SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/11/2015
12:01 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Restoration:
the Land Healed
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
36:1-15
Message of the
verses: I have a fond remembrance
of this portion of Ezekiel, that is chapters 36-39 as it goes all the way back
to the time when I was visiting a high school friend of my in January of 1974,
and for those who have been following my bog posts they are familiar with the
fact that it was during that visit that the Lord opened my heart to receive the
Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. It
was Hal Lindsey who I first hear speak from the passages that we are about to
look at in the next couple of weeks as we begin to look at what Ezekiel was
telling those who were exiles from the land of Israel, now living in Babylon. They were mostly confused and disheartened
but the message that Ezekiel would give them in this section would bring hope
into their lives, hope that when I first heard it too. Ezekiel had just finished talking to the
exiles of how the Lord was going to judge Edom because of the way that they
treated Israel and now he would tell them of what the future of Israel would be
as the world runs towards the end times.
The people surely needed this hope for this is what they had said and
will say ““Son of man, give the people of Israel this message: You are saying,
’Our sins are heavy upon us; we
are wasting away! How can we survive?’ (Ezekiel 33:10 NLT) Next we look
at Ezekiel 37:11 “Then He said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the
whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ’Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are
completely cut off.’” I suppose
that from a human point of view they were speaking the truth, but from God’s
sovereignty point of view He will give a message of hope to the exiles.
“1 "And you, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel and
say, ’O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the LORD. 2 ’Thus says the Lord
GOD, "Because the enemy has spoken against you, ’Aha!’ and, ’The
everlasting heights have become our possession,’ 3 therefore prophesy and say, ’Thus says the Lord GOD,
"For good reason they have made you desolate and crushed you from every
side, that you would become a possession of the rest of the nations and you
have been taken up in the talk and the whispering of the people."’" 4
’Therefore, O mountains of Israel, hear
the word of the Lord GOD. Thus
says the Lord GOD to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and
to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the forsaken cities which have
become a prey and a derision to the rest of the nations which are round about,
5 therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Surely in the fire of My
jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom,
who appropriated My land for themselves as a possession with wholehearted joy
and with scorn of soul, to drive it out for a prey." 6 ’Therefore prophesy
concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the
ravines and to the valleys, "Thus says the Lord GOD, ’Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My wrath
because you have endured the insults of the nations.’ 7 “Therefore thus says the
Lord GOD, ’I have sworn that surely the nations which are around you will
themselves endure their insults. 8 ’But you, O
mountains of Israel, you will put forth your branches and bear your
fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon come. 9 ’For, behold, I am for you, and I will
turn to you, and you will be cultivated and sown. 10 ’I will multiply men on
you, all the house of Israel, all of it; and the cities will be inhabited and
the waste places will be rebuilt. 11 ’I
will multiply on you man and beast; and they will increase and be fruitful; and
I will cause you to be
inhabited as you were formerly and will treat you better than at the first.
Thus you will know that I
am the LORD. 12 ’Yes, I will cause men-My people Israel-to walk on you
and possess you, so that you will become their inheritance and never again bereave them of
children.’ 13 “Thus says the Lord GOD, ’Because they say to you,
"You are a devourer of men and have bereaved your nation of
children," 14 therefore
you will no longer devour men and no longer bereave your nation of children,’
declares the Lord GOD. 15 "I will not let you hear insults
from the nations anymore, nor will you bear disgrace from the peoples
any longer, nor will you cause your nation to stumble any longer,"
declares the Lord GOD.’"”
We have stated before that the Lord owns all that He has
created including the land of Israel and He has given it to them to be their
possession. I remember that when I was
working at the foundry where I was employed for 35 years that a man and I were
talking about a statement that he said to me.
He had told me earlier in the conversation that he owned his house and
was rather proud to tell me that it was all paid off and he owned it. I said to him that if he looked forward a
hundred years then who would own that house if in fact it was still there. God has promised this land to the children of
Israel in a promise that He had given to Abraham which is a part of the
Abrahamic covenant as seen in Genesis 12:1-3; 14-18; 15:7-21. Dr. Wiersbe states “That settled their ownership of the land, but their possession and enjoyment of the land depended on their faith and obedience (Lev.
26).” He goes on to say that “The Christian life is similar. We enter God’s family by trusting Jesus
Christ (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8-9), but we enjoy
God’s family by believing His promises and obeying
His will (2 Cor. 6:18-7:1). Disobedient
children have to be chastened (Heb. 12), and God often has to chasten the
people of Israel because of their rebellion and disobedience.”
As we begin to look at this passage we see that God tells
Ezekiel to set his face toward the mountains of Israel which is a way of speaking
to Israel. He did a similar thing in
chapter 35 when he spoke against Mt. Seir as it represented Edom. So from this first verse we know that Ezekiel
is talking to the nation of Israel. We
know from or study in Ezekiel and other OT prophets that the Babylonians had
completely ruined the land of Israel, and one thing that we must notice that
Ezekiel is not speaking about all of Israel, not just the Southern Kingdom of
Judah as he begins the prophecy and this will go on throughout the last 13
chapters of Ezekiel. Now we know from
the last chapter and even will see it in these verses that Edom had tried to
take over the Promised Land and even tried to help Babylon in destroying
Judah. Verse ten of this chapter speaks
of this. As stated earlier they did this
because of their long standing hatred for Israel which began back in the book
of Genesis when Esau and Jacob were brothers who hated each other. Look at these verses from the prophet Malachi
“2 “I have loved you," says the LORD. But you say, "How have You
loved us?" "Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?" declares the LORD.
"Yet I have loved Jacob; 3 but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a
desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness’
(Mal. 1:2-3).”The word hate means just that and not “love less” as some think
it means.
Now it is good of us to remember that as we look at
passages that show God’s judgment on other nations as seen in many of the OT
prophets that we remember that Israel is God’s child or in some cases even
shown as His wife and so just as we have seen in Dr. Wiersbe’s quote there are
times in the church age when God has to discipline His children as seen in
Hebrews chapter 12, and there were times when God had to discipline Israel, but
they were still His children unlike the other nations who committed sins
against the Lord and also against His child Israel. Israel is still God’s child today for that
will never change, but as the Apostle Paul writes God has set Israel aside and
even goes on to say of the church that it was a wild olive tree which was
grafted into the true tree Israel. He
speaks of these things in the 9th-11th chapters of
Romans. So what we are seeing in our
text today is that God promises to bring Israel back into the land and although
He will do this around 527 BC, in this passage He is speaking of a later restoration
of Israel to the land, which speaks of the end times as we will see as we go
through these final chapters of Ezekiel.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “God accused the mountains of Israel
of depriving the Jews of their children (Ezek. 36:12-14, see NIV). This may refer to the fact that the pagan shrines
were in the high places, and there some of the Jews offered their own children
to the heathen gods. But would end,
because the exile in Babylon cured the Jews of their idolatry, and in the
future kingdom, only the true and living God would be worshiped.” He then goes on to say that we will see this
in chapters 40-48, that is the worship of God in the Millennial Kingdom.
He continues “Since the founding of the nation of Israel
in 1948, great progress has been made by the Jewish people reclaiming the
land. There has been a great deal of
reforestation and irrigation, and the waste places are being transformed.” This is only the beginning for the Jewish
people, but first as we are learning in our study of Revelation the will have to
go through some very terrible times before the Lord returns and begins the
Millennial Kingdom when the promises found in the OT prophets and Psalms will
come to pass.
4/11/2015 1:06 PM
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