Revelation 16 Cont

Okay. Well, good morning.

You'll open set with a word of prayer. Good morning, Father. We come to you this morning, Lord, with just a grateful heart that we can gather as members of the church, your body of Christ here,

Father. And we just appreciate your word. Father, I appreciate the teachers that you have sent to this church to teach your people,

Lord. And I just ask that you use Brother Mike, Pastor Keith, as they teach here today,

Lord, and make our hearts receptive to your word. For these things we pray in Christ Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Alright. Let's go back to where we left off, which was

Ezekiel chapter 16. Anybody remember the, it was like a pop quiz.

What was the first time we saw the word harlot used in Scripture? We shechem.

Shechemites. And that was just an opening of, hey, what do you don't do? You don't mistreat a woman because it's treating her like a harlot, because that's the word that was used.

And then the next time, we're not going to do all of them, but, and the next one was, anybody remember? It was 38.

38, yep. And 38 was who? That's actually pretty significant in the sense of how in redemptive history, what comes, anybody remember what comes about because of Tamar and Judah?

She's listed the genealogies of Jesus. Because of what had happened, what had happened was, is it saved the seed of the

Messiah from Judah, because remember it had been cut off from Ur, what was it? Ur, Onan, and then

Shelah, and the seed was carried on, the promise that the seed would come through Judah was carried on with it. But then we continued on, and you had the continual pattern of what would happen when you get to the

Mosaic legislation, what did you do to a harlot? Stone them. Stone them, or burn them.

Matter of fact, in this particular case, when Judah thought that she had actually played the whore, and she did, but she did it with him, he said, you bring her out and burn her, because that's what was done.

Hey, even if you go back, anybody ever heard of Hammurabi's Code? Anybody? All right.

You've seen it live. You helped him write it, didn't you? Hammurabi's Code is really significant in history.

You can look it up online and see it. It's obviously, it's in CUNY form, I mean, Howard Glyphics or whatever they call it.

And it is one of the oldest written laws at the time of the patriarchs, it would have been the time of Abraham, that actually talked about the

God of the Most High. Some people believe that Hammurabi could have been a believer. I don't know, but we know this, the laws that he put in place were just holy and right.

And part of that law was, what do you do with an adulterer or an adulteress?

He said, I mean, this is how it should be, and the Mosaic law does it the same way. He said, what do you do when a person commits adultery?

You stone them. What do you do with the adulteress? Stone them. He said, that's what you do, or burn them.

You execute them. So even then, he says, if these two were caught in the act, not an accusation, but caught in the act, they were to be put to death.

Well, that continues on into the Mosaic legislation. And it's interesting that even before the

Mosaic law comes, there were things that were culturally accepted that then were codified in the

Mosaic legislation, whether it was execution of adultery, rape, those types of things. And even the level right marriage was something, because that's what this was all about, was the level right marriage.

And then it winds up being codified in the Mosaic legislation. So we continue on.

We saw through the prophets. We didn't go through all of them, but you saw through the prophets the continual pattern of whoredom.

Even in Isaiah, he uses not only the idea of whoredom and adultery, but he also uses the idea of, it's in chapter 1,

I think it's verse 21. If somebody wants to look it up, they can. I think it's Isaiah 121. He actually calls them

Sodom. So he makes, he calls them Sodom no less than four times in Isaiah.

He calls Jerusalem Sodom. And he also calls them adulterous, fornicators, immoral, all these things that demanded the execution.

But then you go on to some of the minor prophets. You'll see it. It's difficult.

I'd really like to spend a lot of time on Hosea because it's so significant. But Hosea, he's actually told to go marry a harlot.

And if anybody ever read that book in one sitting, it's a little bit long. I think it's like 14 chapters,

I think. 13 or 14. If you could sit and read it in one sitting, it doesn't break up the narrative.

But it starts right at the beginning in chapter 1. This is what I want you to do. You're going to go marry a harlot.

And what she's going to do is she's going to have children of harlotry. And then he begins to tell them what the names are going to be. And each one of them points to the idolatry of the northern kingdom.

Not that he didn't care about the southern kingdom, but specifically dealing with the northern kingdom. And it was the continual pattern of the nation of Israel going into whoredom.

Remember we went through the judges? If you just backed up, here's Hosea. If we backed up to the time of the judges, you may remember what it said in Judges 2.

