Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 21, 2018 | Dear Israel: You're Killin' Me! - Unwanted In My Own House

Transcript

January 21, 2018 | Dear Israel: You're Killin' Me! - Unwanted In My Own House · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: How are you, everybody?
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to week number three in a sermon series on the book of Ezekiel.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: This schizophrenic prophet, this crazy guy, this wild and wacky book.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: My title this morning, Unwanted in My Own House.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: You ever felt unwanted in your own home?
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Remember when you were a kid and your little sister took away that toy that belonged to you, and your parents didn't act fast enough to get it back to you, and so you knew you were unappreciated and unloved, and so you told them you were leaving home forever?
0:41
SPEAKER_00: And you even walked down to the end of the block.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: You know?
0:44
SPEAKER_00: So I think all of us as kids at times felt unwanted or at least unappreciated.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: But then it still happens, and it gets worse the older you get.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, you get to be a teenager, and sometimes you feel unwanted in your own home.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: I was talking with your parents, you deserved it.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: So, and then just kidding.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh so then you went to college.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, you had several different roommates, maybe as many as eight if you switched them every semester.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: And at least some of those roommates, they brought their friends into the room.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
1:16
SPEAKER_00: And the way that they looked at you, they talked with each other.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: You felt unwanted in your own room in the dorm.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you were living off campus, or maybe you graduated from college, lived in an apartment, and you had several roommates, and they brought their boyfriends, their girlfriends by whatever, and you were at times you felt unwanted.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, the worst thing is after you get married, right?
1:41
SPEAKER_00: There are times when, you know, you take a walk because you've just had an argument and you know you are not wanted at that moment in your house.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Or you have children and and they let you know you're not wanted, and it's a painful thing.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Lord knows exactly what you're feeling.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're gonna talk about this morning.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: We're we're gonna do chapters 8, 9, 10, and 11 of Ezekiel.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: We'll be here till about 3.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And uh we're gonna do uh uh part of the old test.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do something I've never done 40 years before.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh I never heard, and this is gonna be seminary level.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm warning you right now, you're gonna have to concentrate.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Even though I never heard this when I was in seminary, I'm gonna walk through the entire Bible and talk to you about something that's really important called the glory of God.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna fit that in with what is one of the most critical, awful moments ever in Israel's history.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Surely one of the five worst days and years in the entire history of the nation Israel was this day on 592 BC when the glory of God left the temple in Jerusalem and has never returned.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, I would urge you as we're going through Ezekiel to join many of us in taking the Ezekiel challenge.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Read Ezekiel during this 12-week series, four chapters a week, we'll take you through the whole book.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And I'm doing four devotionals each week on those four chapters, by the way, since this is week, we're starting the third week.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have read Ezekiel 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, the first eight chapters?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: That's really great.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Raise them higher over in the College Avenue building I can't see.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, got it.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm really thrilled how many of you are doing this, and many of you are coming up, by the way, and you're saying things like, wow, this book is really repellent, you know, and people are dying, and then there's blood, and Ezekiel's having to lie on his side for 390 days and cook his food over poop, and I mean it's just crazy.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you are going, I need to read that book.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting on the Ezekiel challenge.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: And this morning's message, while we're going to be talking about a huge topic, and I'm not kidding you when I say seminary level, um, will help you understand an attribute of God, which, if you understand it, will help you appreciate Ezekiel and help you appreciate God a lot more.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
4:18
SPEAKER_00: So let me talk about the glory of God this morning, all right?
4:21
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about uh this incredible attribute of God that he is glorious, but I'm not gonna talk about all of the ways that God shows his glory, because of course there are lots of ways that God shows his glory.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: He shows his glory, right, in the sky and in the stars and so forth.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: And he shows us glory.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians says, if you're Christian, you've got his glory in you, and you're moving from glory to glory.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: So when you're kind to me, you know, if you come up and you say something nice about the sermon afterwards, and that's that's not just a hint.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: That's a direct plea.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: No.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, if you say nice things, if you do nice things for people, they're seeing the glory of God in you.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm talking about something very specific.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about one aspect of the glory of God today called the shekinah.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: The shekinah, shekina is not a word that appears in the Bible in relationship, is glory is not called the Shekinah glory in the Bible.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: The Jews took the word from the Old Testament, Shakan, which means to dwell, and they've applied it, and we use that, and it's a good word.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: And you need to know that when Paul thought in Romans 9 about why the Israelites, his countrymen, were so privileged, in 9 through 11 of chapter of chapter book of Romans, he's saying, listen, you guys think God has thrown the Jews in the dustbin of history?
