Pastor Barry here returns to the study of the Book of Ezekiel. First there is a recap of the overall theme of the book and the material presented about the previous 15 chapters. Next there is examination of the behaviour of the Jews, falling into the despicable practices of the neighbouring countries.
It is a significant feature of Chapter 16 that God is getting Israel to be aware of her failings, iniquities, abominations and unfaithfulness! It’s laid on really thickly! It is also pointed out the Israel is unwilling to acknowledge these facts. Israel’s history (in a genetic sense) is shown, and the comparison with Sodom and Gomorah is illustrated. Jerusalem and its longs history (under other names in early times) is described at length. Pastor Barry describes the development of Jerusalem through the ages, even up to the time of Christ, and brings in the wonders of the Grace of God and the loving works of Jesus.
The events involving Ruth & Boaz are shown to have parallels with these relationships and events. Even matters concerning preparations for weddings. Solomon and Sheba and their interaction are described and parallels drawn.
Unfortunately Israel still goes astray in many ways (child-sacrifice gets a mention here).
The subject of tithing it touched on briefly (10% being an unrealistic figure 😉)
To close Pastor Barry draws comparisons of Ezekiel’s catalogue of woes with the state of a large proportion of The Church in our present world.
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PS0: ::: The latest development on the “Transcript” section is that the text-file will be subject to far less preparation than before – less editing and correction. It will still be converted to sentence-column form as before, but any trimming and polishing will be left to the user. Any shortcomings in the transcription software should be pretty obvious and so not a problem in getting the meaning (and the audio file will provide the necessary clarification if required 😀🎧 )
PS1: ::: {not-so-}NEW FORMAT of the transcript.
To ease the processing and preparation of the transcript, and we hope improve the readability of the text, a new format was been adopted in mid October. This breaks the text into sentences instead of arbitrarily-sized “paragraphs”. When the reader opens the file in a program such as Notepad (in MS Windows), then the appearance can be just like a newspaper column. The format is such that the user has many options available, depending on preferences and what software they like to use.
Any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
PS2 ::::: TRANSCRIPT OF THE SERMON
There is a “button” labelled “Save Video” (or “Download Video” sometimes). This actually links to a text-file to download. It is a transcript of the sermon. At present it is at an experimental stage: it is an aid to getting the most out of the sermon audio. There is no substitute for listening to the verbal delivery of a sermon. However, searching through an audio file lasting the best part of an hour can be somewhat difficult. When you approach the search knowing that you’re sure there is something about “redemption”, for example, then a transcript text-search can take you right there and show you the time in the recording where you will find it! The file is simple “text” rather than a more sophisticated form so that you can edit or reformat as you prefer. This transcript is in 2 forms (in the one file). One half consists of normal text arrangement. These ‘blocks’ were at purely arbitrary boundaries (boundaries were inserted at about 800 character intervals, purely to avoid having one huge unbroken deluge of text, i.e. no attempt at grammatical accuracy). The format has now been changed as described above in PS1. The other section is short bunches of words (8 to 12 nomally) beneath the TIMES at which they occur (for the whole sermon).
This facility is in development (“experimental” as mentioned above) so any feedback on usefulness, improvement suggestions, or whatever, would be most welcome.
