Bible Study - Ezekiel 31

Join Darrell Franklin as he shares during our Wednesday Night Light Bible Study.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Summit Church Podcast. Thank you for joining us as we share weekly sermons and teachings from Summit Church in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Our prayer is that today's message encourages your faith and helps you grow in your relationship with Jesus. Check out our website at summitchurchtn.com. Thanks for listening, and we pray this message encourages you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Praise God. Every day is a good day in the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it's hard good days, and sometimes it's easy good days, but they're all good days in Jesus. Amen. So um see here. So we are going to um take a look at Ezekiel chapter 31. And um you'll notice there are no slides uh tonight uh because I don't we uh PowerPoint and keynote get so overused, I only tend to use it when I think it's going to be very helpful. Um and so we're not gonna use it tonight. And I say that in part because we're recording, uh we are recording, right? Um and so all right, thank you. Um and the reason why I I double checked is last week we had a problem with the on the internet side. It wasn't here at Summit where we couldn't record. So there's gonna be a few things that I'm going to repackage and talk about over the next couple weeks so that we can make sure and get them on the podcast as well as live. I'm not gonna do it in the same way because I don't want to bore you to tears, uh, but we're gonna repackage some of that and and and talk about some of those things again so those who are listening to the podcast can get the content as well. And so uh Ezekiel 31, the the title of this one is Egypt and the Cosmic Tree, right? I I think they opened for the Beatles in 1975. Um Egypt and the Cosmic Tree. And so um we're again just to start out uh to give you some introduction, right? We last time we talked about how eschatology isn't just study of the end times. It is the study of God's plan for creation from Genesis to Revelation. It's understanding the purpose of creation, it's understanding the purpose of redemption, it's understanding the purpose of the cross and the second coming and the new heavens and the new earth and all of those things in one unified approach. And last time we talked about how that uh the assumptions that you go into studying this with kind of lead you to your conclusions. Okay, and so and and also talked about the fact that because that's the case, we want to be very humble uh as we we study this and make sure that if we disagree with somebody about something that's gonna happen in the future, that we don't divide over that, that we don't uh that we don't not receive from somebody because they have a different view of the end times than we do, unless it's way out there and and denies things like the literal physical resurrection. Um Gene sent me a thing where there's some full preterist who those are the folks who believe that everything that's in prophecy is happened in 70 AD and before. Uh, since all the judgments are past, everybody's saved now. They're now universalist, everybody gets into heaven because all the judgments are in the past. So when you get to that point, okay, then you can can divide over it, right? If you don't think that Jesus is necessary or saving faith is necessary anymore. But until you get to that point, we talked about uh making sure that we don't divide over those things that are to come. Again, if somebody denies the crucifixion or the resurrection, then that's that's a different story. And so uh in Ezekiel 31, we're gonna follow up on uh Ezekiel 30. And um this is one of those things um that I I spend a lot of time because Ezekiel 31 is one of those chapters that if I weren't teaching it, I probably would have read through and went, oh, that's interesting, and then went to Ezekiel 32. Right? Uh that never happens to any of y'all, I know, but uh um the um because Ezekiel 31 is very, very symbolic, and it and it's it's actually written in a style, and again, I would not have known this uh if without some study, uh it's actually uh prophetic satire, um which is a strange name. But what it is is it's it's a form that was used um in writings during that time to make an exaggerated point to try to grab somebody's attention. Right? So we use satire uh today, uh and again that the reason um um the um um so um there's a satire site by the call called the Babylon Bee, right? Who uh I don't agree with all their politics, I'm not endorsing that, right? Um but um let's see here. Uh Toddler Review, the full genius of Despicable Me 3 really presents itself on the 27th viewing. Um uh and somebody you you've been through that, right? Um so uh Trump reveals plan to secure a third time by speaking for seven years. Um if anybody watched the speech last night, it was almost two hours. Um and and so did did they did they really expect Trump to speak for seven years there? No, they used an exaggeration to make a point, right? There's another one I was looking for. Uh um woman actually dies because her husband did get the blanket fast enough and she froze to death. Um you know um uh my favorite one, is your cat actually Satan? Nine things to look for.

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Okay.

