Bible Study: September 25, 2024

Okay, so tonight we are going to be in Ezekiel 20. Ezekiel 20 is a very interesting chapter. It's a well-organized chapter, and in this chapter God gives us some pretty solid instruction on what is important to him. As we read through Ezekiel 20, he's going to speak about two things, two things primarily. If we are doing the things that he says in this chapter the way that he wants it to, the way he wants us to with our heart, with our mind, and our soul in it, it looks like if we're doing those things we would be pleasing him because these two things that encompass our lives have deep meaning to God. In Ezekiel 20, it begins really a new portion of Ezekiel. You'll remember as God reveals things to him, God will tell him to speak at times, speak to the children of Israel, speak to this group. As we begin chapter 20, we have a time set. We see it's a different time than in the chapters that we were in before because God mentions the time that Ezekiel is writing here as he records this. Verse 1 says, it came to pass in the seventh year in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, that certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the Lord and they sat before Ezekiel. And the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel saying, so remember God told Ezekiel, you speak when I speak to you. And so here's some words that are going to be here to speak to the house of Israel. We remember that the house of Israel had already been taken into captivity, so when God speaks these words to the elders that are gathered there before him, they are words for us. And they are words for the people of all time who have received scriptures. And he says in verse 3, he says in verse 3, Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, have you come to inquire of me?

As I live, says the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you. Well, that's quite a statement by God, meaning why would I answer you? What have you done for me? How have you obeyed me? I answer the prayers and I acknowledge the people who pray to me and pray, as Jesus Christ said, in his name to God, when we're doing and living our lives the way God wants, he listens to those prayers.

He listens to us and he answers us, not meaning that every answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no, and that's always for our own good. Have you come to inquire of me? As I live, says the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you. Will you judge them, Son of man? Will you judge them? Then make known to them the abominations of their fathers. So what God is saying is, you're coming to me for something. You're coming to ask me for something. Well, I'm going to let you know, and I'm going to make it known to Ezekiel, these are the abominations that you did, that you did, and your people did, and I want you to know what you have done that has separated you from me.

Let me just go on for a little bit. I see two hands up there, but we'll come back to them in just a minute. Verse 5, say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Thus says the Lord God, On the day when I chose Israel, and raised my hand in an oath to the descendants of the house of Jacob, and made myself known to them in the land of Egypt, I raised my hand in an oath to them, saying, I am the Lord your God. So God is recounting what he did here. When he made a commitment to Israel, he was the one who made the first move. He came to Israel. Remember, we read in Isaiah that God said, I created you. I created Israel. And he did through those miraculous births of Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, I created you. And he goes, I came to you. I brought you out of Egypt. I'm the one who made a covenant to you. I came to you, and I said, this is what I was going to do. I've raised my hand in an oath to you, saying, I am the Lord your God. Verse 6, On that day I raised my hand in an oath to them to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.

See what God had said? I searched this land out. I prepared it for you. It's the glory of all lands. I had this in mind for you. You are my people. You are the ones who I looked at. You are the ones who I made these promises to. You are the ones that I entered into a covenant with, and I prepared all these things for you. I had you in mind the whole time. God was saying the same thing to all of us. I had you in mind. I had you in mind. I called you. I made promises to you. I told you that Jesus Christ was your Savior, that if you repented and you turned to me, that if you lived the life that I followed, that I wanted to give you eternal life. I wanted to give you the kingdom of God. I wanted to give you the things, and that you would be a joint heir with Jesus Christ. I wanted to give you all those things, and you entered into a covenant with me. But I called you. I called you, and you responded. I reached out to you first, and I said to them in verse 7, Each of you throw away the abominations which are before his eyes, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. So I'm going to pause here. We're going to talk about that word abominations for a little bit here. But, Bill, did you have a comment before we go on?

Yes, please. Yes. Thank you very much for this Bible study. A curious question. Wasn't Ezekiel in the land of Babylon when he was writing this article, writing the letter?

Yes. Wasn't Ezekiel a captive amongst in Nebuchadnezzar's reign? A rule, rather.

And so why would there be sons or elders of Israel there? Is Israel being used in a metaphoric way to illustrate all of Israel, meaning Israel and Judah together? Or do you think that there were actually Israelite men who were in Babylon also? You know, I don't know if there were Israelite men. Remember, Judah would be part of Israel as well. You know, it's interesting you asked that question because the commentaries speculate on that. Was this a word where those men were literally in front of Ezekiel? Or was it more figurative that God is talking about here? I sense that there were men before him and elders. Remember, there were elders in where Ezekiel was. God showed him the sins of Israel back in the early chapters and everything like that.

I sense that they were there in reality. Could be. Well, you know, but at any rate, God answers them. But it is notable that they are called elders of Israel and not elders of Judah. That may have been in captivity there with him. Let me see. Maria? Maria, do you have a question?

You're muted, Maria, if you have a question.

Okay, let's go on. Maria, keep your hands up. We'll come back to you here in a minute.

