Ezekiel Part 3

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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September 6, 2023

Sunday school from September 3rd, 2022

Understanding Divine Service Part 4

00:00: All right, let's pray. Lord Jesus, as we again open your word, we ask that through your
00:06: Holy Spirit that you help us to rightly understand what you revealed there, knowing that Ezekiel is not an easy text.
00:11: 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.
00:33: 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.
00:40: 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
00:49: Brady Bunch, when they went to Hawaii, you know, it was like previously on the Brady Bunch, you know, you know,
00:54: Tiki ended up in somebody's, you know, in his luggage, and now he had a surfing accident, yeah.
01:00: 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,
01:18: 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
01:27: 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.
01:36: A good way to think of it is this, is that for your sake and mine,
01:43: God had to put Judah in timeout, and a 70 -year -long timeout.
01:50: This is a, if you would, a type of medication, a cure for the disease of idolatry.
02:00: They had gone so deep into idolatry, and their worship practices in the temple's so corrupted.
02:07: 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.
02:17: But things are so bad in the temple worship, and they're so steeped in idolatry, and there are so many false prophets.
02:25: 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.
02:47: 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.
03:01: 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.
03:17: And you have these false prophets who are spewing this nonsense, saying, don't unpack your luggage, we're going to go home.
03:25: 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.
03:33: 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
03:43: YouTube prophets. To discredit them, and you'll see that one of the impacts that these
03:48: 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.
03:58: God always keeps his word. So, but we've got a problem. Ezekiel is a freshly minted prophetic penny.
04:06: He still, 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.
04:27: 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.
04:34: Ezekiel chapter two, I'll start at verse one again. So he said to me, son of man, stand on your feet,
04:39: I will speak with you. As he spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and sat me on my feet.
04:45: 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.
04:56: Now, a little bit of an aside, okay? So our Hebrew word, marad, for rebel, has a
05:02: 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
05:09: New Testament, as we get closer and closer to the return of Christ, there is prophesied a rebellion in the church against Jesus.
05:22: Let me show you the prophecy. It's in 2 Thessalonians chapter two, and there's a particular word
05:27: 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
05:42: Lord has already come. So let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the, what?
05:49: The rebellion comes first. Apostasia is the
05:54: Greek word, and its corollary in Hebrew is marad, all right?
06:01: So the idea here is that God is sending Ezekiel to a nation of rebels, but in their particular case,
06:09: 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
06:19: Messiah to the world who's gonna 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 gonna come and bleed and die for our sins.
06:39: 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?
06:57: 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?
07:13: Have you heard of church denominations ordaining impenitent homosexuals, ordaining women?
07:20: Teaching false doctrine extraordinaire from the pulpits, you know, like the word of faith heresy and things like this.
07:26: 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.
07:36: You'll note that it's super hard nowadays to find good churches. It's super easy to find a bad one.
07:43: And I mean, it's like, take your pick, it's all poison.
07:49: Very few congregations now will tolerate a pastor preaching the word. And so the rebellion is against God.
07:57: 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
08:07: God and object of worship. So he takes his seat in the temple of God, that's a church, proclaiming himself to be
08:12: God. And everyone's gonna go, ooh, yeah, you are, you're God, man. You know, and he's not, okay?
08:19: So we have that, you'll note that in God's calling of Ezekiel, we see the effects and the symptoms of what
08:33: God is describing as a group of people who are rebels, who have rebelled against him. They have apostatized, right?
08:41: They've apostatized against me. They and their fathers have transgressed me to this very day.
08:46: The descendants also are impudent and stubborn, and I send you to them and you shall say to them, thus says the
08:58: Lord Yahweh. Notice, again, in the book of Ezekiel, over and again,
09:04: God is referred to as the Lord Yahweh. I don't know why the ESV translates it like this, but the
09:10: Lord Yahweh basically is talking, really kind of positionally pacing God right at the highest top, and then
09:16: 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.
09:49: You preach the truth to them whether they want to hear it or not. You're gonna give them vegetables, right?
09:55: I don't like vegetables. You need to eat your vegetables. I don't want to eat my vegetables. Right, you know, this is how this is going, right?
10:01: But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house.
10:10: Open your mouth and eat what I give you. Huh. Ezekiel, you need to eat these vegetables, right?
10:22: 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.