It says that when the descendants of Joshua, the elders that had followed

Joshua, and Joshua died, it says that next generation began to play the harlot with the

Baals around them. They began to play with the nations around them, play the harlot.

And then it goes on into, anybody remember Gideon last week?

Remember I told you, how did they play the harlot with Gideon? Y 'all didn't know it was pop quiz.

The what? They made that, he constructed that ephod. Yeah, and what was the significance of an ephod?

We didn't talk about that last week, but what was the significance of an ephod? Well, it represented him, so they were...

And the priesthood. Right. Yeah, and the priesthood. So what they did is they looked at Gideon, remember, hey,

I look here, I can't be your king, but you can look at this thing that I made. And it says that because of Gideon, they began to play the harlot.

Once again, we're seeing what harlotry, real adultery, real prostitution, is looked at as the same thing in God's eyes as far as spiritual infidelity.

That's what the whole book of Hosea was about. Look, I came to you, I provided all these things for you, and you went out and you played the harlot.

That's what Hosea... And a lot of people believe that Hosea... I say a lot, let me back it up.

This is not conservative or liberal scholars. In Hosea's case, some believe that God didn't really tell him to go marry a whore.

He says, hey, just go marry a girl that's in idolatry. That...

What's that? They just didn't look at the... He clearly says it. Well, they're trying to spiritualize something, and I can make the argument that, look, that's not what

God told him to do. He says, I want you to go marry a harlot so that it will be a picture of your infidelity to me.

He didn't say, hey, go marry a bail worshiper to show that it's an infidelity to me.

Go marry an actual prostitute so that it shows that your infidelity is just at...

Your idolatry is as equal to me as adultery.

And if you read... And we'll finish reading Ezekiel here in a second. You read Hosea and just as Jeremiah is so in tune with God as he's prophesying to the nation for those 41 years, so it was with Hosea.

He was so in tune with God that you see that God's heart is absolutely broken over the nation's idolatry.

I have counseled multiple people, both the husband committing adultery and the wife committing adultery.

And it is almost an insurmountable amount of ground to cover to restore those two people, especially if one's not a believer.

You have two believers, that happens. Well, at least you have the spirit of reconciliation that lives within the heart.

If there's true repentance, that can happen. But when you have an unbeliever and a believer, that's almost irreconcilable.

So as we continue to read through Ezekiel, last week we began to read through how he said, look, when you were born, you were laid out to be left alone.

He says, nobody even cut your umbilical cord. And he says, what did

God say He came along and did in the first part of chapter 16? Remember? Wiped off the blood. Came and cleaned you and picked you up.

Yeah, and when there was nobody there to... And this is Middle Eastern, what they did to babies.

They salted their skin. And I think one translation says they wrapped them in swaddling clothes.

It's interesting that when we get to the New Testament, what did they do with Jesus? Wrapped Him in swaddling clothes.

So he says, look, there was nobody there to care for you. And what did I do? I came along and saw that you were in need.

I cleaned you up. I gave you everything that you could possibly need. Hey, even in that situation with Ezekiel, it echoes also back to the

Isaiah of the vineyard passage to where although the parable...

Good morning. The parable is different, but the meaning, what it's trying to convey is the same.

Remember when the vineyard? God says, look, I came. I gave you a vineyard. I dug it out.

I gave you everything you needed to produce good fruit. I gave you the vineyard.

I gave you the moat. I gave you the fertilizer. I did everything for you, and your vineyard produced nothing but rotten grapes.

He says in Ezekiel, look, I came to you. I took you out of your inability to take care of yourself and began to take care of you.

I put you in the plushest place. I gave you the best of gold. I gave you the best of clothing.

Remember, he says, hey, I put a necklace on you. I put earrings on you. I made you the most beautiful thing in all of the land.

Look, I gave you everything that you possibly would need to stay faithful to me, but what did they do?

They became unfaithful. They became unfaithful. And we will pick up in Ezekiel 16 in verse 30.

Now how languishing is your heart, declares the Lord God. While you do all of these things, these actions of a bold -faced harlot, when you built your shrine at the beginning of every street and made your high places in every square, in disdaining money, you were not like a harlot.

Here it is. He's been talking about harlotry. He's been talking about infidelity as worshiping other gods, and here's what he calls them.

You adulterous wife who takes strangers instead of her own husband.

