SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/6/2015
9:54 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Individual Responsibility PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
18:5-18
Message of the
verses: “5 "But if a man is righteous and practices
justice and righteousness, 6 and does
not eat at the mountain shrines or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house
of Israel, or defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman during her
menstrual period- 7 if a man does not
oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, does not commit robbery,
but gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with clothing, 8 if he does not lend money on interest or take
increase, if he keeps his hand from iniquity and executes true justice between
man and man, 9 if he walks in My
statutes and My ordinances so as to deal faithfully-he is righteous and will
surely live," declares the Lord GOD.
“10 “Then he may have a violent son who
sheds blood and who does any of these things to a brother 11 (though he himself did not do any of these
things), that is, he even eats at the mountain shrines, and defiles his neighbor’s
wife, 12 oppresses the poor and needy,
commits robbery, does not restore a pledge, but lifts up his eyes to the idols
and commits abomination, 13 he lends
money on interest and takes increase; will he live? He will not live! He has
committed all these abominations, he will surely be put to death; his blood
will be on his own head. 14 “Now behold, he has a son who has observed all his
father’s sins which he committed, and observing does not do likewise. 15 "He does not eat at the mountain shrines
or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, or defile his
neighbor’s wife, 16 or oppress anyone,
or retain a pledge, or commit robbery, but he gives his bread to the hungry and
covers the naked with clothing, 17 he
keeps his hand from the poor, does not take interest or increase, but executes
My ordinances, and walks in My statutes; he will not die for his father’s
iniquity, he will surely live. 18 “As for his father, because he practiced
extortion, robbed his brother and did what was not good among his people,
behold, he will die for his iniquity.”
We call this sub-section “You cannot blame your
ancestors.” In this section we see three
men from a family, people that the listeners of Ezekiel would relate to, and
the reason that he is giving them this lesson is to refute the proverb that we
spoke of in our last SD. These are
hypothetical Jews that Ezekiel speaks of in this section. We also see the word death mentioned many
times in this chapter and death that is spoken of is physical death. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Whether people lived
under the Old Covenant or the New Covenant, before or since the cross, the way
of salvation is the same: faith in the
Lord that is evidenced by a new life or obedience (Heb. 11:6; Hab. 2:4: see
Rom. F).”
In this section we see Ezekiel tell about eight negative sinful
things that this person had done, and also eight positive virtues too. I won’t name them as they are listed in the
verses above. Both the negative things
and the virtuous things are mentioned in the Law of Moses. What we can notice of this man that he did
these things because of the love that he had for the Lord, as he did not do
them out of habit, or in order to gain salvation through his works.
The righteous father had an unrighteous son (Ezekiel
18:10-13). The verses are already listed
above. Ezekiel had nothing good to say
about this man, but listed ten offenses against God’s law or which three were
deserving of capital punishment.
The third character in this drama was a righteous
grandson (Ezek. 18:14-18). I suppose
that this may sound a bit strange but certainly not impossible or improvable,
and that is that the righteous son had an unrighteous son, and then the unrighteous
son has a righteous son. Ezekiel seems
to be driving the point home about how far off the parable was. By the way we can see this unfold with King
Hezekiah having a very unrighteous son, Manasseh, and he had another
unrighteous son, Amon, while Amon had a very righteous son King Josiah. Dr. Wiersbe concludes “The point is that the
third man, the grandson, resisted the bad influence in the father’s bad
example. The Lord didn’t kill the
grandson because of his father’s sins or even spare him because of his
grandfather’s righteousness, but dealt with the man on the basis his own faith
and righteousness.” This without a doubt
answers the truth of the parable, and should have put to shame those who
believed it, that were listening to Ezekiel.
1/6/2015 10:22 PM
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