Let's talk about abominations again here because abominations is a pretty strong word. I know we've talked about this before, that really anything against God is an abomination. I think we tend to think of the abomination of desolation when Antiochus Epiphanes came into the temple in Judah and literally defiled everything. All the altar of God offered unclean animals and did all sorts of unholy things that were at a complete affront to God in a way that none of us would ever, I hope none of us would ever do to God and affront him and insult him in the way that Antiochus did. And as Christ says, there will be that abomination of desolation at the end of time as well. But anything that goes against God is an abomination. So just one scripture just to remind us of what some of those abominations are. And the abominations of Israel are pretty serious as we go through this chapter. There's two of them in particular I mentioned that we're going to talk about. But back in Proverbs 6 and verse 16, we find what God says, something that we see around us all the time. In the society that we live in today, we see this. It's just part of the society that we live. In verse 16 and Proverbs 6, it says, These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven, are an abomination to him. A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift in running to evil, a false witness who speaks lies, and one who sows discord among brethren. That's part of our everyday life, unfortunately, right?

Yet God considers all those things abominations. They are not the mark of people who are pleasing him, who are led by his Holy Spirit, and allowing that Holy Spirit to mold them into who God wants us to be. So when we read about these abominations, there are very serious ones that we know of, and we will see some of those as we go on in here, because as Israel moved further and further away from God in ancient times, and as Judah followed the same pattern, it started off with, we might say, little things. The proud look, lying tongue, feet that are swift to run to evil, but then it continually progressed. The farther and farther away you get from God in his way, the more and more evil and corrupt people become until you hit the crescendo that we're going to hit in verse 26. That seems to be where God says, I've had enough. The people cannot be reclaimed. They've turned too far.

They've turned too far from me. So let's go back to verse 7, and remember that all of us are guilty of abominations before God when we do the things and behave in the ways that he considers not at all part of what he would have us do. First, let me read that again. I said to you, throw away, throw the abominations which are before his eyes, and don't defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. So as God made this covenant, what he said is, I'm going to take you out of Egypt, but you don't take Egypt with you. You leave the abominations, you leave the idols, you leave the ways of Egypt behind you, and you learn to live my way. It's really the same thing that God says to us. I will take you out of the world. I will give you a life. I will give you a future. I will give you a hope that you can't possibly have in the world. But when I call you out of the world and you say, you will come out of the world and follow me, leave the world behind. Leave its ways behind.

Leave the ways that have been set in your mind behind. Let God create a new heart, a new mind, and a new way in us, and follow that way. It's exactly the same thing he told Egypt that he gives us today and says, leave it behind. But they, verse 8, they rebelled against me and wouldn't obey me.

They didn't all cast away the abominations which were before their eyes, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. And I said, I will pour out my fury on them and fulfill my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt.

So he's saying here, while Israel was in Egypt, they were worshipping some of those idols, and they didn't cast them all away. They left them there before their eyes. And he said, get rid of all of them as they came out of Egypt. We see that in other places in the Bible. A story I didn't write down in the chapter, but I know it's in Genesis. You'll remember the story of Jacob when he was at his uncle Laban's house, and he had two wives, Leah and Rachel.

And he really loved Rachel, and Joseph was the miracle child that God gave to Rachel and Jacob, through which the line of Israel progressed. But Leah had sons that she bore to Egypt, and apparently she was dedicated to God. But Rachel, while she was dedicated to God, when Jacob and his family left, and remember Laban chased them because Jacob left in the middle of the night, took the kids, took the wives with them, and then Laban caught up with them, and was angry with Jacob, you recall.

And then he said, okay, fine. So you took your wives, you took your kids, but did you have to take my gods? Did you have to take my gods? And Jacob said, no, we didn't take your gods. He was leaving that. He left those gods behind. But the Bible tells us, Rachel took those gods. She couldn't leave the gods behind her. And sometimes when we leave the world, we have to examine ourselves, are we still clinging to some of those gods, some of those things that marked us and identified us in our past life?

God said of the Israelites in Egypt, and when he miraculously took them out and gave them a life that they couldn't possibly have ever attained on their own, the freedom and the land that he said was the glory of all lands, they couldn't leave those gods behind them. It's a lesson for us, and it's one of the two lessons that we see in Ezekiel 20. There's two things that God will talk about in this chapter that has 40, what are the 48 verses?

One of them is idols and idolatry. And it is a huge issue with God that we leave the idols that we have behind him. And back in those days, they might have the little statues that they carried around with them, the little idols of wood, the little idols carved of stone. Today, our idols are of a different type. We have to look into our minds and our hearts. What are we trusting? What do we put there in place of God? What's between us and God? What are the things that we wouldn't let go of? You hear me and other ministers talk about, you know, are our idols, you know, our bank accounts, our idols, our security systems, our idols, the multitude of medicines that we take every day, our idols, the military might of America, the wealth of America, the fact that America is the wealthiest nation on earth.

What are those idols that stand between us and giving all of our trust, all of our hearts, all of our mind to God? So Israel was never able to do that. We know they never had God's Holy Spirit, but we do.

We do. And so we can have the mind of Christ because Christ and the power and the love and the sound mind that God gives us to be able to do those things and to overcome the things of the world which ancient Israel wasn't able to do.

