Ezekiel Part 4

We're going to pray and we're going to get started.

One of the more strange bits of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is a strange book.

This is one of the stranger bits of it.

Let's pray.

Lord, as we open your word, we ask you, Holy Spirit, to help us to rightly understand what has been revealed there that we

would take to heart what you have given as far as words to Ezekiel.

May they apply to us equally as they have applied to the people who received them first.

And through your word, may we have a disregarding of all who teach us

falsely and prophesy falsely and instead only listen to those who truly are ones you have sent

so that we may understand what is sound doctrine, what our sin is, and also the great hope and the

reconciliation we have in Jesus Christ.

We ask in Jesus name.

Amen.

OK, when we left off a few weeks ago, it feels like forever

ago, because last time we met and actually did this kind of thing, an actual Bible study.

It was before I went to Australia.

So I've, you know, the last time we opened up the Bible for a Bible study, I still hadn't

traveled all the way to the other side of the world.

I lost a Tuesday along the way.

It was the weirdest thing.

I left on on Monday.

It was Labor Day.

And when I arrived in Australia, it was six in the morning in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday and Tuesday,

just flat out disappeared.

It just wasn't there.

So I'm really concerned.

My concern is, is that if Jesus shows up on a Tuesday and somebody is on a plane to Sydney, Australia, they'll

miss the whole thing.

So I will say this, though, because I never miss a good opportunity to

point out that yet again, I have survived the end of the world.

If you're not sure what I mean, if you did not know that on that midnight on

September 23rd, that was when the rapture was supposed to take place.

And again, I know it's becoming an annual event now.

And those people who continue to basically take Jesus's words, no one knows the day or the

hour as a challenge, rather than a than something that basically says,

stop trying this altogether.

They keep doing it year after year after year.

So good news.

A lot has transpired, including going to Australia and surviving the end of the world yet again.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

So.

All that being said, we are here today and we began a

look at Ezekiel chapter four.

And when you read the commentators on this section of Ezekiel, it's funny

reading non -Lutheran commentators because they don't know what to make of it.

Lutheran commentators, they know what to make of it, but they're not sure how it all

fits, because what we're looking at are action prophecies, prophecies

that Ezekiel is actually very well known for.

And these are prophecies not done merely in word, but these are prophecies

done in deed.

And the words themselves are pointing to events that are going to take place.

And you're going to note what God is up to at this point is in the process of, if you would, making a little bit

of a spectacle of Ezekiel for the purpose of getting people to pay attention to him

because he's the only true prophet among them.

Now, Daniel technically is a prophet, but he's he's working for Nebuchadnezzar.

He's in the in the higher echelons of things.

And there are no other prophets at this point.

Jeremiah is long gone, and we're not we're not even sure what has happened to him.

We know that he ended up in Egypt, but we don't know what his ultimate demise was because we never hear from him again.

So Jeremiah is now off the world stage.

Ezekiel is on the world stage.

And so he's going to be engaging in these action prophecies.

And people are going to be looking at him and scratching their head, wondering what on earth is going on.

So for the sake of just a little bit of a recap of what it is that we went over before you guys

like, no, like when you're watching a Netflix series, right, it says, do you want to see the recap?

You don't have the ability to press the button to say no on me today.

You have to get the recap.

No.

I'm just saying if it did exist, I'd break it.

You'd show up in the middle of the stage.

Right.

There's a skip recap button on Roseboro and it doesn't work.

Right.

Okay.

So let's, let's read again from Ezekiel.

And you son of man, take a brick, lay it before you, engrave on it a city,

even Jerusalem, so he's engraved on this brick, Jerusalem, put siege works against it.

Build a siege wall against it.

Cast up a mound against it, set camps also against it and plant

battering rams against it all around.

And you take an iron griddle and place it as an iron wall between

you and the city and set your face toward it and let it be in a

state of siege and press the siege against it, this is a sign for the

house of Israel.

And so there is, and he's going to be laying on his side.

There's more details here.

Then lie on your left side and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it.

For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment.

