Ezekiel Part 29

All right, let's pray and we'll get into our text. Lord Jesus, again, 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, we are in the book of Ezekiel.

We got partway through chapter 21, but it feels like that was a month ago.

Does it feel like it was a month ago to you guys? Stephen Elliot is like, hmm, it might've been a month ago because there was like Holy Week and then there was

Easter and then we did the, yeah, I think it's been a while. So what

I'm going to do for the sake of clarity, we'll back up into the context in 21 because you can never get too much

Bible, right? And let's just go back to the beginning of the chapter and we'll work our way back through it.

24 is where we were at, but let's add the context. The word of Yahweh came to me.

Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem and 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 will draw my sword from its sheath and 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 have drawn my sword from its sheath and it shall not be sheathed again.

When we worked through this a while ago, you'll note that I pointed out this is not Precious Moments Jesus that we're dealing with here.

This is the Jesus that is very offensive to people who are liberal and progressive because they have something faulty in their theology.

Scripture says that God is love and this is most certainly true.

God is love. However, they have redefined things so that they actually kind of flip that sentence and in their way of thinking, love is

God and those two sentences are not the same. They are not the same at all and their definition of love is kind of an ooey, gooey, sentimental, don't rock the boat, don't whatever you do offend anybody.

Can't we all just get along kind of love? It's weird and as a result of it, the most unloving thing that you can do among those people is to rebuke somebody for teaching falsely.

If they say something that the Scriptures contradict, that person's wrong and you say, dude, what you just said contradicts the

Scriptures. Like, you've broken our rule. You can't do that. You have love and so you'll note this

Jesus here with his sword drawn, that's the real Jesus and God truly, we can see what he's like normally when we look at the cross where he's laid down his life for us but that does not mean that Christ is not without wrath.

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 and all knees will be weak as water. Behold, it is coming and it will be fulfilled declares the

Lord Yahweh and you'll note with a setup like that, have you ever had somebody who draws out a description of something?

Like, oh, I gotta tell you about what's happening. Oh, what's happening? Oh, it's the best thing ever. Really, really, tell me about it. Oh, you're not gonna believe it when you hear it.

Well, tell me already, would you, right? In this particular case, rather than it being positive, you'll note the whole thing is negative and what

Ezekiel is doing is going, oh, oh, oh, oh no.

Oh, what do you mean, oh no? Oh, it's terrible what's coming. Whoa, what's coming, right?

So he's doing the opposite of that and notice how he's really, at this point, drawing them in with his groaning and with his not giving details to the point where they, at this point, they are probably experiencing anxiety and dread.

Behold, it's coming. It'll be fulfilled declares the Lord Yahweh and the word of Yahweh came to me.

Son of man prophesy and thus says Yahweh. A sword, a sword is sharpened and also polished.

Sharpened for slaughter, polished to flash like lightning. Can you imagine delivering this message and them going, whoa, whoa, oh no, huh, huh?

You know, just the details are in such a way that the way it's described and the way it's delivered is to give maximum impact of like a fear of dread and doom and this is what

God wants them to experience. God wants them to experience dread and doom, yeah, because his hope is that they'll repent, right?

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

So the sword is given to be polished. Then it may be grasped in the hand and 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 attesting.

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

Lord, Yahweh. Good question, you know, so God's basically saying, listen, I tried disciplining you.

I tried correcting what's going wrong here and you wouldn't listen, you despised the rod.

You took no discipline whatsoever so now the only thing that's left for you is a sword.

And from time to time, I'll preach along these lines. I'll say to people that God will eventually give people what they want, right?

When we talk about God going all Burger King on people. Again, always I'm showing my age, you know.

Remember those commercials? Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, you know. Have it your way at Burger King.

All you kids are looking at me like, what on earth is he talking about, right? It was a thing, okay? The whole point was is that, you know, they were trying to distinguish themselves against McDonald's because McDonald's, you know, they have a very formulaic way of doing things and if you want a

Big Mac with no pickles on it, back in the day, that was pretty tough to get a special order like that. But oh man,

Burger King, they gave you what you wanted. But that's the way it works with them with God.

You don't want mercy? You don't want to be forgiven of your sins?

You won't take God's correction? Okay, that's all right.

There is another option. You ain't gonna like it, but there is another option.

And that's his wrath. So you'll note, this is kind of an interesting thing, is that oftentimes people accuse

God of being very belligerent, somehow being manipulatively coercive.

