Good evening, everyone. Welcome here to our evening service at Calvary Baptist Church of Freehorn. And also welcome all those who tuned in to us via internet. And also welcome to our visitor tonight. Welcome. Please open your hymnals to number 261. 261, trust and obey. Number 261. When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word, what a glory To His goodwill He abides with us still And with all who will trust and obey Trust and obey For there's no other way To be happy in Jesus But to trust and obey not a shadow can rise not a cloud in the skies but his smile quickly drives it away not a doubt nor a fear not a sigh nor a tear can abide while we trust and obey trust and For there's no other way To be happy in Jesus But to trust and obey Not a burden we bear not a sorrow we share but our toll he that richly repay not a grief nor a loss not a storm nor a cross but his blessing we trust and obey trust and obey for there's no other but to trust and obey. But we never can prove the delight of His love until all on the altar we lay. for the favor he shows and the joy he bestows are for them who will trust and obey trust and obey for there's no other but to trust and obey. Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at his feet, or we'll walk by his side in the way. What he says we will do. Where His saints we will go Never fear, only trust and obey Trust and obey For there's no other way To be happy in Jesus But to trust and obey Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we're thankful this evening that we can come together in thy house. We're thankful for the privilege that we have of being able to trust in the true God, the only true God. We're thankful that thou hast made thyself known to us through thy word. We're thankful for thy son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only savior of mankind. We're thankful that we can know the forgiveness of sin and have thy peace in our hearts if we trust in thy word and follow what thou hast said and get saved first of all, and then secondly, begin to walk with thee and learn how to do that. We're thankful that we have an opportunity to gather together here. We're thankful for the privilege we have of meeting in this town, in this area. We just pray that we could be a blessing and a help to people in this area. and for visitors that travel through. We pray for our website, that it would also be effective in helping to reach the lost and encourage the saints. We pray for our country, for our governments. We pray for the salvation of many in government, that our leaders might see the wickedness that's in their hearts and that they might see the need to repent and be saved. We pray also for the United States, as they also have a very ungodly government. We pray for the salvation there of many that they would see the importance of truth in their lives. We continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that souls would be saved in Israel for Mr. Netanyahu, that he would come to know thy peace in his heart and see the importance of truth in his life as they continue to fight with the Hamas and Hezbollah and with Iran and Russia and China in the background. We pray, Father, that many in that country would be saved, pray for the soldiers as they fight, that they would also come to know the fear of God in their hearts and see the need to know Thy peace and blessing. And we do pray for the Arabs as well, that many of them would get saved and see the need to repent and know the truth in these days of grace. We continue to pray as well for the situation in Ukraine and ask, Father, for the Christians there as well as in Russia, that they would honor Thee. and be able to help others to know thy peace and blessing. We look forward to the soon return of thy son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But we know that there are many who are not saved at this point, and we pray for the salvation of many in these days of grace. So may thy will be accomplished as we spend this time together. May we glorify thee in all that is said and done, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. And over to 269. 269, Under His Wings. Number 269. Under his wings I am safely abiding Though the night deepens and tempests are won Still I can trust him, I know he will keep me He has redeemed me, and I am his child. Under his wings, under his wings, who from his love can sever? Under his wings, my soul shall abide, safely abide. Under his wings was a refused sorrow, while the heart yearningly turns to his rest. Often when earth has no balm for my healing, There I find comfort and there I am blessed Under His wings, under His wings Who from His love can save her? Under His wings my soul shall abide Under his wings, oh what precious enjoyment There will I hide till life's trials are over Sheltered, protected, no evil can harm me Resting in Jesus, I'm safe evermore Under his wings, under his wings Who from his love can sever? Under his wings, my soul shall abide And one more, to 428. Number 428, to the work. 428. To the work, to the work, we are servants of God. Let us follow the path that our master has trod. With the power of his counsel, our strength to renew. Let us know with our might what our minds find to do. Toiling on. Toiling on, toiling on, toiling on. Let us hope, let us watch, and labor till the Master comes. To the work, to the work, let the hungry be fed. To the fountain of life, let the weary be laid. In the cross and its honor, our glory shall be. While we err as the tiding, salvation is free. Toiling on. Toiling on, toiling on, lead us on, lead us watch, and labor till the Master comes. To the work, to the work, there's a labor for all, for the kingdom of darkness and error shall fall. Jehovah exalted shall be, in the loud swellinging, salvation is free. Toiling on, toiling on, toiling on, toiling on, let us hope. I'll labor till the master comes. To the work, to the work, in the strength of the Lord, and our robe and our crown shall our labor reward. When the home of the faithful our dwelling shall be, and we shall with our ransomed salvation is free, toiling on. Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter 12. We're going to read the first seven verses there of that chapter. And we'll stand, please, for the reading of God's word. Ezekiel chapter 12, beginning there at verse 1, it says, the word of the Lord also came unto me, saying, son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see and see not. They have ears to hear and hear not, for they are a rebellious house. Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight. And thou shalt remove from thy place to another place in their sight. It may be they will consider, though they be a rebellious house. Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight as stuff for removing. And thou shalt go forth at even in their sight, as they that go forth into captivity. Dig thou through the wall in their sight, and carry out thereby. In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy shoulders, and carry it forth in the twilight. Thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not the ground. For I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel. And I did so as I was commanded. I brought forth my stuff by day as stuff for captivity, and in the even I dig through the wall with mine hand. I brought it forth in the twilight, and I bear it upon my shoulder in their sight. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful for Thy Word, we're thankful for the truthfulness of Thy Word, thankful for Ezekiel and for his willingness to be obedient to Thee as thou didst give him the words to write, even as he was told to speak and to write to a rebellious people, his own people, the nation of Israel. And Father, we pray, as we already have in the past, we pray for the nation of Israel as we know that today they are still in a rebellious house. They still do not want to acknowledge Thee as the true God, and Thy Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as their Savior and Messiah. We pray for them, pray for the salvation of many Jews, not just in the land of Israel, but across the world. We pray for Thy protection over them, as in Canada and the United States, anti-Semitism is on the rise again, and a hatred towards Thy people, even amongst our leaders. We pray for the salvation of many. We pray also for the salvation of many Gentiles, that thy will be accomplished in these last days of grace that we're living in, that people might hunger for the truth and see the importance of learning what the Word of God actually says. So we ask that thou wouldst guide and direct us here. May thy will be accomplished as we look at these verses, that we might exalt thee with our thoughts and with our actions. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. For the sake of our visitors, our services for the most part are expositional preaching. I don't do very much topical preaching. I want everybody to get the whole counsel of God. And the way to do that, I believe, is when we take a book of the Bible and we study the book. That gives us everything that God wants us to know from there. And of course, I will cross-reference to other places as the Lord leads. But that's how we do things. And so right now, we're in chapter 12 of the book of Ezekiel. And the title of the message this evening is Warnings Regarding Rebellion. And Israel, as Ezekiel was told to write to the nation of Israel, There are, of course, many things in the book of Ezekiel that apply to all of us, things that we can learn from. But the immediate context is to the nation of Israel. And Ezekiel is writing in chapter 12. He's in Babylon and writing to the captives. And he has been in a vision in the last few chapters that we've been looking at in Israel, in Jerusalem. And God was showing him things that were happening in Israel. the corruption that was there and why he had sent the Babylonians in to punish them. Israel today, as I mentioned already, is facing many challenges. The United States is becoming increasingly hostile towards Israel. Mr. Biden is not a friend of Israel. He's a friend of Iran. He's a friend of Hamas. He knows that he can't get the votes of the common people, the sensible people in the United States, so he's looking to get his votes from the Hamas supporters and that group of people. Interestingly, Dearborn, Michigan has become the main home of the Muslims in the United States. Dearborn, Michigan was originally known for Henry Ford and for the Ford Motor Company. That's where he started manufacturing cars, and that's where he built his factory. It was a thriving city, but it's likely to become much poorer under Islamic control. As of 2023, 55% of the population, the population of Dearborn's 110,000 people, 55% of that population claimed to be Middle Eastern or North African. And of course, the Muslims, once they get a certain number of people in an area, then they start to push for Sharia law. And when they bring that in, then you end up having no-go zones where the police are afraid to go in because they're afraid of being retaliated against. And of course, the Muslims are famous for lying. Their religion tells them they can lie if it suits their purposes. And so they know how to act like the victim when in fact they are the aggressor. So as we look at the world today, and as we look at the Bible, there are many things that we can learn from the Bible that help us to understand what's going on today. And the first thing we want to notice from this passage this evening is that God's word is sure. If you look at chapter 12 and verse 1, it says, the word of the Lord also came unto me, say. You notice the word Lord there is all capitalized. Again, when you check that out, that's speaking of Jehovah God. God has several names. One of his names is Jehovah. That speaks of him as the self-existent God. He doesn't need anybody to feed him. He doesn't need anybody's counsel. He is all wise, all knowing. And he knows how to direct us. And he knows what is going on. And he knows how to deal with every situation that anybody faces. Now, as I mentioned already, in the book of Ezekiel and in the time of Ezekiel, Judah is the main audience here. Remember that Israel was split into two parts back in the days after the death of King Solomon. The north was then called Israel, and the south was called Judah. And so Ezekiel was from Judah, and he was addressing the sins of Judah. The north, the 10 tribes had already been taken captive by the Assyrians. And the South was now under attack from the Babylonians. The Babylonians would make three invasions into the South, and each time they would plunder Jerusalem particularly, they would kill people, and they would take captives. And so Ezekiel is writing, he's a captive in Babylon, and he's writing regarding what's going on back in Jerusalem and writing and speaking to the captives that were there with him. One of the things that we see with Ezekiel as well as with Daniel and Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who were also captives in Babylon, we see that God was able to make a way for them, even though they were captives in a hostile land. The Babylonians were not friendly people. If you didn't fall in line with what they wanted, they would just as soon kill you as look at you. We know that from the book of Daniel, when Hananiah and Mishael and Nazariah would not bow to that image, The king not only threatened, but he made the furnace seven times hotter and threw them in there and was hoping that they would be destroyed. And he found out that you don't fight against God and win. And so God made a way for Ezekiel, even as a captive, made a way for him to be able to be free enough to be able to speak to the people, his own people, and to write down these things for all generations from that time forward. But it's important for us to understand, and Ezekiel reminds us of this often, that The word of the Lord also came unto me. Ezekiel is not writing here because he's got some spare time and he's decided to write something. He's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And that's something that is clear from the entire Bible. And that's important that we understand that. Now, God is the author of the entire Bible. He had 40 different men, holy men, the Bible tells us, whom he used to write the Bible. But he is the author of the entire Bible. He's not the author of the Apocrypha. The Catholics have the Apocrypha as part of their Bible. But he's not the author of that. He's also not the author of the many perversions. There are over 100 perversions of the Bible in the English-speaking world. He's not the author of those. There are many people who take the opinion that God is like the natives used to talk about the Europeans that came to Canada. They would say that, they would call them, they would talk about the white man. And they would say the white man speaketh with a forked tongue. And what they meant by that is that you couldn't trust the Europeans. I don't like to talk about people as white or black