For I assigned to you a number of days, 390 days

equal to the number of the years of their punishment, so long shall you bear their punishment

of the house of Israel and when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second

time, but on your right side and bear the punishment of the house of Judah,

40 days, I assign you a day for each year and you shall set your face toward

the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared and you shall prophesy

against the city and behold, I will place cords upon you so that you

cannot turn from one side to the other till you have completed the days of

your siege and you take wheat and barley, beans, lentils, millet, and

emmer, put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them during the number

of days that you lie on your side, 390, you shall eat it and your food that you

eat shall be by weight, 20 shekels a day from day to day, you shall eat it

and water, you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hymn from day to day, you shall drink

and you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung

and the Lord said, thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations

where I will drive them and then I said, ah, Lord Yahweh, behold, I have never

defiled myself from my youth up till now, I have never eaten what died of itself or was

torn by beasts nor has tainted meat come into my mouth and then he said to me, see, I

assign you cow's dung instead of human dung on which you may prepare your bread.

That's so much better.

What a mercy.

So this is the setup and Ezekiel's going to do this 390

days on his left side, 40 days on his right side with, you

know, with Lego Jerusalem under siege and you just sit there and go,

what is going on?

Well, at its core there's a reason why he's doing this and that is, is that

Jerusalem has not yet completely fallen.

Nebuchadnezzar has not destroyed the temple up to this point and there are

false prophets among the the exiles of Judah who are

legitimately saying, don't unpack your luggage, we're going back to Jerusalem

soon.

We're expecting a suddenly in a breakthrough, right?

And they're saying this and they're absolutely lying through their teeth.

God is not the one speaking.

So here's Ezekiel in this long drawn -out

ordeal of a action prophecy lying on his left side bearing the

punishment of the people of Israel for 390 days.

Then he gets to flip over to his right side, all the while he's eating this bread cooked over

cow dung.

Again, it's just bewildering to me that anyone would want to sell this bread, you know, that is an actual

company selling Ezekiel 4 or 9 bread and it's like, really?

You know, how do you get permission to sell such a bread, right?

Especially since the special ingredient is what it's cooked over, right?

Yeah, so Josh mentioned that from the people who bring you Ezekiel 4 or 9 bread that we have that they have marriage

counseling via Hosea, right?

This is the fellow who God commanded for him to marry a prostitute, you know?

It's like, aye, aye, aye.

So yes, James, I

assure you if God put me on the Ezekiel 4 or 9 bread diet, I would lose a lot of weight quickly,

okay?

Yeah, in other words, I wouldn't be eating, okay?

All right, now hang on a second here.

Okay, Lego Jerusalem, love how Pastor makes things so relatable.

Yeah, it is Lego.

It's like Lego Jerusalem, right?

I can almost hear Ezekiel going, pew, pew, pew, you know?

Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, anyway.

All right, so then he says this.

Son of man, behold, I will break the supply of bread in Jerusalem.

They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay.

I will do this that they may lack bread and water and look at another in dismay

and then rot away because of their punishment.

Now, if you remember, Jeremiah prophesied that Jerusalem was going to fall and that the

only hope that the people in Judah and Jerusalem had was they needed to surrender

to King Nebuchadnezzar.

So this is now, this action prophecy is ultimately going to be fulfilled and very shortly

fulfilled.

And you know, and the false prophets are going to legitimately look like

buffoons because they are and Ezekiel is going to be the only guy standing where, you know, when

Ezekiel speaks, it happens.

When Ezekiel says something is going to take place, it legitimately takes place and that's on purpose because when we

talk about somebody who is a prophet, a prophet is somebody whom God chooses

to be his mouthpiece and he is the one who is the messenger who is giving words from

God.

God doesn't lie.

God doesn't stutter.

God doesn't do the nonsense that today's so -called prophets do.

Today's so -called prophets have much in common with the false prophets at the time of Ezekiel.

And as a result of it, Ezekiel, he's the gold standard now in exile.

He is the prophet of note and when he says something's going to happen, God's actually talking to him and it

legitimately takes place.

And God is trying at this point to wean the exiles

of Judah off of the false prophets, wean them off of them so that they will listen to

his true voice.

