Ezekiel Part 28

We are gonna pray and then we're gonna get into our study. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, as we open up your word, we ask your Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what is revealed there so that we may properly believe, confess, and do all according to your

Holy Word, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Ezekiel, chapter 20.

Gonna put the nose to the grindstone here. I'm gonna back up into the context just a little bit here so that we can remember, it's been a while since we've actually like read a section out.

And so God is speaking judgment against Israel.

And so if you remember at the beginning portion of chapter 20, it's titled the

Israel's Continuing Rebellion. And it says on the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the 10th day of the month, certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the

Lord of Yahweh and sat before me. And if you remember, God basically was saying, you impenitent idolaters,

I will not be inquired of you. And the reason why he will not allow himself to be inquired of him is because they were engaging in something called syncretism.

All right, sure, we wanna hear what Yahweh has to say, but we also wanna worship Asherah. We wanna fire up incense for Baal.

We want to sacrifice children of Molech. You know, it's the standard, it's fair kind of stuff.

So God calls them on that and basically says, I will not be inquired of by you because of these things.

And so we continue then where God is going to give a positive thing in the middle of a negative rebuke.

You'll note that this is one of the themes that you see in scripture because in scripture, which is true, the law or the gospel?

The answer is yes, both, both are true. And the law has a particular purpose.

The purpose of the law is to make you aware of your sin and call you to repentance.

The gospel tells us what God has done or will do in this particular case.

And aspects of the gospel are designed to comfort the penitent. But they cannot provide comfort for the impenitent because the promises do not apply to the impenitent.

They only apply to the penitent. So the text then goes on to say, verse 33, as I live, declares the

Lord Yahweh, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out,

I will be king over you. And every time I hear God talk like this, outstretched arm, what does that sound like?

Crucifixion, right? You know, I've never heard kings talk about outstretched arms in such ways, but maybe this is a common thing.

But you'll note that as Christians, we look back at that and go, that sounds crazily like the crucifixion.

And this past Wednesday night. Oh, my mic, okay, hang on a second here.

Am I echoing? Yes. All right, okay, this past week when

I was for the midweek service, we were looking at the crucifixion of Christ. And I noted that Christ has chosen the cross to be his throne.

He has chosen to have a crown of thorns rather than a crown of gold and jewels. And this was all part of his decision to make.

And so you'll note that same theme runs here. As I live, declares the Lord Yahweh, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out,

I will be king over you. But here's the interesting bit. With wrath poured out,

I will be king over you. Through the cross, my question is this. Who was the wrath poured out on?

Christ. So if you read it the way the world would read it,

God's coming back and Christ is coming and he's gonna, I'm gonna be king over you.

Like this. That's not exactly what this is referring to.

Because you'll note through the cross, we recognize with an outstretched arm, Christ is our king. And with wrath poured out, he is king over us.

But he is the one who endured that wrath for us. But for everybody who remains impenitent, the wrath that this is going to be referring to is the wrath to come when

Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. So just like swords have two edges to them,

I would note this part of the oracle has a double edge to it. The edge of the law and the edge of the gospel.

The edge of the gospel, because we are believers in Christ and have been brought to penitent faith in him, we can sit there and go, yup, the wrath of God's been poured out on King Jesus and he was stretched out, his arms were stretched out and nailed to the cross and he bled and died for us and absolutely he's, this is good stuff.

And those who are impenitent sit there and go, uh -oh, we're in trouble, right?

It's fascinating how if you read it as a believer in Christ, you see it one way.

As an unbeliever, because you don't believe the gospel, the gospel's completely foreign to you and the scripture lies locked up, this is all thread.

Isn't that interesting? So then he says, I will bring you out from the peoples,

I will gather you out of the countries where you are scattered with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out.

Now this is a second wrath, right? This is the wrath that happens when

Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. But we who are in Christ, he says to us, he will gather us from out of the countries where we are scattered.

So note, since we're all grafted into Israel, I always like to say what

Mikey DeGraw said years ago, Mazel Tov, congratulations, we're all

Israelites now. That being the case, when Christ returns, he's gonna gather us, his people, from all the countries that we've been scattered.

If you've been scattered to the country of Minnesota, it's not really a country, but if this is where you've been scattered,

Christ will gather you from here. Which is, thank God, because I hope it's warmer where we're going.

