All right, look deep in your Old Testament. Find Ezekiel. Ezekiel, the prophet, chapter 18, over halfway through your Old Testament. If you're going to have trouble finding that or use the table of contents in your Bible, Ezekiel 18.

Start a new series today for the month of August. And let me say right now that in the month of August, it's back to school. You get two resets a year in ministry. One of them is January. You know, new year, turning over a new leaf, everything resets.

And then in August, back to school, the same thing happens. And so January is usually a highly attended month at church, and then August, typically a highly attended month at church. It's the two times of the year that we get to start over. And so the experts in church growth say that in August and in January, that's when you do sermon series for seekers and sermon series for those that may not be all that involved in church, and that might just appeal to them by what you call it. And I'm breaking all those rules this month.

Here's the name of my sermon series for the month of August. The soul who sins shall die. Amen. I mean, I'm going for it. I got that phrase from this text in Ezekiel.

And I'm typically, if you're new, I haven't done a whole lot of this this year, but I'm really a verse by verse through the Bible preacher. And so I'm going to do that in Ezekiel 18 for the month and see how far we get. And so before I get into the message, I want to just read the text, Ezekiel 18. If you found it, say, yes. I think it will be on the screen.

If you did not, it's okay. I read from the new king James, and our text today is the first four verses. The word of the Lord came to me again saying, what do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. As I live, says the Lord God, you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine.

The soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine. The soul who sins shall die. Let's bow for prayer. Father, your word is holy. It is true.

It is right. We confess that we believe it, and we ask you to open our ears and our hearts to learn what you want us to learn, to internalize what you want us to internalize and to apply what you want us to apply. Change our hearts, o God. Give us ears to hear in Jesus name and a faith filled church said amen. When I was growing up, there were three broadcast tv channels and three local tv channels.

ABC, CB's, NBC, Channel Five, Channel 13, and channel 24. Testify. Remember that? For the little bit of older crowd. And the locals were PBS, channel ten, and then 24 and 30.

That was the Memphis area. You could watch those channels over the air if you didn't have cable. And my family was late on cable and microwave ovens and just everything cool, so I had to learn all this. But when there were only three broadcast networks, advertising made a bigger impact in american culture. And so big companies that ran ads on ABC, CB's, and NBC became just kind of our language because we saw them and heard them so much.

I want to do a little test. I want to see if you can tell me. I'm going to give you the slogan from the advertising campaign, and you just kind of just say out loud, the company. Can we do that? Okay, a test run.

Have it your way. Burger King. Okay. So far, so good. All right, you ready for the test?

Here we go. Finger licking good. Kfc. Just do it. Don't leave home without it.

American Express card. What's in your wallet? Capital one. Somebody said nothing. All right.

Yeah, you just gave it right? Amen. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard. All right?

You watch a little more tv than everybody else who ever just said that that was master. Okay. Got the. Got the credit cards out of the way. You're in good hands with it.

Must be your carrier. All right. And then the last one today, because I had to stop with appropriate ones. Snap, crackle, pop. Hallelujah.

All right, you guys did good. Give yourself a hand. All right, slogans. You were able to say a lot of those because they became pop culture phrases in Ezekiel 18. The Lord has given us a profound reflection about the relationship between God's justice on one hand and human responsibility on the other.

It also. This chapter has one of the most powerful evangelistic appeals in all the Old Testament. You can read and learn Ezekiel 18 as a modern day person and be saved by Jesus. This chapter likely represents a conversation, a dispute, an argument between Ezekiel, the prophet, the people that he preached to, because they were languishing in exile in Babylon. They'd been stolen away from their homeland by the judgment of God in 587 BC.

The reason I think it's a conversation or a dispute is because Ezekiel quotes the people in verse two, in verse 19 and in verse 25. So they're kind of going back and forth. And throughout this chapter, Ezekiel shows us that he was both an evangelist and a pastor. Ezekiel was an evangelist because he was seeking to turn awayward children back to the Lord. And he was a pastor because he was faithfully shepherding a very nervous flock as they were floundering away from home.

And all of that, ladies and gentlemen, begins with a popular saying. I call this the people's popular slogan. Here are verses one and two again. And note that after I read verses one and two, we're halfway through the text today. Amen.

Say thank you. You're welcome. All right. The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, what do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. That was a saying much like those slogans you were able to quote to me a while ago and tell me their company, because it permeated Israel's culture.

