Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 7, 2018 | Dear Israel: You're Killin' Me! - The Fantastic Four

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January 7, 2018 | Dear Israel: You're Killin' Me! - The Fantastic Four · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:01
SPEAKER_00: That's the first time I've seen that too.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's cool.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: How are you this morning?
0:09
SPEAKER_00: This is the first time I've allowed myself to speak for a few days, been saving my voice for this.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: I am really excited about this morning.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're starting a 12-week series uh on the on a book that's unfamiliar to most people, most Christians.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: It's uh if you look online, you'll find there are no sermon series that you can find on this book.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh and yet uh I was going through uh uh for 48 weeks this last year with some guys.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: I went through a Bible study on this, and they kept saying, Man, you ought to preach this.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: This is great stuff.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do that for the next 12 weeks.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna pick 12 passages out of Ezekiel, and that'll bring us right up to Easter.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna give you an Ezekiel challenge.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: It's 12 weeks.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: There are 48 chapters.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: I think the math works out to four chapters a week.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: So, starting this week, if you read four chapters in Ezekiel each week, you'll have read through the book of Ezekiel by Easter.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I encourage you to do that and to help you do that, and to help you do it in such a way that you'll actually end up not just having Ezekiel as a friend, but as a book that you really know, I'm writing devotionals.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And I put the first four online, discoverTbC.com for next week.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: So uh four devotionals from the first four chapters of Ezekiel.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: So if you'd like to do that, if you'd like to do some devotion in Ezekiel as you read through it, uh I encourage you to do that.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: So um, wow.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: This morning I'm going to talk to you about God.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: You'd think that preachers would talk about God more often, but um there are a lot of things in the Bible, and so preachers talk about a lot of things.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: But um it's always great to get to talk about God, and we've come to a passage in the Bible which has a vision of God, and it's the most extended, beautiful, long, intricate vision of God in the entire Bible.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think this is an opportunity for us.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: It's a weird passage, but listen, thinking about God has so many values.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: I could have uh said it a lot of ways, but the best way to say it is just to quote A.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: W.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Tozer, who says, What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: The mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I see that typo, and I'll fix that between services in case you're thinking about that and fixated on it.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna get to talk about God, and so I want you to open your Bible if you have one to Ezekiel 1.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: If you didn't bring one, use your cell phone.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a cell phone, it'll be on the screen in front of you.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna read through the 28 verses of chapter 1.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: And I'll stop once in a while.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh, verses 1 through 3 of the introduction to the book and to this vision in the 30th year, and by 30th, Ezekiel's actually referring to his own age.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel is 30 years old.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: And in the fourth month of that year, on the fifth day of the month, and by the way, the significance of that, Ezekiel was raised in a family where his daddy was a priest, okay?
3:42
SPEAKER_00: He lived back in Israel, grew up in Jerusalem.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel's dream apparently was to be a priest.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: His daddy apparently said when he was uh younger, you know, when you're 30, the rules are when you're 30, you can become a priest on your 30th birthday and you can serve for 20 years.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Serving as a priest in the temple in Jerusalem is a huge privilege.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: And so Ezekiel had looked forward to it.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: But then something happened.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: When he was age 25, Babylon overturned Jerusalem and took him captive and ruined his professional dreams and drug him off to Babylon.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: So in the 30th year, he's in Babylon, he thinks his professional dreams are over, and he's about to get a career change.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: In the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, so this is the same time he would have been anointed as a priest, while I'm among while I was among the exiles by the Chibar Canal, or the Kiebar, we'll call it the Kibar Canal.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh your translation may say river.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: It was actually a canal.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh Babylonians dug loads of canals off the huge Euphrates River to water their city of Babylon and all the suburbs.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
4:47
SPEAKER_00: And one of the main ones was the Kibar canal.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: On the fifth day of the month, it was the fifth year of King Jehoiachin' exile.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: He's dating his uh he's dating from the present king, the last king of Judah that had been set up.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: And um so he he he's he's he's dating this vision and everything.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: So by the way, we can figure out what day it is.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: It was actually July 31st, 593 BC that this happened, okay?
