He could as a baby.

Even when Jesus came to us at age thirty, it was in a quiet way.  He began by making some wine at a wedding.  Then he kind of wandered here and there.  There wasn’t a lot of fuss until they found out what He could do.  Then the crowds began to follow but it was only the common folks who followed.  The rulers and church leaders sure didn’t follow Him because He was not one of them.

Contrast that to what happened when someone like Herod came.  There were parades and many festive activities.  Any conquering king was greatly honored by the people.  Usually when a dictator takes over, he gets everyone’s allegiance by killing the opposition.  Even when we elect the president of this country, we have to stop for a day of celebration and an inaugural ball, if you are on the winning side.  I hope that you can see the sharp contrast between human kings and Christ the King.  With our human kings, all focus is on the humans.  But when we have Christ the King, all focus is on God.

So, our kings enter with parades and slaughters while God enters with humbleness and peace.  Now what do we do once we become a king.  I have already mentioned that we kill the opposition.  We try to make sure that we set it up so we stay in power.  I have noted before that we will usually lie and cheat in any and all ways to stay in power or to even gain power.  Our leaders may demand that we bow down to them like they did in Bible times.  Daniel was supposed to do this and he was thrown in with the hungry lions.  This type of forced worship is found in many places today, especially where Islam is concerned.  If you take a close look at it, human beings certainly do make ugly leaders.

Contrast that to what Jesus did when he was in His ministry.  Here is a man who fed the poor and hungry with next to nothing as seen in the stories of feeding 5000 and then 4000 people.  He healed the sick as when He healed the 10 lepers.  He made the lame to walk and the blind to see.  I could name many, many more miracles like this but I want to move on.

Everywhere He went He was teaching.  He taught us to be kind to all people.  He taught us to be patient.  He taught us to love all people no matter whom they were or what they did.  He taught us not to discriminate against those in need of God’s ministry.  He taught us to forgive each other just as God forgives us.  This list also goes on and on.  I hope that by making these comparisons you will begin to see that the principles that we have built for our kings and presidents have been all wrong.  What would the world look like if we started to use the principles of Jesus in every phase of life?

Now let’s take a look at what our passage says about our King, Christ the King.  I hope that you noticed as I was reading this that this Old Testament reading is a parallel to the reading in Matt. 25 of the sheep and the goats.  Jesus uses a parable to tell us to try to treat everyone as if they were Jesus.  This is hard to do.  Ezekiel uses the terms fat sheep and lean sheep and we will get to this in a minute.

But first, what will God do for His sheep?  God will search for His lost sheep and take care of them.  Remember that at this time, the sheep had been scattered.  They were exiled in Babylon.  Even in Babylon they were not all in one place.  It will be the job of Ezekiel to try to bring hope to a broken people.  God is telling the exiles that He is in charge.  He is watching over them and that He will return them to the land of Israel.  They will all be rescued.  This, of course, means that all will be rescued that want to be rescued.  If you know the story of the return from exile, it was only a small percentage of the people who actually wanted to come home again.  After all, they had been in Babylon for 70 years.  They had roots there.  They had families and they had intermarried with the native people of Babylon.  They had peer pressure to stay.  Society told them to stay, so many stayed.

Now I think that we have to remember that this has been the promise since the beginning.  God will take care of us.  He will not leave us.  Remember when I said that God doesn’t grow tired, we do.  It is the same way with this.  God does not leave us.  It is us who leave God.  We have many instances of that in our world today.  We have so-called world religions that are totally against the ways of God and we are told that we have to accept them.  I disagree with this.  We are to accept these people but we are never to accept these false religions.

It is the same way with the world view in this country.  We can never accept the world view just because everyone else does.  How many times have you heard times are changing and God must also?  Just because one lemming jumps in the ocean to drown doesn’t mean that it is such a good idea to follow.  If we do then this is what is going to happen.  When the time comes for us to be called home, you won’t get to heaven if you haven’t been following Jesus in all He says.  You cannot pick and choose what we want to believe about God.  God has promised to take us all home and He will if you so choose.  If you choose any other road, any other god, then you will be like the exiles who didn’t want to come back to the Promised Land of God.

If we go back to Ezekiel 20, we read that God takes no pleasure in having to leave someone behind because of their disobedience.  God is trying His hardest to have everyone come to Him in the end.  There is absolutely no way that He sends anyone into the fire.  This is not what He wants.  It is us who send ourselves into the eternal fire of hell.  It is your choice.  Reading again in Ezekiel 20, we find that we will not be condemned because of what our parents did.  Just because your parents are condemned because they didn’t follow Jesus, doesn’t mean that you are also condemned.  The choice to follow Jesus is always yours and yours alone.  However, we all know that it is hard to break out of the mold that our parents have cast for us but it can be done.  Jesus will help.

Here we are reading in the Old Testament some of the very lessons that Jesus taught in the New Testament.  I think that Ezekiel gives us a very clear picture of how we are to live just like Jesus did hundreds of years later.  It makes me wonder about the Jewish leaders.  The things that Jesus taught are all in the Old Testament.  Why did they decide to skip over this stuff and ignore it?  I think that the answer has to lie in the evil works of Satan where all bad things originate.

The second part of this passage talks of the fat sheep and the lean sheep.  It tells how the fat sheep have taken everything from the lean sheep.  They have nothing to eat because the fat sheep push the weaker ones away.  In the case of these ancient Jews, it meant that the Babylonians were the fat sheep.  It also meant that there might have been certain Jews who saw the opportunity to get a better position by siding with the Babylonians.  Whatever was happening, this means that they will not go unjudged.

God will judge the sheep; we don’t judge the sheep.  Our job is to do what God tells us which will lead to a better world and a better life.  Don’t worry about the person who is always sinning.  Don’t worry about the thief or the crook or the immoral person who insists on living in sin.  When the end comes, they will have to stand before God for judgment.  They will have no one with them to defend them.  They will have to answer why they stole my money or my livelihood or whatever.  Now we will also have to answer the same kinds of questions.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We will all be judged by the only fair judge in the world, God.

We, however, have the best lawyer in the world.  Ezekiel tells us that God will send us one from David.  Following the Bible we see that Jesus was from the line of David.  Jesus will come and He will be our shepherd.  This is the Good News.  Because of Jesus coming to us in human form, dying on the cross for our sins, being resurrected from the dead and ascending back to heaven, we can stand before God.  Jesus will be with us all the way.  He died for your sins so that you can be in heaven with all your friends and relatives.  God set up this whole thing because He loves you so much.  All you have to do is accept this love.  You do this by confessing your sins to Him and asking Him to live in your heart as your Lord and Savior.  It is that simple.  Only then will you be able to begin the best life that is possible for you.

You see it is much, much simpler to be Christ the King than it is to be a human king.  All Jesus has to do is be honest and fair.  All He has to do is love all people.  All He has to do is tend His sheep.  He cannot tell a lie so that He has to cover one lie up with 2 more lies.  He cannot favor you over me.  He cannot hate.  All He can do is love us.  I think that is a pretty reassuring thought.

God’s love is unconditional.  There is nothing we can do to get away from it.  God’s grace is everywhere and we should be praising the Lord for it.  Jesus is talked about all through the Old Testament.  As a matter of fact, everything in the Old Testament points to the coming Messiah.  Jesus is that Messiah and He loves all people.  The life we have in Jesus is far, far better than any type of life outside of Jesus and that’s a fact, Jack.  Learn to love Him in return.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.