Ezekiel Part 7

So let's pray and then we'll get back into Ezekiel. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask through your Holy Spirit to help us rightly understand what you have revealed there so that we may properly believe, confess, and do accordingly.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so if you haven't noticed since last week, I've been spending a lot of time talking about Israel because it's kind of the hot topic of the moment. But something recently was drawn to my attention and I'm gonna share this with you because if we're gonna talk about like anything related to the Bible as it relates to Israel, I think we should have a fuller picture of what's going on.

And so here you'll note that this is footage, Israeli festival goers gunned down by Hamas as they flee Supernova Music Festival. But I want you to note something here. This footage has not been doctored.

I mean, it shows people, we've all seen this footage of people fleeing from the festival and stuff like that. But there's something interesting that was at the festival. Do you see it? Okay, so that being the case, we can say idolatry is making its reappearance in Israel.

And that is part of the story. So we recognize that what Hamas has done is absolutely wicked, it's evil. This, you know, gunning down old ladies. I mean, can you imagine surviving the Holocaust only to be gunned down in your 90s by Hamas?

For them killing children and all this kind of stuff, this is absolutely sinful. At the same time, I can't exactly say that Israel is sinless because there at this music festival, there were people reveling in front of Buddha.

I mean, what on earth is going on, right? So the idea then, as Christians, we have to look at it biblically. And that biblically requires us to recognize that all nations, including Israel, including people in Muslim nations, and around the world, we are all called to repent of our sin.

And the first commandment says you will have no other gods, straight out. And so, you know, at this point, we have to continue to recognize that the religion of the Pharisees, which is alive and well in modern-day Israel, is a form of idolatry.

It is a religion that Christ specifically repudiates, refuses to obey any of its oral traditions, and forbade the apostles from obeying their oral traditions, and Christ rebuked it with the harshest rebuke and woes, which we heard in the sermon today.

And so, the best way I can put it is, as we're reading through Ezekiel, we're gonna see nothing's really changed. Okay, and this call to Israel, and Israel kind of being singled out, where we can visibly look from the Bible and sit there and go, this is a people that look like they are legitimately cursed.

Because they is, and that stands as a testament to God's wrath. If you were to kind of think of it this way, is that God leaves examples of his wrath so that we would pay attention to them. So that we would learn to fear God's wrath, and to turn away from sin.

That's the whole point. And I think, if it was the Apostle Paul, who may have said something along these lines, you know me and my memory, it's getting weirder as I get older, right? First Corinthians 10, let's see here.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, our fathers, were all under the cloud, all passed to the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink, they all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

Nevertheless, First Corinthians 10 continues, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.

But I feel like, you remember in the movie, The Bug's Life, right? There was this funny scene where there's this trailer out in the middle of the wilderness somewhere, and the guy had set up one of those purple bug lamps, you know, and so the scene opens with these two moths flying near the bug lamp, and one of them starts going towards the bug lamp, and the other one's, don't do it, don't do it, I can't help it, it's so beautiful, right?

And then, pssst, eh, the end, right? And we all laugh, because it's funny, but here's the thing, that's our sinful nature. Sin is the bug lamp to your sinful nature, which looks at it and goes, it's so beautiful, it can't possibly be that dangerous.

It is, it really legitimately can kill you, that's the point. So, nevertheless, when most of them, God was not pleased, they were overthrown in the wilderness, now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.

You sit there and go, well, Pastor, I hate to say this, at times I desire evil. Well, welcome to the club, this is why we live as penitent believers in Jesus Christ. Again, confessing that even our sinful desires are sinful, and asking God to forgive us.

How do we sin against God? By the thought, word, deed, by what we do, by what we don't do, the whole thing. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were, as it is written, and the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.

We must not indulge in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and 23 ,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.

Now, these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall.

I think I've got this thing figured out, I don't need your help anymore, Jesus. Oh boy, that's the words, that's almost as stupid as hold my beer. I mean, that's really bad. No temptation is overtaken that is not common to man.

God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So, you'll note that even we Christians have to be admonished to turn away from idolatry, in all of its forms.

I remember years ago, when the podcast for Fighting for the Faith was a regular thing, we had a sketch that we would play, we did these Max Holliday sketches, right? And one of them was called the Build-A-God Shop.

