Episode Transcript
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So, as you're turning there to
Ezekiel forty three, one through nine,
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I want to explain just a moment
why we are skipping so far ahead of
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where we've been. We just finished
a chapter eleven, and what you will
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see is the way things ended there
in chapter eleven are being picked up here
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and connect in a new way in
chapter forty three. I'm doing this in
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part because our brother Christian here is
going to be preaching in many of our
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evening services over the summer and so
I thought, and as he takes us
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through various parables right and so I
thought this might be a way to bring
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some of the major themes that we've
been considering in Ezekiel to a conclusion at
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this point, and perhaps we'll pick
it up again in the future, but
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you'll really enjoy hearing this, the
word of the Lord here from Ezekiel Forty
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Three. It's very encouraging. Let's
hear our God's word now versus one through
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nine. Then he led me to
the gate, the gate facing east,
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and behold, the glory of the
God of Israel was coming from the east,
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and the sound of his coming was
like the sound of many waters and
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the earth shone with his glory,
And the Vision I saw was just like
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the vision that I had seen when
he seem to destroy the city, and
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just like the vision I had seen
by the Cabar Canal. And I fell
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on my face as the glory of
the Lord entered the temple by the gate
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facing east. The spirit lifted me
up and brought me into the inner court
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and behold, the glory of the
Lord filled the temple. While the man
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was standing beside me. I heard
one speaking to me out of the temple
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and he said to me, son
of man, this is the place of
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my throne and the place of the
souls of my feet, where I will
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dwell in the midst of the people
of Israel forever, and the House of
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Israel shall no more defile my holy
name, neither they nor their kings.
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By their wharring and by the dead
bodies of their kings at their high places,
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by setting their threshold by my threshold
and their doorposts beside my door posts,
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with only a wall between me and
them, they have defiled my holy
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name by their abominations that they have
committed. So I have consumed them in
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my anger. Now let them be
put now let them put away their warring
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and the dead bodies of their kings
far from me, and I will dwell
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in their midst forever. He may
be seated well here in Ezekiel. Forty
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three, Ezekiel mentions two previous visions, the visions that we have been going
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over over the last several months or
so. At the beginning of the book,
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Ezekiel Mentions two visions. You notice
how he says and the Vision I
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saw verse three was just like the
vision I had seen when he came to
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destroy the city. That's the one
that we most recently heard of. And
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then he adds just like the vision
that I had seen by the Kebar canal.
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You remember that, of course,
when the Lord reveals to Ezekiel this
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amazing scene, when he carries him
up by this vision and he sees the
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chair of EAM, these ministers of
flaming fire, he sees these great wheels
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within wheels, this mighty chariot and
which the Lord moves throughout the Earth.
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We saw the Lord himself seated on
this throne far above, lifted up and
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in these high places, ruling over
everything, seeing everything, powerful over everything,
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the eyes of the wheels, having
eyes all over them, everything moving
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on according and perfectly according to the
will of the spirit of God. These
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amazing scenes that call to is it
caused Ezekiel himself to fall on his face,
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of course, humbled our hearts as
well. And this scene, this
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vision that he saw in those early
chapters of the book, as it's recorded
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again, he had a similar vision
in the latter chapters, the more one
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recent ones that we read, and
there we saw that this place, the
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spirit, the glory of the Lord, was on the move, and it
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was on the move in a very
terrifying direction. Last time we read about
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how the glory of the Lord exited
the Holy Place of the temple and moved
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o out toward the East, away
and he saw the presence of the Lord
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lift up and leave, leave the
place where God had said he would dwell,
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leave, the place that Solomon had
prayed to and had built according to
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the Lord's will, in which the
Lord had descended and ruled a mudd among
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his people. We saw the Lord
leave and in his leaving we saw all
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of that terror and wrath and judgment
against his people coming down upon them.
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And why? Because of the things
that is ekiel speaks of here. whorring
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after other gods, murder dead bodies. Of He speaks of the kings everywhere,
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but that was because of their judgment. They're constant bloodshed in the kingdom.