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Wrongola.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, he still loves them.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: And he starts by saying, they're Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of law, worship, and promises.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And what he means by that in Romans 9 4 is he means the Shekinah glory of God, something quite special.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the visible manifestation of the presence and glory of God.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And it is a crazy thing.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
6:14
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I want to trace it through the Bible for you the first time.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm really sure that it appears in the Bible, would be in the famous Abrahamic covenant.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: You're part of that covenant, by the way, if you're a believer, the Abrahamic covenant was made between God and Abram by cutting animals apart.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Abraham falls into a deep sleep.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: When he wakes up, the Shekinah glory of God is passing through the pieces in two parts.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: There's a cloud of smoke, and there is a blazing pillar of fire.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: And that would be the first clear time.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: The Shekinah glory appears in the Bible, but it then shows up again in Egypt when God is setting his people free after 430 years of captivity.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And now in 1440 BC, to help these scared two million Israelites leave the land of Egypt, he goes before them.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: It says the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light to go.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: By day and night, Shekinah led them out of Egypt and right up to the Red Sea.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And remember, they got stopped there, and now the cloud of the Shekinah glory goes behind them to hide them from Pharaoh's army.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Pillar of fire leads them through the water of the Red Sea.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: So the Shekinah glory of God in full force, the visible manifestation of God on earth, takes them through the Red Sea.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: It should be Exodus 15, not Genesis 15.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: And then they go up to Mount Sinai, and what do they see in Exodus 19?
7:52
SPEAKER_00: They see the Shekinah glory of God shining forth in full radiance from the peak of Mount Sinai.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Don't get near this mountain.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: If you or even your cat or dog or favorite animal touches the base of this mountain, they'll be electrocuted, not his words exactly, but basically that's what he was saying.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: So stay away, I am up here in power.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Moses, you come up, and you'll remember that Moses went up, and he was so uh ref he's so infused by the Shekinah that when he came down he had to wear a veil, his face radiated uh with the Shekinah glory of God for a while.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: And so that was on the top of Mount Sinai.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And while there, God gave Moses and Israel some commands.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: And one of the commands he gave them was to build him a tabernacle because he wanted his Shekinah glory to be able to dwell amongst them without wiping them out.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And so he said, and Shekinah means literally the one who dwells, he said, make a sanctuary for me, so that I may dwell, Shekhan, among them.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: You must make it according to all that I show you.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: The pattern of the tabernacle, Mishkan, you can hear Shekinah in that word too, as well as the pattern of all its furnishings.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what they did.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: They built him a tabernacle according to the pattern that he gave them.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: And there, in that three-part tabernacle in the Holy of Holies, or literally the most holy place, there in the ark, actually, uh God said, My throne is on the surface of the ark, in between the arms of the cherubim.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: They had, remember the Fantastic Four two weeks ago?
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Cherubim, face of a man, wings of an eagle, body of a lion, golden ones, wings touching each other on top of the ark.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: God said, My throne, I sit enthroned above the cherubim.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: And there, temporarily, you had the during the day, the cloud burst forth, the cloud of God's Shekinah, and at night, the fire.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: But then when they got uh, after they started wandering through the wilderness, God kept himself, the Shekinah, in the Ark of the Covenant, and it became associated with the Ark of the Covenant ever after.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: And they crossed over into the promised land, and remember they first defeated Jericho, that mighty city, with the Ark of the Covenant leading the way around that city, the Shekinah glory inside that ark, and the walls came tumbling down.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: And in the book of Joshua, we find that uh that that they conquer the promised land pretty much, and they take the tabernacle with the town with the ark containing the glory of God in it, up to a little town called Shiloh, which not only have we now found that town, it is called, and I quote, the sexiest archaeological dig these days in all of Israel.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: I took a group there a couple years ago, somebody leaned down and found a little coin dating from this very time, during the 300 years that the tabernacle was there in Shiloh, during the period of Joshua Judges, Ruth, first Samuel.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: And so that's where the tabernacle sat, northeast of Jerusalem for 300 years.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: But something terrible happened.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: A priest named Eli, the last priest, there before the king started, the priest named Eli in charge did not discipline his sons, Haphne and Phinehas.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And Hophni and Phinehas made it really clear that they preferred other things in the house of the Lord to the Lord himself.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: And so they uh embezzled money and they took the sacrifices, the best parts for themselves, the porter houses and the stakes.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: And they also took the pretty women and they took them right in there to the holy place and they slept with them right there.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And God, as a result, said, I'm getting on up out of here.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: And he left, he let the Philistines capture him.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: They always were fighting the Philistines there, 1100 BC, 1050 BC.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Story of Goliath comes just a little bit later.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: But what happened is that they were losing to the Philistines again, and they said, You know what?