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Anybody here uh have a birthday on July 31st?
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Huh?
5:28
SPEAKER_00: No.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Um the word of the Lord came directly to the priest Ezekiel, son of Buzi, his dad Buzi was a priest.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: In the land of the Chaldeans by the Kibar Canal, uh, you'll read Chaldeans in this book because they they called themselves by their language, which was Chaldean.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: We call them by their city or their region, which is Babylonians.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: We call them Babylonians.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: In the land of the Babylonians, or Chaldeans by the Kibar Canal, the Lord's hand was on him there.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Really quick historical uh digression.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonian Empire had conquered the world.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: It was the greatest empire of that day, controlled present Iraq, uh, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, all the way over to Iran.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Huge empire, very strong.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: You notice Babylon there, you'll notice Israel 600 miles apart.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh Babylon had come and knocked over Jerusalem, and they actually defeated them and took exiles, uh, uh deported them three different times, 605 B.C., 597 BC, 586 BC was the final and total destruction.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Ezekiel was deported in 597 BC in the middle one.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
6:38
SPEAKER_00: And he was taken 600 miles from Jerusalem all the way over to Babylon on the Euphrates River, and the exiles must have been blown away when they got to this place.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: It was the most beautiful, the most amazing city that had ever been built in the history of the world, with ziggurats and huge palaces and the hanging gardens of Babylon.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: And as they walked in, they must have thought, oh man, our God is helpless compared to the God of the Babylonians.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Our God, as the God of a small land of Israel.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: We've never seen anything like this.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: With with walls 80 feet thick, you could drive three chariots abreast on the top of the, on the top of the 90-foot walls and the huge uh, all of the all of the stuff on Babylon.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And the exiles were uh put down in a dirty suburb south of Babylon on the Kibar Canal, and uh and uh that's where, by the way, it's just southwest of Baghdad today in Iraq, and it it's sort of broken down.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's such a powerful city back then, but it's just ruined today, okay?
7:45
SPEAKER_00: So let's get back to the text, okay?
7:47
SPEAKER_00: But that's the historical background, and I know lots of people love that stuff, as do I.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 1:4.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: I looked, says Ezekiel.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: So it's probably close to sunset.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: He's doing something, he suddenly stops.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: There's a wind from the north, that's the direction the winds come from at that time of year.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: And there was a whirlwind coming from the north, a huge cloud, with fire flashing back and forth, and brilliant light all around it.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: In the center of the fire, there was a gleam like amber.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: The likeness, and now for uh this description falls into three parts.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: The first of the three equal parts, seven verses each, seventh verses seven through fourteen is about the four, the fantastic four.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Four living creatures.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: The next four verse, seven verses are about the wheels, and the final seven verses are about the platform, the throne, and God Himself.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: The living creatures.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: The likeness of four living creatures came from it, and this was their appearance.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: They looked something like a human.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: But he said they had four faces and four wings.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Their legs were straight.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Don't ask me why he throws that in.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
9:02
SPEAKER_00: But their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the hooves of a calf, sparkling like the gleam of polished bronze.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: They had human hands under their wings on their four sides.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: All four of them had faces and wings.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Their wings were touching.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: The creatures didn't turn as they moved.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Each one went straight ahead.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Their faces looked something like the face of a human, and each of the four had the face of a lion on the right, face of an ox on the left, face of an eagle.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: That's behind.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Why those faces?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, we know from the ancient Near East, is that they can uh people consider the lion the king of the wild beasts, the ox, the king of the domesticated beasts, the eagle, the king of the birds.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: So here you have, and the human, the ruler over all the animals on earth.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: So you have the four sovereigns, uh human creatures that are sovereigns.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: This is what their faces were like.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Their wings were spread upward.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Each had two wings touching that of another and two wings covering its body.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Each creature went straight ahead.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went without turning as they moved.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: Can I stop here and say, I think you and I might see this one day?
10:14
SPEAKER_00: I think you and I might see this one day.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Why do I think that?