or yellow or whatever because racism is an evolutionary term. It's not a Bible term. The Bible never talks about people in their color of their skin. He talks about nations. And so, but you know, a lot of people think that God speaks many different messages that contradict one another and yet it's all truth. Now, how is that possible? How is it possible for God to speak many different things and yet it's all truth? Just go back in your Bibles to the book of Proverbs. I'll just show you one verse there, the book of Proverbs, chapter 25. And in verse 23, and you can look this up yourself if you have access to the internet, and you'll see in Proverbs 25 and verse 23, it says, the north wind driveth away rain, so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue. So that's talking about there that someone that's a backbiter is someone that's a gossip, someone who says nice things about you to your face, but as soon as you're out of the way, he tells all kinds of dirt about you. That's what it's talking about here. And he wants to tell other people. He wants to spread a juicy tale that he's heard. You know what I heard? and then he wants to expose somebody for something. And the Bible says here, the north wind driveth away rain, so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue. So a godly person, when someone wants to come to you with a juicy tale, and if you're a saved person, the guy says, hey, you know what I heard? I want to let you in on something that I heard about that guy over there. A good person will frown upon that, will let it be known, I'm not interested in you spreading stories about someone else. I don't want to hear about it. Now if you have a New King James Bible and you think that that's a good Bible, you should read this verse in the New King James and you'll find that it says the exact opposite of what God says. But how can they both be true? They can't be. you have to decide which one's true. And you see, God, in his providence, inspired the entire Bible, and then he chose men that would honor his word to give it to us in the English language. And so we can, today, we can know what is the true word of God. We don't have to be scratching our heads and searching around here and there and everywhere and wondering, what is true? You know, Pilate asked Jesus, what is truth? Because Pilate had observed the Pharisees, and he had heard about their false teaching. He didn't know if it was false or not, but he had heard about what they taught. And when Jesus came, he taught something completely different than what the Pharisees taught. The Pharisees had taken part of the scriptures, and they had made up their own doctrines according to their whims and wishes. And that's what a lot of religions do today. They make up their own doctrines. They take the Bible, some verses from the Bible, and then they run off and make their own doctrines. But you see, we have to stick to the word of God. That's our security. Every word of God is pure. And if we stick to God's word, we don't have to worry that someone's going to mislead us. But if we get away from God's word, then we're open to all kinds of deception. So again, in our text here, God tells us that he is the one who came to Ezekiel with this word. The word of the Lord also came unto me. the word of the Lord. The second thing that we want to notice is the nature of Ezekiel's audience. And God has told Ezekiel this before already. He's warning Ezekiel. Ezekiel was not given an easy task. And I dare say today that if you're a born-again Christian and you're going to go and talk to people, you're going to find the same response that Ezekiel did. You're going to find that there are very few people who really want to know the truth. And you'll find a lot of people who don't want to know the truth. They don't want to be told the truth. And so it says here in verse two, son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see and see not, they have ears to hear and hear not, for they are a rebellious house. So Ezekiel is told right up front, you see, and that's one of the things that I appreciate about the Bible. God never beats around the bush. Nobody has to wonder, now what is God actually saying here? We can understand what God is saying because he speaks plain English. Now, yes, there is some symbolism. We talked before the service about the book of the Revelation. The book of the Revelation, there's a lot of symbolism there. Even in the book of Ezekiel, we've looked at the wheels. We've looked at the wheels within a wheel. What is that talking about? And we've studied that. So there is some symbolism in the Bible that we need to understand. But again, if we take the Bible as our commentary, and the Bible is the best commentary on the Bible, God helps us to understand what he's saying. And there are some things that we are not going to fully understand in this life. That's the reality. because we're fallible and God is infallible. And so there are things that we just will not understand. And that's the reality. So as we look at this passage here, Ezekiel is addressed, first of all, he's addressed as son of man. He's addressed several times in the book of Ezekiel as son of man. He's being reminded by God that he is a man. He's the son of a man. He's not an angel. He's not a god. He's a son of man. He's been given an important task. He's a priest. The Bible tells us that. And he's also got a ministry in prophecy in the book of Ezekiel. He's speaking of things that are going to happen in the future in part of the book of Ezekiel. Here in our text, and as we've looked at in the previous chapters, he's talking about things that were happening in Israel during his time. And so he's speaking as son of man, and he needed to be careful as the son of man that he would be faithful to the word of God. Now it tells us here, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house. That word rebellious there, the Hebrew word translated as rebellious means bitterness. Bitterness. And a person that is bitter is generally someone that's angry and someone that is assuming that you have treated him unfairly. And that's why he becomes bitter. He doesn't like the way you've treated him. And there are a lot of people in the world that carry bitterness around on their shoulders. They're bitter because they think somebody didn't treat them right. I know for years, I walked around as a bitter person. I didn't like the way I was treated by my father, and I was a bitter person. And I had to ask God to forgive me for that after I got saved. What right did I have to expect a certain kind of treatment? You see, and a lot of times that's how we are in life. We think, this is how I should be treated. Who says so? Who says so? Everything that we have, whether you're saved or not, everything that we have is a gift from God. The air that we breathe is a gift from God. The food that we eat is because God has given us the soil and the weather to be able to provide that food so that we can eat it and we can benefit from it. The health that we have is a gift from God. The rain that we receive today is a gift from God. The sunshine out there right now is a gift from God. Everything that we have, what right do we have? And so bitterness, the Bible warns about it. It's a sin. And the nation of Israel, it tells us here that they were a rebellious house. Now why would they be bitter? Why would Israel be rebellious against God? Well, we know the history of the nation of Israel. We know that God chose Abraham and told Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees. Ur of the Chaldees was an idol-worshiping country. And Abraham was told to leave that place and go to a new land that God was going to show him. Abraham was reluctant. He was told to leave his family and go to that land with his wife. You can read about it yourself in the book of Genesis, chapters 11, 12, and on. You see that Abraham was reluctant to follow God. So what did he do? He took his father with him, and he took his nephew with him. But God told Abraham to leave his kindred. So what did God do? Well, on the way, Abraham's father died. And then when they got into the land that God had promised to Abraham, Lot's men, his servants, and Abraham's servants couldn't get along. So they had to split. So you see, God worked to separate Abraham from his family. That's what he told him to do in the first place. Separate from your family. I want to take you to a new land. You and your wife, that's it. You too. And then I'm going to give you a seed. And they had to wait many years before God gave them that promised child. Well, we move on in the history of the nation of Israel. We know that God promised them a land flowing with milk and honey. And that's exactly what God gave them. And when David was the king of Israel, Israel did very well. No enemy. By the time that David died, there was no enemy that dared to attack Israel because God was blessing them through David. Why was God blessing them through David? Well, the Bible tells us that David was a man after God's own heart. David was someone who wasn't without sin. The Bible points that out. But David was one who, for the most part, he talked to God, he prayed to God, asked God for direction. And not only did he ask God, but he then followed God. See, it's one thing to ask God for something, but it's another thing to follow him when he tells you what to do. And oftentimes, we want God to agree with what we want to do. And so when we pray, we're asking God to put his stamp of approval on our plans rather than saying, you know, God, here's my plan, but what do you think of my plan? And that's what we need to do. We need to ask God to direct us. And many times, he's going to change. the plans that we have. David was a humble man. He was a king, but he was a humble man. And that's why God could use him. But then after David died, Solomon took the throne. And we know that Solomon started out as a very humble man. He asked God for wisdom to know how to govern this great land that God had given, great number of people that God had given him to govern as a king. And God promised him wisdom and wealth. But the problem with Solomon was that Solomon, you know, he followed after the steps of his father. One of the things his father did is he had many wives. Not as many as Solomon, but David had many wives. The Bible says in Genesis chapter two, therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife. Not his wives, his wife. And Jesus in Matthew 19, the Pharisees came to attempting him, and Jesus took them right back to that passage and said that a man is to stick with his wife until death parts them. And he warns about anybody that would dare to try to interfere with that and try to split that up. He doesn't want that. Marriage is a gift from God. It's a blessing when we know God and follow him. But Solomon, Bible says he loved many strange women. And the Bible says that those women turned his heart away from God. So before Solomon died, he had trouble, both inside Israel and from outside of Israel. And the history of the nation of Israel from that point on is up and down, like a roller coaster. They had some good kings. The North never had one good king, but the South had some good kings, and they had some bad kings. But it went up and down. And many of the kings of the South ended up making alliances with the pagans, the enemies of God. And why did they have to do that? Because they did not want to trust God fully. They wanted to have a puppet god. They didn't want to follow God according to his word. And you can't live that way. You cannot make up your own rules if you want God to bless you. You need to follow what he says. And so the nation of Israel here, they were a rebellious house. Says in verse two, they have eyes to see and see not. A lot of people today, they can go outside and they can enjoy the flowers. They can enjoy the green grass. They can see the sun in the sky. Just a few days ago, we had an eclipse, solar eclipse, right? And a lot of people went out there to look and see what was going on in the sky. We can see these things, but it says they have eyes to see and see not. There's a lot of people today, they can't see what's really going on in our world. They can't see it. You know, it's a little over three years ago that the Wuhan virus was announced. And then after a short time, they decided to change the name. Instead of the Wuhan virus, they called it COVID-19. Why'd they do that? Where did the virus come from? It came from a lab in Wuhan, China. Does that mean every Chinese person's a bad person? No. But did the virus come from China? Yes, it did. So is it wrong to say it's a Wuhan virus? No, that's where it came from. It's not wrong. In fact, it's honest to say that's where it came from. But you see, what did the government do with that virus? They had planned that whole thing. You know, their lab in Winnipeg was used in part to develop that virus. There was also labs in the United States used to help to develop that virus. All of a sudden, the two Chinese scientists that were working in the lab in Winnipeg had to disappear. Why? Because it became known what they were doing. And our government has tried to hide what was going on in that lab to this day. They don't want us to know. And then they came out, our prime minister came out and he says, the only way we're gonna get through this thing is with a vaccine. Do you know that they changed the meaning of the word pandemic so that they could call this thing a pandemic? Do you know that they changed the meaning of the word vaccine so that they could call it a vaccine? It's not a vaccine, it's a poison shot that's gene altering. And it's deadly. Many people have died because of the shot. Many people have been injured because of the shot. And so there's a lot of people today that are still, still to this day, following the false science of our government saying, we got to follow the science. It's not science. And they're still following it. There's very few people that can see what's actually going on. And that's the problem. A lot of people have eyes to see, but they can't see. They can't see what's actually going on and what God is doing. And what's the next thing that's coming on the world stage according to God's timetable? What's the next thing? The Bible says the next thing that's coming is the rapture of the saints, and that will bring in the tribulation, the seven-year tribulation. Who's gonna be the ruler during that time? The Antichrist. What kind of a ruler is he gonna be? The Bible says he's gonna be a ruthless ruler, such a world has never seen. Hitler was a bad guy. But the Antichrist's gonna be far worse. And the Bible says that God is going to send a strong delusion to those people that are going to be left behind, and there will be many who will be left behind when the Antichrist comes on the scene. And God's going to send them strong delusions so that they're going to believe a lie. They're going to believe that he is Christ. And they're going to cheer and be excited about having him come on the