12:06
SPEAKER_00: We got us a powerful box here.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: This thing's a magic talisman, all we have to do is take it into war, and we've seen the movie with Indiana Jones, lift the lid off, and we can make their faces melt.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: And so, not exactly like that, but so they took the thing into battle.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
12:23
SPEAKER_00: God said, You know what?
12:24
SPEAKER_00: This is my excuse.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get out of here.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: You guys just make me sick.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to hang around in my own house where I'm not wanted.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: And so he let the Philistines capture the ark.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And Hophani and Phinehas, Eli's two sons, were killed when they took the ark.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And the news came back to old Eli, really old guy, 90 years old, and he fell off the fence backward and broke his neck.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: And his daughter-in-law, Eli's daughter-in-law, was about to give birth.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: When she heard the news, the news news apparently, about the capture of the ark, she collapsed and she gave birth.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: And as she was dying, she named the boy Washburn.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: She named the she named the boy Ichabod.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh word Ichabod, the I stands for no, and Kavod stands for glory, no glory.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Interesting nickname.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Actually, the it's named after a guy named Ichabod Washburn, who was a sold copper wire back in the mid-1800s and gave the school$25,000.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh wish Washburn Ichabod, but she named the boy Ichabod, saying, the glory has departed from Israel because the ark of God has been captured.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: The Shekinah glory was now gone.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: Philistines were rejoicing, they're they're going, oh yeah, we always thought we were stronger, that our God Dagon was stronger than the God Yahweh, the God of Israel, and so they rejoiced, and they took that thing, they had uh Pentapolis, five great cities, and they took it into the temples of each of those cities.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And in that temple, they had in their holy of holies the huge god Dagon, face of a man, body of a fish.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: And they took the ark in there and put it down as one of the other defeated gods, and in the morning, each time when they went in, they found the huge god Dagon fallen over in front of the ark, not broken as if he had just toppled over, but decapitated smoothly.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: Smoothly decapitated.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Same way, by the way.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Exactly the same thing David would do shortly to their hero Goliath.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: So uh God clearly showed that he can take care of himself, and uh and um and maybe that's where the movie makers got the idea of the ark being able to melt people's faces.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: But eventually the Philistines got tired of all of the sickness in their land, and so they sent the Ark of the Covenant of the glory of God back to Israel on a cart, pulled by two melt cows, and everybody cheered and so forth.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
15:00
SPEAKER_00: It stopped at somebody's house who took it into their house and began to be blessed by it.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: But there was a new king in town, the first king, and his name was Saul, and Saul didn't care about it.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Strangely, not having a heart for God, he just didn't care whether or not he was close to God.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: And so he was up by now in Jerusalem, and the ark of God was a number of miles down the road in somebody's house.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Forty years he didn't care about it.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: And then came the next king, David, and he cared about it.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: He says in Psalms, I couldn't go to sleep at night, thinking that the ark of God and the person of God was so far from me.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: And so he and all Israel went down to Kiryat Yarim to take from there the ark of God.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, who is enthroned above the cherubim, that famous phrase you see throughout the rest of the Old Testament.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh, who is enthroned above the cherubim.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he uh caused a lot of ruckus because he stripped down and danced around and his his wife made fun of him and so forth.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens, guys, whenever we strip down and start dancing.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: So, probably hadn't happened in your house.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: Certainly hasn't in mine.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: So um so then uh David wanted to build a uh temple in which to keep this, and God said, No, but I'll let your son build a temple.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: And so his son Solomon built this beautiful temple, and we read about the dedication of that temple in 1 Kings 8, and the highlight of that dedication is that when the priests came out of the holy place, the Shekinah cloud filled the Lord's temple.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: And because of the cloud, the priests were not even able to continue ministering, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: And for the rest of Israel's history there in Jerusalem, as you know, that's where the Shekinah glory of God dwelt.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Once a year the priest would go in, offer the sacrifice, the blood of the goat of atonement on the mercy seat, and the glory would shine forth, and that's where God dwelt in his Shekinah glory, and that brings us up to the fall of Jerusalem in the time of Ezekiel.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: And to remind those of you who were here two weeks ago, and for those of you who weren't here, Jerusalem fell in three stages: 605, 597, and 586 when it was totally destroyed.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: After 586, we've never seen the Ark of Covenant again.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: And this passage this morning will explain to you, I think, why God doesn't care.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Why God let the Ark of the Covenant be taken by the Babylonians, probably, and be turned into kindling.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: So what happened is that Ezekiel in 597 goes east with thousands of others to Babylon, 600 miles east, where he and others are awestruck at the beautiful city of Babylon, and they are placed down at Tel Aviv, just southeast of there, the area of the Jewish settlements by the brook Kibar.