SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/8/2015
9:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction
to “The end of the kingdom.”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
23:1-4
Message of the
verses: “1 The word of the LORD came
to me again, saying, 2 "Son of man,
there were two women, the daughters of one mother; 3 and they played the harlot in Egypt. They
played the harlot in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and there
their virgin bosom was handled. 4 “Their names were Oholah the elder and
Oholibah her sister. And they became Mine, and they bore sons and daughters.
And as for their names, Samaria is Oholah and Jerusalem is Oholibah.”
We begin looking at the second main point from Dr.
Wiersbe’s outline from the seventh chapter of His commentary in which he
entitled it “See The Sinful City,” and of course he is speaking of
Jerusalem.
We see that this chapter (23) is very similar to chapter
16 as both tell of the history of the nation of Israel and also its apostasy
from the Lord. Both chapters use
prostitution as a metaphor to show the
unfaithfulness of Israel to their Lord.
We have seen God marrying Israel at Mt. Sinai and thus Israel being
unfaithful in their marriage to the Lord.
As we go through the 49 verses in this 23rd chapter we will
not only see Judah, but also Israel playing the harlot with Assyria, Babylon,
and also Egypt. They did this instead of
trusting the Lord to deal with the trouble they were in because of their sin
against Him.
After King Solomon died the nation of Israel became
divided between the Northern kingdom and the Southern kingdom, both having the
same number of kings, but the Northern Kingdom did not have one good king and
in 722 BC they were conquered by Assyria and in 586 BC Babylon would finish
conquering the Southern kingdom by destroying Jerusalem and the temple. The first king of the Northern Kingdom put
two calves as an object of worship so that the people would not go to Jerusalem
to worship the Lord. Many did move to
the Southern kingdom in order to that very thing, worship in Jerusalem.
We see the names of two daughters in these verses Oholah
represent Samaria, the Northern kingdom, and Oholibah who represents the
Southern kingdom of Judah.
Dr. Wiersbe writes:
“With that background we can now examine this parable and see how it
applied to the Jews in Ezekiel’s day as well as to God’s people in our own day.
The main message the Lord wanted Ezekiel
to get across to the Jewish people was that He was perfectly just in punishing
the kingdom of Judah because of the way they had behaved toward Him. The Lord made three declarations: Judah arrogantly ignored God’s warning when
He judged Samaria (23:5-13); Judah then went beyond the sins the Samaritans
committed (vv. 14-21); therefore, the Lord had every right to judge Judah (vv.
22-35).”
2/8/2015 9:43 PM
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