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Sunday school from May 5th, 2024
Okay, we are going to pray and then we're going to get back into the book of Ezekiel.
Warning, today's text is like last week's text.
It's, this is the best way I can put it.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask you, Holy Spirit, to help us to rightly understand what is revealed there so that
we may properly believe, confess, and do according to your holy word we ask in Jesus' name,
amen.
Okay, by way of review, we are in chapter 23 of
Ezekiel and this is the oracle against Ahola and Aholaba
and it's a, whoa, it's the best way I can describe it because I think in all of the
chapters of scripture, this one is the most in your face.
I legitimately can't think of another text that's this, wow,
and Bruce Burns agrees, so that means we're not going to have a discussion about it, but
this passage is really hard and if you remember, Ahola and Aholaba are representative of the
northern and the southern kingdoms of Israel and of Judah and
God is describing their idolatry in the most graphic
of sexual sin type details, metaphor.
That's the figure of speech that God is using and as a result of it, like I said, this is pretty
rough and tumble stuff.
So let me back up.
Last week we ended off with me doing a little excursus on kind of the basic tenets of
Gnosticism and the reason we did that is because God here is addressing the
root of where their idolatry had come from and that is from the
Egyptian mystery religions, which then, that's the seedbed of what would later
become the other ancient mystery religions and then Gnosticism itself and
as I've been studying Gnosticism now for four years, I've come to the conclusion they don't have
an orthodoxy and as a result of it, to say that all Gnostics believe a particular
thing is a little bit of a tortured statement.
They believe similar things is the best way I can say it.
There's a similar esoteric meta -narrative and we talked last week about that there's kind of this
core meta -narrative that basically posits the idea that Yahweh, the God of
scriptures, was an accident and we noted
last week in one of the primary Gnostic ways of looking at it, Yahweh
is the evil God known as Yaltabaoth and he was conceived by Sophia
through an act of self -gratification and she tried to abort
Yaltabaoth and so that didn't work.
She hit him in a cloud and Yaltabaoth came to the
aberrant conclusion that he was the only God and he's the one responsible for creating order
and so order and names and laws and
all of these things that we see in our universe, you know, male and female and all the created
order, that to the Gnostic is anathema.
The goal is to free yourself from the tyranny of the material world and the
tyranny of Yaltabaoth and his patriarchal way
that he set up matter to run with order and things like this and so
that today, it's still alive.
It's still alive very much today in very many quarters that call themselves Christians.
Gnosticism has been the perennial enemy of Christianity, always lurking in the shadows
and in the early days when it first came out, the apostles wrote vehemently against it and
as a result of it, it pushed itself back into the shadows but it's always maintained
its presence with us and is constantly trying to subvert and it's the Gnostic worldview
that is the primary worldview behind the transgender movement and this
idea that you need to be true to your authentic self.
Your authentic self is that spark of divinity within you and forget the fact that
that evil Yaltabaoth assigned a sex to you at birth or at your conception.
You be you, you do you and if necessary,
you poke Yaltabaoth in the nose or in the eye and you let him know that you're not going to
give in to this material body that he has assigned to you and you're going to be the true thing that you are
and so you say, that just sounds nuts but that's what's behind all of this.
So Gnosticism is presently present with us and in
the book of Jeremiah, right before they go into exile, at the time of those kings
where they had turned the temple of Solomon into this co -exist
syncretistic temple and they had given Yahweh a consort
by the name of Asherah and set up an Asherah pole.
All of this is part of the Gnostic stuff and then God was pointing out that whether they learn all of this
nonsense, they learned it in their time in Egypt.
That's where this is coming from and so God is speaking very strong words of judgment against
them, against the Israelites and so let me back up just a little bit for our context
sake and dare I go this far back, verse 22.
28 is where we'll pick up from but 22 for context.
Therefore Aholahba thus says the Lord Yahweh, behold I will stir up against you your lovers and
these are those whom Judah was looking to
and wanting to be like, okay, and so he's describing them as her sexual
lovers.
I will bring against you, I will stir up against you your lovers from whom you turned in disgust and I will bring
them against you from every side, the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekad and Shoah and Koah
and all the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, governors and commanders, all of them, officers and men of
renown, all of them riding on horses and they shall come against you from the north with chariots
and wagons and hosts of peoples.