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: And it is there that the book begins with the Shekinah glory of God showing up in Babylon of all places.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: In Babylon, the Shekinah glory of God shows up in Babylon, coming to the exiles there, one exile in particular, named Ezekiel.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's where this is the story we discussed two weeks ago of this mysterious, fantastic four, this strange situation where God shows up, and God shows up in person, the visible manifestation of his glory and presence, but he allows himself to be shown as a human, half made of fire and half made of amber, but blowing people's minds, and then he leaves.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And now we come to Ezekiel 8 through 11.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: Now Ezekiel is taking time off.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the sky.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: He took me in visions of God to Jerusalem.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: So I take it his body didn't go back to Jerusalem, but he went in a vision of God, so he somehow could see things very perfectly.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: But in visions, he went back to Jerusalem, to a specific place, to the entrance to the north gate of the inner courtyard of the temple.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And in the courtyard, we read was the idol that caused God to be jealous.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Immediately, some of you are saying, No, I don't like that.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't like that.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Jealousy is a bad thing.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: And I say, No, no, no.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: If you catch nothing else from this morning, catch this.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Because you will never either understand the book of Ezekiel or the God that really exists unless you understand that one of his major attributes is his jealousy.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: You say, but jealousy's a bad thing.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: I've seen the Hulk and it's green and it grows, and I say, no, no, no.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: No.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: You're confusing it with the really bad thing, which is envy, which is one of the seven worst sins.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: Envy is wanting something that's not yours.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: Envy is desiring something that God's not given you.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: Jealousy is having a passionate love for what is legitimately yours that God has given you, like your wife, like your family, like your loved ones.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: And they are yours.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And if you can let them go, if you can have someone else come in and steal your husband or steal your wife, or steal someone that you're in a covenant relationship with and you don't care, then I would ask if you really loved that person.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: It is jealousy that makes you love with a deep and passionate love your people.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And it is jealousy that made God really upset when in his own home, in his own house, where he himself dwelt, the children of Israel, his own children, his own bride, brought in an idol, and it caused him to be jealous.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Last week we sang a song here.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: They sang it this morning over here in the Mulvaine building.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: They sang it this morning over in the College Avenue building.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: It was a song written by a guy named John Mark Montgomery less than 10 years ago.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Lives in Charlotte.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: John Montgomery was with his friend, a youth pastor named Stephen one morning.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And that morning he and Stephen were praying, and Stephen said, Lord, I would give my life today if it would shake up the youth of America.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And that night, John Mark Montgomery's best friend Stephen was driving in his car, and his car got hit and he died.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: And John Montgomery went home and he wrote a song that he never expected would be a popular worship song.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a song expressing how he felt.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Crashed and cr crashed into and crushed by God.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote these words.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: He is jealous.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: He is jealous for me.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Loves like a hurricane.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: I am a tree.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: You know what a hurricane is like.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: It uproots trees, it bends them over, it breaks them.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: It's an awful, it's a crushing thing.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And John Montgomery was feeling that somehow this lover in heaven had turned into a frowning face.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: It was like a hurricane.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden the song turns.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: As he says, all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: What afflictions?
22:50
SPEAKER_00: The loss of my best friend.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: The crushing, the crushing move of God in my life.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: But all of a sudden, I'm unaware of these afflictions because they're eclipsed by glory.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: It's as though he was seeing the Shekinah glory of God.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, and I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, how he loves us.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh, how he loves us.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, how he loves us.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: You see, when God breaks forth in indignation against his own people, it is because of his passionate, jealous love for them that cannot stand for them to be unfaithful to him and to choose another lover and to make him unwelcome in his own home by bringing their other lovers into that home.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: And so God brings Ezekiel to Jerusalem to explain to him, to show him why he simply must leave his own home.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: And he brings him, he says, to the courtyard of the temple and to the north gate, right next to the idol that caused him jealousy.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: So there's Ezekiel and there's the idol.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And there's the holy place and the most holy place and the courtyard.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: And you say, what idol was that?