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Um I'm a little more on the yes side, but that that some of you are cat people, so I'm not gonna tell all those jokes. Um and so um, so right, we don't really think the cat is Satan, right? It's it's exaggeration, it's hyperbole to make a point, right? It's it's those kind of things. And so when we we talk about prophetic satire, we're talking about I Ezekiel is all through Ezekiel doing outrageous things to grab people's attention, to help them avoid the judgment of God. He is, again, if you take a look at some of the language that he uses, and and and and I'm glad I'm not covering these chapters, but if you take at some of the language that he uses to describe uh Israel's infidelity against God, it's it's actually x-rated language, right? It's it's language that people the translators can't translate it accurately because people would burn the Bibles, okay, because it's that graphic. Okay. And no, I'm not going to tell you what it is. Um and so um, and please don't Google it. Anyway, um, just don't. Um, and so um I can point you to a theologian that'll walk you through it in a protected format. Um, but um but what Ezekiel's trying to do here is he's trying to shake people up and get them to pay attention because in the case of the Egyptians, they saw Moses come through and they saw their firstborn die and the river turn to blood and the and the frogs and the and the gnats, right? You would think that would be enough to grab somebody's attention. Right? If you saw the Red Sea parted and saw the most powerful army at the time swallowed up by a sea, right, and destroyed completely, you would think that might change somebody's mind, right? And so if you were Israel and you saw Pharaoh's army swallowed up, you would think that would make a lasting impression. Right? If you saw the kebab, the weighty glory come down, right? If you saw the fire consume the sacrifice, if you saw all the miracles that God did. Um, you know, the the uh the manna in the desert, right? Another one of the Babylon B things that I liked is God creates flaming hot manna to, you know, so they won't complain in the desert anymore. But um the the thing is, is you would think that that that would grab people's attention and it would change their minds permanently. But it really points out to the fact that, right, as much as I believe in signs and wonders, as much as I believe in miracles, as much as I believe in those demonstrations, until people have an encounter with the Holy Spirit where God writes his laws on their hearts, which is the prophecy in the Old Testament, just simply seeing is not enough. Right? You can use those things to get people's attention and to let them know that God is real, but in order for them to be transformed, they don't need to just have an encounter with the things of God or the miracles of God. They need to have an encounter with God Himself. And so that's that's one of the things that we see in this. And um and so um so Ezekiel here is using this this prophetic satire to use kind of a humorous form, right, to make the point to to Egypt and to those who trust in their abundance, like Egypt does. And a couple of the themes, when it gets this symbolic, I'm gonna kind of outline some of the themes before and then we'll read the scripture. Uh so a couple of the themes that we're going to see is that Egypt, like Assyria, right, had the most powerful military in the world, right? Their culture influenced everything. Right? People came to them, right? They were the they were the big dog on the block, right? They were the most powerful, right? Their their language and their trade and their units and their calendar shaped everybody around them. Does that sound about like anybody you know in modern times? Right? You know, one of the things I hear people say a lot is, you know, the United States has the biggest Air Force in the world, and the United States Air Force, and we have the second biggest Air Force in the world in the United States Navy. Right? And so people are like, you know, oh, why do we do certain things? Oh, because we can. And and again, if people are teasing or joking, but we have to understand that there are dangers in putting your faith and your trust in those elements of human power and in those elements because if we get lifted up in pride in those things, right, then there's a danger in that. And so one of the things that the elements in Ezekiel 31 is that be careful that you don't take pride in the things that God has given you. Be careful that you don't take pride in the things that God has given you. One of the ways that we see Pentecostal charismatic movements, moves of God, start to go off the rails, right? If you study revivals, if you study moves of God, refreshings, outpourings, those kind of things, a lot of times you'll see them just kind of wind down and those kind of things because they almost always have a life. But sometimes you see some of them go completely off the rails, right? If you study those things, you see some where it starts really great and God's in it, and people are moving and praying, and then all of a sudden it is the Hindenburg and the Titanic, right? It is just crash and burn. And I know I'm not supposed to talk about that out loud, but I do. Um and so um the thing is, is one of the some of the patterns that you start to see in that, right, is right, God, again in Ezekiel 31 says, right, that Egypt is strong because its roots are based in the waters of God, that God flows through, the river of God, and the and the roots are deep and strong because of the rivers they did not create. And so they start to take for themselves, right, look what we did, look who we are. And so when you talk about the move of God, when you talk about revivals, they start to go off the rails when we start to say, we must be doing something right. Right? Or we must be special, right? Instead of saying, Jesus is special and Jesus is doing something right, when we start, or we start to say, Oh, God must approve of my theology because people are getting healed. Just went straight there, didn't I? Aw man, so when we when we again, one of the things that strikes me there is a couple of revivals in Great Britain. And did you know that that one of them believed in predestination and one of them believed in free will, and God moved in