So in verse 9, you know, God says, God says, oh, I've got some people in the waiting room, sorry, but God says, you know, they rebelled against me, and I said I will pour out my fury on them and fulfill my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. And then in verse 9, he says, but I acted for my namesake, that it should not be profaned before the Gentiles, among whom they were, in whose sight I had made myself known to them to bring them out of the land of Egypt. So they sinned against God, and God says he was angry with them, and he would pour out his fury on them. If he had had them all die, if he had just had what Israel completely wiped out, he would have been justified in doing that because they all sinned. They all sinned before him, just like we have all sinned and we have earned nothing but death. It's only by the grace of God and the gift of God that he offers us eternal life. But they didn't. And God says, but for my namesake, because I wasn't going to be profaned before the Gentiles, this is how I conducted myself. And three or four times in the first half of this chapter, which is probably all we're going to be able to get through tonight, God talks about that. He says it three times, I wasn't going to have my name profaned before the Gentiles. Israel did profane his name by turning against him, by not following what he had to say. But God said I won't have my name profaned before them. So if we turn back to Numbers, we see kind of what God is talking about when he says he won't have his name profaned before people, before the Gentiles, before the non-Israelites of the world, if you will.

And that's an important thing to God because remember, he makes a promise. He makes a promise, Israel, I will be with you, Israel, I will deliver you to the promised land, Israel, I do all those things. And while he would be justified, justified in wiping everyone out, you know, and bringing death upon all of them because of the sins that they committed, he doesn't do that. Because what was one of the things that Gentiles would say, see, he wasn't powerful enough. He wasn't powerful enough to deliver that those people. And that way his name would be profane. So let's look at Numbers 14. And it is beginning in verse 13. Numbers 14 verse 13. Moses, this is a time where Israel has disappointed God again, hasn't shown trust in him. And Moses said to the Lord, verse 13, then the Egyptians will hear it. For by your might you brought these people up from among them, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They've heard that you, Lord, are among these people, that you, Lord, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands above them. And you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if you kill these people as one man, then the nations which have heard of your fame will speak, saying, because the Lord, their God, because the Lord was not able to bring this people to the land which he swore to give them. Therefore, he killed them in the wilderness. And so Moses is pleading, don't let your name be profaned. You are powerful enough to bring this people to the promised land. You can bring them through any trial, any test, any army that comes up against them, you can deliver them. But don't let your name be profaned. As God said, I should just wipe them all out, Moses. I should just wipe them all out and start over with you. Moses said, don't let your name be profaned. So when God says this, it's like, you know, they will be punished for what they do, but there will always be a remnant of Israel. There will always be a remnant of his chosen people. We read that back in Ezekiel 6. We read it in Isaiah several times. There will always be a remnant of Israel. God may punish them. And at the end of time, because of Israel's sins, modern day Israel's sins, and I'm not talking just about the little nation you know that's over there in the Middle East, but because of their sins, the Bible indicates a huge percentage of those Israelite nations will die, but there will be a remnant that lives over into the kingdom. God's line does not die out. Yes, Bill Bruce.

There it was. Wasn't God just testing Moses when he made the statement? He wiped them all out to see how he'd react. I think he was doing that, but also it puts in the Bible what does God mean? Moses elicited very well. He knew exactly what the nations would do. See, there God is not powerful. He couldn't do what he said to do. So it does preserve that in the Bible to us, and God knew when Moses said that he gets it. He had God's interest at heart, and he knew God would deliver them. He was not going to wipe them out, so he saw it was in his heart through that as well. Okay, so let's go back to Ezekiel 20 here, and in verse 10, continuing that thought about, I'm not going to let my name be profaned among them, but God also had to, as Israel sinned, he also had to let them know there is a consequence to their sin. He couldn't just let it go by and slide by and say, oh well, get on with life. We have to march on to the Promised Land. They had to feel the pain and the hurt of departing from God as well. So if he had just kind of written them a blank check and said, go on with life, we'll deal with it later, he had to make it known to them, you do need to follow me, you do need to obey me, and when you disregard me, and when you disrespect me, there is a price to pay, a consequence. So in verse 10, it says, therefore I made them go out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness. And I gave them my statutes and showed them my judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. Now here's another phrase that shows up three or four times in this chapter they're in. God repeats, when I give you my judgments, when I give you my statutes, when I give you my way of life, that's where life is. You will live by them. He makes the contrast in a few verses that when you follow your own statutes, or the statutes or ways of the lands around you, or something else, you're not going to live by those. Those ways bring death. Only God's way brings life. And he repeats that, you know, as I say, when God says one thing, well says it once, we pay attention. When he says it three and four times, this needs to stick in our heads, that his way, his statutes, his way of life, his judgments, when we live by those, he shall live, that word, he shall live by them. Moreover, he says, I also, in verse 12, I gave them my Sabbaths.

So the rest of this first half of the chapter, God is going to talk about his Sabbath. The Sabbath day, it would also, since we have a plural there, could include the holy days as well, his Sabbaths, that they are a sign, he says, between him and his people. The second half of the chapter is all about idols and about idol worship and how God detests it and how we need to put these idols behind us and out of our lives. But this first part, he talks about the Sabbath and how important it is to him. And over and over, he recounts, Israel didn't keep the Sabbaths the way that he intended them to do. They profaned the Sabbaths. They cheapened them. They watered them down.