They shall set themselves against you on every side with buckler, shield and helmet and
I will commit the judgment to them and they shall judge you according to their
judgments and I will direct my jealousy against you that they may deal with you in
fury.
And you're sitting there going, does God do that?
Yeah, he does.
When provoked, he does.
But you're gonna know, God didn't start off this way.
How long did Israel, did Judah have to repent?
170 years.
Yeah, long, long, long time.
Did they?
No, no.
In fact, they had more time to repent than the United States has been around as a nation.
God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, but he kept sending prophet after prophet
after prophet and what's the message of the prophets?
Repent, turn from these worthless idols.
Return to me, I will forgive you, I will pardon you abundantly, God says.
Leave these worthless things.
No, they didn't.
Okay, so God finally says, all right, fine.
You don't want my mercy, you don't want to be forgiven.
There's another option.
You're not gonna like it.
And it uses words like fury and judgment and wrath, right?
They, the Assyrians and the Chaldeans and those of Koah and the Babylonians, they will cut off your nose
and your ears, they're gonna disfigure you so you're not beautiful anymore.
And your survivors shall fall by the sword, they shall seize your sons and your daughters, and your survivors
shall be devoured by fire.
They shall strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewels, thus I will put an end to your
lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to
them or remember Egypt anymore.
For thus says the Lord Yahweh, behold, I will deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands of
those from whom you turned in disgust, and they shall deal with you in
hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare
and the nakedness and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered.
Your lewdness and your whoring have brought this upon you because you played the whore with the nations
and defiled yourselves with their idols, and you have gone the way of your sister,
therefore I will give her cup into your hand, thus says the Lord Yahweh.
You shall drink your sister's cup that is deep and large,
and you shall be laughed at and held in derision, for it contains much.
You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, a cup of horror and
desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria.
You shall drink it and drain it out and gnaw its shards and tear your
breasts, for I have spoken, declares the Lord Yahweh.
Now, interesting that you would think of it, that God uses many times throughout the scriptures
the idea of his wrath, his fury, his judgment coming to us as a
cup that must be drunken.
You're drinking, drinking, drunken.
I gotta work out the verbs on that one, right?
You gotta drink it, okay?
Whether you want to or not, you're gonna.
You're made to drink it, and sometimes God says you're gonna drink it to the dregs.
That's the whole point, and this isn't a cup you want to drink.
Well, this reminds me about something that Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Lord, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
Isn't it interesting that Christ, looking to the cross before he's crucified,
is praying about it as if it is a cup?
And what was the cup that Christ was made to drink?
This one, the cup of God's fury, the cup of God's wrath.
This is what Christ suffered in your place and mine, and so when you read about
God describing his fury and his wrath in terms of a cup that is required to be drunk,
note this.
You know, people sit there, that's just terrible.
God forcing you to drink from a cup of his fury and wrath.
What kind of God is this?
Well, that's the cup that Christ drank for you, right?
Yes,
yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, the cup we drink, though, is the cup that's filled with his blood, and
we eat his body for the forgiveness of our sins.
So the cup that we have together is the opposite of God's wrath.
It's a cup of blessing.
And if you remember when we did our Seder dinner, you know, just for educational
purposes, you know, it's the cup of blessing that is the thing that Christ turns into the
Eucharist.
So, yes?
Well, you go to France, you go to Normandy.
Or the Ardennes, and it's some of the most beautiful country on God's green earth,
because the war is over.
Yeah.
And, you know, the war against our sin was won by Christ on.
The cross.
The war is over.
Now there's nothing left but the beauty.
Right, yep.
So you'll note then that, you know, great point, you know, about the beauty that remains is that,
you know, here when we read about God's wrath, it gives us pause, rightly so.
And, you know, and the whole point here is that God is making an example
of Aholah and Aholabah, you know, Israel and Judah, so that we, and all these
millennia later, can read this and go, oh,
oh, God's law goes, uh, this is, I'm learning to avoid this now.
Think differently about my own choices.
But if that were true,.
Then I couldn't have God as the small town sheriff who winks and nudges at my
inconvenient little petty sins, you know, and comes down really hard on the
stranger, you know,.
Passing through.
And then where would my comfort be?
Right.
So let's talk about this.
So what was the, it was the Andy Griffith show.
Okay.
And what, in the Andy Griffith show, if somebody got drunk, what would they do with them
in the times of the Andy Griffith show?
