Episode Transcript
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Let's turn to God's word in Ezekiel. Now, Ezekiel Chapter two. The
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last time I read Ezekiel to you, we read of this vision that he
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is that Ezekiel received from the Lord. He was a man with other men
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and women in exile in Babylon,
and the Lord has revealing himself to Ezekiel
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and calling him to be a prophet, to speak God's word. And in
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that vision we saw God's majestic splendor. Amazing things were revealed to him and
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to us as well, in the
word and in the sight of those things.
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This one who was seated on the
throne, the s mighty throne made
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up of Cherubeam and wheels and the
spirit of God and and all the rest
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that we found there. Now this
one whom he sees, speaks to him
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and calls him to do a very
hard thing. And as I read now
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and Ezekiel two through chapter three,
Verse Fifteen, I'd like you to remember
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that Euse Ekiel's name means God's strengthens. So let's give her attention to God's
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word. Now Ezekiel too, through
chapter three, fifteen. And he said
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to me, son of man,
stand on your feet and I will speak
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with you, and as he spoke
to me, the spirit entered into me
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and set me on my feet,
and I heard him speaking to me,
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and he said to me, son
of Man, I send you to the
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people of Israel, to nations of
rebels who have rebelled against me. They
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and their fathers have transgressed against me
to this very day. The descendants also
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are impudent and stubborn. I send
you to them and you shall say to
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them, thus says the Lord God. And whether they hear or refuse to
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hear, for they are a rebellious
house, they will know that a prophet
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has been among them. and You, son of Man, do not be
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afraid of them, nor be afraid
of their words, though BRIARS and thorns
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are with you and you sit on
Scorpions. Do not a be not afraid
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of their words, nor or be
dismayed at their looks, for they are
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a rebellious house. And you shall
speak my words to them, whether they
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hear or refused to hear, for
they are a rebellious house. But you,
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son of man, hear what I
say to you. Be Not rebellious
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like that rebellious house. Open your
mouth and eat what I give you and
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when I looked, behold a hand
was stretched out to me and behold,
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a scroll of a book was in
it, and he spread it before me
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and it had riding on the front
and on the back and there were written
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on it words of lamentation and mourning
and woe. And he said to me,
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son of man, eat whatever you
find here, eat this scroll and
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go and speak to the House of
Israel. So I opened my mouth and
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he gave me this scroll to eat
and he said to me, son of
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man, feed your belly with this
scroll that I give you and your stuff
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and fill your stomach with it.
Then I ate it and it was in
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my mouth as sweet as honey.
And he said to me, son of
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man, go to the House of
Israel and speak with my words to them,
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for you are not sent to a
people of foreign speech and a hard
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language, but to the House of
Israel. Not Too many peoples of foreign
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speech and a hard language whose words
you cannot understand. Surely, if I
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sent you to such they would listen
to you. But the House of Israel
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will not be willing to listen to
you, for they are not willing to
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listen to me, because all the
house of Israel have a hard forehead and
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a stubborn heart. Behold, I
have made your face as hard as their
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faces and your forehead as hard as
their foreheads, like Emery, harder than
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flint. I have made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed
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at their looks, for they are
a rebellious house. Moreover, he said
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to me, son of man,
all my words that I shall speak to
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you, receive in your heart and
hear with your ears, and go to
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the exiles, to your people,
and speak to them and say to them
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thus, as the Lord God,
whether they hear or refuse to hear.
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Then the spirit lifted me up and
I heard behind me the voice of a
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great earthquake, blessed be the glory
of the Lord. From its place it
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was the sound of the wings of
the living creatures as they touched one another
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and the sound of the wheels beside
them, and the sound of a great
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earthquake. The spirit lifted me up
and took me away, and I went
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in bitterness, in the heat of
my spirit and the hand of the Lord
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being strong upon me, and I
came to the exiles at tell Abibe,
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who were dwelling by the Cabar Canal
and I sat where they were dwelling and
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I sat there, overwhelmed, among
them seven days. It sends the Reading
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of God word, may He bless
it to us. So in this chapter
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and chapter in a little bit of
the next one, you probably noticed several
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phrases sticking out, phrases that repeated
multiple times. House of Israel, rebellious
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house, rebellious house, rebellious house
of Israel, over and over again.
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I'm you also heard Ezekiel being called
many times the son of man, a
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title that our Lord himself will use
of himself, one of the primary ways
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he uses to describe himself. We
also see in this passage on the movement
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of the spirit. Then, multiple
times and in a few different ways,
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we hear of the Ezekiel being called
to eat of these words and to speak,
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whether they listen or not, and
they will not listen, God says.
