Ezekiel Part 33

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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May 26, 2024

Sunday school from May 26h, 2024

Ezekiel Part 34

00:00: All right, let's pray. We'll get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask that the Holy Spirit help us to rightly understand what is revealed there, so that we may properly believe, properly confess, and do all according to your holy word, we ask in Jesus' name.
00:14: Amen. There's questions? Our wireless microphone is not working.
00:28: Okay. Okay. All right, so questions today, we have a portable mic to do that because we're having technical problems.
00:38: Got it. Okay, last week in the book of Ezekiel, we were looking at chapter 27 and the lament for Tyre, and you'll note that there's an interesting theme here that repeats itself in the book of Revelation, and it's worth noting, especially as we start getting into the next chapter as it relates to the lamentation against the prince of Tyre.
01:00: So, if you remember in chapter 27, it said, O Tyre, you have said, I am perfect in beauty, and your borders are in the heart of the seas.
01:11: Your builders make perfect your beauty. They made all of your planks of fir trees and sineer, and they took a cedar from Lebanon to make a mast for you.
01:20: Of oaks of Bashan, they made your oars, and talking about all of the different things in which, through their commerce, they have made themselves beautiful and rich, and this is the problem.
01:33: Okay, and when we kind of think about how the world thinks, the world puts a huge premium on, well, let's start with youth.
01:43: Okay, by the way, that goes away really quickly. I don't know what happened. Yesterday, I was 18, and I had washboard abs, and I, you know, was a swimmer, and then
01:53: I woke up this morning, and look what happened. But the world puts a lot of premium on youth, on wealth, on power, and you're going to note that the way the world operates when it comes to sizing people up, you want to, how can you tell that somebody's really arrived?
02:14: Well, they can wear Louis Vuitton, right? It's the weirdest thing.
02:22: It's like, and I think those bags are ugly. Why would somebody want to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a
02:28: Louis bag, okay? Yeah, what? Status, that's right, and wasn't there,
02:35: I don't know if they're still around, but there was, people were wearing shirts that said supreme on it.
02:40: Okay, I think it cost all of five dollars to make that shirt, and how much were they paying for those stupid supreme shirts, right?
02:48: And so, you'll note that over and again, the way the world thinks in terms of wealth, opulence, power, things like this, entire, as we were reading last week, they're into this mindset like deep, and God there is, therefore, is speaking against them.
03:05: But I would remind you, there's a similar theme to this in the book of Revelation regarding Babylon, right?
03:11: Remember, in the book of Revelation, Babylon is the bad guy. Babylon is the kingdom that is working against the kingdom of Christ.
03:18: So, listen again to the theme from Revelation 18. After this, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory, and he called out with a mighty voice,
03:31: Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast, for all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.
04:02: Ah, you're starting to see the theme, right? There's a over here. Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
04:08: Out of her my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues, for her sins are heaped high as the heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
04:18: Pay her back, as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds.
04:24: Mix a double portion for her in the cup that she mixed, as she glorified herself and lived in luxury.
04:30: So give her like a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says,
04:37: I sit as queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.
04:43: For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, and death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire, for mighty is the
04:52: Lord God who has judged her. And so you'll note then that Babylon, this
04:57: Babylon the Great that's fallen, this is symbolic of the of the satanic world system, and the way it thinks, and the way it operates, and its hatred towards and malice towards the one true
05:12: God and the saints of Christ. That's the idea here. So we're seeing in the book of Revelation similar themes.
05:19: I would say that these are good parallel themes that we're seeing as God is speaking these oracles through Ezekiel against nations that aren't even believers in Yahweh, and God still is speaking judgment against them.
05:33: Which then leads to chapter 28. In chapter 28, we're going to hear this prophecy against the
05:39: Prince of Tyre. And this is where we'll continue. So the word of Yahweh came to me.
05:45: Son of man, say to the Prince of Tyre, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because your heart is proud, and you have said,
05:55: I am a God, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas.