Where would the town drunk get put?
They lock him up in a cell, but he could walk out as soon as he was sobered up, right?
Despite the fact that disorderly conduct and drunkenness in public is a crime,
did they ever enforce it as a crime?
Did you ever sit there and go, what's wrong with you cops?
If you think that God is like that, like Don Knotts, okay.
Who, you know, just when you break the law, he just puts you in the, in the, in the jail cell, just
to let you cool your heels.
And sober up.
Is that a just God?
Well, this is the other, the other face that atheists present, you know, and in their, in their double standards to
attack Christ is they're either completely incensed that Christ, of Christ's mercy,
or they're completely incensed that the merciful God, they're completely incensed that somebody could be
forgiven, or they're incensed that God punishes, punishes evil, you know?
So, so, you know, just to prove how, how reasonable we are without the help of the Holy Spirit.
Um, spoken tongue and cheek.
We're so reasonable.
But, but the truth is the things that,
the things that, that, that the unbelievers are outraged.
Why doesn't God do something about that evil or that evil
person?
You know, he is more angry.
He loves whoever's wronged more than you ever did, including yourself.
You know, and, and his wrath about it is shown.
In the passion, you know?
Coming back to my metaphor on the, on being snakebit, when we had the venom of the serpent running through us,
isn't it fascinating to you that when people sit there and go, why doesn't God do something about the
sinners in the world?
The person saying that is not including them as part, themselves as part of the problem.
What if he starts with you?
No, that's not what I meant.
I didn't mean me.
I meant them, you know?
Right?
So the problem of evil, when you, when you talk about it in the abstract as if somehow you're not a participant in it,
that, that's just delusional.
Just absolutely delusional.
You know, you want God to do something about sin.
Well, let me, let me tell you.
He did.
He had, he laid all of our sin upon Christ.
He bled and died for every last bit of it.
And he calls us to repent and offers us full forgiveness.
When I read Ezekiel at 12, I was.
Like, oh, those, those wicked bad people.
When I read Ezekiel at 30, I'm like, have mercy.
On me, Jesus.
That's me.
Yes.
I'm glad you say that because there's kind of a rabbinic tradition within Orthodox Judaism that you're not supposed to read
Ezekiel until you're in your thirties.
You know, that's a, that's a, you know, it's, and, and which I think is fascinating.
And I, I, I used to think it was because of the chapters like chapter 23, because of just how
in your face this is, but I have, I have something more to do with what Bruce kind of
brought up because you'll note that when we're reading about what happens and
when God is acting in judgment, again, this is not designed to make us go, yeah, you get them God.
This is more along the lines of, how come I'm not experiencing this?
Because daily we, we, we have our old sinful Adam, you know, around our necks and he is really
active in seeking things that are the opposite of what God would have us seek.
So, you know, when God acts in judgment, it's the,
the, the correct response is Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.
That's the correct response.
The wrong response is yeah, go get them God.
It's about time.
That's, that's not right.
Marilyn.
And then, and then you'll note their knowing is, is, is based upon experience then in, in,
and that, that knowing is not, is to the, it's not to their benefit.
It's more, more along the lines of to their anguish, you know, to their shame, to their,
you know, to it's to, it's, it's designed to inflict even more pain in God's judgment and wrath.
Hmm.
Let me continue reading.
All right.
So coming back, you shall drink it and drain it out and not shards, tear your breasts.
For I have spoken, declares the Lord Yahweh.
Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back,
you yourself must bear the consequences of your lewdness and your whoring.
Now look at that.
You yourself, that, that's an interesting phrase.
Why is it interesting?
Because you'll note that on the cross, Christ bears your sin and mine.
If you don't want to be forgiven, you don't want to be pardoned, you're going to take the one
true God and cast him behind your back.
Then you all by yourself get to bear the consequences of your sin,
which to me sounds stupid because Christ has borne the consequences of your sin and mine.
So note the you yourself adds an emphasis here.
You yourself must bear the consequences of your lewdness and your whoring.
Yahweh said to me, son of man, will you judge Ahola and Aholaba?
Declare to them their abominations, for they have committed adultery and blood is on their
hands.
With their idols, they have committed adultery and they have even offered up to them for food,
the children whom they had born to me.
That's just how wicked they were, right?
Moreover, this they have done to me.
They have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths for when
they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols on the same day, they came
into my sanctuary to profane it and behold, this is what they did in my house.
