Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15. And the title of today's post is,

He Takes Names. Ezekiel 11, 1 to 4 from the message, says,

The Spirit picked me up and took me to the gate of the temple that faces east. There were 25 men standing at the

gate. I recognized the leaders, and he mentions their names. God said, Son of man, these are the men

who draw up blueprints for sin, who think up new programs for evil in this city.

They say, we can make anything happen here. We're the best. We're the choice pieces of meat in the soup pot.

Oppose them, son of Man, preach against them.

The New American Standard translation says it this way.

The Spirit lifted me up, brought me to the east gave the Lord's house.

And behold, there were 25 men at the entrance of the gate.

He mentions the names.

Then he said to me, Son of man, these are the men who devise wrongdoing,

give evil advice in this city.

Prophesy against them.

Prophecy, son of man. God takes names. In this passage, the prophet Ezekiel was taken in the spiritual

realm to the gate of the temple, where God showed him 25 men marked for judgment. These are the men, he said, who devise iniquity,

prophesy against them. The subsequent verses speak of their judgments. I can't think of anything more frightening than to know my name was on a list

of those God is about to judge. We don't want that for anyone. He also keeps a list of those he

intends to bless.

There's a revealing description of this in the book of Malachi.

The context of this book is the unfaithfulness of Israel, a people God loved very much and who were supposed to be walking in covenant with him.

They'd turned away from him, however, and were instead worshipping idols.

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