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Instead of being a kingdom of a
people united by love, neighbors watching
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out for neighbors, giving and sharing
and supporting one another, Israel had become
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this terrible place that looked just like
the nations around them, and this God
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had promised if this had happened,
they would be destroyed, just like he
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destroyed the nations who were before them. The last time we looked at,
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we considered the temple of Ezekiel.
was taken on a tour of the temple
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grounds. He was shown that among
the leadership of the people and among the
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Laity of the people, idolatry had
just grabbed hold of their hearts. Worthless
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objects had come to take residence in
the temple itself, the place where God
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was called, was supposed to dwell, the place where God had said his
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presence. People had the audacity to
set up idols. They're in the temple,
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sometimes in hidden ways, sometimes in
obvious ways. These foolish, worthless
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places or objects had come to take
the hearts of his people, the people
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of God, people that he had
rescued out of Egypt. He had decimated
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the the whole, the whole,
a religious system in Egypt, as well
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as their economy and their king and
all of the rest. He had shown
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himself to be powerful and rule,
or and king over every false god,
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over every idol Egypt, and our
king had not been able to hold God
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and his people in Slavery. He
said they will worship me, and he
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set them free to do so.
And now that people was enslaved to false
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gods. Instead of crusting God as
their king, instead of him being at
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the center of their kingdom, at
the center of their lives and their worship
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and their everything, he had taken
a back seat to their lusts and everything
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was falling apart. Bloodshed, injustice, bribery, corruption, abuse of power,
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of idolatry, of course, and
the consequences of these things war,
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famine and worse. And instead of
learning from their foolishness and their foolest ways,
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they did what people enslave to sin
always, always do. They press
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harder and they pressed deeper into that
sin, like a man drowning who should
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know how to swim. But instead
just flails and grabs at graspless things all
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around him. Israel was drowning in
their own sin and though profit after Prophet
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was thrown them, help was calling
them to repentance, was telling them to
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turn, they just kept flailing,
they just kept grabbing at all the things
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that they wanted to grab. And
now God's people were going to come under
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judgment, and they did. In
the chapters that we skipped, we we
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see, you will read there,
of the coming to pass all of the
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things that is Ekiel saw in the
visions that we read, the destruction of
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Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, bloodshed everywhere. Is Ekiel saw in
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those visions what God was going to
do, having been rejected by his people.
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He was going to give them over
to that rejection and those corrupt desires
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and he was going to leave.
And the result was the undoing of a
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covenant that God had made with Israel. They broke the covenant and now all
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the curses were going to come upon
them, and indeed they did. Israel
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broke apart the most relation, most
important relationship, not only in their lives
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but in all the world, because
it was through Israel. Remember that the
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hope of the nations would be founded. Remember that it was in Abraham that
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he would be the father of many
nations, that many nations would be blessed
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through him, through this family,
through this people. It wasn't just their
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hope, it was all our hopes, and now it was all dashed.
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Or was it? It wasn't all
dashed, it wasn't all finally destroyed,
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and that was because God had made
promises and, unlike his people, who
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failed to keep their promises, God
would keep his. Yes, he would
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bring down the curses upon them.
Yes, they would experience war and famine
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and bloodshed and all of these things. He would destroy them for their sins.
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But according to his awesome promises of
grace that he had made to Abraham,
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they had made to David, God
would establish, through this people,
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a kingdom that would be forever.
There would be offspring that would be left,
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there would be a remnant that would
preserve. God would keep his promises
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and he would save them from their
sin. And as we read in Psalm
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Eighty seven, we read of cush
Egypt and Rahab and these other foreign nations
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coming to call Zion their own city. What an amazing promise, this sort
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of bringing in of the nation's foreign
people saying, yeah, I belong,
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I belong to Israel, Abraham's my
father, says the Egyptian, says the
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Babylonian, he says the American,
these amazing promises of the people of God
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coming in from all over the world
to be established once again in this place
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and here in his echil forty three, those glimmers of hope that we saw
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in the beginning, the man who
went through the city and took names of
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those who were repenting, for example. Here we see that hope in a
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really wonderful way because here, instead
of the departure of God, which we
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saw before, the exiting of the
presence of God from the people, God
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abandoning them to their own sins,
here we see him coming back in amazing
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seeking. He goes to the gate, verse one. He's led, is
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Egel has led, to the gate, the gate facing the east, the
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gate where the Lord had left by, and behold the glory of the Israel
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was coming from the east. Perhaps
our reminder, in a connection with the
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sun itself, a light that shines
in the darkness, darkness that does not
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overcome it, a light that raises
a hope that comes up in the morning,
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a day spring that brings us joy
and gladness after a long night.