They even sent for men to come from afar to whom a messenger was sent and behold, they
came.
For them, you bathed yourself, painted your eyes and adorned yourself with ornaments.
They're going on a date, right?
You sat on a stately couch with a table spread before it on which you had placed
incense and my oil.
The sound of a carefree multitude was with her and when men of the common sort
drunkards were brought from the wilderness and they put bracelets on the hands of the women, the beautiful
crowns on their heads, then they said of her who was worn out by her adultery,
now they will continue to use her for a whore, even her.
For they have gone into her as men go into a prostitute, thus they went into Aholah
and Aholahba, lewd women, but righteous men shall pass judgment on them
with the sentence of adulterous and with the sentence of women who shed blood because they are
adulteresses and blood is on their hands.
For thus says the Lord Yahweh, bring up a vast host against them, make them an object of terror
and a plunder and the hosts shall stone them and cut them down and with their
swords they shall kill their sons and their daughters and burn up their houses.
Thus I will put an end to lewdness in the land that all women may take warning and not commit
lewdness as you have done and they shall return your lewdness upon you and you shall bear
the penalty for your sinful idolatry and you shall know that I am Yahweh, the Lord Yahweh.
So you know they're going to know that Yahweh, that he's the Lord Yahweh, they're going to know it,
but it's not the kind of knowledge that leads to eternal life.
This is a knowledge that comes having experienced God's judgment.
All right, now this is all prophesied prior to the final fall of Jerusalem.
So you know you'll note that we're well into Ezekiel at this point and the
initial exiles who'd gone in the early part of God
acting in judgment, they're still waiting for the siege of Jerusalem and its final fall.
That does happen and we're going to kind of get to it.
In the ninth year, the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, the word
of Yahweh came to me.
Son of man, write down the name of this day, this very day.
The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day.
Now think this out.
You might think, what's so big about that?
Okay, take away your internet, take away the telephone lines, take away
telegraphs and satellites and stuff like that.
How long did it take for news to travel?
At the speed of smell, right?
At the camel speed or horse speed, right?
It took a while.
So if you're hundreds and thousands of miles away, it's going to take
months for the news to get to you.
But you'll note that Yahweh gave Ezekiel on the day that it happened, the
news that it had happened.
Which means that when he shared this oracle with those people who were in exile and said,
here's the day it took place, Yahweh told me, guess who turned out to be right and was vindicated?
Ezekiel, right?
It's like, how'd you know?
God told me, right?
So note the specificity.
This is contrary to the nonsensical prophecies we get from people today.
The Lord told me that we're entering a season of suddenlies and that this is going to be a Kairos season for
you and Jesus, right?
It's just nonsense.
When God gives a real prophecy, he gives real details that can be legitimately confirmed.
In the ninth year, 10th month, on the 10th day of the month, the word of Yahweh came to me, said, man, write down the
name of this day, this very day, the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day, and
utter a parable to the rebellious house and say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh,
set on the pot, set it on, pour in water also, put
in the pieces of meat, in all the good pieces, the thigh and the shoulder, fill it with choice
bones, take the choicest one of the flock, pile the logs under it,
boil it well, seethe also its
bones in it.
Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose corrosion is in it
and whose corrosion has not gone out of it.
Take out of it piece after piece without making any choice, for the blood she has
shed in her midst, she put it on the bare rock, she did not pour it on the ground
to cover it with dust, to rouse my wrath, to take vengeance, I have set on
the bare rock the blood she has shed, that it may not be covered.
Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, woe to the bloody city, I also will make the
pile great, heap on the logs, kindle the fire, boil the meat well, mix
in the spices and let the bones be burned up, then set it empty on the coals,
that it may become hot and its copper may burn, that its uncleanness may
be melted in it, its corrosion consumed, she has wearied herself with toil,
its abundant corrosion does not go out of it into the fire with its corrosion, on account of
your unclean lewdness, because I would have cleansed you and you were not cleansed from
your uncleanness.
There it is again, I would have cleansed you.
Is it God's will that any should perish?
Nope.
Everybody who ends up in hell, it's their own fault.
Every single person.
It's not God's will that they're there.
I would have forgiven you, I would have cleansed you, but you were not cleansed from your uncleanness, and you shall not
be cleansed anymore till I've satisfied my fury upon you.
