Bible Study: August 28, 2024

Okay, so tonight we're gonna begin a very interesting chapter in the book of Ezekiel. It's like every chapter in Ezekiel does have some tremendous meaning to it when you get into it and you just focus on what the words are saying there. You know, the last few weeks we've talked about how God is showing Ezekiel the sins of his people, and as he describes the sins of Jerusalem and the house of Israel, you know, we examine ourselves in the light of those as well to see, are we? Do we maybe sin against God and not even recognizing it as we read these words? Tonight, in chapter 16, God's gonna explain an analogy that is used frequently in the Scriptures. We know that he loves us. We know that he saw ancient illness as his bride, his wife. We know that those of us in New Testament times that God calls that he sees us as the bride of Jesus Christ. That's what he's preparing us for. So throughout the Scriptures, we have this analogy of marriage. It's throughout there. It's part of the covenant that we work with on God that he leads us into. And in this chapter 16, it is really interesting and touching. When we get the glimpse of what God feels, as we take up our covenant with him, when we can make a covenant with him that we will follow him and that we will do whatever he asks, be loyal to him and faithful to him, and then we depart from that covenant. And in chapter 16 here, he addresses it to Jerusalem. He's telling Ezekiel, tell Jerusalem. Tell Jerusalem their abominations, he says there in verse 2. But really then he goes through and he takes Jerusalem as a baby and progresses it through life and shows how he cares for it and takes care of it. But as we read those words, it may be that it was written to Jerusalem. Some people and some of the commentaries will suggest that maybe Ezekiel sent a letter to Jerusalem. He wasn't in Jerusalem at the time this was given. More likely, Jerusalem is just a symbol for everyone who God works with, for his church, for his people, because we can see ourselves in the verses that are here as he progresses from birth into the adulterous actions that we could take. So let's pick it up here in verse 1.

Verse 1 and read through that. And this is another chapter. We're not going to get through the entire chapter of 16 tonight. Just because there's so much in it, I think it would do disservice to try to get the entire 63 verses done in one night. When you go through some of things, you just need to take time to reflect on it, to meditate on it, to kind of let God put in your mind what exactly he's saying. So we will get through the first part here about the progression of the young person to the wife to the adulterous state and how God reacts to that. So in verse 1 of chapter 16, it says, again, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, came to Ezekiel, saying, for those of you who just joined were in Ezekiel 16, just picking it up in verse 2, Son of man caused Jerusalem to know her abominations. So you remember that when God called Ezekiel, sometimes he had to Mac out prophecies. Other times he said, I'll have you speak. And this is the time he's telling him, you tell Jerusalem her abominations. God does that with us as well. He will let us know what our abominations are, what our sins are. Sometimes it's good to ask God, what are those things? I often go back in my mind to what David said when he asked God, search my heart. Let me know if there's any wickedness, because he was so determined to just let God purify him, and he was willing to give up anything of him. We need to be those type people, too. Whatever of us is displeasing to God to weed out of our personalities, behavior, actions, words, and everything else. So, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem. And then he begins at birth. Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. So, if we look back at just literal Jerusalem, who God is addressing here, we see that they were formed from a a Gentile nation, if you will. We go back to Genesis 15 for just a second. We see that when God was making the promises of a plan to Abraham, he tells them that he'll bring them back. He'll bring them back to the land of the Hittites, of the Amorites, and the Jepheseites. You don't really have to turn there, but in verse 18 of Genesis 15, Genesis 15, he says, On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying to your descendants, I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates, the Kenites, the Kenazites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, Rephaim, Amorites, Canaanites, Gertishites, and the Jepheseites. So, Jerusalem itself was founded in a Gentile country. God is saying, I took it. You weren't of special birth. You weren't of just this noble, high-minded societal birth. You were just a common birth. And when we look at ourselves and put ourselves into this, look who God called out of the world.

We weren't the high and mighty, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1, 26. We weren't the mighty and the noble of the word. We were just common people. And when we're born human, we're dust. We're dust. And God gives us life. But in this life, as He blesses us with His calling, He imparts life to us. So, as we begin these verses, just think about our birth and our beginning. He says, your birth and your nativity are the land of Canaan. I told you out of the world, you were sinners. You were sinners. You weren't God's children at that time. Your father was an Amorite. Your mother was a Hittite. And as for your nativity, on the day you were born, and then He explains, you weren't taking care of it all. No one was really taking care of you. On the day you were born, your naval cord wasn't cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you, nor were you rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. And apparently, back in ancient days, they would rub a newborn baby with salt to stimulate the skin and to stimulate Him. The God is saying, when you were born, you were nothing. No one cared for you. None of these things were done for you. You weren't washed. You weren't rubbed with salt. You weren't even wrapped in swaddling clothes. You were just out there. No one loved you. And when we look at it from God's standpoint, we were just human beings before He called us. The world didn't love us. Yes, we had love of our mother and father and the people, our friends and relatives and everything like that, but we weren't really loved and cared for. We were just out there and we had no future and no real and no real hope because at that point we didn't know God. We didn't know what hope was until Jesus Christ, until God called us and we received His Holy Spirit. We didn't know what the future was. We weren't really alive. And He's saying that about Jerusalem, but we apply it to ourselves as well. None of these things were done for you, He says in verse 4. Verse 5, He goes on, No, I pity you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you, but you were thrown out into the open field when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. You really were uncared for. You really had nothing going for you. You were just out there and you would have been allowed to die if someone didn't come along that could bring salvation. Just like if there was no Jesus Christ, if He didn't die for all mankind and He didn't bring salvation, the possibility of salvation to all mankind, there was no hope and no future for us. And He's comparing it to the same thing.

