Oftentimes, as we look in God’s Word, we can see that things haven’t changed that much today from when the prophets lived in days of old, when Ezekiel lived.
At the time that Ezekiel lived, there were people that hated the nation of Israel and had no reason to hate Israel. Yet they did. A lot of people today in our nation have turned against Israel, and they say, well, look it, the majority of the people in Israel don’t believe in God.
And they’d be right, because if you look at Israel today, although the Lord is working in the nation of Israel, and people are coming to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, both Jews and Arabs in the nation of Israel. As we shared before, we support some ministries over there, and they’ve given us amazing reports of people coming to know Christ in these times, and that God is using even the circumstances that are going on in the Middle East to draw people to Himself. But at the time that Ezekiel lived, there was people that… We already have talked about the nation of Edom before.
The Lord spoke of all the nations around Israel at the time, and He’s speaking about Edom. And as He’s looking at Edom, there are people that should have loved Israel, but they didn’t. Edom was the descendants of Esau, and Esau was the brother of Jacob.
Those of you who are here and have gone through our Sunday morning studies, we’ve looked at the fact of Esau and Jacob when they were born, when they were in their mother’s womb. And their mother, Rebekah, cried out to the Lord and said, what’s wrong, as there is something going on with their babies? And the Lord said, there are two nations in your womb, and two different peoples. God knows the beginning from the end.
And even though these two boys that would be born to Rebekah and Isaac made their own choices and chose whether they’d serve God or wouldn’t serve God, God knew the ultimate outcome of what their attitudes would be, because He knows the beginning from the end, but yet we choose. Esau, as the Scriptures tell us in the book of Genesis, was a man who had a heart after this world. He didn’t have a desire for spiritual things at all, and he pursued the things of this world instead of the things of God.
Jacob, on the other hand, was a man who had a tender heart towards the Lord. And although Jacob at times struggled, yet his heart was always turning to God. And when he had his difficulties in life, he sought the Lord, and the Lord gave him answers.
Well, the descendants of Esau are the nation of Edom. Edom today, if you go to the Middle East, Petra is located in Jordan. That’s in southern Jordan.
To go to Petra, you’re about two hours away from Eilat, which is the most southern city in the nation of Israel, located right on the Red Sea. And that was kind of one of the central cities of the nation of Edom. Edom also went across the southern portion and into, really, Edom, as it’s on many of the maps in the Bibles, would be located southwest of the Dead Sea.
And so that was the area that the nation of Edom lived in. And Mount Seir was the main mountain or place that God gave as an inheritance to Esau. It’s not as if God had neglected Esau or rejected Esau, but Esau rejected God.
And the Lord blessed Esau in spite of who he was and his attitudes towards him. And we see that he blessed him because when he met Jacob, when Jacob was returning from being with his uncle Laban, and Esau met him, Jacob sent gifts of flocks and herds before him to give as gifts to his brother. And his brother said, I don’t need these because I have been blessed and I have my own gifts and my own family and my own servants.
But Jacob insisted that he take them. Well, what happened is oftentimes, as we talked on Sunday, the influence of parents on their children can develop attitudes and directions of life or relay foundations that the children are attracted to those aspects of what we’ve taught them instead of the Lord. Remember Esau married two Hittite girls.
Those would be Canaanite girls. And then when Jacob married Leah, or when they sent Jacob away to find a wife with Laban and his family, he ended up marrying Leah and Rachel. Esau went out and married a daughter of Ishmael, who was really an Egyptian and really a pagan in her nature as well.
His choices were always wrong, but he chose. The influence he had on his children was evident in the way that they treated the nation of Israel. Even though Esau did not attack his brother he had threatened, his descendants attacked the descendants of Jacob quite often.
As Ezekiel is in the nation of Babylon, taken away into captivity, God gives him visions of things that are going to happen. We talked earlier that he did already predict what would happen to the nation of Edom, but God brings it a second time. He wants to show, number one, what happens to those who hate that which God loves, and really, by extension, hate the Lord.
So let’s take a look at chapter 35 of Ezekiel tonight.
Ezekiel 35:1-5
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 2 Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it, 3 and say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. 4 I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord. 5 Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end: 6 therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. 7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth. 8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword. 9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.
10 Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the Lord was there: 11 therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee. 12 And thou shalt know that I am the Lord, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume. 13 Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard them. 14 Thus saith the Lord God; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate. 15 As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the Lord.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Dear Holy Father, as we come before you, Lord, I pray that you speak to us through your Word. Help us to understand that it is not a light thing to speak against you and to speak against those that you have called the apple of your eye. Lord, I pray that you just help us to see that those that would possess this attitude, even in the day in which we live, are walking on very, very dangerous ground and are incurring ultimately the wrath of God. Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand the importance to share the Gospel with people that they may know the forgiveness that is found in Jesus Christ and that they would turn to Him.