Look, he said, look, you were supposed to follow me, and what did you want? You wanted something else. You wanted something that would give you something that I provided for you, but you just wanted something else.

Men give gifts to all harlots, but you give your gifts to all the lovers to bribe them to come to you from every direction for your harlotry.

And I think I mentioned this last week. Look, he's saying, look, most harlots, they have people come to them and pay them for their services.

He says, you're not the every run -of -the -mill prostitute. He says, you actually are paying people to have sex with you.

He says, you're worse than the regular harlot. And then he says in verse 34, thus you were different from the women of your harlotries in that no one plays the harlot as you do because you give money.

And you give money, and no money is given to you, thus you are different. Verse 35, therefore, oh harlot, hear the word of the

Lord. Thus says the Lord God, because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all of the detestable idols.

You see the connection? Harlotry, whoredom, and then idols. Therefore, behold,

I will gather all of your lovers with whom you took pleasure, even all those whom you love and all those whom you have hated.

So I will gather them against you from every direction and expose your nakedness to them that they may see your nakedness.

We've talked about it before. What is the exposing of one's nakedness to do? Shame. Is shame bad?

Think about it for a second. Is shame bad? Nakedness is not bad because when they were in the garden, it says that Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed.

But it's good. Yeah, it's shame if even when talking with guys, he said, well, one, this has been just a couple of weeks ago, he says, man,

I feel guilty. I'm like, well, are you? He says, why do I feel guilty? I don't know. Are you guilty?

He says, well, I don't know. I was like, well, normally if you feel guilty, I said, I don't know your heart.

I don't know what you do in your private time. I don't know where you go at night. I says, if you feel guilty, why?

Because normally if you feel guilty, it's because you've done something. Then when that guilt, that feeling of guilt is then either brought to light, people know about it, or you're caught, what does that bring about?

Shame. Therefore, I don't believe that shame in and of itself is bad.

It is something that God has given to the conscience of men and women so that when you are in sin, you should be ashamed of the things that you're thinking and doing and that should cause repentance.

I don't think you should run around and doubt your salvation, but I often say you should be at times in your life where you go, man,

I call myself a Christian, and the things that I say and do at times just don't reflect that.

That should bring shame. It should bring shame. Shame then should bring repentance. It says here in verse 38,

Thus I will judge you, here it is, Thus I will judge you like women who commit adultery, and look what he compares it to, or shed blood or judge.

Okay, so what do you do? We've already said it. What do they do with adulterers? Adulterers and adulteress, what do they do?

Execute them. And what do you do with murderers? Okay, that's what he said. Look, he's putting those two together.

So he has taken spiritual idolatry is equal to whoredom, and he's also now taken idolatry and adultery and connected it to murder because of the penalty.

He says then, And I will bring on you the blood of the wrath and jealousy.

You remember when they came out of the land of Egypt, God told them,

My name is Jealous. Anybody remember that? He said, My name is Jealous. Hey, is jealousy good? Yeah, man, you better believe it, because I tell you what,

I'm jealous about my wife, and another man puts his hands on my wife, it's fight time. Okay, it's fight time.

You should be jealous of your bride. Women should be jealous of their husband.

That's what's being said here. God was jealous towards his bride.

Who was his bride? Israel. Yeah, Israel. We could just say both northern and southern kingdom.

He had the right. Yes, sir. Is this power to the people or hand -raising? But you know what?

Now, the distinction between envy and jealousy, because God never says

I'm an envious guy. He says I'm a jealous guy. But we know envy is, you know. Well, envy has the idea of this.

Go ahead. It has the idea of discontentment. Discontentment, and you want that person to, let's say you had something that I wanted.

This is what it means. I want your Suzuki truck. He said you can have it.

Are you going to trade or what? Are you raising your hand? Go ahead.

It is, yeah. And part of covetousness and envy has the idea of I want what you have, and then when

I have what you have, I want you to want it from me. That's envy.

I want you to desire what I have because then you can't have it. That's covetousness. What is covetousness?

Desiring something that you cannot have in and of itself. Now, there is, just like you should be jealous between a husband and a wife,

I think there should be a lust between a husband and a wife. Okay? There's a good type of that, a desire for one another.

In this case, it's a desire for something that you have, then once I have it, I want you to want it from me.

That's envious. Jealousy is God saying, Look, I purchased you.