So I'm just looking at the forecast today going, seriously, really?

It's like, ah. So I thought March is supposed to go out like a lamb.

You know, it's like, I'm a little annoyed at the moment. Weather reference for those of you not geographically located in Minnesota at the moment.

We're under a severe winter advisory, potential of one to seven inches of snow between now and 10 a .m.

tomorrow. It's like, why? Why? And there's already snow on the ground now.

You can tell we've already got the first dustings. All right, moving on. So I will gather you out of the countries where you are scattered with a mighty hand and outstretched arm and with wrath poured out.

I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.

Does that sound like the day of judgment to you? Yes, it should. As I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you, declares the

Lord Yahweh. I will make you pass under the rod. I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.

I will purge out the rebels from among you, yes, and those who transgress against me and I will bring them out of the land where they sojourned but they shall not enter the land of Israel.

Then you will know that I am Yahweh. Now, a little bit of a note here. I can hear some of you going, well, isn't this referring to like when the time in Babylon was over and they returned to the promised land?

No, we already read this. We already read Ezra and Nehemiah. Do you recall any of this happening?

No, this is an eschatological promise here. So the land of Israel will not be a postage stamp piece of property in the middle of the

Middle East. The land of Israel will be none other than the entire new earth. Okay, you kind of have to think of it that way, okay?

All right, as for you, O house of Israel, thus says the Lord Yahweh, go serve every one of you his idols, now and hereafter.

I will not, if you will not listen to me. If you're not gonna listen to God, go ahead and worship your idols.

Eat and sleep, for tomorrow you'll burn in hell. But it doesn't say that, but that's kind of the point.

Right? Close to it, right? Go and serve every one of you his idols, now and hereafter, if you will not listen to me, but my holy name, you shall know more profane with your gifts and your idols.

So God's basically done. And the thing is, is that syncretism is a tough thing to get rid of.

That's the best way I can put it. Once it starts getting ingrained, it's crazy. Yeah. Right, right.

And I would even say other, like what used to be called the mainline Protestant denominations, that's crazy stuff going on here.

I was watching the kerfuffle unfold this week as a pastor in the state of Washington, I kid you not, part of the sermon appeared on something called the

Woke Preacher Clips YouTube channel, all right? There's a fellow who has dedicated himself to kind of slogging through the different, far woke left pastors and pastrixes and people who have pronoun issues and talk about them.

And he found a clip from a guy in Washington who preached a sermon a couple weeks ago basically claiming that God should be worshiping man.

It was stunning, okay? It was absolutely stunning. I've never seen Mike Winger be on something so up to date.

He actually put out a video on it. And he called it Satanism and I thought, dang, Winger nailed it, man.

It's just, you know, the belief that God should worship us, that's crazy.

That's what Satan was trying to do with Jesus in the wilderness, right? So, yeah, anyway, it's just, we have lots of problems with syncretism and bizarre stuff going on in the church.

Now, God says, as for you, O house of Israel, that says the Lord Yahweh, go serve every one of you as idols now and hereafter if you will not listen to me.

But my holy name you will know more profane with your gifts and your idols. For on my holy mountain, the mountain height of Israel, declares the

Lord Yahweh, there all the house of Israel, all of them shall serve me in the land. There I will accept them and there

I will require your contributions and the choices of your gifts and all your sacred offerings. So you're gonna note here, this points to the fact that in the new earth, there's legitimately going to be forms of worship.

And that in the new earth, we will be bringing contributions and gifts to God.

Keep all of that in mind, that's kind of cool, right? But it's gonna be true worship, no tainted sin kind of stuff, it's gonna be great.

As a pleasing aroma, I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered.

And I will manifest my holiness among you in the sight of the nations.

Now here, nations, so this is Goy. And this is not talking about in the sight of the nations as far as pagan nations at this point.

But this may in fact really be referring to the different ethnicities that exist within the world.

Okay, so you'll note that we Europeans, because that's what most of us are, some of us aren't.

But we Europeans, we're kind of a people, we're kind of a race, we're kind of a nation in that sense.

So the idea here is it's talking about the fact that we still continue to have some of that identity moving into the new earth.

We will be one big body and still have different distinctions, right? So which is kind of nice.

So, and you shall know that I am Yahweh when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country I swore to give to your fathers.

