Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. Yeah, we I don't even know what you just heard. I have no idea what you just heard. I haven you got no clue what you talking about. I have no idea. What would I be talking about? I don't know what I'd be talking about. I don't know. You've been having a stuttering problem lately. I do remember that. That's. What I mean? Yeah.

What, we

talked about medication on the last episode. Yeah. Maybe we ought to, take a look at that. Get some medication for stuttering.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see.

Okay. As long as you don't gimme Tourettes in the podcast, then I think we'll be okay. I will. I will not let that happen. If you got the shot collar we recorded during the podcast, that's true. Yeah. Anyways, it's it's Tuesday, man. The weather's been great. I looked the other day at a 10 day forecast. We don't have any temps in the nineties. That's amazing. For this time of year. You know what, I'm gonna say it,

you're gonna be surprised when I say it, but I kinda like the heat. Yeah. Okay. Here's why though. Here's why. Okay. The weather is so bitterly cold. That I enjoy the hot now 'cause it's, and then when the cold comes, I'm like, okay, I think I might be ready for it. I feel like the summer went too quickly for me to be ready for the winter. No, dude, I'm always winter. Gimme winter all the time. I, so in my office at home, when I wake up in the morning. Like for whatever reason, that particular room in the house doesn't get heated very well or cooled. So it's either really hot in the summer or really cold in the winter. And if I have to choose, I'd rather have the warm 'cause in, in the winter it's really cold. I have the space heater right in front of me. Yeah. And I'm shivering as I read my Bible. I don't like that, but you can get a blanket, you can put on sweatshirts, you can put on, no, I don't. I like doing it in a certain way and it includes none of those things because then the blanket gets in my way. I'm trying to read my Bible and the, my blanket's hanging over my shoulder, and then I can't move my arms as well. I look like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to hold my Bible in a certain way. All right. No, somebody out there bypass around a snuggy. He needs a snuggy. I don't think I you know what, if it was a. Compass, NTX branded Snuggie with your face on that. I would love it. I would model it. Oh man, we would sell it. People would love it. Danny Mayer is already on it. I guarantee you. We'll at least price it. We'll look at it guys. If you want a Snuggie with Pastor PJ's face and our church logo on it, you let us know. I'll look into it. If it's a good price we'll think about producing it. Ain't nobody got time for that, man. Nobody wants that. I know at least one person in your family who would want one. No, she wouldn't. And I was talking about Annie, but

I don't even know that Annie would want that. She would take it to school. She would take it because she would feel bad. She'd be like, oh, I don't want dad to feel bad that I don't want the blanket with his face on it. I know what you guys are getting for Christmas now. I'm just gonna say it. Come on Danny, you and me. Let's make it happen. Alright? Yeah. There's gonna be a cat on it somewhere too. Hidden Cat. Alright. Hey, Ezekiel. 21, 22, Ezekiel 21. We've got a difficult section in here. You talked about the. Indiscriminate nature of God's judgment sometimes. And that's one of the things that we come across in Chapter 21, is God's talking about his judgment. And that's really what Chapter 21 is all about. He mentions the word sword so many times in the opening here, but I think the big thing that we need to address shows up here in verse what verses verse three, he says, I'm gonna cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked. Yep. And that one's tough

because, 'cause he just said. He would not kill people for their righteousness. But for their sin. So resolve it for us, please. Thank

