Ezekiel Part 23

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Ezekiel Part 24

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So let's pray, and then we will get into our study. Lord Jesus, again, we come to you empty -handed, and we ask,

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Lord, that through your Holy Spirit, that you would humbly answer our requests to help understand your words so that we may rightly believe, confess, and do.

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We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so there were a couple questions regarding to the sermon, two questions about the sermon.

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Number one, David took Goliath's own sword and killed him with it. Does this foreshadow

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Judas and how Christ used his, or the devil's weapon, to cut off Satan's head?

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I would note that's a really good way of looking at it. That's not a bad way to look at it at all.

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And I would note it also, you'll note that because in the Garden of Eden, God said to the serpent, on your belly you will go.

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I always like to think that when Goliath fell, he fell face first down on the ground, which is kind of invoking all of that thing.

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I can't help but think that Satan saw the actual battle of David and Goliath and maybe started sweating a little bit going, ooh, ooh.

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Oh, wow, Barbados is in sunshine and freshness. Barbados is here. All right, great to see you,

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Sheldon. All right. I would let you know that in the forecast here in North Dakota and Minnesota, we got 50s coming up.

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You know, it's gonna like, shorts and t -shirts weather coming this week. I'm looking forward to it.

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All right, second question. Does the story of David and Goliath also reflect the idol Dagon with its lying face down, with its head cut off, spoken of earlier in 1

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Samuel? I think that's a good way to look at that as well. I always like that story because, you know, for all those liberal, postmodern, skeptical

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Christian pastors and theologians who talk about how, you know, we Christians, we need to embrace the idea that God is working through other religions, that, you know, and that somehow ecumenicism when it comes to different religions is really what we need to do in love.

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I note that in the Old Testament, God never plays nice with other idols.

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And so there's the Ark of the Covenant inside of the Temple of Dagon. And the reason why it's there is because the

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Philistines had captured it. And what does God do to Dagon? Just flops him right on his face. And a good way to think of Dagon, he's kind of like Ariel's, the

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Little Mermaid's father, right, you know, he's kind of that, he's that kind of a fish deity, he's like a merman. And so they bring him upright, and then the next night he's on his face, and then, you know, and then he's lost his legs, and he's lost his arms and his head, and so he becomes

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Dagon, the stumpy God, you know. So, you know, and God just doesn't play nice. Now James, you had your hand up.

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Same thing happens to Jezebel. That's right, same thing does happen to Jezebel. That is a, that's a fascinating theme.

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That's a darker theme in scripture. It's kind of worth, you know, kind of going down that theme a little bit. Yeah, but you're absolutely right.

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Okay, let's see here. Okay, somebody still has their Christmas tree up.

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May God have mercy on Jody. All right. All right, we're gonna continue now with our study of Ezekiel.

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And you'll note that, for the sake of like wrapping up chapter 18, how many weeks have we been in chapter 18?

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Like a month, you know? Be ready, we're gonna actually get into chapter 19. I know that sounds like, that's scandalous, like no way, it's true, we're gonna get into chapter 19.

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So here's what it says again in Ezekiel 18, 21. If a wicked person turns away from all of his sins that he's committed, keeps all my statutes, does what is right, he shall surely live.

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He shall not die. None of the transgressions that he's committed shall be remembered against him. For the righteousness that he has done, he shall live.

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Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked declares the Lord Yahweh, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live.

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Does it sound like God sits there and goes, oh, goody, goody, goody, that evil person died. No, it's actually legitimately a tragic thing in God's eyes that anybody perishes.

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And it's foolishness if you think about it. It's legitimately foolishness. So when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice, and does the same abominations that the wicked person does, shall he live?

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None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered. For the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed for them, he shall die.

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Yet you say, the way of the Lord is not just. How many of you have heard people complain about Christianity, or complain about the

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Bible, complain about the God of the Bible? God of the Bible is so judgy, man. He's a bigot, he's a homophobe, you know, all this kind of stuff, right?