10:33: They are also for Ezekiel. He is to take them to heart.
10:40: He's to read, to mark, to inwardly digest these good and wholesome words of God, and so are we, right?
10:52: 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.
11:20: Now this gets weird. And he said to me, son of man, eat whatever you find here.
11:26: 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 this scroll that I give you, and fill your stomach with it, and then
11:39: I ate it. It was in my mouth. It's sweet, okay?
11:47: And of course, this is a metaphor, but again, it reminds us that we also are to be consuming
11:53: 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.
12:12: People who are fresh, fresh attendees of Kongsvinger, I've never been in a church service that had that much
12:18: Bible in it before, right? Because what does the average evangelical church do?
12:24: You get a couple of verses out of context, just kind of, here's a little Bible here, just a little bit there, and you come to Kongsvinger, I'm gonna tell you this, you're gonna leave full.
12:35: 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.
12:41: 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,
12:52: I think they stoned him to death. He's in the graveyard out there. You know, you're not gonna get away with it.
12:57: 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?
13:06: 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.
13:21: Your opinions, you can just leave them at the door. Your speculations have no place here.
13:27: I'm gonna give you the words, and you are to speak my words with them, straight up, okay?
13:34: This is the job of the herald. By the way, pastors have that same responsibility, okay?
13:42: Let me prove it to you. This is how pastors are prophetic, because I do not get to pick what
13:49: I preach. It is not my job to pick what I preach at all. So in 2
13:55: 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.
14:09: Well, how much word? All of it. Come on, you can't really do that.
14:16: I preached the word. How much word was in your last sermon? Well, it was 45 minutes long, yeah, and there was 1 .4
14:24: verses. You're not preaching the word, are you, right? So you know, pastors are called to preach the word.
14:31: My opinions, they don't matter. What I want doesn't matter. My speculations, take them or leave them.
14:40: In fact, I would recommend just leave them, okay? My job is to preach the word, but what if it's not popular?
14:48: 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.
14:55: 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.
15:10: Why? Well, the time is coming, and I would say is now here, when people will not endorse sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers who will suit their own passions.
15:20: They'll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Sarah Young just died a couple of days ago.
15:27: Do you all know who Sarah Young is? Okay, she has sold millions. I think the last account
15:37: I heard from her publisher was 40 million copies of a book called
15:44: Jesus Calling. Okay, I mean, isn't that Christian, Jesus Calling?
15:50: Well, she claims to have channeled Jesus, and the book itself is spiritual auto -writing, what
15:58: Jesus said to her while she was channeling the spirit of Jesus. That's right, that's right, blasphemy.
16:07: So when I heard yesterday that she died, I simply put on X, you have to call it that now,
16:13: X, it's not Twitter, it's X, I put on X, Sarah Young now knows that that was not
16:19: Jesus who was calling her, and that her life's work was in fact a demonic deception.
16:30: There's nuclear fallout in San Francisco to this day at the headquarters of X as a result of saying that.
16:38: 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
16:47: Jesus and spearhead rebellion against Christ, the real Jesus, in this church. If you have a copy of Jesus Calling, suggested uses, okay?
16:59: Compost, you can compost it, that's a good use for Jesus Calling. If you're hard up for toilet paper, like the next pandemic hits and you don't have any toilet paper, that would be a good use for it.
17:10: 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.
17:19: So those are some, so that way you don't feel like somebody wasted all of their money. We find some practical uses.
17:27: Paper mache, Louis says, paper mache would work as well. Right, exactly. I'm not sure what
17:32: I would make into a paper mache. I have to think about that, what scandalous thing could
17:38: I create out of paper mache from Jesus Calling? Maybe depict
17:44: Elijah on Mount Carmel in paper mache from Jesus Calling. Just to make a point.
17:50: But all of that being said, coming back here then. So we can see that, well, here
17:58: God is basically telling him you're gonna speak with them with my words, okay?
18:04: 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.
18:14: 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
18:22: 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.
18:29: Surely if I sent you to such, they would actually listen to you. Whew, zing!
18:37: You gotta love it when God sends those zingers right up to your head, right? High inside fastball.
18:43: But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you.
18:49: At this point I'd be going, can you send somebody else, please? This does not sound like a good assignment, okay?
18:57: 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.
19:06: Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces and your forehead as hard as their foreheads.