24:16
SPEAKER_00: And well, we think we know what the idol was.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: It was the most popular ancient Near Eastern idol, a Phoenician idol called the Asherah.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: And we're pretty sure that's the idol because it wasn't long before that that King Manasseh, terrible king of Judah, carved an Asherah idol and put it in the temple, where the Lord had said to David and Solomon, I'll be worshipped in the temple.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: This is my place that I have chosen for my home.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And this idol is standing there, and God is there too, because we read this idol seems huge and shocking to Ezekiel, but the next thing is even more shocking.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: The idol pales next to the fact that he says, next, I saw the glory of the God of Israel there, like the vision I'd seen in the plain, chapter one.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And what he means is he saw the Shekinah glory of God from the waist down, blazing fire, from the waist up like amber.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: That's the Shekinah glory.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And this is departure step number one.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh turns to him and says, Human son of man, look what they're doing here.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: The great abominations that the house of Israel is committing here, driving me away from my sanctuary.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: But you shall see even greater abominations.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And now we have the four abominations in Ezekiel 8, corresponding to the four moves, the departure steps.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: First, there's the idol that made the Lord jealous.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, Hey, listen, I want you, there's a secret room here.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: I want you to tear apart the plaster and look in this room.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel starts tearing apart the plaster and he looks in, and in this darkened room, he sees none other than the 70 elders of Israel, the 70 leaders, now that the king is gone.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And they're hiding in a dark room, and they've carved reptiles and snakes and animals on the walls, and they're offering incense to them and to all these little idols in this secret room.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: And then God says, Yahweh says, Listen, I've got an even worse abomination for you.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And it takes him up to the back of the temple, and he finds the women's ministry of the temple.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: And those women are all there performing a weeping ceremony for a Babylonian god, the male sex god called Tammuz, who dies every fall.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And only if you'll conduct a weeping ceremony will he come back to life in the spring.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And so the women are all loudly sobbing for this Babylonian God.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, I got something worse, a worse abomination.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And he looks to the front.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: God, Yahweh takes him to the eastern edge of the temple, and there he sees a horror.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: He sees the worst of all.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: He sees 25 men with their rear ends and their backs to the glory of God, to the to the holy place, a direction you should never take.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: They're facing east and they're praying to the Egyptian sun god, Ra.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: It's astounding.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: What do they want to go?
27:15
SPEAKER_00: Back to Egypt?
27:16
SPEAKER_00: They want to go back to captivity?
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Abominations.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, as this tour of the temple, led by the Shekinah glory himself, shows Ezekiel the abominations of the temple.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Basically, what God is saying to Ezekiel is listen, it's obvious, isn't it?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm unwanted in my own house.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And at that point, the glory of the Lord rises from where it is in the most holy place, above the cherub where it had been, to the threshold, to the front door of the temple.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 9, 3 and 10, 4.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: That's step two.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine that when it comes out of that little place enclosed by curtains, that all of a sudden, all of a sudden it's going to be this blazing light.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, we read the temple was filled with the cloud, and the court was filled with the brightness of the Lord's glory.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: The sound of the cherubim's wings, for they came with him, was like the voice of God Almighty.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's step two, and then step three, it's as though God is so reluctant to leave his home.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to leave his own home and his own people because he loves them so much.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And so he takes it slowly.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And then we find the glory of the Lord moved away from the threshold of the temple.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And now it stops above the cherubim.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: They lift their wings and they ascend from the earth, and the wheels are beside them.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: It's right before my eyes, Ezekiel says.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: And the glory of the God of Israel is above them, and it stopped at the entrance to the eastern gate of the Lord's house.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: That's the departure step number three.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: And then the final step in chapter 11 is then the cherubim with the wheels beside them lifted their wings, and the glory of the God of Israel above them, and the glory of the Lord rose up from within the city and stopped on the mountain east of the city.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: Do you know the name of that mountain?
29:17
SPEAKER_00: You do.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Mount of Olives.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: It was from that mountain, by the way, that years later, Jesus, Jesus, the embodiment of the glory of God, that he would leave and go back to heaven.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, in Acts 1, it says a cloud hid them from their sight.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the Shekinah cloud hid Jesus from their sight.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: But that's where the story ends.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: It says in the in verse 24 of chapter 11, and Ezekiel and I was taken back to the canal Kibar back in Babylon.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: So you go, well, well, I've been to Mount of Olives.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: There's no Shekinah glory there, I can tell you.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: It's all dirty.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Photographers, that's where you take pictures of the city.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Where did it go from there?