Yeah, so the Build-A-God Shop, aside from the fact that I was still financially traumatized from how expensive Build-A-Bear is as a shop, if you've never experienced that, you need a second or a third mortgage in order to afford one of those bears.

But the whole point is, is that people treat Jesus and religion the way they treat a Build-A-Bear shop. They create a God of their own liking, and this is what we do. So tell me about your God. Well, my God needs to be, he needs to be very open-minded.

Okay, you want your God to be woke. Yeah, that sounds good, I like that. My God needs to be woke. Okay, my God also needs to be into feminism and hate the patriarchy. Gotcha, okay. Is your God gender-fluid?

That sounds right, that sounds right. My God is gender-fluid. Okay, and so you put all those things together about your deity, and at the end of it, you have to name your bear. At the Build-A-Bear shop, you have to name your deity when you're done building it, and the weirdest thing happens.

People concoct their own deities, and at the end of it, when asked, what is the name of your deity, they'll say Jesus.

Strange, isn't it? That doesn't hit you the first time. Yeah. It takes a couple.

It takes a couple times. You get it, it's like. Yeah, when that one hits, it hits hard. But the thing is, is that each and every one of us are guilty of this on some level or another. When you talk to that blue-haired lady who says down with the patriarchy, and you say to her, listen, what you are saying and what you are believing is opposed by scripture.

She will say these words. The God I believe in would never blank, okay? And as the mechanics would say, well, there's your problem right there, okay? Because as soon as you say the words, the God I believe in, those are the words of idolatry.

The God who exists has said this is sinful, and the God you believe in isn't that God. And that's the reason for the disparity. Have you noticed that evangelicals are really, before the whole Israel thing broke out, everyone was talking about Andy Stanley.

And the reason why they were talking about Andy Stanley is because he's legitimately come right out and basically had a conference where he invited practicing homosexuals to teach his congregation, and he's pretty much become gay-affirming.

And everyone's sitting there going, what's happened to Andy Stanley? I'm sitting there going, I've been warning you about this guy forever. And the reason I've been warning you about him forever is because God's word says these things, and he says these things, and they don't seem to connect.

And I've been pointing this out for a long time, and so now all of a sudden, when the sheepskin comes off and you can see the wolf, everyone's in a panic, freaking out, in shock. But the thing is is that the reason why they're in shock is because a lot of evangelicals, the things they believe in don't match up with Scripture either.

And that's a problem. That is a problem. So at the end of the day, Scripture is the standard, rightly taught, rightly divided. And when a pastor starts preaching things that are different than what the Scripture says, then you need to beware.

Now, oftentimes, I get accused of doing that because, well, I'm a Lutheran, and everybody knows how wascally Wolfmans are, right? But over and again, when somebody comes at me, they're gonna come at me specifically on one particular doctrine, and it's baptism.

And they constantly come at me regarding that. And all I have to, I just have this PDF that I send them and basically say, listen, we believe what these biblical texts say. And boy, it really creates some interesting conversations, and a lot of people get really upset.

But here's the thing. I don't have a problem if somebody sits there and goes, Roseborough, what you're teaching regarding baptism isn't taught in the Bible. Okay, let's have a biblical conversation. Let's open up the biblical text.

Here's the text we go to. Here's how we read them. How do you read them? Now we're having a good biblical conversation, right? Sometimes. Sometimes. Okay. It can't mean that. The first initial response from people is, I know that's what those verses say, but it can't mean those things.

I know that feeling. I fought that fight long ago, okay? But the thing is, at least we're having a biblical conversation. And that was the thing that annoyed me when I was still in evangelical and I was attending a Lutheran university, was that those darn Lutherans, they kept just sticking to their biblical guns.

And I was like, why?

And I was really annoyed. And at some point, God was gracious to me. It was my third year at the university, and I was translating through the book of Titus, and it came to that famous text that says, when the goodness and the loving kindness of God, our Savior, appeared, he saved us, not by works done by us in righteousness, but dia, through the washing of regeneration.

Dia lutru paliganesias. And it just stuck me in the face. It's like, what is going on here, right? And I looked up lutru, it's from the Greek word lutron, and it means a ceremonial, religious, washing baptism.