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Here comes from the East the god
of Israel, but not the sun,
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the god of the Sun, coming
from the East and all his glory and
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the sound of his coming like was
the sound of his going, all of
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those angels and that great chariot,
like the sound of many waters. Have
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you ever stood by the ocean and
heard it move as it roars, even
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from the beach, even of a
relatively calm one? It's a loud thing.
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And here this is the sound that
Isekiel here is like the rush of
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many waters. The Lord is coming, this giant sound and as the glory
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of the Lord comes, Iseki'l sees
in this vision the earth itself Shining With
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glory, the Lord's glory reflecting off
of the Earth, this amazing, resplendent
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thing. You remember that when the
Lord showed himself to Moses, when Moses
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went up into the glory of the
Lord on Mount Sinai and he we he
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came back down, his face to
reflected the glory of the Lord so much
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that the people said, cover it
up, it's too much and here is
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EEK. You'll sees the earth shining
with the glory of God, and he
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reminds us, as we've already considered
in verse three, to think about this
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in terms of the previous visions that
he's had. The vision was like the
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vision I saw, was just like
the vision I had seen when he came
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to destroy the city and just like
the vision I had seen by the cabar
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canal, and I fell on my
face. And what happens? Well,
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the glory of the Lord enters the
temple by the gate facing the east,
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and the spirit lifted me up and
brought me into the inner court and Behold
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the glory of the Lord filled the
temple before we learned, as we consider
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these images, several things. Let
me list a few. One in these
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visions we learn about the majesty of
the glorious, Most High God. We
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have these pictures, in these visions, to help us to see, through
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these words, the gray and glorious
presence of God, visions which caused easy
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fuel to fall on his face,
passages that have filled us with awe and
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trembling at times, remembering the majesty
of the Lord. Something and these visions
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that should take cause us to take
a deep breath as we contemplate the awesome
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power of God in his mighty angelic
armies, in his most awesome chariot,
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is omnipresence and his omniscians and his
omnipotence, in his most holy nature.
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We also learned the of God,
in his perfect goodness, that in all
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of this splendent glory, he does
not tolerate sin. He doesn't wink at
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it, he doesn't protect it,
he doesn't hide it, he destroys it.
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God doesn't respect those who abuse their
power and hide their sin and lead
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the people astray. He's not afraid
of them, like we so often are.
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He doesn't tremble he who sits mightily
a throned upon all of them,
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who can take the king's heart and
turn it like water in his hand.
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He's not afraid of people that were
often afraid of the chariots of Egypt don't
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begin to compare to the chariot of
the Almighty God. We also learned that
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God, in his judgment, is
awful and terrible. Not only does he
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not tolerate sin, not only does
he not tolerate the people who would abuse
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those whom they are called to care
for, and the idolatry of his people,
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who are called to be holy and
and and walking in love. That
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lack of toleration is in fact a
great judgment and terrible. God doesn't brush
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these things under the rug. He
destroys them. He destroys and punishes those
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who would commit them, and we
learn from these things, as so much
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of the Bible teach, is that
it's God's gracious presence that is what saves
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us. To be in the presence
of the Most High God, apart from
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His grace, is to be destroyed, it's to be afraid, it's to
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be terrified. But when he brings
us in, having forgiven our sins,
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instead of judging us for him in
welcoming us in, we have life itself
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and we have it abundantly. All
this reminds us of the importance of the
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centrality of God in the life of
the people. God is not just an
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idea, but he must be present, in central among us in every way.