both places, and people got healed and saved and delivered in both churches? Right? There are people who disagree with me on eschatology, and 50,000 people got saved. How did that happen? Right? And so we have to be careful not to think that just because God chooses to move, right, that we did it. Right? We've got to make sure that. So you hear me pray a lot. God, when you move, when you do something, every last drop of honor and glory and praise goes to you. And so every last drop, because the moment we start to reach out and touch the anointing and say it's ours, like Uzzah, right? When they were taking the ark, right? That's when death happens, when we become so familiar we think we can do it and take it under ourselves. Okay, that wasn't in the notes, but you know, uh that's for free. So um, so when we talk about Ezekiel 31, one of the things we're really going to run into is a concept of Jewish worldview or Jewish eschatology called the cosmic tree. Now you've heard Ryan say, right, that it starts with a tree in the garden and it ends with a tree in Revelation at the end. And so I want to be very clear that the language that Ezekiel is using here has nothing to do with those two. He's talking about a Jewish Near Eastern, Middle Eastern, Bronze Age view of the world, that the world turned on an axis of a cosmic tree with its roots in Sheol or the grave, the tree in life, and then the branches stretching into the heavens. Okay, so it was a worldview. And the reason why I didn't bring you a picture, because if I'd have given you that picture, it would have stuck in your head as something that's legitimate, and it is not the biblical worldview, it is the Jewish worldview. And sometimes when, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is a lot of times in charismatic movements now, for people who have different views, again, good people filled with the Spirit, God loves them, right? Very respectable. Um, they'll say, I have a Jewish eschatology. And what they're saying is that they're not only adopting the view of the Old Testament, but they're adopting the Jewish worldview that's available in writings outside of the Bible, especially in what's called the intertestamental period between the last book of the Old Testament and John the Baptist. Right? So there are lots of things, and again, these can be some good writings, right? There's some very much positive things in there. I'm not discounting them. But again, when you talk about the assumption of Moses and Bell and the Dragon and the book of Enoch, especially the second, third, and fourth books of Enoch and those kind of things. There's a lot of literature that recently we recovered, recently in archaeological terms, in the last hundred years. Uh, where we're really excited about some of those things because it gives us some real insight into translation and how words were used. So things like Kingdom of Heaven and Son of Man and Finger of God and some of those phrases, we can get a lot of uh input from that. But in using those things to study and translate, people have started thinking, oh, well, those non-biblical books were correct about eschatology and how God works in the world. And so we're starting to interpret the Bible based on those non-biblical books. And again, as we talked about last time, we have a very high view of scripture. Everything gets judged by scripture, everything gets judged and bows at the feet of the word of God in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so we do not judge Ezekiel based on these intertestamental writings. We judge these intertestamental writings on the basis of Ezekiel and the other word of God. And so, again, if you accept, right, the Jewish eschatology, the cosmic tree, as being the real representation, then you wind up as a post-millennialist, right? You believe that we're in the millennium, right? You believe that we're going, the world's going to get better and better, and then Christ is going to return, because that's how they understood the kingdom of God. And so the the, and again, good people, not judging them, it's just not the view that we take because we don't see that those uh books that were written in between Malachi and John the Baptist are consistent entirely with the Old Testament, and we prioritize and give and give primacy to the Old Testament. Now, if you went and talked to some of those folks, they would say that I have inadequately described their view, probably so. Um, but um, but the the thing is that when I listen to them, they inadequately describe my view. So um that that's um again, go you can go listen and get their worldview. So, but when we talk about this cosmic tree, right? This tree with roots that's in the underworld, in Sheol, in the grave, right? And so have to remember during this time, as far as we can tell, there wasn't a really well-developed idea of the afterlife like we get in the New Testament, because we really start emphasizing the afterlife when Jesus comes and we have hope in the afterlife, right? That because Jesus makes it alive and he comes, I am the resurrection and the life. And so he he puts the life in afterlife, right? So that that comes from Jesus. And so Sheol was this kind of murky place, right, or the grave where people died and they went to, and you could be gathered to your father's and those kind of things, kind of incorporated the past, right? But there wasn't a lot of clarity. There was some, and and at some point we'll go and we'll talk about Sheol and develop that more fully. Um, but just understand that that when when Ezekiel talks about the the trees of the Garden of Eden being in Sheol, he's not saying that the tree of life is in hell. Okay. Uh so we're just basically we're talking about that. So it was more of a worldview about how we view the world, right? Kind of more like today we would talk about science or physics, right? So again, the the the the thing is is that we we have an understanding of the world, right, where we we think that germs cause disease, bacteria, and viruses, right? That's relatively new in the world. And so the the thing is, is that if if somebody comes and says, I'm sick, we're gonna pray for them, but we you know we we understand that you might need an antibiotic. We're not saying, oh, we need to bleed you, right? Because that's the way we view sickness in the world. And so when