This is how the liberals talk. They'll say, you know, we don't believe that God sends anybody to hell.

I mean, seriously, how can God be love and then send somebody to hell? I mean, isn't that just, this language of hell and stuff like that, that's the language of coercion and things of this nature.

But you'll note that when preaching the gospel, hell is not part of the presentation.

You'll note that when God gives us good news, Christ died for our sins, it's not like he's saying, and if you don't believe, you're gonna go to hell.

That rarely shows up as a theme in scripture. It does show up, and that's not to say that hell isn't real, it is absolutely real.

But you'll note that God lets the good news of the gospel stand on its own as good news with the idea that each and every one of us has the law of God written on our hearts, having it written upon our hearts.

You'll note that when we hear the law and we hear that we haven't measured up to it, you know what we often say?

Yep, that's right. And so we feel the convicting work of the spirit through the preached law.

And so God brings the gospel to us in the context of the law. However, you know, the discussion of hell comes up, and Christ is the one who preached of hell the most out of anybody in all of scripture.

I think that's fascinating. But you'll note, the ones who refuse to believe, who don't wanna repent, you don't wanna be forgiven, okay.

Scripture describes them in weird language. It says of them, they do not find themselves worthy of eternal life.

They haven't deemed themselves worthy of eternal life, so they get the other thing, right? As for you, son of man, prophesy.

Clap your hands, 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 many stumble.

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

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

I, Yahweh, have spoken. And you'll note that he's already said that both the righteous and the unrighteous will know that he is

Yahweh when this is fulfilled. So there's kind of the idea God wants then. Ezekiel prophesied it.

These people knew it was coming. God fulfilled the words of Ezekiel because they weren't Ezekiel's words, they were

God's words. And when destruction finally came upon them, they went, oh, whoa, Yahweh is real.

Too late, right? So the word of Yahweh came to me again. 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. Make a signpost. Make it at the head of the way to a city.

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

When I preached on this, I taught on this a few weeks back, you know, if you guys remember the television show

MASH, right, they had those big signposts, this many miles to Tokyo, here's to New York City, and all the different directions.

Here, God has instructed Ezekiel to set up a signpost saying Jerusalem's this way.

Be sure to follow that path right here. And I don't know if you put down the miles as to how far it is, how

Jerusalem, how far away it was, but that's kind of the point, that, you know, God had Ezekiel set up a signpost so that the soldiers marching from Babylon to Jerusalem would know the way to go.

It's this way. And God told him to do that. You could just see them, what are you doing?

Well, God told me to set up a signpost, say this way to Jerusalem. Here's how you get to Rabbah, you know. Do you know the way to San Jose?

Sorry. Slipping into some older songs. Again, showing my age. Somebody pointed out that the 1980s are closer to the 50s than we are to the, yeah, this getting old thing is for the birds.

Alas, I digress. All right, so mark a way for the sword to come to Rabbah, of the Ammonites and to Judah, and into Jerusalem the fortified.

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 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.

Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because you have made your guilt to be remembered, in that your transgressions are uncovered, so that in all your deeds your sins appear, because you have come to remembrance, you shall be taken in hand.

Now listen to the language that God is using here to talk about how our sins are dealt with, okay?

So, one way you can talk about Jesus' death on the cross is that our guilt is remembered no more, why?

Because Christ has bled and died for our sins. Our transgressions are covered by the blood of the

Lamb. People can talk this way, right? And because of that, none of our deeds appear before the eyes of God.

This is very good news. But to the impenitent, the opposite is true.

And so, God is saying, because you have made your guilt to be remembered, I offered you forgiveness,

God says. I gave you full pardon if you wanted it. And they said, no thanks, we're good.

We're fine, God, all right? And your transgressions are then uncovered, kind of like nakedness, so that in all your deeds your sins appear, because you have come to remembrance, you shall be taken in hand.

Over and again, I love the way the Scriptures describe for us the way the

Gospel works. And the pictures in Scripture are so, so wonderful, and very comforting.

Colossians 2, again, is one of my favorites, where Paul says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy or empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, not according to Christ.

That would include today's modern liberal woke folk, by the way, okay, that's all post -modernism, stay away from that, it's a plague.

For in Christ, the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority.

In him, you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by the putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

We read this last week in our Do Christians Need to be Torah Observant lesson. Having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead, and you who were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh,

God has made you alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. That text never gets old for me, never.