So chapter five, and you, oh son of man, take a sharp sword,

use it as a barber's razor and pass it over your head and your beard,

then take balances for weighing and divide the hair.

Okay, so he's going to, this is a self -shaving grooming event and he's

taken all the hair off his head, he's taken off his beard, thankfully he gets to keep his eyebrows, you

know, and then he's to take the whole lot of it and then divide it up.

A third part of it you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city.

And let's see here, in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are completed, a third part of it you

shall take and strike with the sword all around the city.

That has to be ridiculous to look at.

Okay, so here Ezekiel has taken his hair and people are going, what's

he up to now?

It's like, so there he's walking across the street or whatever and go, is that Ezekiel?

It's like, what happened?

You just like, he's completely bald, doesn't have a beard.

Scripture requires him to have a beard, by the way, according to the Mosaic covenant, he's supposed to have one.

So here, you know, he's breaking one of the rules, but God is doing this on purpose to make, give him a message.

He's gathered up all the hair that was on his head and on his face, divided it up in thirds

and one, and he's, they follow him and want to know what's going on.

He takes a third of it, throws it in the fire and we weigh all our fast hair goes up, right?

And it's gone.

And then he takes a third of it and he's got a sword and what's he doing?

Beating it with the sword.

Have you lost your mind, Ezekiel?

Again, God is purposely making a spectacle of him to get people to pay

attention and these action prophecies come to pass.

All right.

So a third of it, you shall take and strike with the sword all around the city.

And how does one do such a thing?

Okay.

Did he have to put it in a bag?

You know, how does one all over the city take a third of your hair and, you know, slice it up and

dice it and attack it with a sword?

No, I think all around the city of, you know, he's in.

Oh, it may, it may be Jerusalem.

Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe he's beating it.

Oh no, this is after.

Yeah, this is after.

Yeah.

This is, this is, this is the next part of it.

Okay.

A third part of it, you will scatter to the wind and I will unsheathe the sword

after them.

And you shall take from these a small number, bind them in the skirts of your robe.

And of these again, you shall take some and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire.

From there, from there, a fire will come out into all the house of Israel.

Thus says the Lord Yahweh, this is Jerusalem.

I have set her in the center of the nations with countries all around her.

And she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations

and against my statutes more than the countries all around her for they have rejected my

rules and have not walked in my statutes.

Now, a little bit of a note here.

If you've, if you've ever kind of thought strategically, like if you think in terms of

like defendable territory, Israel is not an easy place to defend

because you can get attacked by sea.

You could get attacked from the north.

You can get attacked from the south.

And the only effective place that's a little more difficult to attack you from if you're Israel is,

is from the east.

Right?

And so why, why did God choose that as the promised land?

Well, you can kind of see it here.

He says that he set Jerusalem in the center of the nations with

countries all around her.

That was an intent on the part of God.

In fact, a good way to think of it is this, is that if you were to pick a city, a

region, a territory from which to launch the gospel from so that it

quickly gets around the world, Jerusalem is a logical place

based upon where people were living at the time and how the world was divided up geopolitically.

That's a legitimately good place to start Christianity from because it's in the center of

everything.

Right?

So here you kind of sit there and go, Oh, that, that makes sense here.

But here's the thing.

God, he set them there on purpose so that the nations around would have

exposure to his name.

They would know who God was.

They would run into those weird people, the Jews and stuff like that.

And this would be the launching point for Christianity itself.

Tactically, this makes perfect sense.

But when you have people then that are supposed to be doing one thing and rebelling against it and doing the opposite,

then you've got a big problem.

Right?

So God had to take them out of the center, put them in time out over in Babylon.

And so here it says, so this is Jerusalem.

I've set her in the center of the nations with countries all around her.

She has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations against my statutes, more than the countries all

around her.

For they have rejected my rules.

They have not walked in my statutes.

Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because you are more turbulent than the nations that are all around you

and have not walked in my statutes or obeyed my rules and have not even acted according to the

rules of the nations that are all around you.

Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, behold, I, even I

am against you and I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the

nations.

And because of all your abominations, I will do with you what I have

never yet done.

And the like of which I will never do again.

Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in your midst.

