Ezekiel Part 3

All right, let's pray. Lord Jesus, as we again open your word, we ask that through your Holy Spirit that you help us to rightly understand what you revealed there, knowing that Ezekiel is not an easy text.

There's parts of it that we just do not understand, and as a result of it, we cry to you to help us to rightly understand what is revealed there so that we may understand your intent, that we may rightly believe as you've called us to believe, that we would eschew error, that we would in fact abhor it, and that we would even abhor the evil within ourselves and the deeds that we commit against your commandments.

We pray that you would continually keep us in repentance and that through the power of the Holy Spirit, you would give us strength to mortify our sinful flesh. We ask all this in Jesus' name, amen. Last week, when we were in the book of Ezekiel, I feel like, you guys remember when the Brady Bunch,.

When they went to Hawaii?

You know, it was like, you know, previously on the Brady Bunch, you know, you know, a tiki ended up in somebody's, you know, in his luggage, and now he had a surfing accident, you know. If you remember, last week, we got a little bit into chapter two, and I took the occasion of that particular portion of the book of Ezekiel to do a little bit of an excursus talking about the fact that we, as pastors, I'm talking about pastors now, are called to do the same thing that God has called Ezekiel to do, and that is not fear the people whom God has sent him to preach to, despite the fact that they are a rebellious people and a whole bunch of them ain't gonna listen.

A good way to think of it is this, is that for your sake and mine, God had to put Judah in timeout, and a 70-year-long timeout. This is a, if you would, a type of medication, a cure for the disease of idolatry.

They had gone so deep into idolatry, and their worship practices in the temple so corrupted, and when you see the details of how corrupted it is there, it's absolutely terrifying, but that's gonna take a few weeks before we get to that portion.

But things are so bad in the temple worship, and they're so steeped in idolatry, and there are so many false prophets. Back then, they had all these YouTube prophets, even before there was YouTube. They just didn't have the internet to broadcast, but it's the same wingnut wackerdoodlism with the same vapid, empty, contrary to God's word, so-called prophecies that were really amounting to fortune-telling and just telling people.

What they wanted to hear.

And so God now is in the process of applying a really, really heavy medication, an antibiotic for the purpose of curing them of the disease of idolatry. When we work through Nehemiah and Ezra, we saw the result, the end result of this treatment that God's giving them, but in Ezekiel, we have to remember, they're still steeped in the sickness, and they are super symptomatic.

And you have these false prophets who are spewing this nonsense, saying, don't unpack your luggage, we're going to go home. God's sending a breakthrough and a suddenly, and so be ready to go at a moment's notice.

We're heading back, boys, just be ready for it. And God's gonna keep them there for a long time. And part of the reason why he's keeping there for a long time is for the purpose of discrediting all these YouTube prophets, to discredit them.

And you'll see that one of the impacts that these YouTube prophets are gonna have on Judah in exile is that they're going to basically come to the conclusion that God never keeps his word. God always keeps his word.

So, but we've got a problem. Ezekiel is a freshly minted prophetic penny. He doesn't have any of the tarnish on him. And he's fresh out of prophecy school, which lasted all of but five minutes. And he is now prophesying and God is telling him, don't be afraid of these people.

But what comes next is going to sound looney tunes. I kid you not, it's going to be like weird, but we'll talk about it. Okay, so let's read. I'll back up just a little bit so we can catch our context.

Ezekiel chapter two, I'll start at verse one again. So he said to me, son of man, stand on your feet, I will speak with you. As he spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and sat me on my feet. I heard him speaking to me.

And he said to me, son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels who've rebelled against me. Now, a little bit of an aside, okay? So our Hebrew word marad for rebel has a Greek counterpart that actually shows up in the New Testament.

And one of the things we always have to keep in mind is that in the New Testament, as we get closer and closer to the return of Christ, there is prophesied a rebellion in the church against Jesus. And let me show you the prophecy.