06:02: Yet you are but a man, and you are no God, though you make your heart like the heart of a
06:07: God. You are indeed wiser than Daniel. No secret is hidden from you. And you're going to note something here.
06:14: Here in Ezekiel, we have a reference to Daniel, one of the exiles in Babylon, author of scripture.
06:20: And you're going to note here that God is speaking to the Prince of Tyre, not saying that he literally is wiser than Daniel, and that no secret is hidden from the
06:31: King of Tyre. He's saying that tongue -in -cheek. Oh, yeah, you're wiser than Daniel.
06:37: Uh -huh. That's the tone that's going on here. Which then leads to, you're going to note then how
06:43: God is talking. Remember in scripture, first, first principle in understanding the doctrine of the
06:49: Trinity are the clear passages of scripture, like Isaiah 43, 10. You are my witnesses, declares
06:55: Yahweh, my servants whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me. Before me no
07:00: God was formed, nor will there be any after me. Right? So the beginning of the doctrine of the
07:05: Trinity is the firm belief that there is only one God. And so here, when you see men calling themselves
07:12: God, you'll note that God oftentimes will respond to their delusional claims to deity with mocking and with ridicule, because they are no gods.
07:26: A prime example of that, by the way, is a very misunderstood psalm in the
07:32: Old Testament. I think it's Psalm 82. Let me see. I'm doing this from memory here. Let's see here. No, let's see here.
07:40: Hang on a second here. I'll just look for a word.
07:48: Counsel. And I want Old Testament Hold on a second here.
07:56: It is. It's Psalm 82. How did I miss it? All right, Psalm 82. Listen to this psalm. All right.
08:02: This one's quoted by Mormons to try to prove that there are multiple gods.
08:09: All right. So here's what it says. God has taken his place in the divine counsel.
08:15: In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. All right. And so the
08:21: Mormon sits there and goes, see, see, there's multiple gods. And you sit there and go, no, that's not how this works.
08:28: Isaiah 43 10 says, before me, no god was formed, nor will there be any after me. What's going on here?
08:34: Well, let's keep reading. So God has now taken his seat among the deities, right?
08:40: And he chimes in. You know, I don't know if he was given the floor properly. Maybe he wasn't following Robert's rules of order correctly.
08:46: But either way, he takes the speaker's position. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?
08:57: Give justice to the weak and to the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
09:03: Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Well, I gotta ask a question.
09:09: What kind of deities don't care for the weak or the fatherless? What kind of deities don't take up the cause of the afflicted and the destitute?
09:17: What kind of deities are there that don't rescue the weak and the needy? Sounds like lame deities to me.
09:25: All right. What's the point of having a god if your god doesn't even care about its creation, right? So he continues.
09:31: They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. Here God is talking about these so -called gods.
09:39: I said you are God's sons of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men you shall die and you will fall like any, what?
09:49: Prince. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations.
09:55: So Psalm 82 is similar to what we're reading in Ezekiel. And that is, this is a psalm written written by the
10:02: Holy Spirit through the psalmist Asaph. And God has taken on a mocking tone of those who claim to be gods on earth.
10:12: So if you guys remember when you took Western Civilization back in junior high, was it sixth, seventh grade, you know, when you had to learn about the
10:20: Fertile Crescent. Some of you homeschoolers, I hope you're learning about the Fertile Crescent, right? And so you learned about Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers and stuff like this.
10:29: What was the most common feature of all of the monarchs, all of the kings of that period in human history?
10:38: They all thought that they were little deities on earth. Okay. Oh man,
10:48: Josh says, I thought you were going to say inbreeding. No, that was clearly present in the Egyptian family line for sure.
10:56: Okay, but all of that being said, in fact, none of their in Egypt at the time of Tutankhamun and all those folks, the royal family didn't have any branches.
11:07: It was just two trunks, you know. Yeah, it was like weird. But all that being said, the common theme of all of these ancient monarchies is that all of these deities, all these monarchs, claim to be gods on earth.
11:23: And that's a problem. Okay, because you'll note, any of these deities around today, not a single one.