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That's what this temple represented, that's
what his presence they're represented love,
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and this is important for us to
remember, because our temptation is always to
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replace God with idols, just as
they did, people in authority to replace
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his power with their power, and
sometimes this happens in really on bold and
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outrageous ways and sometimes it happens in
very subtle ways. Either way, it
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shouldn't be acceptable in the lives of
people who are made in the image of
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God. We should never be people
that are moving God to the periphery when
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he is the one who is to
be at the center. We treat him
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sometimes like he's an emergency savings account, you know, just there in case
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we need him, or, to
use an analogy, we treat God as
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if he was a to use another
analogy, we teach God sometimes as if
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he was a candy dish on the
counter at your office at work, something
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that you pass by every now and
then and grab a little something out and
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helps a little bit, makes the
day a little better, but not really
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important. If it disappeared, you'd
be fine. People think they can find
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their way in life without this God, although he is the only one who
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gives purpose and meaning to everything and
whom is the beginning and the end of
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all things. We think we can
find our own way. We think we
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can keep him at the edge,
as we think we can put ourselves as
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central, or fame or money or
power, busyness or family or whatever.
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There's only one thing, only him. A try in God, who is,
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it can be and always is,
at the center of everything. When
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we move away from that, that's
how we lose our lives. There are
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so many people today trying to find
their identity, their place in the world.
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They're so lost they try to find
it through social media, knowing that
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the bottom will fall out at any
moment. Get Rich quick schemes are everywhere.
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Think of people putting all their hopes
and cryptocurrency or whatever, sad stocks,
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constant movement from place to place,
where rutelessness, wandering, hopeless people,
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a culture filled with anxiety and sadness, constantly questioning our identity, not
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knowing where to turn, what to
do. These passages and is ek'll tell
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us where our identity is to be
found. It's in this awesome God who
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created all the world and who has
rescued us through his own plan of salvation,
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WHO's called us out of sin and
bondage so that we might live in
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him. And that's what he's promising
here in his ekiel, in this vision,
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a return into the world, into
the center of the world into Israel
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itself. And as we go on
and read, we read that you remember
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is ekiels brought into these central places. And what does God say through this
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man standing beside him? He says
in verse seven, son of Man,
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this is the place of my throne
and the place of the souls of my
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feet. This is a reminder to
us that even here, in this vision
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of the Temple of God, his
temple, the most holy place, is
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just where God sets his feet,
this footstool, this most glorious thing of
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everything that anything could be imagined,
in the most holy place in all the
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world. It's where God puts his
feet. This is how far above God,
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God is above anything that we could
imagine. The temple on Earth did
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not contain him, and indeed even
the temples of the new heavens and the
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new earth will not be able to
contain him. We ought to wonder and
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marvel and praise God for who he
is. And here he is in his
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graciousness and his blessing, because he
says here I will dwell in the midst
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of my people, of Israel forever. These kings that used to always vie
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for power, that would set up
their house right next to mine. No
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more of that. They're dead bodies
will be removed away and all will be
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made right. The central promise here, we find in other places in his
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ekil, for example, is ecyl
thirty seven that we read this morning,
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is that God would dwell in the
midst of his people, he would cleanse
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our hearts from all this gross idolatry
and he would be with us forever and
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ever. And a new dawn is
dawning. And ultimately we see this fulfilled
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in Christ. How do we know
this? We know this because the a
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temple was rebuilt, but this itself
was just another earthly temple pointing forward to
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that Lord who would come. Matthew
one in twenty three, we are told
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that Jesus is called Emmanuel. God
with us. He is the fulfillment of
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the promise of these of the presence
of God. Consider what John says and
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John One hundred and fourteen. The
word became flesh and made his dwelling among
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us. This is Ezekiel language,
isn't it? This is the prophecies being
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fulfilled, Jesus, the son of
God, coming and dwelling among us.