No one pitted you. We know this world is of Satan. He tells us that the whole world is under the sway of Satan. He certainly doesn't care for us. His real mission is to destroy mankind. He just wants them to die. He's not going to nurture us for any other reason other than to see us be destroyed from earth. Even at that time, Jesus Christ will return at the time when man would destroy himself off of the face of the earth and save us even at that time. So He says, you were hopeless, just like we were until God came into our lives and and called us and opened our minds to the truth. When I passed by you, He says in verse 6, and I saw you struggling in your own blood. It's kind of a picture there, isn't it? Young baby just throwing there. No one caring for it, just struggling in its own blood. No one cut its navel cord. When I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, live. Yes, I said to you in your blood, live. You know, I didn't write down the verse, but no, I think it's in John 1, the first few verses of John 1, where it says, in Him, in Christ is life. And Him was life, and He was the light of the earth, light of the world. And that's what God did to us. He looked at us, and for some reason, in this lifetime, you know, He looked at us, opened our eyes, and said, live. Live. I will put life in you. I will open your mind to the future and, you know, to the calling that He's given us. For the rest of mankind, it'll be in their time, but for now, He's given us life.

So again, we see the analogy here of what He's doing. We can see ourselves in this. He's talking about Jerusalem, a city, and we're going to see that it applies to Israel, His nation, but also His wife, a collective nation that yields itself to Him as we progress through this here. So He said, live. Verse 7, I may thrive like a plant in the field.

You know, we had no life in us. It's God who develops us. It's His Holy Spirit that produces the life, the energy, the zeal, gives us purpose, produces things in us that we never thought we could know, could do, or anything else like that. It all is of Him. I made you thrive like a plant in the field. And you grew. You matured. And you became very beautiful. Under God's care, under Jesus Christ, what God's Holy Spirit in us, under His leadership and guidance as we yield to Him, we do grow spiritually. We mature. We do become beautiful in His sight as we allow Him to hold us into who He wants us to be. Your breasts were formed. Your hair grew. But you were naked. You were naked and bare. You still had no clothes. I took care of you. I rescued you from death. I rescued you from oblivion. I gave you life. I took care of you. I nurtured you. And you became beautiful. You thrived. You thrived under my care. But you still didn't have garments. You still need those spiritual garments to put on. You still need to become completely mature. You're going to be my bride, and I can clothe you in fine linen, white and clean. When I passed by you again, on verse 8, and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love. You were mature. Now you could commit to me. Now you could enter into a covenant with me. Now you could. We could be bound together in love and in a relationship where I provide for you, God says, and you yield to me. You become who I want you, who I need you to become, who I want you to become, so that we can live together and be together in perfect unity. It says, now, now is the time that that can happen.

Indeed, your time was the time of love. So I spread my wing over you and covered your nakedness.

That's what God does, right? When we get married, we take each other in. We become one with one another. And like a loving husband here, God covered his wife. He provided for her everything, literally everything. And so they entered into this this covenant. We look here in verse 8. Well, in verse 8, when I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love. So I spread my wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you and you became mine, says the Lord God. You know, God loves Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem. It tells us that over and over in the Psalms. It is the city where Jesus Christ will return. It will be the capital of the world at the time when Jesus Christ brings on earth. He loves Jerusalem, but he loves his people. He loves his people. He loves us. He loved ancient Israel. He rescued them. They were nothing. They were slaves in Egypt. They were a people going nowhere with no future. They were incapable of freeing themselves for the bondage that they were in, as we know. But he lovingly took them out of Egypt, and he made them thrive. As he walked with them or as he led them through the desert for those 40 years, they walked and they saw his love. They saw his care. They saw him take care of all of their needs, and they finally brought him into the Promised Land. But they didn't make a covenant. They didn't make a covenant with him as they came out of Egypt. You don't need to turn back to Exodus. I think we know the verses pretty well. But in Exodus 19, after God had brought Israel out of Egypt, they were there at the base of Mount Sinai. And you remember that Moses had taken them through all these cleansing rituals. They had to wash their clothes. Then three days later they would appear before him. He had them separate themselves. He had them go through these things so that they were prepared and ready to meet their God, to meet their husband that they would enter into covenant with. And they heard the thunderings and they heard the lightnings. And they knew that he had brought them out of Egypt. He had already provided for them any of the things that they needed along the way. And when Moses brought the law to them, they said to him, everything that the Lord says, we will do. Everything he says, we will do. And then in Exodus 34, in verse 27, God actually then says, I'm entering into a covenant with you. I brought you out. I've nurtured you. You're beautiful. And now I want to enter a new covenant with you. Chapter 34 of Exodus, verse 27 says, the Lord said to Moses, write these words, for according to the tenor of these words, I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

So they were bound to God at that point. They became, they were in a relationship that was meaningful to God and meant a lot to him. He had done so much for that people. He had done so much to rescue them, nurture them, grow them. And he was now going to lead them into the promised land after they learned to walk with him for those years in the wilderness. He was willing to give them everything just like a good husband would want to do. And so he does that. And he says, you're still in Ezekiel 16. And he says at the end of verse 8, you became mine. You were my wife, is what he could say. You were the one who I married. It was you out of all the peoples on earth. I made you a special people. If you remember even in Isaiah 43, I know we've done this a few times as we were going through the book of Isaiah, remember that God said that he created. He created Israel. Remember that? And we talked about how there was the miracle birth of Isaac. He was a child. He was a child of promise. It wasn't. It was a birth of Sarah, but it was God who gave them that child. He was a miracle child. Same thing with Isaac and Rebecca as the twins were born. Same thing with Jacob and his wife Rachel, who he loved, who was also barren, and God gave them Joseph. And through that line, through that line came Israel and the people that God blessed. He created Israel. He took it. He took them from a child that meant nothing, grew them, thrived them, and he created that. And he says, you're mine. You're mine. I created you. And very much that he did that with ancient Israel. He does that with us as well. He takes us from literally nothing, just living dust that has no future without him. And he puts his spirit in us so that we can become who he wants us to become so that eternity and life can be in us. Never about us. It is about us to the extent that we make choices along the way and yield to him and choose to put sin, faults, weakness, bad attitudes, everything out of our lives. But it is God who does it all. We are his. And that's what he's saying here in verse 8. You've grown. You've become beautiful. You are mine. And that's something for us to always remember. It's going to remind that of us here as we go through this chapter. And as we go on in verse 9, he says a very baptismal thing here in verse 9. I washed you in water. Yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood and I anointed you with oil.