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I'd like to walk with you through
this passage, I'm section by section,
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and consider God's word with you.
We begin in chat chapter two,
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in verse one through two two,
and we hear of the sender. This
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is connected, as I mentioned before, with the previous chapter where we have
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this great vision of the glory of
the Lord, the Lord himself, and
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it's that one who says to me, son of man, stand on your
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feet and I will speak to you. And Amazingly, what happens is that
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the spirit enters to him and sets
him on his feet. This is going
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to become one of the great themes
of this passage. As I mentioned,
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Ezekiel's May name means God strengthens.
Ezekiel is unable to stand, he's unable
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to fulfill this call on the Lord
just to stand up, that is,
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until the Holy Spirit enters into him
and causes him to stand up. Ezekiel
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will later on command a great army
of bones to rise up, to stand
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up, and likewise they will and
they will stand up by the work of
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the spirit in them. The son
of Man, Jesus Christ, is also
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anointed by the spirit and he did
what he was called to do a through
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that anointing, and likewise we in
him also stand up and walk in new
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life because of the spirit of God. The sender. Really matters because,
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as we come to see, Ezekiel's
calling is going to be a very difficult
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one. They are going to be
temptations to stray from it, just as
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we all face temptations to stray from
our calling, and at that moment,
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at those moments, that's when it's
most important for him to remember who it
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is who's called him and what he
has been called to do. Who He
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is called to go speak to is
described in verse three and four. The
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beginning of four, he is sent
to the House of Israel and they are
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described multiple times as being rebellious.
Some of the most descriptive language is here
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used. At the beginning we're told
that Israel, whom, who is he,
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who means ego, is supposed to
speak to? They have rebelled against
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me on. He says in verse
three that they are nations of rebels.
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It's a very interesting way to speak
of Israel, because Israel, after all,
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is usually just considered a nation.
Probably what's going on here is the
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Lord is speaking of Israel as he
usually speaks of the nation's. He's merging
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them together as a way to show
the kind of judgment that is going to
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be on not my people, as
they are referred to in another prophet.
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They have been excluded. They are
now out of the Promised Land. They
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have become like the nation's first in
their sin and now, in their judgment,
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they are nations of rebels. Their
fathers have transgrestimate against me. To
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this very day we see the sins
of the fathers being passed down here in
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verse four of the descendants are also
impudent and stubborn, or we might translate
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this hard faced and hardhearted. Like
later when he says they have hard foreheads
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and hard hearts. Their faces,
their foreheads, they are stony faced.
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We might say, have you ever
tried to deals with someone who is stony
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faced, hard faced against you?
On these words impudent and stubborn, in
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English we use impotent to describe someone
who is bold with contempt and disregard,
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someone who looks at you and just
doesn't care, someone who looks at you
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and is impertinent, shameless, totally
satisfied in there, in there not being
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one with you. Stubborn probably comes
from the word stump. You know what
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a stump if you've ever had to
try to get a stump out of the
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ground. It's hard. It's a
stump. Burn all right, you try
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and you pull and you move and
it just won't move. It's strong,
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it's stubborn, it's obstinate, and
this is what God's people are being like.
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They are not listening to him,
and because Ezekiel's a prophet, they
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are not going to listen to Ezekiel
either. He says, I send you
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to them and you shall say to
them, thus says the Lord. And
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then, and he promises to him
that though they will not hear him,
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they will know that a prophet has
been among them, and it is because
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Ezekiel's words will come true, the
things that he predicts, the things that
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he prophesies, will come to pass, and they will know that he is
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a true prophet, like Moses and
like Christ. In verse six and the
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following verses. Now gets to Ezekiel's
emotions after these words. Right, how
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would you respond to a message like
this? We know how others have responded
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to a message like this. Might
think of another prophet, Jonah. Right,
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imagine you had to be the one
to go to a place that where
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it might not go well, where
things might not go as you like imagine
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in and Jonah even thought there might
be a chance they would repent. Here,
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Ezekiel knows that it's going to be
hard. Imagine that you were the
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messenger of a King and you had
to go to the king's enemies who hated
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your king, and tell them that
his judgment was coming right. Don't kill
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the messenger, right, the common
phrase. This is exactly what's going on
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here, the concern that might be
on his heart, and that's why God
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tells him. Don't be afraid,
he says in verse six. and You,
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son of man, be not afraid
of them nor of their words,
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though BRIARS and thorns are with you, and you sit on Scorpions. My
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guess is, being in the city
and among you, there's at least one
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person here who has sat or been
bitten by a Scorpion. Not a pleasant
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thing. It's something that we avoid, it's something we watch out for.