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Because this is not the only time in the Bible that when God appears, he appears something like this.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: He appears something like this in Daniel.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: He appears something like this, by the way, in Ezekiel chapter 10.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: He appears to Ezekiel again, and it's something like this.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: He appears like this in the fourth chapter of the book of Revelation when John sees him.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: I think you and I might see something like this one day.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: So one of the values of you and I doing this is when we're there and we see this, when everybody, all the believers see this, or maybe the whole world.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else will be going, Oh, I can't figure this out.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to focus.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Are those wheels?
10:49
SPEAKER_00: You and I will know all about it.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: We'll go.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're wheels within wheels.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are four different faces.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: We'll know it if we see it.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just a little extra bonus that you get for being here this morning.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: The likeness of the living creatures was like the appearance of blazing coals of fire or like torches.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Fire was moving back and forth between the living creatures.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: It was very bright with lightning coming out of it.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: The creatures were darting back and forth like flashes of lightning.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Now the wheels.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: When I looked at the living creatures, there was one wheel on the ground beside each of the four-faced creatures.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: The appearance of the wheels and the craftsmanship was like the gleam of barrel.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: And all four had the same likeness.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Their appearance and craftsmanship was like a wheel within a wheel.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: We'd call it a gyroscope, I guess.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: When they moved, they went in any of the four directions without turning as they moved.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Their rims were tall and awe-inspiring.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Each of their four rims were full of eyes all around.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Weird.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them, and when the creatures rose from the earth, the wheels also rose.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Wherever the spirit wanted to go, the creatures went in the direction the spirit was moving.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: It's the spirit that moved them, and the wheels followed.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the wheels that took them in different directions.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: So at times they touched the ground, at times they zoomed up like a rocket, went right, left, flashed like lightning.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And the wheels rose alongside them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: When the creatures moved, the wheels moved.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: When the creatures stopped, the wheels stopped.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And when the creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose alongside them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Now over the heads of the living creatures, the last seven verses, the likeness of an expanse was spread out.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: It gleamed like awe-inspiring crystal.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And under the expanse, their wings extended toward one another.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: They each also had two wings covering their bodies.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And when they moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of a huge torrent, like the voice of the Almighty, and a sound of tumult, like the noise of an army.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: When they stopped, they lowered their wings.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: So when the thing moved, it's really loud, you know.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And the wings are up.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
13:03
SPEAKER_00: But when they'd stop, wings go down and it's silent.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: How weird is this.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And a voice came from above the expanse over their heads.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: When they stopped, they lowered their wings.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Something like a throne, with the appearance of Lapis Lazuli, the most beautiful, really the most costly element that they knew in those days, bright blue, was above the expanse over their heads.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: On the throne, high above, was someone who looked like a human.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: From what seemed to be his waist up, notice how he's careful not to say this is what it was, but this is what it looked like.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: I saw a gleam like amber with what looked like fire enclosing it all around.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: From what seemed to be his waist down, I also saw what looked like fire.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: There was a brilliant light all around him.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: The appearance of the brilliant light all around was like that of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: This is the appearance of the likeness of the Lord's glory.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: When I saw it, I fell face down and I heard a voice speaking.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's when chapters two and three come along, and we have the Lord actually moving from the vision to what he said in verses one through three.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: There are three parts there's the vision, the voice, and the hand.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: In chapter two, we have the voice.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: God speaks to him and calls him to be his prophet.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: And in chapter three, the hand of God grabs him and moves him.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: So that's chapter one.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Is this cool or what?
14:34
SPEAKER_00: So um now you notice the number four.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: One thing I'll say.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: The number four was the key number here.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: There are four creatures, four faces, four, everything's four, four wheels, and so forth.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: And four is the number of completeness, and I take it the focus here is that is that this is complete sovereignty and total and all that stuff, and and it's the four winds of the earth.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: That God is not just the God, you know, of Israel, he's the God of the whole world.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: North, south, east, west.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: And there's a chance, okay?