So as God grows us, so we're ready to enter into that covenant with him, what do we do?

We are baptized. He washes away all our sins. We are a new creation in his sight. He puts his spirit in us so that we can grow and become one with him. Verse 10. I clothed you in embroidered cloth like a husband. He provides the fine things for us. And we're going to see that in the next several verses here. I clothed you in embroidered cloth. I gave you sandals, a badger skin. I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was a fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. Left nothing, left us, not without anything that he, you know, would want us to have. Gave us everything fine and even the fine foods that were provided. You ate pastry, a fine flower, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful and succeeded to royalty. Do you see the progression of what God has called us to?

From nothing to growing with Him, allowing Him to clothe us with the righteousness that comes from His Holy Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit that He develops in us, so that we become people who are adorned in fine clothes. He gives us fine things, fine things to eat. He blesses us richly.

He blesses us richly in all things. He is a good husband if we follow Him and are loyal to Him.

And we know that our future, as it says in Revelation 1, is to be kings and priests under Him. Pride of Christ, but with that, you are exceedingly beautiful and succeeded to royalty.

You know, there's a movie. I don't know if the movie is a play. I want to say it's Pygmalion, but someone can correct me on that. Remember, there's a movie on this very thing where someone takes a lady, alas, from... Yeah, my fair lady, that's... Yeah, from Britain. And she's just one of the common people, right? Not at all in royalty, and she doesn't dress fine in anything. This guy takes her under his wings and develops her into a fine lady. And I have to wonder, do they read Ezekiel 16 to see what God does to His people and write that story after that? And it's a fine story as you see that and as you see someone take care of it and someone develop in that way, when someone gives them the attention just like God has given you and me the attention that we need. Your fame, verse 14, your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect. True, God reminds us, it was perfect through His splendor, which He bestows on us, says the Lord God. You were perfect because of what I did for you. Don't forget that, God said.

You were nothing. I made you who you are. You yielded to me. You gave yourself to me. You wentered into a covenant with me. Keep that covenant and let Him grow as in that way.

I do want to stop there in verse 14 because even with ancient Israel, we can look at ourselves and see pictures of ourselves and what God is doing here, but also with the nation of Israel. He brought them out of Egypt. He put them in the Promised Land and He did bless them richly. Under King David and King Solomon, they were a very wealthy nation. When you read these verses about their fame went out, it was a beautiful nation. People looked at them and said, what nation is this? It might remind us of Queen Sheba's visit to King Solomon. Let's go back at that in 1 Kings 10. King Solomon, at least in his early days, was very loyal to God. He was committed to God with all of his heart. He wasn't looking for himself later on in life. When he had all the riches and all the fine things of life, he departed from God. When he didn't keep God's covenant with all the number of wives that he married, he departed from God. But in the early days, God blessed Israel greatly. In chapter 10 of 1 Kings, we read what it was like and what a nation that must have been for the people around the world to realize there's something special about that nation. 1 Kings 10 says, When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame Remember, God says, your fame went out because of your beauty. When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue with camels of boar spices, very much gold and precious stones.

When she came to Solomon, she spoke with him about all that was in her heart.

The land was not only beautiful, but God gave Solomon as we know wisdom. So Solomon answered all of her questions. There was nothing so difficult for the king that he couldn't explain it to her. When the Queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants, the service of his waiters and their apparel, his cupbearers, and his entryway by which he went up to the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her. She was just overwhelmed. Everything here is so perfect. It's so beautiful. It's just beyond what she could even fathom that she was actually seeing. And she said to the king, verse 6, it was a true report, which I heard in my own land, about your words and your wisdom. However, I didn't believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame of which I heard.

Happy are your men, and happy are these your servants who stand continually before you and hear your wisdom. Blessed be the Lord your God, who delighted in you, setting you on the throne of Israel. Because he has loved Israel forever, therefore he made you king to do justice and righteousness. And then she showered Solomon with gifts. You know, you read those verses, you read those verses, and you see what God has done. And you see what he's done for us today in our individual lives and in his church as well. He blesses us with things, even with the wisdom. You know, we know what the truth is. You know, as I look at the world around us, look at the world around us, and we see more and more people in the world, not in the church, you know, that are beginning to look at the Bible and read the Bible. And they don't really know what they're reading. And I don't know what they're, if they're thinking it's just a nice storybook, but I heard of just another celebrity this week who, you know, mentioned that he is going to be reading the Bible because he just wants to know what it says. More and more people are looking at it. And I know we do these videos and everything else like that, but there is only, only the Church of God can explain what those words mean. You know, the churches, the world's churches, they can't explain what's going on. They don't understand the truth of the Bible. They don't understand what Jesus Christ said. They teach all sorts of falsehoods around Him. But God has given us that wisdom. And people will eventually, as God leads, probably, maybe fully, at least in the time of the two witnesses, they will look to God for truth. But we know, we know when Christ is on earth, all nations will flow to Jerusalem. It will be beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, as God adorns it in the world. The world is restored and rejuvenated under Christ's rule.