But it's an interesting word that he uses there in 12. The word gave indicates that this was a gift that God was giving to mankind. It wasn't something he just said, he could have said, moreover, I commanded that they keep my Sabbaths. No, this was an act of love. Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths. I gave them to them. They were supposed to be a blessing to them, a delight to them, as it says in Isaiah 58.13. I gave them something that would make their lives special and attach them and draw them closer to me. Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign.

And sign there, you know, could be like a mark, a beacon, a flag. This identifies my people. They keep my Sabbaths. They keep them the way that I said to keep them. They are a sign between me and my between them and me, God says. They're an identifying sign that these are my people.

But it's not just keeping the Sabbath they are not working on. It's doing the things and keeping the Sabbath and the Spirit the way that God has asked us to as well. Moreover, verse 12, I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between them and me, and they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them. I've set them apart. I've set them apart. I took them out of Egypt.

He took us out of the world. He opened our minds to truth and the future and what His plan is.

When we keep His Sabbaths, He says, I sanctify. It's a sign that they might know I've set them apart. They're my holy special people, the ones I'm working with right now.

For anyone new that's on right now, God has a plan of salvation for every man, woman, and child who has ever lived. In this day and age, He has the group of people that are called the first fruits that He's working with. But after the return of Jesus Christ and after the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, there is the second resurrection where every man, woman, and child who has ever lived is going to be resurrected and going to have the opportunity to choose Christ and to do His will and to show God their hearts are with Him and He will give them immortality as well. So He has a plan of salvation for all mankind. It's another mark of God's true church because no other church that I know of teaches the plan of salvation the way the Bible teaches us. They mix it with heaven, they mix it with hell, they mix it with whatever it is they do, but no one understands the real plan of God and that He has a plan for all of mankind.

Whether or not they ever heard the name Jesus Christ in this physical lifetime, they will and they will have an opportunity. But God gives us the Sabbath. And remember, back in Genesis, He's the one who created the Sabbath day. He rested on the Sabbath day, back at the time of creation, and He set that day apart from all the other days. He blessed it and He sanctified it. It wasn't made just for the Jews. It wasn't made just for the ancient nation of Israel. God reminded Israel as He brought them out of Egypt what His plan was, but the Sabbath day was created for all of mankind back in the Garden of Eden when God created all things. Mankind just departed from it and ignored it. But God's people who He calls and works with follow the principles that He established way back there at the beginning of mankind's time on earth. I gave them my Sabbath, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them, who sets them apart, who's working with them. Yet the house of Israel, verse 13, making sure I'm not missing some scriptures here I intended to go to. Actually, there was one. I'm going to go back to verse 11 and let's turn back to Nehemiah 9. I was talking about when God gives us His judgments, He says, if a man does these, he shall live by them. Back in Nehemiah, it's a pretty good example of what God means by that. In Nehemiah 9 and verse 13, we did the book of Nehemiah before we came into Ezekiel, and you probably will remember this.

Verse 13, he's recounting the time that Israel was brought out of Egypt. Verse 13, he says, you came down also in Mount Sinai, speaking of God, and you spoke with them from heaven, and you gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments. You made known to them your holy Sabbath, and commanded them precepts, statutes, and laws by the hand of Moses, your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger. Remember a gift as they were in the desert with nothing else to eat. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger. You brought them water out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go into possessed the land which you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted proudly. They hardened their necks. They didn't heed your commandments. They refused to obey, and they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them. But they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they appointed a theater to return to their bondage. But you are God. You are ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and you did not forsake them. And God doesn't forsake his people. They may endure a time of punishment, but he doesn't forget them. And that's a lesson of this life as well, because we know that God will bring back at the return of Jesus Christ, that remnant of Israel, he will bring them back to the land he promised them so many millennia ago, as we've talked about many times here through Isaiah and Ezekiel. Yes, Marta? Yes, hello. I'm from Pasadena.

Good to see you.

A clarification. You said that these individuals that were in the desert, the Israelites, ancient Israelites, they didn't have God's spirit.

Correct. They all died in the wilderness, except for the 20 and below. So does that mean that even though they rejected the Sabbath, and they saw the miracles, and they still rejected it, do they have another chance of a do-over in resurrection? I'm not going to answer for God. I'm going to say I believe so because they never had the Holy Spirit. You remember in the resurrection, he says, I'll pour my spirit out in them those days so they can understand. They didn't get it then, but since they didn't have God's Holy Spirit and reject his Holy Spirit, which is the unpardonable sin, right?

Yes. Then I believe that it's God's determination that they will be resurrected. Yes, thank you.

