All right, well, we're going to continue on in our study through Ezekiel, and last week we ended up with chapter 11.

So tonight we'll pick it up in chapter 12, and I'll ask you to turn there if you're not there already.

This chapter is actually amongst the best in all of Scripture as it relates to those who ridicule us and mock us, those of us who dare to believe in God's prophetic word.

And what we're going to see is God using the prophet Ezekiel as a prophetic sign

vis-à-vis prophetic visuals,

illustrating and demonstrating the fulfillment of God's prophetic judgment.

And sadly, though, at the end of the chapter,

the people still refuse to repent.

And instead of repenting, we find them scoffing and mocking despite these final prophetic

warnings from a loving, long-suffering God who is having Ezekiel do this. Why? Because he wants them to repent. It's not God's will

that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And he's so long suffering.

Now their mocking comes in two familiar ways,

the first of which is that,

ah, every generation thought it was in their lifetime.

And yet the visions, the predictions, they've failed to happen, thus it will never happen.

That's the first one. We've heard it all before. The second one is even if it does happen,

it won't happen in our lifetime. So no worry, no hurry. We have plenty of time

before it does, if it does. So this is going to be what we're going to see and two ways that

they're going to mock. And spoiler alert, nothing has changed.

Nothing new under the sun.

Oh, it's maybe is packaged a little bit differently,

but it's the same mocking.

...