But also the wisdom that's there. And people will marvel at the things that we may even take for granted of what God has given us, of the wisdom that God has given us, that we can see the things going on in the world. We understand what He says. We understand what that is. And we should always be thankful that God has opened our minds to that. And that's what He is talking about here, if we go back to Ezekiel 16. Like, your fame will go out. Your fame will go out because He says, you're my wife. We're in a covenant together. We become one. We become one, and you grow, and you grow, and you grow when you're with God to become at one with Him. So we have this beautiful picture of this bride. We have this beautiful picture of Jerusalem. We have this beautiful picture of Israel. But we come to verse 15 of Ezekiel 16, and we see that something happens.

All that beauty, all that development gets faded away as Jerusalem, Israel, us, if we don't watch what we're doing, we begin to trust in our own beauty. We begin to trust in our own wisdom. We begin to trust in our own whatever it is, and begin to look at ourselves and think, you know, look how great I am when we always should be saying, thank you, God, for being merciful and patient and calling me out of a world of complete waste of time and futile life that we would have had otherwise. So in verse 15, we see this human element enter into this beautiful picture that God has planted. And you can see the time, you can see the patience, you can see the love that he has had for Jerusalem, Israel, us, individually. Verse 15, but you, in Ezekiel 16, verse 15, but you trusted in your own beauty. You played the harlot because of your fame, and you poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it. Oh, you turned against me. You became so enamored to yourself. You started looking at the world around it, and you wanted everything that it had. You forgot that you were supposed to be loyal completely to me. You started looking around, and you wanted to do other things. You wanted to do what the world did, and you became full of yourself. And because that iniquity was in you and that pride was in you, sinned, and you committed adultery. Now this should remind us, you know, later on in Ezekiel, we're going to come to Ezekiel 28. What God is saying here about Jerusalem, we see in verse 28 when it talks about Satan and what God who was Lucifer, as we call him, and what happened to him. It's the same picture of what happened here to Jerusalem, Israel, us, that we see in verse 15. If we go forward to Ezekiel 28 and verse 12, it says here, Son of Man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre.

Lamentation means there's something to be sorry for. Something has disappeared. What was good once has become a sorry state. The book of Lamentations that comes right after Jeremiah talks about the weeping and the sorrow that the people of Jerusalem had for what they gave up, what they realized. We gave it all up for all these other things. We should have always been loyal to God. Son of Man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre and say to him, Thus says the Lord God. And we know here in these succeeding verses, he's talking about the one who became Satan. You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, just like we read in Ezekiel 16. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, just like the fine linen, the embroidered cloth. Every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, diamond, barrel, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes, meaning that could all the music with all the talent that was there, the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. God is the one who created. God is the one who put those talents and everything in there and that beauty into that being that became Satan. You were the anointed cherub who covers. I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. He was there walking with God, one of the three angels, three archangels. You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you, until pride came in you and you started looking at yourself and thinking how great you were, rather than thinking, thank you, God, how great you are, and thank you for what you've done.

By the abundance of your trading, and he's talking about how nations act here when they become below. By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within and you sinned.

So I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, because when we depart from God, he departs from us. Satan betrayed God.

Satan, in essence, committed adultery against God. He broke the covenant. He turned against him and became his own independent being, looking for his own thing, apart from God.

Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You know, it might remind us of Deuteronomy 8, as we're going through the Deuteronomy reading program. As you're going through it, you will see when you get to Deuteronomy 8, God says, he'll give us blessings, he'll give us food. And he says, but when your bellies are full and you built for yourself fine houses and you have all these blessings of life, he says, and he warns us, don't forget me. Don't forget me. I'm the one who gives you wealth. I'm the one who made it all possible. Because if we allow ourselves to just get caught up in the wealth that we have, the houses that we have, the luxury that's in the life that we have, it can take us away from God. The people in Orlando and Jacksonville remember when I was there, I would often say, you know, trials in life, when they're tough, when there's sickness and there's people that are persecuting us, when we're in tribulation, we can turn to God and we can bond together. But maybe the hardest trial of all is when we have plenty in our lives and we have to keep remembering, it's God I owe it all to. I need to remain loyal to him and not get enamored with what I can do and the things that I have and the places I can go and think that we did any of himself. We always remember it's him. It's him who gives us wealth. It's him who gives us what we have.

So verse 17, your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You corrupted. You corrupted your wisdom. I gave you wisdom, but you perverted it. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. So what did God do? I cast you to the ground. I laid you before kings that they made my gaze at you. And so, you know, we see this really tragic thing where someone turns against God because they turn to themselves. They begin trusting in themselves. And that's what we're going to see when we go back to Ezekiel 16 here in this picture of what God is talking about with this baby that he's rescued and nurtured and wed and made beautiful and made, gave, and fame at everything to her. But in verse 15, we read, wow, she started going out with other guys. She started betraying God. She wasn't loyal to him. You can imagine, men, what it would be like if your wife started stepping out with someone else. It would be a tragic thing. It would be a very painful thing. It would be tough to deal with. Wives, you can imagine the same thing as your husband did that.

