OUR FATHER WHO EXPLICITLY WARNS HIS PEOPLE OF COMING JUDGEMENT

Ezekiel chapter 4 verse 9 - 10 says this;

“Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side. 

 Weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day and eat it at set times. 

In this excerpt, the prophet Ezekiel was instructed to gather a mixture of grains in a sealable storage jar. These grains were to be used to make bread while he was enacting a military seige that was soon to befall Jerusalem. .

This supply of grain was to be evenly rationed out for his daily food supply during the period  of 390 days that he was lying on the ground  bearing the sin of Jerusalem.

These enactments that were carried in a very public area outside the city of Jerusalem,  were to warning to the people that these things would being symbolized by Ezekiel would occur when the city was besieged and the people carried off into exile. Below, the details of Ezekiel's enactments from the excerpt are linked to what they symbolized;

• Ezekiel was to lie on the ground and not move
• The people would be involuntarily restrained i
• 
  
• Gathering and mixing different grains
• The people would be carried to a strange land
• 
  
• Each day, Ezekiel was to have tiny allocations of food
• Their food would be tighly rationed 
• 
  
• Each day, Ezekiel would eat at set times
• Their schedules would be tightly controlled

These actions carried out by Ezekiel were a stern warning to Jerusalem to induce them to repent and change their ways.

Amen.

4

OUR FATHER WHO DEFENDS HIS REMNANT

The book of Isaiah 10 verse 9 says this;

‘Has not Kalno fared like Carchemish?

Is not Hamath like Arpad, and Samaria like Damascus?

This verse, containing words spoken by the king of Assyria, is an analytical comparison between the territories that he was invading.

To him, there was no distinction in how the territories would be able to resist his conquests.

He looked at the kingdoms and saw them all as worshippers of idols and that they were defenceless against him.

As verses 10 and 11 say, the king of Assyria's evaluation was that other kingdoms he had conquered had superior systems of religious iconography than those of Samaria and Jerusalem and so it followed that conquering those territories would be easily achievable as well.

As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols, kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria—shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?’”

The king of Assyria left out an important factor when considering Jerusalem and that factor was that Jerusalem was under the Judgememt of God but there was still a remnant therein whose defender was the Lord and it was for their sake that the king of Assyria was going to be visited by the retribution of God as verses 24 and 25 say;

 Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord Almighty, says:

“My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians, who beat you with a rod and lift up a club against you, as Egypt did.

Very soon my anger against you will end and my wrath will be directed to their destruction.”

Amen.

OUR FATHER WHOSE GLORY WILL  BE A SHIELD OVER HIS PEOPLE

The book of Isaiah chapter 4 verse 5 says this;

Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy.

The people who endure to the end and remain in Christ and whose names are recorded among the living (their names are found in the book of life), will  assemble on Mount Zion.

Here, the glory of God will manifest as a cloud by day and a flaming fire by night. This will form a shield over everything in Zion.

This the blessing upon God's people who emerge from the entrapment set by the kingdom of darkness and are assembled in Zion.

Amen.

2

OUR FATHER WHOSE NAME IS HIGHLY EXALTED

The book of Isaiah chapter 12 verse 4 says this;

In that day you will say: “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.

In the day that the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the people and the kingdom of darkness will be brought down and its strongholds destroyed, in that day, chapter 12 tells us that the Lord's people will make known to the whole world what the Lord has done and that His name is exalted.

In that day when the Lord frees His people from the fowler's snare with which the kingdom of darkness had entrapped us, we will praise the Lord for if it were not for His intervention, we would have been hopelessly entangled.

Praise the Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

4

OUR FATHER WHO KNOWS THE HEARTS OF ALL BEINGS

Verse 3 in the book of Obadiah says this;

The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’

This verse diagnoses the cause of the delusion that had misled Lucifer. 

Pride in his heart had given him a false sense of invulnerability and he had surveyed the inhabitants of heaven and decided that there was no one strong enough to dethrone him from the heights to which he planned to ascend.

He had moved his residence away from the areas relegated for him up to the mountain terrain high above the other residential areas of heaven and from this elevated location, he aspired to go even higher above the clouds of heaven.

Isaiah chapter 14 verses 13 and 14 reveals the progression of Lucider's ambitious plan this way;

You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God;

I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.

 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

Lucifer had calculated that he could incrementally take higher and higher ground and ultimately end up at a level that was equivalent to where God was.

Unknown to Lucifer, the Lord knew what was in his heart and Lucifer was cast out of heaven.

4

OUR FATHER'S SALVATION COMES FROM ZION

Psalm 14

The LORD looks down from heaven
To see if any
Understand that their salvation
Comes from Zion


God is present with the righteous
Those who seek Him will find refuge
Let Jacob be glad and Israel rejoice

OUR FATHER WHO PUSHES BACK AGAINST THE OVEREACH OF THE POWERS OF DARKNESS

The book of Isaiah chapter 10 and verse 10,  quoting the Assyrian king plotting his scheme to  destroy the Lord's people in Jerusalem as he did to pagan Samaria,  says this;

As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols, kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria—

Verse 11 continues;

shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?’”

This overstep by the king of Assyria invoked the Lord's anger against him as verse 12 says;

When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.

Even more broadly viewed, the overreach of the Assyrian involved a global power grab that erased national identities and orchestrated massive wealth transfers from the nations to himself. This maneuver was done with such subtle deception that no one objected. Verses 13 and 14 puts it this way;

For he says: “‘By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding. I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their kings.

As one reaches into a nest, so my hand reached for the wealth of the nations; as people gather abandoned eggs, so I gathered all the countries; not one flapped a wing, or opened its mouth to chirp.’”

However, in verse 15, the Lord rhetorically asks if a mere impliment can set the agenda of the user;

Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it, or the saw boast against the one who uses it? As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up, or a club brandish the one who is not wood!

The Lord will respond to the king of Assyria's presumption with destruction by fire and the displays of splendor and power that the Assyrian sets up with be utterly ruined. Verses 16 and 17 sats it like this;

Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors; under his pomp a fire will be kindled like a blazing flame.

The Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame; in a single day it will burn and consume his thorns and his briers.

Resources and administrative heirarchies erected by the Assyrian with be destroyed leaving a tiny remainder of his former reach and influence. Verses 18 and 19 renders it like this;

The splendor of his forests and fertile fields  it will completely destroy, as when a sick person wastes away.

And the remaining trees of his forests will be so few that a child could write them down.

Amen.

2

OUR FATHER DECLARES WOE UPON THOSE WHO INTEND ON DESTROYING HIS PEOPLE AND  THE NATION OF THE EARTH

The book of Isaiah 10 chapter verse 5 says this;

“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!

This verse reveals that the kingdom of darkness is an impliment that the Lord allows to run roughshod over the people of the earth whose conduct becomes unbearable ( including those who are His people ) and thus the Lord determines to release judgement over them.

However, the Lord declares woe upon the kingdom of darkness for their own evil conduct as well as the evil of  planning to overplay their hand in order to completely destroy as many nations as they can. Isaiah chapter 10 verses 6 - 7 says;

I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder,  and to trample them down like mud in the streets. But this is not what he intends,  this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations.

4