The hope of our salvation and the blessing of all that you brought to us through the nation of Israel, your Word, and ultimately your Messiah. Lord, speak to us now through your Word. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As you look and read this account of the attitude of the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, it looks like you’d be picking up a newspaper and reading about Hezbollah and Hamas in Iran today. About those people that all they want to do is see the Jews dead.
All they want to do is have what the Jews possess. All they want to do is take that which God has promised to another and make it their own. I want you to see there are three main problems that the Edomites had.
The first was pride. The first was pride. As we look through the book of Ezekiel, you’ll see that one of the things that God continually brings out through Ezekiel’s Word and is talking to the nation of Israel about is some of the things that they suffered from because they began to act and live like the world.
And this world is inspired by Satan, the prince of the power of the air. And as we saw when we were looking at God’s judgment that He would ultimately bring against Sidon and Tyre when the king of Tyre was judged, it was really speaking of Satan. And the Lord said that he was in heaven and what really brought his downfall was his pride.
He thought that he could be like the Most High. The Edomites, God gave to the descendants of Esau land. God blessed Esau in that he had herds, he had servants.
We know that he had at least 400 men that he brought with him with ultimately probably the idea of killing Jacob and destroying all that he had. But God changed Esau’s heart on the way and instead he embraced his brother. But I want you to see the descendants of Edom, of Esau.
All they could do was be prideful like their father had been and say, I deserve what others have. And the others were really an extension of Jacob and their relatives, their closest relatives. The closest relatives of the Jewish people today in the Middle East would be if there were any descendants of Esau, of the Edomites, because they truly would be the cousins of the Jews.
The descendants that we saw, the Moabites and the Ammonites, they would be extended cousins because they would be the descendants of the nephew of Abraham, the descendants of the Ishmaelites would again be further extended cousins because Ishmael was the half-brother of Isaac, but they would be extended. The descendants of the sons of Keturah and Abraham would be extended to the same extent that Ishmael would be. They’re all relatives, but the closest relatives would be the Edomites.
And I’ve shared with you before, we went to Petra, which is in the heart of the land that had been promised to Esau and where the Edomites lived. And if you go to Petra, one of the amazing things is Petra was a city and an area of the land of Edom that was impossible to attack. It was impossible for nations to get in there and destroy these people because the Edomites, you had to go through these long canyons to get back to Petra.
And the Edomites could get the high ground and they would be able to destroy the armies when they begin to march through these canyons. And as you march through the canyons, there’s solid rocks on both sides of you and you look up and you could see how the Edomites would be able to get up on top of there. They would be able to shoot arrows and spears down upon them.
They would be able to cut off from behind and in front and trap the armies in the canyons. And they were impossible to defeat. They became so impossible, they became very proud.
They thought, there’s nobody who can defeat us. And they became so proud that the Nabateans, who were descendants of Ishmael, were also really sculptors and artists. And the Edomites became so proud they wanted to build their cities in their land.
And it was this beautiful red sandstone down there. And that’s one of the reasons Esau is referred to as red. He had red hair and was ruddy in complexion.
The land that he inherited was red and ruddy in complexion. The sandstone was red and what they did is they hired the Nabateans to come in and carve beautiful carvings of buildings into the sandstone. And if you ever see pictures of Petra, there’s a picture, one of the most famous pictures of the treasury.
And they carved out these beautiful columns in front. And it’s got all these, it’s got an arch over the top and like windows carved into it. And it looks just beautiful.
You go inside and it’s only about, it’s not even as deep as this church inside, which is funny. But on the outside, it looks like this huge building. Well, that’s what they did.
The Nabateans came in and they carved all these beautiful facades into the sandstone for the Edomites. And the Nabateans came off that they were their friends, because we’re your relatives and we’re your friends. And we have the same desires that you have.
Where the whole intent was to destroy the Edomites. And ultimately, the Edomites were conquered and defeated, not by some outside army, but ultimately by the Nabateans, who came in to live amongst them, to work for them. And then they ended up rebelling and destroying them, as pretty much as the culture as they once had their nation.
But the reason that God allowed that was because of what the Edomites did to Israel. The Edomites were always coming against Israel. And if you look here, God tells you what their attitude was.
He says in, find the verse, where he’s talking about the blood. Verse 6, Now what does it mean, thou hast not hated blood? They didn’t hate death. They loved and they wanted to kill the Jewish people.
They wanted to kill their brothers. They did not have a high regard for life. And God says, because you view and want to shed blood, and you don’t really see how horrible it is when you do this, your blood shall be shed, and you shall be judged.
It’s interesting today, if you go into the Middle East, some of these people, the Hamas and Hezbollah, they have the attitude of the Edomites. All they want to do is see the Jews dead. And so they feel that they are above even the law of God, and they can do what they want to do.
Their attitude is one of arrogance and pride. They view that they are indestructible. That was what the Edomites did.