There's the loyalty that God built in the marriage. That loyalty has to be to God, too. He's given us everything. We owe him everything. That's our loyalty to trust in him and to be loyal to him only. In verse 15, we see here this beautiful woman is now stepping out, and her beauty is going to fade. Verse 16 of Ezekiel 16, you took some of your garments. Remember all those things that he clothes there with? The embroidered cloth, the silk, the linen. You took some of your garments and adorned multicolored, high places for yourself. Rather than worshiping me, you set up idols. You are worshiping bank accounts, popularity, whatever it might be, those things that we really count on and that we begin to worship. In our way, that God says, you're not being loyal to me, it's fine to have these things. It's great to do these things. The first loyalty needs to be to him. You took some of your garments and adorned multicolored, high places for yourself. You were doing what you wanted to do, rather than keeping him in mind. You played the harlot on them. Such things should not happen, nor be.

You don't make idols. As we go through our lives, we cast out the idols. We learn to trust in God as the first commandment says, no other gods besides me. Yet, this person is doing the opposite—setting up this idol and setting up this idol—and trusting things other than her husband. Verse 17, you've taken your beautiful jewelry from my gold and my silver, which I gave you. You made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them. It's kind of a perverse thing there that God is the image that he gives us, but that's what he sees his wife doing—that she's perverting all these things that he gave or turning them into not the beautiful gifts that he gave, but something completely disgusting in his eyes. You took your embroidered garments and covered them—them being your idols, the things that you that you were worshiping. You took your embroidered garments and you covered them. You gave them to your idols. I gave them to you, and then you passed them on. You set my oil and my incense before them the oil. I gave it to you to anoint you to for you, but you gave it to them. You gave it to them. Also my food, which I gave you, the pastry of fine flour, oil, and honey, which I fed you, you set it before them. You gave it to them. You didn't even keep it for yourself. You gave it away as if it meant nothing to you. As you set it before them is sweet incense, and so it was, says the Lord God. Verse 20, moreover, you took your sons. Well, let's pause there for at verse 19. You know, we talked about that there are there are prophets who existed at the same time. Like in Isaiah, we talked about the kings that he ruled under and some of his contemporary prophets. Ezekiel has some as well. They would be Jeremiah, who was in Jerusalem preaching. And we won't turn to Jeremiah. I think it's chapter 3. It kind of talks about this same thing about an adulterous wife and how God feels when we go out and we betray Him, betray Him with these other things and give our trust to Him. Another one of those is Hosea, one of the minor prophets. So just let's look at him for a moment. He comes right after the book of Joel, which comes right after the book of actually comes right after the book of Daniel. So Hosea, right before the book of Joel.

Because Hosea, God has him act out exactly what we're reading about in Ezekiel 16.

You probably remember the story of Hosea and Gomer. And God has Hosea, a prophet, go out and marry a harlot. Actually, marry a harlot so that it could picture to Israel. And Hosea could see, boy, this is what God feels like. This is what He feels like as He's married to this lady. And in verse the first chapter, they have some children. And God tells them what the child should be. One of them is low ruhama, meaning no mercy, because God's what God is seeing as His nation departs from Him. Down in verse 9 of chapter 1, they have another one called His name Loam. They are not my people. They are not loyal to me. They were my people. I intended for them to be my people, but by their own choices and actions, they departed from me. They left me. They abandoned me. They committed adultery. And so in Hosea 2, let's just read a few verses here, where God is showing Hosea really the same kind of sentiment we have here. And part of Ezekiel is God is 16, as God wants us to feel what He feels. And sometimes we put ourselves in the place of God, in the things that we are in our lives. I know as our children would grow up and they would disappoint us at times, as all children do, I would find myself thinking at times, you know, now I know how God feels about me. Now I know how He feels about me because I've kind of done the same thing to Him. Didn't listen to what He had to say. Went out and did this, even though it was the wrong thing to do.

And our children grow up, and you know, as they've learned things, they become, you know, as the world would say, good people. But there's some trying times in that, just like God has with us. So we begin to see how He feels about us when others treat us this way. So in Isaiah 2, you know, God says, Say to your brethren, my people, and to your sisters, mercy is shown. Bring charges against your mother. Bring charges, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband. Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts. Lest I strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born, I will make her and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. I will not have mercy on her children, for they are the children of harlotry. Their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has behaved shamefully, for she said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool, my linen, my oil, and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and wall her in, so she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers, but not overtake them. Yet she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, I'll go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now.

For she didn't know that I gave her, she didn't remember maybe, she did not know that I gave her grain, new wine and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.

So you can read the rest of it as well. It's an interesting book when you see what God has Hosea to, and that was his life. He lived it out, and so when he would speak about adultery, he understood perfectly fine, perfectly well, what the nation of Israel was doing to God. We have to appreciate that as well, and how he feels. How everything he's given us anytime we are tempted to stray, anytime we're tempted to do things, if we would just stop and think, I owe everything to God, I owe everything to God, it would make us turn around and be loyal to him.

So let's go back to Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16. And again, you can read Jeremiah 3, 4. Maybe it's in there, I didn't write. It's in the early chapters of Jeremiah, where he talks the same thing that Ezekiel is. God gives his people the common the common prophecies, the common admonitions, the common warnings. Don't do this. Later on in Ezekiel, we'll see one of those warnings that so specifically apply to us in the Israelite nations today. So we're here in Ezekiel, let me see what time we have, Ezekiel 16. In verse 20, we have this picture of a woman who is departing from her husband. She's giving away everything he said, just to attract other lovers, because she's insatiable to learn the things of the world.

Verse 20, she even takes the children, even shakes the children that he gave him, and sacrifices them. Verse 20, Moreover, you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to me. Remember in Amalekai 2 verse 15, God says, you know, he's talking to husbands, and he says, you've been treacherous with the wife of your youth. You've been treacherous with her. And he talks about the godly offspring that he was seeking. And when we have children in our marriages, they are God's children. They are His, and He wants us to raise them and grow them in His way, so that they grow up loving Him, just like a part of a happy family that has mom, dad, children, grandchildren down through the generations. But He says, you didn't do that. You didn't do that. I think it's in the book of Hosea as well, where he says, you know, you raised pagan children.