And it's like, there's no denying, this is talking about baptism. And I could not get around it. And after fighting with God in that text and letting out a few unpious biblical, not biblical, but expletives, I was defeated by what the scripture says.

But I will take anybody who's willing to have an open Bible conversation over and opposed to somebody who wants to sit there and have an opinion conversation. Well, you gotta understand, in the world we live in, why opinion is this?

What this verse means to me is, and this is how they talk. In fact, when my wife and I were at Pasadena, Nazarene, we attended a small group Bible study together. I think it was our sophomore year. And after they would serve the tortilla chips and salsa, or you get something worse.

I think one of the worst things I ever had was like, Fritos and cream cheese with salsa on top of it. It just didn't work. I'm sorry, but if you're gonna have a small group Bible study at your house, do not serve Fritos, then put a chunk of Philadelphia cream cheese.

And then pour salsa on top of it. That is inappropriate. How bad is that meal?

Okay, so on a scale of one to kale, it's definitely an eight to kale. It's not quite kale, but it's very close to it. But I kid you not, the way it would start out, and I still have trauma from it. I think I need to go see a PTSD person.

Like a vegetable and jello? Yeah, oh, no, no, wrong, bad. Vegetable and jello, that does not, it should have never been. Was that the time when bell bottoms were still in? Yeah, okay, well, that explains everything.

Okay, all right, so that's when the country was still using LSD, okay, all right. So my point, let me try to get back to it, is that after we had to pray while holding hands, which I always hated, then the small group of people who were Bible study leaders, she would read a verse or two out of context from her new NIV Bible, and then we would go around the room and we would answer this one question.

What does this verse mean to you? What a horrible question. The question is, what does the verse mean? What did God intend? I would note that even before postmodernism was a thing where people were talking about it, that's a way of doing language deconstruction.

And so if you're not familiar with how postmodernity works, you think of Foucault and Derrida and others who basically worked with this idea that it doesn't matter what the author intended when he wrote something or she wrote something, what mattered was what the reader experienced inside their head while reading it.

Okay, and I always go back to this analogy. When I was growing up, I had chores on Saturdays. Okay, and the thing, the chore I hated the worst, and I kid you not, was cleaning my dad's car. Okay, and because we had hard water in Monrovia where we lived at the time, and if you didn't dry the car quickly, you would get water spots.

And if my mom saw the water spots on the car, guess what, I'd have to do it again, okay? And I hated that, absolutely, because she would come out and she would inspect. It's like, no, no, you're gonna do it again.

The whole thing, what do you mean the whole thing? Do it all over again, no! Okay, but on Saturday mornings, my mom, she would play tennis. So she had a friend of hers that lived in San Dimas, California, we lived in Monrovia at the time, and so my mom would get in her car and she would drive off to go see her friend, and the two of them would play tennis on Saturday mornings.

And my mom would leave me notes. And the notes would say something like this. My blessed son, actually, she never started that way. She would just say, Chris and Mark, here's the things you need to do.

I'm playing tennis this morning. I'll be back around this time. You need to vacuum the living room. You need to dust your desks. You need to make your beds. I want you to put all your clothes, separate them by colors and whites, and put them near the washing machine.

You had to do that back in the days, because they, man, I hated having to wear tidy whities, because if you mixed them with the colors, they would turn pink. It was horrible. And then you would be teased mercilessly, but that's a whole other story.

But she would then say, and then make sure that dad's car is washed and things like this. All this is supposed to be done before she gets back. Now, if I were to play the postmodern word game, what does this mean to you, all right?

And my mom, if she were to come home on a Saturday morning and say, what's this? The laundry hasn't been separated. The vacuuming hasn't been done. The dusting hasn't happened. And your bed isn't made.

And why is your dad's car still dirty? If I were to say, well, mom, when I read your note, here's what it meant to me, okay? I doubt that I would be alive right now speaking to you at this moment, okay?

That would probably be the last thing I ever said. And then the story would go on to say, thus perished Chris Rosebrook, okay? But you don't play that game with your mom. Why do people play that game with their heavenly father?

Yeah, okay? So you're gonna know this falls into the category of what? Rank idolatry. Now playing word games with God's word where it doesn't mean what it says and the only thing that matters is what it means to me.

And then I can kind of smorgasbord this thing together. Is that, when we were growing up, that was a word that actually had meaning because that was a restaurant, that was a restaurant style smorgasbord.

