SPEAKER_00: This one they've called Doom, which I'm not quite sure is completely fair, but um I wanted to see, as always, if you had reactions or questions to either the reading or the video to start us out.
SPEAKER_04: Well, first I don't understand the repeated reference with the son of man.
SPEAKER_00: Great question.
SPEAKER_00: So nobody seems to really have a good understanding of that, and it might be helpful to tell you we actually often when we read, we've got a little oops in our mind.
SPEAKER_00: We say things like Jesus is the son of God, right?
SPEAKER_00: But in the Psalms, the king is often called the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: So really, Son of God is sort of a title of somebody who's blessed or favored by God, and it ought not be taken literal in the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Son of Man is really interesting, especially when Jesus uses it.
SPEAKER_00: It really could be actually very literal when Jesus uses it.
SPEAKER_00: That his claim is, I'm a regular person.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of scholars have done some work to say, actually, Son of Man is this sort of, if you don't mind me using this big word, eschatological word.
SPEAKER_00: Eschatological means like where it's about the end.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's this kind of special person that has a special relationship with God that's either going to speak for God or is the fulfillment of the sons of God as kings.
SPEAKER_00: So none of these titles are very clear.
SPEAKER_00: That's the hard bit.
SPEAKER_00: They seem to have a lot of ambiguity, but they really seem to be, again, Son of God is saying, like, favored by God, and Son of Man is seems to be saying somebody favored by God, but is really just a human being.
SPEAKER_03: Right.
SPEAKER_00: So they actually might be compliments to each other.
SPEAKER_04: The other thing is um the the reference.
SPEAKER_04: I don't quite understand how the book was written.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really have a record of that.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to assume that the author who has the visions writes them down, and who does the stuff, writes down what he did.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So so in and reminder, this guy's in Babylon, so he was taken, uh, and and the book starts out before the temple's been destroyed, because he's acting that out.
SPEAKER_00: So he's probably taken on the first exile, like 596.
SPEAKER_00: This is a very lit, this is a member of the gentry.
SPEAKER_00: He's a priest, but you want to think like high up in the priestly class, like he's a bishop would be an equivalent.
SPEAKER_00: Um, very literate, probably wealthy, um, a little eccentric.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe more than a little.
SPEAKER_04: Then then the then the other thing is God seems to take on a different kind of personality.
SPEAKER_04: Um he's more human here.
SPEAKER_04: Than I've than we've we've seen in the past, I think.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly very emotional, right?
SPEAKER_00: Very emotional and prone to things like anger and vengeance.
SPEAKER_00: Those are themes we see in God.
SPEAKER_00: But remember, we have to decide whether that's true or whether the author is trying to say, because you think of God in these ways, let's go ahead and complete the picture.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So if you think, I mean, for example, if you think you're God's chosen people and God has a special relationship with you, then realize you will be more accountable for what you do than everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure the author is saying God is actually like that.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: That God has special relationships with some instead of others.
SPEAKER_00: I think what he's saying is, since you think that, you need to realize that may not be in your favor.
SPEAKER_00: Because you should know better.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it makes super sense.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we buy at hook, line, and sinker, and we say, aha, uh, Jewish people are favored by God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you, I have a problem with the idea that God plays favorites.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't seem very good.
SPEAKER_00: Could be, though, that uh our Jewish ancestors were the first people who responded to God, specifically in these ways.
SPEAKER_00: And since they've got that response and they've put that in Scripture, then they ought to know how to respond.
SPEAKER_03: Right.
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, another way to say it, John Wesley wrote this, is that ignorance isn't sinful.
SPEAKER_00: Willful ignorance is.
SPEAKER_00: So if these people know better and are willfully ignorant or are rebelling against what they know to be true, that's sin.
SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking these are the descendants of the people that God had a hand in creating.
SPEAKER_00: But see, God had a hand in creating everybody.
SPEAKER_02: There's pretty big differences in the civilizations.
SPEAKER_02: Some two.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a good point, but remember that these people are really, really small, like New Hampshire.
SPEAKER_00: They've never been a successful huge empire nation-state.
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_02: That that God was always working with these people.
SPEAKER_02: He had a way of connecting with them.
SPEAKER_02: So these are the uh this bloodline.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's well, I think that's what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_00: These people are the ones who are tracking the same story we're getting in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas, let's say the Roman Empire or the Assyrian Empire is tracking different stories from these.
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel says, since you're tracking this story, you ought to know better.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, when you see a tree, I don't mean to be argumentative because I don't even know what I'm talking about here.
SPEAKER_02: But you see a family tree, but it it spreads out so far.
SPEAKER_02: And then if you're gonna track somebody, you're just following part of it.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's there may be other people that may be related, but you're not, I mean, you're carrying this name down, you know, just because I mean other people got married, their name changed from Jones to Smith, and and they're not, you know, they're related, but they don't know that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's really fair.
SPEAKER_00: I think we're exactly agreeing about this.
SPEAKER_02: So since these Romans were not unrelated, they were, you know, maybe part of the bloodline, but this message was going down through these people.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I I think we're exactly on the same page.
SPEAKER_00: So as a result, since Ezekiel's writing to people who are tracking these stories, they ought to know.
SPEAKER_00: They're more accountable because they've got this.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't know any better, then you're not as guilty as if you knew better.
SPEAKER_00: That's I think that's what Ezekiel's trying to say.
SPEAKER_00: And really what that means is the most accountable people on the face of the planet, according to our own story, are Christians, not non-Christians.
SPEAKER_00: And that's this interesting thing when people come evangelize.
SPEAKER_00: There's a danger to accepting the message.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you take it at face value, you will be judged more harshly if you buy into this than if you don't.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's true.
SPEAKER_00: I think Ezekiel's pointing out the internal conflict logically of all of that.
SPEAKER_00: If we know we're supposed to be people of grace and forgiving, if we know that and say we believe that, and then don't do it, it'll be worse than if we didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I don't know that that's true.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying this is a message to our way of thinking.
SPEAKER_04: So we now have read another prophet uh who, and this is probably the third or fourth prophet in the roe, who has um spoken, we say, I'm I'm saying this as well, spoken for God, condemned the Israelites uh to being a huge dysphora, dyspora, yes, pronounce correctional.
SPEAKER_04: Diaspora.
SPEAKER_04: Diaspora, okay, and that at some point he will bring something back.
SPEAKER_04: But I guess what I'm hearing you say, and it makes sense, is that this is the the uh the prophet's position, if you will.
SPEAKER_04: The prophet's saying this.
SPEAKER_04: This isn't necessarily when we hear that God is a jealous and vengeful God, it's not necessarily true.
SPEAKER_04: It's their interpretation of this.
SPEAKER_04: Um do we feel that the prophets are are explaining what happened to the to the to Israel, or are they predicting it?