you. Absolutely easy. Ready? Here we go. Now it's one of those that, there's multiple views out there from commentators because it is such a difficult concept here, and there's a few options out there. One of them is that, this is a mem, so Aism in Hebrew is a literary device where the author will use. Two extremes to communicate that this in includes everything in between. And so in this case, the two extremes would be the righteous and the wicked, and then everything in between. So the author, God through Ezekiel, would be saying, you know what? I'm gonna wipe out everybody. I'm not gonna be, there's not a, a, a. Sliding scale for me. There's not some people that are gonna escape because they're more righteous than these people are over here, even though they are still wicked. So in that sense, this could still be God saying, I'm gonna judge the unrighteous, the wicked, but I'm gonna judge those that are closer to the side of the righteousness scale and those that are all the way on the side of the evil scale, that this is a mes including everybody. That's an option. I think that's an attractive option personally. Others believe that this was just a shock value that got the Ezekiel saying. This is how severe my wrath is and how significant my wrath is. I don't find that one as compelling. And then others are saying this is just simply a, an allusion to the indis discriminatory nature of war that is Nebuchadnezzar came through, that he was going to take people out regardless. He wasn't going to look at whether or not they were righteous or unrighteous on God's scales. That when Nebuchadnezzar came through as the wicked and cruel, rebellious. King that he was gonna do what he always does. And that is if somebody's in his way and if somebody's standing against him, he's gonna take them out regardless of where they stand in the eyes of God. I think that one undercuts the sovereignty of God a little bit too much for me. So that's why for me I would lean towards the mannerism side of things. But pr what would

you say? So I've wrestled with this one, and I don't have a conclusive, I'm standing on this hill, this is what I'm gonna say for forever, but I think the end of 22 gives me a sense of. God is saying there actually is no one righteous. So the end of chapter 22 says, I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall, stand in the breach. That makes me feel like that one probably makes the most sense. He's looking for someone righteous, who's truly righteous, what really no one's righteous. And so cutting off the wicked and the righteous is at the level of the human perspective from the. Horizontal perspective. I could say that guy over there, he's more righteous than I. But from God's perspective, there's nobody. Here's why I hesitate on that. 'cause I would love to say that's the one that's the right interpretation. Is that here I think he's probably referring to someone in the form of leadership, because clearly Ezekiel, I mean he's in Babylon, but he, Ezekiel, Jeremiah would qualify as one of those people. I think Jeremiah's still on location in Jerusalem. So I think Jeremiah would be one of those people. So I think he's talking about leaders here. A second attractive one to me. Is that what I was pointing out earlier is that you have individual responsibility in chapter 18 before God, and that you have corporate responsibility in Chapter 21, where there is a form of indiscriminate suffering. And I don't mean that from God's perspective. It's him choosing, but it's, from our perspective, it would look as though. It is random and I'm using air quotes. You can't see random suffering, and I think that's the idea of the rain falling on the just, and the unjust. It's the opposite side of that. In the same way that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. So does the tornado. And in that sense, there can be suffering at the human level that is not tied to one's personal righteousness or unrighteousness. It's the same as though if Russia or China were to bomb the United States and they did it in Dallas, we would all suffer, even though personally before God we're righteous in his sight. But we would all feel the impact of that hit. I think that's another one that I find attractive, but push me. I don't feel great about either because I feel like it, it's really sits in tangent with chapter 18.

Yeah. It does. I like your view. This seems to be perhaps the leaders and view that fits with the context of chapter 20. Chapter 20 is he's confronting the elders for daring to have the presumption to come and seek his guidance on things, right? He's also been talking about the princes of Israel. He's gonna talk about the princes of Israel again in chapter 22 and verse six. These are the kings, these are the leaders. Behold, the Prince of Israel, every one of you, according to his power, have been bent on shedding blood. So there is a lot. Dealing with the leaders where he's indicting them specifically. And so I could see that even though the difficulty there is in chapter 21 he just addresses Jerusalem. He doesn't specifically call out the leaders, the elders, the princes, anything like that. Yeah,