scene. But if you read the book of the Revelation, and you read the book of Daniel, and you read Matthew chapter 24, and a few other places, you find that as the Antichrist is planning his strategy, God is also gonna be sending plagues that the Antichrist is not gonna have protection from. And so the time of the tribulation is going to be a terrible time for those people that are here. It's not going to be a good thing. And yet many people are going to be here because they've rejected the truth. The day of grace is today. God's word tells us that. Christians, the Bible says, are not appointed for wrath. And the time of the tribulation is called the time of Jacob's trouble. It's a time when God is going to be pouring out his wrath in particular on the Jews. Because he wants the Jews to turn to him and recognize Jesus Christ as their Messiah. That's what the Bible teaches. And so it's going to be a terrible time for those that are here. So as we look at the Wuhan virus, getting back to that, and we look at what the government has tried to implement since they brought that virus into being, what do we see? We see a practice run for the tribulation. That's what we see. When the Antichrist is going to force everybody in the mid-trip point, he's going to force everybody to take his mark. What'd they try to do with this virus? They tried to force everybody to take the shot, didn't they? Can't travel unless you have the shot, can't go to a restaurant, can't go here, we're not even supposed to sing in the church because of the virus, not supposed to wear a mask, supposed to be six feet apart, and for a while they told us to lock our doors, nobody's supposed to be coming to church. You see, they tried to put the thumb upon us. They tried to stop people from honoring God. And that's what the Antichrist is gonna do. So this was just a practice run, but how many people can actually see that? Most people, they're just oblivious to that. And that's the problem that Ezekiel was writing about here to the nation of Israel at the time that he was alive, that the nation of Israel could not see Why the Babylonians were coming in and invading them? They couldn't see it, they couldn't understand it. Why they thought God had forsaken them? When it was the other way around, it was they that had forsaken God. And what does God do when his people forsake him? He punishes them. You see, any good parent is gonna discipline their children. A lot of parents in this generation, they claim to love their children, and because they claim to love their children, oh, I would never spank my son or my daughter. That hurts. That's cruel. We're taught in our secular system that it's cruel, it's abuse to spank your child. That's what our secular system says, but the Bible tells us that the rod of correction is needed for our children. So we are raising a generation today that is terribly spoiled and terribly rebellious. And God, when his people disobey him and rebel against him, what does he do? He spanks them. So what's he doing here with Judah? He's spanking them. He's sending the Babylonians in to attack them. But they can't see that. And then it says, too, they have ears to hear, but they hear not. So not only did God send the Babylonians in to spank them, but God also gave them prophets beforehand and during the time of Jeremiah was in Israel, in Judah, during the time of the Babylonian invasion. What was Jeremiah telling them? You're going to go into captivity. Why are you going to go into captivity? Because you've continuously rebelled against God. Prophet after prophet, God sent them to warn them. They heard it, but they didn't hear it. Just like a lot of people today. They hear the word of God, but they don't hear it. You see, if I hear what God says, I do what God says. If I only hear it and let it run off, I don't really hear it. Again, parents will tell their children something, and the children will walk away and do something completely different. Why is that? Because the parent didn't actually have the attention of the child when he was talking to him. So the child heard it, but it didn't mean anything. He just went on and did what he wanted to do. So we need to get the attention of our children. And God, he has a way of getting attention of his people. But even though he gets their attention, many times they don't want to hear it. And that's true for people today, too. Many times we don't want to do what God says we should do. And a lot of people, they get mixed up, they get messed up, and they think, well, it's by doing that I'm saved. No, no, we don't get saved by doing. We're saved by grace. Only by grace. The doing comes after. Turn your Bibles to Ephesians chapter two. Ephesians chapter two. There's three verses there that are very helpful in this regard. Ephesians chapter two, and in verse eight, eight and nine, It tells us there, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Now in my Bible, at the end of the word boast, there's a period. What about your Bible? So that's a completed sentence, right? Verses eight and nine are a sentence. So then we come to verse 10. Verse 10. starts with the word for. So verse 10 is adding to what's being said in verses eight and nine. It says there, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus under good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. So this is talking about after the person is saved, if the person has listened in verses eight and nine and been saved by grace through faith, Now in verse 10, after we're saved, now we can produce good works. And not only can we, but we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works. So after a person is saved, they should be doing good works. And how do we define good works? Well, based on the word of God, not based on what you think or what I think, it's based on what God says. Some of the good works we know of in the Bible is baptism. That's a good work when a person is saved. The Bible commands that. Church attendance. Faithful church attendance is a good work. The Bible commands that. Joining a good church is a command of God. It's important to be a member of a true church where you can learn and grow and work through and with. Very important. So these are things that we do after we're saved. But again, the nation of Israel, they wanted to be a part of Israel, but they didn't want to be a part of Israel. They didn't want to know the God of Israel. They didn't want to follow him. They didn't want to serve him. They're a rebellious house. That's a problem. And God is going to address it. So in verses 3 through 7, God tells Ezekiel to give another object lesson. So our third point is the need for another object lesson. You see, God often uses pictures to help us to understand what's going on. So in verse 3, it says, therefore, So therefore, when you see that word, it means that God is giving us something based on what he's told us before. So in verse 1, he's told us that it's his word that Ezekiel is going to speak. In verse 2, he tells us who Ezekiel is going to speak to, a rebellious people, his own people. Verse 3, what's he going to speak to them about? Thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight, and thou shalt remove from thy place to another place in their sight. It may be they will consider, though they be a rebellious house. Now, we are just in the process of settling in. We just moved. Just moved to Holland. And you know what? I'm tired of moving. I'm tired of moving. But we need to settle in now. We need to organize where we're gonna put