11:31: Was it Nero who went up on his balcony at sunrise and he raised his hands to dictate to the sun for it to come up?
11:40: It's been coming up ever since he's been gone. Yeah, and long before he got there too,
11:45: I think he was just engaging in deception. And that's kind of the point. So you'll note that God here in Psalm 82 is condemning those who so foolishly claim and think that they are deities on earth.
11:58: But I would note, have you noticed that many of our celebrities are treated as if they are little deities on earth?
12:10: Is that terrifying? Just really think about it. Okay, and what exactly are we rewarding these people with so much wealth and power and and worship that they receive?
12:21: What have they done exactly? They play pretend. That's right. I'm not a real doctor, but I pretend to be one on television.
12:29: You're the best doctor ever. But he's not a doctor. Okay. So you get the idea.
12:35: We human beings are kind of prone to this kind of mindset. So here, God in the opening part of Ezekiel 28 is speaking against the king of Tyre with that same mocking, irony kind of thing going on here.
12:51: You'll note that God does not give professional courtesy to anybody claiming to be a deity.
12:56: He gives zero courtesy to them. Yep. So because your heart is proud and you have said,
13:03: I am a God, I sit in the seat of the gods in the heart of the seas, yet you are but a man and no
13:09: God. Though you make your heart like the heart of a God, you are indeed wiser than Daniel.
13:16: No secrets hidden from you. That's kind of the attitude there, right?
13:22: By your wisdom and your understanding, you've made wealth for yourself and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries.
13:28: By your great wisdom and in your trade, you've increased your wealth and your heart has become proud in your wealth.
13:37: Who does that sound like? No, it sounds like Satan.
13:44: Satan. Okay. All right.
13:52: Therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because you make your heart like the heart of a God, therefore I will bring foreigners upon you, the most ruthless of the nations, and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and they will defile your splendor.
14:08: Some kind of God you are. I'm going to show everybody you are powerless. They shall thrust you down into the pit.
14:16: You shall die the death of the slain in the heart of the seas. Will you say I am a
14:21: God in the presence of those who kill you? You can't kill me. I'm a God. Watch us, okay?
14:29: Though you are but a man and no God and in the hands of those who slay you, you shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of foreigners, for I have spoken, declares the
14:39: Lord Yahweh, the real one true God. You'll note that one of the things
14:46: I've noticed in scripture is that when God finally acts in judgment, oftentimes he chooses judgment that legitimately is ironic to the particular sin that the person or the nation that he's judging are known for.
15:04: Okay, you think you're a God? Well, you're going to die just like a prince, okay? Now, here comes one of the more interesting passages.
15:12: And note, we're already dealing with some of the same themes from the book of Revelation.
15:19: And in talking about the pride of the prince of Tyre, I've already made the claim, this sounds a lot like Satan.
15:27: And listen to this, okay? In scripture, we get very little, and I mean just a scat amount of information regarding the backstory, regarding Satan.
15:38: What we do know is that Satan was an angel. We don't know exactly what type, and cherubim and seraphim aren't exactly the way to make proper distinctions along these lines.
15:51: Okay, because he was, because of the seraphim in the throne room of God, and because Satan is referred to as the serpent and as the dragon, some theologians have postulated that maybe he was one of the seraphim.
16:07: And then you're going to read in this text that he was a cherub. Is there a difference between the two? I don't know, okay?
16:13: Here's the thing, that we get just a little bit of the backstory. So the backstory is actually quite fascinating, and a lot of people don't weigh this part.
16:23: So we would pull this together with like Isaiah 14, and try to get a little bit of the backstory of Satan.
16:29: And so listen to this, Moreover the word of Yahweh came to me, son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre.
16:36: And I want you to say to him, thus says the Lord Yahweh, You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
16:48: You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle.
17:01: And crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. Wait a second, who is this oracle against again?
17:09: How old is the king of Tyre? He was there in Eden? I don't remember him being on the manifest for Noah's ark.
17:18: Right? So you're going to note here something. This is one of the things that we see is interesting in scripture, in the prophets, is that God will be addressing one person, but in reality, he's addressing
17:32: Satan who's behind that person. Or Satan who is exemplifying what that person stands for.