30:04
SPEAKER_00: People guess, some people say it went to Babylon temporarily.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, wherever.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: One thing's for sure, it went back to heaven.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: It went to heaven because that's where John saw it in Revelation chapter 4, and from there it's going to come back.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Even Jeremiah explains this painful departure as God saying, I left my home and my people.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And here's why, Jeremiah 12, 7.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: I have abandoned my house.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: I've deserted my inheritance.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: I've handed the love of my life over to her enemies.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: My inheritance had behaved toward me like a lion in the forest roared against me.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, catch this.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: I hate her.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: How can you love someone and hate them at the same time?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, Fred Frops never understood that.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: But God loved his people passionately and dearly, and yet at times it drove him crazy, and he hated them.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, he'll never stay where he's not welcome.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: He says, you know, I explained this to you a thousand years ago.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: I told Moses this would happen, Deuteronomy 31, they'll abandon me and they'll worship the pagan gods of the land they're about to enter.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: When that happens, I'll become angry with them and I'll abandon them and they'll be destroyed.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Many terrible disasters will come upon them, and then they'll realize that these things are happening to them because I, their God, am no longer with them.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: So a hundred years later, some of the exiles come back to the land and they rebuild the temple a lot smaller, Haggai's temple, but the Shekinah glory was gone.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't return, even though it just sounded like it did.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: So, in case you're listening, there was a cell phone with a really pretty sound that sounded like the Holy Spirit.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: So Haggai wrote this: Who is left among you who saw this temple and its former glory?
31:58
SPEAKER_00: In comparison with it, isn't this temple in your eyes as nothing?
32:02
SPEAKER_00: But listen, here's the promise.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I promise you, I'll fill this temple with glory, says the Lord of hosts.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: The glory of this latter temple will be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: A promise that the Shekinah will return.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: When did it happen?
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it happened in part 500 years later.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: When the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem and went to the temple, and embodying the Shekinah glory in his person, you could say, without the radiance, he was in the temple.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: We know that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and the disciples say we beheld his glory, but only a few of them got to behold his Shekinah glory.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: They beheld the glory of his character.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: But Peter, James, and John one day were invited by Jesus to go up on to the mount, Mount Herman, we think.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: And there they saw the Shekinah glory of God shining forth.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: And Peter would later say in 2 Peter chapter 1 that you can be confident that Jesus is going to return in glory one day.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: He says, because I saw the preview.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: I saw the preview.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: I was at the Transfiguration, and sure enough, we're told in the book of Revelation that this will happen, that Jesus Christ will return one day to save his people.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: He will come down to earth.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: And on that day, Isaiah the prophet tells us, the Lord will create a cloud of smoke by day and a glowing flame of fire by night over the entire site of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord will dwell during the millennium, the thousand-year reign, right there in Jerusalem, and there will be a third temple, and the Shekinah will return to the temple.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel himself tells about this in chapters 40 to 48.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: He says in chapter 43 that he saw in a vision the glory of the Lord entering the temple by way of the gate that faced east.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the inner court, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: And there, dear friends, is a summary of the entire biblical teaching on the Shekinah glory of God, which leads some of you, I would imagine, to ask a very personal question.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm a child of God, like Israel.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: Would he ever abandon me?
34:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, after all, doesn't God promise never to leave his people?
34:28
SPEAKER_00: I'll never leave you nor forsake you.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: He said to, let's see, who did he say that to?
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Who said that to Joshua?
34:36
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting because then he did leave or abandon his people hundreds of years later.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he meant I'll never leave Joshua.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe that's a general promise for his people.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: We certainly know other verses in the Old Testament and Isaiah.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: We're told he'll never abandon you if you're helpless or desolate, when the poor and needy seek water and there's none and their tongues parched with thirst.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: I, the Lord, will answer them.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: And we know repeatedly, God says he always stays where he's welcome, Psalm 9, 10.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: You've not abandoned those who seek you, Lord.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: So long as you seek him, so long as you pursue him, so long as you worship him, so long as the temple, which you are, is happy to have him there.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: But friend, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that repeatedly we are told in the Bible that down through history, time and again, God has stepped away temporarily from his people.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: Then later returned.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: As Nehemiah is summarizing the ancient history of Israel, the judges period, he says, You gave them deliverers who rescued them.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: But as soon as they had relief, they again did evil, so you abandoned them to the power of their enemies.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: But when they cried out to you again, you rescued them, many times in your compassion.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Later on, we read that the prophet went to King Rehoboam and he said to them, This is what the Lord says, 2 Chronicles 12, 5, you've abandoned me, therefore I've abandoned you to Shishak, the king of Egypt.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: And when this happened in the Old Testament, God's faithful few always cried out to him.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 14, 7.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: They said, Yes, Lord, our iniquities do testify us, our rebellions are many, we have sinned against you, and yet you're among us, Yahweh, and we bear your name, don't leave us.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes he did, Ezekiel shows.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: But even when God leaves his rebellious children, notice he doesn't forget them.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 49, 14.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: Zion says, The Lord's forsaken me.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: He's thinking of Ezekiel's day when their exiles in Babylon, the Lord's forsaken me, the Lord's forgotten me.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast, says God?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Have no compassion on the child she's born?
37:02
SPEAKER_00: Even though she may forget, I'll not forget you.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: See, I have tattooed you, engraved you on the palms of my hands.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: Your walls are ever before me.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: And just after that, he says, My departure is never permanent from my people.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I bring you back.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: The brief moment was 70 years long for Israel.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: In a surge of anger, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting, everlasting kindness, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your redeemer.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: Listen, God returns to his desolate, repentant people.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: The preacher Ezra said, A hundred years after Ezekiel, though we are slaves, our God has not abandoned us in our slavery, but extended grace to us, giving us relief so that we can rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Wow, are you are you confused?
38:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is this is deep stuff, isn't it?
38:07
SPEAKER_00: This is like a half a semester in seminary.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Can I apply this to our lives?
38:13
SPEAKER_00: Because this has some profound implications for your life.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And my fact, not just one, but four.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: Four being the magic number in the book of Ezekiel.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: And the first is stay, second is return, the third is no, and the fourth is rest.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Stay.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Listen, friend.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: If presently your temple welcomes God in his person inside you, you're not shoving him out by worshiping other things, you've not abandoned him, you're not a walking away from him, then stay there this week, stay there this month, stay there this year.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to turn to the one book in the New Testament that is a commentary on the Old Testament, on the nation of Israel.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 10.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: It says, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with full assurance that faith brings hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised his faithful.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: Stay with him this week.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: It's one reason I think it's so important.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: If you're not taking the Ezekiel challenge, make up another challenge.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: But this is why the Lord wants you to stay in his word.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: He wants to hear you pray to him every day.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Stay there with him.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews adds, listen, run with perseverance, stay on the racetrack.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Run with perseverance to the race marked out for us.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: Looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: Stay.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: Won't you stay?
40:16
SPEAKER_00: And if you have wandered away, won't you return?
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Won't you please return?
40:22
SPEAKER_00: If that's where you find yourself today, having wandered away, seek the Lord while he may be found.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 55.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: Call on him while he is near.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: That's a word for prayer.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: Let the wicked forsake their ways, the unrighteous their thoughts, and turn back to the Lord, and he'll have mercy on them and to our God.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: For he will freely pardon.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Won't you return to me?
40:45
SPEAKER_00: Won't you come back?
40:46
SPEAKER_00: If you return, wow.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: I'll I mean I've I'm keeping one eye on the road all day long, he says to the prodigal son.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm keeping the other eye on my hand.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: I've engraved my your name on my hand.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking for you constantly.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: Won't you come back?
41:04
SPEAKER_00: Why would you, why would you draw back from me and waste your life?
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
41:13
SPEAKER_00: Won't you return?
41:14
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Johnny Cash, you know, was the he was the he was the poster.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: He was the poster maybe for backsliding.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: He trusted Christ, you know, if you read the book.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: He'd become a Christian when he was young.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, he wandered, and if you've seen the movie, he really, he really backslid.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, once, once as he returned to the Lord, he wrote a song called God's Gonna Cut You Down.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I think he knew the, maybe he knew the hurricane song before it came out and thought, you know, it's more than a hurricane.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: He's got an axe, and he'll chop you down, baby.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: He'll chop you down if you wander away from him.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: And he would wander away from him.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: Hank Williams, another country singer, you know, uh, had become a Christian and kept just kept deserting him.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: And then he had left a concert in Alabama, Montgomery, Alabama, uh, with his mother, and his mother started talking.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, mothers will do, he started talking to him about coming back to the Lord and so forth in the car.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: And he was struck by that.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: And he went home and he wrote a song that he closed his concert with from that day forward called I Saw the Light, set to an old Irish tune, old Irish tune by the name of, Will you not come back home again?