That proverb's quoted in Ezekiel, and word for word, it's quoted in the prophet Jeremiah two. This was out there and everybody said it. If this was happening in today's time, this would be like one of those little icons people put on their social media to show you. Whatever the flavor of the month issue is, they support the fathers have eaten sour grapes. The children's teeth are set on edge.

And like any proverb, this one is both brieftainous and colorful. Let me tell you another way to say it. Our parents did the eating, but we ended up with the cavities. Or our parents did the drinking. We got the hangovers.

You getting the idea so far? The point of the slogan was, the children are suffering because of the sins of the parents.

My question is, why did the people go around saying this? Why had this caught on? Why was this on every bumper sticker of every chariot? Why was this so popular? Well, that question has two answers.

First, they were conceding. They were giving in. They were saying, well, that's the way life is. That's what they were saying with that slogan. So they were conceding and they were also complaining.

Not only were they going, well, that's just the way life is. They were saying, it's also unfair.

We are not enjoying our lives in this foreign land. I guess not. That's called the judgment of God. But the idea following that is, that's just the way things are. That's just the way life is now.

But here's my question. Who oversees the way things are? God does. And the children of Israel were absolutely convinced of that truth. So if these times are bad and it's just the way things are, and God is in charge of the way things are now, what are they saying?

You see, here's the concession. One generation makes mistakes, and the next generation suffers the consequences. That's the way life is. And here is the complaint. The past generation committed the sins, but the present generation is punished for them.

That's not fair.

Think back to that proverb. What do they call themselves in the proverb? They call themselves the children. What are they suggesting when they call themselves the children? They are suggesting we're innocent and paying for someone else's crimes because children are innocent.

But you know what Ezekiel, chapter 18 is going to bear out for us? These folks quoting this proverb were far from innocent. Remember, the name of the series is the soul whose sins shall die. And the name of this message is, all souls are mine. Because the Lord is going to say those four words near the end.

It is a universal mark of corrupt nature to place blame, which belongs to us, onto others. And that corrupt nature, that universal mark is very old. It goes back to Genesis, chapter three, verse twelve. That's where Adam transfers the blame of his sin, of eating the forbidden fruit first onto his wife and then onto God. Do you remember this verse?

He says, the woman you gave me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. So the exiles in Ezekiel, chapter 18, are simply following the example of Adam by blaming God. If this is just the way life is, and God's in charge of the way life is, and I hate my life and it's going terrible, it must be God's fault.

They were convinced that he was punishing them unjustly. Instead of that proverb, they might as well have been saying, we are innocent victims of an unfair God.

Or further, I play no role in my own suffering, and there's just nothing I can do about it. Do you hear the resignation in their voices? Do you hear that they're giving up? What kind of effect would this kind of attitude have on the morale of the people? And not only that, if they think like this, what kind of restraint on their urges would even be left?

If they think it's all helpless and hopeless? You see, here's the poison that had entered their hearts. If we cannot change the past, and we can't, then we can't change the present or the future either. So why bother to try, my brothers and my sisters, when that gets in your heart? It takes one whale of a gospel to break through the hardened heart.

At that point, these exiles viewed the present through the lens of the past. You see, they were overwhelmed by the fall of Jerusalem. The thing that happened that caused them to be relocated and dislocated and taken into captivity and slavery into a pagan land that had crashed in on them. And now they were in Babylon. It was a catastrophe.

They saw their whole lives doomed and devoid of any purpose. I remind you, life was like that, and nothing they did could alter it. That's what was in their hearts at the moment. Do you understand that? For them to get to that place, the mushroom cloud of God's wrath had drifted over their lives.

And since nothing would change, what was the point of even living right? Do you see that they were embittered in their hearts and paralyzed in their souls. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. As long as they felt this way, they would see no need to repent. And, ladies and gentlemen, when you see no need to repent, you close the only door to salvation in your life.

Even today in our world, this cosmic fatalism afflicts many people, perhaps in this room. It keeps them from responding to the gospel. May I ask some questions?

Do you feel imprisoned by the past generation?

Do you believe that you've been genetically programmed against knowing God and against believing in Jesus, because no one else in your family ever has? And as they go, so you go. Did you inherit emotional and psychological baggage from your family? From your ancestors, from your parents and grandparents? Did they eat the grapes that set your teeth on edge?

Maybe you've grown weary of this present world we're living in. And if you're not, just watch the nonsense in the political world right now.

