Episode Transcript
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After fourteen remain standing, if you're
able, and we will read some of
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this, some of this chapter,
this first half. So this is versus
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one. Through eleven, Ezekiel,
Fourteen won through eleven. Then certain of
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the elders of Israel came to me
and sat before me, and the word
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of the Lord came to me.
Son of men, these men have taken
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their idols into their hearts and set
the stumbling block of the iniquity, of
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their iniquity, before their faces.
Should I indeed let myself be consulted by
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them? Therefore speak to them and
say to them, thus says the Lord
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God. Any one of the House
of Israel who takes his idols into his
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heart and sets the stumbling block of
his iniquity before his face and yet comes
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to the Prophet, I, the
Lord, will answer him as he comes
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with a multitude of his idols,
that I may lay hold of the hearts
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of the House of Israel, who
are all estranged from me through their idols.
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Therefore say to the House of Israel, thus says the Lord God,
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repent and turn away from your idols
and turn away your faces from all your
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abominations. For anyone then of the
House of Israel, or of the strangers
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who sojourn in Israel, who separates
himself from me, taking his idols into
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his heart and putting the stumbling block
of his iniquity before his face, and
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yet comes to a prophet to consult
me through him. I, the Lord,
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will answer him myself and I will
set my face against that man.
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I will make him a sign and
a by word and cut him off from
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the midst of my people, and
you shall know that I am the Lord.
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And if the Prophet is deceived and
speaks a word, I, the
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Lord, have deceived that Prophet and
I will stretch out my hand against him
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and will destroy him from the midst
of my people, Israel, and they
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shall bear their punishment. The punishment
of the Prophet and the punishment of the
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inquirer shall be alike. That the
House of Israel may no more go astray
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from me, nor defile themselves anymore
with all their transgressions, but that they
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may be my people and I may
be their God, declares the Lord.
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God, you may be seated.
Well, we have here in his equal
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fourteen as a really, really the
sad situation. The elders and other people
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from the House of Israel were coming
to prophets, the Prophets of the Lord,
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Ezekiel among them, to inquire of
the Lord. A good thing,
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you would think, right to go
and seek the will of God, to
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go learn the word of the Lord. That would you would think, would
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be a good thing. But it
wasn't really the word of the Lord that
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they were after. Ezekiel doesn't say
what they were after exam exactly, but
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he tell does tell us about the
duplicitous nature of these people, halfheartedness and
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which they were coming to in to
come and meet with God. He identifies
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three things. Are Two things and
one summary of the two that will focus
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on this evening and will think about
both what they were doing and the Lord's
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response to it and the Lord's reason
for that response. So first, what
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were they doing? The Lord reveals
to Ezekiel two things. They had taken
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idols into their hearts, they had
set a stumbling block of iniquity before their
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face and through these things they had
separated themselves from him. The first of
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these things they had taken idols into
their heart arts. Now before, you
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might remember that Ezekiel had been taken
to the temple in a vision the temple
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of God while it was still standing, and he was given a tour of
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that temple, almost like a spy
right with special x Ray Vision, he
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was able to see what was going
on inside this place, and what he
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saw was abomination after abomination. The
House of the Lord was filled with idols.
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Now here we see where that was
coming from in a spiritual sense.
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They hadn't just accidentally put up a
statue here an idol over there. They
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had brought the idols into their hearts. The internal idolatry had given expression to
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an external idolatry, and that's,
of course, how it always works.
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They were worshiping these false gods and
it wasn't a pretense, and even if
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it were, it would be of
course wrong. They had taken an not
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taken, these idols into their hearts. A second thing that they did is
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Ezekiel describes it as they set us
stumbling block before their eyes. He said,
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a stumbling block before there, or
they set stumbling block before their eyes.
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This is another their way of referring
to idolatry, but it reframes it
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in a way, so and say
it in the first place. He says
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it takes them into their hearts.
Now he talks about the idols as being
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like in front of them, which
is, of course, how they would
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have worshiped these idols. That's how
we all worshiped idols. We look at
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this thing, we have, this
thing that we're after, this thing that
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were there worshiping, and they would
look at this idol and they would think
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of this, this or that God
and they would say so and so will
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help me, so and so will
make things right. And maybe you can
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imagine. Some of these idols were
maybe beautiful in some way right, covered
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in gold or silver, perhaps chains, perhaps set in a beautiful place.