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh you don't it's not something you find.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: But I was reading something in astronomy, and some astronomers consider uh you know, consider that in the in the north, south, east, and west, the four uh the four most prominent and leading and ruling uh constellations in the north, south, east, and west compasses are the lion, the ox, Taurus, the bull, and the uh and the eagle and and uh and the man.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I don't know, but whatever it is, this is total.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I've picked out, guess how many lessons I'm gonna give you from this.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I better I better stay on the four, okay?
15:44
SPEAKER_00: So so here they are, and here's the first lesson.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: This is the most obvious lesson, okay?
15:48
SPEAKER_00: God is not like us, or but like anything we know.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: God's not like us or like anything we know.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: He's strange, he's different, he's odd, he's random, he's not like anything we've ever seen or come across.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: Let me say three things about this.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Number one, this is something that people don't realize.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: This is something that people don't know.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: When you talk to people about God, normally, to be honest, most people just think God's sort of a bigger version of us.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Toward the end of his life, Henry David Thoreau was asked.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: A friend of his came to his house as he was dying and said to him, uh, Thoreau, have you made your peace with God yet?
16:27
SPEAKER_00: And Thoreau said, We've never quarreled.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: As if God is just someone you might have a quarrel with.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: More recently, more recently, our movie makers, our TV script writers, our late-night talk show hosts, people like this, talk about God again, as if he's just like that, us.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And the most, two most popular movies about God made in my lifetime, or at least my lifetime, to see movies, God was played by George Burns and by Morgan Freeman.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And in both cases, God was a late-night talk show host who's retired.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically, that's what he was.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: He was a retired late-night talk show host.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: He's funny, he was cool, definitely non-threatening, full of great one-liners.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: He's like your clever old uncle who came to your house for Christmas and entertained you and and just, you know, so forth.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Three words that do not apply to God whenever God is presented in movies or in TV shows or late-night talk show comments, three words that don't apply to him are scary, spiritual, and holy.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's nothing at all like the God of reality, like the God that really exists, like the God of Ezekiel chapter 1, who is really an unusual, strange, odd God.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: So people don't know that.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, can I say that this is a reason for you to believe in God?
17:53
SPEAKER_00: This is a reason for you to actually believe in God.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible, God of the Bible isn't the simple, straightforward being anybody has imagined.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: People who don't believe in Christianity, people who don't believe in Christianity have a concept of God that is always simple and always childlike.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: They say something like this to you I don't believe in God because if there was a God, He would He would not allow all this suffering in the world.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't allow a little baby to die.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't allow there to be floods and hurricanes and and and tornadoes that kill innocent people.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't allow late-night house fires.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: That's not the kind of God that would, you know, so I can't believe in that kind of a God.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: Your God doesn't exist.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, a God that would allow the world that we have.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And they're not silly people, these people that say this to you, but they are saying something that is extremely silly and extremely shallow.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: It's a child's version of reality.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Reality is always random, reality is always odd, reality is always unexpected, not neat, something you'd never expect.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you some examples.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Look at our solar system.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: You would expect, if you created a solar system with eight planets or nine planets, whatever, you'd expect the planets would look something alike, or that they would be equidistant from each other, or that they'd have a similar atmosphere, or that they would have similar rotation, or that something about the planets would be like each other, but there's an absolutely nothing normal or obvious about our solar system.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: It is random, it is odd, it is strange.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: If you're a diver, and then you dive under the surface of the ocean, is the underneath of the ocean anything like you would have ever expected?