things and what are we gonna get rid of and so on. But Ezekiel here is told to move. He's told to take stuff from his house in the sight of the people and move it to another place. And God says to him in verse three, it says, it may be they will consider. You see, it wasn't that God's object lesson here was defective, it's that the people were so rebellious. They did not want to see what they needed to see. They did not want to hear what they needed to hear. And the picture that God is giving Ezekiel to present to the people here is again a reminder to those Jews that were still back in Judah. Babylon was not done with Judah yet. As I said before, that Babylon made three invasions into Judah and into Jerusalem. Three times they went there. Every time they killed some people, every time they took captives, and every time they plundered, took some things out. And in the final time, they destroyed the temple, and during those three invasions, they knocked down more and more of the wall. You see, David, you go to Israel today, and you'll still find part of the wall that David originally put up. Still there. And you'll also find a part of the wall that Nehemiah put up after the exile. And if you compare those two walls, you'll see that David's wall is, I don't know, what would it be, five, six times higher than a person? Whereas Nehemiah's wall, that's a much shorter wall, and it's made of rubble, not of big stones that no person can carry. It's rubble that's put together to make the wall that Nehemiah built. But you know that during the time that David was the king, those walls stood strong and they protected, particularly Jerusalem, from invading armies. Why did they protect them? Because David trusted God. It wasn't the wall that was so important, it was God that was important. And the wall was a symbol of the protection that God would give them as long as they would follow him. And that's why when the Babylonians came in, those same walls that David built couldn't keep the Babylonians out. because Israel was no longer trusting in God. You and I today, we need walls. We don't have to make stone walls, but we need walls. We need protection in our lives, and that protection comes from God. We need to know him. We need to study his word to make sure that we're not being led astray by the many deceivers that are out there. There are far more deceivers than there are truth tellers. Far more. And the only way that we're going to protect ourselves, first of all, is by being saved. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 12, I believe it is, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God because they're foolishness to him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. So a person that is unsaved is not going to understand the Word of God because he's a natural man. He cannot understand it until he gets saved. We need to be saved, and after we're saved, the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, indwells the true child of God. And so when the Holy Spirit is inside the true child of God, he helps the true child of God to understand the word of God, to be able to connect the dots, if we can use that phrase. So here in verse three through seven, Ezekiel is drawing a picture. by taking his stuff from his house, and it tells us in that passage that he's to take that stuff, it says there in verse five, he's to dig through the wall in their sight. Now why would he claw through the wall of his house when there's a door he could go through? Why would he do that? Well again, what's the picture that God is painting? The Babylonians were going to come into Jerusalem and knock down the wall and take the people through what they knocked down. They didn't care if the people got scraped up and bruised and maybe broken legs as they dragged them through the rubble. They didn't care. But that's what happened. They knocked down the walls and invaded and took the, they didn't have to wait to go through the gate. That didn't matter to them. They took them out anywhere and everywhere. And during that time, if you remember, Zedekiah, who was warned by Jeremiah not to resist the Babylonians. He said, you're going to go into captivity. Don't fight back. The punishment is due, and you're going to get captured. What did Zedekiah do? He tried to escape at night. He fled out the back way and thought, aha, I made it. I'm free. But what did the Babylonians do? They chased after him, and they brought him back. And then what did they do? In front of his eyes, while he's bound, they butchered, they slaughtered his sons. And he couldn't do a thing about it. And then after they did that, they took his eyes out. So the last thing that Zedekiah saw was his sons being butchered, and then he was blinded. That was the memory he had. He couldn't go and look at a flower and say, get his mind off of his dead sons. He couldn't look into the sky. He couldn't watch a bird flying by. He couldn't see anything. And so Ezekiel here is told to dig through the wall, claw through that wall, Ezekiel, make a hole in the wall and take your stuff out through that hole in the sight of the people. And then he says to him further to that, he says there that you're to put a mask on, cover your face in verse six. Cover your face. Who covers their face when they're gonna go and commit a crime, the thief does, right? What did the government try to tell us to do for the last three years? Mask up. Mask up. What for? They knew the masks didn't stop the virus. They knew that. We had, during that time, we had someone come into our home to hook up internet where we were living, and the person was wearing a mask. I didn't wear one, but he did. He thought that either I was deadly or he was. I don't know which one. But anyway, he was wearing his mask. And then as he's leaving, my wife was cooking a meal right then. And he says to me, as he's on his way out, he says, boy, that smells good. I said to him, yeah. I said, that's exactly how good your mask is. You can smell everything that's going on. So everything is getting through that mask. That's a useless thing to be wearing. Helps you nothing. But there are still people today walking around with masks on, still thinking that either they need protection from the rest of us or we need protection from them. I don't know which it is, but they still haven't figured it out. But Ezekiel here is told to cover his face so he's to act like an invader. What did the Babylonians do? They invaded Jerusalem. So the picture here that Ezekiel is supposed to paint with himself, as the example, is of himself clawing through his wall, taking his stuff out on his shoulder, wearing a mask, all to portray what the Babylonians were gonna do in Jerusalem. In verse seven, It says there, and I did so as I was commanded. I brought forth my stuff by day as stuff for captivity. And in the even, I dig through the wall with my hand. I brought it forth in the twilight, and I bear it upon my shoulder in their sight. Now, the twilight, that's another important word that God used here. Twilight is in the evening. And when we look at it in the sense of the prophetic word here, twilight is talking about the end of your life or the end of the life of your city or whatever it is, but here it's in relation to Jerusalem. But it's also in relation to the people. It's the twilight of their life. And as the Babylonians would come in, they would kill many people. I'm in the twilight of my life. 72 years old, I don't know how many more years I have left, but I'm in the twilight of my life. Some of