Isn't that interesting? That nation, the country I swore to give to your fathers. And he's not talking about the postage stamp piece of property, how do

I know? Here we gotta do some cross -reference work again. Let me show you how I know we're not talking about this tiny little place, the place where they're getting ready to invade in Brafa and all that kind of stuff, because.

Yeah, right, yeah, that's the big news thing right now. Red heifer, okay. So let me show you how

I know this isn't talking about this. And so if you don't pay attention to scripture, you don't let scripture interpret scripture, you're gonna end up with really bad ideas.

And so you'll note in Hebrews chapter 11, it says, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

So far, so good. You're thinking, okay, it's earthly, right? And he went out not knowing where he was going.

That's usually what happens when I go into Walmart, by the way, I just wanna make that clear. And by faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land living in his tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

For he was looking to the city that has foundations whose designer and builder is

God. What kind of city is that? Okay, so you'll note it says what

Abraham was looking for. Does any book of the Old Testament say it this clearly? No, and you'll note then when we look at what we just read in Ezekiel and rerun it through this text, which gives us the clarity, we can see what's going on.

So then watch what it says. All of these died in faith, not having received the things promised.

Abraham did not receive the promised land. Because why?

Because he was looking for the city whose designer and builder is God, right? But having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, and that's what we are, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Huh, so you'll note then that the promised land is not about any squabble going on over any piece of property, anywhere in the

Middle East between Egypt and Syria. It's just not, okay? Because the promised land of the

Old Testament of Abraham's time is a type and shadow pointing us to the real thing.

And the real thing is the thing that is still yet to come. So you'll note then, he says, and you shall know that I am

Yahweh when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country I swore to give to your fathers.

So what's the country God promised to give to their fathers? The new earth, okay?

And there you shall remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves and you shall loathe yourselves for all the evils that you've committed.

And you shall know that I am Yahweh when I deal with you for my name's sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupt deeds,

O house of Israel, declares the Lord Yahweh. So God says to those who will be saved,

I will not deal with you according to your corrupt ways. Which then kind of invokes one of the big promises of the new covenant.

What is the major promise of the new covenant? God remembers to forget your sins, right?

So there is a sense then in what this text is saying, we will have some memory of what it is that we've done and we will lament and loathe and hate what we've done in this world in sin.

But God is not gonna deal with us according to what we've done because he deals with us in mercy because of Christ. So the word of Yahweh came to me.

Son of man, set your face toward the south land. Preach against the south and prophesy against the forest land in the

Negev. Say to the forest of the Negev, hear the word of Yahweh. Thus says the

Lord Yahweh, behold, I will kindle a fire in you and it shall devour every green tree in you and every dry tree.

The blazing flame shall not be quenched and all faces from south to north shall be scorched by it.

All flesh shall see that I, Yahweh, have kindled it. It shall not be quenched.

And then I said, ah, Lord Yahweh, they are saying of me, is he not a maker of parables?

So after hearing these rebukes from God through Ezekiel, the response of these idolaters, these syncretistic idolaters, they're in exile because of their syncretistic idolatry, is we don't understand you.

You're a speaker in parables. But was he? No. God was kind of just being straightforward.

It's like, ugh. So the word of Yahweh came to me. Son of man, set your face towards Jerusalem.

Preach against the sanctuaries. Prophesy against the land of Israel and say to the land of Israel, thus says

Yahweh, behold, I am against you and I will draw my sword from its sheath and I will cut off from you both righteous and wicked because I will cut off from you both righteous and wicked.

Therefore, my sword shall be drawn from its sheath against all flesh from south to north and all flesh shall know that I am

Yahweh. I've drawn my sword from its sheath. It shall not be sheathed again. Yeesh.

Terrifying. As for you, son of man, groan.

I do that every morning when I get out of bed. Right? Ugh. I don't have to,

I have to do this again. Barb, get the wedge. As for you, son of man, groan.

With breaking heart and bitter grief, groan before their eyes.

And when they say to you, why do you groan? You shall say, because of the news that is coming.

Every heart will melt and all hands will be feeble.

Every spirit will faint. All knees will be weak as water. Behold, it is coming and it will be fulfilled, declares the

Lord Yahweh. And when you hear words like that, they say to you, what? What's gonna be fulfilled? Right?

That's kind of the point. You'll know there's a little bit of a buildup in like drawing them in, like what is going on?