Over and over again, the entire record of debt. Every one of your sins written in the book.

The whole section that those things are recorded in, the whole thing has been torn out of your book and nailed to the cross.

So when you stand before Christ on the day of judgment, none of your sins will ever be remembered by God.

Not one of them. That's a pretty good deal. And if you find a better deal, let me know because I don't think a better deal exists.

All we rebel sinners have had the entire record of debt that stood against us canceled and it nailed to the cross.

So here, because you've made your guilt to be remembered, God says, in that your transgressions are uncovered, that doesn't sound very smart to me, so that in all your deeds your sins appear because you've come to remembrance, you shall be taken in hand.

And you, oh profane, wicked one, prince of Israel whose day has come, the time of your final punishment, thus says the

Lord Yahweh. Remove the turban, take off the crown. Things shall not remain as they are.

Exalt that which is low and bring low that which is exalted. A ruin, ruin, ruin,

I will make it. That's a three ruinous thing. That's a ruin, ruin, ruin.

Ruin, ruin, ruin, I will make it. This also shall not be until he comes, the one to whom judgment belongs, and I will give it to him.

Verse 27, this shall also not be until he comes, the one to whom judgment belongs.

Who is that referring to? Jesus. Isn't it fascinating that in the prophets of the

Old Testament, just interwoven, are these threads that clearly cannot find any other explanation except for that they are prophesying of Christ.

Fascinating. And you, son of man, you prophesy and say, thus says the

Lord Yahweh concerning the Ammonites, concerning their reproach. Say, a sword, a sword is drawn for the slaughter.

It is polished to consume and to flash like lightning, and while they see for you false visions, while they divine lies for you, to place you on the necks of the profane wicked whose day has come, the time of their final punishment.

Return it to its sheath in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin. I will judge you, and I will pour out my indignation upon you.

I will blow upon you with the fire of my wrath, and I will deliver you into the hands of brutish men skillful to destroy.

You shall be fuel for the fire. You're gonna be a bunch of logs thrown into a campfire. Your blood shall be in the midst of the land, and you shall be no more remembered, for I, Yahweh, have spoken.

Now, a little bit of a note. While they see for you false visions, while they divine lies for you, to place you on the necks of the profane wicked, when

God permits false prophets, false prophecy to grow and to take over, and people put their trust in it, it is a judgment from God that shows that his intention is judgment on people, because if they heard a true prophet and listened to him, they might truly repent, and so listen to the words.

They see for you false visions, while they divine lies for you, to place you on the necks of the profane wicked. This is one of the reasons why

I fear for politics in the United States, because it's not the same choices that we've had in the past, okay?

You look at Biden, and you wonder how on earth is he even able to make a decision to like what he wants to have for breakfast in the morning, okay, and then you look at Trump, whose spiritual advisor is

Paula White, and remember her big prophecy about the angels coming from Africa that were gonna overturn the election results?

They clearly got lost in Albuquerque, but, you know, Bugs Bunny reference, but that being said,

I look at the state of affairs, spiritually, for America's right right now, and I don't see any hope, because they are listening to the wingnut wackerdoodle, false prophets and false prophetesses, and it just makes me wonder if God's basically saying, yeah, bad things are coming for you,

America. Just looking at this pattern going, eh, you know?

It would be one thing, you know, if Trump were a confessional Lutheran, and, you know, attended the divine service every week, and would have nothing to do with Paula White, and Ken Copeland, and people like that.

Then he wouldn't get elected. Then he wouldn't get elected. A Lutheran will never be elected President of the

United States, because everybody will play the Martin Luther card, okay? Martin Luther.

Martin Luther, you know, it's like, you know, because, you know, the

Pope is the Antichrist, and Martin Luther was an anti -Semite, so therefore you can't, no confessional

Lutheran. But if that was my choice, I would have much more faith, that there's a real decision that could be made that would result in some real positive good for the states.

But Trump, and Paula White, and Ken Copeland, and all the wingnuts that he surrounds himself with,

I sit there and go, how is this a good choice? Because I can't,

I can't interpret history apart from theology. In fact,

I don't think any Christian should. You can't interpret even current events apart from theology, and I'm not asking us to interpret events the way the dispensationalists do, with, you know, the

Book of Revelation open in one hand, and the newspaper in the other. That's not what I'm talking about. Instead, looking more like at Ezekiel, looking at Jeremiah, and saying, you know, there's something really off here.