What are they called now, buffets? Like, what are like major buffet? Golden Corral. Golden Corral. I haven't been there in a long time. When I was raising our kids, it was Sizzler, right? Home Buffet.

Home Buffet. Then this is what people do. They will pick and choose the portions of scripture that they want to believe in. And when you do that, you make yourself out to be your own God. That's literally what you're doing.

Well, God, I wanna make sure that I, everybody understands I believe in Jesus, but there's some caveats. That whole walking on the water, raising people from the dead kind of stuff. You know, this is the modern world.

I don't know if I'm into that. And calling sinners to repentance. Yeah, that's a little passe. But I believe in Jesus, all right? And so the question is, which part of the Bible do you agree with? Well, I agree with the Sermon on the Mount.

Uh-huh. Which part? The blessed bits. Okay, all right. I see how this works. Okay, and you're gonna note, this is how we oftentimes approach the scripture. And when we are confronted and it's pointed out to us, that ain't no way to read the Bible.

And what you're doing is leaving yourself in control and you are now deciding using your reason and your feelings and your experiences, which parts of the Bible are true today, which parts you can just ignore.

That's idolatry. And that's always the beginning of heading off into the bizarre directions that we're now arriving at right now. And so, you know, there's a problem. And it's a big one when you consider it.

Ezekiel 5 and God's Judgment on Idolatry

So coming back then, we were working our way through chapter five last week. And at the risk of being redundant, I'm gonna pick up chapter five and now read it in context nonstop. And then we'll get into chapter six.

You, O son of man, take a sharp sword, use it as a barber's razor, pass it over your head and your beard, then take balances for weighing and divide the hair. A third part of it, you shall burn in the fire in the midst of the city when the days of the siege are completed.

And a third part of it, you shall take and strike with the sword all around the city. A third part, you shall scatter to the wind and I will unsheathe the sword after them. And you shall take from these a small number and bind them in the skirts of your robe.

And of these, again, you shall take some and cast them into the midst of the fire and burn them in the fire. From there, a fire will come out in all the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord Yahweh. This is Jerusalem.

I've set her in the center of the nations with countries all around her and she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations and against my statutes more than the countries all around her for they have rejected my rules and they have not walked in my statutes.

And I would note, when you have people running around and being invited to preach at churches, old ladies with blue hair who claim that they go up to heaven every day and that John Wayne is there and he's shooting Western movies and that they can take sticks and bat hurricanes back into the Atlantic.

It depends on what day of the week it is, okay? All of that being said, you're gonna know that that's the same kind of stuff. It is outright rebellion against what God has revealed in his word. When you have a woman pastor, that is outright rebellion against what God has specifically said in his word as to who pastors are supposed to be.

When you have an impenitent homosexual or a transsexual now in the pulpit and affirming the Sparkle Creed, that is the same kind of wickedness that is condemned here. When you lead people in prayers to the saints, when you plant statues of St. Joseph in your yard to help sell your house, this is the same thing, right?

They have rejected my rules, they have not walked in my statutes and therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, because you are more turbulent than the nations that are all around you, have not walked in my statutes or obeyed my rules, have not even acted according to the rules of the nations that are all around you, you therefore, thus says the Lord Yahweh, behold, I, even I am against you, I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations, and all of this is in the sight of the nations so that the nations will pay attention.

This is so that the other nations sit there and go, you know, maybe we ought not go down that path. And because of all your abominations, I will do with you what I have never yet done and the like of which I will never do again.

Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, sons shall eat their fathers, I will execute judgments on you, and any of you who survive, I will scatter to all the winds. Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord Yahweh, surely because you have defiled my sanctuary with all of your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore, I will withdraw.

Remember, they put incense altars to Baal, the starry host of heaven. They put an Asherah inside the Holy of Holies because they wanted Yahweh to have a wife. And God says, I'm out of here. And we're gonna see that in the chapters ahead.

God is going to depict for us to see His glory, His presence legitimately leaving and withdrawing from the temple itself. It's not, He's not satisfied to say, I'm going to do this. Ezekiel is given an actual vision of God following through on this.

My eye will not spare, I will have no pity. A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst. A third part shall fall by the sword all around. And the third part I will scatter to all the winds and will unsheathe the sword after them.