SPEAKER_04: See it's great.
SPEAKER_04: Great course.
SPEAKER_04: It's easy to predict because you can see the Assyrians and a huge army on the other side of the wall.
SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, we're not gonna win this one.
SPEAKER_00: Unless.
SPEAKER_00: We're only gonna win this unless something supernatural happens.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And since you think everything happens for a reason, if you want that supernatural deliverance, you'd better be supernaturally invested.
SPEAKER_04: So if so.
SPEAKER_04: But they weren't delivered.
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes and no.
SPEAKER_00: So Well, I know 70 years later they come back.
SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, and Judah gets Judah does get delivered from the Assyrians.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Just not from the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Well, I mean, yeah, the Assyrians stop because something happens and the Assyrians king, they have to go back.
SPEAKER_00: But the but the writers will tell you it's because Hezekiah repented.
SPEAKER_00: That influenced it.
SPEAKER_00: So God delivered them from natural consequences.
SPEAKER_00: So I think we always have to pick between two basic readings.
SPEAKER_00: There's probably more than two, but we can either say that the Bible is describing us and God and how we relate to each other, or we can decide that the Bible is prescribing how we ought to behave.
SPEAKER_00: And how God ought to behave.
SPEAKER_00: So we can either read Ezekielus saying, listen, if you don't do everything right, God's got a big stick that's gonna whip you.
SPEAKER_00: Or we can read Ezekiel saying, since we think that, we better change our ways.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: One way describes our belief, and since we believe, we should behave this way.
SPEAKER_00: The other way says God is actually this way.
SPEAKER_00: And those aren't the same way of reading.
SPEAKER_04: In a way, it's easy.
SPEAKER_04: It's easy to predict.
SPEAKER_04: I can't say it as well as you.
SPEAKER_04: It's easy to predict what is going to happen when you can see what's going to happen over the hill.
SPEAKER_00: So, like when the nuclear missiles came to Cuba and were aimed at the United States, seemed like a really tense moment.
SPEAKER_00: And then when they left, that's a moment of repentance and deliverance, to use biblical language.
SPEAKER_00: Now there wasn't any prophet called Ezekiel that wrote about that, but if you're familiar with this incident and with the way it almost got sprung through the Bay of Pigs, it's almost supernatural that Nikita Khrushchev took that stuff back.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And listen, one way we could read that is, oh, America must have been really righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Another way we could read it is, thank God that non-Christian people repent.
SPEAKER_00: And so the value, the premium is on the repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Because if Khrushchev had not repented, remember, he's the one who sent them.
SPEAKER_00: If he hadn't repented, we'd have a different story.
SPEAKER_00: So this function of language, I think what Ezekiel's trying to do is not just be predictive or even descriptive.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to make meaning out of what's going on.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: But is it is he is he making meaning about what is going on versus predicting what is going to happen?
SPEAKER_00: I think it's both in, because when we figure out what things mean, those do have a future and past quality to them.
SPEAKER_00: So look at the first image.
SPEAKER_00: It's a weird book, right?
SPEAKER_00: The first two chapters are about the wheel and the wheel and the wheel, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there's a song, a spiritual, called Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that may make no sense to you at all, except if we drill down to it.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Ezekiel has ended up in exile in Babylon, but they believed that God's territory was in Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's God's home turf, and God lives in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: So Ezekiel sees this vision, and there's four wheels, and they're covered with eyeballs, and there's a throne seated in this sort of cart.
SPEAKER_00: And really, what Ezekiel's describing is a throne and a chariot.
SPEAKER_00: And what do you know?
SPEAKER_00: God didn't live in a temple.
SPEAKER_00: God's thrones got wheels.
SPEAKER_00: So the people had been removed, and God went with them.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like they were in exile from God, God went with them.
SPEAKER_00: So there's meaning making 101, right?
SPEAKER_00: God isn't limited to a place, and the people who are in exile are not in exile from God, just from their home country.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this this image, the chariot is called a Merkava, and this is a kind of Jewish mysticism called Merkava mysticism that involves like burning loins and molten bronze and a chrysalite sky.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see it over and over and over again in the Old and New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's this mystical vision of God.
SPEAKER_00: The creatures, curiously enough, that we see are so superhuman, right?
SPEAKER_00: They have four faces: an ox, an eagle, a man, and a lion.
SPEAKER_00: They're covered with eyeballs, they're looking in every direction, right, of the compass.
SPEAKER_00: And those are cherubim.
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel's the one who gives us the key to that.
SPEAKER_00: So when you think about Raphael's picture in the Sistine Chapel, it's completely wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Those are not cherubim.
SPEAKER_00: No way.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're not even supernatural.
SPEAKER_00: The only way they show you that those beings are supernatural is to say they've got wings.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Ezekiel says, no, no, it's not just that they got wings, they got four heads and they're covered with eyeballs.
SPEAKER_00: So when you see the Raiders of the Lost Ark and you see the two cherubim on top, completely wrong picture.
SPEAKER_00: Would not have been two attractive human beings that are maybe androgynous with wings, it would have been these crazy looking things.
SPEAKER_04: And they have wheels.
SPEAKER_00: And they've got wheels.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're and they're pulling a chariot.
SPEAKER_00: And they're somehow tied to the wheels, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we, I just want to make sure you know, we completely ruin what the Bible has in mind when it talks about cherubim and seraphim, which we talked about with Isaiah, right?
SPEAKER_00: The burning flying snakes that have six pairs of wings.
SPEAKER_00: And um really interesting thing is that the word angel in Greek actually just means messenger.
SPEAKER_00: So we've got a history of tradition that says angels are divine messengers, but actually a singing telegram is an angel.
SPEAKER_00: So when the arch messenger Gabriel shows up to Mary, could have been a human being.
SPEAKER_04: How would the human being have any idea that she was going to have a being?
SPEAKER_00: Same way Ezekiel said, here's what the Lord says.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a messenger can be a prophet.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I think that's interesting is sometimes we make things a little so supernatural that we can no longer access them.
SPEAKER_00: And when we read in Hebrews, to show hospitality to strangers because some people have entertained angels unaware.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd say we always entertain messengers from God.
SPEAKER_00: Because everybody has the opportunity to speak a message from God.
SPEAKER_00: So we could either make that really high classification, like the winged things are coming down pretending, or we could say, uh, listen, the way this works is God speaks through human mouths, but through divine words.
SPEAKER_02: But it could be both ways.
SPEAKER_00: It's not always an either-or.
SPEAKER_00: I just think that we've kind of created this angelology, which is fine, and it could be true, it's just not biblical at all.
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'll tell you about an angel for me, Lee Ann Womack.
SPEAKER_00: She's a country singer.