I brought you out of the land of Egypt. You're supposed to follow me. I made a covenant with you.

You agreed to those terms and conditions, even before he gave them to them, but even when they brought them down, and they did, once the tablets were broken,

Moses went back up there, got the law again. They still agreed to those terms and conditions. Remember that. They always agreed to the terms and conditions, before they were written down and even after.

They agreed. Therefore, when a man and a woman take vows, the I do's, the I do's to love and to cherish and to stay faithful and all of those things, okay, you agreed to that, and if those are broken through the monogamous relationship, well, then the consequences now are going to be worked out.

In God's case, he was very patient with them. Should God have executed the nation of Israel in the

Old Testament immediately, when they started bowing down to the golden calf?

Yep, sure should have. Matter of fact, he was going to, and Moses said, hold up.

Let me take care of that. You take, wipe me out. And God says,

I'll wipe all of them out and start with you. And most everybody was like, cool,

God really likes me. Moses said, no, no, no, no, don't do that, because of your great name, then your name will be defamed among all the nations that you brought these people out here to kill them.

It's because God was jealous. He was jealous. You should worship me and me only.

And then he says here that in verse 39, I will give you over into the hand of your lovers.

They will tear down your shrines, demolish your high places.

Okay, were shrines and high places wrong? It's a no -brainer. Of course, what were the high places made for?

What's that? Yeah, places, and they were also made for places of idolatry, because what did you do on the high places?

You made yourself closer to the gods. And what were shrines made of for? For housing the teraphim, the idols.

The teraphim is idols. You just gave me a crazy look. She said like this.

Teraphim is the house of idols. You remember in Judges, what did they do? They made a house with Micah, and it was the place, the shrine,

Micah's shrine was a place to hold the idols. So here it is. You demolish, they will demolish those things.

They will strip you of your clothing. They will take your jewels. They will leave you naked and bare.

They will incite the crowd against you. They will stone you, cut you into pieces with swords, and here it is, and they will burn your houses with fire, execute judgments on you in the sight of many women, and then

I will stop you from playing the harlot, and you will also no longer pay your lover.

So I will calm my fury against you. My jealousy will depart from you, and I will be pacified and be angry no more, because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me by all of these things.

Behold, I in turn will bring your conduct down on your own head.

Look, God says, hey, I'm going to do this because of what you have done, then he says this, so that you will not commit this lewdness on top of all of these other abominations.

Now, he's like, look, the reason why I'm bringing this destruction on Jerusalem, remember, when was

Ezekiel, was the temple still standing when Ezekiel was prophesying?

Yes. He came in. He was part of this deportation.

He started his prophetic work probably 592 -591.

Would you probably? That's what you said. So, this here is when his prophetic ministry, it was the full destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the house of God wasn't until this.

But this is what he is saying. Look, this hasn't happened yet. It's almost as if you still have an opportunity to repent.

If you repent of your idolatry, I won't execute you. If you repent of your whoredom,

I will not smash you. But there does come to a point where God says, all right, I'm done. I'm done. Now, take your

Bible and turn it over to Ezekiel 23. Can anybody read

Ezekiel 23? All right. This is basically a story.

God makes a... He's going to give a parable. And there's no question as to who he's talking about here.

This is what's great about this. People can do hermeneutical hopscotch to try to say, well, he wasn't talking about them. He wasn't talking about them.

Wait until you hear this. Ezekiel 23 beginning verse 1.

And the word of the Lord came to me again saying, son of man, there were two women.

The daughters of one mother, and they played the harlot in Egypt. Now, right at the beginning, it's telling you these people had come out of Egypt and they were playing the harlot in Egypt.

So your mind should go back. Okay, what were they doing in Egypt? Were they really a covenantal people when they were in Egypt?

Technically, yes. It had not been ratified with the Mosaic legislation, but they were under the

Abrahamic promise. Remember, when Jacob and his descendants went in and stayed in Goshen while Joseph was in the house of Pharaoh being the prime minister, they were still under the

Abrahamic promise and covenant to do what? Circumcision and follow

God, follow Yahweh. He says they played the harlot in their youth.

There their breasts were pressed, and there their virgin bosom was fondled.

Their names were Ahola, the elder, and Aholaba, her sister.

All right, I've often wanted to preach this passage and just call it sister -wise because if you read it, that's what it is.