19:14: Okay, they're stubborn, well I'm gonna stubbornize you. And this kind of recalls a particular text in the
19:20: 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
19:26: 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, going back to the three -year lectionary and having to correct it constantly is annoying me.
19:40: So I'm just gonna go back and I'll work that out. But anyway, in the
19:45: 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.
19:53: And this text, I've made your face as hard as their faces, your forehead as hard as their foreheads.
20:00: And it says, like Emery, harder than flint have I made your forehead. That just completely evokes
20:08: Jesus when he sets his face like flint to go to Jerusalem, to go to the cross, to bleed and to die for us.
20:16: Jesus was stubborn. That's it, I'm going in there and I'm gonna save these people,
20:22: 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?
20:29: Peter's all, no, you can't do that, right? But you get the idea. So like Emery, harder than flint
20:36: I've made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks. They don't like me.
20:43: 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.
21:02: Wow. Why? Because it's scripture, God has spoken.
21:09: God's word is living and active. God's word equips his saints for every good works, it makes them complete.
21:17: 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
21:28: Lord Yahweh, whether they hear or they refuse to hear. And you just see him, why me?
21:40: So then the spirit lifted me up and I heard behind me the voice of a great earthquake.
21:47: Blessed be the glory of Yahweh from its place. Brr, right?
21:54: And it was the sound of the wings of the living creatures as they touched one another.
22:01: And the sound of the wheels beside them and the sound of a great earthquake.
22:08: 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.
22:20: The hand of Yahweh being strong upon me. He doesn't wanna do it.
22:26: This is not an assignment, he says, son goes, thank you Jesus for finally revealing to me my purpose.
22:31: I am now a purpose -driven prophet, yay. No, instead he's going in bitterness.
22:41: He knows this is not gonna be easy. It's gonna be difficult. It's gonna be hard.
22:47: Who among us enjoys not being liked? Let me ramp it up.
22:55: Who loves being hated? Do you like it when people ignore you? Mistreat you, slander you?
23:05: Is anyone like that? They're not going to listen to me? What kind of assignment is this?
23:14: 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.
23:25: So I went in the bitterness and 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
23:33: Chabar Canal and I sat where they were dwelling and I sat there overwhelmed among them for seven days.
23:44: He's gone into full depression. Well, Zanak will fix this, right?
23:53: 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.
24:01: 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
24:19: I will require at your hand. This is next week's Old Testament text and we're getting it in context.
24:27: 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
24:32: 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.
24:46: 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?
24:58: 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.
25:10: 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
25:17: 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.
25:31: And you're gonna note something here. Ezekiel's talking to you, he's talking to me.
25:39: 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
25:48: Bible study yesterday. The answer is not exactly but yes, but also maybe no.
25:55: It kind of depends and the reason why I say this is because remember our context. Remember the three rules for sound biblical exegesis?
26:02: Context, context, and context. Son of man, who is
26:08: God addressing? Ezekiel. So in his first understanding, this is a command directed straight at the head of Ezekiel.
26:19: However, it does apply secondarily. It applies to those who are in the offices that God has established.
26:26: So for instance, pastors in the pastoral epistles. I just read it.
26:31: Pastors do the job of preaching what? The word. So the duties of a pastor require me to preach the word.
26:43: 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
26:51: I preach on this topic, so I'm not gonna do that anymore. Am I allowed to do that?
26:58: No. Okay, so Paul picks up in Acts chapter 20, language that comes straight out of Ezekiel.
27:08: And Paul in Acts chapter 20 is giving his farewell address to the pastors of the churches in the city of Ephesus.
27:18: 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
27:25: Lord with all humility, and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how
27:30: I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable. Important word, that word shrink.
27:39: In the Greek here, hupastelo is our Greek word. Let's show what this word means.
27:45: To draw back, to disappear from a position. Have you ever seen that meme of Homer Simpson's disappearing into the ivy?
27:53: Okay, that's what it means to hupastelo, to draw back, to withdraw, to hesitate in regard to something, to shrink back, to avoid, to be timid, to keep silent about something.
28:06: 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.
28:17: And he says, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything. And proof positive, the
28:24: Apostle Paul, was he persecuted? Was he stoned?
28:30: And I'm not talking about in the Colorado weed kind of sense, okay, or now Minnesota, right? He was absolutely stoned, okay?