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It's just nonsense. God's ways are just, they are the epitome and the very definition of just.

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So God says, here now, O house of Israel, is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?

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I was cracking up on social media as I was scrolling through it, you know, this morning after I woke up, you know, that's always a fun thing, you wake up and kind of just,

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I gotta wake up, I gotta go to work, and you scroll through social media. I saw a photograph that was hilarious. So, you know, apparently,

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I don't know if you guys have noticed that in certain parts of the country, theft is like at an all -time high.

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You know, people come in right off the streets, just steal stuff right off the shelves, and then off and disappear with these things.

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And so, retailers have begun locking up those items in a case, in a cabinet, you know, and.

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All kinds of stuff, just like normal everyday stuff. You need some dental floss, that's locked up. You need some toothpaste, that's locked up, you know.

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You need some hemorrhoid cream, that's locked up, okay. Don't ask about that. Anyway, but the point is, is that all that stuff's locked up and the person on social media had posted a photograph they took with their phone on social media and said, capitalism sucks.

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And it's like, this isn't capitalism, this is like theft prevention, it's just like, yeah.

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This is the result of your voting. Right, you know, it's like, what on earth?

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Okay, I would note, our ways are not just. God's ways truly are just.

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So when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it, for the injustice that he, for that, the injustice he has done, he shall die.

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Again, when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life.

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And I would note, then, that this is now, we're now in the Lenten season, and you'll note the alleluias have disappeared, and rather than greeting the gospel with an alleluia, what are the words that we greet the gospel with now?

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Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

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This is the perennial call for repentance that is amplified during the season.

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So because he considered and turned away from all of the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live. He shall not die.

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Yet the house of Israel says, the way of the Lord is not just. Oh, house of Israel, are my ways not just?

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Is it not your ways that are not just? Therefore, I will judge you, oh, house of Israel.

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Everyone, according to his ways, declares the Lord Yahweh. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.

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Now, important to note here is that the careful exegete will see and hear what might appear on the surface a contradiction, okay?

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So I want you to kind of work this out. So you have a rank sinner, which by the way, that's all of us, you have a rank sinner who is confronted with the law of God, and they go,

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I'm turning from my iniquity. They cry out to God for mercy, right?

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And does God remember their iniquity? Does God remember their injustice? No, but note then,

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God here says, I will judge you, oh, house of Israel, everyone according to his ways.

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Well, if he's gonna judge everybody according to his ways, how is it possible that the person who is the rank sinner would not then be judged even after he's turned away from his ways?

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Bueller? Jesus. Jesus.

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Yeah, you're right. Okay, this goes to like one of my absolute favorite texts in all of scripture.

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I always have to point this out because it's so good. Okay, when you read the fine print of the gospel, the gospel gets just better and better and better.

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And so in Colossians chapter two, you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,

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God has made you alive together with him, with Christ, having forgiven us all of our trespasses.

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How? By canceling the record of that that stood against us with his legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

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And so here, when we were looking at Ezekiel, Ezekiel says, I will judge you, oh, house of Israel, everyone according to his ways, right after he says that he will not remember the sins that the person has committed if they turn from their wickedness.

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So you'll note then the method by which God forgets is the fact that in that record of all of your deeds that is kept in those books, remember the day of judgment is described as books being opened.

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Oh, that gives so many people so much anxiety. But keep this in mind, your judge,

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Jesus Christ, has bled and died for all of your sins. And in your books, the section called the record of debt, all of your transgressions, that whole section has been ripped out of your book.

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So when God says he's going to judge everyone according to his ways, what does that mean for Christians?

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He's not going to remember when I didn't take out the trash after my mom gave me a direct order to do that.

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And instead, he's going to remember all the good things that I have done. All the evil and the wickedness that you have committed, that's locked into that record of debt and it has been nailed to the cross.