Like really, really, really off. You know, so on the one hand, I can't vote for the one guy, but voting for the other guy doesn't, it theologically is off, and I don't know what to do about it, you know?

Because the option of the other guy is terrible, but I fear the unknown bit regarding the fact that this guy is surrounded by people who are legitimately agents of hell.

So, yeah, sorry, I'm thinking out loud. I'm using, I haven't been able to process what to do. Defund the government.

Yeah, not the police, just the government. All right, coming back.

A sword is drawn for slaughter, is polished to consume into flash like lightning, while they see for you false visions, while they divine lies for you, to place you on the necks of the profane wicked, whose day has come, the time of their final punishment.

Return it to its sheath. In the place where you were created, in the land of your origin, I will judge you.

Now, this is a weird sentence, okay? And tracking this down has led me on one of my fun little bunny trails that I go down from time to time, okay?

I've said it before, I'll say it again. If you saw the way I study, y 'all would be appalled, okay?

Because you'd sit there and go, why is he taking all these hours to get this far in his study when all he has to do is just read these texts, he'd be done in 30 minutes, okay?

But here's the reason. Because the footnotes are too good, okay? Which then, one footnote leads to another footnote, which then opens you up to a whole academic article that then opens you up to a discussion that people are having about these things, and you wouldn't have known that if you didn't go down the footnote path, okay?

The value of a book is always in the footnotes, just trust me when I tell you this, because when somebody has synthesized a whole lot of other work into their own book, you wanna get at their research, you wanna know what their primary sources were.

Similar thing here. Listen to the words again, and I want you to, I'm gonna ask you guys a question.

Return it to its sheath in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin,

I will judge you. Where does the final judgment take place?

Right. Yes! That's kind of the point. Okay, so I'm gonna say this.

This is a minor thread, this is not a major discussion. These are minor voices.

I read this and I sit there and go, since it's talking about God going to judge them in their final punishment, that's day of wrath, that's the return of Jesus kind of stuff.

And where are the nations judged? Everyone is gathered in the Valley of Har Megiddo, right?

It's in Israel. Where was Eden? I don't know.

And people sit there and go, well, it has to be in Mesopotamia. Okay, why? Because the

Tigris and the Euphrates are there. And my question is this. Were they there before the flood?

Or were those named the Tigris and the Euphrates after the flood? After the real

Tigris and Euphrates rivers? I would note that the global flood probably changed the geography of planet

Earth in such dramatic ways that it's super hard to figure out where anything was.

That being the case, God here, in this tiny little sentence that shows up, your initial response was, it sounds like Eden.

Right, and there is a minority of theologians who agree with you.

And this led me to an interesting track where I was reading a theologian who says,

I can't prove it, but this sentence hints at it that Jesus's crucifixion site was probably the place where the

Garden of Eden was and where his cross was planted was probably on the same spot where the

Tree of the Knowledge and Good and Evil was. He said, I can't prove it. Well, the thing, or they were like next to each other.

So they're on the same spot. And Christ, where he's crucified, it's right next to a garden tomb.

So all of that being said, there's the people who kind of delve deep into biblical typology and stuff like that, they see a sentence like this, and then they begin to sit there and go,

I wonder. I wonder. And the thing is, we can't prove it.

And it's questionable as to whether or not, since this is kind of a judgment against, an oracle against the

Ammonites, is God saying he's gonna judge the Ammonites in Ammon? That doesn't make any sense because it doesn't quite fit.

This final punishment is that I will judge you and I'm going to do so where?

In the land of your origin, where you were created. I know.

This is the reason why I point this out. I would let everybody know, the greatest training that I had for preparing me to be a pastor, aside from teaching my kids and my family the scriptures, was being a jungle cruise captain at Disneyland, okay?

My job was to point at things and say what they were. Okay, the backside of water, okay?

Things like this. There's not a lot of thought that goes into that, okay? But the idea here is that I'm just pointing this out and saying when you read different theologians and exegetes on this, there is a wider conversation that leads to a particular place with certain of these theologians, okay?

Just keep that in mind. I pointed out, not because it's definitive, it's not. But note that there are some theologians who read this and go, hmm, and that's all you can do.

Sometimes God, he leaves these little breadcrumbs and you just have to read the scriptures in depth and kind of slow everything down.