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And you what John says after that
in one hundred and fourteen, he says,
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and we have seen his glory and
we have seen his glory, we
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have seen the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ. Hebrews,
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one of the three says the sun
is the radiance of the glory of God
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and the exact imprint of his nature. In the song of Simion Luke,
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on seventy eight and seventy nine,
we read that because of the tender mercy
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of our God, whereby the sunrise
shall visit us from on high to give
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light to those who sit in dark
places and in the shadow of death,
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to guide o our feet into the
way of peace. This is what God
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was doing in Christ. He was
revealing his glorious nature in the world through
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the Sun, our savior. Now
that savior would die. He would be
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a rejected stone, is a way, one of the way the scriptures put
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it. The Nation's would take him
and then they're a great building project of
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the world. They would look at
Jesus and say not for us, not
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for our project, we don't need
him. But that rejected stone, the
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Bible says, becomes the corner stone
of the new temple. And listen to
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this. What Peter says in First
Peter, two, four and five,
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as you come to him, a
living stone, rejected by men but in
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the sight of God, chosen and
precious. You Yourself, like living stones,
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are being built up as a spiritual
house, to be a holy priesthood,
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to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ. What the Bible
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teaches us is that this final temple
in which God will dwell amidst his people
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is a temp pull in which he
is, that self, the cornerstone,
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and we it are those living stones
built up, his Holy Spirit dwelling in
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US, the body of Christ.
God is so more close with us,
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and we can even begin to express
and imagine. The scriptures talk about it
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in these glorious ways, and we
must hold fast to those truths. And
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when we do, we can begin
to pray and Sing, as the psalms
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do. And all close with this
psalm one hundred and thirty nine. Oh
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Lord, you have searched me and
known me. You know when I sit
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down and when I rise up.
You discerned my thoughts from afar. You
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search out my path and my lying
down and are acquainted with all my ways,
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even before a word is on my
tongue. Behold, oh Lord,
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you know it all together. You
Hem me in behind and before you lay
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your hand upon me. Such knowledge
is too wonderful to me. For me
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it is high. I cannot attain
it. Where shall I go from Your
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Spirit, or where shall I flee
from your presence? If I ascend the
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heaven, you are there. If
I make my bed and Shole, you
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are there. If I take the
wings of the morning and dwell in the
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uttermost parts of the sea, even
there, your hand shall leave me and
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your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, surely, darkness shall
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cover me in the light about me
be night. Even the darkness is not
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dark to you. The night is
as bright as the day, for darkness
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is as light with you, you, for you formed my inward parts.
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You knitted me together in my mother's
womb. I praise you, for I
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am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful
are your works. My soul knows it
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very well. My frame was not
hidden from you when I was being made
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in secret, intricately woven in the
depths of the earth. You saw my
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unformed substance. In your book were
written every one of them. The days
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that were formed for me. As
yet there was none of them. How
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precious to me are your thoughts,
Oh God? How vast is the sum
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of them? If I would count
them, they are more than the sand.
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I awake and I am still with
you. Oh that you would slay
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the wicked, Oh God, Oh
men of blood, depart from me.
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They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain.
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Do I not hate those who hate
you, Oh Lord? Do I
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not loave those who rise up against
you? I hate them with complete hatred.
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I count them my enemies. Search
me, Oh God, and know
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my heart, try me and know
my thoughts, and see if there be
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any grievous way in me, and
lead me in the way of everlasting here
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is the song and the prayer of
someone who is at rest in the presence
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of God, knowing that wherever they
are in the world, no matter wherever
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they go, in the darkest praise
in the brightest place, God is supreme
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over them, all, over it
all, and he has them in the
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palm of his hands. God is
present with us in this way through Jesus
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Christ, and so, beloved,
don't seek him elsewhere. When God has
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revealed his glory to us in this
person, in this son. Don't go
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searching for him anywhere else. Give
Him all your praise and give him all
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your glory. Find your future hope
here and remember that this Immanuel, this
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God with us in Jesus Christ,
this glory that is revealed to us this
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cornerstone of the new temple, is
the same one who said to us,
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surely I am with you always,
even to the end of the age.
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We Find God in Jesus Christ and
in the Holy Spirit, who unites us
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to us, to him in such
a way that we become the very temple
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of God. I'll praise and glory
to the Triune God. Amen. Let's
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pray.