but I think that goes back to a theme that we've talked about before, which is as goes the leader, so goes the people, and so there is a sense of shared responsibility. Again, I think America, it makes sense to us. We could say, yeah, we as people are Americans, and if someone were to bomb us, we would feel a corporate responsibility for that. We would also feel a corporate sadness much in the way like September 11th. 2001. So I think that's probably, that works. I could see and understand that one resonates and makes sense to me as a 2025, person who's trying to understand things from my perspective. But again, God's view is different and we have to say, what does God say? I wanna believe what God believes. I want to, I wanna understand what God is saying and trust that as opposed to trusting my instincts from 2025.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corporate. Something that came to mind there. I remember. I think it was, yeah, it was, MacArthur wrote a book, small book, a long time ago called Can God Bless America? And one of the things that he was talking about there is he was talking about baseball games. We go to seventh inning stretch, we stand up and everybody sings. God Bless America, right? Yeah. And basically he said, why would he. And that, that was the question looking at the state of our nation at the time and saying, should we look at our nation? Should we as Christians sing God bless America rather than, God humble America, God caused us to repent. God lead us into a brokenness over our sinfulness rather than presuming upon God much like the elders of Israel at this time to say, Hey God, can you bless us right now while we've got. Things running rampant and sin happening all over the place. Unchecked and rebellion and pridefulness and all of these things. So that's a connection to this idea, maybe of corporate judgment, corporate responsibility that we might be able to say. Okay. Yeah. To your point, if there was something that happened here. To our nation, we might be able to point to that and say, you know what? That's not a judgment against Christians and churches necessarily, but it is a judgment against the nation in which we live and we're a part of that nation, and so we're gonna suffer as a result of that.

That's right. And the book that you just mentioned, can God Bless America, is Still Out and Available Hardcover, looks like it's not in print, but it is available in Kindle for five bucks if you're interested. Published in 2000 and. There you go. Yeah. By the lates, John

MacArthur, the late John MacArthur. Yeah. Chapter 22. Chapter 22. We've already alluded to some of the things that we find in here but this is really God running down. Here's what you're being judged for again and specifically the violence that was done, the injustice that was done. That starts in verse six, goes down through verse 12. God lists off some pretty awful things that were committed by the kings and allowed to happen there under the reign of the kings there. Immorality, there there's just awful. Perversions that are taking place here in the nation. And this is why God is going to bring the judgment. And I found it fascinating because God has talked about at times on the positive side, you know what, I'm gonna gather you from the nations. I'm gonna gather you back to myself for good and for the millennial kingdom in the future. But instead here he talks about gathering, but he talks about gathering for. And so we find that beginning of verse 20, he says, as one gathered silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace to blow fire on it in order to melt it. So I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath, I will gather you and blow on you with fire of my wrath, and you shall be melted in the midst of it. So God is comparing his judgment that's coming to the furnace that is going to be used to, um, to smelt metal and to remove draws from things. And yet in this. This case, there's nothing precious left over. It's all dros and it's all gonna be destroyed under the wrath of God.

Chapters like this make me incredibly thankful for the fact that all of God's wrath has been exhausted. On Christ instead of me. Yes. Because this is what I deserve. This is what we deserve. I can't help but feel for the tender conscience that reads this and still feels this. That, that God thinks this about them and it's true. I suppose if you're in your sin, if you're walking contrary to the Lord and you don't have that relationship with Christ where you're trusting in him for your salvation, this is something that you should tremble at. You should not take God's threats as being empty. He hates sin, and we've talked about that. He uses graphic depictions to shock us into becoming aware of our sin and how he feels about it. But for those of us in Christ, man, the comfort from this is that we will never. Ever see this ever. We will only see delight in the father's face because Jesus has born the wrath that we deserve. And chapters like this should give us great gratitude for that

very thing. Yeah. Even as the chapter ends you referenced this verse, but verse 30, I sought for a man among them who should build up the law and stand in the breach before me for the land that I should not destroy it, but I found none. That's Christ for us. That's right. And so Christ is the one that stood in the breach. Christ is the one that stood up so that God would not destroy us. And so he wasn't able to find it in Israel, but he has found it for us. If you have repented from your sins and put your faith in trust in Jesus, he's the one that's standing in the breach for you. That's right. That's, we're celebrating. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, we do celebrate Christ and the fact that he is the one standing in the breach for us. He's the one as the writer of Hebrew says, who's at your right hand interceding for us still today, so that we might be confident that we can be saved to the uttermost because we're drawn nearing to you. We are drawing near to you through him, through Jesus. So God, we pray that we would have a great confidence in that, that we'd read passages like this and tremble. Over sin and over the seriousness of sin, but not tremble out in fear that you are gonna judge us because of what we know to be true about us, because of Jesus. So we thank you so much for Christ and the hope we have in Him. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said