Sons shall eat their fathers and I will execute judgments on you and any of you

who survive, I will scatter to all the winds.

Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord Yahweh, surely because you have defiled my

sanctuary with your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore

I will withdraw.

My eye will not spare.

I will have no pity.

A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your

midst.

A third part shall fall by the sword all around you.

A third part I will scatter to all the winds and will unsheathe the sword after them.

Thus shall my anger spend itself and I will vent my fury upon them and

satisfy myself.

And every liberal theologian goes, this isn't God.

God is love.

This is kind of this.

What is this?

Okay.

And so this is where they take offense, right?

But here's the thing.

Did Israel have any warning that God would

act this way if they broke his covenant?

Yes.

Right.

Okay.

So you guys remember when you bought your house and you got the mortgage and then and you had to take your

arm out in a sling after signing all those papers and escrow, right?

You know, and it took like a week for it to recover because you and they had you sign this and sign that and initial this

and initial that.

And then when you look at that, and they gave you the copy of the stack of papers, which is a book.

Okay.

Have you ever stopped to think you are responsible for everything that you

agreed to in those papers?

And I got to admit something here.

Last set of mortgage documents.

I didn't really read them.

So if they came to my door and said, it's time for your left kidney.

And I said, wait, what?

It's right here in your mortgage docs.

You agreed to give us your left kidney.

Okay.

I agree.

They shouldn't accept that.

No, I wouldn't have reasonably accepted that.

But the point I'm making is, is that I should know what I signed up for, right?

So when we look at the Mosaic covenant, do you guys remember where in the Mosaic covenant

it talks about what God is going to do if they don't keep their end of the bargain,

the fine print section.

Okay.

I'm surprised that this portion of scripture isn't written in six point Helvetica.

Okay.

But it's not.

Let's see if we can hunt this down real quick here.

Right.

May cause diarrhea.

Right.

You know, right.

Huh?

Sorry.

Side effects may include cannibalism, you know.

All right.

So here's, here's the section book of Deuteronomy chapter 28.

Now I need to remind everybody Mosaic covenant is a works

righteous covenant, and it is not a covenant regarding salvation.

It is a land lease agreement between God and the children of Israel.

If you obey the fine print of the Mosaic covenant, you get all these

blessings.

If you disobey all of the commands or the commands of the, of the Mosaic covenant, then God

is going to curse you in these ways and ultimately expel you from the land.

Consider then how this plays out in the timeline in history,

because what we just read in Ezekiel five was that God's going to spend his

anger and that he's going to basically bring about cannibalism

and the things he says that are going to happen in Jerusalem will never happen again.

But here's the thing.

They didn't happen once.

They happened twice.

So the reference that God is making here is not merely to the people in Jerusalem at the time of

Ezekiel.

There's a secondary fulfillment with the siege of Jerusalem under

the armies of Titus in 70 AD.

Keep this in mind.

So let's take a look at the fine print here.

I know that reading legalese is loads of fun during a Bible study, but alas, we are going to do it because this

is a necessary component of all of this.

So children of Israel, they've signed up for the Mosaic covenant.

They've agreed to this.

Here's the blessing and curses portion of the covenant.

If you faithfully obey the voice of Yahweh your God,

notice the instrumental word, if.

Being careful to do all, not some,

all his commandments that I command you today, Yahweh your God will set you

high above all the nations of the earth and all these blessings shall

come upon you and overtake you.

And I'm going to see the verb here.

Okay.

Now let me give you a little bit of a cross -reference here.

Okay.

Have you ever heard the statement from scripture, surely goodness and mercy

will follow you all the days of your life.

Okay.

The English is so anemic.

Okay.

Surely goodness and mercy will Rahad.

That's the Hebrew word.

Rahad will pursue you.

Okay.

Like you are a fugitive on the run with bloodhounds chasing you.

Okay.

Surely goodness and mercy will Rahad you all the days of your life.

Right.

Similar thing going on here.

Although it's a different verb, uh, in this one's here, uh, Nashag.

This one is interesting though.

It still has that same kind of implications that if you obey these things, these blessings are going to

pursue you.

They're going to overtake you.