You didn't teach them my way. You taught them the ways of the world. You let them engage in all these other things. You betrayed me in that way. I remember it's the husband who sets the standard, the spiritual standard. God sets the spiritual standard. When we go His way and live His way, there's happiness, there's peace, there's unity, there's the abundance of everything.

But here we see, you took my sons and daughters, God said. You bore these to me, in verse 20, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured, were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you slain my children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire.

And we know that in ancient Judah, they did, under the leadership of some of the wicked kings, they did sacrifice some of the children to Molech. And God was absolutely appalled and disgusted with that. And because of that, those sacrifices and the fact that children were just destroyed and killed for a meaningless idol or to glorify self. We can kind of see some of the things that go on in the world around us today, especially with this recent last couple years fascination that some of the country has with abortion. It's a right. It's a reproductive right, and some wear it as a badge of honor. Badge of honor. I think I might have said this, you know, as I saw one t-shirt on Twitter one day on something where the lady had on it that she's had 21 abortions. It was disgusting. It's disgusting. When God sees those things, his children, remember, he created the earth and told Adam and Eve, multiply, fill the earth, because he wants all mankind to become his sons and daughters.

Well, we may not kill our children, we may not kill our children, you know, literally. But if we don't teach them God's way, we can lead them to death. They need to be taught God's way. They need to be taught the way of life. We need to honor God and our commitment with him in teaching our children, strengthening our children well. It will be their decision when they grow up.

But trust in the verse when it says in Proverbs 22 6, even when they are old, they won't depart from it. They don't forget. They may choose to go away for a while. Well, God knows, and whatever happens with that. Okay, so here we have him saying, you took my kids, you gave away the clothes, you gave away the incense to all these your lovers, and now you even sacrificed our children. Verse 22, in all your abominations and acts of harlotry, you did not remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood.

You know, when we get to the days of Unleavened Bread, you know, over and over in the Bible, God says, remember, remember who you were, remember you were slaves in Egypt, remember that I brought you out, remember that I've given you life, remember, remember, remember, teach your children. This is what he's saying there, too. When all you were doing those things, you've never thought back. Who was I? Who was I? Look what God has done for us. Why would we turn against him? Why would we anger him? Why would we betray him and have him turn against us if we just remembered who we were and that we are literally nothing, literally nothing without him? Verse 23, then it was so, after all your wickedness, woe, woe to you, says the Lord God, after all your wickedness, that you also built for yourself a shrine and made a high place for yourself in every street. You were worshiping you. You became full of yourself. It was everything about you, what you should have, that people should look up to you, should be your way and not someone else's ways.

We have to watch that in ourselves. It's God's way. He leads. He decides, not us. Our job and the way to happiness and peace and fulfillment in his life is to yield to him and let him, let him lead. The answer isn't in ourselves. But here, you know, we can build ourselves up as shrines and as well. And we look at the end time in Revelation 13 when it talks about the beast power that's going to be on earth. What does he do? What does this king do? He worships himself. It's the epitome of what Satan would have us do. Satan worships himself. He wants to be above all. He wants everyone. He wants everyone yielding to him, bowing to him, serving him. But that beast power, that king, describes in the latter verses of Daniel 11, it's all about himself. He's arrogant. He's narcissistic. Everything is about him. And so we have this, that sin begets sin. It gets worse and worse and worse. So God says, you've done all these things. Now you're setting up shrines for yourselves. You built your high places, verse 25. You built your high places at the head of every road and made your beauty to be a hoard. No longer were you beautiful. Now you're disgusting, God says.

You built your high places and made your beauty to be a hoard. You offered yourself to everyone who passed by and multiplied your acts of harlotry. You committed harlotry with the Egyptians, your very fleshly neighbors, and increased your acts of harlotry to provoke me to anger. You kept doing these things. You never thought, return to God. You never thought, what am I doing? You just became enamored in worshiping yourself and all the things that pertain to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, as John says in his first epistle there in 1 John.

You committed harlotry even with the Egyptians, your very fleshly neighbors. You increased your acts of harlotry, verse 26 again, to provoke me to anger. You can understand how a husband would feel that way, angry. And God is, God does, he is, he does get angry when we rebel against him in that way and exalt self rather than him. Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and gave you up to the will of those who hate you. They don't really love you. They're just using you. They don't really respect you. They're just using you. You're giving them all these things. Dear, they're not worshiping you. They're using you, what he's saying. You may think it's because they're all around you and clamoring and all these things, but they're they don't love you at all.

Now, as we go through this part, realize the humanness of us, but also think about Israel and some of the things that we read in the book of Isaiah and even earlier on in Ezekiel, that when God's people will play the heartlet with all the nations of the world, and they will think they have all these friends, and they will have all these people that love them, but in the end they don't love you at all.

But in the end, they don't love you at all. And when they have an opportunity, they will turn on you and destroy you. We read that about that, and we read that in the prophecies of what's going to happen to the Americas, the Britons, the Candidates, the Australians, the New Zealand's of the world. All these friends, all these friends that we think love us and they hate us. They hate us, so when they have an opportunity to destroy us, they will. And we're going to see that here in a little bit as we go through these verses. It's exactly some of the parallels there.

So God says, I'm going to take away the blessings in verse 27. You betrayed me. You've departed from me, and so when you depart from me, the blessings depart as well. Your allotment will be diminished. I will give you up to the will of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior.