He says, look, I have married two sisters. One is Ahola and the other one is

Aholaba. And then he says this, and they became mine, and they bore sons and daughters, and as for their names, here it is.

There is no question as to who he's talking about now. Samaria is

Ahola, and Jerusalem is Aholaba. Okay, what was the significance of Samaria?

The northern kingdom, and specifically the northern kingdom's capital of the northern kingdom.

What's the significance of Jerusalem? Capital of Judah, okay?

So there it is. There's basically two cities. He says Ahola played the harlot when she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers, after the

Assyrians, her neighbors who were clothed in purple, and governors and officials, and all them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses.

You know what, they made alliances with Assyria and with Egypt. All these things that God told them they were not supposed to do, they did.

And then God eventually says, that's who you want? You want them, not me? I'm going to give it to you. Verse 7 says,

And she bestowed her harlotries on them, all of whom were the choicest men of Assyria, and with all whom she lusted after, with all their idols, she defiled herself.

Once again, you're seeing the connection between whoredom, harlotry, and idolatry, idols.

She did not forsake her harlotries from the time of Egypt, for in her youth men had lain with her, and they handled or followed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust on her.

Therefore I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted, and they uncovered her nakedness.

They took her sons and her daughters, but they slew her with the sword. Thus she became a byword among women, and they executed judgments on her.

This is basically a summary of what God did to Samaria, the northern kingdom that had departed.

Why did the northern kingdom depart from the southern kingdom? Do you remember why it happened?

It was idolatry. Remember what was the two times the

Lord came to Solomon and said, cut it out. What did He tell

Solomon to cut out? He was worshiping the idols of his plethora of wives.

He set up high places. He set up shrines. And God entreated him twice, not through a prophet, not through some other mouthpiece.

In 1 Kings, it says God came to him and says, hey man, cut it out. And then he did not.

And God says, because you didn't cut it out, I'm not going to wipe you out, but I should wipe you out for your sins.

He says, but because of my love for David and my covenant with him, I'm not going to. As a matter of fact,

I'm not even going to wipe it out in your lifetime. What I'm going to do is I'm going to cause these other nations to now, which had a hedge of protection from coming into you,

I'm going to begin to be a scourge to you. And then I'm going to split the nation into two.

I'm going to give one to your servant, one to your son. One's going to go to Jeroboam and one's going to go to Rehoboam.

And what did Jeroboam do once the kingdom split? Go ahead. Put a high place up there.

That way they wouldn't come worshiping Jerusalem. That's right. But he didn't. He put two. One was in Samaria.

And he said, you know what? One's in Samaria might be a little too far for them to come. We'll put a golden calf up there and we'll call it

Yahweh. But then we'll put one down in Bethel. That way for those that can't get all the way up there, they can just hop the border from Judah basically and come worship idolatry in Bethel.

And it was the continual pattern of the northern kingdom to follow the idols, follow the

Egyptians, make alliances with them, make alliances with the Assyrians, make alliances with all of these other nations around them other than trusting

God. In here, verse 11. Now her sister Aholava saw this.

Yet she was more corrupt in her lust than she. Now, the northern kingdom was pretty bad.

And what does it say here? She's worse. It says that her harlotry were more than the harlotry of her sister.

She lusted after the Assyrians, the governors, the officials, the ones near, magnificently dressed, the horsemen riding in horses, all of them desirable young men.

And I saw that she had defiled herself. They both took the same way.

Look. He says, you saw what I did to your sister. And if you remember what Jeremiah told them, he under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit, the prophetic word from Jeremiah says, look, you saw what

I did to your sister in 722. Now, he didn't give them the date. He said, hey, you saw what I did to your sister.

Did you see? I actually wiped her clean from the land. Now, I don't believe that the ten tribes were lost, as per se.

We don't know who they are. I do believe they were just intermarried and dispersed into a diaspora of the Assyrian empire, never to return into the land.

Okay? So he says, you saw what I did to them, and you are now not caring.

I will do the same to you. That's what Jeremiah says. Jeremiah says, God will do the same thing to you and more if you don't cut your harlotry.

It says in verse 13, and I saw that she had defiled herself, played in the same way, 14.

So she increased her harlotries, and she saw the men portrayed on the wall, images of the

Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girded with belts on their loins, and flowing turbans on their heads, and all of them looking like officers like the

Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth. Why would they say the

Babylonians, the land of their birth? Because that's where they're... What's that?