SPEAKER_00: I was extremely depressed, and I heard this song I Hope You Dance, and there was something about that song which is really cheesy that took me right out.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I've never met Leanne Womack, but she's an archangel for me.
SPEAKER_00: She gave me a message for God right when I needed it through a pop song.
SPEAKER_02: What was the name of that again?
SPEAKER_00: I Hope You Dance.
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's not a great song.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a country song by Leanne Womack.
SPEAKER_00: It was on the radio ten years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go listen to it.
SPEAKER_00: You probably have heard it before.
SPEAKER_00: It was all over the radio, but I, you know, she didn't have wings and she also didn't have a lion face.
SPEAKER_00: But I heard a message from the Lord from her.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, my her uncle had an experience just like that.
SPEAKER_04: Uncle Ruben?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the man that brought him.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: He he was in Austin, and he's quite an interesting uncle of mine.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, he had been drinking, he'd been having a drinking party, and he swears he was a lot territory where he was.
SPEAKER_01: He was walking the street, and he turned around, and there was a black man dressed in a suit, just looking very professional.
SPEAKER_01: And uh the other one would say, Tell the story, I knew he was bringing me home.
SPEAKER_01: And he just kept walking, and the man was there, the man was there, the man was there.
SPEAKER_01: He walked to his neighborhood, and anyhow, he got home and he knocked on the door, and my my my cousin, uh little Louen, he saw over at the door and said, Daddy, where have you been?
SPEAKER_01: Where have you been?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but here I am.
SPEAKER_01: And he turned around, and this image of this man that he swears brought him home.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, and he had a very interesting there are other things about dealing with that, but that story was some of my uncles would say, he made that up.
SPEAKER_01: No, he didn't make it up.
SPEAKER_00: I you know, I hold big area for things I can't explain.
SPEAKER_00: I do.
SPEAKER_00: But I think sometimes we make things so magical we forget that God deals with very ordinary things as well.
SPEAKER_01: Well, he didn't say he had wings or anything.
SPEAKER_01: It was just this black man was very well dressed and seemed to seem to know where he needed to be.
SPEAKER_01: And he never spoke to him.
SPEAKER_01: He would just look at him and he would Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So that's what those are the angels you entertained in the early.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first other couple chapters talk about how actions speak louder than words.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And and there's some weird business, like there's this moment where Ezekiel's stunned for seven days.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he had a seizure or a stroke.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_00: But His meaning is like the word of the Lord was so heavy it knocked him out.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that's very typical of mysticism.
SPEAKER_00: People who have these visions, which he just had, right?
SPEAKER_00: Are kind of like catatonic for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Then he starts doing so.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and then one of those visions, right, is that his forehead gets hardened and thickened so that he can hit heads with the people.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: This is another image of him hardening his heart as well, because your heart in the Bible is the center of your will.
SPEAKER_00: We would probably put that in our head, right?
SPEAKER_00: Your will is in your head.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, his forehead just got real thick.
SPEAKER_00: Then he starts doing stuff, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like he ties himself up and lays on his left side for 390 days.
SPEAKER_02: This is in chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: It is.
SPEAKER_00: So that's supposed to represent one year.
SPEAKER_00: One day equals one year that the tribes in Israel, now those are the northern ten, are going to be in exile.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we don't know that that exile ever ended.
SPEAKER_00: Then he lays on his right side for 40 years to show one day per year for Judah.
SPEAKER_00: But the exile for Judah was longer than 40.
SPEAKER_00: It's important to know.
SPEAKER_00: So this may just be like a symbolic number.
SPEAKER_00: He plays siege.
SPEAKER_00: So he gets down like army men and makes a model of Jerusalem and blows it up.
SPEAKER_00: He's showing what's gonna be.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is really eccentric behavior, don't you think?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is something like a 10-year-old would do.
SPEAKER_00: And people would say, like, no, no, that's our home.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: He makes Ezekiel bread, which you can buy in the grocery in the freezer section for$7 a loaf.
SPEAKER_00: And people say, aha, like there's that health recipe.
SPEAKER_00: God's telling you how to make healthy bread.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't healthy bread.
SPEAKER_00: This is made from trash.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like this, this is made from the poorest sweepings.
SPEAKER_00: This is meant to show people that they're going to be really poor when all of their stuff gets burned.
SPEAKER_00: They won't be making wheat, a bread analyst wheat.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna have to use cheap stuff like barley and rye.
SPEAKER_00: That's poor man's bread.
SPEAKER_02: So I remember you in a sermon talking about the bread that people ate mostly.
SPEAKER_02: The bread and wine, which was most of the diet.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: I had a question, like I looked at that and said, that looks pretty good to me.
SPEAKER_02: Um spelt as we and all this other stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We pay high premium for that stuff now, but that was junk grain.
SPEAKER_02: What what were the rest of them eating?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'll just give you an idea.
SPEAKER_00: When my dad grew up, only poor people ate wheat bread.
SPEAKER_00: If you had money, you ate white bread.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I had changed a lot.
SPEAKER_00: So if you had money, you're eating white bread.
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00: And if you had didn't have money, you're eating Ezekiel bread.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so they were eating refined wheat products.
SPEAKER_00: Well, but we didn't really have refined, all of it's made with grindstones.
SPEAKER_02: But you know, there's there's just eating better stuff, not the I don't even know if it's better for you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It's assembled bread has always had class associated with it.
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, again, what I told you before is 90% of their diet is bread.
SPEAKER_00: But what kind of bread depends on how good your mill is.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got home mills, but it could be a mortar and pestle.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've ever tried using one of those, it's not a fine grind.
SPEAKER_02: No, and not only that, they had a different uh species of wheat then because it's been uh modified through uh you know breeding to make it easier to harvest.
SPEAKER_00: You got it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, I have a grain mill at home, it's electric, and it actually is two stones that run.
SPEAKER_00: Can you change your mind?
SPEAKER_00: Please do.
SPEAKER_00: It's two grains, two stones that run and grind, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I can set the grid on that, but if you've got a home mill back then, you may be doing it by hand.
SPEAKER_00: The best flour, the finest flour, is going to come from stones that weigh tons.
SPEAKER_00: And your average person can't afford that.
SPEAKER_00: A.
SPEAKER_00: And B, how are you gonna power it?
SPEAKER_00: You either need mules to pull it or you need water to turn it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and that implies you've got technology, you've got available energy.
SPEAKER_00: So the average person is making bread with very coarsely ground flour, that's what he's making.
SPEAKER_02: Well, it looks like he didn't even say that he ground it a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you have to grind it, or you can't, it won't make bread.
SPEAKER_02: How could you do that when you're lying on your side?
SPEAKER_00: He he didn't.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's a little bit of mystery here.
SPEAKER_00: But if you try to make bread without flour, if you just use grain, it ain't gonna work.