So the word of the Lord of Yahweh came to me. Son of man, prophesy and say, thus says

Yahweh, the Lord, saying, a sword, a sword is sharpened and also polished, sharpened for slaughter, polished to flash like lightning.

Now hang on a second here, I just, I'm gonna do a little word search. I gotta switch apps here to do this.

Hang on a second here. Do, do, do, do, do, do, and I'm gonna look for sword.

All right, and I don't want it in the Old Testament, I want it in Revelation. All right, let's see here.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. From his mouth comes a sword, which is to strike the nations he will rule, oh yeah.

All right, so let's take a look at Revelation 19. Okay, Revelation 19.

Because it mentions a sword twice there, and of course this is just too small.

All right, so rejoicing in heaven, marriage supper of the Lamb, a rider on a white horse.

Aha, here it is, okay. So then I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse. The one sitting on it is called

Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and he makes war.

Who's this talking about? Jesus. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.

He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, the name by which he is called is the

Word of God. The Word of God, hmm. The halagos to Theou, okay.

And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.

From his mouth comes a sharp sword, with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.

He will tread the winepress, the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written,

King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And then I saw an angel standing in the sun with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead.

Come gather for the great supper of God to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.

And I saw the beast, the king of the earth, with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army.

And the beast was captured with it. The false prophet, who was in its presence, had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image.

These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse.

And all the birds were gorged with their flesh. Now, a little bit of a note here.

I'm gonna do something really quick here. See if I can do this expediently. I want to look for, oh look, it's

Precious Moments Jesus. Okay. You'll note that a lot of people are going to, and they do, they reject what

Revelation says here because they have idolized this aspect of Christ.

We are not denying that Christ is the friend of sinners, that Christ says, let the children come to me, and that Christ is our good shepherd.

We are not denying any of that. But here's the thing. This loving, kind, almost soft

Jesus, I have to be careful how we describe him here, this is the Jesus that comes with the gospel.

You don't get this Jesus if you persist in sin and unbelief. You get the other one.

You get the one who has the sword coming out of his mouth. The one who legitimately himself slays the nations.

Okay, so you'll note then, there's nothing wrong with having this view of Jesus, but this only comes through the gospel.

And if you then, as a Christian, say, well, I reject this idea that Jesus has a sword coming out of his mouth and he slays the nations because it contradicts this, okay?

Does it? Does it contradict that? Think of it this way, okay?

Those of you who are dads, right? Kids look up to us, right? At least when they're smaller.

Now I have to look up to my son, but that's a different story. They look up to us, right? And when your kids are small, all right?

And let's say you take them to a family picnic and you decide that you're gonna go down to the river or maybe go to one of the 10 million lakes in Minnesota somewhere, right?

It always fascinates me here because people will disappear. Well, where have you been? Oh, we were at the lake.

Which one? Yeah, right, right. So you take them to the lake, right?

And there at the lake is, you know, you're camping with your family and then the camp spot next to you is another family or a dude who has a big, scary dog, right?

And the dog doesn't like your children. In fact, your dog doesn't like your smallest child, right?

But are you not kind to your children? You are, okay? But if that dog starts barking and getting aggressive, what are you gonna do, dad?

You're gonna stand between your child and that dog and you're gonna be shouting at that dog, telling it to back down and back off, right?

And as you're talking to that dog, are you gonna be looking like this? No, okay?

There might be a whole other level to you that most of the time never appears until your kids are in danger and all of a sudden that guy gets unlocked, right?

And that guy means business. He's got an angry tone and he's doing this kind of thing, you know, make himself bigger, right?

Is that a contradiction in who you are as a father? No, it's not.

So when we talk about the different aspects of God, it's important for us to remember, we talk about God in both his primary work and his alien work, okay?

When God is bleeding, suffering, and dying for our sins, when he is acting in kindness and forgiving us, remember, it's the glory of God to forgive sinners, right?

This is God's primary mode. This is his primary work. God's alien work is the work when he acts in wrath and that only shows up when he is provoked and normally he's provoked over a long period of time.

God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, but when he finally does say enough is enough, it's kind of like Popeye the

Sailor Man. He eats a spinach and then it's over for, you know, for Bluto, right?

I just, am I, does anyone know what I'm talking about here? Is that just too old, right?