It's in 2 Thessalonians chapter two. And there's a particular word I'm going to zero in on, but here it says, Paul says, now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has already come.

So let no one deceive you in any way for that day will not come unless the, what? The rebellion comes first. Apostasia is the Greek word. And its corollary in Hebrew is marad, all right? So the idea here is that God is sending Ezekiel to a nation of rebels, but in their particular case, God's got to keep them, got to cure them of their apostasy, of their rebellion, because it's through Judah that God is going to be giving the Messiah to the world who's going to bleed and die for the sins of the world.

So for the integrity of God keeping his promises, he's got to apply a cure to Judah to cure them of their idolatry in order to preserve the integrity of the bloodline of Christ who's going to come and bleed and die for our sins.

But now that Christ has already come, when this type of rebellion, the type of rebellion we see in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, rears its head again, there is no solution other than the return of Christ and to bring the whole world to an end, okay?

So you'll note before the return of Christ, there's supposed to be rebellion in the church. And I would just say, if you don't think it's already here, let me just give you a quick Jungle Cruise tour of the abysmal state of the church, okay?

Have you heard of church denominations ordaining impenitent homosexuals? Ordaining women? Teaching false doctrine extraordinaire from the pulpits, you know, like the Word of Faith heresy.

And things like this?

You know, the claim that God has restored modern-day apostles and restored prophets to the church and they speak utter nonsense and rebellion against God. You'll note that it's super hard nowadays to find good churches.

It's super easy to find a bad one. And I mean, that's like,.

Just, it's like,.

Take your pick, it's all poison. Very few congregations now will tolerate a pastor preaching the Word. And so the rebellion is against God. So that day, the day the Lord will not come unless the rebellion comes first and then the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God and object of worship.

So he takes his seat in the temple of God, that's a church, proclaiming himself to be God.

And everyone's gonna go,.

Ooh, yeah, you are, you're God, man.

You know, and he's not, okay? So we have that, you'll note that in God's calling of Ezekiel, we see the effects and the symptoms of what God is describing as a group of people who are rebels, who have rebelled against him.

They have apostatized, right? They've apostatized against me. They and their fathers have transgressed me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn, and I send you to them, and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh.

Notice again, in the book of Ezekiel, over and again, God is referred to as the Lord Yahweh. I don't know why the ESV translates it like this, but the Lord Yahweh basically is talking, really kind of positionally pacing God, right at the highest top, and then Ezekiel, he's son of man, he's low man on the totem pole.

So whether they hear you or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house, at least they will know that a prophet has been among them, and you, son of man, be not afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words, though briars and thorns are with you, and you sit on scorpions, be not afraid of their words, nor dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house, and you shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house.

You preach the truth to them, whether they want to hear it or not. You're gonna give them vegetables, right?

I don't like vegetables.

You need to eat your vegetables.

I don't want to eat my vegetables.

Right now, this is how this is going, right? But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house. Open your mouth and eat what I give you.

Huh.

Ezekiel, you need to eat these vegetables, right? Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, and these words that God is giving to Ezekiel are not merely for the rebellious house.

They are also for Ezekiel. He is to take them to heart. He is to read, to mark, to inwardly digest these good and wholesome words of God, and so are we, right? So eat what I give you, and when I look, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it, and he spread it before me, and it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe, and you'll note that Ezekiel is given the words that he is to speak.

Now this gets weird. He said to me, son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll. Go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat, and he said to me, son of man, feed your belly with the scroll that I give you, and fill your stomach with it, and then I ate it.

It was in my mouth, as sweet as honey, okay? And of course, this is a metaphor, but again, it reminds us that we also are to be consuming God's word. One of the things that does happen with some frequency, you'll note that we have a lot of folks who join us online because they haven't found good, faithful churches in their neck of the woods, and so they have joined us online in order to receive the word of God, and I've heard this more times than I can even count.