SPEAKER_02: That wouldn't be very good.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, actually, if you just cook some grain in some oil, it tastes fine.
SPEAKER_00: It's crunchy, but it isn't bread.
SPEAKER_02: So you have to make that.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't mean to.
SPEAKER_02: You're fine.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's very, very interesting, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: It certainly would be flat because yeast can't penetrate the gluten, which is the protein, until you break it.
SPEAKER_00: So until you crush it, the yeast doesn't get in there and create that anaerobic reaction that allows it to congeal until you knead it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So you can take flour and mix yeast and water with it, but if you don't knead it, it it really doesn't work very well either.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't have yeast packets.
SPEAKER_00: The yeast is in the air.
SPEAKER_00: So essentially, what they're doing is making sourdough.
SPEAKER_00: When you hear about Passover and they say you're eating bread without yeast, it's they've just mixed it and cooked it.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have time for the yeast from the air to penetrate.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with yeast.
SPEAKER_00: The whole point is they don't have time for it.
SPEAKER_00: This bread's extra bad.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is it like all full of grains that nobody wants, but it's cooked on poop.
SPEAKER_00: And Ezekiel even says, Listen, you're asking too much.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Well, fine, cook it over cow poop then.
SPEAKER_04: First human poop.
SPEAKER_04: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: And he says, no, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: But God does say other people are gonna be using human poop.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh These aren't fine ovens.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the the the the the goal is they're cooking it however they can, which is not great.
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, in sieges, people run out of fuel.
SPEAKER_00: There's they run out of wood.
SPEAKER_00: So then what do you put in the oven?
SPEAKER_00: These are very descriptive images, so one way we could hear it is God's telling you to eat Ezekiel Bredet.
SPEAKER_00: Another way we could hear it is, oh, it's going to be as bad for us as it is for everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: And he's showing the exiles, hey, maybe you're wondering how people back home are doing.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you.
SPEAKER_02: So he was in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: He's in Babylon.
SPEAKER_02: At this point.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And then he does something really nuts.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this guy, like I say, he may be schizophrenic, he may just be one of those artist types.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I like artists.
SPEAKER_00: But he takes a sword and cuts his hair, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then he does he a third of it he burns, and a third of it he chops into pieces, and a third of it he scatters in the wind, and then he takes a couple of long hairs and sticks them down in his robe.
SPEAKER_00: Now, look, you have to know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you think this guy's a raving lunatic, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, most people probably thought, like, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: But here it is in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_04: Well, because he's because he's saying that there'll be a remnant that will come after me.
SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting, right?
SPEAKER_00: Actions speak louder than words.
SPEAKER_00: This is performance art.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: Because, hey, not everybody does just words.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes an image will speak to you in ways words can't.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is like monks in Vietnam setting themselves on fire.
SPEAKER_00: This is like a man stepping in front of the tank in Tianman Square.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, did he really bring the whole communist regime to a halt?
SPEAKER_00: Not exactly, but one tank stopped.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's kind of what's going on here.
SPEAKER_02: But he was outside doing this at the start.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he's doing this in public.
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, he also spent a lot of time stamping his feet and clapping his hands.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, you'd be bad guy, and you would think like, it's equivalent to these people in street corners with signs like the end is near.
SPEAKER_00: We used to think that these people are ludicrous.
SPEAKER_00: Well, imagine a guy just walking around, clapping his hands, stamping his feet, saying, attention, attention, attention! Like, what have you been drinking?
SPEAKER_00: But he's doing it on behalf of God in this case.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what we hear.
unknown: Good morning, love.
SPEAKER_00: Um really interesting image in the middle of this.
SPEAKER_00: God is going to shoot arrows at Jerusalem, is the line, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like God is not just watching this happen, God is actively conspiring to destroy the holy city.
SPEAKER_00: I think those are all the actions.
SPEAKER_00: Then we get into the oracles, right?
SPEAKER_00: Did I go too fast?
SPEAKER_00: Or make this dull at all?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_04: It keeps it keeps it keeps on and on about I mean he you know he does it one way and then he comes around and he tries it does it a different way.
SPEAKER_04: And he gives some personality.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Um after a while, it's like just do something.
SPEAKER_00: I I you know what's interesting is we don't have any sense how long it took him to compose this book.
SPEAKER_00: And so it could be he had this burning message.
SPEAKER_00: We see the kernel, which is about repentance and hope and trust, all of these different things.
SPEAKER_00: And um boy, this could have taken him 13 years to do and say all these things, and then we just got it all in one go.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're these people, this is coming to you in small bits at a time.
SPEAKER_04: Well, they kind of said that in here, that that people would wait for him to come out and say something.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I can't remember which I do remember that.
SPEAKER_04: Clearly, he it didn't all come out at one time.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: Including like, hey, your wife is your wife's gonna die and you're not allowed to mourn her.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: That that was strange.
SPEAKER_00: Which would have really looked like he didn't care.
SPEAKER_00: And instead, he's doing, again, performance art saying you're not gonna have the you're gonna have the luxury of being able to care because you're actually gonna die being taken in chains, and there won't be any time for a sitting Shiva.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be pulling you around by your nose.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we could say this is prescriptive, and God's telling us not to mourn the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely wrong read.
SPEAKER_02: But in a mass disaster, you just have to keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, and I think that's very descriptive.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Shall we move to the oracle?
SPEAKER_00: We probably know this one really well.
SPEAKER_00: I'll take your heart of stone and change it into a heart of flesh, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we we I think make a big mistake when we think this is about our feelings.
SPEAKER_00: These are recalcitrants people who are just not sensitive.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, your heart is the center of your will.
SPEAKER_00: So these are stubborn people, and God is going to try to change that stubbornness into something that's actually, instead of like dead and unmoving, into something that has a heartbeat and has life, and it's sort of pulsing.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to think that sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own positions that we forget about the life they're supposed to lead us into.
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is like when we choose to view other people as people instead of as principles.
SPEAKER_00: That's when we change our heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this really ugly image, right?
SPEAKER_00: That Jerusalem is a pot and people are going to be the meat.
SPEAKER_00: It's really, really dreadful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04: It was kind of hard to kind of understand.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Babylon's gonna have a face.
SPEAKER_00: A face with flesh.
SPEAKER_00: It's grisly, it's awful.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And I would tell you, and having not been, but I mean uh every combat veteran I've talked to, this is a pretty apt imagery for what happens in in war and skirmishes, right?
SPEAKER_00: Is people are just like meat.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean actually eaten, but they're they're like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's really ugly.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that came in chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: This is after Ezekiel kind of gets to have a vision of the temple, and then instead of seeing God worship, he sees like the elders swinging incense over their idols.
