SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
2/14/2015 9:48 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Then End of a Delusion
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
24:1-14
Message of the
verses: “1 And the word of the LORD
came to me in the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month,
saying, 2 "Son of man, write the name of the day, this
very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day.
3 "Speak a parable to the rebellious house and say to them, ’Thus says the
Lord GOD, "Put on the pot, put it on and also pour water in it; 4 Put in
it the pieces, Every good piece, the thigh and the shoulder; Fill it with
choice bones. 5 “Take the choicest of the flock, And also pile wood under the
pot. Make it boil vigorously. Also seethe its bones in it." 6 ’Therefore, thus says the
Lord GOD, "Woe to the bloody city, To the pot in which there is rust And
whose rust has not gone out of it! Take out of it piece after piece, Without
making a choice. 7 "For her blood is in her midst; She placed it on the
bare rock; She did not pour it on the ground To cover it with dust. 8 “That it
may cause wrath to come up to take vengeance, I have put her blood on the bare
rock, That it may not be covered." 9 ’Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, "Woe to
the bloody city! I also will make the pile great. 10 “Heap on the wood, kindle
the fire, Boil the flesh well And mix in the spices, And let the bones be
burned. 11 “Then set it empty on its coals So that it may be hot And its bronze
may glow And its filthiness may be melted in it, Its rust consumed. 12 “She has
wearied Me with toil, Yet her great rust has not gone from her; Let her rust be
in the fire! 13 “In your filthiness is lewdness. Because I would have cleansed
you, Yet you are not clean, You
will not be cleansed from your filthiness again Until I have spent My wrath on
you. 14 “I, the LORD, have spoken; it is coming and I will act. I will not relent, and I will not pity and I will not be sorry; according
to your ways and according to your deeds I will judge you," declares the Lord
GOD.’"”
Some people who think that God is only love need to read
verse 14 and see that although God is love He is also just and He is also a God
of wrath. I wish to give a few quotes
from Warren Wiersbe in this SD so that we will be able to better understand
this important portion from the book of Ezekiel.
“This chapter closes the section of the book that focuses
on the destruction of Jerusalem (chapters 4-24) and it is divided into two
parts: a parable about a boiling pot (24:1-14) and an ‘action sermon’ involving
the sudden death of the prophet’s wife (vv. 15-27). After that, Ezekiel deals with God’s judgment
on the Gentile nations (chapters 25-32) and His glorious promises for the
people of Israel (chapters 33-48).” Now
when we look at history we see that it has been exactly been like the outline
of the book of Ezekiel. At the end of
chapter 24 the Jewish kingdom is done and the Gentile nations begin to rule as
the Jews have never yet recovered from what happened to them after Jerusalem
was burned along with the temple. Jesus
then came and the church age followed shortly after His assenting into heaven
and the Gentile nations continued to rule just as the prophet Daniel wrote
about in his book. In May of 1948 we see
that the nation of Israel was reborn and still exists today all be it they are
surrounded by their enemies who again want to destroy them. The church age will end with the Rapture of
the Church and once again God will focus on Israel along with pouring out His
wrath on the Gentile nations as only one of four people will be alive after the
tribulation period and that does not include those who will be taken to heaven
in the Rapture of the church. The last
section of Ezekiel tells about things that will happen during the tribulation
period along with chapters 40-48 describing things that will happen in the
Millennial Kingdom. Things like Jesus
Christ changing the topology around where Jerusalem is and also the setting up
of the new temple and the sacrifices that will be offered as we look back at
what Christ did on the cross through these sacrifices.
“God’s message came to Ezekiel on January 15, 588 BC, the
date of the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. So critical is this date that it’s mentioned
in 2 Kings 25:1-3 as well as Jeremiah 39:1-3 and 52:4-6. During their years of exile, the Jews
observed four annual feasts to remember the painful events of the destruction
of Jerusalem (Zech 7; 8:18-23). They
marked when the siege began (tenth month), when the walls were breached (fourth
month), when the temple was burned down (fifth month), and when Gedaliah the
governor was assassinated (the seventh month, Jer. 41:1-2).”
Because of the length of this SD I will try and finish it
on tomorrow.
2/14/2015 10:12 PM
2/15/2015 7:06 PM
Eze 24:3 “Speak a parable to the rebellious house and say to them, ’Thus
says the Lord GOD, "Put on the pot, put it on and also pour water in
it.” We see that God called Israel a
rebellious house and we need to answer the question why He called them
that. I have mentioned many times that
God had made a conditional covenant with the house of Israel when they had come
out of Egypt and it is found in the book of Deuteronomy’s 28th
chapter. Deuteronomy means the renewing
of the Law and it was actually written to that second generation that came out
of Egypt because all the first generation over twenty years old had died in the
wilderness over the forty years that they marched around the wilderness because
of their sin in not believing God that they could defeat the nations that were
in the Promised Land. So Moses wrote the
book of Deuteronomy telling them again what was in the Law of God and in that
28th chapter we see the conditional covenant where God tells the
nation that if they would do these things that they would be blessed, but if
they did these other things they would not be blessed and even cursed. Israel did not follow what God told them to
do and so God’s long-suffering ran out and finally they would be destroyed by
the Babylonians along with the city of Jerusalem and also the temple being
burnt. King Zedekiah also broke his
covenant with the Babylonians and this was another reason why God called them a
rebellious house. We learned in Ezekiel
chapter eleven about a pot that would be boiling and now we look at another
parable of similar things. The rulers of
Jerusalem were saying that the good meat in the boiling pot was those who
stayed in Jerusalem, but they were the ones that would be burned up as seen in
this section of Scripture that we are looking at. The fire of the boiling pot would be the
Babylonians burning down the city of Jerusalem and their beloved temple, a
temple that the Jews turned into a place where they worshiped their idols and
God was feed up with that.
I want to say that when we studied the book of Jeremiah
we also saw that he along with Ezekiel had to put up with false prophets, and
many of the people believed these false prophets which caused the nation to
turn away from God and worship idols and eventually be destroyed. To our avail in this country we are doing the
same thing.
Dr. Wiersbe finishes on a similar note: “Our world today lives on delusions and myths
because, like the Jews in Ezekiel’s day, the world won’t accept the authority
of the Word of God. People still believe
that might makes right, that money is the measure of worth and success, that
the aim of life is to have fun and do what you want to do. You can believe whatever you please about
God, yourself, and others, and everything will turn out fine because there are
no consequences. But one day God will
expose the stupidity of these delusions and the world will discover too late
that there are consequences to what we believe and how we behave.”
2/15/2015 7:25 PM
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