People who are fresh attendees of Kongsvinger, I've never been in a church service that had that much Bible in it before, right? Because what does the average evangelical church do? You get a couple of verses out of context, just kind of, here's a little Bible here,.

And just a little bit there,.

And you come to Kongsvinger, I'm gonna tell you this, you're gonna leave full. You're gonna leave full of God's word, and if you attend here in person, you're gonna leave with a full belly, too. It is impossible for anyone to leave here without eating.

All right, it's a mandatory thing, and in fact, the last person who tried to escape here without eating something, I think they stoned him to death. He's in the graveyard out there. You know, you're not gonna get away with it.

So if you are hungry, you come to Kongsvinger, and it doesn't matter if you're spiritually hungry or you're physically hungry, you're gonna get food, right? And that's the idea. So then he said to me, son of man, you go to the house of Israel, and you speak with my words to them.

Your opinions, you can just leave them at the door. Your speculations have no place here. I'm gonna give you the words, and you are to speak my words with them, straight up. Okay, this is the job of the herald.

By the way, pastors have that same responsibility. Okay, let me prove it to you. This is how pastors are prophetic, because I do not get to pick what I preach. It is not my job to pick what I preach at all.

So in 2 Timothy, Paul writes, I charge you, Pastor Timothy, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who's the judge of the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word.

Well, how much word?

All of it.

Come on, you can't really do that. You know, I preach the word.

How much word was in your last sermon? Well, it was 45 minutes long, yeah. And there was 1 .4 verses. You're not preaching the word, are you?

Right?

So you know, pastors are called to preach the word. My opinions, they don't matter. What I want doesn't matter. My speculations, just take them or leave them. In fact, I would recommend just leave them.

Okay, you know, my job is to preach the word. But what if it's not popular? Oh, you do that in season and out of season, the text says. Oh, well, you know, God's word has some pretty negative bits to it.

Can't we just leave those out? No, you gotta reprove, rebuke, and exhort. You gotta preach all of it, including the bits that require reproof and rebuke, with complete patience and teaching.

Why?

Well, the time is coming, and I would say is now here, when people will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers who will suit their own passions.

They'll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Sarah Young just died a couple of days ago. Do you all know who Sarah Young is?

Okay.

She has sold millions. I think the last account I heard from her publisher was 40 million copies of a book called Jesus Calling.

Okay.

I mean, isn't that Christian, Jesus Calling? Well, she claims to have channeled Jesus. And the book itself is spiritual auto-writing, what Jesus said to her while she was channeling the spirit of Jesus.

In other words, blasphemy.

That's right, that's right, blasphemy. So when I heard yesterday that she died, I simply put on X, you have to call it that now, X. It's not Twitter, it's X. I put on X. Sarah Young now knows that that was not Jesus who was calling her, and that her life's work was in fact a demonic deception.

There's a nuclear fallout in San Francisco to this day at the headquarters of X as a result of saying that. And people said, this is shameful, shameful that you would say that. You say that you're a pastor.

It was shameful that she would blasphemously preach this false counterfeit Jesus and spearhead rebellion against Christ, the real Jesus, in his church. If you have a copy of Jesus Calling, suggested uses.

Okay, compost, you can compost it. That's a good use for Jesus Calling. If you're hard up for toilet paper, like next pandemic hits and you don't have any toilet paper, that would be a good use for it.

You can also use it for fire kindling, okay? But actually reading it and thinking that you're hearing a message from Jesus, yeah, no, no, you're not. So those are some, so that way you don't feel like somebody wasted all of their money.

We find some practical uses. Paper mache, Louis says, paper mache would work as well. Right, exactly. I'm not sure what I would make into a paper mache.

I have to think about that.

What scandalous thing could I create out of paper mache from Jesus Calling? Maybe depict Elijah on Mount Carmel in paper mache from Jesus Calling, just to make a point. But all of that being said, coming back here then.

