SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/4/2015
9:47 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
The People of the Land
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
33:23-29
Message of the
verses: “23 Then the word of the
LORD came to me saying, 24 "Son of
man, they who live in
these waste places in the land of Israel are saying, ’Abraham was only
one, yet he possessed the land; so to us who are many the land has been given
as a possession.’ 25 “Therefore
say to them, ’Thus says the Lord GOD, "You eat meat with the blood
in it, lift up your eyes to your idols as you shed blood. Should you then possess the land?
26 “You rely on your sword, you commit abominations and each of you defiles his neighbor’s wife.
Should you then possess the land?"’ 27 "Thus you shall say to them, ’Thus says the Lord GOD,
"As I live, surely those who are in the waste places will fall by the
sword, and whoever is in the open field I will give to the beasts to be
devoured, and those who are in the strongholds and in the caves will die of
pestilence. 28 “I will
make the land a desolation and a waste, and the pride of her power will
cease; and the mountains of Israel will be desolate so that no one will pass
through. 29 “Then they
will know that I am the LORD, when I make the land a desolation and a
waste because of all their abominations which they have committed."’’
Just a moment for a bit of review to better understand
what Ezekiel is talking about. Ezekiel in this section (chapter 33) is speaking
to the nation of Israel, and in our last SD which covered verses 1-20 he was
speaking to the entire nation, but in this section he will be speaking to those
who are living in the land of Israel after the Babylonians destroyed the
nation. Israel was still a very sinful
nation as we can see from the verses we are looking at in today’s SD, for
Ezekiel tells them that they eat meat with the blood in it, they defile their
neighbor’s wife, they rely on the sword for victory and not the Lord, and for
all of this they will be punished very severely. In the book of Jeremiah we saw that the
people that Ezekiel is now writing about forced Jeremiah to go to Egypt when
the Lord told them not to go, but they were suppose to stay in the land and
submit to the Babylonians and God would care for them, but they would not
listen and so many went to Egypt where they would be killed by the
Babylonians.
When the siege was over the Babylonians left some of the
poor people to care for the land, and they also sent more people to Babylonians
as exiles. This took place in August of
586 BC. The people left thought that the
Lord should give the land back to them and their reasoning was that if Abraham
possessed the land as only one person them they being many should be able to
posses it too. There was a big
difference between these people and Abraham, for Abraham was a friend of God
and pretty much obeyed the Lord after he was called by Him when he was around
75 years old. There were times when he
did sin, but not like those who were left in the land. Another thing that was different was that
Abraham never possessed the land, but was promised by God that his descendants
would one day possess the land, and they did but I believe the completion of
this promise will happen during the Millennial Kingdom when Christ sits on the throne of David and
rules the whole world from Jerusalem.
In the 24th chapter of Jeremiah the Lord shows
Jeremiah two baskets of fruit with one being good while the other bad. The good fruit would be the ones who would go
into exile and their descendents would then come back to Israel, but the bad
fruit would stay in the land and would then either go off to Egypt or be killed
for not obeying what they should have been doing, which was submit to the
Babylonians the same as all the exiles were told to do.
4/4/2015 10:09 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment