SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
2/1/2015 3:20 PM
My Worship Time Focus: A Defiled People
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
22:1-12
Message
of the verses: The first thing that
I want to do is to go back to the outline that we looked at in the beginning of
our study of Ezekiel. We saw that the
second point in the outline was entitled “The Fall of Jerusalem,” and this
covered chapters 4-24 in the book of Ezekiel, and now we will begin this last
section of this second part of the outline.
Dr. Wiersbe entitles this chapter in his commentary on Ezekiel “See the
Sinful City,” and he writes in his introductory comments the following: “Ezekiel focuses on four final events: the end of the city (chapter 22), the end of
the kingdom (chapter 23), the end of a delusion (chapter 24:1-14), and the end
of a marriage (chapter 24:15-27). Chapter
24 records two heart-rending announcements from the Lord: the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem (vv.
1-2) and the death of the prophet’s wife (vv. 15-17). What a sobering way to climax Ezekiel’s many
messages to the spiritually blind Jewish exiles in Babylon!”
We will now begin looking at the
introduction to “The end of the city” which covers chapter 24.
I believe that when the Lord called
the Babylonians to destroy His city, Jerusalem, a city that He loved and chose
that city for His temple to be built, a city that would one day be the place
where His Son would die, and a city that His glorified Son will reign over all
the earth for 1000 years. Psalm 132:13 “For
the LORD has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation.” I have to believe that in doing this that I
broke the heart of God, but there was no other remedy because His people had
sinned and they had broken His covenant.
When we look at the three different prayers that are recorded in the
night chapter of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel we will see the heart break that these
three people of God had over what happened to Israel and to Jerusalem. All three chapters contain repentance over
the sins that Israel had committed which caused the Lord to destroy the city
and to actually end the rule of the dynasty of David on this earth even though
it did not end the line of David, for Matthew 1:1 says “The record of the
genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew then goes on to write the names of
David’s descendants from the Lord Jesus Christ all the back to Abraham.
We will not look at verses 1-12 of
chapter 24. “1 The word of the LORD came
to me: 2 “Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of
bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable practices 3 and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD
says: O city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst and
defiles herself by making idols, 4 you have become guilty because
of the blood you have shed and have become defiled by the idols you have made.
You have brought your days to a close, and the end of your years has come.
Therefore I will make you an object of scorn to the nations and a
laughing-stock to all the countries. 5 Those who are near and those who are far
away will mock you, O infamous city, full of turmoil. 6 “‘See how each of the
princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood. 7 In you they have treated father and mother with
contempt; in you
they have oppressed the alien and ill-treated the fatherless and the widow. 8 You have despised my holy
things and desecrated my Sabbaths. 9 In you are slanderous men bent on shedding blood; in you are those who eat at the mountain
shrines and commit lewd acts. 10 In you are those who dishonour their fathers’ bed; in you are those who
violate women during their period, when they are ceremonially unclean. 11 In you one man commits a
detestable offence with his neighbor’s wife, another shamefully defiles his
daughter-in-law, and another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter. 12
In you men accept
bribes to shed blood;
you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors
by extortion. And you have
forgotten me, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
We see many sins that the people of
Judah committed against the Lord, the biggest was the shedding of blood and the
worship of idols. We also see that the
leaders in Jerusalem were receiving bribes and condemning innocent people to
their death in order for others to be able to claim their property. This really reminds me of Ahab when he
confiscated the property of Naboth the Jezreelite who owned a vineyard that
Ahab wanted. Ahab’s wife Jezebel had
Naboth killed and both she and Ahab paid for that sin with their lives later
on. Dr. Wiersbe writes “So evil was the
judicial system in Jerusalem that the Gentile nations heard about it (Ezekiel.
22:4-5) and reproached the name of the Lord.”
Judgment for these sins was shortly coming and the results for the men
who committed these sins would be similar to those of Ahab and Jezebel.
As we look at the list of sins that
Ezekiel writes in these verses we can see that there are many of the same sins
going on around the world today, and when one looks at the punishment that
Israel got for committing these sins one should understand that God’s
long-suffering will some day run out and judgment will come upon all who commit
these sins.
In verse seven we see some of the
sins that were being committed in Jerusalem against parents, strangers and
aliens, and orphans and also widows. We
know that God cares for both the orphan and also the widows. Then after dealing with the sins committed
against people God through Ezekiel speaks of their idolatry, something we have
been talking about throughout our study of the Old Testament, especially in the
prophets. When the children of Israel
came into the Promised Land they were suppose to have a good affect on the
nations around them, but sadly the nations around them had a greater affect on
them and one of the things that they taught them was to worship idols,
something God hates, and for that matter still does. God is a jealous God, not like we as humans
define jealously, but God being Jealous is one of His attributes.
One would think that when people
committed these grievous sins the courts in the land would take action, but not
when the courts in the land were corrupt.
We see that very same thing in our land today and when we go back to
1973 when our supreme court made the killing of unborn babies legal in our
country and since that terrible day over 50 million babies have been
murdered. We will answer to God for this
travesty some day.
Another thing that Ezekiel targeted
was the immorality that ran ramped in their land and again we see the same
things happening in our land today. I
suppose that if the technology that we have today was around in Ezekiel’s day
that they would have been looking at similar things on their internet that are
available on ours.
Israel is God’s chosen people and
although they are not set aside today according to Paul as seen in chapters
9-11 of Romans God still has a plan for them.
However because during Ezekiel’s day and before that they were supposed
to be used by the Lord and they failed and this made is worse because of all
the blessings that He had given to them, and therefore I believe that the same
thing holds true for our country in that God has blessed our country mightily
and we are now turning our backs on Him.
This will one day cause Him to turn His backs on us. We should be learning from what Ezekiel is
teaching us.
2/1/2015
5:00 PM
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