19:33
SPEAKER_00: No, reality is always weird, random, odd, unexpected.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: You gasp at the strangeness of it.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: And that was C.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: S.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Lewis's point when he said reality is usually something you couldn't have guessed.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: If it offered us just the kind of universe we'd always expected, I should feel we were making it up.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: But in fact, it's not the sort of thing anyone would have made up.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: It's just that, has just that queer twist about it that real things have.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Atheism, I love this line.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Atheism turns out to be too simple.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a fantastic line.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And true, and true.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's the second point.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: When we read in Ezekiel what God is like, it's a reason for you actually to believe in Christianity.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And the third point sort of goes the opposite direction.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: And yet, and yet, though God is absolutely weird and strange, and yet it seems to me that God has planted the idea, the hint, the seed of a strangeness within us.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And it keeps bubbling to the surface, seeping to the surface down through the centuries in our artistry, in things that people carve out of stone and so forth.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean is, we're always carving for thousands of years fantastic creatures.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Even at the same time, why is it that in all many of those civilizations you go over there and you find cherubim, these beings with a body of a lion, with a face, not four faces.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: It's true, they're different.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Not four totally different faces and so and four different creatures.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: It's one creature, but it's something like this with a face of a human and a body of a lion, and sometimes the rear end of an ox and the wings of an eagle.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Why do you have animals like the Sphinx with you know the body of a lion and the face of a man or centaurs or things like this?
21:32
SPEAKER_00: I think it's my view, I think it's because God, God has planted this little with his image, he's planted this little idea of his strangeness inside of us and it keeps bubbling out.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Why is it that as we approach the end of time, more and more fantasies are popular?
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Why is it that we have more and more movies about fantastic creatures?
21:52
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible, I'm suggesting, is it just possible that this idea of God's strangeness, his fantastic, Being, his rulership over fantastic beasts, that this is seeping out of our artists and our writers.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Is it just possible that this is an idea, a reality is deep within us, and that it's coming out?
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Is that possible?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: I think it might be.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's point number two.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: Point number two.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Or point actually point number one, God's not anything like us.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: A big point.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Point number two, a short point.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: God's dazzling brilliance proclaims his glory.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Every time you see God in the Bible, whether it's on top of Mount Sinai, whether it's Daniel falling down before this bright radiance, wherever you see God, he is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: We read in Daniel 10, 6, Daniel sees God.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: His body looked like a precious gem, his face flashed like lightning, his eyes flame like torches, his arms and feet shone like polished bronze, his voice roared.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: 1 Timothy 6, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, dwells in unapproachable light.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: God's dazzling brilliance proclaims his glory.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: And then you come to revelation.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And you find that one day you and I, all of us who have believed in Jesus Christ, will be in the new Jerusalem, in a city here on earth.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
23:18
SPEAKER_00: No lights there.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: He showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: It shone, or as the British would say, it shone with the glory of God.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And the city had no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illumines the city, and the Lamb is its light.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: God's dazzling brilliance proclaims his glory.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: So he's not in a glorious number three, he's sovereign.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: God is on his throne, notice, ruling over all.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: He's on his throne, ruling, he's ruling over all creatures.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: All four of the kings on earth are nothing more than simply carriers, carriers holding up a crystal that supports the throne of the true ruler, the overall ruler of all the creatures on earth.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: And he rules all over the earth.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: The view that all religions used to have, and many religions still have, that God's rule, that the Hindu God rules in India, okay?
24:15
SPEAKER_00: A Muslim God rules in Arabia, that Yahweh God can rule in America, but God is limited.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: That falls apart because God is here in Babylon.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: He's sitting on his throne in Babylon, he rules over the entire, the entire earth, God rules over all.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: In this book, by the way, let me make a comment.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: The two most common phrases in this book, the two most common phrases in this book are, I am Yahweh.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, I am Yahweh, I have spoken.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: I am Yahweh.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: And the second is I did this that they may know that I am Yahweh.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: God is concerned that we know that He is the Lord ruling over all.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
24:59
SPEAKER_00: 93 times Ezekiel is referred to in this book?
25:04
SPEAKER_00: Never by name.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: God only calls, never calls him Ezekiel.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: God always calls him Bin Adam, son of man, human.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: That's who we are.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: We're humans.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: We're limited.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: We are rulers over the entire earth, filled with the image of God.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: We are amazing creatures in the universe.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Angels will one day bow before us, and yet before God, we are merely Bin'Adam.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: We are sons of Adam and Eve.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: We are merely humans, and God is on his throne, ruling over all.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: And fourth and final point, and yet, and yet, get this, and yet, in spite of the amazing apparition, this amazing being that God is and who we are, just humans, Homo sapiens, God is interested in us and he comes to us.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
25:53
SPEAKER_00: He still comes to us.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And how does he come?