28:38: 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
28:48: Bible because my friends in Canada could be arrested if they repeat what
28:53: I say, right? No, you are not to shrink back from declaring anything that is profitable.
29:01: 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 of faith in our
29:08: 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
29:15: 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.
29:24: If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.
29:30: Important words, I do not account my life of any value. Any pastor who refuses to preach the full counsel of the
29:39: Word of God considers his life more important than the Word of God. I want to make sure
29:47: 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?
29:54: 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.
30:01: And now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.
30:08: Therefore, I testify to you this day, I am innocent of the blood of all. What? That's Ezekiel talking.
30:20: The Apostle Paul, I am innocent of the blood of all. For I did not hupostello,
30:26: I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.
30:34: 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?
30:45: 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?
31:00: Not even close, right? But the pastor who basically says, my job's to preach the full counsel of the
31:07: 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
31:19: I heard about a lot of guys that that's happened to, wow. I remember a few years back, we used to have pirate
31:28: Christian radio conferences here at Kongsvinger, I'm kind of glad to be out of the conference business, right?
31:34: 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
31:43: 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,
31:57: 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
32:05: Faith, and it messed him up. And so he started preaching law and gospel from the pulpit, calling sinners to repent, preaching the full counsel of the
32:17: 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
32:33: 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?
32:46: And so they were really annoyed by this preaching of his. Well, a few years later, we had a pirate
32:53: Christian radio conference again, he came back, and he was a pastor again. He had changed denominations, he's now a
33:00: Lutheran pastor up in Canada, and was able to colloquize in and get a few things, and took a call, pastor of congregation, and he's doing just fine.
33:09: But the congregation that he started out at, they rallied to get rid of him because he was preaching the
33:15: Word. Just let that sink in for a second. How dare you preach
33:20: Jesus and him crucified for my sins every week, stop it! Right? Now, what he could have done is basically said, you know,
33:31: 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
33:44: I gotta do is do what these women are demanding. He didn't shrink.
33:53: There is no shrinkage in the pastoral office. It works as a metaphor, but it's out there.
34:03: 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
34:16: Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Important thing, who has made, who is the one who puts pastors into the pastoral office?
34:23: 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.
34:46: Paul knows what he's talking about, right? I forget which church father it was. I wanna say
34:53: 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.
35:10: That wouldn't 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.
35:20: So that being the case, you'll note in its primary understand sense, this is gonna primarily apply to pastors today.
35:29: Okay? Because we're tasked with the job of preaching the word. You're not tasked with preaching the word the same way
35:35: 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.
35:41: You do get to share the gospel and scripture and scriptural truth with your friends and family members and coworkers and things like this.
35:48: 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.
35:58: Does that make sense? So primarily, this is going to apply then to pastors today, prophets of old, okay?
36:07: So coming back then here, I'm gonna, so the hand of the Lord, of Yahweh, was upon me there, and he said to me, arise and go out into the valley, and there
36:17: I'm gonna speak with you. You can talk to me now if you wanna talk to me right here, but okay, we'll go to the valley like you said, right?
36:25: So I arose and I went out into the valley, and behold, the glory of Yahweh stood there.
36:31: Boy, is that a weird word. Omed stood, the glory of the
36:37: Lord stood there, like the glory that I had seen by the
36:43: 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,
36:54: 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
37:03: 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.
37:10: But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them, thus says the
37:16: 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.
37:27: 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?
37:38: 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.
37:48: So, you know, just saying, okay? Okay, all right, now let me back up a little bit here and take a look, because I know there were some questions, and last week
37:57: I didn't get to be able to. Talking about rebellion in the church, Revealing Truth posted a video showing a Muslim imam speaking at Beth Moore's pulpit about forgiveness in the
38:05: Quran. Why does he have to recite the Quran in Arabic? Well, because that's the only approved official language of Allah.
38:16: It's the most beautiful language ever, they say. But you bring up a good point, Daniel, that if you didn't see that, you can actually
38:22: Google it, at Beth Moore's Episcopal Church this past week, they had an imam in the pulpit reading and chanting from the
38:34: Quran. Now, I wanna make something clear.
38:41: Muslims are welcome at Kongsvinger, in the pews, not in the pulpit.