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He is telling Ezekiel that, even
if it's that bad, even if it's
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like sitting on Scorpions, which it
will be, he says you are not
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to be afraid, you are to
sit down, be not afraid of their
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words, nor to their looks.
You shall speak to them. So we
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know that one bad way that is
equel could possibly respond to this hard word
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is by being afraid. There is
a second way, and it stems probably
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from fear, and that's rebellion.
In Verse Eight, he says, but
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you, son of man, hear
what I say to you. Be Not
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rebellious like that rebellious house. Do
not join in their rebellion. And how
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would he enjoin in their rebellion?
Well, the chief and the most obvious
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way for Ezekiel to do that would
be refusing to do what God has just
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told him to do. God is
just told him whether they hear are not,
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no matter how hard it is,
no matter how painful it is,
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no matter how much suffering you have
to go through, you must go.
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And if Ezekiel Says No, I'm
not going to do it, then he
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joins them in their rebellion. He
says, be not like them, be
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not rebellious like that rebellious mouth.
Instead, open, open your mouth and
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eat what I give you. He
must receive the word of God in his
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mouth and speak it with his mouth. And here then, amazingly, this
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symbol of the word in the mouth
becomes a kind of reality, where,
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in this vision, Ezekiel is called
to eat the word. A scroll is
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open to hand is stretched out before
him. A scroll, you know,
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a long, wound up piece of
paper. There's writing on both sides,
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and this writing is hard writing,
we read at the last verse of Chapter
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Two that it's lamentation and mourning and
woe. We read a little bit in
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Psalm seventy seven, the words of
someone who is lamenting, who's feeling under
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the woe of God, who is
mourning loss and who is suffering. These
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are hard words to read, their
hard words to speak, and that's what
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Ezekil is going to be called to
do. He is called to eat this
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word and to speak it. In
chapter one, verse three, the the
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the Lord says to his equal son
of man, eat whatever you find here.
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It's yet another call to or is
equal to do whatever God commands him
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to do, whether it's hard or
whether it's easy. It's often tempting in
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our lives to avoid the hard things. We spend a lot of our lives.
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I spend, anyway, a lot
of my life trying to figure out
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how to make things easier. How
do I make scheduling easier? How do
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I make money management easier? How
do I make this meeting easier? How
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do I make all the time right? We have APPS, we have phones,
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we have systems upon systems. One
systems about making things easier. There's
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a lot of good to that but
sometimes the Lord purposefully chooses to not make
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our lives easier. Sometimes the Lord
chooses to make our lives hard, to
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cause us to eat lamentation and mourning
and woe, and it may be tempting
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to avoid these things. But when
God gives us a either by direct command
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or by the hand of Providence,
we must not refuse them. The Lord
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says, take up your cross and
follow me. Peter tells us, don't
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be surprised when the fiery trials come
upon you. There are things in this
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life that we are called to expect, we are called to be ready for
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and called to move forward in faith
no matter what. And if we don't,
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then we are rebellious. If we
don't, if we refuse the hand
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of the Lord, if we were
in froze the instructions, in the directions
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of the Lord, we are rebellious
to not trust in God and instead turn
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aside, thinking that we can do
better on our own, that we can
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find a better path, an easier
way. That's what Israel kept falling into.
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Over and over again, they would
things were not going well and they'd
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jump into the arms of this God
or jump into the arms of that nation,
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turning away from the God who had
promised to care for them in the
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good times and in the bad.
And it's because of that rebellion that God
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is now equipping this prophet with this
amazing vision and the power of his spirit
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to now go forth and speak judgment
on these people as one who is called
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to speak judgment. He says to
Ezekiel, don't be one who comes under
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the judgment. How does Ezekiel avoid
this rebellion? How do you fear God
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more than man? One way is
by reminding ourselves of who the Lord is,
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by keeping this vision in our minds, and other visions of the Lord
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that are given in scripture, and, of course, the greatest vision of
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God of all, which is in
Jesus Christ himself, the image of the
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invisible God, as the scriptures say. When we look at him and when
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we see his suffering and when we
see him on the cross, we come
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to understand what judgment is, what
judgment for rebellion is and how terrible it
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is, and we are warned.