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So there's no contradiction here. And you can see all the way in the Old Testament in this text, that very same apparatus.

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Exegetically, you sit there and go, wait, God just said he's going to judge everyone according to their ways, but he's not going to remember the sins of those who committed iniquity and turn from it.

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And the answer then, you'll note, the cross is the missing puzzle piece in all of this. And when you put the cross here and you put

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Colossians 2 here, then you can see that there's a consistent message from the

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Old Testament all the way through the New. There's a critical scholar that is notorious on YouTube and on TikTok and places like this.

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His name is Dan McClellan. And this is a guy, I've got a video coming out this week against him.

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And he claims that the Gospels do not contain any eyewitness testimony.

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And it's like, oh, this is going to be easy to blow up. Christian biblical scholar? Well, he's a biblical scholar.

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Not Christian. Well, he's a critical scholar, but he's Christian -ish, if I mean, like the

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ELCA or something like that. I always like to use this analogy. Critical scholarship is to biblical scholarship as abortion doctors are to pediatric medicine.

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Okay, it's that same idea. But over the past week,

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Dan McClellan put out a YouTube video claiming that in the

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Bible, there is no unified voice. And I'm sitting there going, wait, what?

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The Apostle Peter would beg to differ because the Apostle Peter makes it clear that all scripture, that everyone who wrote scripture, they did those so as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. There is a unified voice of the Holy Spirit throughout all of the scriptures.

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And so critical scholars say, well, there's no unified voice. It's like, you guys gonna make your career out of denying every clear passage of scripture?

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It's like, this is what they do. And so back in the day, maybe about 10, 15 years ago,

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Bart Ehrman was the most popular reigning critical scholar. And I think Dan McClellan's trying to figure out how to grab his audience and appeal to a younger audience and kind of become the

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Bart Ehrman of this current generation. He's well on his way. But I would note that there's a unified voice because Colossians 2 and Ezekiel 18, they'd be teaching the same thing, right?

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Mere coincidence. Yeah, that's right. It was just happenstance, okay? I know.

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Those are just hate facts. Those are just hate facts, okay? Don't you understand that? All right, so cast away all the transgressions that you have committed.

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Make yourselves a new heart and a spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel, for I have no pleasure in the death of anyone declares the

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Lord, Yahweh, so turn and live. Now here, we're going to note, God commands make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

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And everybody listening to this is gonna go, uh, how am I supposed to do that?

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Okay, you know. That's the neat part. You know. Right, so this is the wonderful bit.

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I hate to, spoiler alert, we're gonna go forward in the book of Ezekiel. And in Ezekiel 36,

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I want you to consider this. So there's a thing that we Lutherans talk about. And we call them gospel imperatives, all right?

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So when you hear a gospel imperative, then you need to not panic and have an anxiety attack and go, oh no,

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I'm gonna perish. Okay, when you hear a gospel imperative, here's the fun bit. Whatever the gospel demands, the gospel supplies.

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The law, whatever it demands, it gives you no power whatsoever to obey it, okay?

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But whatever the gospel demands, the gospel supplies. So God demands for those to be saved that they make themselves a new heart and a new spirit.

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And you sit there and go, um, do they sell those kits at Home Depot?

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What do I do with this, right? This is where we'll note that God, you know, always supplies the bits that the gospel imperatives require.

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So the gospel says, repent and believe the gospel so God the Holy Spirit grants you repentance and gives you faith in Christ, right, as a gift.

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So Ezekiel 36, 22 says, therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord Yahweh, it is not for your sake,

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O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.

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So note here, when God, he's gonna do something kind and he's not doing it for their sake.

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They get to be the beneficiaries for sure, but why is he doing it? For God's great name, okay?

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And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them.

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And the nations will then know that I am Yahweh, declares the

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Lord Yahweh, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

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I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

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I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols,

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I will cleanse you. Sprinkle you with clean water. What is that referring to? Could it be baptism?