And you gather up all the breadcrumbs and go, where is this going, okay? All right, let me just come back there.

So the sword is polished to consume you. Return it to its sheath. I will pour out my indignation upon you.

I will blow upon you with the fire of my wrath and I will deliver you into the hands of brutish men and skillful to destroy.

You shall be fuel for the fire. Your blood shall be in the midst of the land. You shall no more be remembered for I, Yahweh, have spoken.

Now, a little bit of a note here. The clever atheist now speaks, okay?

The Bible can't be trusted. Well, why? Well, isn't it true that the word of God endures forever?

Yes, of course, right? In VDMA, right, that's the word of the Lord endures forever. Well, it says here that God's not gonna cause the

Ammonites to be remembered anymore, but he wrote it in a book that will never end, so they'll always be remembered.

Is that a contradiction? It's like, lean into this, you know. Right? And so you'll note the only memory that we have of them, really, is found in the scriptures, but being remembered no more.

Can you point me to where are the Ammonites today? Okay, that great body of Ammonite princes and people, and who are the great thinkers and theologians and technology innovators of the

Ammonites today? The dustbin of history. Yeah, they're in the dustbin of history, right? That's what is meant here, so keep that in mind.

So when you run across the clever atheist, just roll your eyes and say, you stupid. Okay, right?

It's the fool who says in his heart there is no God. It is not the wise and intelligent man.

Oh, gotta remember this, okay? You younger kids, if you go to college, you gotta understand this.

You are required to take Philosophy 101 in any liberal arts degree, okay? And if you take

Philosophy 101 at any university that is run by anybody that is pagan to any degree, the

Philosophy 101 teachers, the profs, they have a way of keeping score.

They put notches in their belt for every Christian kid. They knock that faith out of them.

And here's the thing. Philosophy 101 profs are idiots, all right?

If you're having trouble with your Philosophy 101 prof, come to me, I will give you ammunition.

You'll be walking in there with the theological equivalent of like grenades and a bazooka, and you'll be able to hold your ground against these guys.

So, yeah, that's right. Now, you won't get a good grade because they will owe you a grudge, but you will actually be able to stand your ground against them very handily because their arguments are garbage.

They're just scoobalon. So, anyway, that's what I'm here for, by the way.

So don't come back from college and go, oh, my Philosophy 101 prof, my whole faith is rocked right now.

No, I told you. Talk to me, we will mount a fun defense.

And Joshua, when he was a younger kid, we sent him to some schools where they didn't agree with certain things, and he was the most subversive person with the truth ever, okay?

So when we were homeschooling him, we were actually homeschooling him through the public school system, which was kind of interesting.

And so Josh got to participate in the science fair, okay? And Joshua came up with this wonderful idea to come up with a kind of an interactive science project that questioned the whole theory of evolution.

And basically, what he did is he had these two toys. One toy was completed and put together, and the other toy wasn't.

And all it was was like these series of gears. And it had like a handle and stuff like this, and you push them down onto this board.

And so he stuck all of the gears of the unfinished one into a fish tank and had something circulating the water. And the question was, how many millions of years will it take for it to create this thing that's down here?

No, they were not happy with it. So, yeah, so be super subversive with the truth.

The best way I can say it is scripture, Christ says, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

So there's Josh going, I was just doing a science experiment, right? But we don't like the conclusion this is going to.

All right, coming back to our text, chapter 22. So the word of Yahweh came to me saying, and you, son of man, will you judge the bloody city?

Then declare to her all of her abominations. You shall say, thus says the Lord Yahweh, a city that sheds blood in her midst so that her time may come, and that makes idols to defile herself.

You have become guilty by the blood that you have shed and defiled by the idols that you have made and you have brought your days near.

The appointed time of your years has come. Now, a little bit of a note. Have you noticed that as godlessness increases, that oftentimes violence increases?

Hmm, when there are no morals, what happens? Societal collapse.

I was on social media and was, across my feet on X came these liberal pundits who were screaming to high heaven about the racism of what's going on in Florida.

I'm thinking, what's going on in Florida? And so, you know, I followed the links that they were providing and it turns out, get this,

Governor DeSantis, in conjunction with the Florida legislature, passed laws against retail crime.

You can't go into a store and just steal things. And so, on DeSantis' X feed, it showed two men who had been arrested for trying to steal things from a retail outlet in Florida, and one was an

African American, the other was a white fellow. Both of them were face down on the ground with handcuffs behind their backs, and DeSantis' comment was, boom, right?