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Won't you please return to me, God says.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: And the reason you need to is because you know something, and it's a scary thing to know, but Ezekiel says it, and and Hebrews also says it, says that if we go on sinning willfully after becoming Christians, after we receive a knowledge of the truth, there's no more sacrifice for sins.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: You already went through that.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: He already died for you.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: You already trusted in that.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: But what's left is a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which consumes adversaries.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who set aside the law of Moses in the Old Testament died without mercy.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: How much severe punishment, verse 29, do you think he'll deserve who's trampled underfoot, the Son of God, and regarded as unclean, the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about believers here and has insulted the spirit of grace.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: And he goes on to say in the next verse, we know God who said, Vengeance is mine, I'll repay, and again the Lord will judge who?
43:22
SPEAKER_00: His people.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: It's a fearful thing, dear friend, to fall into the hands of the living God.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: And he concludes, My righteous one will live by faith.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: But if he draws back, I have no pleasure in him, and God doesn't.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: And dear friend, I hope you're not there today.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: But if so, I'm so glad that you came this morning, and I can plead with you to come back to God because you know that that's serious.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a serious choice you've made.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: But in many of our cases, it's a brother or sister or a child or a friend who's wandered away from God, and we find ourselves a little scared and we're asking, does that Mean they're going to hell?
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Does that mean they've lost their salvation?
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Does that mean that God's abandoned them forever?
44:06
SPEAKER_00: The answer is no.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll go back and look at those verses that say that even when God leaves his rebellious children, he doesn't ever forget them.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: For a moment he will abandon us when we abandon him, when we'll say, I don't even want you in the temple in my heart.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: I want other things, but with deep compassion, I'll bring you back.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: With everlasting kindness, I will have compassion on you.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: And we can rest because of verses like Paul's 2 Timothy 2, 11 through 13.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: Here's a trustworthy statement.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: If we died with him, which we did at the cross, every Christian did, if you trusted him, we'll live with him.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: That's a promise.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: If we endure during this life, we'll reign with him.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: If we don't endure, if we disown him, if we abandon him, he'll also disown us.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: But even if we are faithless, he will remain faithful because he can't disown himself.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: That's why Zig Ziegler said, when you become a Christian, you get a PhD past having doubt.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: That's the way Zig Ziegler, the salesman, used to talk.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: And of course he was exaggerating.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: Because you and I know people who, because of depression or the things in their lives, they have doubts.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: But what it is, they're past needing to have doubt, because once you've trusted Christ as your Savior, the righteousness of Jesus Christ is now credited to your account.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: And you have an alien righteousness in heaven with God so that that book has your name in it.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: You will go to heaven.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: But on this earth, if you say, God, I want nothing to do with you, God will say, Fine.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to force myself on you.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: Abandon me, I'll abandon you.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: But I will never, I'll never pull your name off my hand.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: I'll never stop keeping one eye on the road and hoping you'll return from that pigspin.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Won't you please come back?
46:08
SPEAKER_00: And dear friend, you'll know that you can rest in the assurance.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: That one day that ark, the ark of God, where God didn't say, you know, hammer the hammer, hammer some nails into the outside of the ark, some spikes, and you ate, hold on as best as you can, and if you can make it through the flood, then you're saved on the other end.
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SPEAKER_00: No, you can rest in the ark as bad and smelly as things get.
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SPEAKER_00: He'll bring you through to the other side and one day bring you home forever.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: But my plea is what Ezekiel 8 through 11 is, will you understand that your God is a jealous God?
46:45
SPEAKER_00: His heart is breaking for you, and if you wander away, he'll be a hurricane.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: That's what his love will be like, and you'll be like a tree.
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SPEAKER_00: And hopefully one day he'll stop and say, You are beautiful, and you love me despite how I wander away.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Will you come back to him today?
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Please.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for uh for this deep and and um at times painful revelation about yourself and about us and about Israel and about the people you love, the people who just kill you at times, and we know we are those people, and at times we do kill you.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I apologize.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: I I I I ask that you would forgive me.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: This morning we come back to you and beg your forgiveness and thank you for your compassion and the fact that your love is an everlasting love.
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SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.