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Yeah, right, okay. All right, and. It was just raining.

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Huh? It was just raining. It was just raining. You are, you're in the right vein now,

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Lily. You've figured out how this class operates. Way to go. Okay, keep it up.

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Okay, I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all the idols, I will cleanse you.

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I will give you a new heart and a new spirit and I will put within you that I will put within you.

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So God says, make yourself a new spirit, make yourself a new heart, and everyone's going, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, right?

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Ah, don't worry. What does God say? I will remove your heart of stone and I will give you a new heart, right?

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I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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Huh, does that feel a little better? Okay, okay. But you'll note, the original readers of the book of Ezekiel, when they got to this part in chapter 18, make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit,

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I'm sure the existential crisis was very overwhelming at this point.

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How am I supposed to do that? I can't even slay my Goliaths. How am I supposed to, ahem, sorry.

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All right, okay. Why will you die, O house of Israel, if I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the

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Lord Yahweh, so turn, repent, live. All right, a lament for the princes of Israel.

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Now, I'm gonna note here, this is going to, we're gonna start to get a taste of what's going to be an upcoming section in the book of Ezekiel.

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In the book of Ezekiel, there's an entire section of laments towards the pagan nations, but the laments begin here, but it's not a continuous thing.

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This is gonna be kind of interrupted, but when we get to the laments regarding the nations, regarding Tyre and Sidon and Babylon and all these other things, these laments will be words of judgment and they're gonna be clumped together, but here you're gonna get the first of these laments, and you take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel and say, what was your mother, a lioness?

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Among lions she crouched, in the midst of young lions she reared her cubs, and she brought up one of her cubs, and he became a young lion, and he learned to catch prey, he devoured men, the nations heard about him, he was caught in their pit, and they brought him with hooks to the land of Egypt.

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When she saw that she waited in vain, that her hope was lost, she took another of her cubs and made him a young lion, he prowled among the lions and became a young lion, and he learned to catch prey, he devoured men and seized their widows, he laid waste their cities, and the land was appalled, and all who were in it at the sound of his roaring, then the nations set against him from the provinces on every side, they spread their net over him, he was taken into their pit, with hooks they put him in a cage and brought him to the king of Babylon, they brought him into custody that his voice should no more be heard on the mountains of Israel.

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So it's pretty clear what these lion cubs that become lions are referring to, these are the princes of Israel.

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But you're gonna note here they're not exactly spoken of in kind terms, but this would make sense because Jesus is the what?

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The lion of the tribe of Judah. And the princes of Israel are legitimately of the tribe of Judah, they're of the line and lineage of David.

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So note what's going on here, so God is using kind of this poetic language to talk about something here, they did bad and they ended up being brought with hooks back to Babylon.

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Your mother was a hamster in, oh sorry, hang on. It says your mother was like a vine in a vineyard planted by the water, sorry, yeah, yeah.

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Right, that's so close, sorry. Yeah, it's muscle memory from, you know, from a bad dog, that's a funny story.

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So we used to have, we had this black lab, her name was Cookie, and Cookie, she would always hover around our dinner table because she would get scraps, right?

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And oftentimes I would feed her, like if we were having a steak and there was a piece of fat or whatever, I'd give it to her, and it became known as flying meat.

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And one particular time, one of the things we had as a habit, the practice at our house, is that after everyone had finished their dinner and before we took all the dishes off the table,

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I opened up the family Bible and we would read the Bible together as a family. And I had, on that particular day, had not given

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Cookie her flying meat. And so she was really like eyeing it, okay?

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And so I'm reading the Bible and she just can't wait. And so I'm reading the

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Bible and I get to a part and it says, and the Lord said, and Cookie goes, roof, okay, give me my flying meat.

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And so the sentence came out, and the Lord said, bad dog. And, yeah, thus saith the

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Lord. The Lord said, bad dog. Poor Cookie, I tempted her beyond her abilities.