SPEAKER_00: Um he sees uh women weeping for tamus and um um which is a Canaanite deity, um, prostitutes uh who are worshiping the sun, S-U-N.
SPEAKER_02: It seems that God has gotten very angry about incense.
SPEAKER_00: Incense is this image of worship, right?
SPEAKER_00: So the way it's supposed to go is it's about making a holy smell in a place with this idea that the smell is pleasing to God.
SPEAKER_00: Graphically, the idea is that it's going up.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So we so you kind of get both.
SPEAKER_00: And then in um when when Moses gets the Torah, um, the the incense recipe for the temple cannot be replicated anywhere else.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's holy in the sense that you can't burn temple incense at your house.
SPEAKER_00: If you do, uh there's great penalties for that.
SPEAKER_00: Like you might get burned up.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's only for the temple.
SPEAKER_02: But this is a really, really you can't burn it over in the other temples.
SPEAKER_00: It used not the not the the God's temple incense.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can burn burn nag champa or you can burn some patchouli lemongrass, but you can't burn the recipe, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how you make it special.
SPEAKER_00: You can only use it in one spot.
SPEAKER_00: But incense, we know is super, super old, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people have been using it for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I think the image is that the smoke goes up, and it's about creating this fragrant aroma so that you, you know, it's we gotta think through we're very, very perfumed people.
SPEAKER_00: Very per no, no, we are.
SPEAKER_00: Like I had somebody jog by me this morning and I could smell a dryer sheet.
SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was alright.
SPEAKER_00: I always wonder like what people are gonna smell like when they run by.
SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure I smell dreadful um because of like sweat and stuff, but but so these are people who took baths like once a year, whether they needed it or not, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so um actually, unlike now, where you can buy, I mean, everything we have is very scented.
SPEAKER_00: Um perfumes were like more expensive than gold.
SPEAKER_00: You can read that in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: Mary opens up this perfume on Jesus' head that was a year's worth of wages.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we even have perfume in the world that costs a year's worth.
SPEAKER_00: You can think about the median wage here.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's fair to say it's a hundred thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_00: It's a hundred thousand dollars of perfume she pours on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even think that exists anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Because we figured out here's how you go and get gard and frankincense.
SPEAKER_00: We know how to extract it and even reproduce it artificially in a laboratory.
SPEAKER_00: But the smells meant even more for them because they didn't have anti-perspirant and perfume and all of that business, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even 50 years ago, think how much globalization's changed.
SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to have real German food, well, you had to go to Germany.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I can get it in Houston better than I can get it in Germany.
SPEAKER_00: Because we've got all of this flat world interworld commerce and stuff, and the same with sense.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: So incense was a really big deal.
SPEAKER_00: It's like if you think about when Barnum and Bailey started, how how just visually rapturous seeing that had to be because they didn't have television.
SPEAKER_00: They've never seen anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: So most people have never smelt anything like this incense until they go up to a temple and it had to be ravishing to their senses because they didn't have anything like it, huh?
SPEAKER_00: We lose that perspective because we can have it on demand.
SPEAKER_00: But you can have Amazon delivered to you same day.
SPEAKER_00: So we still use incense as a way of cultivating, hey, we want to create this holy aroma.
SPEAKER_00: It's very tactile, right?
SPEAKER_00: And curiously enough, if you go to a church that burns incense day after day, it doesn't matter whether they're doing it that day.
SPEAKER_00: It smells different.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a way of demarcating it it does smell different because it is different.
SPEAKER_00: And the prayers of the saints in Revelation go up just like the incense does.
SPEAKER_00: Curiously enough, when we read Jonah, the deeds of the people go up like a smell before God, but it smells really bad.
SPEAKER_00: So what we do is aromatic to God one way or another, and that's part of the incense connection.
SPEAKER_00: The elders are worshiping idols with incense, and that makes its own smell, which is making God gag.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: The smell of sulfur burning is incident.
SPEAKER_00: To us, yeah, it's not great.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a great smell.
SPEAKER_02: And God wouldn't like that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, since God created sulfur, I'm pretty sure God's very happy with the smell of sulfur, but I think it's not a pleasing odor to us, right?
SPEAKER_00: So that becomes an analogy for us.
SPEAKER_00: But surely God likes the smell of sulfur as much as God actually likes the smell of frankincense, because God made both of them.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: But we have to, but for us, there's something not great about sulfur, mainly because it's poisonous, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you this is a part of why we don't like to smell sulfur, if we breathe too much of it, it will kill us.
SPEAKER_05: But also sulfur can sometimes be used as a medicine.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: In limited quantities, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And when you smell it in the wild, right, it could be there's a thermal pool, and that has healing properties.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: But not if there's too much.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, all of this, though, I think is good for us to say we have to use language and human tactileness to try to make sense of this.
SPEAKER_00: And the prophets are trying to make sense of human experience in which these people who perceive themselves to be the chosen people who have built a home for the only God there is that's so powerful, how is it that those people got led away into exile?
SPEAKER_00: Was God not strong enough?
SPEAKER_00: Was Marduk a better God?
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel says, Oh, none of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, God engineered this defeat for you.
SPEAKER_02: I thought that's why he had to have Ezekiel there to explain it, or else they would have thought that God was a failure.
SPEAKER_00: It's very possible that, again, Ezekiel helps people make meaning.
SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes this cannot go well.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so um, you know, a lot most of our Jewish brothers and sisters since the Holocaust have had real problems with God.
SPEAKER_00: Real problems.
SPEAKER_00: There are a group of Orthodox Jews who say God did the Holocaust, not allowed it to happen, engineered it to punish people for their sins.
SPEAKER_00: Sins of being too liberal, sins of not keeping the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: And so the way it goes is you get what you pay for.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't listen, God will get revenge on you.
SPEAKER_00: That's not appealing for most Jewish folk.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: Most Jewish folk have had a really hard time since the Holocaust believing in a God of any kind that is positive.
SPEAKER_00: But some people take this message.
SPEAKER_00: So I think we always have before us, again, the choice: is God actually like this, or do we think God is like this?
SPEAKER_00: And if we think God is like this, we better change our ways.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04: In order for them to make sense of it, he had to have a personality.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't, we again, like you say, we read this book, I'm God, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00: I I can't imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: Because to me, cognition is like the most important thing I do.
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice in Ezekiel that the good people get marked on their heads?
SPEAKER_00: They get a mark?
SPEAKER_00: That shows up again in Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: John's not making that up.
SPEAKER_00: It came right out of Ezekiel.
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, those were the people that were going to be passed over.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_04: And it was kind of like throwback to when the Egyptians, I mean when the Jews left Egypt, they marked they did they marked the lentils of the doorposts, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: They set them apart.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I did skip two prophetic actions.
SPEAKER_00: One is he has to eat and drink quaking.