Okay, so let's go back to Ezekiel 20. We're going to come back to this, he shall live by them here in a minute again. Let's go on in verse 13. We just read this in my nine back there. It says, yet the house of Israel revealed against me in the wilderness. They didn't walk in my statues. They despised my judgments. There it is. Which if a man does, he shall live by them. Life, peace, and glory comes by living God's way. Which if a man does, he will live by them. And they greatly defiled my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my fury on them in the wilderness to consume them. They defiled my Sabbaths. You look that word up in the Hebrew, and it means they polluted. They polluted the Sabbaths. They made them dirty. They cheapened them. God intended them to be this kind of like island in the middle of a week that was set aside perfectly for him. A time of delight. I mentioned Isaiah 58. We should go back there. We should go back there and look at that since we're talking about the Sabbath day. Isaiah 58 and verse 13. You know, Ezekiel 20 and Deuteronomy 5, God gives the Sabbath commandment. And he says, you shall do no work. You shall rest on that day. No one in your house shall do any work. That means you don't have people coming in to do house repairs, mow the lawn, fertilize the lawn, or anything like that within your gates. It's a day of rest for your household. And Isaiah 58 verse 13, he expands on that a little bit as God does through the Bible when we read it. And he says, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, you know, if you don't do your will on the Sabbath, if you, you know, we walk toward doing what we need to do during the week—the work, the chores, the entertainment, and whatever—if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and you call the Sabbath a delight, you know, call the Sabbath a delight. The people of Israel oftentimes didn't call the Sabbath a delight. Maybe sometimes we don't call the Sabbath a delight. We'll turn in a minute to a couple verses in the book of Amos that talk about how Israel, Israel back then and Israel today, might be keeping the Sabbath day. They might be saying, yeah, the seventh day is the Sabbath. Yes, the first day of the seventh month is the Feast of Trumpets, and we're going to keep that. But are they really keeping it in this way that God intended? Do they call it a delight? If you'll call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then if you do those things—and that is a chore, that is giving the time to God, right?—then you shall delight yourself in the eternal, and I, He says, will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. God showers blessings down on people who bless them as He wanted always to bless all of mankind. If all of us and all of the world would just have listened to God how different life would have been, or could be, and certainly will be when Christ returns and sets up His kingdom on earth. I mentioned Amos. Let's go ahead and look at Amos 6, I think it is. Amos...

Well, we'll come back to Amos 6 in a minute. I know Amos 8. Let's look at Amos 8.5. I'll see if I have Amos 6 written down in my notes here.

Amos 8. Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos. Four books forward from Ezekiel. Amos 8, verse 5, verse 4. I'll start with verse 4. Hear this, you who swallow up the needy and make the poor the land fail.

It's talking about things that doesn't please God, saying, when will the new moon be passed that we may sell grain? Those were times that we observed in Old Testament times. When will the new moon pass that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may trade wheat. We're just wishing it away. We're just sort of waiting for it to be done so we can get on with our lives and get this 24-hour period over with. The Sabbath, that we may trade wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel large, falsifying the scales by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, even sell the bad wheat. So God is saying, look at the attitude that they have for the times that he said to observe. And so when we don't observe or have the proper attitude toward God's Sabbath, look what they do. They're dishonest traders. They make the shekel large. They have deceitful scales. They do all these things apart from God's law because it is important to keep that Sabbath holy, as God says in the commandment there. He says that for a reason. When we are focused on the Sabbath table, when we keep it holy, when we truly do the things we read in the Bible, and we truly do Isaiah 58 verse 13, and train ourselves of that, and it becomes part of our heart and mind, we do call the Sabbath a delight. It is the time that buoys us the rest of the week. It is the time that we go to the holy convocation that God calls, that we delight in being in His presence and in the presence of other people. It gives us the energy and the zeal that we have to go on, and it also reminds us of who we are, and we're committed to living God's way of life and those other areas of His life as well. There's something about the Sabbath that makes that special.

Yeah, Amos 6. Amos 6 verse 21. It's just where the book of Amos which I no longer am. Let me get back there. Amos 6 verse 21.

Wow. Okay, maybe it's Amos 5 verse 21. Oh yes, Amos 5 verse 21. Okay, that's why I couldn't see it in 6 when I looked before. Amos 5 verse 21. I hate, God says, I despise your feast days and I don't savor your sacred assemblies.

You're keeping the feast days. You're gathering together, but they're not pleasing me. You're not doing it with the heart that I had intended this Sabbath day to be kept. I hate your feast days. I don't savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I won't accept them. They're not offered with heart. You're just doing it out of rote to check off a box. Nor will I regard your fat and peace offerings. Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments, but let justice run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Give yourself completely and wholly to God is what he says. Then I'll listen. Then I'll hear.

But don't just go through the motions and think that it pleases me. We don't fool God. He wants our hearts. He gives us his Holy Spirit that we can give him his hearts. When we do, we find joy, peace, meaning of life, purpose, unlike anything we've ever had that we've ever experienced before. Let's go back to Ezekiel 20 here.

We are in verse 14, I think. But I acted. God says, in verse 13, just to remind us where we are, Israel rebelled against me. They didn't keep my Sabbath. They defiled them. They polluted them. But I acted for my name's sake. Again, he's repeating this. But I acted for my name's sake, that it shouldn't be profaned before the Gentiles, in whose sight I had brought them out. So I raised my hand in an oath to them in the wilderness, that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them, flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands. They weren't going to enter in.