But we are also warned. As we
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are warned, we are also encouraged
that by that death of the son of
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God, by the death of the
son of man who became man, four
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men, to save us from our
sins. When we look at the one
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who not only died but rose again
from the dead and rose up on these
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clouds, these same clouds that are
described here in Ezekiel, we confined great
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encouragement in the victory of Christ and
the conquering of Christ, in his love
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and grace for us. Oftentimes,
what we need, to put it another
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way, as a vision of God
that is bigger and clearer than the sense
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of trouble that we have about this
or that thing. And that vision of
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God. We get that not by
some kind of by manipulating our emotions into
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some mystical experience or speculation. We
get it by reading and trusting his word,
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word that is full of amazing images
and visions that the prophets, a
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word that is commanding and fearful and
terrifying and comforting and hopeful, a word
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that gives us a vision, that
of God, it is true, that
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we can depend on because it's his
very spirit that speaks these things to us,
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just as he spoke to Isekiel,
an amazing, amazing thing. God
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gives to us a similar word in
the word of Christ. He gives us
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a word of judgment on the world, oh judgment of the rebellious, a
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word that goes against the sins,
the lust, the pleasures of this world.
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In the Scriptures, in the Gospel, God gives us a word that
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condemns false religions, a word that
upholds God's created word order, a word
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that calls us to worship God alone, in Christ alone, by faith alone.
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A word, in other words,
that the world will hate. It
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will be a stumbling block to them, an offense of thing to them,
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and the world will often hate those
who speak it, and we will feel
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their wrath. But it doesn't begin
to compare to the wrath of God,
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which we have been safe from in
Jesus Christ. And so that stumbling stone
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becomes the cornerstone, the foundation of
our faith, not something we try to
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get around or skirt or ignore or
hide, but something we stand on with
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confidence that God will care for us. We speak the words of God to
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ourselves, into the world, and
then we let God take care of the
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rest. What will be will be. That's not our job to figure out.
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We do what God calls us to
do, and what God calls us
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to do is very similar to what
he calls Iszekiel to do, to eat
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the word and to speak the word
and to live by it. Well,
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after giving this word to Ezekiel,
we read in verse three that it was
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sweet as honey. We're just such
a surprising thing, I think, after
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all this morning and lamentation and woe
and rebellious house and he has to eat
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this word and do whatever I say
and eats at a man he well,
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that was kind of sweet, as
sweet as honey, he says. Now
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later he is going at the end
of this section he's going to describe a
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bitterness that he feels as well,
and this is often our experience of the
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Gospel. There is a kind of
bitter sweetness to it because in the cross,
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which is what the Gospel is all
about, we have both the judgment
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of God and the grace of God
coming together in one place. There's bitterness
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to it, there's wrath, there's
anger, there's torment, a man of
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sorrows our savior, but there's also
life and healing and restoration and love.
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Ezekiel gets his first bit of comfort
as he tastes the honey sweet word of
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God. And this is good because
things get harder from here and verses for
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through eleven, the Lord says to
Ezekiel again, a son of man,
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go to the House of Israel and
speak my words, for you will not
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speak or for you are not sent
to a people of sporn speech. Before
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he tells them that, whether or
not they listen to you, must go,
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but now he tells them that they
will not listen to you. The
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auntie has just been up. Now
Verse Seven says the House of Israel will
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not be willing to listen to you, for they have not listened to me.
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They have a hard forehead and a
stubborn in heart. But you know
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what God does? God equips him
again. We see in this calling of
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Ezekiel to this hard thing. We
see him equipping Ezekiel. In verse eight
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we read that he's to God says, I have made your face as hard
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as their faces and your forehead as
hard as their forehead, like emery harder
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than flint. I have made your
forehead. Emery and flint are two really
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hard materials. They're sometimes used on
concrete and other places to create non slip
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surfaces. Perhaps you've heard of emery
boards that are used to file finger nails
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down, or emp they'll use emory
sometimes to shape, to deal with Rice,
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in milling rice. It's a really
hard material, one of the hardest
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and most durable materials we know of. And Ezekiel's face is going to be
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like that, like that black hard
stuff that you don't slip your feet on
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when you go into certain places.
His face is going to be like that.
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God is equipping him with the fortitude
to resist, to stand strong,
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as I've heard people say, sometimes
he's he's filling his spine with Steve.
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All rights, he's preparing him to
do this hard thing. God, and
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the important thing to remember here is
that God equips those he calls. Doesn't
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mean it's going to be easy,
but it does mean he will be with
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you. And so we see in
verses twelve through fourteen again the spirit at
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work. The spirit lifts up Ezekiel
and this wonderful thing happens. If Ezekiel
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is feeling at all discouraged, now
he gets this, I was going to
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say, sense that God is with
him. It's much more than a sense.
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You hear it for yourself. The
spirit lifted him up and I heard
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behind me the voice of a great
earthquake. Blessed be the glory of the
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Lord from its place. It was
the sound of the wings of the living
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creatures as they touched one another and
the sound of the wheels beside them and
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the sound of the great earthquake.