SPEAKER_00: So you're imagining him like trying to eat and drink like that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean be all over the place, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's gonna show.
SPEAKER_00: And then the other one is he packs his bag and digs a hole through the wall, right, to show what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_04: This says that that's what the uh last king.
SPEAKER_00: Zedekiah does.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he does, and he gets caught, and his children get killed in front of him, and then gets his eyes put out.
SPEAKER_00: Dreadful.
SPEAKER_02: Then there was that time when the soldiers tried to escape to Jordan and got caught.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it didn't go very well.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about false prophets whitewashing these pathetic walls that will never actually hold people now.
SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if that's sort of praising the border wall.
SPEAKER_00: You pick which one.
SPEAKER_00: The one between us and Mexico, the one between Bethlehem and Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we can whitewash those walls.
SPEAKER_00: They don't they won't even function.
SPEAKER_00: We know that.
SPEAKER_00: The Berlin Wall wasn't even functional.
SPEAKER_00: People dug underneath it, they snuck through it, it didn't even do its intended purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And to whitewash it is really, really interesting in that.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel says God is gonna punish false prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Those are whitewashers of walls that won't that won't work.
SPEAKER_00: Um and after that, after God takes care of fake messengers, then they'll be my people and I'll be their God.
SPEAKER_00: As if there's obstacles God has to remove for our sake.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe those aren't people, maybe those are parts of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the answer to that.
SPEAKER_01: Parts of ourselves, I like that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if it's people, then we do, I'm worried we become like the like like what Ezekiel says, he says, woe to people who hunt lives.
SPEAKER_00: So we could look for false messengers and hunt them down.
SPEAKER_00: But we in so doing we might actually be missing those parts of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Do you notice he says that even if Daniel and Noah and Job were around, they could only save themselves?
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's sort of the message is, right?
SPEAKER_00: This the the sort of the zeitgeist or the spirit of the people is so committed to living into sin with a capital S that even three really great folks couldn't turn the whole spirit of the people around.
SPEAKER_00: So remember, sin with a capital S isn't like I told a lie, it's about expense of other people, consumption of other people, and that's baseline idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Not bowing to statues, but eating other people up as if they were bred.
SPEAKER_00: Hunting lives.
SPEAKER_00: There's a really graphic chapter.
SPEAKER_00: We read this when we wanted to be naughty, um, Seventh Baptist Kiddos.
SPEAKER_00: It's about how each Israel is a foundling child that grows up into a prostitute, and it's really, really, really graphic.
SPEAKER_00: Um course, when we were in middle school, we were like, ooh.
SPEAKER_00: But but now it's really awful, and it's a terrible image against women, honestly.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Ezekiel's a woman hater.
SPEAKER_00: The thing is he he really is using an image in his cultural no-you.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is we hold on to it and say, aha, women are like that.
SPEAKER_00: So it's really it is very, very problematic.
SPEAKER_00: And reminder that this whole bit about adultery is wrapped up in what pagan, I mean Canaanites did at their temples, which really was practice actual prostitution.
SPEAKER_00: So all of this is very sexualized.
SPEAKER_00: So they're making this analogy, but the problem is women at the time don't have any agency.
SPEAKER_00: In general, we don't, we're not really sure women can have agency today, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, so we we still struggle with this.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she went out and she paid people to uh absolutely, which is so backward and crazy, yeah, right?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I I I kind of you know I kind of read that out of the file.
SPEAKER_04: That's weird.
SPEAKER_04: And and because because women were property back then, right?
SPEAKER_00: Women were property, and at the temple you paid to engage with a woman, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's how prostitution is supposed to work.
SPEAKER_00: The prostitute's not supposed to pay you.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, this is a linguistic stretch.
SPEAKER_00: And really what it means is this is when when people of Judah have paid tribute to Egypt to help them.
SPEAKER_00: It it would be like a prostitute paying the John.
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that that's so laden with fundamental like gender inequality.
SPEAKER_00: It's I in one sense we get what he's saying, but it's it's kind of like a racist joke, if if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: We can understand what it means, but there's almost something dangerous about repeating it.
SPEAKER_00: You'll never find that read, by the way, in the lectionary on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: The lectionary has decided it's too dangerous for public worship to read this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're right, they don't know the answer.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly which chapters in the early or make the lectionary?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what am I talking about right now?
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 16.
SPEAKER_00: It is an interesting image, right?
SPEAKER_00: That God found Israel abandoned on the side of the road and grew her up.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically, this is not an image that is think about this, this is not an image like, hey, you're my natural-born baby.
SPEAKER_00: You were pathetic and I adopted you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's really an interesting adoption image.
SPEAKER_00: God went looking and had compassion for somebody who is parentless.
SPEAKER_04: And um, when you compare it, when you compare the language in the Bible with the language here, it's very interesting here.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: In the message.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: He's really trying hard to translate word pictures.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: We're reading Ezekiel, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Notice he says, hey, um, no more are people gonna say, our parents ate sour grapes and our teeth are set on edge, only sinners will perish.
SPEAKER_00: So you won't perish what your parents do.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true.
SPEAKER_00: It's not true, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if your mom is an alcoholic during pregnancy, you'll probably have fetal alcohol syndrome, and your teeth will be set on edge.
SPEAKER_00: If uh your parents have great genetics but they choose not to exercise or they're depressed during pregnancy, then epigenetics says you may not get them all.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, this is an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think that's the interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: Like, our parents ate sour grapes and our teeth are set on edge, is really this recognition of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that we're essentially get to reap the benefits or the disasters that our parents sow.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we still are responsible for what we do with it.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what Ezekiel is trying to say.
SPEAKER_00: You might have inherited a climate in which climate's the right word, I think.
SPEAKER_00: Of some really harsh weather.
SPEAKER_00: However, you are able to change the climate.
SPEAKER_00: But I think the problem with sin is it is like a climate.
SPEAKER_00: And climate change has got some really tough things for us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Notice that the way you do that, he says, is um no idols, no wrongdoing, no accruing interest, no robbing, or taking collateral and pledge.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he be generous.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't anything in there about how you're supposed to worship.
SPEAKER_00: This is all just about social interaction.
SPEAKER_00: And the real tough one, right, having read all this calamity, God's gonna do, is Ezekiel says, on behalf of God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
SPEAKER_00: I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but I only have pleasure in their repentance.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's probably a really important thing to hold on to when we read about all this anger and vengeance, is if we read it as God's mad as hell and is going to be satisfied to punish you, we've misread it.
SPEAKER_00: Because this phrase says this is the last thing God wants to do.
SPEAKER_01: I mean magnificently hopeful, out of all the sorrow and the pain and the ugliness.
SPEAKER_04: Did say in here towards the, I guess it would be towards the end of our readings this week, that um if you sinned but repented, that you could be brought back into the um into God's favor.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Um whereas um I think in the past, if you sinned, that was it.