Anybody say that? Abraham came out of the land of the Chaldeans. Remember, he's the first Hebrew. He was bowing down to pagan gods, and God says, all right,

Abraham, pack up your stuff and leave. Well, where am I going? I'll tell you when you get there.

Pack up. And he says here in verse 16, and when she saw them, she lusted after them, sent messengers to the

Chaldeans. The Babylonians came to her, to the bed of her love, and defiled her with their harlotry.

And when she had been defiled by them, she became disgusted with them. She uncovered her harlotries and uncovered her nakedness.

Then, and I became disgusted with her as I had become disgusted with her sister.

Yet, she multiplied her harlotries, remembering the days of her youth when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

She lusted after the paramours. What's a paramour? What's that?

Yeah. Look, he said, you lusted after all of your illicit lovers.

Look, he says, you lusted after everything that walked by. You lusted after and wanted everything else other than me, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys, whose issue is like the issue of the horses.

Thus, you longed for the lewdness of your youth when the Egyptians handled your bosom because of the breast of your youth.

Hey, that is even an echo back to when they left the land of Egypt, what did they say they wanted to do?

I want to go back. I want to go back. I want to go back. Hey, they just saw all the dead bodies of the

Egyptians floating up on the Red Sea, and what did they say when they didn't have water?

Well, man, yeah, you brought us out here to die. We had everything in Egypt. Yeah, remember, we had the nice leeks and onions.

We had all of these things. We should just go back. Is that not playing the harlot?

You want to go back to the place of bondage? Remember, what did Egypt represent? The place of bondage.

The place of bondage. He says in verse 19, yet she multiplied her harlotry, remembering the days of her youth.

Oh, hey, let me skip on down. We only got about 10 minutes. Let's go to verse 22. Therefore, O Holaba, thus says the

Lord God, Behold, I will arouse your lovers against you, from whom you were alienated, and I will bring them against you from every side, the

Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoah, Koah, and the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, governors and officials of them, officers, men of renown, all of them riding on horses.

They will come against you with weapons, chariots, wagons, and with the company of peoples.

They will set themselves against you on every side with the buckler, the shield, and helmet, and I will commit the judgment to them, and they will judge you according to their customs.

I will set my jealousy against you that they may deal with you in wrath.

They will remove your nose and your ears, remove from your nose, remove your nose, remove from your nose and your ears, and the survivors will fall by the sword, and they will take your sons and daughters, and your survivors will be consumed by the fire.

Once again, what did they do to prostitutes? Burn them.

This is very important, because when we get to Revelation 17 and 18, it's very clear what happens to the city and the people, the whole of Babylon.

They burn it and stone it. And then verse 22,

I'm sorry, verse 27, Thus I will make your lewdness, your harlotry brought from the land of Egypt to cease from you so that you will not lift up your eyes to them or remember

Egypt anymore. For thus says the Lord, Behold, I will give you into the hand of those whom you hate and to the hand of those whom you were alienated.

They will deal with you in hatred, take all your property, and they will leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your harlotries will be uncovered.

Once again, you're going to be put to shame. Both your lewdness and your harlotries these things will be done to you because you have played the harlot with the nations, because you have defiled yourself with their idols.

You have walked in the way of your sister. Therefore, I will give her the cup into your hand.

And thus says the Lord God, You will drink your sister's cup, which is deep and wide, and you will be laughed, and you will be held in derision, and it contains much.

You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, and the cup of horror and desolation, the cup of your sister, you will drink it and drain it, and you will gnaw its fragments, and they will tear your breast, for I have spoken, declares the

Lord. Look, it talks about drunkenness here, being intoxicated.

Hey, I think we can all agree. Sin makes you stupid, right?

We agree. What does sexual sin make you do? It will make you incredibly stupid. It will make you absolutely blind.

And that is what has happened to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Her sins had made her blind.

And as her normal run -of -the -mill sins that became unrepentant, she then went to worse sins, which was harlotry.

And once she became into the harlotry, not only was she stupid then, because actually if you remember what it says in one of the prophets, it says you are stupid children.

That's what God called it. You're stupid children over your sin. Now, because they have now played the harlot, not only are they stupid, they're incredibly stupid and they're blind because of their drunkenness.