we talk about the cosmic tree in this sense, we're talking about how they viewed the world, right, culturally, not necessarily biblically. Now, Ezekiel uses cultural language here, so we have to understand it to understand the passage, but we we need to understand, right, that that if it just because you use a cultural reference, right, uh, so if if I use a Star Wars metaphor, that doesn't really mean that I think Yoda exists. Okay, and so I don't. Um, and so sorry for some of you, we'll do counseling after. Um, and so um, and then um, and so when we take a look at Ezekiel again, the symbolism in Ezekiel brings together the tree symbolism, right, that's used in the culture, the tree symbolism that's used in the Bible that's legitimate, and we'll we'll differentiate that. And it points, right, uh, from the Garden of Eden, right, uh all the way to Jesus' coming, and it emphasizes the spiritual roots of Egypt's rebellion and the judgment that came in chapter 30. It's showing the spiritual reason why that judgment is is uh coming to pass. Okay, so and again, I told you I wasn't gonna do a 45 minute Introduction. I just did 15, so we're getting closer. Okay. Um, and so um so chapter 31, um in Ezekiel reading out of the New American Standard Bible. Um in the eleventh year in the third month on the first of the month, the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man, say to the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to his hordes. Okay, one of the interesting things about this passage is it um dates this particular passage about two months after the previous uh judgment that was pronounced in Ezekiel 30. And and it is in the reign of Jehoiakim, right, as the the uh Babylonians are sending waves of armies and besieging Jerusalem. And one of the interesting things about this being a prophetic satire that's highly symbolic, that it's one of the few prophecies that's rooted in time and place. And so one of the things that I do want to talk about because it's unusual here, is that occasionally you'll get, right, in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, right? Occasionally you'll get, right, um uh Daniel talking about the switchover, right, from from uh you know Nebuchadnezzar to Darius and all those kind of things, right? You'll get those dates. But a lot of times when you when you look at prophecy and you look at scripture, God is not nearly as interested in day and time and year as we are. Have you ever noticed that? So calendars existed in all of this, right? They had multiple calendars, right? So if you take a look at Stonehenge, they built Stonehenge in you know 6,000 BC or 5,000 BC, where they lined up with, I think it's the summers and winter solstice exactly. The Babylonians and the Egyptians had lunar and solar calendars, they had them calculated down to the to the minute. Okay, so they the calendars existed, right? Um uh certainly by 4,000 BC calendars existed. By 1500 BC, calendars uh again, the Jews had a couple of different calendars. It's not what they use currently, but they had a couple of different calendars. And so one of the interesting things is that God wanted, I think, to note this is a real thing happening in real time, even if it's highly symbolic. Right? So when he was in chapter 30 and he was naming cities and canals and north and south, and who was gonna do what and which king was gonna come, right? You had a lot of specific details, so you really didn't need a date and time. But in chapter 31, he's going, okay, this is going to be really spiritual and symbolic, so I'm gonna give you a rootedness in date and time because it's necessary to work the work will of God and get the message of God across. And so one of the things we can take from this chapter, the first application, is God gets interested in time and our sense of timing and calendar time when it suits his purposes. And God seems to be completely uninterested in calendar time or our sense of timing if it doesn't suit his purpose. Has anybody ever noticed that? Right? We want things to happen now, today, right? We want to put a date and a time on things, right? You know, and and and and you know, then God says, you know, uh, tarry and wait for it. And if you tarry and you wait for it, it will come. Does it tell us when it's going to come? No, it just says it's gonna come in God's time. And so the the first thing that that we can take from this is that when it especially when it comes to prophecy, and this is my opinion, you doesn't have to be anybody else's, I don't think that like the second coming or the rapture is on, you know, preset on September 14, 2028. Right? It could be, but I think it's gonna be more when the fullness of time happens, then that's going to take place. Right? And so, um, and and the reason why I talk about this is because in the eighties and nineties, dispensationalists went off the rails with 88 reasons why Jesus is gonna come back in 88, and and there was a recent uh premillennial cult in Africa where people were convinced I think that Jesus was gonna come back sometime, either late last year or earlier. And we've just got to avoid that nonsense, right? So um the uh if I'm gonna call out nonsense in other views, we definitely gotta call it the nonsense in our own, right? And so um, and so that's really the the first thing. The second thing is, right, is in verse 2, Son of Man, say to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and to his hordes, and to his multitudes. And in some of the other prophecies, it is specifically against Pharaoh himself, but this is in against the entire society, right? It's to the army, it's to the the the courtiers, it's it's to against everybody. Okay. And so when we get to this prophetic satire. Uh again, poems, satire are it's not formatted in Hebrew, it's not punctuation, it's the how it's structured in the writing. And so what you tend to start out with is you tend to start out with this overblown praise of the subject you're going to roast. Okay? So imagine, right, if you went up to somebody and say, you're the greatest baseball player in the history of baseball players, right? You're better than than Willie Mays and Babe Bruce and Hank Aaron, right? You're better than Otani, right? You're the greatest history in the hitter in the history of hitters. Oh, but you got struck out by a 12-year-old, right? So that that's kind of the form that we're doing here, right? And so um that that's that's where we go. So in um in in the second half of verse 2, whom are you like in your greatness? And and if you look at the verb tense in there in the in the language, um, it can also be translated, How great do you consider yourself? Right, that's an alternative reading there. So, how great do you consider yourself? Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches and forest shade, and very high, and its tops was among the clouds. The waters made it grow, the deep made it high, with its rivers continually extended all around its planting place, and sent out its channels to all the trees of the field. Therefore its height was loftier than all the trees of the field, and its boughs became many, and its branches long because of many waters as it spread them out. All of the birds of heavens nested in its boughs, and under its branches all the beasts of the field gave birth, and all great nations lived under its shade. So it was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its branches, for its roots extended to many waters. The cedars in God's garden, I was talking about the Garden of Eden here. The cedars in God's garden could not match it. Assyria, you were so great, even the trees in the Garden of Eden could not compare. Right? So now we're getting a sense of that real exaggeration, right? So it could not match it. The cypress could not compare with its boughs, and the plain trees could not match its branches. No tree in God's garden could compare with, excuse me, no tree in God's garden could compare with it in its beauty. I made beautiful with the multitude of its branches, all the trees of Eden, which were in the garden of God, were jealous of it. In other words, the tree representing Assyria. Okay. Right? Oh, Assyria, you were so high and mighty and beautiful that even the tree of life was bowing down to you. Okay? And so a lot of times when we do biblical studies, we focus on Egypt, we focus on Babylon or Persia, and we don't really give enough uh time to Assyria. So Assyria, if you want to understand uh in Bronze Age, Middle East or Near Eastern history, Assyria was the empire that preceded them both, and they're the empire that really figured out how to be an empire. They're the ones who figured out how to conquer territories and and conquer people groups and and build roads and laws, and and so uh uh Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, started out as an Assyrian language, right? And so they were Assyria for that time period is like the Roman Empire for us. It was closer in time, but right, their their internet memes, you know, asking guys, how often do you think about the Roman Empire? And the response is right now, thank you very much. And and so um the the the thing is that right, we take a lot of our imagery, we take a lot of our ideas about how things work, right? You know, because people say, you know, well, how did the Roman Empire fall? And so we we look at those things. And so Assyria really played that role in the minds of the Egyptians and the Israelites and and the Babylonians. The Assyrians really were the first great empire. They were also, and sorry for the reference for those of you who are not in sci fi, they were also the Romulans, right, or the Klingons, right? They they were an evil people who were very, very, very evil, right? So they were also uh, you know, if you didn't do what they wanted, they would just completely wipe out your city, right? Um if they wanted your city, they would completely wipe out your city, right? If they had a bad burrito, they would wipe out your city, okay? Um and maybe not burritos back then, but um the uh and so the Assyrians were the originators, right? They were the ones that everybody was trying to copy, right? They were the ones who set that empire culture, and so they were the first great conquering empire in that region that really made things, and and and everybody was terrified of the Assyrians before they fell. Now, like a lot of great empires, the Assyrians started a lot of infighting. They had oppressed Israel, and and part of their destruction was judgment uh for their oppression. Um, but there was no external reason really why they fell. They just they they fell under judgment and and destroyed themselves from within. And so when he's comparing Egypt to Assyria, what he's saying is, Egypt, you have you think of yourselves the way that we think of Assyria, right? You've raised yourself up to this mythic, world-changing, culture-setting, overwhelming thing, and you think that essentially that God needs you, you don't need God, right? Because when you take a look at the pharaohs, they declared themselves gods. They became gods, and so they lifted themselves up in the place of God. And so one of the things that we see that's in the theme of this is that, right, the original fall in the garden was right, you shall eat of this tree, you shall know good and evil, and you shall become as God. And so he's pointing back to the Garden of Eden, saying that you're recapitulating that same rebellion. And one of the things that when we talk about these judgments over and over and over, is the judgment of God does not come simply for immorality. The judgment of God does not simply come because people are making mistakes. It is when people break that first commandment and they say, We are God in God's place. It's when idolatry, when my view, when my approach, I consider to be superior or equal to God. Okay, so if Jesus came and he humbled himself even to death on the cross, right, how much more so that was telling us, right, that the ultimate thing that we cannot do is to equate our thoughts, our philosophy, our position to be equal with God. And that's where you tend to see the judgment of God, right, come out. And so because a lot of times I've heard it preached in my past oh, Egypt was judged because they were oppressive or cruel or because they, you know, took, you know, uh slaves. That's bad, right? But uh we underestimate God's mercy in allowing humans to live and to continue so that they might find salvation. God will allow a lot of suffering in order to give people a chance to come to salvation. And so the the the thing is, is that could he have killed when they were putting the blood over the doorpost and on the lentils, right, and