17:39: Okay, if you take a look at like Ezekiel, not Ezekiel, but Isaiah 14. Let me find this passage real quick.
17:45: Isaiah 14. Okay, it's from Babylon. Let's see here, Sheol. All right, let's see here.
18:01: Is it 14 or is it 18? I'm getting old. I can't remember these things anymore. Okay, what is it with text?
18:15: I will make. Let's go here. Here we go. I just got to go to Isaiah.
18:23: Second Samuel, first Kings. I will make.
18:32: Okay, therefore I will make. There it is. It was a 14.
18:37: How don't I miss it? Second time in a row I've done that. Getting old. Getting old stinks. I can hide my own easter eggs.
18:45: Okay. Okay. Here it is.
18:54: So in this oracle in Isaiah, against... Okay, so the
18:59: Lord has given the rest. Okay, so this kind of taunts against Babylon is what this says. So listen to this text.
19:06: How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of the dawn. How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid low the nations.
19:13: You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high.
19:18: I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
19:25: I will make myself like the most high. But you are brought down to shale to the far reaches of the pit.
19:32: Those who see will stare at you and ponder over, is this not the man who made the earth tremble and shook the kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities?
19:44: This, you'll note this passage, when you read, you read this, this is like God is talking to a human monarch, but he's describing the heart of Satan.
19:56: And how do we know this is the heart of Satan? There's Christ in the wilderness being tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights.
20:02: And the final temptation is that he shows Christ all the kingdoms of the earth and says, all these
20:07: I will give to you if you will bow down and you will worship me. Talk about a sick puppy.
20:13: I mean just, you want to know how absolutely delusionally, maniacally twisted
20:18: Satan is. He is the original narcissist. Self -love to the point where he wants his own
20:25: God to bow down and worship him. So this idea then in Isaiah 14, you see that same theme of how
20:34: Satan in his heart says, I will ascend, I will make myself like the most high, I, I, I, me, me, me, all that kind of stuff, right?
20:44: And here's the most terrifying bit, is that we can all relate to that.
20:50: Every one of us, we want to be the center of attention. Don't believe me? You think back to your childhood, right?
20:56: You wanted everyone to pay attention to you. You wanted to interrupt conversations with, search yourself.
21:02: You wanted people to see how smart you were, how talented you were, how, we, we all do this, right? People nowadays, they, they, they judge your worth as a human being based upon how many followers you have on Instagram and Snapchat.
21:16: Right? So note again here this, this, this theme. So are we talking about the king of Tyre or are we talking about Satan here?
21:26: Yeah, right, exactly. That's kind of the problem, okay? So you were in Eden in the garden of God.
21:32: Every precious stone was your covering. Sardis, topaz, diamond, barrel, you got the idea. On the day you were created, they were prepared.
21:40: You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
21:51: And you're sitting there going, where are the stones of fire? Okay, we're talking about geography we've never heard of before, right?
21:59: You were blameless in all of your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you.
22:07: In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst and you sinned.
22:14: So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God. And I destroyed you, oh guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
22:24: Your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
22:31: I cast you to the ground. I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.
22:38: By the multitude of your iniquities and the unrighteousness of your trades, you profaned your sanctuaries.
22:44: So I brought fire out from your midst and it consumed you and I turned you to ashes.
22:51: Turned to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you.
22:57: You have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever.
23:06: Again, who are we talking about here? So this is one of those features that you see in scripture.
23:13: I think the term is this is like a proleptic prophecy. It clearly has one thing in mind, but it has more than that one thing.
23:20: Right? And so here we get some of the backstory of Satan. His origin story doesn't sound like a good one.
23:28: He got high on his own beauty and as a result of it, he became the first narcissist and God, because he became arrogant and proud, if you really want to talk about what's the original sin, since sin did not come into God's creation until that occurred, that is the original sin.
23:53: And so when he comes into the Garden of Eden and he tempts our first parents, now that's the original sin for humanity.