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel looks up, and everything is super weird, and he looks up and he goes, Wow, the being on the throne looks like a human.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: It's a role reversal.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Right?
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Garden of Eden, God made us in his own image.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Now he's reversing you.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Now he comes in our image.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Just to sort of help us feel that he's interested in us.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna come all the way over there to Babylon.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: You think, in fact, the folks back in Jerusalem say, you guys have all disobeyed me, and that's why you're over here, and you're throwing, and I'm throwing you on the trash heap?
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're on a trash heap, it's a tell.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: But I've come all over here because I'm interested in you.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: I care about you.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm present with you.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm interested in you, and I'm coming to you where you are, even though you're in exile.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Wow, isn't that amazing?
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Because that's a message, that's the final message he leaves with you and with me today.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Though, no matter how great God is, and I hope that today God has been elevated in your eyes and in your mind and in your heart, because what you think about God is the most important thing about you.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: It's so important that you have a big God.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: God's really down here.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: He's here.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: He's interested in you, he's close.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't mind, I'm gonna use an illustration out of country music, which is about as down to earth as you can get.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Song was sung by Ronnie Milsap in 1981.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: I loved, I love the song.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Now that I talk on a country music station every day, I love talking about this song occasionally.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Because the song is about a confident young man whose girlfriend has told him she's done with him.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't like him anymore.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: She's leaving, she's walking out.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And Ronnie Milsap sang a song called There's No Getting Over Me.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, here's the young, confident young man talking to the girl.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: She's about to walk out the door.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, you can walk out on me tonight if you think it ain't feeling right.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: But, darling, there ain't no getting over me.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: That's confidence.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, you can say that you need to be free.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: I hear the voice of God here, by the way.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, you can say that you need to be free, but there ain't no place I won't be.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Sweet darling, there ain't no getting over me.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And finally, don't you know you can tell everyone we're through?
28:22
SPEAKER_00: You might even believe it too.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: But darling, there ain't no getting over me.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: And in this book, God comes to Israel and says, You're killing me.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: You're killing me.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: That's why you're in exile, because you've been killing me.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: You've run away from me, you're worse than the prodigal son, but there's no getting over me.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I've sent you in exile, but I'm coming after you because I care about you.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm interested in you.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: There's a hundred years ago that a guy full of addictions, troubled, but with a desire toward God, a guy named Francis Thompson, wrote a poem that everybody knew in our country 100 years ago.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Even though it was 182 lines were required to be memorized in school.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: The Hound of Heaven was the name of it.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote about how God came after him, called the Hound of Heaven, and it began this way.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: I fled him down the arches or down the nights and down the days.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Francis writing about God.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: I fled him down the nights and down the days.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: I fled him down the arches of the years.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I fled him through the labyrinthine ways of my own mind.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: And in the midst of tears, I hid from him from those strong feet that followed, followed, followed after.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: The hound of heaven, chasing him, chasing him, and finally the hound of heaven catches him and he submits in the last lines to the hound of heaven who comes after him, who won't let him go.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: And this is a book, and this is a vision about a God who comes to us when we've run away from him and comes after us and won't let us go because he cares about us, even though he's the greatest, greatest being you can ever imagine, and greater than you can imagine.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And even though we are just bin Adam, we are just humans, Homo sapiens.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: But he chases us and he's coming after us, and he's coming after us this morning.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: And he wants us to say, catch me.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm right here.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad we got to celebrate communion this morning.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: And as I close in prayer, prepare your hearts to talk to this God who's coming after you.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Father, we're so grateful.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: That you in all your greatness, far greater, far stranger, far scarier than we can imagine, that you care for us and you come after us.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: And you're here chasing us.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: You want us for yourself.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Even though we're killing you, you come after us because you want us for yourself.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, as we take the bread and drink the cup, we say yes.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Guys, come forward and serve the table.