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If you ever seen an actual physical
idol that somebody has created, usually there's
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some care that go that is put
into that im you can find them around
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town and here INTUC son or in
people's homes. The places where they're set
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apart right, maybe in a restaurant
or in a hallway in a home,
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a place where there's a special table
in a special covering and a special bowl
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and things of good quality. They
set these things before their eyes. But
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but God reframes it. He says, you know, take your glasses off,
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your crooked glasses and and see things
rightly. What you'll see is the
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idol is in fact a stumbling block. That's how the Lord identifies it.
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It's not some wonderful, beautiful thing
that ought to be treasured. It ought
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to be identified as a stumbling block, something that will make you fall.
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Now, when we walk around,
we are always being careful, usually less
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we're reading or on our phones or
something like that, we are careful about
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stumbling right it can be very bad
in some cases. We try to be
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it is wise to be aware right
where we walk and how we walk,
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and if there's something in our path, we move it out of the way,
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we move around it. Perhaps you
go on walks in your neighborhood and
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you're one of those helpful people that
kicks the landscrape gravel, you know,
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back into other people's yards. You
know this is something we're just aware of.
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It's a part of our life.
We avoid stumbling, but then sometimes
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we don't. Sometimes we put the
stumbling block right in our path, close
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our eyes and then start walking,
and that's essentially what the people were doing
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with these idols. This was the
idols as God wants us to see them
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or not some good thing. Nor
are they even a neutral thing. They
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are a stumbling block thing, a
thing that will make us fall, and
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indeed it did make them fall.
And this is one of the great and
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very sad things about this passage.
Israel had just these people that were coming
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to Esequel, were coming to him
in Babylon, the elders of Israel and
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others that were coming to him and
to false prophets to seek who word of
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the Lord, who had idols in
their hearts and idols before their eyes,
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are people who had just been cast
out of Israel for idolatry. It shows
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you how idols capture our hearts,
enslave us, how dangerous they are.
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Will come back and think about that
a little bit more in a moment.
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Now. One of the things that's
really important to remember about idolatry is that
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it really can be everywhere or anywhere. It can be attached to anything.
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Perhaps you've you can notice this by
thinking about all the names of Gods that
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are out there. I'm even within
a particular system of religion, you might
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have dozens, hundreds, thousands of
God's, named and unnamed. I think
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that's one it's one way that we
can remind ourselves of how keen we are
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to make idols. It's not just
a threat here or there, but we
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can make them out of anything,
and that's important to remember. That idolatry
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in any place you find it,
and any false religion, and then time
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is religion is expressed falsely. That
idolatry is is not ultimately about the object.
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Idolatry is about getting things you want
or think you need. Right,
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we have a god, supposedly,
a God for the harvest and a God
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for the moon and a God for
the sun and a God for this slithering
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thing and a god for fertility and
a God for an on and on and
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on it goes, because these are
the things that we think we need,
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these are the things that we think
we need to have, to obtain,
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and so when we go and we
seek them out, it's not so much
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about the thing that's there, it's
it's what's in our heart as the thing
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we're after. And when you remember
that, none of us are left off
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the hook. None of us can
look at the idols of other people in
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their homes and their places of business
and go huh, such rubes right.
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We can't look at that and say
well, good thing, I don't do
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that well, I am glad you
don't do that, if you don't do
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if you don't do that, but
we're not off the hook because ultimately they're
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doing the exact same thing we do
when we covet things, which is idolatry.