He's going to cleanse them with his fury.
I am Yahweh, I have spoken, it shall come to pass, I will do it, I will not go back, I will not
spare, I will not relent, according to your ways and your deeds, you will be judged, declares the Lord Yahweh.
And we, our proper response to this is, Lord have mercy on us.
A little text in context.
Huh?
Text without context is a pretext for a proof text.
Correct, yes.
This is the same Lord speaking to the same Ezekiel,
who earlier in 22 is speaking about if the sinner turns away.
Right, so this is not a passage to be twisted, that there is no, there is no, that Satan likes to twist
passages like this and convince us there.
Is not enough forgiveness with the Lord for our sins.
It was just crazy talk, yeah, but you're right, that's the way the devil talks, you know.
Oh yeah, I know there's forgiveness with Jesus, but not for you, buddy.
Yeah, I saw what you did.
Did you hear what you said to that person?
Oh, your sin is so special, and God's mercy only goes about this far.
You need it to go this far,.
But it only goes this far.
Too bad for you.
So this is specifically on the condition of.
The impenitence.
Yeah, yeah, this is based upon impenitence, you know.
And you'll note, always and again, I remind you that the scriptures make it clear, today is the day of salvation, today is the
day of God's grace, today is the day of mercy.
You cannot guarantee that tomorrow will be, because no one knows the day or
the hour.
No one.
If you're sitting there thinking, well, I'll sort things out with God when I'm on my deathbed.
There's no guarantee you're going to have one of those, right?
There's no guarantee, okay?
So today's the day of salvation, keep that in mind.
So the word of Yahweh came to me, son of man, behold, I'm about to take the delight of your eyes away from you at
a stroke.
Yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down.
Sigh, but not aloud.
Make no mourning for the dead.
Bind on your turban and put your shoes on your feet.
Do not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.
So I spoke to the people in the morning, and that evening my wife died, and on the next morning I did as
I was commanded.".
There's nothing easy about that.
So God let Ezekiel know his wife was going to die, suddenly, and the command
was, no mourning.
This is another one of those prophetic acts on the part of Ezekiel.
Why on earth would he not be mourning for his wife?
Why is he not crying?
Why is he not weeping?
And you'll note that when we read in the Gospels, culturally there's a weird thing in
Israel, and that is that there were professional mourners, okay, which is
not a practice that's in our country.
It's very few nations now that still practice such a practice, but that was a common thing in the ancient world.
You know, somebody dies, and it was kind of a status symbol.
If you had really a lot of money, you can pay for a good,
good act, and a good number of people to come and mourn your dead.
And so oftentimes it was used as a status symbol.
And even in our day, nowadays, I've seen the websites, because I went down this bunny trail a few years
ago.
I've seen the websites for guys in Haiti that offer these types of services.
So, you know, these professional mourners in Haiti, it's a nice side hustle, right?
You know, for so much money, they will come, and they will weep, and they will cry.
For so much money, they'll bring even more people, and they'll really, you know, put up, you know, they'll really make it sound like, you know,
the whole world's come to an end because your loved one has died.
And for the, like, the grand package, like the one you pay the most money for, if you pay for that, then
one of them will throw himself into the grave after they've lowered the casket.
So it's like, it's nuts, right?
So, but here, Ezekiel, no
mourning, no weeping, no tears.
And if you sigh, you do it privately.
That's, okay.
So again, this is one of those prophetic acts.
So he does it.
On the next morning, I did as I was commanded.
So at evening, my wife died.
The next morning, I did what I was commanded to do.
And so all the people said to me, will you not tell us what these things mean for us, that you are acting thus?
Why aren't you mourning?
Why aren't you weeping?
Why are you not, why are there no tears?
So then I said to them, the word of Yahweh came to me.
Say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord Yahweh.
Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your
power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearning of your soul,
and your sons and your daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword, and you shall do as I have done.
You shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.
Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet.
You shall not mourn or weep, but you shall rot away in your iniquities and groan to one
another.
Thus shall Ezekiel be to you a sign.
According to all that he has done, you shall do.
When this comes, then you will know that I am the Lord Yahweh.
Ouch.
So for them, it was a figure pointing to God's judgment, but Ezekiel got to live it out.
He lost his wife, and so his wife
symbolized Jerusalem, and the temple in Jerusalem, and the loss of the temple in Jerusalem.