24:01: What does he try to convince them of? What's the sales pitch to Eve?
24:09: God knows that on the day you will eat of it, you will be like God. We went for it.
24:24: And that's the problem. Is it any wonder that Christ condemns the unbelieving world as being the children of the devil, desiring to do his will?
24:34: There is no truth in the narcissist. And each and every one of us, our sinful nature, our old
24:40: Adam is an old, well -practiced narcissist, looking out for me, myself, and I.
24:51: But the fulfillment of the second table of the law is love your neighbor as yourself, which requires us to have an outward focus.
24:58: Now, if you want to know kind of the rest of the origin, well, the rest of the story, again, there's not much in scripture. You know, it always fascinates me when somebody writes a book and they've got a whole book on demonology.
25:08: I'm sitting there going, well, how do you do that? Oh, well, we conducted some exorcisms and we interrogated demons.
25:16: And you thought you were getting the truth from them? It's like, what? You're going to note that in the grand scheme of scripture,
25:28: Satan truly is a foe. And he is absolutely waging war against the saints.
25:34: But God has given us so little of his backstory that it's just enough to know that Satan is like the worst thing ever.
25:44: And that's pretty much it. So listen to this next part of the details.
25:50: So we know that he wanted to be like God. He was created beautiful, was decked out beautifully, was totally perfect.
25:59: Then he fell in love with his own beauty, the original narcissist. But there's a little bit more to it.
26:06: God cast him out of the mountain of God as a profane thing.
26:11: But listen to what it says in Revelation 12. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet.
26:18: This is not the Virgin Mary, by the way. This is a depiction of the Old Testament church.
26:24: And I know people don't like to use the word church in relation to believers of the Old Testament, but it works. Okay, Rome is wrong.
26:30: This is not the Virgin Mary. And under her feet and on her head was a crown with 12 stars.
26:36: She was pregnant, was crying out in pains of birth pains and agony and giving birth. Another sign appeared in heaven.
26:42: Behold a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and on his head were seven diadems. And his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
26:52: What is that referring to? So as best as we can kind of figure it out, that Satan, in retaliation against God judging him for his narcissistic profanity, convinced a third of the angels to join him in rebellion against God.
27:12: So when you kind of put the pieces together and look at where we're at and how we got here and what's really going on, you know,
27:22: I think of the last hymn that we sung, right? The last hymn that we sung, my favorite line in there is, and then the end of all the war, right?
27:30: Well, when did the war begin? It began before the Garden of Eden. And Satan was the one who initiated the war.
27:40: It was a full -on rebellion against God with the hopes of unseating God and replacing him with Satan.
27:49: That's the idea. A third of the angels of heaven went for it. They're the ones who are the demons. And so humanity has been brought into the war as enemy combatants of God by our fall into sin and listening to the temptation of the devil who said, you will be like God.
28:08: So we've all been participants in the war. As Christians, we've been participants on the wrong side as well as the right side.
28:20: But each of us were born on the wrong side under the dominion of darkness. This is enemy occupied territory, if you would.
28:27: And so as a result of that, we got to keep an eye on really what's going on here. When the scripture is describing these things, you'll note that Satan's not stupid.
28:36: And he's been watching us a lot longer than the information we have about him. He tempts us so easily.
28:43: It's ridiculous. He could play us like a Stradivarius. So you don't take him for granted. But at the same time, don't give him too much credit because prayer gets rid of him.
28:54: Resisting him firm in the faith causes him to flee. So for as terrible as a dragon as he is and as maniacal as he is,
29:04: God continues to protect us and tells us to stand strong in the faith. He resists the devil and he'll flee from you.
29:12: How do you do that? I like Luther's way of doing it. When the devil just comes along, long flatulence will get rid of him.
29:22: So I'm beginning to think Luther had bowel problems going back to his time in the monastery, but that's a whole other issue. Taco Bell monastery.
29:30: Luther talks a lot about his bowels. And it's really weird when you read his writings.
29:37: So okay, I unfortunately have to leave on that note. All right,