You know, we live in a land that is just kind of like amazingly perverse anymore. And the things that we, you know, export from America and the ideas of sexuality, this transgender stuff, and the championing of it as if that is the hero and the epitome of human existence to be transgendered or same-sex, even to the point that we would take children and say, hey, if you're eight years old and you want to change your sex, you know, you choose.

Your parents don't have any rights. The rest of the world, you know, doesn't look at us and think, wow, what a smart, wonderful, and great people they are. They look at it and say, what a sick people that is. You know, the Muslims aren't thinking, what a wonderful people. They call America the Great Satan because of the things we do. Russia doesn't look at us and say, what a great people. They sit back and they look at it and say, huh, what are they doing to themselves?

They are destroying themselves. We don't see it, but others do. He says, these were ashamed of your lewd behavior and there are nations who will take from us all day long, but they abhor what we do and they certainly would never teach it to their people or tolerate it in their societies. Verse 28, you played the harlot with the Assyrians because you were insatiable. There was no one. There was no one that you said, no, I will not. You wanted to be with everyone and be with everyone, whatever they did, because you were insatiable. Indeed, you played the harlot with them and still were not satisfied. There was no filling you up.

Whatever, whatever was awful and despicable and abominable to God, you were willing to do. Moreover, you multiplied your acts of harlotry as far as the land of the traitor, Chaldea, Babylon. At the end of the age, we know that society in Revelation 13 before the return of Jesus Christ is called Babylon, you know, kind of the symbol of religious perversity and everything perverse in there. But God calls at that, had its beginnings back in in Babel, and continues to there. You multiplied your acts of harlotry as far as the land of the traitor, Chaldea, and even then you weren't satisfied.

Even when you got to what we think would be the lowest level, you still weren't satisfied. You kept digging deeper. How degenerate, verse 30, God said, is your heart. Seeing you do all these things, the deeds of a brazen harlot, you erected your shrine at the head of every road.

You built your high place in every street, yet you were not like a harlot because you scored payment. So he goes, just look at you. Harlots offer themselves because people are paying them. Oh, I want your money so they will prostitute themselves to get money. But you're worse than a harlot. You're not like a harlot at all, God says. You are an adulterous wife who takes strangers instead of her husband. Men make payment to all harlots. That's the sin.

They'll go out and they'll pay the prostitutes for all the things that a woman will do, but not you. You do them. You do them freely. You're not expecting payment for them. He says, that you made your payment, men make payment to all harlots, but you made your payments to all your lovers. And you hired them to come to you from all around for your harlotry. I mean, you're paying them. You're doing everything that they want you to do, harlotry or giving yourself to them, and you're paying them. And you look at us today, if I can draw the analogy, America, we are very free with whatever we give. Whatever we give. If someone needs assistance and it's a noble thing that America has done, I'm not decrying it, but we will give money to everyone.

So, you know, I mean, recently the Middle East has been in the news with Iran and all these nations that are lining up against Israel, and we know what the end result and what their goal is, is to wipe out Israel and wipe out America. But we give them money. Here, take some money.

I'll do what you want. I'll play games with you. I'll do, well, harlot, I'll prostitute myself with you, but you don't have to pay me. I'll give you money. I'll spread it to everyone on Earth.

There's kind of an analogy there of what we're seeing today that God is saying. You're different than a harlot. You're not looking. You're just giving it all away, just like He said. You gave the garments away. You gave the food away. You gave it all away. You hired them, verse 33, to come to you from all over, all around, for your harlotry. You are the opposite of other women in your harlotry, because no one solicited you to be a harlot, in that you gave payment, but no payment was given you. Therefore, you're the opposite. Good point, right?

But when God sizes it up, you're worse than a harlot. You're not even getting paid for it. You're not even craving their money. You're just willing to give it all away for your evil desires.

Verse 35, Now then, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, because your filthiness was poured out, and your nakedness uncovered in your harlotry with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children which you gave to them, surely therefore I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved, and all those you hated. I will gather them from all around against you, and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.

They will see who you are. You played the game. You gave it all away. There's a price to pay, and I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged. I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy. I will give you into their hand, verse 39, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places. They shall strip you of your clothes, take your beautiful jewelry, and leave you naked and bare. Verse 40, and we'll... okay, we'll go down to verse 42. They shall also bring up an assembly against you, and they shall stone you with stones and thrust you through with their stores. You think you're... you think they're your lovers. They think you're their friends, but when they see who you are, when all the blessings have disappeared, they will turn against you. It's the same that God says about the time of Jacob's trouble, and what is going to happen to him when all these supposed allies turn on us. Verse 41, they'll burn your houses with fire. They'll execute judgments on you in the sight of many women, and I will make you cease playing the harlot, and you shall no longer hire lovers. You won't be able to anymore. No one's going to want you anymore. They're just going to want you basically dead and destroyed.

Then God says, and we'll finish here in verse 42, So I will lay to rest my fury toward you, and my jealousy shall depart from you.

I will be quiet and angry no more. There comes a time when he says that, you know, I've exacted my fury on you. I've taken my anger out on you. You've lost everything because of your actions, and then things will just be quiet. You'll be left. You'll be left lying in your blood, just as you were when you were, when I found you back so many years ago when you were born.

You gave it all away. He gave us everything, but by our actions, Jerusalem's actions, Israel's actions, you gave it all away. It happened to ancient Israel. It happened to Judah.