They defiled my Sabbath. They profaned my Sabbath. They disregarded me. They didn't do what I had to say. And they paid a price. I would have been perfectly justified, God could say, of killing them all. They deserved it. They deserved it. They earned it just like you and I have. But they weren't going to enter into the Promised Land. So that younger, or that, yes, that older generation, as Marta pointed out, except for Joshua and Caleb, didn't go into the Promised Land.

The rest of them did. They paid a price. What God had brought them out and wanted to give them was denied because they didn't give God their hearts and minds. It's a powerful lesson to us, too. If we don't keep the Sabbath, if we don't learn to keep the Sabbath, the Sabbath that God gives us, will He let us? Will He permit us? Will He allow us into His kingdom? We will be the people that, in the millennium, are looking up to us. How are we obeying God? Are we living our lives by those things that God says, if you do them, if they become you, you will live by them?

And it's incumbent on us today to be doing those things. And as the Sabbath comes to really be paying attention to it and ask God, help us to keep it the way that you want us to keep it. Teach us. Teach us your way. Especially if we feel that we strayed away from it a little bit and allowed the world to come into the Sabbath days or our own things to come into the Sabbath day.

One thing I'll say, and it'll irritate some people, but you'll probably be hearing me more and more, you know, cell phones are a very intrusive thing in our lives. I can be in meetings and hear this thing ding, and all of a sudden my attention is somewhere else for a second. So a lot of times now I just leave it in my office and I think I don't even want it to distract me at all. You know, and sometimes we take our cell phones to church and other things, and I know people read the verses on that and everything like that, but there's also distractions to come. And it's kind of like letting the world in a little bit because we don't need to have those things in our minds as Sabbath services is going on. We need our attention completely on God and what we're there for. Someone waiting? Okay. So verse 15. No, verse 16. Why did he say they wouldn't go into the land? Which he had promised them? Verse 16. Because they despised my judgments. Because they didn't walk in my statues, but they profaned. There's that same word that's translated as defiled in verse 13, profaned in verse 14, profaned in verse 16. It means polluted. Polluted might be a way that we make it dirty. It's not the clean, pure thing that God had given us. Because they despised my judgments, they didn't walk in my statues, but profaned my Sabbaths. For their heart went after their idols. They let those other things take their attention away from me. That's where their hearts were. They kept going to those things. The second half of Ezekiel 20, I said, is about idols and how we let those take us away from God and distract our attention from Him. Nevertheless, he says in verse 17, my eye spared them from destruction. I did not make an end of them in the wilderness, but I said to their children in the wilderness, don't walk. Don't walk in the statues of your fathers, nor observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols. He's saying, you know what? Your fathers sinned against me.

They didn't do things the way I said. They knew what my commands were, but they didn't do it. They didn't do it. We read in Ezekiel 17, I think it was, where God said, where we're talking about the three scenarios of the righteous Father, the righteous Father, and then the Son who was even more righteous, the unrighteous Father that the Son was righteous, the rebellious Son, all those things. God is saying, do it your way. Just because your fathers sinned, don't follow their way. Do it God's way. And that's what he's saying here. You know, your fathers are all going to die in the wilderness because they profaned my Sabbath because they didn't get, they didn't hallow. We're going to come to that word, hallow here in a couple of verses. Didn't hallow my name, and they didn't hallow my Sabbath.

Don't do it their way. Do it my way, God says. And that's what he says in verse 19. I am the Lord your God. Walk in my statutes. Keep my judgments and do them. Follow me, God says.

Something for us. Don't follow. Someone you see that you looked up to is profaning the Sabbath just because they do something. Don't follow them. Ask God and have him lead you into what is the thing that needs to be done on the Sabbath to please him, to dedicate that time to him, that that Sabbath is a sign between us and him and a marking on us and in our families.

This is God's time. This is our time, and we delight in it. Keep these judgments, or keep my judgments and do them. Verse 20, hallow. Hallow my Sabbaths. Observe them. Delighted them. Hallow. Hallow them. You know, hallow is an interesting word. It literally means purify, consecrate, clean it up. Hallow my Sabbaths. It's exactly the same word, but in Greek that we see in the prayer that Jesus Christ offered as the model prayer. Our Father, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed. Hallowed be your name. Purified, special, cleaned, consecrated from everything else. God says the same thing about his Sabbaths. Hallow my Sabbaths. Treat them as holy time with the respect that they deserve because they are from God, a gift from God, and if we keep it, we will begin to understand what that gift is. Hallow my Sabbaths, and they will be a sign between me and you that you may know that I am the Lord your God. And there's a tremendous comfort in knowing that God is our God, and that he is with us, and that he is doing the things that he wants us to do. I'm going to give you a couple verses that I didn't turn to about keeping the Sabbath. Well, you know what? Where are we? We're in verse 20.

Yeah, let's go ahead and look at them. Since we're talking about the Sabbath, let's go back to Numbers 15. I won't turn to the commandment. You know where to find those in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 25. But you know, God taught Israel the Sabbath before they were ever at Sinai.