So, you'll note what we just read in Revelation and what we're reading in Ezekiel.

These are hard things to hear, but this is an important aspect of who

God is and this is according to his alien work. It is not a contradiction of the merciful, kind Jesus who comes to us and say, come to me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

It is not a contradiction of the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

It is not a contradiction at all when God acts in wrath. This is what happens when God is provoked over a long period of time and note then, there are legitimate and real consequences for our sin and there is real justice for those who don't want mercy.

Keep that in mind. A sword, a sword is sharpened, also polished, sharpened for slaughter, polished to flash like lightning.

Or shall we rejoice? You have despised the rod, my son, with everything of wood.

So the sword is given to be polished, that it may be grasped in the hand. It is sharpened and polished to be given into the hand of the slayer.

Cry out and wail, son of man, for it is against my people. It is against all the princes of Israel.

They are delivered over to the sword with my people. Strike, therefore, upon your thigh, for it will not be a testing.

What could I do if you despise the rod, declares the

Lord Yahweh. As for you, son of man, prophesy. Clap your hands and let the sword come down twice.

Yes, three times. The sword for those to be slain. It is the sword for the great slaughter which surrounds them, that their hearts may melt and may stumble.

At all their gates, I have given the glittering sword. Ah, it is made like lightning, it is taken up for slaughter.

Cut sharply to the right, set yourself to the left, wherever your face is directed. I also will clap my hands and I will satisfy my fury.

I, Yahweh, have spoken. The word of Yahweh came to me. As for you, son of man, mark two ways for the sword of the king of Babylon to come.

Both of them shall come from the same land. And make a signpost. Make it at the head of the way to a city.

Mark the way for the sword to come to Rabbah of the Ammonites and to Judah into Jerusalem, the fortified.

So here God is telling him to make a sign. Y 'all remember the television show

MASH, right? And they had this big old signpost. This many miles to Tokyo, this many miles to Los Angeles and Washington D .C.,

all that kind of stuff. Similar thing going on here. He's making a sign similar to this, but basically says this way to Rabbah, that way to Judah.

I don't know if they used miles back then. I don't think so, that's kind of a English thing. But you get the point. For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination.

He shakes the arrows, he consults the teraphim. He looks at the liver, into his right hand come the divination for Jerusalem.

To set battering rams, to open the mouth with murder. So note here, the king of Babylon is a guy who's engaging in fortune telling and looking for signs and things like this.

He'll take a group of arrows and put them in a bundle and then toss them on the ground and you're supposed to be able to read based upon the patterns that they make, what to do next.

And then it talks about how he uses the liver. Okay, this is a horrible practice.

Basically you take an animal, you kill it, you take its guts, its innards, and you just make a splat with it and then you're able to then divine by looking at how the splat does its thing, what you're supposed to be looking for.

It's gross. Yeah, splatomancy. We should make a petition among the academic community to have that recognized as the official name for it.

But you get the idea, it's kind of a gross thing, like looking at the entrails of animals for the purpose of divining things.

It's like, who came up with this idea? I remember years and years and years ago when

I was growing up, my parents and I, we went to Vancouver, British Columbia.

And we were there during the exact time when Charles and Diana had gotten married.

And so the whole city was just completely like goo -goo over the whole wedding and all this kind of stuff.

Little did they know it was coming. None of us knew. But all they know is that Charles has taken a wife and the ceremony was beautiful, her dress was stunning.

The bride was gorgeous. And it was all the rage. And my parents, they wanted to have dinner that night.

And because it was practically a national holiday, the only place we could get dinner that night was in Chinatown, okay?

So Vancouver has a big Chinatown. They have a big Chinese community. So we went to Chinatown and we found one of these authentic Chinese places.

And I kid you not, we were having a hard time ordering because the English translations were wanting.

Thankfully they had photographs of some of their things and we would point to stuff. So afterwards, because there weren't that many people in that restaurant, afterwards the owner came up to greet us and to thank us for coming for dinner and all this kind of stuff.

And the owner's wife said, would you like me to read your tea leaves? And my mom said, sure.

And I'm looking and I'm going, what's this? And so she legitimately took the tea leaves from the kettle and poured it into the thing and then got rid of it.

And at the end there was like a thing and she pointed to the thing. Oh, that's not, very important thing, they're coming.

All that kind of stuff. Who invented this? Who came up with this idea? How does the universe have contact with us through tea leaves?