Thus shall my anger spend itself and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself. And they shall know that I am Yahweh, that I have spoken in my jealousy when I spend my fury on them. Now, a little bit of a note here.

Have you ever heard Oprah explain why she ain't no Christian no more? Okay. She read this. Huh? She hadn't even read this. She hadn't read this bit. No, they read the commandment. Mm-hmm. She was raised as a Christian and she was attending a church service when a pastor was reading out the portion from Exodus where God says, you shall have no other gods for I am a jealous God, punishing the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me.

And in her testimony, she says, I don't wanna have anything to do with a God that suffers from jealousy. That makes God small and petty. And so she was offended that God would be jealous that people would worship other gods and so you know what she did?

She turned to the new age and to spiritism and weird stuff like that. So her big beef with the God of Israel is that he's jealous. Well, here's the thing. Are there any other gods? No. Why on earth would God be okay with saying, I know you made me God but I'm not interested in you.

I believe this block of wood over here is the thing that made me, okay? God says, fine, I'm gonna make you just like your deity. You worship a block of wood, I'm gonna turn you into somebody who has a block head.

That's a Roseboro paraphrase of a portion of Isaiah but that principle is there in scripture, okay? All right, windbaggery, yes, all right. I have spoken to my jealousy when I spend my fear upon them.

Moreover, I will make you a desolation, an object of reproach among the nations all around you and in the sight of all who pass by. You shall be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and a horror to the nations all around you.

That's still to this day. When I execute judgments on you in anger and fury and with furious rebukes, I am Yahweh, I have spoken. When I send against you the deadly arrows of famine, arrows of destruction, which I will send to destroy you and when I bring more and more famine upon you and break your supply of bread, I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they will rob you of your children, pestilence and blood shall pass through you and I will bring the sword upon you.

I am Yahweh, I have spoken. Why does God seem so grumpy in the Old Testament? Okay, somebody asked me that question recently and I noted this. Do you know that the history of the New Testament is about this small compared to the history of the Old Testament?

New Testament, we get just, what, 20, 30 years of history? Maybe 50 on the top end. But the history of the Old Testament spans hundreds, if not 1 ,000 years. And we, and in the course of a long period of time, we see God's steadfast love, his slow to angerness, being pushed and prodded and him being provoked and then him finally reacting in judgment.

You know, the Old Testament is written over a long period of time. We can see the cycles of apostasy in God's judgment in that long period of time. The New Testament is such a short period of time, you don't get to see that full thing.

But Christ promised that he would destroy Jerusalem in judgment and he did, just as the New Testament's being finished, right? So the word of Yahweh came to me. Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel.

Prophesy against them and say, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh. This is the Lord Yahweh, to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys. Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you and I will destroy your high places.

Why is God prophesying against mountains? What did these poor mountains ever do to him? What was that? High places, right. And I would note, we don't have any of those here. Nope, I'm looking for some high places.

Right, right, go for mountains. That was about as high as I get out here. Our dyke is looking pretty high, you know, compared to, but what happened in Israel is that every single mountain hill, they turned it into high places where they would worship false gods.

You ascend this mountain and you're closer to Baal. You ascend this mountain and you're now in the realm of Molech. Where did the gods of Greece live? Mount Olympus, right. So God's prophesying against these things.

Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you. I will destroy your high places. Your altars shall become desolate and your incense altars shall be broken and I will cast down your slain before your idols.

And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols. I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste and the high places ruined so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, and your incense altars cut down and your works wiped out.

And the slain shall fall in your midst and you shall know that I am Yahweh. Yet I will leave some of you alive when you have among the nations some who escape the sword and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols.

I gotta warn you, there are some pretty brutally in your face descriptions in the book of Ezekiel. This is only a teaser because there's a whole portion of it that we're going to get to eventually where I'm gonna have to say parental discretion advised.

That's how blunt this text gets, all right? But you'll note, adultery and idolatry are like the same sin. Adultery is cheating on your spouse. Idolatry is cheating on your God, right? It's the same idea, one spiritual, the other physical, but this is why God constantly uses the concept of whoring when it comes to idolatry.

And then they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed. For all their abominations, they shall know that I am Yahweh. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them.

So thus says the Lord Yahweh, clap your hands, stamp your foot and say, alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword, by famine and by pestilence.