It's like, you're going to be a fugitive going.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Here comes blessings.

And they chase you down and wash you away in a sea of blessing.

Right.

That's the picture here.

Okay.

Sorry.

I may have overdone that.

All right.

Bummer.

And then listen to what he says.

If you obey the voice of the Lord, your God, blessed shall you be in the city.

Blessed shall you be in the field.

Blessed shall you be the fruit of your womb.

That's the underwear they wore in the time.

No, that's sorry.

That's a different one.

Okay.

Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, fruit of the, and the fruit of the ground and the fruit of your cattle and the increase of your herds and of

the young of your flock.

Blessed shall you be, shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

Blessed shall be you when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out.

That sounds like a good deal, right?

Works based.

Land lease agreement.

Keep all the commands.

Yahweh will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you.

They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.

Yahweh will command the blessing on you in your barns and in

all that you undertake, and he will bless you in the land that Yahweh your God has given you.

Yahweh will establish you as a people holy to himself as he has sworn

to you.

If you keep the commandments of Yahweh your God and walk in his

ways and all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of

Yahweh.

Ah, we know that's true because he stuck them in the middle of everything, right?

They will know that you are the people called by the name of Yahweh and they shall be afraid of you and Yahweh will make

you abound in prosperity in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your

livestock, in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord Yahweh swore to your fathers to give you.

Yahweh will open to you his good treasury, the heavens to give the rain to your

land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands and you shall lend to many

nations but you shall not borrow and Yahweh will make you the head and not the tail and you

shall only go up and not down if, and there it is again,

if you obey the commandments of Yahweh your God which I command you today being careful to do

them and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today to the right hand

or to the left to go after other gods to serve them.

Now we've worked our way through a large portion of the Old Testament.

Is this the history of Israel?

Blessing upon blessing, obedience after obedience and goodness and blessing pursuing them

and all the nations being afraid of them and then just being the center of

everything good on planet earth?

No.

Instead the story of the people of Israel is a story of a stiff -necked people who

cast God's words behind their back and disobey him to the point

where they're worse, they are worse than the

pagans.

The pagans are looking at them and their sin going, dang that's evil, right?

That's what we're talking about here.

That's how far off they've gone and I would note, I think the devil works really hard to mess up God's

people.

I think it's fascinating that in our time people who claim to be church leaders and prophets and

apostles are the jankiest bunch of absolute scoundrels on planet

earth and the pagan unbelieving world is offended by their

evil.

You know it's bad when they're making memes and videos about Ken Copeland

and his COVID -19 and making rock and roll songs out of it and making fun of all this kind of stuff and

when people sit there and go, yeah I don't want to have anything to do with Christianity, you guys are a bunch of

thieves and robbers and the people you support are indefensible, right?

Even the world knows that most of the leaders that pass for Christian pastors nowadays,

especially on Christian television, they're going to rob you blind and they know it.

Same thing.

Now this is the blessing portion of it.

Now comes the cursing bit.

If you do not obey all, if, if, if, if, if, then here's what comes

next.

Now by the way, you'll note that today's modern televangelists, the word of faith heretics,

they love quoting Deuteronomy 28, these opening verses.

They totally ignore the fact that this was the fine print of the Mosaic Covenant.

And by the way, the, the official status of the Mosaic Covenant right now is kaput, okay?

That is the official German theological word for describing its status.

The Mosaic Covenant is kaput.

It is not a thing anymore.

There's nobody who can keep the Mosaic Covenant because so many vital bits of it are gone and

you can't keep it.

It's not possible.

That being the case, the current group of people in Israel, although they are genetically Jewish,

Scripture makes it clear because they do not believe that Christ is the Messiah, they are not counted as sons of Abraham,

and they are not under the Mosaic Covenant because that thing is, has been, it's done.

It's kaput, okay?

So here's the disobedience bit.

And this part gets really dark really quick.

If you will not obey the voice of Yahweh your God.

Now consider the implications regarding the inspiration of Scripture,

okay?

My sheep hear my voice, Jesus says, right?

When God says here in Deuteronomy 28, 15, if you will not obey the voice of Yahweh your God,

where is his voice speaking to them from?