And he was really excited because that means he's given power back to the police to go and go after criminals who are stealing things from retail outlets.

And the liberals in this country consider that to be a bad thing.

How is that bad? Isn't there a commandment? I know a commandment, Seventh Commandment, right? I should ask

Elizabeth and Caleb here. Seventh Commandment, you shall not steal. What does it mean, right? You guys can give me the, we'll talk about that when

I get back from Japan. But the idea here, Seventh Commandment, you shall not steal, right? There's a whole commandment about not stealing.

Isn't the job of the government to punish evildoers? So you'll note that as Christianity's influence within the

United States has been diminishing, why has it been diminishing?

Take a look at what's happening to the church. Is the state of the church healthy or unhealthy? Unhealthy, okay?

So we go back 100 years, 100 years from now, what was ravaging the churches? Modernist liberalism was ravaging the churches.

And people like Harry Emerson Fosdick claiming that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead bodily and that he wasn't really born of a virgin because reasons, okay?

And what did modernist liberalism do to all of the mainline denominations in the United States?

Blew them up, okay? When you women receive from your loved one a bouquet of roses, how long do they last?

Huh? A week or two, right? Why, why don't they last very long?

They don't have any roots, okay? When you go the route of false doctrine, okay, your church becomes like a bouquet of roses.

You are disconnected from the roots. You will not be producing any more roses and immortalizing the dying roses is about all you can do.

Why is it that within the ELCA, the Liberal Presbyterian Church USA and the

Anglican churches, why do they have these ginormous cathedrals with 20 gray -haired ladies sitting in them with exceeding capacity of 1 ,000?

Why is it that no one's there? It's the theology, okay? It's the theology.

And so with each congregation lost to that theology, that's one less place where people can hear the gospel.

And with each of these churches falling and falling and falling, what are the chances of people hearing the real gospel and repenting and then that having a positive impact on the

United States? And then what's happened to evangelicalism? It's been taken over by wingnut, wackerdoodled false prophets and false teachers who claim that their latest liver shiver is an actual message from God that they have to figure out how to decode with their

Jennifer LeClaire spiritual decoder ring that they paid 600 bucks for. You kind of get the point

I'm making here, right? So we got a problem.

We've got a real problem, and that is that the increase of wickedness in front of our eyes is that direct result of the sickness that's within the church.

Now, the church has never been perfect and never will be, but I can legitimately say 100 years ago the church was healthier than it is now.

Healthier. We continue. You've become guilty by the blood that you have shed.

You've defiled the idols that you have made, and you have brought your days near. The appointed time of yours has come.

Therefore, I have made you a reproach to the nations and a mockery to all the countries. Those who are near and those who are far from you will mock you.

Your name is defiled, and you're full of tumult. Have you ever, similarly, this is not eisegesis.

Have you noticed how the United States is like the laughingstock of the world right now, especially when it comes to women's sports?

Right? The world's looking at us going, you guys can't tell the difference between a boy and a girl. What's wrong with you?

Behold, the princes of Israel in you, everyone according to his power have been bent on shedding blood.

Father and mother are treated with contempt in you. The sojourner suffers extortion in your midst.

The fatherless and the widow are wronged in you. Again, with the loss of sound preaching and teaching, who suffers?

The weakest and the poorest among us. Rather than them being helped, they are exploited and they are wronged.

You have despised my holy things. You have profaned my Sabbaths. There are men in you who slander in order to shed blood.

I'm gonna lie about you so I can kill you, okay? And people in you who eat on the mountains, they commit lewdness in your midst.

Okay, so this is a PG -13 explanation here. I'll try to keep this

G -rated, though. So lewdness on the mountains, who eat on the mountains, this is talking about idol worship back in the day.

So do you find it odd that people who believed in fertility deities, since fertility was like the focus of their thing, that their sacrifices and their love feasts would also involve sexual immorality?

Would you find that odd? Okay, the two seem to go hand in hand. So eating on the mountains and then committing lewdness in your midst is talking about really gross group sexual activities that took place in these places, all in the name of religion, okay?

I mean, I can't think of a better way to justify my own sinful behavior than to attach it to religion, okay?

This isn't a sin. I was worshiping a Shearer. What are you talking about? Gosh, how dare you judge me like that?

I mean, come on. Everybody knows that's wrong, but that's not what we were doing. We were worshiping, all right?

