SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/19/2015
10:16 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Israel in Babylon
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
20:31-32
Message of the
verses: “31 “When you offer your
gifts, when you cause your sons to pass through the fire, you are defiling
yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I
live," declares the Lord GOD, "I will not be inquired of by you. 32 “What comes into your
mind will not come about, when you say: ’We will be like the nations, like the
tribes of the lands, serving wood and stone.’”
31 For when you offer gifts to them and give your little
children to be burned as sacrifices, you continue to pollute yourselves with
idols to this day. Should I allow you to ask for a message from me, O people of
Israel? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I will tell you nothing. 32
“You say, ’We want to be
like the nations all around us, who serve idols of wood and stone.’ But what
you have in mind will never happen (NLT).”
You may think that after all these exiles went through
that they would have learned exactly why it was that the Lord allowed them to
go to Babylon as prisoners of war. They
had Jeremiah to listen to before they were taken, but they would not listen to
him who was warning them to turn from their idols and not to listen to those
false prophets who were telling them that God would never allow Jerusalem to
fall nor the temple to be destroyed, but it was. They did not listen to the Word of the Lord
when they were in Judah and they still were not listening to the Lord while
they were in exile in Babylon and so the main point of all of what Ezekiel is
telling them is seen in these two verses and that is you are acting just like
your fathers. This is the same message
the Stephen was giving to the leaders of Israel 400 years later when he told
the scribes and the Pharisees “Ac 7:51
"You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are
always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did.” This tells us that history continues to
repeat itself.
The children of Israel were sinning against the Lord and
they were ignoring the privilege of being God’s special people. We have already mentioned that Israel were
suppose to be a light to the Gentiles, but instead the nations around them had
more influence on Israel than Israel had on them. When we were studying the book of Daniel and
in the first chapter we saw that Daniel and his three friends refused to eat
the kings food because that would mean that they were disobeying the Lord. However many of the other young Jewish men
had no problem eating the diet that they were given, so you could say that the
others were saying “When in Babylon, do as the Babylonians.” As we continue looking at the seven churches
in the book of Revelation we will see that some of the churches were
compromising churches, that is they became like the world.
1/19/2015 10:37 PM
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