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“GOD’S PLEASURE? SERVE AND SAVE!”
Text: Ezekiel 18. 1-4, 25-32 – Pentecost 18
Sunday September 27th, 2026
Trinity – Creston
Grace, mercy, and peace is yours from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Our text for this 18th Sunday after Pentecost is the Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel 18 that was just proclaimed.
Let Us Pray: Dearest Jesus, send your Holy Spirit to remind us that it is your desire and pleasure that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. May we openly receive what you desire to serve us with. Amen.
Dear Fellow Redeemed in Christ:
Two words can define true luxury, and they are probably not the first two words that come to mind. Maybe you thought of twenty-four karat gold, beautiful silk sheets or leather furniture.
Horst Schulze is recognized worldwide as a leader in luxury. In 1983, he became one of the founding members of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. As president and COO, he personally created the operating and service standards that made Ritz-Carlton synonymous with lavishness and extravagance.
More than shiny elevators or plush bedding, Schultze says that what luxury travelers want is to be taken care of without being a burden. So he taught all his employees a simple two-word phrase. Instead of saying, “No problem” or “You’re welcome,” Schultze adopted the reply, “My pleasure.” Two words that in Schultze’s world communicate “you are not an interruption; you are the purpose of our work.”
So it’s funny that the place that most of us have encountered Horst Schultze’s secret phrase to gold standard service isn’t associated with luxury at all. Because it turns out that fast-food founder Truett Cathy stayed at a Ritz-Carlton in the early 2000s and was impressed when employees consistently responded with “my pleasure.”
He found it thoughtful and felt it made the service feel more intentional, so he brought the phrase back home to Chick-fil-A and built a culture of hospitality around the phrase. So now, when someone spills their sweet tea, an employee races over with a mop and a towel and insists that cleaning up a stranger’s mess is “my pleasure.”
Even if you’ve never stayed at a Ritz-Carlton or dined at a Chick-fil-A, to be served by someone else and then hear it was their pleasure is a humbling experience. For another person to see you as a person worthy to be taken care of is a mark of honor. It illustrates your value in their eyes.
Through the prophet Ezekiel, the Lord God speaks to you this morning in equal parts justice and mercy, Law and Gospel, to say,
Your Soul Is the Lord’s, and It Is His Pleasure to Serve and Save You.
I. Rarely do we imagine others’ messes as our pleasure.
A. Humans are not hardwired to enjoy inconvenience.
1. We see messes—and the people who bring them into our lives—as burdens. (Give examples.)
2. We tell ourselves the world would be just fine if it weren’t for all the people in it.
B. Often we see our own messy misfortunes as someone else’s fault.
1. We blame others for the troubles we face. (Give examples.)
2. We can feel we are being punished for others’ mistakes.
3. Sometimes we imagine the system is rigged.
a. “Everything is broken because of what the last generation did.”
b. Boxer Mike Tyson claimed his troubled upbringing of abuse, poverty, and crime made him “a monster”—helpful for a fighter but sad for living outside the ring.
4. It would give us pleasure to get rid of life’s messes and the people who make them.
C. The Lord’s exiled people see themselves as God’s victims of their parents’ failure (vv 1–2).
1. When thinking about the home they left, they can only see the sin of a previous generation.
a. They blame the suffering in their present on the sins of others’ pasts.
b. They feel they are paying the price their parents owe.
2. Thus they also unfairly blame God.
a. They feel he set their teeth on edge and set his heart against them.
b. They resent him for stripping their pleasure and giving them punishment instead.
II. Certainly, though, it is never God’s pleasure to punish one soul for another’s sin.
A. People often suffer in the aftermath of others’ sin.
1. The consequences of sin are real.
2. One person’s sin can hurt entire families, churches, and communities. (Give examples)
B. But the Lord does not assign parents’ guilt to their child, nor your neighbor’s guilt to you (vv 3–4).
1. The Lord takes no pleasure in blind vengeance or random retribution.
2. Every individual soul stands before the Lord seen, known, and accountable.
3. The Lord refuses to bind a person’s ultimate destiny to someone else’s mistakes.
C. The Lord rejects his people’s flawed thinking.
1. It robs them of the dignity of responsibility and the hope of transformation.
2. If your condemnation is tied to someone else’s sin, you have no reason to repent, and every reason to resent.
III. But it is the Lord’s pleasure to pair his perfect judgment with lavish mercy.
A. For the Babylonian exiles, he doesn’t just teach about justice; he also reveals his heart of mercy.
1. He is not a cold judge banging a gavel.
2. He is a Father pleading with his children: “Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone” (vv 31b–32a).
3. Repentance is real and life is accessible (v 32b). (Call to repentance for specific sins cited above.)
B. God’s justice and mercy collide at the cross of Jesus.
1. It’s a reality that the exiles could not yet see, but we must.
a. There is a Son who truly did suffer for the sins of the fathers and brothers and grandsons of the world.
b. He drank the sour wine and bore the full weight of the world gone wrong.
c. The Innocent One is condemned so that the guilty might go free.
2. Incredibly, all of that was God’s pleasure: “The Lord was pleased To crush Him [Christ], putting Him to grief” (Is 53:10 NASB).
a. Jesus took the punishment of God’s justice that he did not deserve in order to give us God’s mercy that we could not earn.
b. It’s true: “The soul who sins shall die” (v 4).
c. But Christ Jesus died the death of every soul so that we might live.
d. The cross of Jesus is God’s good pleasure.
In 2025, Northern Irish golfer Rory McIlroy was staring down a familiar foe. McIlroy experienced tremendous success from the very beginning of his professional career. He won his first major tournament, the US Open, at age 21, then followed it up with a PGA Championship the next year and a win at the British Open two years after that.
By 25, only one major title eluded him: the Masters in Augusta, Georgia. Each year, teeing off at the Masters was like going to battle. There was a foe to be vanquished: seventy-two holes that stood between McIlroy and history as the first European to win a career Grand Slam.
But for McIlroy, the course at Augusta kept serving defeat after defeat. It became a burden he carried and a fear he faced every spring. Until 2025. Finally, more than a decade removed from his last major title, McIlroy dueled his way to a sudden-death playoff victory and claimed the famous green jacket. The monkey was finally off his back.
He had conquered the career Grand Slam. When asked how he mustered the killer instinct to take down his unconquerable foe, McIlroy reflected that success came when he realized the battle was with himself. It was not with the course, not with other golfers.
Like McIlroy, we like to see our enemies taken out. But sometimes it’s not so much that we seek victory; rather, that we find pleasure in our enemies’ total annihilation. And that can be a deadly blind spot, because our dream might be to see our enemy vanquished, but we often neglect to see the enemy that is our own sinful minds (Ezek 18:1–4).
The Lord sees our enemies clearly, including the enemy within us, our own sinful nature. And it’s mercy that leads him to attack this enemy. He pleads that we would turn from our evil ways and live (18:32)—so that he can claim you as his prize.
What brings the Lord pleasure is not wanton wrath but showing mercy. Our neighbors and parents are not scapegoats on whom to blame our suffering. There is only the Lamb who suffers for us and with us.
And for the joy set before him he endures the cross and dies that you might live. He cleans our mess, pays our tab, and opens to us the golden mansions of heaven.
You are not an interruption, a burden, or a punching bag; you are the reason Christ came. He sees you as worth taking care of. Your soul is the Lord’s, and it is his pleasure to serve and save you. All praise to Christ Jesus. Amen.
Now may the peace of God in Christ Jesus keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.
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