So tax exempt. Yeah. Tax exempt, wow.

Right. Burning Man, Coachella. Right. I still crack up of the last Burning Man, how God shut that thing down with bad weather and turned it into a swamp.

I just thought that was great, okay? Okay. Okay. Hang on, this next part's not fun.

In you, God says, men uncover their father's nakedness, and in you, they violate women who are unclean in their menstrual impurity.

Yeah, uncover their father's nakedness is kind of a polite way of talking about homosexual things here.

One commits abomination with his neighbor's wife. Another lewdly defiles his daughter -in -law.

Another in you violates his sister, his father's daughter, and in you, they take bribes to shed blood.

You take interest in profit and make gain for your neighbors by extortion. But me, you have forgotten, declares the

Lord Yahweh. Right. I would note this is the description of many places in America now, right?

So no, when people forget Yahweh, and they will not hear his law, they refuse to be forgiven by his gospel,

God hands them over to their sin, which gets worse and worse and worse and worse.

And sin itself, that ever -increasing sin, is a punishment from God. And so you're sitting there going, does this sound like a place you would like to live?

I mean, if you had purchased a house in this neighborhood, would you feel safe? I mean,

I wouldn't. I wouldn't feel safe at all. Rampant sexual immorality, people shedding blood, taking bribes, this sounds like a very treacherous place to hang out.

But you gotta admit, though, they sure are free. But are they?

Or are they really slaves, right? Behold, I strike my hand at the dishonest gain that you have made, and at the blood that has been in your midst.

Can your courage endure, or can your hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with you?

A little bit of a note here, okay? God's gonna strike his hand against the dishonest gain. Have any of you ever watched those

YouTube channels where these guys who are like former hackers now are using their hacking skills to go after scam call centers in India?

Fascinating to watch this. There's one particular guy that I watch, he colors his hair blue from time to time, which

I don't understand. But he records his conversation with these scam callers.

And they know who he is because he's been doing this long enough. And when they figure out who he is, they cuss him out.

This guy is like Robin Hood. He's trying to basically go after these people to keep them from stealing from little old ladies and people like this.

And when they realize that there's some vigilante trying to protect these people, he gets cussed out by them.

And whenever I hear them do that, I sit there and go, these people have like no conscience. They legitimately think they're justified, that there's nothing wrong at the end of the day with what they're doing.

Yet they have to live in secrecy, they can't tell their family what they're doing for a living and stuff like this. And they fear being shut down by the government, but oftentimes they're paying the government so that they don't have to get shut down.

And you just sit there and go, how does one get to the point where they are so hardened in heart and so lost in sin that they would, when somebody's doing the right thing, they would cuss them out.

It's crazy. It's absolutely bonkers. But God here is describing these people in those kind of same terms and talking about the fact they are sexually immoral, they are completely gaining their living through dishonest gain and they're into violence and stuff like this.

Sounds like a lot of inner city portions of the United States. Can your courage endure or can your hands be strong in the days that I shall deal with you?

Again, God speaking in judgment. It's terrifying when you consider it. God saying, I'm gonna deal with you. And how do you think that's gonna go?

It's not gonna go well. I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries. I will consume your uncleanness out of you and you shall be profaned by your own doing in the sight of the nations and you shall know that I am

Yahweh. And the word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to me.

All of them are bronze and tin and iron and lead in the furnace. They are all dross of silver.

Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have all become dross, therefore behold, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem as one gathers silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace to blow the fire on it in order to melt it.

So I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath. I will put you in and I will melt you.

I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my wrath and you shall be melted in the midst of it as silver is melted in a furnace.

You shall be melted in the midst of it and you shall know that I am Yahweh. I have poured out my wrath upon you.

God doesn't mess around. And you'll note all the hot, melting, furnace kind of talk, implying the fires of hell.

That's what's kind of being alluded here. But I have to stop. I've run out of time.

Okay, so next time we gather together, we will finish chapter 22.

I'm traveling next weekend. So you know the sermon will be preached by Pastor Klein from the

Aletheia Synod and he'll be joining us from Australia for our sermon next week. So keep me in prayer as I travel.

Every time I watch the news, I hear about another Boeing plane, have things fall off it. I just sit there going, should

I be flying anywhere right now? I'd rather drive to Japan at this point, but oh well. But keep me in your prayers and Lord willing, we'll see you guys next time.