the death angel? Could God have just wiped Egypt off the face of the map right then and there and been justified? Yes. But he was giving them a chance for redemption in spite of their great wickedness and cruelty. Right? Could have God wiped out the Assyrians in the first ten minutes? Yes, could he have wiped out the Babylonians? Yes. And so instead he sends rude prophets making fun of them, trying to grab their attention, right, and trying to get them to grab hold of. You have elevated yourself to the degree that you think that, right, the trees in the Garden of Eden, should the tree of life should come and bow to you. Right. And so one of the things, again, when when you read especially a lot of Ezekiel, and one of the reasons why I'm hitting this har so hard, is that when you read a lot of of commentaries and studies on Ezekiel, you'll get people saying, Oh, Ezekiel couldn't have said that. That had to be put in by somebody else. Right? Or you'll read somebody that will say, you know, this doesn't fit the exact format of this, and so it had to be, you know, made up at a later time. And so we we elevate our judgment and we elevate our academic approach and our opinion over the inspired word of God. And we we become a judge of the word of God instead of a student of the word of God a lot of times in the material. Um, and so that's where people get let off on the wrong track. And the reason, and again, I I don't like to talk about this stuff, but I talk about it because it makes it way its way into sermons and podcasts and study Bibles. Okay. And so um the the the thing is, is is there's study Bibles in every conservative Christian bookstore that say that you know only about a third of Ezekiel was written when Ezekiel wrote it and the rest was just right editions. And so the the thing is is we've got to be very careful to always submit right uh and again when I run across a study Bible that says, Oh, this was written later by somebody, you know, some editor in the second century BC, I just go, right, and I go grab another Bible, right? And so you don't have to do that, but that because because once it gets infected like that, once people elevate their thought above the word of God, then and you know, because uh had one person writing uh talking about the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul used the wrong verse. If he really wanted to make his point, he should have used this quote from the Old Testament. And when I stopped laughing uh at the person, not at Apostle Paul, it's like, oh yeah, sure, I'm gonna sit here and say, yeah, the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul made a mistake there, you know, and so um so that's the reason why I bring it up. Uh, and especially those of us who are a little older, right? We don't live in that world, but the folks who are a little younger do live in that world. And so we have to be very careful to say, yes, I've read the academic stuff, yes, I've read the stuff that's produced in in the German schools and the British schools and all that kind of stuff, and and they fall in love with their own ideas, right? And they exalt their own opinions over the word of God. So, verse 10. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because it is, and again, we're switching from a poem. Most of your Bibles will have that, that those preceding verses in stanzas as a poem, and this becomes prose. And whenever you see that, it's a shift in the literary form. So the poem, right, we don't necessarily take that as history, right? So um we don't take the poem The Charge of the Light Brigade as an absolute, right, historical account. We take it as a poetic account. So we don't, but when it switches to prose, now we're getting serious and we're getting to those things that we can take more literally. Okay? Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because it is high in stature and set its top among the clouds, and its heart is haughty in its loftiness, therefore I will give it into the hand of a despot of the nations, and he will thoroughly deal with it. According to its wickedness I have driven it away. Alien tyrants of the nations have cut it down and left it on the mountains, and in all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs have been broken in the ravines of the land, and all the people of the earth have gone down from its shade and left it. On its ruins all the birds of heavens will dwell, and all the beasts of the fields will be on its fallen branches, so that all the trees by the waters may not it be exalted in their stature, nor set their top among the clouds, nor will their well watered mighty ones stand erect in their height, for they have all been given over to death to the earth beneath, among the sons of men, with those who go down to the pit or go down to Sheol. Thus says the Lord God, On the day when it went down to Sheol I caused lamentations, I closed the deep over it and held back rivers, and its many waters were stopped up, and I made Lebanon mourn for it, and all the trees filled of the field wilted away on account of it. I made the nations quake at the sound of its fall, when I made it go down to Sheol with those who go down to the pit, and all those well watered trees of Eden, the choice at choicest and best of Lebanon, were comforted in the earth beneath. They also went down with it to Sheol, to those who were slain by the sword, to those and those who were its strength lived under its shade among the nations. So this paints a picture, right, of the tree of Assyria, right? We had this great, right, sarcastic building up, the greatest of trees, right? And God said, But when you got in your heart, haughty in your loftiness, when you got flying too high, too close to the sun, and you thought it was yourself and not God, because I was the one that gave you the water that that gave you the water for your roots that caused you to grow. I was the one that gave you the sunshine on your leaves that caused you to grow. I was the one that created trees and made trees able to grow in the first place. And so when it got haughty in its loftiness, and and and and you you you tend to see this over and over in history, um, because fame and success are just as great of a trial and tribulation as um sometimes being poor and sick. There are a lot of people who have been destroyed by being successful.