This corresponds to what we read in Chapter
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One, Verse Twenty, and there
we read wherever the spirit wanted to go,
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they went. That is the chair
Abeam and the wheels rose along with
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them. Ezekiel is on the move
because the spirit is on the move,
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and because the spirit is on the
move, the Great Warrior Chariot of God
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is on the move, as God's
chariot gets going, these great, real
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wheels that are tied with the angels
and the spirit, and him sitting on
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the throne above it all, clothed
and clouds and darkness and lightning and a
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rainbow. This is the one who
goes with Ezekiel, this is the one
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who causes Ezekiel to stand and is
encouraging is that must have been. This
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glory and this power is also very
overwhelming, and so we read in the
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last few verses that is the spirit
lists him up and sets him down among
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these exiles. He sat there,
overwhelmed for seven days, and the scriptures
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even give us a little more inside
into how Ezekiel was feeling. It says
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that. The way this is translated
here, it says I went in bitterness
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in the heat of my spirit.
or You could translate this something like he
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went bitter in the heat or the
the hotness of his soul. The word
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heat here has something to do with
a kind of powerful internal force. It's
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sometimes used of like venom or poison
of a snake. It's sometimes used of
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the glow of wine right, this
sort of power and warmth and hotness to
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it, and that heat, this
sort of power, I might translated something
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like his heart was hot and it
was hot with this kind of of anger,
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this bitterness. I think what's going
on here is he is feeling in
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his body the judgment that the Lord
has for the people. That same power
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and righteous anger that the Lord is
going to pour out on his people,
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he's now pouring it out in his
prophet. The spirit is is strengthening him
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in the in this word that he
is called to speak, and he will
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speak it in a way that is
in a way that matches the words that
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are spoken. The spirit lifts him
up and he finds in his heart this
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this anger, this hot heart,
as the hand of the Lord is strong
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upon Him and he is overwhelmed.
As we think about all of this,
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imagine ourselves being in a similar situation, how difficult that would be. He
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I want to close by reminding us
all that this is not nearly as difficult
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or as overwhelming as what our Lord
experienced the garden of Hissemone, when he
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sweated drops of blood because of the
wrath of the Lord that was going to
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come upon him. And Ezekiel will
also experience that judgment in the coming days.
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Are, in the coming a passages
and Ezekiel's coming days, he is
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going to enact, with his body
and with his words, signs, signs
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of judgment which are strange and uncomfortable
and gross, and in all of them,
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Ezekiel begins to experience in some ways
the judgment of the Lord himself.
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And in this Ezekiel, the son
of man, is a type of Christ.
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He reminds us of what Jesus is
and who Jesus is as a prophet
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of the Lord as well. Jesus, likewise, will not just experience and
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bits of God's wrath or symbols of
God's wrath, but God's wrath period everything
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that you and I deserved as a
as part as those who belong to the
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rebellious house of man. Jesus,
who came to be like us, to
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take on sin, though he knew
no sin, though he was righteous,
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though he was not rebellious, though
he was obedient in every way, he
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experienced in his soul and in his
body the wrath of God, the darkness
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of Judgment, the he of these
things, of the anger of God.
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But, like is Ekiel, and
better than is Ekiel, Jesus was faithful.
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And because he was faithful, and
because he gave us this word,
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the judgment that is ekil is going
to testify to and prophesy about, the
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judgment that he is even now beginning
to experience, the judgment that we begin
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to feel as the the the the
chariot of this divine warrior begins to move,
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is a judgment that is past for
us. And when we enter into
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the glory of the Lord, we
enter the as those who are counted as
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righteous as Jesus has, totally unafraid, but joining our voices with the angels
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and the chair of being, the
saints of the righteous made perfect in the
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glory and praise of God and because
of that, when we go out into
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the world and call to do the
Prophetic Ministry that we are called to do,
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whether that is whether you have the
particular calling, as I do,
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as a Minister of the Gospel,
or whether you're an ordinary Christian with the
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General Office of speaking the word of
the Lord, all of us have a
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responsibility to speak of the cross as
it truly is, with its bitterness and
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it's pain because of sin, but
also the sweetness of the Gospel, the
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sweet promise that when we trust in
the Lord, who is our prophet and
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our priest and our king, that
God does well and we are well in
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him. And just as God equips
the Ezekiel here by his spirit, so
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also he equips us. He tells
us in his word that when he we
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put our faith in his son,
he gives us his spirit as well.
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Let's pray and ask the God would
do just that among us.