You feel powerless to change the circumstances that you're in. And it doesn't really matter what I do. They're just going to get me in the end anyway. Is that what you think? What is there to repent of and change if everything's predetermined?

If fate exists and it's beyond my control, then, preacher, what's the point? Now that I've brought you to where the children of Israel were in Ezekiel 18, the question is, how will God respond to their complaint?

He uses oath level language to dismiss their slogan outright. Here's verse three. As I live, says the Lord God, you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel. Does God sound happy in verse three to you?

He swears by himself, you will stop saying this about me. But let me ask you a question. What if the fault really could be laid at the foot of the previous generation. Well, if that were true, then those in our text on whom the judgment rested had a reasonable complaint. They could reasonably shrug off any sense of sin.

And believe it or not, they could accuse God of injustice. But you know as well as I do that with all false thinking and false doctrines, for them to become popular, there must be a kernel of truth in the teaching to make it seem plausible. So I want to ask you, where in the world did this come from? Where did this concept of the continuing responsibility for family sins come from? Well, everybody, look at me.

They read it in their bibles. It came from the ten Commandments, the decalogue, God's top ten. Exodus, chapter 20, verse five. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.

Are you a little uncomfortable now? You're supposed to be. I'm supposed to read the Bible and create the tension, get you to see what's happening, and then release the tension. Are you ready for me to release it? Surely God's not capricious.

Surely he's not mean. Surely he's not bloodthirsty. And I do assure you he's none of those things. So what does that verse mean in Exodus in light of what we've been reading about in Ezekiel? The point of the verse in Exodus is the effects of sin are serious and long lasting.

It is not that God impulsively punishes the innocent for their ancestors evil ways. That is not what Exodus 25 25 teaches. God is simply saying in Exodus 21st, chapter 20, verse five, when there's sin and iniquity in your family, it takes a long time, and it goes a long way in polluting and affecting everybody else because he only visits that on the third and fourth generation of those who hate him, not the ones who know him and love him.

So here's what was happening in Ezekiel 18. Blaming others for their misfortunes, that is, their parents. The people were denying their own guilt. And my brothers and my sisters, why was this wrong? Because every individual is personally responsible to God.

So the first part of my message was the people's popular slogan, and the last part of the message is God's unpopular claim.

In the place of this invalid proverb, God makes an audacious statement. Verse four. Behold, all souls are mine. The soul of the father as well as the soul of the Son is mine. The soul who sins shall die.

Okay, so that verse makes two claims. You ready? The first claim of this verse is all human lives belong to God. He says, all souls are mine. Let me tell you what that doesn't mean.

That doesn't mean just the christians. Every Muslim belongs to God in ownership, not in faith. Every atheist belongs to God because he created them, not in faith, but in ownership. Every Buddhist, every Jehovah's witness, every Mormon, every Catholic, every false religion, every soul who ever walked on the face of the earth, God says, I claim you. You're accountable to me.

Do you believe this?

The world says you can have your God because he will only be relevant to you. Oh, that's not true at all. This world is on a collision course with the holy wrath of almighty God. And when it stops spinning and when he brings time to a close since he invented it, it won't matter what religion or what non religion you have, you will come face to face with the God who made you, whether you believe it or not. This is why you need a faithful church and some preachers.

Yes, I mean God has this unpopular claim. Literally, the verse reads as the life of the Father, so the life of the son. To me they belong. And that verse is parallel to the beginning of psalm 24 for you note takers. Psalm 24.

One God says the same thing using different words. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. In Ezekiel, God says, all souls are mine. And in psalms he says, the world and all who live in it belong to me. It means that all people live before the face of the personal God called Yahweh.

I mean to convince you of this. We do not suffer in some demoralizing prison of fate and some laws of the universe. The Lord God is not some far away deity. He's the personal owner of every human who has ever lived.

And he says the child's relationship to me is no different than the parents relationship to me. By the way, that destroys infant baptism.

And the reason why is there are no covenant children born into faith. You're born again into faith or you're not in the faith at all. Do you know that Bible teaches believer's baptism? All souls are mine. The father's and the children are responsible to me in the same way, on the same conditions and with the same demands.

So what does this indicate?

Would you look at me just for a second? Every person seated in this room has individual value to God and your personal choices and your daily actions matter to the Lord. All souls are mine. Now to apply this message as I close for the note, takers this won't be on the screen. I'll say it twice.