38:51: No Muslim has anything to tell us regarding God, and the
38:56: Quran is not God's book, right? We are not to hear the Quran as if somehow it is a message from God, it is not.
39:06: It is a book of apostasy and rebellion by a false prophet named Muhammad. So, and I would note here,
39:15: Daniel, that was really very Masonic of Beth Moore's church, and the reason
39:24: I say that is because it doesn't matter which holy book you take your
39:30: Masonic vows on, right? All right, so Daniel put the link in there if anyone wants to see it.
39:38: Okay, so this is sound teaching, Jacob says from Malawi, from our little congregation in Mizuzu, this book that you passed around,
39:48: I'm learning so much from you, and through the style of teaching that people can know God in truth and in spirit, and can worship him, because for many years, we were cheated with false preachers and teachers, they called men of God, but they're not.
39:59: I'm sorry to hear that you were cheated by them, and I thank God that you're able to hear God's word today. All right, if you want to talk with Jesus, you do not have to look in the
40:12: Bible, just text him. Right, okay, yeah, okay, I see.
40:18: Oh, wow, they have a text bot, you can actually, an AI text bot that claims to be
40:23: Jesus. Oh, that isn't blasphemous at all.
40:29: Notice the sarcasm, wow. AI generated also some biblical figures. No, I'm with Daniel, that could be
40:37: Satan? Yeah, that's Satan. Yeah, wow, that's, okay. Glad I didn't miss any more questions.
40:45: How would you address this when an employer forbids sharing your faith with clients, okay?
40:52: So, Luis chimed in a little bit, remind your employer that they can't discriminate against anyone due to religion, that is any religion.
41:00: So, here's, this is something you guys all need to hear. When you are at work, you are exchanging your time and your talents and your expertise for a thing called a paycheck, right?
41:17: That's what you're doing. When you are on the clock, it is not your time because you've sold it.
41:28: When you are off the clock, you can do whatever you want. Okay, and I would note this, that many businesses that have clients, oftentimes client relationships are formed formally around the conference room or at the other person's business or something like this, but also client relationships oftentimes are formed informally.
41:53: I think of some of the better doing businesses here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, they all have season tickets for the
42:01: Sioux, though you can't call them that anymore, sorry, fighting Hawks, that sounds horrible. The UND hockey team, there we go, right?
42:09: They have season tickets for the UND hockey team, right? And what do those people do with them?
42:15: They invite their clients or the companies that they're working with and they enjoy time together off the clock doing informal stuff, right?
42:26: So, if your client invites you to a UND hockey game, go, it's worth every penny that they paid for it, you'll have a great time, plus UND will usually do well, okay, but second is if during the conversation that you have while the other team's forward is in the penalty box, it steers into the religious, you're off the clock, you can talk about whatever you guys wanna talk about.
42:53: So, I would always tell Christians to maintain their integrity and remember this important question, am
43:01: I at this moment doing work for money? In other words, this is not my time, this is something that belongs to somebody else because I've sold it to them, if so, obey the rules because it's their time, it's not yours, they're paying you for it.
43:16: But when you're off the clock, on your lunch break, or having an informal conversation with anybody, every topic is open to discussion because it's not their time, right?
43:31: Be shrewd as snakes, innocent as doves, but do so with integrity, right?
43:37: Okay, good question, by the way. Lily says, best to do on your lunch break.
43:43: I'm with you, Lily, and if you smoke cigarettes, you can do it on your cigarette break, too, but most people don't do that anymore, so, yeah.
43:50: The cigarette smokers are the leper colony of the day, you know, I can't imagine anybody who smokes cigarettes up in this part of the world, can you imagine having to go outside when it's 30 below to smoke a cigarette?
44:01: Oh, forget that, I'm quitting next week, I'm getting the patch, you know? And then
44:07: Lily also points this out, best time is when they ask you about your faith. Of course that's the best time, and you know what?
44:15: I don't think I can recall that many clients, relationships I've ever had where my conversations with them didn't naturally steer into things like this.
44:25: It happens all the time. People are haunted by Jesus because they know he's the real God, okay?
44:31: And so these are things that perplex them and worry them, and they will start these conversations, just let it happen.
44:40: Okay, next part, boy is this, like I said, hang on, this is gonna get weird, and I can only begin to get you, start here, and we'll work this out, okay?