unknown 42:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Especially if they're not prepared for it. So a lot of times you see a lot of people, right? And and again, I think that we we make too much we make our ministers and prophets and apostles celebrities, uh, sometimes against their will. Um, and then the fame and the money and the fortune becomes too much and they get overwhelmed by it, right? We've seen that over and over in in Christianity. Um and um I I just never see Apostle Paul out signing autographs, you know? Oh, Apostle Paul, let me get a picture with you, right? Um is that stepping too close to home? Um, and so um, or you know, I've got to get a word right from the Apostle Paul because Timothy won't do. Right? And so the the thing is, is that when we get elevated, right, and and they even prepare NFL players for this. They they call it the trauma of success, because a lot of NFL players come from very impoverished backgrounds, and they they go from trying to scrape together enough, right, to to be able to go to Taco Bell, right, to oh, here's ten million dollars suddenly. And um, there's a lot of NFL players who are bankrupt. About half of all lottery winners go bankrupt. Right? How do you how do you win a hundred million dollars and wind up bankrupt in in ten years? It happens sometimes five years. And so the the thing is, is that one of the things when we talk about Lord, lead us not into temptation and deliver us not from evil, and again, people get freaked out when I say this is God, don't give me more success than I can handle. Lord, let me fly at that exact place where I can stay abiding in you. Now I want all the success I can handle. Right. I want everything, but it don't don't give me anything that's going to lead me away from you, right? And so the the thing is is that um one of the things that we we tend to see right is they got lofty and and driven up, but God gave them over, right, to a conquering army, right, to destroy them. So now everything that was under them is now on top of them. That's what all that means, right? The birds that were sheltering in your branches are now sheltering on your branches. The animals that were reproducing under you and living under you are now living on top of you, right? And everybody that was your strength is now in the grave and in Sheol. So everything becomes destroyed. And so when we talk about those things, right, God is saying that a because of their wickedness, because they've elevated their themselves to God, because their success went to their head, right? God allowed Assyria to be destroyed. Okay. So, verse 18. To which among the trees of Edom are you thus equal in glory and greatness? You will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth beneath. You will lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain with the sword. So is Pharaoh in all of his hordes, declares the Lord God. There's a second piece of making fun of them, right? Because the whole chapter is basically about Assyria and how they became, right? And God's putting Egypt in their place and goes, Yeah, you too. Yeah, you too. Right? We're not even going to write the chapter about you. We're just going to give you this example and focus on them and make them the star of the show. Have you ever met somebody who always wanted to be the star of the show? Right? Toby Keith wrote a country song about it, like I want to talk about me. Um and and so um and so the the thing is, is God was putting him in their place. It's like we're gonna prophesy over your destruction, but we're really gonna talk about you in like two verses, right? And the rest of it's gonna be a description of somebody else's glory, because again, one of the things when we get transfixed with what's in the mirror instead of looking up into heaven, right, then then again we can become a little self-obsessed and a little self-oriented. And so what God is saying to the Egyptians is you became self-obsessed and you began to worship yourself. So now I'm gonna say, you're barely even worth mentioning. Okay, and so that that's kind of the end of that particular is to say that if you walk with God and walk in God, right, you have significance and greatness, but if you forget God and worship yourself, you become barely worth mentioning. And and one of the things, again, that um people um when we talk about the gospel, right, we we say things like, Jesus loved you so much he died for you, right? All of create if there had just been one person, right, and you were the only person on the earth, Jesus would have gone to the cross for you. If there had been one person, right, Jesus would come back again just to get you. If there had been one person, he would create the new heavens and the new earth, he would do it just for you. And all of that is a hundred percent true. But what scripture also says, if you reject that, God becomes indifferent to you. God has contempt for you. Now, again, rejection isn't, oops, I lied, or oops, I looked at something I shouldn't have looked at, or had, you know, or I shoplifted a Snickers bar. That's not what we're talking about, right? Um, and those things you shouldn't do, but we're not talking about those are the things that drive, right? It it is saying, right, God, I don't need you, you don't exist, I'm equal or better than you, right? Then, as again, as it says in Daniel, not only does it bring God's judgment, but it brings his abhorrence, his contempt, right? And so one of the things that we we again that to the balance, right? Remember the two the two poles on the clothesline? We have God's love, right, and God's holiness, right? And his sense of boundary, right? And so one of the things that we've done, and I and again, we were too legalistic for a while, didn't preach about God's love, so we went and started talking about God's love a lot, and that's great. But there are some people that we talk about God's love or not, right? They're saying, you know, oh yeah, no, I'm gonna be a mass murderer for Jesus, right? Uh it doesn't matter what I do. Um again, I've met people, I'm a sex worker for Jesus. Okay, they were serious. It wasn't a joke, right? This is my ministry as being a sex worker, being a prostitute. Okay. Not making it up, more than one person, okay? And so the the thing is, is that we have to have both things where it's it's you you can't, you know, you have that balance of, right, God will pursue you always, passionately, wonderfully, but there will come a time, right, where if people reject God and say, I don't, I reject you, God, completely, I don't need you, I'm equal or better than you, right? And and you're not real, and and and there's a judgment day coming. And so we have to have that balance in Scripture, right? Or else we it goes back to universalism, right? Which is okay, everybody's saved and everybody's going to heaven, and what we do doesn't matter. And so you kind of have to have that balance. One of the other things, and we'll go ahead and get your questions, comments, and complaints ready. Um, and so um one of the things that that the Lord is is also prompting me to do is is helping people to understand the process of teaching a little bit. And so I'm just gonna be taking a couple minutes here or there to