SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/14/2015
1:27 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Israel in
Egypt
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel 20:5-8
Message of the
verses: “5 and say to them, ’Thus
says the Lord GOD, "On the day when I chose Israel and swore to the
descendants of the house of Jacob and made Myself known to them in the land of
Egypt, when I swore to them, saying, I am the LORD your God, 6 on that day I swore to them, to bring them out from the land
of Egypt into a land that I had selected for them, flowing with milk and honey,
which is the glory of all lands. 7 "I said to them, ’Cast away, each of you, the detestable things of his
eyes, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the
LORD your God.’ 8 “But they rebelled against Me and were not willing to listen
to Me; they did not cast
away the detestable things of their eyes, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. Then I
resolved to pour out My wrath on them, to accomplish My anger against them in
the midst of the land of Egypt.”
In yesterday’s SD we looked at the introduction to this
very long 20th chapter of Ezekiel and saw that it had a lot to do
with history, and probably history is not the favorite subject of most people,
but actually it is one of my favorite subjects.
When the book of Genesis ends we see that the Lord through a famine
caused the children of Israel to move into the land of Egypt and when the book
of Exodus begins this rather large family turns into a country, and they were
begin used as slaves to the Egyptians.
The problem was that the Egyptians worshiped many idols and probably
most of the children of Israel at this point worshiped these same idols with a
few looking forward to the redeemer that God had promised them to look
for. Of course it is better to worship
God and to follow what He has for us to do than to worship idols. Think about how Satan tempted and caused Eve
to fall as he told Eve that God was holding out on her, that there was
something much better for her if she only would disobey God she would find
out. Well you know the rest of the
story, but this story is being told over and over again in countless lives
around the world today as people want to do what they want to do and then they
find themselves in trouble because they are not following what the Word of God
has to say for them to do. Stewart
Briscoe writes on this subject in his commentary on Ezekiel. “He (God) intended to show that anyone
reading the story of the experiences of the people of Israel would be reading
the special story of a special people in whose midst God was especially at work
revealing Himself. This is of the
greatest importance to us who live centuries after the events took place. If it can be ascertained that the events
actually occurred, then it should not be too difficult for even the most timid
soul to believe not only that ‘God is’ but also to see the biblical revelation
what sort of God He is.”
God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and to Jacob what was
going to happen to their offspring, that they would go into the land of Egypt
and be there for four hundred years, then He would bring someone into their
family who would led them out of Egypt, with great spoils, and then take them
into the Promised Land where they would live and where they would be a witness
to those people around them. God did his
part, but unfortunately Israel did not do their part. When God called Abram he
came from an idol worshiping land and people and the worship of idols was what
would case the children of Israel to come under the wrath of God and Ezekiel is
showing the exiles this in these verses.
Remember this section, verses 1-44, tell us about leadership
responsibility and it was the leaders from the beginning that caused Israel to
fall and to worship idols. Now to be
fair not all of the leaders were bad, but when we look at the leaders in the
Northern Kingdom everyone of these kings were evil, and many of the kings in
the Southern were also evil including those during the last days of this
kingdom.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “When God opened the way for Israel to
leave Egypt, some of the Jews took their Egyptian gods with them! God had sworn by an oath (‘lifted up my hand’)
that He was Israel’s God (v. 5) and that He would set them free and give them
the Promised Land (v. 6). The true God
set them free, but they carried false gods with them! The nation rebelled against God even after He
demonstrated His grace and power in delivering them!”
1/14/2015 2:14 PM
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