So we can see that, well, here God is basically telling him, you're gonna speak with them with my words, okay? You speak to them with my words. You are not sent to a people of foreign speech or of a hard language, but to those of the house of Israel.

Guess what, you don't get to do foreign missions here. You're gonna do local missions, so luckily you don't have to get those people who do the Wycliffe Bible translating, and all this kind of stuff. And not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language whose words you cannot understand.

Surely if I sent you to such, they would actually listen to you.

Whew, zing!

You gotta love it when God sends those zingers right up to your head, right? High inside fastball. But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you. At this point, it'd be going, can you send somebody else, please?

This does not sound like a good assignment, okay? They will not listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me, because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces, and your forehead as hard as their foreheads.

Okay, they're stubborn, well, I'm gonna stubbornize you, okay, and this kind of recalls a particular text in the Gospel of Luke. You see this in the one-year lectionary, and by the way, we're going back to the one-year lectionary next year, and I don't think I'm ever going off of it.

I repent, mea culpa, okay? After working with the cream of the crop of like the best texts, you know, going back to the three-year lectionary and having to correct it constantly is annoying me. So I'm just gonna go back and just, I'll work that out.

But anyway, in the Gospel of Luke, and you see this in the one-year lectionary, there's a text that legitimately says that Jesus sets his face like flint to go to Jerusalem. And this text, I've made your face as hard as their faces, your forehead as hard as their foreheads, and it says, like Emery, harder than flint have I made your forehead.

That just completely evokes Jesus when he sets his face like flint to go to Jerusalem, to go to the cross, to bleed and to die for us. Jesus was stubborn. That's it, I'm going in there and I'm gonna save these people.

I'm gonna rescue, I'm gonna bleed and die for all their sins. I've set my face like flint, and there's no way I'm turning back. Are you with me, boys? Peter's all, no, you can't do that, right? But you get the idea.

So like Emery, harder than flint I have made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks.

They don't like me.

They never invite me to their Christmas parties,.

For they are a rebellious house. Moreover, he said to me, son of man, all my words that I shall speak to you, you receive them in your heart.

Wow. Why?

Because it's scripture. God has spoken. God's word is living and active. God's word equips his saints for every good works. It makes them complete. So you receive them into your heart and hear with your ears.

Go to the exiles to your people, speak to them and say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh, whether they hear or they refuse to hear.

And you can just see him.

Why me?

So then the spirit lifted me up and I heard behind me the voice of a great earthquake. Blessed be the glory of Yahweh from its place.

Right?

And it was the sound of the wings of the living creatures as they touched one another. And the sound of the wheels beside them. And the sound of a great earthquake. This is the throne of Christ. And the spirit lifted me up and took me away and I went in bitterness in the heat of my spirit.

The hand of Yahweh being strong upon me. He doesn't want to do it. This is not an assignment.

He sits there and goes,.

Thank you Jesus for finally revealing to me my purpose. I am now a purpose-driven prophet, yay!

No, instead he's going in bitterness. He knows this is not gonna be easy. It's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be hard. Who among us enjoys not being liked? Let me ramp it up. Who loves being hated? Do you like it when people ignore you, mistreat you, slander you?

Does anyone like that? They're not going to listen to me? What kind of assignment is this? Oh, believe me when I tell you, it's gonna get worse for Ezekiel. He doesn't even know the half of it yet as far as just how awful of an assignment this is gonna be.

So I went in the bitterness in the heat of my spirit and the hand of Yahweh being strong upon me. I came to the exiles at Tel Abib who were dwelling by the Chabar Canal and I sat where they were dwelling and I sat there overwhelmed among them for seven days.

He's gone into full depression. Well, Zanak will fix this, right? So at the end of the seven days, the word of Yahweh came to me. Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me.

If I say to the wicked, you shall surely die and you give them no warning nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity but his blood I will require at your hand.

This is next week's Old Testament text and we're getting it in context. And if you would like a little bit more of an in-depth study on this, I would recommend taking a look at the men's and women's Bible studies from yesterday.

We covered this, but if you warn the wicked and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity but you will have delivered your soul. I am going to require it of you if you don't tell the wicked to repent.

Oh boy, how many churches would fall under this condemnation today?

How many do?

So again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered but his blood I will require at your hand.

But if you warn the righteous person not to sin and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he took warnings and you will have delivered your own soul. And you're gonna note something here. Ezekiel's talking to you, he's talking to me.

So is there blood on our hands, George asks. I'll do this for the sake of the people who were not able to attend the men's or women's Bible study yesterday. The answer is not exactly but yes, but also maybe no.

It kind of depends and the reason why I say this is because remember our context. Remember the three rules for sound biblical exegesis? Context, context, and context. Son of man, who is God addressing?

Ezekiel.

So in his first understanding, this is a command directed straight at the head of Ezekiel. However, it does apply secondarily. It applies to those who are in the offices that God has established. So for instance, pastors in the pastoral epistles.

I just read it. Pastors do the job of preaching what? The word. So the duties of a pastor require me to preach the word. How much of it? All of it. Okay, am I to sit here and go, well, the folks at Kongsvinger don't like it when I preach on this topic, so I'm not gonna do that anymore.

Am I allowed to do that? No, okay. So Paul picks up in Acts chapter 20 language that comes straight out of Ezekiel. And Paul in Acts chapter 20 is giving his farewell address to the pastors of the churches in the city of Ephesus.

And here's what he says. You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable.

Important word, that word shrink. In the Greek here, hupastello is our Greek word. Let's show what this word means. To draw back, to disappear from a position. Have you ever seen that meme of like Homer Simpson's disappearing into the ivy?

Okay, that's what it means to hupastello, to draw back, to withdraw, to hesitate in regard to something, to shrink back, to avoid, to be timid, to keep silent about something. So the Apostle Paul is looking back at his apostolic ministry, giving his farewell address to the pastors of the congregations in the city of Ephesus.

And he says, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything. And proof positive, the Apostle Paul, was he persecuted? Was he stoned? And I'm not talking about in the Colorado weed kind of sense, okay, or now Minnesota, right?

He was absolutely stoned, okay? Shipwrecked and beaten and imprisoned and all this kind of stuff. Lord, I'm sure that you don't really intend for me to preach those negative parts about the Bible because my friends in Canada could be arrested if they repeat what I say, right?

No, you are not to shrink back from declaring anything that is profitable. And he says in the teaching that in public from house to house, testifying to both Jews and to Greeks of repentance towards God and a faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And now behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.

But I do not account my life of any value nor is precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. Important words, I do not account my life of any value.

Any pastor who refuses to preach the full counsel of the Word of God considers his life more important than the Word of God.

I want to make sure I get invited to all the right Christmas parties. I don't want people writing negative things about me in the op-ed section of our local newspaper.

Right?

Uh-huh.

I'm going to finish the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

Therefore, I testify to you this day, I am innocent of the blood of all.

What?

That's Ezekiel talking. The Apostle Paul, I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not hupostelo, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. So again, coming back to the question, okay, who's responsible for, legitimately tasked with the job of preaching words given to them by God today?

Pastors. And a pastor who shrinks back, doesn't teach the full counsel of the word of God, tinkers with the message, manipulates it, controls it, and teaches something contrary to it, or adds their own stuff, are they faithful pastors?

Not even close, right? But the pastor who basically says, my job's to preach the full counsel of the word of God, all of it, whether you like it or not, even the bits that you hate, the risk of losing his pastoral office, and boy, have I heard about a lot of guys that that's happened to, wow.

I remember a few years back, we used to have pirate Christian radio conferences here at Kongsvinger, I'm kind of glad to be out of the conference business, right? But that's not to say I won't have one in the future, I like the homecoming on the prairie, it's much better.