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The scriptures say covetousness, when we
when we are discon tent about things,
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when we think there's something that we
need to have an order for us
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to be okay. And, as
I've said, idolatry can come in so
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many shapes and forms, just to
list a few, to kind of get
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your minds and your hearts going a
little bit, your consciences, think about
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the opportunities that we crave. Sometimes, maybe it's a particular job or an
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opportunity to travel or living in a
certain place, that that is just the
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thing that we feel like we need, the thing that we're driving for,
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the thing we obsess about, the
thing we think about in research and spend
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all of our time and energy on. And maybe you would say, well,
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I don't spend all my time on
it, but you know, you
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know when too much is too much. You know when your heart is going
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after the wrong things and inordinate ways. Maybe if it's an opportunities. Maybe
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it's particular achievements, a particular degree
or a particular promotion, or maybe even
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just the appreciation of someone. How
many people have gone to great lengths just
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to get a ad a boy,
from their dad or their mom? How
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many people have done even really despicable
things to get the affirmation of someone else?
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This reminds us that sometimes that are
idols are also relationships, a particular
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type of friend that I must have, a particular kind of spouse or or
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something else. Then, of course, there's things, possessions, houses,
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Gadgets, deals, harvests, whatever. There are things that are related to
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our bodies that we think that we
must have, that we must need,
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a physical touch, cure from a
disease or being able to look a particular
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way or not look a particular way. These things that we be crave,
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these things that we cove at,
these things that we say, if I
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don't get this, I'm not going
to be okay. Whenever we're thinking those
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kinds of thoughts, you know that
you're slipping into idolatry, but God wants
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a hundred percent of you. He
doesn't want just a little bit of you
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or some of your time or some
of your love or some of your trust.
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He doesn't want to be the source
of most of your joy or most
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of your hope. God desires to
be everything to you and he wants everything
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of you. He wants you to
love him with all of your mind,
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with all of your soul, with
all of your strength. But in I
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am this idolatry and idolatry that was
in their hearts, and idolatry a stumbling
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block that they put there before their
eyes. They were separating themselves for God,
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from God, as he says here, and that's what happens. You
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can't serve two masters, and this
is a lesson that the scriptures teach us
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over and over and over again.
A lot of times we tend to think,
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well, I can, I can
serve God in this way. I'll
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go inquire of the prophet, I'll
I'll go to church, I'll read my
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Bible, I'll do this or that
good thing. And indeed those are good
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things. Not Want to discourage you
from them, but to go from them
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and go to them in in a
hypocritical way or in a way that is
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not actually trusting the Lord, is
not good. And when we do that
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we separate ourselves from God, we
separate ourselves from the only sorts of the
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things that we need, the things
that we desire, the things that he
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wants us even to have. So
this is what these people were doing.
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They were going to these prophets with
idols and their hearts, a kind of
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a fake faith, a pretense of
religion. How does God respond? Well,
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the first thing he does, or
one of the things he does,
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is he shows them that he,
he and not they're idols, is the
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one true God, and he does
that in a number of ways. He
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says he will do that in a
number of ways. One is his power
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over people. Unlike the false gods, which can't really do anything because ultimately
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they're just expressions of our covetousness and
our false worship. They can't provide the
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things that we want, but he
can. He is powerful and he says
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he will even send a lying prophets
to go speak to those who desire lying
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prophets, those who go with halfhearted
hearts and those who go on to the
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prophets not really seeking after God.
He will. He will confuse them,
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he will give them over to their
own selfdeception. We also see his power
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over Providence. He says, I
will cut you off from my people,
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perhaps meaning a kind of excommunication,
a dismemberment of a person from the body,
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and perhaps he means even death there. Either way, he promises to
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cut off these people who go to
him in this way and to make them
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a by word. You know what
a by word is? It's a,
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you know, sort of a everybody
knows that kind of person. Or like
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one example I came across and thinking
about this passage was lot's wife, right,
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the sort of symbol. Or Sodom
and go more is another one.
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You know, you just say Sodom
and go more and everybody knows what you
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mean. Right. That's what God
will make you if you go after him
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in these ways. He's that powerful. He's powerful over what people think,
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about how they act. He's powerful
over Providence. He's powerful to judge these
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people go to God in this sinful
way. They bring idols into their hearts,
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they bring idols into the temples,
thinking that God doesn't see, thinking
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that God is like the idols that
they serve, incapable. But it's not
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true, is it? We read
in First Samuel Sixteen seven. The Lord
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sees not as man sees. Man
Looks at the outward appearance, but the
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Lord looks on the heart. Psalm
seventy nine and other places like Jeremiah Eleven,
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talk about God is the one who
tests the heart and the mind.