SPEAKER_04: Your history, there was no way that you could be.
SPEAKER_04: There was no repentance.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: So there was a change from he's not going to allow the people that aren't going to be allowed to go back.
SPEAKER_04: It's going to be your children.
SPEAKER_00: Seems that way, and that's about right, because they're going to be there for a generation.
SPEAKER_04: And so he's not going to allow, he's going to punish that whole generation, and then they'll be bringing a new generation that will go back.
SPEAKER_04: I thought something that she said was interesting, I hadn't heard before.
SPEAKER_04: I knew that that Moses didn't make it to the promised land, but I hadn't heard before that none of the Egyptian generation will enter.
SPEAKER_04: I guess it would be the Egyptian generation that came from well, the Egyptian generation, of course, will enter the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Two did.
SPEAKER_00: Only two did.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua and Caleb.
SPEAKER_00: Because they were the spies who said we can do it, God's on our side, and their reward was that they got to go in.
SPEAKER_04: So all of Israel came from those two?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, um the people who actually were delivered from Egypt, it was their kids that went in, not them.
SPEAKER_00: Plus Joshua and Caleb.
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
SPEAKER_04: So it's funny because they knocked go in because they were dead?
SPEAKER_04: Or did they not go in because they were dead?
SPEAKER_00: Because they were dead.
SPEAKER_00: It took long enough for those people to die.
SPEAKER_00: It took them 40 years to get in.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Average lifespan 33.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But there is something interesting about Moses not making.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, in some ways, like we, I think hopefully we have this sort of hope that as we pursue justice and equality, it may not make it in our lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Martin Luther King was very clear that this was not going to happen within his own generation, but that he had in his mind he'd been to the Promised Land, even though his body wasn't going to make it.
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
unknown: That's what he said.
SPEAKER_00: There is this great hopeful image.
SPEAKER_00: I read this, um, this is a Kierkegaard quote because it's all Saint Sweet.
SPEAKER_00: And uh he says something like, uh we're it's all great to say that God created everything out of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: But it's even better that God makes saints out of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the promise of Ezekiel, actually.
SPEAKER_00: God's ability when we are responsive, when our heart goes uh to flesh instead of stone to make a saint out of a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: You would not want to be married to this guy.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is really important, not just because he won't grieve for you, because he was nuts.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, he was nuts.
SPEAKER_00: And it isn't it great that the Nazi people make it into the book.
SPEAKER_02: We're all God's people.
SPEAKER_00: All of us, even the Nazi ones, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: When was this when was the Hebrew Bible compiled?
SPEAKER_00: Uh well, okay, it took a long, long time.
SPEAKER_00: It it doesn't seem to have been finished until around 75 AD.
SPEAKER_00: 75.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is around, there's a dispute.
SPEAKER_00: Is it just the first five books?
SPEAKER_00: Or should we also read Psalms and Prophets?
SPEAKER_00: And and ultimately, a generation after Jesus, they decide on mostly what we've got.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Christian folk, you know, have changed the order of the books.
SPEAKER_04: I did not know that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Jewish Bible is differently ordered from our Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: From this.
SPEAKER_00: From what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: But it's got all the same books, just the order is different.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Esther and Ruth are at the end, not in the middle where we find them.
SPEAKER_00: We've kind of done a chronological ordering.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Bible is organized in order of authority.
SPEAKER_00: That is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy come first because they're most authoritative.
SPEAKER_00: If you're Jewish, if you read something in the Psalms that seems more pleasant but disagrees with the other, you throw the psalm away.
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: We do it the other way.
SPEAKER_00: Because Psalms enter the monastic movement and we do a psalm every Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: You notice.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, every time we do something, that came from the monks.
SPEAKER_00: If you were a monk, you prayed all 150 psalms every week.
SPEAKER_00: Because you met seven times a day, right?
SPEAKER_00: So you you cycled through there.
SPEAKER_00: Um but if you're Jewish, the psalms are the least important, not the most.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody loves to read Leviticus.
SPEAKER_00: If you're Jewish, you read Leviticus before you read Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's sort of the the, you know, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Jewish people don't read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but but yeah, I hope you get the point there.
SPEAKER_04: The the the angel, I mean the the chairbone, or whatever it was that we encountered earlier in Ezekiel with the face of the oxytour.
SPEAKER_04: Aren't those the representations of the four the gospel?
SPEAKER_04: Gospels?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Luke is the man who has the plain view.
SPEAKER_00: John is the eagle who sees from above.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think I said that wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's the man.
SPEAKER_00: Luke is the ox, and Mark is the lion.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And there's thematic reasons for that, but um listen, John's not really an eagle.
SPEAKER_00: It's tying into this imagery that we've mostly forgotten.
SPEAKER_04: And did the imagery come from Ezekiel?
SPEAKER_00: Uh in I mean, Ezekiel, I think, is bearing witness to what people already believed.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And we've lost that because we don't think divine beings look like this.
SPEAKER_00: Most of our angelology is super wacky compared to the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you might think this is wacky, but it's original.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I always thought that sure.
SPEAKER_02: We were the little babies.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because Raphael painted that 400 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: But this is this is 2,500 years old.
SPEAKER_00: So a lot changed.
SPEAKER_00: We wanted divine beings to look like superhumans, not like amalgams of animals.
SPEAKER_00: But like when you go to India and you see these deities that are amalgams, they didn't really think Kali had Kali had 12 arms.
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to show she's not human, like she's supernatural.
SPEAKER_00: So how do you show that by bits of animals that have like ferocity or by multi-arms to show she can do more than you can?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's sort of the goal here, is to depict them actually as supernatural, not just pretty human beings.
SPEAKER_02: The goddess of Kwan Yin.
SPEAKER_05: Well, Quan Yin is um a female representation of also there's also a male part of that.
SPEAKER_05: So she's just a female, a female version of country tree.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so country is a compared to the uh India.
SPEAKER_00: Some people like to argue that it's all derivative from India.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know about that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not really sure Doom is the right title.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure Doom is the right title.
SPEAKER_00: I think it can be.
SPEAKER_00: I think what we what we hear before over and over again, right, is today I hold before you hope or doom, you pick.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Ezekiel seems to be offering these people chances.
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so throughout the last few readings, it's all about the Jewish people um being um basically um sinning, not following the covenant, and being punished for it.
SPEAKER_04: Um I don't know where I was going with that.
SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04: I had a point.
SPEAKER_04: And I've lost it.
SPEAKER_00: I I I do want to say, I think it's really easy to say, like, oh look, this explains why Christianity became prominent because Jewish people didn't do what they were told.
SPEAKER_00: Or uh, hey, what's the application?