But we had a fellow who came to one of our pirate Christian radio conferences here at Kongsvinger, and the first time he attended, he was a former pastor, and his story went something like this. He, a Canadian pastor, basically taught to just go with the flow and all this kind of stuff, and somebody recommended he listen to Fighting for the Faith, and it messed him up.

And so he started preaching law and gospel from the pulpit. Calling sinners to repents, preaching the full counsel of the word of God, and there were women in his congregation, specifically he said women in his congregation, that lost their minds and legitimately rallied the troops, and they defrocked him.

They defrocked him for preaching the word, for preaching the gospel. They would say to him, they said to him things like this. We don't need to hear the gospel every week, okay? And so they were really annoyed by this preaching of his.

Well, a few years later, we had a pirate Christian radio conference again, he came back, and he was a pastor again. He had changed denominations, he's now a Lutheran pastor up in Canada, and was able to colloquize in and get a few things, and took a call, pastor congregation, and he's doing just fine.

But the congregation that he started out at, they rallied to get rid of him because he was preaching the word. And just let that sink in for a second.

How dare you preach Jesus and him crucified.

For my sins every week, stop it!

Right?

Now, what he could have done is basically said, you know, I've got a wife, I've got small kids, I gotta pay the bills, and I've got all this money in my retirement account provided by my congregation, and if I don't wanna lose that steady income, all I gotta do is do what these women are demanding.

He didn't shrink. There's no shrinkage in the pastoral office.

So. So. So.

It works, as a metaphor, but it's out there. Okay, you get the idea, right? So Paul says, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God, so pay careful attention to yourselves and to all of the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.

Important thing, who has made, who is the one who puts pastors into the pastoral office? The Holy Spirit. So you need to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood, and I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things.

Paul knows what he's talking about, right? I forget which church father it was. I wanna say Augustine, but it may have been somebody earlier than him, but there was a famous saying among the church fathers, and that is that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests, with the heads of bishops being the mile markers.

Let that one sink in, that's a zinger, right? So you'll note, no shrinkage, pay careful attention to yourselves, and Paul preached the whole counsel of the word of God. So that being the case, you'll note in its primary understood sense, this is gonna primarily apply to pastors today, okay?

Because we're tasked with the job of preaching the word. You're not tasked with preaching the word the same way I'm tasked with preaching the word. You get to declare the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

You do get to share the gospel and scripture and scriptural truth with your friends and family members and coworkers and things like this. But you're doing so freely as Christians, members of the priesthood of all believers, but you don't have an actual command by God to preach the way pastors do.

Does that make sense? So primarily, this is going to apply then to pastors today, prophets of old, okay? So coming back then here, I'm gonna, so the hand of the Lord, of Yahweh, was upon me there, that he said to me, arise and go out into the valley and there I'm gonna speak with you.

All right, I mean, you can talk to me now if you want to talk to me right here, but okay, we'll go to the valley like you said, right? So I arose and I went out into the valley and behold, the glory of Yahweh stood there.

Boy, is that a weird word.

Omed, stood.

The glory of the Lord stood there, like the glory that I had seen by the Chabar Canal. And I fell on my face, but the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet and he spoke with me and said to me, go, shut yourself within your house.

And you, O son of man, behold, cords will be placed upon you and you shall be bound with them so that you cannot go out among the people. And then I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth so that you shall be mute and unable to reprove them for they are a rebellious house.

But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh. And he who will hear, let him hear. He who will refuse to hear, let him refuse for they are a rebellious house.

Not only are you supposed to speak the words I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna bind you up with cords and make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth and you won't even be able to speak until I tell you you can speak, okay?

Who's in charge here? It ain't Ezekiel, okay? And you'll note that he didn't even have to pay a $500 prophetic activation fee to Jennifer LeClaire. So, you know, just saying. All right, now let me back up a little bit here and take a look, because I know there were some questions.