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He's a tester of hearts and minds. First, excuse me. First,
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chronicles twenty eight nine says the Lord
searches all hearts and understands every plan and
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every thought. You can't hide from
that kind of God. He's not a
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god of wood and stone, he's
not a god of gold and silver.
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He's a God who can penetrate past
every pretense, past every show, into
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the depths of your heart and know
exactly what is going on there. God
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is going to show that he is
the one true God in his control over
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events and people and his power to
judge, in his power to discern.
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We're going to see that even in
these actions, as these men, these
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elders of Israel, these men who
are supposed to be leading, who are
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supposed to be overseeing, guarding,
protecting the people. Instead they're going with
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idols in their hearts, idols before
their eyes, going to a prophet saying,
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tell me a word of the Lord, but God knows what is going
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on and he will punish them.
He will also punish, he says,
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the ones that speak these false words. Remember, Ezekiel is one among many
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prophets, and many of those prophets, as we've seen in other places,
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where false prophets, bad prophets,
lying prophets. The people of Israel had
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set up a whole false system of
religion, false places of worship, false
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priests, false laws fall and,
of course, false idols. There were
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people everywhere who are willing to say
anything for a buck, who are willing
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to cat hurt those who are downcast. I'm not protect those who are innocent
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but take bribes and these kind of
things for their own gain. The whole
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system is going to come crashing down. It already has, which is the
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shame of all this. Right,
it already has in Israel and now here
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they are in Babylanche with the same
sorts of things. They have separated themselves
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from God, they have put a
stumbling block before their face, and he
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responds by saying, I will set
my face against you and I will separate
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myself from you. And in these
ways, in these parallel ways, that
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God is responding to their actions.
We see his perfect justice. They set
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a stumbling block before their face,
so he sets his face against them.
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They separate themselves from him, he
separates himself from them. They seek after
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other gods. He shows by his
power and his putting them down that he
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is the one true God. But
God does something that they don't do.
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In other words, it's we have
a we have a way in which there
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isn't a parallel in this passage,
and that's the call to repentance. The
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people are hard hearted, the people
are acting in the all these ways.
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God responds in his Justice, but
he also calls them to repentance, and
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that's an amazing thing. They're thinking
again about these people being in Babylon.
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I think it's worth spending a moment
to observe that sometimes, when judgment and
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discipline comes into our lives, we
tend to say things, where we can
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say things like, well, might
as well just give up. It's all
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over, the worst is happened,
I've been abandoned by God. I might
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as well just give myself over to
the world, to my flesh, to
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the devil. We have a way
of, instead of learning from our discipline,
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doubling down on our disobedience. Instead
of noticing our losses, we we
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double down on them. Instead of
noticing our defilement and seeking cleansing, we
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cover ourselves with more filth and we
sin, on and on and on.
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But here are these people, cast
out of the presence of God and Israel,
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cast out into this foreign land,
and yet God is still speaking to
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them. God is still calling them
to repentance. Isn't that amazing? He
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is still calling them to repentance.
On the one hand, he's saying you
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think the worst has come, it
hasn't. You keep going this direction.
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There is still more judgment to be
had. But there's this other thing that's
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also true. You may think there's
no more hope. You think that God
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has left his people, that you
are abandoned, that you are in this
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foreign place, that you are no
longer with him, but that's not true
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either. God is not so he's
not like their idols, which are tied
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down to stupid blocks and stone.
He can move anywhere, he can do
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anything and he can give hope.
And even the darkest places, the most
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isolated places, the most disorienting places, when we think we are so far
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gone, God is still calling us
to repentance, at least while we're still
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here, while we still have breath
to breathe, while the Lord has not
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yet returned in judgment. And this
called repentance is a wonderful thing. When
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Jesus comes to inaugurate the new covenant, we see many of these things in
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him, and I want to think
about just one story with you where I
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think we see a lot of these
elements all together, and that's a story
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of the woman at the well.
