SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/17/2015
10:23 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Review of the first part of Ezekiel
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Ezekiel 1-24
Message of the
verses: I was thinking this morning
about what we have been learning in the first 24 chapters of the book of
Ezekiel and came up with a short overview of those first 24 chapters in my mind
and so I would like to take a moment to write some of the things that I was
thinking about concerning those chapters.
In the first three chapter we saw Ezekiel starting his ministry by
seeing a vision of God in a way that is certainly unique as far as what is seen
in the Scriptures. Ezekiel had a very
unique ministry as he was ministering to those exiles that God had sent into
exile in Babylon in order to keep the nation of Israel alive and well until He
would send them back to their land some 70 years later. As in the nation of Israel there were false
prophets among the exiles telling the people that they would soon be going back
to their land, but when we studied the book of Jeremiah we learned that
Jeremiah has sent a letter to the exiles telling them to settle into the land,
but build house, have children and live there for they would be there for a
while.
Yes the first 24 chapters of Ezekiel live up to the title
of Stewart Briscoe’s commentary on Ezekiel “All Things Weird and Wonderful,”
for next we see Ezekiel going in the spirit to the city of Jerusalem and seeing
what the priests and false prophets were doing in the temple, and that was not
good as they were actually worshiping idols inside the temple. He stayed there for a few chapters and the
Lord actually told him that he would not speak for some time. This seems to be
a bit of a mystery as to who he could actually talk to, but it seems to me that
he was still able to talk at his home and also to the exiles when the Lord told
him to. At the end of the 24th
chapter God told him that this restriction was complete and as we will see he
begins to speak about the nations and what the Lord was going to do with them.
It seems to me that Ezekiel was following the events that
were happening in the city of Jerusalem telling the exiles what was going do,
even to the point to when the siege began in Jerusalem and then the temple was
being burnt to the ground by the Babylonians.
I believe that God wanted the exiles to be informed of
what was going on in Jerusalem because He would use them to continue the people
of Israel in order to bring the Messiah into the world. Even though it seemed that the Davidic
covenant was done, it was not as both Mary and Joseph’s line would come from
the line of David as seen in the books of Matthew and Luke.
Israel had broken God’s covenant with them and God’s
long-suffering had run out and so Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed
and the nation would be in exile, and when they came back home to their land
they would not worship idols again. I am
speaking of the idols of wood and stone.
The 24th chapter ends with the death of
Ezekiel’s wife and this was one “action sermon” that was the hardest to perform
as God told him he could not grieve over the death of his wife, showing that the
people in Jerusalem did not have the time to morn over their lost relatives.
In our next SD we will look at the introduction to
chapters 25-28 and Dr. Wiersbe entitles this section “God Judges the Nations.” 2/17/2015 10:46 PM
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