He says in verse 36, Moreover, the Lord said to me, Son of man, will you judge

Ahola and Aholahba? Then declare to them their abominations, for they have committed adultery.

Here it is. Once again, idolatry is spiritual adultery.

They have committed adultery. Blood is in their hands. Thus, they have committed adultery with their idols and have caused their sons, whom they bore, to pass through the fire to them as food.

Again, they have done this to me. They have defiled my sanctuary. On the same day, they have profaned my

Sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered my sanctuary on the same day to profane it.

And lo, thus they did within my house. You hear what they did?

They offered their sons and daughters into the flames of Moloch.

And then, what did he say y 'all did? Y 'all, after you did that, after you executed the sons and daughters that I gave to your wives, the fruit of their womb, remember it's the

Lord that gives life, he says, I gave them the fruit of their womb, you took the very fruit that I gave you, the seed that I gave you in your stomach, and then you burned it in the fire towards another idol, and then you've got the audacity to walk into my sanctuary and act like you want to worship me.

That's what he says. Verse 40, and we'll wrap it up here.

Furthermore, they have sent for men and have come from afar to whom messengers were sent.

And lo, they came for whom you have bathed, you've painted your eyes, you've decorated yourself with ornaments, you have sat on a splendid couch with the table arranged before you on which you had set my incense and my oil.

The sound of the carefree multitude was with her, and the drunkards were brought from her, from the wilderness with men and with the common sword.

They put bracelets on their hands of the women and beautiful crowns on their heads.

And then I said concerning her who was worn out by adulteries, will they now commit adultery with her when she is this?

In other words, hey, after I make an open shame, do they still want her? But they went in to her as they would go in to a harlot.

And thus they went in to Ahola and Aholaba, the lewd women, but they righteous men will judge them and judge the adulteress with the judgment of the women who shed blood.

Because they are adulteresses and the blood is in their hands. He says, look, they're going to judge you because of your idolatry.

Your idolatry is spiritual adultery. You say, Mike, you keep beating that drum.

You better believe I'm going to beat the drum. Because when you get to Revelation, it's very significant.

If all of Revelation is rooted into the Old Testament and God destroys the whore of Babylon, Babylon, Jerusalem, has already been called twice in the book of Revelation Sodom and Egypt.

Now, what has he even said here? Y 'all have made harlotries with who?

Babylon. He said it right up here in the earlier parts of this chapter. You have now embraced

Babylon. Well, when you get to Revelation, why is God going to...

Once we figure out who Babylon is, God's going to destroy Babylon for what? Idolatry, which is?

Spiritual adultery. Let me write this down. Here's the biggest part.

Next week, we'll go through who Babylon is over the course of church history.

But this is important. Who did

God make a covenant relationship with? Israel.

None of these. None of these. I don't even care if you want to say

Roman Catholic Church. And this will be something we'll hit next week.

God made a covenant with Israel. Therefore, could any of these nations have committed adultery with God?

No. Therefore, there's only one nation that fits

Babylon of Revelation. Only one nation is

Babylon code for the nation of Israel. I would say yes.

I would say yes. He's already called them Sodom. He's already called them Egypt.

How many times through the prophets were they called Sodom? Gomorrah. Now, I do want to say this.

You think that calling a nation a harlot was just something God threw around. Now, I will have to say this.

There are two other nations that God said were harlots. And one was

Tyre. And that's significant because reading through 17 and 18, we're going to see that God's using terminologies of the splendor and the glory that was brought in Isaiah 14, 23, and 24 that he talks about Tyre.

He talks about Jerusalem. And then the other was Nineveh.

It was Nineveh. He called, if you remember, back in Nahum.

Remember John preached? They had a revival. It lasted about 90 to 100 years.

And then Nahum comes along and he says, hold up. Y 'all now have departed and you have become a harlot.

What was the idea? The idea was that Nineveh, the city, actually went into covenant relationship with who?

With Yahweh. And what did they do within 100 years? They apostatized.

What does God do to apostates? He executes them. What happened in 612? They melted the city from beneath basically.

They let the water run up underneath. And that was actually in Nahum the prophecy of what was going to take place is that the city would melt.

Well, what happens? They let the waters come up underneath with the Scythians, part of the Babylonians, maybe some of the

Medes. When they came in, they let the water run up underneath a city that was impenetrable and watched the city just crumble from underneath.