SPEAKER_00: Because we're no longer under siege.
SPEAKER_00: I think the the idea here is that when we live into idolatry, whether it's Christian idolatry or episcopal idolatry, um, the doom we're going to reap is not living the larger life that God intends.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we say that's fine because I got plenty of money, and what we don't realize is that we're we're missing out even at that level.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the strict application of these scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what the scriptures really want us to do.
SPEAKER_00: I mean they think he was not talking to these people about heaven when they die, he's talking about heaven while they live.
SPEAKER_06: Because they're human.
SPEAKER_06: Well, something people inclination to reveal or reveal it.
SPEAKER_00: They're hard-headed, and that's the imagery uses.
SPEAKER_00: They're hard-headed, they're hard-hearted.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I you know, I think this is a really interesting thing, and I'm gonna say it bombastically, but you know, in the in the sanctuary you have this big old table, and sometimes we call it an altar.
SPEAKER_00: Um actually in the Church of England it's called the Lord's Table.
SPEAKER_00: We started calling it an altar because we used the Scottish Rite, not the English Rite.
SPEAKER_00: Now, on the altar, you sacrifice Jesus to atone for your sins every week.
SPEAKER_00: At the Lord's table, you go to be nourished for ministry, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I think part of this deal is sometimes we buy into the sacrifice mentality that God is okay with us sacrificing other people.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, God wants that to happen so that we can be more righteous.
SPEAKER_00: So I sort of think about, you know, boy, what kind of people do we sacrifice on altars to God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, gay people, you know, or transgender people, or Roman Catholic people, or Mormons, and or women, which is all throughout here, right?
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we do it and we say, this must be what God wants.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, I'm convinced we still live like that, even if we've got different categories of people.
SPEAKER_00: Um so does Ezekiel say why?
SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know that there's any why why do we do that?
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know that there's any answer why do we do that?
SPEAKER_00: I think he says we do do that.
SPEAKER_00: And we we'd like to have God on our team, and Ezekiel is saying, why don't you just be on God's team?
SPEAKER_04: Right.
SPEAKER_04: Well did the behavior that the uh the Israel and I guess all humans manifest come out of the um Garden of Eden and the uh Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Bible says no.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Bible doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Bible says clearly that Garden of Eden's story is describing human beings as we are, not telling us how we got here.
SPEAKER_00: The Eden story I think says if you have to pick between life and knowledge, one of the things about being a human being is you will pick knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the proof.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta tell you this story.
SPEAKER_00: You won't believe what happened yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: This oh no, I shouldn't tell you that story.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: But when you started to you just pick knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: You just pick knowledge because you want to know the story.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: When somebody says, I shouldn't tell you, oh no, you have to tell me now.
SPEAKER_04: You open the door.
SPEAKER_00: You you gotta tell me now.
SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't tell you the story because it's not one I should share, but you gotta tell me.
SPEAKER_00: We pick knowledge, it's what it is to be human.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the book's saying.
SPEAKER_00: It's not saying we're following from what God intended.
SPEAKER_00: Jewish people don't believe we fail from anything.
SPEAKER_00: The story just describes we want to know stuff.
SPEAKER_04: Well, are people not following the covenant because they have free will and they don't have to be?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that's possible.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even think that Jewish scriptures.
SPEAKER_04: Why would you not follow it?
SPEAKER_04: What why would you not?
SPEAKER_04: Because it feels good not to follow it?
SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, there's a game not to follow it.
SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Perhaps right here is just part of the evolution of God.
SPEAKER_04: Because you know, because God is evolving throughout the Bible into who he becomes when Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe said another way, our understanding of God is evolving.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can pick it either way you want, right?
SPEAKER_00: But I think something that is the case is Augustine, I think, is wrong biblically, we're not born sinners.
SPEAKER_00: But I think we are born into sin.
SPEAKER_00: As in the world in which we're born into is not equitable or just.
SPEAKER_00: So I think, you know, honestly, I don't know if Jean-Jacques Rousseau is right.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you read him, uh, you take a little baby and put him on an island with no other people, and it grows up to be really like virtuous and good because there's no corrupting influence of humanity.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he said, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know if that's right, but I do think it's true that societies pass corruption on to their kids.
SPEAKER_00: So why do we not do all of this?
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of it is taught.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember when my daughter was two and three, she would say, Look at the black guy.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a white person with black clothes on.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't correct her.
SPEAKER_00: And she would say, Look at the pink lady.
SPEAKER_00: You know, describing somebody's color based on their clothes, not their skin.
SPEAKER_00: Well, when did she learn to call somebody a black person?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this year?
SPEAKER_00: Who taught her?
SPEAKER_00: I didn't teach her that.
SPEAKER_00: I tried really hard not to.
SPEAKER_04: But she was taught.
SPEAKER_00: We we we learn socially.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I don't even know that it's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I just think it's got tinges in it, right?
SPEAKER_06: Because my daughter learned when she went to kindergarten because the other kids were labeling.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: And she came home and asked, Mama, what am I?
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
SPEAKER_06: They they're calling me, it was a Spanish-speaking comedian, they're calling me Cuela, which is white white girl.
SPEAKER_06: And she didn't know, am I black or brown or white?
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it what it wasn't, she didn't know those labels.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: She could we didn't label.
SPEAKER_05: So she learned it from our Kirkgarden poke.
SPEAKER_05: Once you when you label me, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_05: You negate me.
SPEAKER_00: And we grow up doing that because, I mean, just think about our politics.
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump's a liar.
SPEAKER_00: Well, look, everybody tells lies.
SPEAKER_00: But the definition of liar means you only tell lies.
SPEAKER_00: There's no way he's a liar or anybody else.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he's told the truth once in his life.
SPEAKER_00: Even if it was just I'm hungry.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And we can say, no, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: But then when we flatten people out, we turn them into like epitomies, and of course, we do that because it's there's an evolutionary advantage to us versus them thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And that's part of our evolution.
SPEAKER_00: It's also part of the climate that we inherit.
SPEAKER_00: So I think this book is all about climate change.
SPEAKER_00: In the best possible way, right?
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is about climate change.
SPEAKER_04: Well, repentance implies that you've done something you shouldn't have done, so you repent for it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I don't know if it always is.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes repentance means it just means turning, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I had to turn to get into the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: It means I've got a goal that's worth pursuing.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll change my trajectory to get there.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean I was doing something wrong, it's just a change of trajectory to do something better, maybe.
SPEAKER_06: Turning towards rather than away from.
SPEAKER_00: It could be both, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and sometimes, right, um, the choices we get in the Bible are do we settle for the good or do we pick the better?
SPEAKER_00: It's not always right or wrong.
SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes between good and better.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I don't know if that was any fun for you, but we'll take on the rest of Ezekiel next week.