Every single person stands before the Lord, both personally relatable and morally accountable. Every single person stands before the Lord, both personally relatable, I can know him. And morally accountable. I am responsible to him. Personally relatable, I can know him.

Morally accountable. I am responsible to him.

And God is saying through Ezekiel that even though sin has continuing effects in people's families, God has never punished the righteous for the sins of the guilty. Our teeth have been set on edge by the grapes we have eaten.

There is no one righteous. Not even one. Romans 310, Romans 623. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. And then he says, the soul who sins shall die in the original language of the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, you don't have a soul, you are a soul.

So the Bible says in Genesis two that God breathes into Adam, the breath of life, and he became a living being, a living soul. He didn't get one, he became one. So when God says all souls are mine, he's not claiming a part of you, he's claiming all of you.

So I'm going to leave you with this final truth. If you are a soul, it means I am responsible to God wherever I am.

What if you're in Babylon where there is no temple, there is no priesthood, there are no sacrifices, and the only thing you've got left is your prayers and your faith? Am I still responsible to be a faithful believer to God there? Yes. All souls are mine. What about at work in the modern day?

I mean, I need to be a Christian at home and I need to be one at church. But does it matter how I live at work? Does it matter how I live at school? Do I have a testimony? Am I responsible to God on the university campus?

If you're going off to university, you're going to Babylon by choice and your God's there. You belong to him there. Look, you're responsible to God in the deer woods, somebody say amen, guys, you're responsible to God on the bass lake, you're responsible to God on vacation. You know, you don't get to go. Well, time out.

I'm not going to be a Christian for a week as I go to destin, poor destin. That makes it become just the most godless place on earth. You find christians, right? I'm on vacation. No, if Ezekiel 18 teaches us anything, it's that everywhere you go, God is.

And you're responsible to him. There in olive branch or in Babylon. Every generation and every individual must face up to the responsibility for our own sin. We must recognize that in God's justice, only the wicked will ultimately perish under his wrath. It doesn't matter how it looks to us from here.

So I want to ask you, do you belong to him?

If God were to send his faithful people into a foreign land in captivity today, would you be in the load? Or would he leave you back just to kill you with all the unbelievers?

Are you his by faith? Have you prayed one of those sinner's prayers and had your heart changed? I want you to think about that as we close in prayer. This is just a leadoff hitter for this lineup of this chapter this month. God, I know what's coming, and there's some more direct truth.

And I pray you prepare our church for it. I pray that. I pray we'd be a congregation humbled under the truth of the scriptures. And I pray there'd be souls saved this month because of what we hear from your word. God.

Give us ears to hear. In Jesus name, amen.

Come and join us this Sunday at the Great Commission Church for a truly remarkable and uplifting experience. Great Commission Church is not just any ordinary place of worship; it's a vibrant community where faith comes alive, hearts are filled with love, and lives are transformed. Our doors are wide open, ready to welcome you into the warm embrace of our congregation, where you'll discover the true essence of fellowship and spirituality. At Great Commission Church, we are more than just a congregation; we are a family united by a common mission – to follow the teachings of Christ and spread His love to the world. As you step inside Great Commission Church, you'll find a sanctuary that nurtures your faith and encourages you to be part of something greater than yourself.

We believe in the power of coming together as a community to worship, learn, and serve. Whether you're a long-time believer or just starting your spiritual journey, Great Commission Church welcomes people from all walks of life. Our vibrant services are filled with inspiring messages, beautiful music, and heartfelt prayers that will uplift your soul. Every Sunday at Great Commission Church is an opportunity to deepen your relationship with God and connect with others who share your faith and values.

At Great Commission Church, we believe that faith is not just a solitary endeavor but a shared experience that strengthens and enriches us all. Our church is a place where you can find purpose, belonging, and the encouragement to live a life in accordance with Christ's teachings. Join us this Sunday at Great Commission Church and experience the transformative power of faith in action. Be part of a loving and supportive community that is committed to making a positive impact in our world. Together, we strive to fulfill the great commission to go forth and make disciples of all nations. We look forward to having you with us at Great Commission Church this Sunday, where faith, love, and community intersect in a truly amazing way.

Great Commission Church is a non-denominational Christian church located in Olive Branch, Mississippi. We are a short drive from Germantown, Southaven, Collierville, Horn Lake, Memphis, Fairhaven, Mineral Wells, Pleasant Hill, Handy Corner, Lewisburg and Baylia.

See you Sunday at Great Commission Church!