Ms. Grauensai, I will be with you in just a minute. Before they were ever at Sinai, God began teaching Israel about the Sabbath day. It was on the Sabbath day that with the manna, when they were clamoring about they had no food to eat, he taught them about the Sabbath by this manna that he gave them. You find that back in the book of Exodus. But here in Numbers 15, in verse 32, we see something that doesn't seem like it's that big of an infraction, but it shows you how important it is to God and the mindset that we need to have. It's about the man that was gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Numbers 15, verse 32, says, while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found the man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. Now, he probably was going to take those home and kindle a fire. That is work. You prepare for the Sabbath ahead of time so that you can minimize so you don't have to work on the Sabbath day. While the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found the man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him under guard because it hadn't been explained what should be done to him. So they saw this man. What's he doing out there? And so what do they do? They go to God and ask him, well, what is your judgment on this guy? What do we do with him? He's just picking up sticks. Is that something that we should be concerned with? And the Lord said to Moses, verse 35, the man must surely be put to death.

He's defiled my Sabbaths. He's setting an example for the people out there about defiling the Sabbaths. And God makes what money would say, this is a really stern, this is a really stern pronouncement of this. But he's letting him know it is serious. God takes how we observe his Sabbaths seriously. The man must surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp. Now he's saying, everyone, you all have a part in putting him to death. Can you imagine? I can't imagine, you know, taking stones and having some whether I'm throwing stones at with the purpose that God said kill them. Kill them. But they all had a part in it because in their minds it's like, this is evil. This is not what God wants. This is a part, but what he does when we do it, we are bringing death upon himself. A tremendous lesson in a very, I guess, noteworthy way that Israel learned. Keep the Sabbath holy. So as the Lord commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died. And he died. Let me give you without turning there Exodus 31.

No, let's turn there. Exodus 31.14. I do want to make a point of that as well. Exodus 31 verse 14.

Just two books back. You shall keep the Sabbath therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death. For whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. Work shall be done for six days. That's the things that you do every day of life, including the entertainment things of the other six days, as we read in Isaiah 58.13. Doing your thing. Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. God says it twice. Therefore, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant. It goes on throughout all the generations of Israel. Jesus Christ kept it. Hebrews 4, or is it Hebrews 9? Hebrews 4 verse 9 tells us there is, remains the Sabbath rest for us today. So there's many verses in the Bible, and the Sabbath, God is highlighting here, and it needs to be important to us too, when we realize how important it is to God. Yes, Miss Grounds, sorry to keep you waiting. Oh, that's okay. Going through Ezekiel 20 here, do you think God really and truly meant for these verses to be for us that have God's Spirit, as opposed to those who he knew did not have a heart in them, have the heart in them to obey? Yeah, he definitely means them for us. As we get to the end of Ezekiel, we'll see. This is a book for the end time too, because he talks about bringing Israel back after the return of Jesus Christ. And, you know, let's be honest, you know, not all of us keep God's law perfectly, so we have to be very attentive to that in our lives as well, to be sure we're letting God lead us into living the way that he wants us to. Yeah, Bill? Exodus 16.4, I really like that one, because it proves that the law was in effect before it was given on Sinai to them, when God said, I'll rain bread on them, and I'll test and see if they'll keep my laws. There you go. Yep. That's, I mean, the Sabbath wasn't, yeah, it was before Sinai. You're right. The Sabbath, he was teaching them that before he ever gave them the Ten Commandments and those tablets. So, okay, back to Ezekiel 20. Let me see. Okay, we're in verse 18.

Verse 20, "'Hallow my Sabbaths, and they will be a saying between you, between me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. Notwithstanding,' verse 21, the children rebelled against me." God says, I keep warning them. Remember last week? I think it was last week. We read a verse where God said, you know, maybe the week before, when it was King Zedekiah, and he had departed from God, he was not paying attention to the oath that he had made to Gethsemanezer. And God said, I sent them prophets to warn them. In my compassion, I sent people to warn them, pay attention to the oath that you made. You swore an oath in my name, God says. Keep it. And here's the same thing. God keeps warning. The Sabbaths are important. Pay attention to them. He says it over and over and over in this chapter. Notwithstanding the children didn't walk in my statues. They were not careful. Note those words. Careful, diligently, willingly, exactly, earnestly. And they weren't careful to observe my judgments. That means we've got our mind on it. What on the Sabbath day? What are we doing? What are we doing? How are we doing it? And asking God throughout that day, lead me into what you want me to do. We're not careful to observe my judgments, which, here it is again, if a man does, he shall live by them. But they profaned my Sabbaths.

Then I said, I would pour out my fury on them and fulfill my anger against them in the wilderness, which they deserved. Nevertheless, I withdrew my hand and acted for my name's sake. You can see through these verses where God repeats these things over and over again. You can see his mercy. You can see his patience. You can see his love. You can see his determination that he doesn't want the people to perish. He gives them opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to obey them.