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So she needed her sacrifice of flying meat, so. All right, so your mother was like a vineyard, like a vine in a vineyard, planted by water, fruitful and full of branches, by reason of abundant water.

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Its strong stems became rulers, scepters. It towered aloft among the thick boughs.

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It was seen in its height with the mass of its branches. But the vine was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground.

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The east wind dried up its fruit. They were stripped off and withered. As for its strong stem, fire consumed it.

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Now it is planted in the wilderness in a dry and thirsty land. And fire has gone out from the stem of its shoots.

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It has consumed its fruit, so that there remains in it no strong stem, no scepter for ruling.

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This is a lamentation, and has become a lamentation. So note here what this is talking about.

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So with the Babylonian captivity, the rule of the house of David has come to a stop.

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Okay, there will be no more kings from the line of David, except for one, and that's

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Christ. And when they come back from their Babylonian captivity, the people who rule over Israel, although they are of the tribe of Judah, they are not true kings and princes.

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Instead, they are governors and magistrates under different kingdoms. Under Babylon, under the

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Medes and Persians, under the rule of Alexander the Great's kingdom, and then under the rule of the

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Romans. And what's really fascinating, I always like to point this out, is that there is a prophecy in the book of Genesis that talks about how the scepter wouldn't leave

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Judah until the Messiah comes. Okay, which a lot of the church fathers considered then to be a prophecy that was fulfilled exactly as it should have been.

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Because if you know your Israeli history, your history of Judea from the exile up until the time of Christ, then you know that every magistrate except for one was truly of the tribe of Judah, even after the exile.

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And the one was Herod the Great. Herod the Great was not of the tribe of Judah. He was an

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Idumean. And he tried to hide that fact, by the way. He was like a faux Jew, but he was not

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Jewish. Being a Jumean, that means he's legitimately a descendant of the

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Edomites. And so that being the case, the scepter left

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Judah at just the time when Christ was born. So it's kind of fascinating when you kind of put the pieces together here.

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And so you take that prophecy from the book of Genesis, plug it into its proper place. But here you can see then that the vine was plucked up in fury, the vine of the princes of the kings of Judah, cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up its fruits.

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And then where is it planted? In the wilderness. It's not dead, okay?

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It's just not flourishing, okay? Vines don't do so hot in the desert, okay?

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Pun intended? I don't know. But you get the idea here. So, and then you'll note, this is a lamentation.

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Now, we continue. So in the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the 10th day of the month, and this is, again, reckoning time since their exile, certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of Yahweh, and they sat before me.

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So note the kind of change here that's going on. So Ezekiel early in his career was doing these weird things and people were looking at him like, what is going on here?

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Why is he digging a hole through a wall? Why is he laying on his side? Why is he cooking that bread over dung?

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You know, things like this, right? It's just, and so, but he's got their attention now, but have they really repented yet?

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We're still really early on in the exile. No, they haven't really repented yet, but they know that he's speaking words from God.

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They figured this out, and so they've come and they're sitting before him. So the word of Yahweh came to me.

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Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel. Say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh, is it to inquire of me that you come?

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As I live, declares the Lord Yahweh, I will not be inquired of by you. Will you judge them, son of man?

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Will you judge them? Let them know the abominations of their fathers. So God's still not pleased with them yet because they're not coming in faith.

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They're not coming in repentance, and you'll note that we heard from Ezekiel 18 about turning from iniquity.

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They haven't really done this yet. So God's gonna remind them of the abominations of their fathers, which they have been participating in, which is why they're in Babylon in the first place.

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Say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh, on the day when I chose Israel, I swore to the offspring of the house of Jacob, making myself known to them in the land of Egypt.

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I swore to them, saying, I am Yahweh your God. On that day, I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all the lands, and I said to them, cast away the detestable things.

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Your eyes feast on every one of you. Do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt.

