SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/9/2015
11:02 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The People of Judah Ignored God’s Warning
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
23:5-13
Message of the
verses: “5 "Oholah played the harlot while she was
Mine; and she lusted after her lovers, after the Assyrians, her neighbors,
6 who were clothed in purple, governors
and officials, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. 7 “She
bestowed her harlotries on them, all of whom were the choicest men of Assyria;
and with all whom she lusted after, with all their idols she defiled herself. 8
“She did not forsake her harlotries from the time in Egypt; for in her youth
men had lain with her, and they handled her virgin bosom and poured out their
lust on her. 9 “Therefore,
I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, after
whom she lusted. 10 “They uncovered her nakedness; they took her sons and her
daughters, but they slew her with the sword. Thus she became a byword among
women, and they executed judgments on her.
11 "Now her sister Oholibah saw this, yet she was more corrupt in her lust than she, and
her harlotries were more than the harlotries of her sister. 12 "She lusted
after the Assyrians, governors and officials, the ones near, magnificently
dressed, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. 13 “I saw
that she had defiled herself; they both took the same way.”
When one looks at map of the Middle East they will see
that Israel was placed right in the way that was between Egypt, Assyria, and
Babylon, and in modern times that would be Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. When these nations began to fight each other
Israel would then take sides. Now when
King David was the king he united the nation of Israel and he trusted the Lord
to care for his country, however when Solomon became king he, being the wisest
man in the world, did not do a very wise thing as he would marry women from
other nations in order to form an alliance with them. This was displeasing to the Lord and was also
against His Law for kings of Israel.
We mentioned that Samaria or the Northern Kingdom did not
have a true faith in God in our last SD on Ezekiel, and that was because the
first king of Samaria made up a new religion by putting two idols in the form
of calf’s at the entrance to his kingdom in order to keep the people from going
back to Jerusalem to worship the Lord.
This was one of the reasons that these people got themselves with the
Assyrians and eventually conquered by them.
In 722 BC the Assyrians took over the Northern Kingdom and when the
people were allowed to come back they were a mixed people, not true Jews and
that was the way they stayed even until the time of Christ.
The text states that even though Judah saw what happened
to Samaria they became worse than they were and then the Lord had to use the
Babylonians to destroy them. It is worth noting that after the Assyrians
conquered the Northern Kingdom that them came to Judah and were going to
conquer them and even began a war with them, however the godly King Hezekiah
humbled himself and went into the temple to pray and the Lord sent His angel
and killed 185,000 men of Assyria in one night.
God was using this incident to warn Judah that worse could happen to
them if they did not stop their worshiping of idols.
2/9/2015 11:23 PM
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