It's happened to some people along the way. It'll happen to America and the other English-speaking nations. God has given us so much, but as they turn against him and do things that are wicked and more despicable than other nations on earth, we'll lose it all, and then it'll be quiet. Then there will be a captivity. There won't be anything more to give until Christ returns, because there's always the hope. There's always the hope, and we will see that. We will see that later, but let's end there tonight, and then we'll pick it up next Wednesday night. Do think about those, because it's a very good example when you read in all the other places of the Bible, when God talks about harlotry and adultery. You even read about it in Revelation there. It's a very good analogy, and we just need to remember God's feelings and how he looks at this. As we do that, it helps us to stay close to him. Just like he said in Exodus 19 and 20, when Israel was afraid of God when they saw his power and heard his noise, and heard the thunderings and the lightnings and the mountains shaking, he said, the fear of the Lord should keep you from sin, and the fear of the Lord should keep us from sin, and also recognizing and remembering what God has given us, that we are nothing without him, and we don't ever want to go back to the way we were before into a very futile existence. Well, let me just stop there. Okay, I hope I didn't overlook anyone's questions that were coming up during the Bible study, but if anyone has any questions, comments, or anything that you want to talk about, we certainly can do that. Yeah, Mr. Peterson.

Uh, you must be, must be muted, Mr. Peterson.

Go ahead quickly. Yes.

Ah, can't get my camera back. I'm letting my wife out of here without the camera, and I can't get it turned back on. There I am. Okay, Mr. Peterson, yes.

You're muted. Okay, Mr. Well, Colin. Colin, do you have a question or comment?

Yeah, it is kind of interesting, the scripture here, where they're talking about how Jerusalem is exporting their sins and not even requesting, you know, any kind of financial recomponse or anything for sacrificing themselves. And it's just amazing the similarities that you can see with our, you know, with the United States government today. In fact, it's one step further. You'd mentioned how liberal this country has become with, uh, your generosity as the synonym I was looking for, not liberal as a conservative liberal. But, um, we not only give so much away from the recent country, but our government mandates that people continue to support a lot of these deviant behaviors, or we will stop sending them money. So it's our tax funds at this point. So I think anybody who'd have a questionable argument against being a taxpayer if they wanted, we're, unfortunately, as taxpayers, we are financially supporting the promotion of deviant behavior. So we are. Yeah, we are. We have to. We have to.

But it's a good point. We are financing this stuff. Very good point. So, uh, hey, Mr. Murray.

Yes, excellent Bible study. Thank you, Mr. Shavey. And, um, it's interesting here in Australia, and probably is in America as well, as we're seeing also in the United Kingdom. Now there is problem of, um, even thought crimes, you know, where people in the churches, I believe, did we bring it up here in the last Bible study where people who are praying outside of an abortion clinic were penalized for it as it being like a thought crime. And in the schools here, they teach the woke philosophy and political correctness and so forth. In fact, it's so bad in, in a little country school of Mount Beauty in Victoria, where my grandchildren were going, that the videos that were showing on, um, about, um, teaching children about sex was so pornographic that our, our children, our children have to take our grandchildren out of those that school and take them to another school 100 kilometers away, like 70 miles away, where they're going to school now, because the philosophies that are taught now of this wokeism and, and these people who live perverted lives, they might be in the minority, but they, they have a minority, they have a majority speak in our, in our politics and our societies.

So we're very much like the things that are spoken of here in, um, in the sequel 16. Another thing I noted there too is in Ezekiel, I think 1621 there, that God mentions how these are my children, that are, that the people were sacrificing to Moloch, and these are God's children that are being aborted today. But when we get to Ezekiel 37, of course, we'll have the wonderful encouragement of learning about the, or being reminded of for us, the second resurrection, where of course, hopefully these children will have physical life once again, at the end of the thousand years of Christ rule, and they will have their opportunity for life once again. So a very loving God will make amends for the horrible sins of their parents. Yep, absolutely. The early part of Ezekiel talks about all these things, but it ends on the note of the millennium and the goodness of that. Okay, so either Charles Polonka or your daughter.

Oh, Adina? Okay, yeah, anyway, you're muted. Okay, I'm here. Okay, you mentioned Ezekiel 28, and years ago in verse 16 it says, by the abundance of your trading. So I went and looked in strong concordance, and I couldn't find trading. So I got my old King James out, and I don't remember what the word is, but the strong's at 7404, which means peddling and trafficking. So I'm guessing that Satan did a lot of peddling of ideas and trafficking, and it makes the whole thing like a better understanding of what was going on, what Satan was doing. Yeah, that's very good. That does put a whole new spin on it. Yeah, very good. So I'm writing that down. Okay, Bud, how are you tonight? Okay, excellent. Your Bible studies, excellent. I've thought a lot about all this money and all this equipment we're giving to Israel, Ukraine, and it seems that when somebody has a real bad problem, government problem, we offer them monetary assistance and material assistance. And I say, where does all this money come from? Where do we get the money to build all this equipment that we're getting like Israel and Ukraine? And I like the way you put it, the way you are buying your favors, like the harlot did in the Bible study. God has a way of really pointing things out exactly the way they are, right? The way he writes and records these things and inspires. That's excellent. I like that. What do you put it? Okay, any other comments, questions on anything? Okay, I want to say hi to a couple people. I see Don and Laura Peabody on, and I know Don is going through some health trials right now, so I'd ask, you know, our prayers are with them that you would keep Don Peabody in your prayers as well. And I know there are others online who have some health issues as well. So, you know, we pray for all of you.

Okay, well then I'm going to say good night, and I hope you have a good rest of the week. In America, there's a Labor Day weekend coming up here. I'm sorry. Oh, hey, yes. And yeah, have a great Sabbath, and then we will look forward to seeing you all next Wednesday night. Okay? Good night.

Take care, everyone. Good night, everybody.