Torah, from the written word of God, where all

these commandments written down in the Scriptures.

And note here, this then deals with the concept of the inspiration of Scriptures.

The Bible is the anus to us, it's God breathed, and when we're reading the Bible, we are reading and we

are hearing the voice of God.

Now I feel bad for you all because, you know, here in Oslo, Minnesota, you know, you get to hear the word

of God with a Southern California accent, okay?

Because that's where I grew up, right?

And it's like, hang ten, man, dude, all right?

But if you're in different parts of the world, you get to hear the word of

God in a different accent.

When I was gone, you know, when I was in Australia, Pastor Klein got to preach for me, so you all

got to hear the word of God in an Aussie accent, right?

You'll note that we all, when a pastor faithfully preaches the word, you're hearing the voice of God,

not because the pastor is God, far from it, but instead, when he faithfully preaches and teaches

what the Scripture says, you are hearing the voice of God.

When you open your Bible, you are hearing the voice of God.

And when you are refusing to hear the Bible, you are refusing to hear the voice of God.

And if you take the commandments and you attack them, you are attacking the voice of God.

So note what he says, if you will not obey, what?

The voice of Yahweh your God, or be careful to do all of his

commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you,

and they shall overtake you.

And the list is horrifying.

Cursed shall you be in the city.

Cursed shall you be in the field.

Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.

Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the increase of your herds and

the young of your flock.

Cursed shall you be when you come in.

Cursed shall you be when you go out.

Yahweh will send on you curses, confusion, frustration,

and all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly

on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me.

Now, we're not under the Mosaic covenant, but this does give us a glimpse as to what's going on here, right?

And that is that note that God legitimately gives temporal consequences

for sin.

So when we confess our sins at the beginning of the divine service, we confess that we have earned

God's temporal and eternal punishment.

And so, you know, these are temporal punishments, and God is like going after the very things that we

use, the utensils, the artifacts that we use for generating wealth and

caring for our needs and stuff like this.

Today, he would say, cursed is your car.

Cursed is your computer.

Cursed is your internet connection.

Cursed is your dishwasher, right?

I think my dishwasher is cursed, but that's a different story altogether.

Okay, right?

But you get the idea.

If we were to contextualize it, it would be that same idea.

And I'm pretty sure I can say this and not be incorrect.

We all know one or two people in our lifetime who it seems like they can never seem to

get ahead.

Like all of their efforts ended up with them even being more behind than ever, right?

It just seems to be a thing.

And you just sit there and go, is that person cursed of God?

It just seems like it, right?

So you get the feel for it.

Okay.

Yahweh will send on you curses, confusion, frustration, and all that you undertake until you are destroyed and

perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds because you've forsaken me.

Yahweh will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off of the

land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Yahweh will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation,

and fiery heat, and with drought, and with blight, and with mildew, and they shall pursue

you until you perish.

Ah, that's the reason why my wife cleans the shower every week.

Got it.

And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you

shall be iron.

Yahweh will make the rain of your land powder.

From heaven, dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.

Yahweh will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.

You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them, and you shall be a

horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

And your dead body shall be food for all the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth,

and there shall be no one to frighten them away.

You don't even get a good burial.

Your body is going to be a corpse on the ground, and the birds and the jackals are going to eat you.

Yahweh will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and scabs

and itch.

Not the itch.

It reminds me of that curse, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits, right?

You know.

All right.

And Yahweh will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind,

and you shall grope at noonday as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not

prosper in your ways.

And by the way, I'm like only part way through this section, and already it's rough.

You shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall

be no one to help you.

You shall betroth a wife, but another man will ravish her.

You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it.

You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit.

Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it.

Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you.

Your sheep be given to your enemies, but there shall be no one to help you.

Isn't this describing San Francisco?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

You lose your pickup, your girlfriend, you know, you lose the dog, you know, everything, right?

Yeah, it comes back if you play it backwards.

That's right.

Yeah.

I know the self -driving vehicle.

He bought one from Elon Musk, and now his truck left him.

Yeah.