And they really worshipped death. And if you look at the whole concept of who was the force behind Esau, who did he really motivate him to hate the blessing and to hate the birthright? It was really Satan. With the birthright, Esau would have been in line to be the one through whom the Messiah would come.
But he despised the birthright to the point that he despised God’s blessing and God’s gift to mankind of salvation that was found in the Messiah that was to come, that he traded it, if you remember, for a bowl of stew. That’s how much he despised it. A bowl of stew for the right to be the one through whom the Messiah would come.
And he’d rather go hunting than spend time with God. And he desired, if you stop and think, the only two people in the Old Testament that are referred to as hunters are Nimrod and Esau. Nimrod, it says, hunted the souls of men.
He was a man who sought to destroy men’s souls and bring them under his control. And really, he was motivated by Satan. Esau was a hunter.
And if you look at, it says that Jacob, his father, had so many herds that he had all these men to take, Isaac, his father, rather, had so many herds, he had all these men to take care of his herds. And Jacob stayed home and managed the herds and learned how to take care of the cattle so that when he went to Laban to live with his uncle Laban to flee from Esau’s threat of killing him, that he was able to multiply the herds of Laban because he knew how to do it. Esau would rather go out and kill an animal than take from the herd and butcher the animal that was in the herd and have that for his meat.
He enjoyed the hunt. He enjoyed the kill. And that was his attitude.
He enjoyed the shedding of blood. Just as his children enjoyed the shedding of blood and did not really see anything wrong with killing even their relatives to take what they had. So there was pride and arrogance.
There was a lack of understanding and humility when it came to understanding life and what God had given and how precious life was and God had created man in their own image. The third thing that we see in here is there was a real spirit of envy. A spirit of envy.
I want that which isn’t mine even if I have to take it by force. And I would rather that the land of the descendants of Jacob would be desolate and uninhabitable if I can’t have it. That was the attitude of Esau.
Now if you look at these, I want you to see that in our own culture these are attitudes that are being really promoted in our own culture. An attitude of pride and arrogance. Number one, that you need to exalt yourself even above God.
You need to look within yourself. You need to look at your and follow your feelings and not turn to the Lord and not turn to your creator but to deny your creator and follow yourself. The second thing is that we worship blood in the sense that if you look at our movies, if you look at what our culture promotes and what happens.
Just this last week in Chicago, for example, they had I believe it was either 15 or 17 killings in Chicago this last weekend. There was all kinds of shootings. And it hardly even gets reported on, it becomes so commonplace.
You look at the movies, and the movies are often filled with gore and blood and murder all promoting death. And the descendants of Esau promoted death. And it also, if you look at our culture, what it does is it promotes envy and lust and passion and desires to possess that which we don’t have.
Even though we may have that which should be a blessing. Mount Seir was a blessing to Esau from God, but yet he did not look at it that way. His descendants wanted what Jacob had.
And they lusted after it. And so Ezekiel says, there’s going to be judgment because of these attitudes. Now, if you look at what’s happening today in the Middle East, in Israel, I mentioned Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran and how they all want to kill all the Jews.
And Israel is this little tiny nation the size of New Jersey, and they’ve got all this land all around them. And you can look at the map out in Foyer and you can just see all the nations around that are marked as Muslim. And then there’s this little tiny speck in the center that’s Israel.
Yet they want that land. That’s the land they want. And they want to destroy all the people that possess that land.
And God’s given that little speck of land too. And as you look at that, God says, judgment’s going to come on the Edomites because of that attitude. And judgment will come on these people because of the same attitude.
They possess a spirit of pride and arrogance. If you look at it, they do not want to accept accountability and responsibility for anything. But instead, we’re right even when we do that which is wrong.
And then they exalt not only their attitudes of pride and lust, but also they desire to see blood shed. And they enjoy it. They really are cults of death.
What does Ezekiel say? Ezekiel says, Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me. They thought they were boasting against Israel. They were really boasting against God.
And today, if these nations around the world that want to see Israel destroyed, and even Christians that do not want Israel to exist, they need to look at what God’s saying here. Who are you boasting against? It’s not the descendants of Jacob. It’s me.
It’s God. And you need to understand the danger in doing that. And he says, Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me, and I have heard them.
Thus saith the Lord God, when the whole earth rejoices, I will make thee desolate. As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel because it was desolate, they rejoiced because God judged Israel. They rejoiced because Israel had sinned, and God took them from the land and made it desolate.
They thought, what a great deal. He says, you’re rejoicing for the wrong thing. Instead of being concerned about your brother, that he would understand the blessing that he had, and that he would repent and turn to me, you instead rejoice in the judgment that has come to his house, and my chastising hand is upon him, and I hear and understand your motives.
It’s ones of arrogance, pride, lust, and bloodthirstiness. And he says, Thus saith the Lord God, when the whole earth rejoices, I will make thee desolate. As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee.
Thou shalt be desolate, O Mount Seir, and all Edomia, even all of it, and they shall know that I am the Lord. If you go over to the ministry,