They punish. He punishes them. And he says, you know, you're going to pay the price. And we feel those prices sometimes. We may ignore them sometimes. We may not understand the consequences we are, but we should learn through those things. Turn to God more and more and more. Nevertheless, never... Oh, we read verse 22. I acted for my name's sake in verse 22, that it shouldn't be profaned in the sight of the Gentiles, in whose sight I had brought them out.

God's made us promises. He's made promises to his church. We don't follow him the way, you know, we should as an entire body. We all have things that we need to improve in our lives and grow closer to God. And as his body, we need to be closer to him. We need to be drawing closer to him, paying more attention to what his word says, making that part of our lives and part of our consciousness. And we need to be united in that and not have the division and discord that God doesn't like, that our marks of Satan still among us in our own carnal minds that lead to those things. We have a ways to go to become who God wants us to do. That's why we pray for each other.

We pray for each other that God will, his spirit, that every single one of us will allow God's spirit in to lead us and guide us and show us what we need to learn, show us what we need to overcome, show us what we need to put out of our lives, show us how to keep his Sabbath holy and do the things that he wants. And that has become a thing in this world with the advent and the blessings of internet and Zoom and YouTube and all the webcasts and everything. We do still have many who don't come to church on a regular basis, and they think it's okay to resist the holy convocation that God wants us to be in. It is important to him. He set it up for a reason. And if we're able, and if we can get there, and if we aren't sick and shut in, and we understand all those things, that some can't come. But if we can, we need to make the effort to be where God wants us to be as part of honoring him and hallowing, hallowing his Sabbath and hallowing his name. Verse 23, Also I raised my hand in an oath to those in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the Gentiles and disperse them throughout the countries. So here we have, I mean, we have this is now apart from ancient Israel. Now they've moved into the, he says, in the wilderness, but they didn't, they weren't scattered throughout all the countries of the Gentiles until after they were in the Promised Land. And after they defiled, defied God again, it didn't do his things. And then he scattered them throughout all the nations, as he says, where they're still scattered, but they will be brought back to that land. He promised them back at that time. Bill, I'll get with you in a minute. Because, verse 24, Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were fixed on their fathers' idols.

They were still looking to the world, rather than giving their whole mind, body, and soul to God, and looking to Him, and learning to trust Him more and more each day. Yeah, Bill.

You know, that part, the last little bit we were reading when he said, he said to the children, now that's talking to the children of the older ones, isn't it? Because then it said, they're scattered.

Yeah. Right about that? Well, no, he is talking. Remember, the older generation did not go into the Promised Land. So he's saying, don't do what your fathers did. But then we're talking about another generation that got scattered to the Gentiles when they were in the Promised Land, and then lost it by their activities or their behavior against God. And then later on, we'll see that at the end of this chapter. Therefore, verse 25, God says, because they didn't pay attention to my judgments, because they didn't keep my Sabbath holy, and because their eyes were fixed on their fathers' idols, therefore I gave them up to statutes that weren't good. It doesn't mean that He gave them those statutes. The statutes of the world, the way of life of the world, is not good. But they continually rejected God. He's saying, they continually looked to the world, no matter how many warnings He gave them, no matter how many promises He made, no matter how many times He punished them and then forgave them and pardoned them and had mercy on them, He gave them up. Fine. If you want the ways of the world, go the way of the world. I gave them up to statutes that were not good and judgments by which they could not live.

By which they could not live. The ways of the world do not lead to life. Only the way of God leads to life. I pronounce them unclean because of their ritual gifts. This is the epitome of sin and depravity that God talks about here. When you see Him talking about passing or sacrificing their children to these pagan gods, it's like that's where God draws the line. I pronounce them unclean because of their ritual gifts and that they caused all their firstborn to pass through the fire that I may make them desolate and that they might know that I am the Lord. Israel and Israel and then Judah. They allow those things to happen. They lost their lands because of it. It's the ultimate degradation from sin that we might say is common sin. That doesn't make it right at all. Common sin, but then it becomes more and more depraved. We live in those times today. When you see where we have gone in even the last five years in this nation and the Israelite nations of the world in Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and here as well, and some other countries as well, how we've progressed from mild by comparison sexual immorality to all the sexual depravity that's in the world today and the transgender issues and what people are doing to children and exposing children to and doing to real and real life. Then as we see abortion, which has been in this country for 52 years, and then we see how it's been elevated almost to a god today. This absolute right that we will do anything for to even have late-term abortion, which is all abortion is murder, but late-term abortion is just absolutely a sacrifice of firstborn that is, in my mind, no different than the firstborn passing through the fire that were there. And so we have the same thing that's happening in modern-day Israel that God is blessed as we see back there. Profaning His Sabbaths, and as we move further and further away from God, we become more and more depraved exactly as the progression is shown in Romans 1, if you read through that chapter down to the end of it. So let's stop there. Verse 26 ends the first part of Ezekiel 20 that talks about the Sabbath. It won't be next week. Next week at this time we'll be at the Feast of Trumpets, so we won't have a Bible study next Wednesday, but we will two weeks from today. And then we'll finish up the second part of Ezekiel 20 that talks about idols and talk about some of those idols that we have to be aware of today in our lives as well. So let's end that, but we'll open up for any questions, discussion, anything that anyone wants to talk about.