That is crazy, though, when you think about it, you know, because, you know, Tesla, I mean, you don't pay your bills, your car just wanders off

and back to the Tesla dealership all by itself.

That's a whole other story.

All right, let's continue.

Your sons and daughters shall be given to another people while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them

all day long, but you shall be helpless.

A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you

shall be only oppressed and crushed continually so that you are driven

mad by the sights that your eyes see.

Yahweh will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils

of which you cannot be healed from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.

Yahweh will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a

nation that neither you nor your fathers have known.

Huh?

What does that sound like?

That sounds like Nebuchadnezzar.

Moses prophesied Nebuchadnezzar.

And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, and you shall become a whore, a

proverb, a byword among all the peoples where Yahweh will lead you away.

Isn't that like the whole subplot of the book of Esther?

Right?

You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locusts

shall consume it.

You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the

worms shall eat them.

You shall have olive trees throughout all of your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil of,

for your olives shall drop off.

You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity.

The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground.

The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you and shall

come down, and you shall come down lower and lower.

He shall lend to you and you shall not lend to him.

He shall be the head and you shall be the tail.

All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you.

Let me see here.

Ah, there it is.

Okay.

And you, they shall pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did

not obey the voice of Yahweh your God to keep his commandments and his statutes that

he commanded you.

They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever, because you did

not serve Yahweh your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart,

because the abundance of all the things.

Therefore, you shall serve your enemies whom Yahweh will send against you in hunger and

thirst, in nakedness and lacking everything.

And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.

Isn't this interesting?

Okay.

He'll put a yoke of iron on your neck.

The next person who talks about a yoke of iron like that is Jeremiah.

Remember when Jeremiah was given an action prophecy by God and he was to put a wooden

oxen yoke on his neck?

And then there, what was the guy's name, the false prophet?

Micaiah.

Micaiah, the false prophet, broke the yoke of wood.

And so God went and had Jeremiah make a yoke of iron.

He said, you've broken the yoke of wood.

I'm going to put a yoke of iron around your neck.

Okay.

That's funny because Moses is the one who first initially taught this.

And when you consider then the fulfilled prophecies that Moses

gave that are fulfilled in the history of Israel, and unfortunately, it's a litany of fulfilled

prophecies of God executing the curses clauses of the Mosaic covenant.

But still, these are prophecies.

God made good and all of these details play out to one degree or another

during the history of Israel.

Yahweh will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth,

swooping down like the eagle.

Which country is that?

Rome.

What's the big, what's the mascot of the Roman empire?

Roman eagle.

Holy smokes.

The detail here is startling.

Right?

They will come down, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand, a hard -faced

nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.

It shall eat the offspring of your cattle, the fruit of your ground until

you are destroyed.

It also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of

your flock until they have caused you to perish.

Now, quick note here.

Let's do a little interpretive work.

We, before we studied Ezekiel, we studied Nehemiah and Ezra coming

out of their Babylonian captivity.

There was a renewed interest, a revival, if you would, of hearing the word

of God and obeying it.

And there were good signs that they were off on the right foot.

How long between Ezra and Christ?

400 years.

Now, a little bit of context here.

How long has the United States been around?

Huh?

So 1776.

All

right.

86, 96.

247.

We're almost up to 250.

Wow.

Okay.

We're almost up to 250 years for the United States.

We're at 247.

Somebody knows math.

There's a...

I don't know if you guys know this, but there are three types of people in the world.

There are three types.

There are those who understand math and those who do not.

Okay.

Just want to make that clear.

But all that being said, the United States hasn't even been around for 400 years.

We haven't been around for 400.

And the course that we're on, it makes you wonder if we're going to make it to 250, right?

Yes, you do.

And unfortunately, the apostasy of the United States, the rebellion of the United States, has

become foreign policy that we are imposing on other nations.

It's a mess.

But all that being said, we haven't even been around for 400 years.

But I want you to think about this.

Where we have in Ezra and Nehemiah a good start for the children of Israel or

the people of Judah coming out of exile.

When the New Testament opens, who is in

charge of the land of Israel?

Rome.

Rome's in charge.

