SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/17/2014
10:12 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Ezekiel’s
First Spoken Message PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel 6:1-7
Message of the
verses: “1 And the word of the LORD
came to me saying, 2 "Son of man,
set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them 3 and say, ’Mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord
GOD! Thus says the Lord GOD to the mountains, the hills, the ravines and
the valleys: "Behold, I Myself am going to bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places.
4 “So your altars will become desolate and your incense altars will be smashed;
and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols. 5 “I will also lay the
dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter
your bones around your altars. 6
"In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate,
that your altars may become waste and desolate, your idols may be broken and
brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be
blotted out. 7 “The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am the
LORD.”
Introduction to “The first spoken message: the judgment
of the land (Ezekiel 6:1-14).”
As we are going through the book of Ezekiel we do not see
him speak to the people too much, only when the Lord directed him to do so,
otherwise he did not speak, but used action sermons to get his point across to
the exiles. Now we looked earlier at Ezekiel
being a watchman to the people of Israel and in these next two chapters we will
see him fulfilling this function that the Lord had given him to do. As I was reading over Steward Briscoe’s commentary
on what he said about the watchman I had already written on this section of
Ezekiel, but since it has come up in this section I thought I would quote a
couple of parts from his commentary which was helpful to me when I read
it. There seems to be much confusion on
Ezekiel being a watchman in our day and age so I hope that this will clear some
of that up.
The following is from Briscoe’s subtitle “The Wicked and
the Righteous.” “What Ezekiel was told
to say, in effect, was, ‘You folks who care nothing for God need to know that
if you persist in your disregard of God, you will die as a sinner. Those of you who are religious and earnest
about trying to life the good life need to know the same thing. One of these days, you will trip up in your
efforts and realize you are just as capable of sinning as the wicked. Therefore, both of you need to know that you
are in danger of divine judgment unless you come in repentance and faith to
God.’”
The following quote from Briscoe is from the subtitle “Blood
on Our Hands.” “Then there is the
problem of ‘blood on our hands.’ This
sounds gruesome to our delicate ears but is perhaps best understood in terms of
the principle that God taught Noah. ‘Whoso
sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’ (Genesis 9:6). The idea is that a watchman who knows the
truth about a person’s spiritual danger and fails to alert him is some kind of
spiritual murderer. How far this can be
applied to a Christian without driving him to a nervous breakdown is not
clear. Obviously, the Christian cannot
warn everybody, but he has the responsibility of warning someone.
“Perhaps what we all need to realize is the immense
importance the Lord attaches to sharing what you know with those who don’t
know. Surely this will lead all earnest
children of God to a responsible life of ministry and deliver them from a life
of careless, callous indifference.”
Now I want to look at what is described in this passage
as the “high places” and say that when the people of Israel came out of Egypt
and eventually came into the Promised Land there was no place set up for them
to worship like eventually Shiloh and then finally Jerusalem, so they worshiped
on high places so that they could be closer to the Lord, but eventually because
of their sin and the copying of the people in the land that they did not
destroy they began to worship idols on the high places. As we read through the history of Israel we
see many, many times that the Lord had commanded them to tear the high places
down because they were the center of their idol worship. Now we will see in this section that the Lord
was going to tear the high places down and when they came back in the land
after being in captivity for 70 years, to my relocation they had no more
trouble with the worship of those kinds of idols, for they had learned their
difficult lesson of worshiping idols. As
we look at the sixth chapter we will see these word sour times “They shall
know,” and they did know after the Lord destroyed their high places and also
eventually the city of Jerusalem and the temple in Jerusalem.
When we go back to the book of Leviticus we will see that
the land belonged to the Lord and He was allowing the children of Israel to
live on it up until the time when they broke their covenant with the Lord. That is what they did and so the Lord was
calling the Babylonians to come in and destroy what the children of Israel
thought was so dear to them. I have
mentioned many times about the covenant that is found in Deuteronomy’s 28th
chapter, and when you read over this very long chapter you will see in detail
the things that the Lord said would happen to the children of Israel if they
disobeyed the Lord, which was what was now going on to them.
Let us now look at the first commandment from Exodus
chapter 20 “1 Then God spoke all these words, saying, 2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 "You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself
an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or
in the water under the earth. 5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for
I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on
the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6
but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My
commandments (Exodus 20:1-6).” Notice
that God says that He is a jealous God, which is one of His attributes, and
this means that He will not share the worship due Him with idols. Now let us take that into the NT and the book
of Colossians chapter three which are some of the memory verses that I have
been working on for several months and we find these words: “Therefore consider the members of you
earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry
(Col. 3:5).” I think you will get the
point.
As we look at verses 1-6 of Ezekiel chapter six we see
that Ezekiel describes exactly what the Babylonians did to the high
places. Now remember that during this
time of human history, and I suppose this even takes place in some places of
the world today, that nations had their own gods they worshiped and when they
went into another country to attack it that they would either destroy that
nations gods or take some of them with them back to their own country and put
them in the temple of their own gods to show that their gods were
stronger. In the case of Babylon they
destroyed the high places, which is what God wanted done, but they took some of
the articles of worship found in the temple back to Babylon with them and when
Israel came back into the land they brought these articles with them.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: As I think about
the first commandment which I mentioned above, and realize that God is a
jealous God, and that worship is 24/7/365 I realize that there are far too many
times when I break that commandment and need to seek forgiveness from the Lord
for that sin. Idols are much more than
pieces of stone or wood, but thoughts and actions too.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Remember that God is a jealous God.
Memory verse for the
week: 2 Peter 2:1.
1 Simon Peter, a
bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of
the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus
Christ:
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Nain” (Luke 7:11-15).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who was the husband of
Priscilla?”
Answer in our next SD.
11/17/2014 11:07 AM
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