I was looking at this going, none of this makes any sense. But that's kind of a modern manifestation of what's being described here.

But never forget that night, it was a very interesting night. Huh? What does

Lipton say? Right. Isn't that the name of a character from, oh

I forget. When I hear the name Lipton I think of a movie where there was a character named

Lipton. So nerdy kind of fellow, but that's the whole of the story. All right, so it says this.

The king of Babylon stands at the parting of the way at the head of the two ways to use divination.

He shakes the arrows, he consults the teraphim, he looks at the liver, this is all divination.

Into his right hand comes the divination for Jerusalem to set battering rams, to open the mouth with murder, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to cast up mounds, to build siege towers.

But to them it will seem like a false divination. They have sworn solemn oaths, but he brings their guilt to remembrance that they may be taken.

So that's what's gonna happen. So note when Ezekiel wrote this, the total fall of Jerusalem hadn't come yet.

And that is about to come. And so this is God giving him an oracle of prophecy about what's coming in the future, and saying that when the king of Babylon finally decides that he's going to do this, he's gonna practice divination, and that divination's gonna be the thing that's going to convince them they need to do it.

And even then, they're gonna think that the divination's a false divination, but they're gonna be so superstitious they're gonna obey the divination.

Isn't that interesting? It's like, what on earth, okay? All right, now let me see here.

I'm gonna check questions to see if there's anything notable that I should be commenting on.

All right, let's see here, okay. Too much wrath and judgment for his best life now.

Joel Osteen will never preach on this text. That's right. Unless we get

David Loewe to do it, as a proxy, which I still am stunned by that performance.

So, if you don't know what we're talking about in the, we did a Prophecy of Being a few months ago with David Loewe from the

Cessationist documentary, and he had told us that he has this thing that he does where he tells people to pick any text from the

Bible and he'll preach it as Joel Osteen, okay? And Josh and I were like, challenge accepted, and we came up with passages that were the most negative things ever, okay?

Josh had picked like, Judas hung himself in the next passage, go thou and do likewise, and he turned to, he actually preached that and flipped it into a positive.

I've never seen anything like it. So, just saying, it's worth a watch, okay.

Jody, what's with everything of wood mean? That's just a reference to so many of the idols back then.

The idols were either made of stone or wood, and so it's a reference to the idols. Lightning, lightning mentioned with the sword reminds me of the last day when the coming of Jesus is compared to a lightning flashing over the sky.

Is that a correct connection? Daniel, absolutely that is a correct connection. You'll note, you're picking up on aspects, and this is how we're supposed to read the

Bible. The Bible hyperlinks to itself, and let those clearer passages and let those passages that are dealing with the same thing help fill out your understanding of them.

I wonder how the modern wrath deniers reconciled their beliefs with Sodom, Noah's flood, the fall of Jerusalem.

Boy, Lilia, I legitimately don't know how they do it.

I think they basically just look at these events as if somehow God's wrath had no bearing or any participation in it, because they deny that God even has wrath.

You know, if you, if you really like. The mysteries aren't real. Yeah, right.

Oh, I do know how Brian McLaren denies it. Brian McLaren's way of denying it is actually quite clever.

What Brian McLaren does, his first move is to declare that the entire Bible is a product of human thinking.

And so we're gonna take the Bible, it's no longer the word of God, it's just the product of humans, and his contention is that humanity has developed a better understanding of God.

So in the Old Testament, this was the best that they can come up with in their belief that God was acting in wrathfully, but they didn't understand the true nature of God, which comes later, and so we've developed past that, okay?

The belief that God is a wrathful being, that's going back to the infancy of humanity, and it is silly for us to think things like this.

Theological snobbery. Right, exactly, but that's a clever argument. I think it's really clever, and most deceivers are, so.

And then, do they even spiritualize the events? No, they just basically say that the authors recorded them falsely.

But in McLaren's case, he says that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in no way is about God's wrath, okay?

At least not against Sodomites, and he even bristles at that topic, that language, so.

Okay, we are to the point where I have to go, so we are going to wrap up here.

There is no Sunday school next week, keep that in mind, but Lord willing, we'll see you guys at the different things that we're offering this week for Holy Week.

It's at 10 next week. And the church service itself, the Kongsvinger Church service is at 10 a .m.,