44:53: Chapter four, we're not gonna finish this today. Okay, it says this, and you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you and engrave on it a city, even
45:07: Jerusalem. Okay, so let me tell you what's gonna happen here. Ezekiel is now going to be engaging in prophetic acts.
45:19: The prophecy is in the actions that he is taking. And I describe this first thing that he's supposed to act out,
45:27: I call it Lego Jerusalem. Okay, when we were in San Antonio, all right, we went to the
45:36: Alamo, and across the street from the Alamo, there was this wonderful Lego depiction of the
45:43: Battle of the Alamo, remember that? Okay, I've got a few photos of it, but I'm not gonna show it here.
45:48: And so if you ever go to the Alamo, if you travel there any time in the near future, okay,
45:54: I kid you not, right across the street from the Alamo, there's this tiny little shop, and in there, they've got a full -blown depiction of the
46:01: Battle of the Alamo, all done in Legos. It's impressive, it legitimately is impressive.
46:08: I kinda think of what this is supposed to happen as kinda like that on a smaller scale. And listen to the details.
46:15: So I want you to take a brick, engrave on it a city, you know, Jerusalem, and then put siege works against it.
46:24: So there he is, siege works building up against this brick. Pow, pow, pow, pow, you know, this is the kinda stuff that kids do, right?
46:30: Okay, and build a siege wall against it, cast up a mound against it, set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around.
46:41: And then you take an iron griddle and place it as an iron wall between you and the city and then set your face toward it and let it be in a state of siege and press the siege against it.
46:56: This is a sign for the house of Israel. Wait, what?
47:04: You want me to do what? So there's poor Ezekiel. Well, what do you want me to do?
47:10: This is as good a place as any, and so he sets up Lego Jerusalem, and he's setting up siege.
47:17: He's got a big old iron griddle, and he's going pow, pow, pow, and everyone's going, oh, poor
47:22: Ezekiel. He's baked his brain in the hot Babylonian sun. He's lost his mind, right?
47:31: Oh, it gets worse. It gets worse. Then lie on your left side and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it.
47:44: For the number of days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. I assign to you a number of days, 390 days equal to the number of years of their punishment.
47:59: 390 days he is to lie in front of Lego Jerusalem, which is in siege, on his left side.
48:09: That is longer than a year. Now, let me see if I can pull this to the front so we can see it, but let's see.
48:19: I want to download, there we go. All right, thank you again, Lily, for sharing this. So this is an artist's depiction of Ezekiel.
48:28: He's on his left side. How long does this go on? 390 days.
48:43: Oh. Okay, that is not an iPad,
48:50: Elliot. That is not an iPad. And so long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel.
48:58: And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time on your right side and bear the punishment of the house of Judah for 40 days.
49:06: I assign you a day for each year. That is 430 days, a year and a half.
49:19: And you shall set your face towards the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared. You shall prophesy against the city.
49:24: And behold, I'll place cords upon you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
49:32: Oh, this sounds like it's gonna hurt, but it gets worse. And then you shall take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them in a single vessel and make your bread from them during the number of the days that you lie on your side.
49:45: For 390 days you shall eat it, and your food that you eat shall be by weight 20 shekels a day, and from day to day you shall eat it.
49:54: And water you shall drink by measure, the sixth part of a hen, from day to day you shall drink. And you shall eat its barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.
50:09: Right, this is a mess. And then Yahweh said, and thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations, and I will drive them.
50:18: And then I said, Lord Yahweh, behold, I have never defiled myself in my youth up until now.
50:26: I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by bees or has been tainted meat that has come into my mouth.
50:31: Then he said to me, all right, so see I is saying to you cow's dung instead of human dung. Well, that just makes it better, right?
50:40: And what cracks me up is if we were to do a Google search, Ezekiel bread, okay?
50:50: There is a company that sells this stuff, okay? Let's see if I can get.
50:55: It's in the freezer section of Hugo's there. Oh yeah, it's in the freezer section of Hugo's. Yeah, Ezekiel bread. Okay, Ezekiel 4 .9
51:02: bread. My question is, which dung did they bake this over? Okay, and with that I actually have to go because I'm running out of time.
51:11: So Lord willing, I'll explain what all of this means when I get back, if I come back alive.
51:17: So if I'm breathing when I get back here, we'll talk about what all of this means. But that's a cliffhanger for you on the book of Ezekiel.