You remember the secrets in her heart,
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right, her five husbands. I
believe it was these things which she was
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known by, These things which she
had begotten a reputation for, and she
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comes to the well, she meets
Jesus there, the Prophet Greater Than Moses,
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right, the very son of God, right, and she tries to
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have this like theological conversation with him. Well, I don't know this mountain
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or that mountain. We worship here, we worshiped there, and Jesus cuts
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through it all right, just like
he does here in Ezekiel Fourteen, when
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he speaks to these these prophets,
these false prophets, and he speaks to
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these people who were coming and Oh
seek a word of the Lord will have
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a discussion about theology. Yada,
Yada. I know. No, I
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know what you're doing, I know
what's going on in your life. He
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says to them, he says to
her, he shows his power in this
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and and he reveals himself in this
way and he calls her to repentance and
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she goes away and she says,
he said things that I write, he
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knew these things about me. And
she goes and she tells people about him.
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The Lord calling people even when they
are sort of at the brink or
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far past where we think there's any
hope of return. There are many examples
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of this. Peter after his three
denials of the Lord, after being told
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that he would do these things,
after saying that he would not do these
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things, and the Lord calling him
back to himself. Many, many,
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many examples. As long as we
are breathing, as long as the final
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Jay of judgment has not come,
as long as the Lord is still calling,
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there's time. Even the harshest of
disciplines that we face in this life
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are not necessarily the end. Even
excommunication, even being cut off from the
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church and from God's people, it's
meant to lead US toward repentance. If
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we have your seer, if we
wake up from our stupors, if we
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wake up from our covetousness and idolatry
and see our God who is at work.
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Jesus, of course, not only
revealed himself to this woman at the
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well and to Peter, he not
only revealed that he, as God,
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was the seer of hearts, the
forgiver of sins, the one calling to
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repentance, but he's the one that
actually secured these things for us. Our
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idolatry, as we see from Ezekiel
Fourteen, as we experience in our lives,
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as a way of capturing our hearts, doesn't it? It holds US
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fast, it holds US down.
There's only one power, only one person
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who has the power to break that. Who in the world can break the
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power of idolatry? Who can change
a human heart from exchanging the glory of
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God for creeping things and man made
things? The only one who can break
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that powers, of course, God
himself. And that's what the Lord does.
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The promise here in Isekiel is not
only seen in the called repentance,
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but in the promise of God.
He says, I will do these things,
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that they will know me that they
will defile themselves no more. That
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probably would be a prayer worth praying. Lord, help me to stop defiling
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myself. They would defile themselves no
more, that they would love him,
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that I would be their God and
they would be my people. That's what
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he secures for us in Jesus,
when he comes and he takes on the
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punishment that we deserve, when he
is cut off for our sins, for
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Ir Idolatry. It's a great sadness
that when Jesus was crucified, he was
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mocked as though he were a false
god, king of kings. Right,
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they put over his king of the
Jews, they put over his cross,
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but Jesus was the king of the
Jews and the King of the gentiles,
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the King of Heaven and the Lord
Yahwey. He is the one who came
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to reveal himself as the one who
has the power to do all of these
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things, and it's that God who
is come in love. It's that God
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who has given himself up for you, that wants all of you. So,
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when God says I don't want idols
in your heart, I don't want
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idols before your eyes, I want
all of you think about what a blessing
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it is to hear that if you
got your dream job, your dream relationship,
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your dream school, you don't say, well, I'm sorry that I
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got these things right. If you, let's say you're trying to apply and
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get into a school and then they
you get into the school, you don't
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say, how selfish of them to
want me right now. If that's true
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for these things that we have,
think about how much more this ought to
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be true of our desire for God, for God to speak of us and
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say I want all of you,
I want you to belong to me.
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I am going you have my attention, you have all my love, you
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have all my blessing in my life, you will have everything you need.
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What higher thing could we possibly want? And this is what God wants to
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give us. The God whom we've
offended, the God whom we've broken his
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laws, the God whom we've replaced
with false gods. That God is expressing
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his love towards these people, even
in this moment, even in their idolatry,
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even in their false religion, even
in Babylon. And if you can
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do that for them, they're surely
he can do that for us here.
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And he does. He promises to
you tonight His grace. He promises to
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you his himself, when you repent
of your sins and turn away from your
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idols and toward him. May God
grant us to do just that. Let's
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pray