you are in the dawn of your life. You're just starting out. But you see, we need to understand that the message God is giving here is that this is the end for Judah and Jerusalem. You know that Israel is back in their land right now, right? they don't have a temple and they won't have a temple until the antichrist builds his temple in the in the tribulation but that's not going to be blessed of god that's going to be a short-lived temple and then at the end of the tribulation jesus christ is going to come back to this earth and he's going to build his temple in the millennium and that temple is going to be the real temple But you see that Israel has never ever again had the glory that they had in the days of David and the early days of Solomon, to this day. And the Bible says that Israel's gonna be trampled underfoot, Jerusalem's gonna be trampled underfoot until the time of the Gentiles is finished. Do you know that the United States right now is trying to tell Israel what they can do to defend themselves. The United States wants Israel to stop fighting against Hamas, even though Hamas has slaughtered many of their own people and slaughtered many Jews. Hamas has taken and stolen much of the money that has been sent into Gaza, stolen much of the food that's been sent into Gaza, and the United States is telling Israel, you gotta stop fighting against them. And some of the politicians in the United States are saying, we shouldn't send any more weapons to Israel until they stop fighting against Hamas. Israel is a sovereign nation. And yet, the world, United States thinking they're the policemen of the world, United States thinks that they can tell Israel what to do. Suppose that Russia were to come to the United States and tell them, you're gonna stop doing your business the way you are, and you're gonna listen to us now. Do you think the United States would fall for that? No. And yet, they think that they can boss Israel around. And they warned Israel, don't you go into Rafah. If you go into Rafah, that's trouble. Guess what Israel did? They went into Rafah just in the last couple of days. And you know, the United States is upset because Israel didn't tell them beforehand. Israel was smart enough not to tell them beforehand. Is Israel gonna win this war against Hamas? No. Why not? Because they're fighting in the flesh. You remember a few years ago, I think it was when Obama was the president, that they claimed that they had annihilated ISIS. You remember that? Did they annihilate ISIS? No. When the United States turned tail and ran out of Afghanistan and left those billions of dollars worth of stuff there, guess who took over? ISIS. The United States is still lying about what happened there. You see, Israel will never defeat Hamas because they're not trusting in God. Have they beat them back some? Yeah, they have. Will they find all their tunnels? No. That's the sad reality. When we look at what's going on in Israel today and we look at what's going on in the book of Ezekiel in his day, We can see that if Israel would just simply study the word of God today, if they would study the word of God, they would realize they're fighting a losing battle. If they would turn to God and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation, there'd be a different story being told. And that different story, the Bible tells us about that. It tells us what's going to happen when Jesus Christ comes back at the end of tribulation. And when he sets his feet on the Mount of Olives, the Bible says it's going to split in two. It's going to create a valley. The Antichrist and his army are going to go into that valley, and Jesus Christ is going to fight them in that valley. And what does the Bible tell us? It tells us that the slaughter is going to be so severe that the blood is going to be up to the horse's bridles. That's a lot of dead people to give that much blood. The Antichrist, the Bible says at that time that he's going to be thrown into the lake of fire. He's not even going to stand at the great white throne judgment. He and the false prophet are going to be thrown into the lake of fire by Jesus Christ. And Satan is going to be bound. The angel of the Lord is going to come and bind Satan for a thousand years. That's what the Bible says. And then Jesus is going to bring in the millennium, a time of great peace such as the world has never known, better than the time of David. That's what's coming. We know that. The Bible says so. We know that. We don't have to wonder about it. Now again, there's a lot of people that have all kinds of different ideas about that. But again, if you take the Bible and you study it systematically and carefully, you can only come to one conclusion. If you pick a verse here and a verse there and make up your own story, yeah, you can come up with all kinds of different. It depends on your imagination then. But if you go in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 10, Here's what God says, 2 Corinthians chapter 10. 2 Corinthians chapter 10, starting at verse 3, it says, therefore, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. So every one of us here has flesh. If I came up to you and pinched you, you'd say, ouch. If you pinched me, I'd say, ouch. We all have flesh. That's who we are. But we don't war after the flesh. And we've talked about that here as well. During the last three plus years, the Wuhan virus, they had this big truckers rally in Ottawa. Those truckers, I understand what they were doing. I know what they were doing. But it was the wrong method. It was the wrong method. That's not how we win. And now we can look at that and we can say, yeah, they didn't win. Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act. He defended it. He lied about it and defended it. He got away with it. There are still people in prison today because of that whole thing. You see, Christians don't win by taking placards and going protesting and hollering and screaming. Christians win by spiritual warfare. Though we walk in the flesh, we know war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. What are the strongholds? Well, let's read on. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. You see, God is the God of knowledge. He has given us what he wants us to know about him in the Bible. Nobody today is having any dreams or visions that come from God. There's a lot of people that say they have visions and dreams. They're not getting them from God. We have the completed record. That's the knowledge of God that he has given to us. But what we need to do, it says here, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God. So you have an idea, I have an idea. I mentioned before the service, I was raised as a Mennonite. I learned a lot of things as a Mennonite. But a lot of the things I learned as a Mennonite I found out when I got saved are not biblical. So I had a choice to make. I could say I was born a man and I'm gonna die a man, and I could have said that. But I chose to say God's word is true. I'm not disrespectful to my parents, my grandparents, they're all that same way, but I'm gonna follow what God says. And so I'm still learning today to follow God more faithfully. As long as my mind is sound, I intend to keep learning. But the word of God is my book. So if you want to challenge me on what I'm believing, show me from the Bible where I'm wrong. From the Bible. Not by picking and choosing a verse here or there, but show me from the Bible where I'm wrong. Says here, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing him to captivity. Every thought, not some of them, every thought to the obedience of Christ. And you notice in your Bible at the end of verse five, you've got what? A semicolon, right? What does that mean? There's something more that connects to that verse. What's the more? Verse six, and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. You see, once I obey what God tells me to obey, to follow, now I can help you. to know the truth as well. But as long as I want to be a rebel and say, I don't care what you say, this is what I believe, I can't straighten you out either. And the same goes the other way. If I'm wrong and you're right, you can help me. But if you're not willing to follow what God says, you can't help me. See, the Bible's our authority. And that's something that's very important for us to understand. That's why as we look back in Ezekiel 12, verse one is so important. The word of the Lord also came unto me. It's not that Ezekiel couldn't sleep and had a dream and I'm gonna tell you what I dreamt last night. No, this is the word of the Lord that came to Ezekiel. And we have the word of God in our hands. It's up to us to study, to meet God's approval, not opinions. Opinions are a dime a dozen, but God's word is the truth. And that's what we base ourselves on here at Calvary Baptist Church of Trier, the word of God. And that's what we want to help others with. That's why we broadcast across the world with our internet. We're thankful. The internet is a good tool. There's a lot of bad stuff on the internet. But it's also a way to get into many other countries with the word of God. And we're thankful for the opportunity we have in this generation to use the tools that ungodly people developed, but we can use them for God's glory. Yeah. They never intended that, but we can do that. And I intend to do that as long as the Lord gives me the ability to do that. So, the important thing as we look at the book of Ezekiel, as you look anywhere in the Bible, the important thing is to know the Lord, first of all. Know the Lord. And if you know the Lord as your own God and Savior, then you can begin to grow in Him and follow Him and serve Him faithfully. And He'll lead you. and he'll give you understanding and he'll give you agreement with other believers. There's a lot of division today in what's called Christianity. A lot of division. It shouldn't be there. There needs to be a unity. I'm not talking about ecumenism. I'm not talking about that at all. We're not looking for the lowest common denominator. You believe in Jesus, I believe in Jesus. Let's get together. No, it takes more than that. But if we have the Spirit of God indwelling us, and if we're saved, we have the Spirit of God indwelling us, then we can open the Word of God and we can say, okay, what does this passage say? And you know, the Bible says, you go in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter four, we're running over time today, but this is important. Ephesians chapter four. And notice what God says there. Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 11, it says there, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. For what purpose? Now, let's just stop there for a minute. He gave some apostles and prophets, okay? Who are those? Well, there are people today who believe there are still apostles and there still are prophets. But the Bible tells us there were 12 apostles. They're all dead. Long dead. And there are no prophets today either. So what's it talking about? They gave some apostles and prophets. That's the word of God. The word of God came to us by prophecy. And the apostles and the prophets are the ones that gave it to us. So the apostles and prophets that he's talking about here, that's the word of God. And then it tells us he gave some evangelists. What's an evangelist? An evangelist is someone who's called of God to travel from place to place and preach the word of God, maybe assisting in a church for a while. But today we use the word missionary. You'll never find that word in the Bible. The word missionary actually has its roots in Catholicism. It's not a Bible word. But evangelists, that's in the Bible. And evangelists travel from place to place, and they go there to establish churches, and they go there to assist in the establishing of churches. And then it says, he gave some pastors and teachers. What do they do? They stay in one area and preach the word of God. That's what I am, I'm a pastor and a teacher, called of God to preach the word of God, not to make up my own theories to preach the word of God. So what's the purpose of it? Verse 12, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, and to a perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine. by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. That's the purpose of these individuals in verse 11. Now, there's not a person in this room today that can say that I know everything there is to know about the Bible. I can't say that. Nobody can say that. So there's work to be done for the living ones, the evangelists, pastors, and teachers. There's work for us to do today in helping others to know the truth as we learn the truth. But God's design is for God's people to come to agreement on the word of God. And we do that when we're saved and when we walk humbly with God and recognize his authority over us. His word is truth. And if we will take his word as our authority, we will come to the truth. And we will have agreement in the truth. That's what God wants. You see, and when we have agreement among God's people, now we have a voice to the outside world. Instead of fighting against each other because I don't like what he had to say, if you're saved, it doesn't matter what he had to say. What does God have to say? That's what matters. And when we take God as our authority, we can overlook The way that guy said it, maybe he didn't say it right, but maybe he did, but I just didn't like it. But we can get beyond that and we can say, hmm, that's interesting, I never knew that. And you see a good man, a good teacher, good pastor is going to help you to connect the dots to see here's what it says here. And if we go over here, there's nothing in the Bible that you will find that contradicts anywhere. It's all in agreement because it's the word of God. And the important thing is to know the word of God and to know the God of the word. So that's important. If you're listening to me today, whether here or online, if you're not saved, that's the place to start. You need to be born again. Jesus told Nicodemus, he must be born again. There's no hope outside of that. And then after you're saved, get into the word of God. Find a good church and get into the word of God and God will bless you. He's a good God. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we're thankful that we have this opportunity together today. We're thankful for thy word, for the truthfulness of thy word, for the privilege that we have to gather together and study thy word. And I pray there'd be a blessing to each one that's listening today. Pray for anyone that's listening that's not saved, that they might see that without thee they have no hope, that they might want to know thy peace in their heart and walk in accordance with what thy word says. We pray for those that are saved that we would want to honor thee in our lives and serve thee faithfully and be a blessing to others that they might come to know thy peace and truth as well. May thy will be accomplished, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.