The first 11 minutes are devoted to setting the scene leading to Chapter 17, establishing the context for the material. This effectiveley summarises the 16 chapters that have gone before in the 11 previous sermons. Part of this is the change of role of Ezekiel – not a priest as expected, but a full-blown prophet! He was sustained by God in his stressful role.
There is a section on riddles and figures of speech in scripture (over 200 figures of speech documented by Bullinger). The Eagle – its significance and frequent use as symbol of power (not just in scripture) – is discussed at length.
The Davidic royal family lineage is examined in some measure, from the apparent break at Zedekiah through the ages to the birth of Jesus, and how God arranges things to bring about a resumption of the Kingly Line of David (with a brief digression into the family of Zelophehad, with his five daughters, the eldest being named Mahlah).
There is a section on the politics of Nebuchadnezzar and misbehaviour of Zedekiah and the movements of people between Israel/Judea and Babylon. The nature and significance of the vine-plant are elucidated and the fact that Israel was equivalent to a vine in these concerns (and not the sturdy, independent cedar tree).
God used Nebuchadnezzar as His instrument of punishment for Israel’s misbehaviour
Oaths feature prominently in the next section (an oath to God is binding, even when made by mistake!)
More on the politics and scheming of Zedekiah and the severe repercussions
A few words about Proverbs Ch 3v5&6 – about trusting in God wholeheartedly, in ALL things, not just partially.
More analogies with vegetation: the scion (tender top growth) and The Messiah; planting in important places (mountain).
Every other power, every other authority will be subservient.
Trees are used as symbols of nations/powers and God states that He will establish the one that He wants to be ascendant.
There is a tailpiece where Pastor Barry showed a collection of photos of mesas and butes and pointed out that they look remarkably like tree-stumps. Enormous tree-stumps, but tree-stumps nonetheless! The world before The Flood might well have had things that we don’t see now.
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NB:::: 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.
PS2: ::: 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, gross errors (like repetitions of lines) will be removed, 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.
PS0 ::::: 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.