do that. One of the things that really helped me, and this didn't come for me, is when you're preparing for something like this, I don't look at this as sitting down and teaching for an hour. Right? I look at this as sitting down and teaching for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, for thirty-three hours. And so if you prepare fifteen hours to teach thirty-three hours, it's a good investment. Right? And so a lot of times when people struggle with teaching, with sharing devotions, it's because they under-read and they underprepare. So a lot of people think I can't teach, but they think you prepare an hour and you teach an hour. Nancy will tell you that I I spend a lot more than an hour, I don't know if it shows, but I spend a lot more than an hour on this, right? And so the the thing is, is that I want to encourage some folks. You don't think that you can teach, you don't think that you can share, you don't think that you can do these things, and and mostly it's just because, right, you you just need to understand that the preparation process, right, to teach this series, and I'm not doing this to brag, but to teach this series that I'm doing, I probably got a couple hundred hours of study in it. Okay, and so, and and I really appreciate Nancy because she gives me the freedom, because sometimes things don't get done when I'm studying that heavily, so I appreciate that. Um, but the the thing is, it's not that you can't teach, it's just that somebody has told you, oh, you can you can prepare for 15 minutes and then teach for 30, and that just doesn't happen. And so I want to encourage you that if you don't think that you can get up and lead a devotion or or you know lead something in your family group or whatever, for a lot of people it's just you're not spending enough time in preparation to do it. And if you did, you would easily be able to do it. The the second thing is that 99% of people, unless there's a specific gifting, uh anointing in the Holy Spirit, you cannot create a speech and deliver it at the same time. You have to practice. So almost everything I do, including this piece, I practice to a wall or a steering wheel or something, right? And so the thing is, is if you want to speak effectively, you completely, and again, I don't do the whole thing, but I'll do five-minute segments here and there and work on the language, right, so that I'm not trying to create what I'm talking about while I'm delivering it. And so a lot of people get overwhelmed because they try to create it in the moment. Now, again, there are some people who are gifted and anointed by the Holy Spirit to do that and praise God for that. But they're gifted and anointed by the Holy Spirit to do that, okay? And so some people you can speak effectively in front of other people. It's just a matter of preparation and practice. Then the last thing I'll do, I wanted to add one more, is if you're speaking over a microphone, don't let the first time you speak over a microphone in the room be when you're trying to speak. Come and do a sound check for the first and get used to that. Because what you get used to is when you speak into a microphone, you hear yourself a half second later. And if you're not used to hearing yourself a half second later, it will throw you off. Okay, so if you're in a room, if you're speaking over a sound system for the first time, make sure you prepare, make sure you practice, and make sure you get used to the sound system because a lot of you can minister and teach and lead others that don't think that you can just because of the techniques, not because of giftings and anointing and knowledge. Does that make sense? Okay. All right. So any questions? And if you do have a question, we do have a microphone because we are recording.

SPEAKER_03 54:17

Yes, now um tell me more about this cosmic tree. I've never heard of that before. Um, you had explained how it works from the roots up to the branches, and but I didn't catch all the time.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Okay, so the cosmic tree was basically how the Israelites and the Assyrians and Egyptians and Babylonians, although more Syrians and Babylonians, they viewed the structure of the universe, was structured around the axis of a cosmic tree. So the roots were down in this underworld in Sheol, where the the waters uh and rivers um uh uh ran. Um and so when it talks about the flood, the the fountains of the death burst open, right? It's talking about those underwater subterranean rivers in Sheol coming up to the surface. Um, and then the next layer was the trunk and the branches, right, where you'll notice, right, which the ground in the trunk and the branches is where the life that we observe and see happens, right? It's where the the birds are and the animals and the nations and the peoples, right, are are around that cosmic tree. And then the upper branches reach into the heavens, into the second heavens, and in some cases even to into the um heavens that we would consider heaven. Uh, because ancient peoples, more often than not, especially in this worldview, saw the stars as angelic beings. And so when we talk about in prophecy, right, the stars fell, right? We're talking about angelic supernatural beings in that worldview, in that language. Um and so um so they had this cosmology, this way of looking at the world, right? That again, and it doesn't translate to the spiritual side, it translates to modern physics, right? Uh the Big Bang, right, um, and and the beginning of the universe, and and the fact that we have stars and galaxies, right? And and and we have um, and so it was more of a worldview than a spiritual worldview. Now it was religious in that it was mystical, but it wasn't necessarily biblically based in that sense. Does that help? Okay. And again, I do want to emphasize that Ezekiel will use this language not because he thinks it's correct, but because it's what people understand and he can get the real message to them. And so sometimes one of the things that Christians struggle with, especially in the Old Testament, is the Bible is descriptive instead of prescriptive. It's descriptive instead of prescriptive. And so it describes how to live and honor God in the world that exists without saying that the world that exists after the fall is God's perfect will. So in the New Testament, when it says slaves, right? If you're a slave, be the best slave you can to your master after you got saved. It doesn't mean that God's going, yay, slavery, okay. Uh it's just saying slavery exists, right? And if you find if you come to Christ while you're a slave, right, don't go murder your master because you say, hey, Jesus set me free, and he who is free is free indeed. So I get to murder somebody. No, that's not how it works. And so um the the the thing is it's saying we accept that slavery existed in the Roman Empire, and this is how to be a Christian within that context. And so there are things, especially in in um in the kingdom of Israel and Judah and Samuel and Judges, right, where it is this is how the people of God move through the fallen world as it existed. And this is the language and the way that we move within that fallen world, without saying this is the way that it ought to be.