SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/21/2015
9:23 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Israel’s
Future Kingdom
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
20:33-44
Message of the
verses: 33 "As I live,"
declares the Lord GOD, "surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched
arm and with wrath poured out, I shall be king over you. 34 "I will bring you out from the peoples
and gather you from the lands where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and
with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out; 35 and I
will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into
judgment with you face to face. 36 “As I entered into judgment with your
fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment
with you," declares the Lord GOD. 37 "I will make you pass under the rod, and
I will bring you into the bond of the covenant; 38 and I will purge from you the rebels and those who transgress against Me;
I will bring them out of the land where they sojourn, but they will not enter
the land of Israel. Thus you will know that I am the LORD. 39 "As for you, O house of Israel,"
thus says the Lord GOD, "Go, serve everyone his idols; but later you will surely
listen to Me, and My holy name you will profane no longer with your gifts and
with your idols. 40 "For on My holy
mountain, on the high mountain of Israel," declares the Lord GOD,
"there the whole house of Israel, all of them, will serve Me in the land;
there I will accept them and there I will seek your contributions and the
choicest of your gifts, with all your holy things. 41 "As a soothing aroma I will accept you
when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you
are scattered; and I will prove Myself holy among you in the sight of the
nations. 42 “And you will know that I am the LORD, when I bring you into the
land of Israel, into the land which I swore to give to your forefathers.
43 "There you will remember your
ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves
in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done. 44 "Then you will know that I am the LORD when I have dealt
with you for My name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or according to
your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel," declares the Lord GOD.’"”
What we see in this passage is something that we often
see given from the Old Testament prophets, and that is after we see what the
Lord will do to His people because of their sin the prophet then many times
goes on to talk about a future in which the people will worship the Lord in the
way that He desires them to do. And as
many times in the OT prophets they will be talking about a future kingdom, a
kingdom that will happen at the end of the Tribulation period and will last for
1000 years.
God did not want these exiles to speak to Him, but after
Ezekiel reminds them of what their fathers had done, and that they were following
along the same path he tells them about the future of Israel.
Now we have mentioned in earlier SD’s that it is at times
difficult to understand if the prophet is speaking about their current
situation, such as when the Lord tells Israel through Ezekiel that He will
bring them out as seen in verse 34, whether or not God will do this after their
70 years of exile in Babylon or whether He will bring them out of all the
nations around the world before the Tribulation period, and perhaps in this
case He is speaking only of the end times when God will bring Israel out of the
nations where He had sent them. We know
from history that He did bring them out of Babylon, but this seems to speak of
a later gathering of His people in to the Promised Land.
1 "So it shall be when all of these things have come
upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call
them to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you, 2 and you return to the LORD your God and obey
Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you
and your sons, 3 then the LORD your God
will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather
you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. 4 “If
your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the LORD your God will
gather you, and from there He will bring you back. 5 "The LORD your God will bring you into
the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will
prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. 6 “Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart
and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your
heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. 7 “The LORD your God will
inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who
persecuted you. 8 “And you shall again obey the LORD, and observe all His
commandments which I command you today (Deuteronomy 30:1-8).”
In verses 35-36 of Ezekiel chapter 20 we see that God
speaks of again taking them into the wilderness to deal with them, deal with
their sins and where He will cleanse them of their rebellion, but I am not
exactly sure as to where and when this will happen. My first thought is that this will happen
during the Tribulation period, perhaps during the middle of the Tribulation,
for in that period of time God will not only be judging all the nations that
are on the earth, but He will also be purging Israel and when that purging is
complete Paul says that “all Israel will be saved.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes “As for the true believers who receive
their Messiah, God declares, ‘I will accept them’ (v. 40). God will establish a sanctified nation that
will worship Him in holiness (v. 41). As
the result of this New Covenant and new spiritual experience in their hearts,
the people will come to know their God (v. 42) as well as know themselves and
loathe themselves for the terrible sins they have committed )v. 43). Now longer will they blame their
fathers! They will come to know the
grace of God, for all the blessings He showers on the nation will be for His
names’ sake and not because of any merit on their part (v. 44).”
Ezekiel will write more about these end time experiences
that Israel will go though in chapters 33-48, but we can be sure that what he
has written about in these verses applies to the end times for Israel and not
the taking out of the children of Israel at the end of the 70 years of
captivity.
1/21/2015 9:59 AM
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