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I am Yahweh your God. Now, what an interesting way to describe their idolatry.

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So they're looking on their idols and their eyes feast on them. That's a little weird, okay?

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But have you guys ever seen idolatry in action? Okay, that is definitely gonna work.

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But I'm talking about with religious images and things like this.

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Every election. Doubling down is not gonna help, okay?

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No. So, a couple years back, a close friend of mine who lives in Wales, his wife and his daughters had gone to Spain with his mother -in -law during the

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Lenten season, right before Holy Week. And there is a particular cathedral in the region where they were in Spain where they have this statue of the

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Virgin Mary. And it is the most adorned thing I've ever seen in my life.

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I mean, this would put the Hindus to shame. It's adorned with gold and jewels and flowers and all this kind of stuff.

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And during the Lenten season, once a day, they take this statue of the

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Virgin Mary and they put it on a litter and they parade it through the town. And it takes like 30 men to carry this thing.

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And it's quite the ordeal. And everyone seeing it is like, oh, they're crying and weeping and stuff like this.

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I'm looking at that thing like, what is that? Okay, could you imagine taking

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Norwegian Jesus down and parading him through Oslo? You know. What on earth?

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So this, I mean, this legitimately, this is kind of hard for us to, we don't have a way of understanding it, we who've been raised in the faith.

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But in idolatrous nations, certain images legitimately take on like a life of their own and a value of their own to the point where it's creepy, weird, obsessive kind of stuff.

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And so, yeah, South America still has a lot of that. If you were to travel to India, that's a place where there are a lot of images.

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And to different deities and stuff like this. And all these little shrines set up where people are making little offerings of food and flowers and incense and stuff like this.

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Yeah, and then you got Rome, right? Which is the other side of all of this.

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So God is tapping into something within idolatry that I think it's hard for us to get.

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If you've not seen it, it's hard for us to understand it. But this idea of them feasting their eyes on their idols.

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And this is what God is accusing the ancestors of these Jews who are in exile of doing.

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And then by extension, them participating in as well. This is what they were taught by their fathers to do. And what would these idols have been?

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These would have been Asherah and Baal and Shiva, not

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Shiva, but, and Molech and things like this. These Sidonian gods.

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And so God is just talking to none of them. Okay, but they rebelled against me. They were not willing to listen to me.

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None of them cast away the detestable things their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt.

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Wow. And that's a terrible thing. Now let me check, I thought I saw a question come up here. So Jody asked a question regarding gospel imperatives.

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Does that mean, did that go along with when Christ says to believe in him that he supplies the belief? Absolutely. So when

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Christ says repent and believe the gospel, Christ supplies repentance. He supplies the belief in the gospel.

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I know that sounds weird, but that's legitimately how this works. Let me give you a text on that, by the way, and then we'll come back to Ezekiel.

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If I were to go into the story and the account of the very first Gentile believers, so we're all familiar with the story of Cornelius and how he comes to faith.

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Remember in Acts chapter 10, hang on a second, let me grab, let me grab my, that's untagged,

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I want, oh, what did I do with, here it is. Okay, all right. Oh, I can't read that, that's too small. Okay, there we go.

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All right, so if you remember the account, Peter is staying in, with a tanner, and at Caesarea there was a man named

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Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort, a devout man who feared God with all of his household. He gave alms generously to the people, prayed continually to God.

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About the ninth hour he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, Cornelius, and he stared at him in terror and said, what is it,

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Lord? And he said, your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God, and now send men to Joppa and bring one

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Simon who is called Peter. He's lodging with Simon a tanner whose house is by the sea.

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So we know the story, and Peter is, he's praying on the top of the roof, he falls into a trance, he sees the sheet being lowered with lobster and shrimp and bacon, and all of us are sitting there going, dinner!

