This sermon begins with a historical overview of the activities dealt with in the Book of Ezekiel. An expansive timeline is featured in the pdf-file of graphics accompanying the audio.
There is a substantial treatment on the thorny subject of “Once-Saved-Always-Saved” (aka “Can You lose your “saved” status”?), drawing on the unexpected source in Ezekiel.
Pastor Barry began looking at the details of the Timeline graphic to give the broad sweep of the context of the Book of Ezekiel.
Picking out some salient features,
- the Kings of northern kingdom were invariably bad,and there were only 5 good kings in Judah.
- Two really good ones stand out: Hezekiah & Josiah
- The Book of Joel kind of sets the tone of all the prophetic books, in a few short chapters, he encompasses a great deal of history. It is quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost and so on.
In Ezekiel,part of the message is the one of the coming Redeemer, the Messiah. - Chapter 18 is speaking of the restoration of the nation of Israel.
- Many references to many of the prophets and their references to The Messiah.Isaiah & Jeremiah get a lot of attention.
- More historical sweeps, then focussing on 593 to 574 BC
Digging into Ch 18:
- One substantial theme elucidated is that the verdict that God pronounced was fully justified.
- the normal human nature to want to avoid blame (responsibility) by blaming someone or something else. The case quoted here was “our forebears fault (even quoting one of the proverbs to support their case!)(which gets shot down later)”.
Ch 18 is a rebuttal of this – responsibility for a person’s sin rests on that person alone!
Another substantial theme treated is “If you do accept the Bible, it’s all or nothing!”.
Further topics examined are
- About the character of God and how we perceive Him
- Chapter 18 is about living and dying (three generational examples).
- Real-world history of three of the Judean kings (contrasted, in type, – Hezekiah, that godly king; The ungodly son, Manasseh (the worst king); then the “godly grandson”, Josiah.
- Usury (interest on loans)(or not!)
- Repentance of Manasseh
- Importance of grandparents and their influence on children.
- About sinners repenting and righteous becoming sinners and the repercussions thereof
- Importance of finishing well.
There is a big chunk = more on “The Security of Salvation”:
The Christian may lose his righteous standing before God, BUT in support of the security of the believer, these passages in Ezekiel do not teach the eternal loss of the saved person, but relate to the righteousness which is of God, by faith.
The punishment threatened refers only to physical death rather than to eternal death.
The texts in Ezekiel must be considered in the light of such New Testament texts as John 10, Romans v5, 8, 9, and so on and Philippians 1v6 (the security of the believer is clearly taught) BUT Christians can lose their REWARD if they backslide!
- Section about the “Fairness” of God (ref some of the severe punishments meted out, which some say were “not fair”).
- More on personal responsibility for your own sins.
Finally, there is a reminder that Christ, through his blood, can “purge the very conscience”.
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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.