Doesn't that mean that God had executed one of the clauses of the curses clauses of the

Mosaic Covenant because of their disobedience?

Yep.

So as much of a good start as they had, we can, using the scripture,

this scripture, come to the conclusion that when Jesus comes on the scene,

his own countrymen, Israel, is still in rebellion against

God.

Don't believe me?

Look at the Pharisees.

If you think the Pharisees were merely just judgmental people who were just a little too tightly wound, you don't understand.

They were literally heretics who completely changed everything.

They added to God's word using their oral tradition, their oral Torah, and their

Mishnah and Talmuds.

And they had added a whole bunch of things.

And these people were basically, we can then interpret what's going on.

God saw the Pharisees the same way he saw the idolaters of the

time of Jeremiah.

And the reason we can say that is because God executed the further curses

of the Mosaic Covenant.

And when Jesus comes on the scene, they are under the yoke of that nation from the far -off corner

of the world swooping down like the eagle.

They were under God's judgment.

Jesus showed up during a time of apostasy, not a time of soundness of

doctrine in the time of the history of Israel.

Good grief.

That's like Pharisees.

Yeah, yeah.

Thankfully, most of you don't know who Catherine Crick is.

Consider yourself blessed.

Now, here's where I'm going to leave off.

I'm going to check questions real quick because I might be able to answer one or two of them.

But next week, we'll come back to look at the further development of how the curses clauses

work in the Mosaic Covenant.

But we were able to make some very good judgments as to what was going on at the

time of Israel, the time of Christ, by noting that one of the clauses of the Mosaic Covenant in the cursing bits

was being executed against Israel at the time of Christ, which means they aren't in a good state, they're in

a bad.

They are in apostasy and rebellion.

And this is all going to culminate them with them crucifying Christ, and then God ultimately expelling

them from Israel, from the land.

But let me back up just a little bit here.

Let's see.

Okay.

Nia says, cow dung has been used in lots of places as fuel for fires.

My mom and aunts used to go to the fields to pick it when they were kids.

Isn't that child abuse?

Anyway.

Okay.

So Jody says, are there ancient Jewish symbols and terminologies that the West

doesn't understand?

Do you think Ezekiel knew and understood the meaning of all the weird symbolic things God required of him at the time he spoke?

Yes, I do believe that he understood exactly what was going on in what he was doing.

Although I don't think his initial vision of the throne room of Christ, the initial

vision that he knew exactly what was going on, but we'll see by the time we get to chapter 10, the

throne room of Christ reappears and he has a better understanding of what's going on.

So what he didn't understand initially, he does come to understand later.

You'll see that, Jody, as we continue.

Lily says, did they have the ability to actually keep the Mosaic Covenant as they are sinners or were

they expected to repent and seek God's forgiveness?

Could they have avoided these curses if they repented?

Hope that makes sense.

Yeah, you kind of bring up the question.

Could they have even kept it?

The answer is probably not because each and every one of us is, you know, of our sinful

nature.

Our sinful nature desires sinful things and those passions war against the commandments of

God.

But we learned from the Apostle Paul in Romans 3 that the purpose of the law was to show us that we're sinners.

So that was the whole point of the law to begin with, is to take away self -righteousness so that we

would repent.

So I hope that answers your question, but yeah, I think that's the answer to it.

Anne Jean says, at the other church that I attend, they recite Deuteronomy 18

blessings during service like a creed.

Oh, good grief, Anne Jean.

Run, run.

That is not good.

That is totally twisting of Scripture.

And I bet that they have you recite that during the tithing time, right?

Okay, it's a scam.

You're being scammed.

Run away.

Okay.

Okay, Jacob says, I love the love of Yahweh upon these people of Israel who are so huge, but Israel was

a problem.

That's why the blessings which God told Moses in Deuteronomy was a warning to the nation of Israel.

God put blessings and curses, the choice for them to choose.

Yep.

Okay.

All right.

I have to stop here.

I've got a bank.

Yep.

I've run out of time.

All right.

Lord willing, we will see you all next week and we'll finish up this portion of the blessings, curses, and come back to

Ezekiel next week.

All right.

Peace, dear brothers and sisters.