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Okay, and God says to Peter, rise, kill, and eat, and Peter's like, no way, I will never eat anything unclean, and God says, what

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God has made clean do not call unclean, right? And then he ends up in the house of Cornelius, and he preaches the gospel to them, and Cornelius and his family received the

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Holy Spirit immediately, the same way the apostles received the

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Holy Spirit. We received the Holy Spirit immediately through baptism, but they received it immediately, which was a sign, okay?

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So you'll note then that when Peter returned and gave a report, he actually was condemned by some of the

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Christian brothers who were kind of of the circumcision group, why? Because Peter, a

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Jew, went into the house of Gentiles and ate with Gentile sinners, okay?

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Which you'll note back in the day, the Jews of Jesus' time were ridiculously racist, considering themselves superior to everybody else, and they would not eat with Gentiles.

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That was below them. It was sinful to do so and stuff like this. Not that Scripture teaches that, but you get the idea.

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So Peter is then called on the carpet and told to give an account, and so we're talking about gospel imperatives here.

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So the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.

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So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party, I always use this line, have to continue to use it.

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This is not a party you wanna go to. They criticized Peter, saying, you went to the uncircumcised men and you ate with them.

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But Peter began and explained it to them in order. I was in the city of Joppa, praying and in a trance. I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me.

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Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air, and I heard a voice say to me, rise,

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Peter, kill, and eat. But I said, by no means, Lord. Nothing common or unclean has ever entered in my mouth.

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The voice answered a second time from heaven, what God has made clean, do not call common.

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This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very moment, three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea, and the

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Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. Still, these six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house, and he told us how he had seen an angel stand in his house and say, send to Joppa and bring

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Simon, who's called Peter. He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all of your household.

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As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as on us at the beginning, and I remembered the word of the

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Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then

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God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was

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I that I can stand in God's way? Now watch what it then says. So when they heard these things, they fell silent, and they glorified

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God, saying, then to the Gentiles, also God has granted repentance that leads to life.

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So you'll note, the gospel imperatives are repent and believe, and what the gospel demands, the gospel provides.

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And so God is the one who grants them, and so that's the idea, but when, so this is a big difference between the law and the gospel.

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The law demands, and screeches, and yells at you, and doesn't give you any power to obey it.

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The gospel comes to you and tells you that Christ has bled and died for your sins, calls you to repent, and calls you to trust in Christ, and the

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Holy Spirit is operative through the gospel, and what the gospel is demanding imperatively that you do,

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God himself supplies and gives to you so that you can. Does that make sense?

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Okay, so yeah, Jody, that's the answer to your question. Okay, Daniel from Germany says, idol worship with superstars, examples, the

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Swifties. You know, you're not wrong. Yo, wow, that's a good analogy.

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I do remember, over the summer, they had that Eras tour going around the country, and holy smokes, the

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Swifties, it's like a cult, okay? And it's invaded the

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NFL, okay? You know, I just thought it was weird watching the Super Bowl and seeing

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Taylor Swift all the time, it's like, do I really need a Taylor Swift update, you know? It's fourth down and three to go, and I don't need to hear from Taylor Swift at this point, but the whole country seems to be obsessed with this woman, right?

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So, and then, thought leaders show every human worships something, some even themselves.

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I am the greatest could be the slogan of the century. Everything looks like this will end soon. Yeah, that's right, yeah,

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Klaus Schwab, just saying. All right, Luis says, they parade the statue around town and people are expected to shower it with money.

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You know, Luis, I am, you know, you're not wrong.

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No wonder they're so keen on parading that thing around town, because people are throwing coins at it.

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All right. Right, okay, okay, and so,

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Jody says, I ask about that belief because Jesus constantly tells people to believe, and I find it fairly hard to do if that's just my effort to believe because I'm told to believe.

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Got it, okay, so she got it, good. All right, so what the gospel demands, the gospel supplies, good. Now, this is where I have to jump off.

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So, we will talk more about them, the fact that they didn't forsake their idols, you know, forsake the idols of Egypt, next week,