And so just like Ezekiel didn't mourn, they will eventually lose these things, and they won't even be able to
mourn.
And then that's a sign of God's judgment.
Then you will know that I am the Lord Yahweh.
As for you, son of man, surely on the day that when I take from them their stronghold, their joy
and glory, the delight of their eyes and their soul's desire, and also their sons
and their daughters, on that day a fugitive will come to you and report to you the news.
On that day, your mouth will be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak and be no
longer mute.
So you will be assigned to them, and they will know that I am Yahweh.
So to make things even more complicated and a little more painful for Ezekiel here, now Ezekiel is told by
God, oh, by the way, not only are you not mourning, I'm going to have you be silent.
You get to be mute until, until a fugitive
arrives and delivers the news.
How long is it going to take for that guy to show up?
Months, months.
So now Ezekiel, not only is he not mourning, he hasn't mourned his wife.
Now they go to Ezekiel and say, how's it going today Ezekiel?
Nothing.
And so, boy, these prophetic acts on the part of Ezekiel,.
I feel bad for the guy.
What's interesting is kind of like what you were saying in the sermon about God attaching his word to an inanimate object.
And the people like who are against communion or other, the
anti -sacramentarian group, they ignore that all through the prophets, God
is constantly attaching his word to an animate object, the prophet himself.
You know, Ezekiel's very body and life are
living, living presences of God's prophecy.
Yep.
These prophetic acts are, they are inspired and the Holy Spirit and God's word are attached to
them.
And there's a message that goes along with them.
And, and you'll note again, God's not offering words of comfort to the exiles at this point.
He's these, all of these prophetic acts are invoking his wrath, his judgment.
And what does God, again, we, we got to remember the context that when these,
this first round of exiles went into Babylon, there were some false prophets among them.
And they still hadn't gotten, gotten rid of those Yahoos.
They were still listening to these people.
They were still hanging on to their syncretistic, idolatrous, and Gnostic
notions.
They were holding on to them.
And so God's intent for the, these exiles is to
legitimately through his, his judgments and through his word and through the prophets,
through the prophet Ezekiel, to purge this stuff out of them.
And if you remember, we read it out of order.
We've already read Nehemiah.
We've already read Ezra.
And when they come back from exile, there's no false prophets among them at that point.
They're actually hearing the words of God through the, through the, through Ezra, the scribe.
And they still have sinful problems that have to be dealt with and addressed like marrying foreign women and
things like this.
But those things get, those things get addressed.
So you'll note that this very uncomfortable work that
God is doing there to these fugitives in exile, it's for your
benefit and mine as well as theirs.
Had God not purged this, this idolatry out of them, had not purged out of their
midst the false prophets, what would have been the implications regarding the birth of the Messiah?
You know?
So he's got the salvation of the whole world in mind and here having to cut out the cancer
that is in these people.
And you'll note that the surgery that God is performing, he seems to be performing without any anesthesia.
You know, we're going to cut this out.
Oh, it's going to hurt.
And it's going to hurt really bad.
And because it's going to be so painful, you're going to know that I am Yahweh, right?
That's kind of the point.
And the surgeon is feeling the same pain.
Yeah, he is.
Now, in 25, and let me take a look.
In 25, we have a prophecy against Ammon, Moab, and Seir,
against Edom, against Philistia, against Tyre.
And this one against Tyre is one of the more interesting ones.
But I want you to know in this little section of Ezekiel, we're
going to be looking at God speaking words of judgment and oracles of judgment against
people who are not Israeli.
All right?
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay.
And so that part of this is God's vengeance and repayment for the wicked done by these different
Gentile nations against God's people, for sure.
So you've got prophecy against Sidon.
And even Egypt is going to be mentioned in here.
And so this might seem out of place, but it's not.
And when I was teaching the Elithians through this portion of Ezekiel, one of the things
I made the contention, especially having read it in one of the commentaries, is that
God speaks similar words of judgment to all nations.
This is just a sampling of how God speaks judgment against
pagan, unbelieving nations.
And so this is not a totality of God's judgment.
But you're going to note he starts with his own house first.
He starts with the Israelites.
And now he's going to speak words of judgment against these other nations.
And so there's much that we should hang on to here as we listen to God's wrath
against those who oppose his word, those who oppose his people, those who persecute his people,
those who would trip up his people, martyr his people, and things like this.