He who is far off shall die of pestilence and he who is near shall fall by the sword and he who is left and is preserved shall die of famine. Thus I will spend my fury upon them. And you shall know that I am Yahweh when their slain lie among their idols, around their altars, on every hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to their idols.

I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste in all their dwelling places from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am Yahweh. These are not idol threats.

God followed through on these things. All right, let me check questions now before we get into seven, because I do have some time to do that. But you'll note, this is a tough, tough section of scripture to work through, and it shows you just how seriously God takes this sin.

All right, let's see here. Let's see here. Melina left, okay, wow. Open finds there. So somebody noted the wow, so Lily reacting to the Buddha statue at that festival in Israel. Open defiance. Okay, candy, corn, and circus peanuts are the worst.

What, what's, okay, okay.

Yes, agreed, Rachel, so that's it. We're bringing a Jell-O mold, Jell-O veggie and dessert sometime soon. No, Hannah. Is that culinary terrorism? Culinary terrorism threatened here at Kongsvinger. Somebody bringing a Jell-O veggie dessert.

This is how you get trespassed at Kongsvinger. Yeah, right. Okay, all right, let's see. So there aren't any questions, just silly comments regarding the dumb stuff I've said. Good, okay.

Yes, yes, in this sense.

So when you go, if you go back through the Book of Revelation series. Okay, so the question was, do we consider like the Russia-Ukraine war and the war against Israel and Hamas to be like punishments from God?

That's the question. The answer is yes, and the reason why is because when you read in the Book of Revelation, these are the things that were poured out of the bowls or the things that were unleashed on humanity in punishment for their sin and rebellion against God, and you'll note as we get closer and closer to the return of Christ, then what is expected is that the cycles between these types of conflicts grow shorter and the intensity of these types of conflicts grow greater.

Okay, and so that's the whole point of like, you think of the bowl judgments. You know, God caused a third of the earth to no longer have peace and things like this. So all war on planet Earth is a consequence of our sin and is a form of the judgment of God, and Christ himself in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 makes it clear that we're gonna hear of wars and rumors of wars, but he says, don't be alarmed by these things.

These things must take place. This is kind of standard fare. So the idea then is that the conflict in Ukraine, the conflict in Israel, and the devastation, the loss of life and the destruction of property and all of the horrible, sad, just absolutely horrific stories coming out of both of those war zones, and they're flashed on our computer screens and on our smartphones, this should cause human beings to take pause and say, wait a second.

There's something wrong with humanity. And here's the thing. Granted, Hamas is wicked and evil, and what they did is over the top, just insanely wicked. Who kills old ladies and children and stuff like this?

This is bestial is the best way I can put it. And at the same time, I can't sit here and say Israel's somehow a just society because the state that has basically wedded itself to Pharisaical Judaism is an apostate state in rebellion against God.

And so on the one hand, we can say they're our ally and they stand for democracy and stuff like that. Well, whoop-de-doo. We stand for democracy and we have San Francisco, right? Okay, tell me how just we really are.

And so the idea then is that when we look at this biblically, we recognize that all of this is the consequence of sin, not sin of a specific people, but sin of humanity in general. And it should cause us to say there's something wrong with us humans.

And this does begin to show up in even our own literature, in our own mythos. When you have sci-fi movies and sci-fi books being written where from the point of view of an objective third party, aliens who live in another universe, then they look at us and they determine humanity is a virus, that humanity is some kind of a plague, some humanity is dangerous.

You're speaking biblical language here, okay? You're keying in that there's something wrong with us and there is. And you're gonna note, our technology hasn't made our sin problem better. Our technology's made it worse.

There's like no hope for us. And that's really the point. When God sends judgments like this, it's so that we sit there and go, okay, wait a second here, wait a second. This whole thing is messed up. And the problem is that you look at the reaction of certain people over the past week to the Hamas-Israel war.

They're like, they're rooting for one side or another the way you pick a baseball team, okay? Yeah, well, my team, they're gonna win. Nobody's gonna win this. There's no winner in this conflict. And if you wanna talk about baseball and judgments from God, as painful as this is to talk about, I mean, I gave up watching baseball midway through the summer because the Dodgers honored the nuns of perpetual indulgence, these satanic trans nun people.