Let me remind you of what Psalm 2 says in this regard.
And no, we will not be doing the Blazing Saddles Bible study while doing Psalm 2 today.
But Psalm 2 reads thus, why do the nations rage?
Why do the people's plot in vain?
In fact, it's this section of the Psalms that Peter quotes when he's
arrested for the first time after he healed that man who was
lame from birth, who was laid at the beautiful gate there on the way into the
temple.
When he was put on trial and legitimately being pressured to stop preaching in
the name of Christ.
When they got out of jail that day and they gathered together as the
church and they prayed.
Peter's prayer, he rolls these words up into his prayer.
Why do the nations rage?
The kings of the earth, they set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against Yahweh
and against his Messiah, anointed is the word Messiah, saying, let us burst
their bonds apart, cast away their cords from us.
Is this an endeavor that will succeed?
No.
So God responds.
He who sits in the heavens laughs.
The Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath and he will terrify them in his fury, saying, as for
me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.
I will tell of the decree.
Yahweh said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you.
Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron, dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Now therefore, oh kings, be wise.
Be warned, oh rulers of the earth.
Serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way.
For his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
So when we take a look at history, oftentimes we look at history from a secular
mindset.
Don't do that.
As Christians, we are always to look at history through the lens of good theology, right?
So let me ask a provocative question.
At least this will be provocative for only a certain small group of weird people.
The question is this, when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the
dead and he makes all things new and establishes his kingdom on the earth,
will there be the star -spangled banner flying above his?
No, there will not be.
What will happen to the United States?
Yeah, destroyed.
What is the fate of the United States?
If it doesn't blow itself up in the next civil war, which will be in about five minutes, just stay tuned,
right?
What will become of the United States?
Well, the same thing will happen to Great Britain, Russia, the Ukraine, China,
Japan, Australia.
All of the nations are coming to a cataclysmic end.
And so when we look at God speaking in judgment against Gentile nations,
this is a foretaste of God's judgment of all of the nations of the earth.
Again, remember the prophecy, the prophetic dream that Nebuchadnezzar had regarding the kingdoms of
the earth and then the rock that was not cut by the hands of men coming and smashing them all to bits and
pieces and then growing into a huge mountain and the nations of the earth
disappearing like dust, right?
So when we read a section like what we're going to read, it's important for us to recognize when God
speaks this way, he has words like this to speak to every nation, every Gentile kingdom,
every empire that ever existed has words kind of stored up for them of this nature, right?
So Yahweh, the word of Yahweh came to me, son of man, set your face toward the Ammonites and I
want you to prophesy against them.
Say to the Ammonites, hear the word of Yahweh, the Lord Yahweh, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because you said, aha,
over my sanctuary when it was profaned and over the land of Israel when it was made desolate, over the
house of Judah when they went into exile, therefore behold, I am handing you over to the people of the east for
a possession and they shall set their encampments among you and make their dwellings in your
midst.
They shall eat your fruit and they shall drink your milk.
I will make Rabbah a pasture for camels and Ammon a fold for flocks and then you will know that
I am Yahweh.
Oops, right?
So you're going to note here, do you remember when you were a kid and you got in trouble, you know, maybe you got in a
fight with your brother or you got in a fight with your sister and clearly your brother or sister was in the
wrong, okay?
And so, you know, when your parents decided that they were going to finally intervene and step into this
cacophony of chaos that was created as a result of this conflict that was occurring,
what happened?
Oh, your brother or sister, they got it.
Parents acted in justice and you sit in there and go, yeah, right?
And as soon as they were done with them, they came and said, it's your turn.
Wait, what?
What did I do?
That's kind of what's going on here, okay?
God has acted in wrath against Judah for her idolatry.
Oh, and by the way, Ammon, you were all excited about what was going on while my sanctuary was being defiled.
Your turn.
Go get the belt, right?
That's kind of the way to think about this.
There's a lot of that going on here.
All right, we'll just have to pick this up next week.
Oh wait, next week is Mother's Day.
Okay, so it is our tradition here.
We normally do not have Sunday school on Mother's Day.
So, huh, did we break that tradition last year or not?
No, we didn't.
So we're going to keep the tradition, okay?
All right, so next Sunday being Mother's Day, we will not have Sunday school next Sunday.
We will reconvene if I'm still breathing in two weeks.
All right, Lord willing, we'll see you next time.