SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/2/2015
9:30 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Entire Nation
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ezekiel
33:1-20
Message of the
verses: “1 And the word of the LORD
came to me, saying, 2 "Son of man,
speak to the sons of your people and say to them, ’If I bring a sword upon a
land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him
their watchman, 3 and he sees the sword
coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people, 4 then he who hears the sound of the trumpet
and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will
be on his own head. 5 ’He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take
warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have
delivered his life. 6 ’But if the
watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are
not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in
his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand.’ 7 “Now as for you, son of man,
I have appointed you a
watchman for the house of Israel; so you will hear a message from My
mouth and give them warning from
Me. 8 “When I say to the wicked, ’O wicked man, you will surely die,’
and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die
in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from your hand. 9 “But if you on
your part warn a wicked man to turn from his way and he does not turn from his
way, he will die in his iniquity, but you have delivered your life.
“10 "Now as for you, son of man, say
to the house of Israel, ’Thus you have spoken, saying, "Surely our transgressions and
our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we
survive?"’ 11 “Say to
them, ’As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ’I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but
rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back
from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’ 12 “And you,
son of man, say to your fellow citizens, ’The righteousness of a righteous man will not deliver
him in the day of his transgression, and as for the wickedness of the
wicked, he will not stumble because of it in the day when he turns from his
wickedness; whereas a righteous man will not be able to live by his
righteousness on the day when he commits sin.’ 13 "When I say to the
righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he
commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that
same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. 14 "But when I say to the wicked, ’You will
surely die,’ and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness,
15 if a wicked man restores a pledge,
pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life
without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 16 “None
of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has
practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live. 17 “Yet your fellow
citizens say, ’The way of the Lord is not right,’ when it is their own way that
is not right. 18 “When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits
iniquity, then he shall die in it. 19 “But when the wicked turns from his
wickedness and practices justice and righteousness, he will live by them. 20 “Yet
you say, ’The way of the Lord is not right.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you
according to his ways."”
4/2/2015 9:41 PM 4/2/2015
10:48 PM
We have seen that Ezekiel was called by God to be a
watchman, and in the times that Ezekiel lived in a watchman was a very
important job for the city as they would watch for any intruders from the
wall. Now if the watchman did a good job
they would see who was approaching and could save many lives, but if they did
not do their jobs many lives could be lost.
In this section of chapter 33 Ezekiel is speaking to the entire country
of Israel as far as the message that he is giving. Ezekiel’s job as a prophet was being a
watchman for the nation, including those exiles that he was speaking to, for he
was to give to them the truths that the Lord was giving to him to tell His
truth to these exiles, but as stated the message is for all of Israel in these
first 20 verses.
Dr. Wiersbe writes of the watchman: “the faithful watchman had clean hands, but
the unfaithful watchman had hands that were stained by the blood of the victims
who died because he didn’t warn them.
Isaiah compared unfaithful watchmen to blind men, dogs that can’t bark,
and people who can’t stay awake (Isa. 56:10).
Ezekiel was a faithful watchman who delivered God’s message to the Jews
in Babylon as well as those back in Judah, and that message was ‘Repent—turn from
your sins!” Repent means to change your
mind, but also change the way you live, something these exiles needed to do and
also those back in Judah.
Now as we move to verses 10-20 we see that this section
reminds us of what Ezekiel said in 18:1-32 which is where explained what human
responsibility was before God. He said
this because the current generation he was speaking to were blaming the older
generation for what happened to the nation, however in that section and verses
10-20 Ezekiel makes it clear that God would not punish the children for the
sins of the fathers.
Dr. Wiersbe wants to make sure that we distinguish
regret, remorse, and true repentance: “Regret
is an activity of the mind; whenever we remember what we’ve done, we ask
ourselves, ‘Why did I do that?’ Remorse
includes both the heart and the mind, and we feel disgust and pain, but we don’t
change our ways. But true repentance
includes the mind, the heart, and the will.
We change our mind about our sins and agree with what God says about
them; we abhor ourselves because of what we have done; and we deliberately turn
from our sin and turn to the Lord for His mercy.” I want to mention that it was remorse that
Judas felt after he betrayed our Lord, and not true repentance, while Peter
truly repentant of when he denied our Lord three times.
We saw in Ezekiel 18:21-29 that the Jews argued or
debated with Ezekiel stating that God was not fair and also that His ways were
unequal. God says the following at the
end of verse twenty: “I will judge each of you
according to his ways."” It
was not God who needed to change for He cannot change, but the people to whom
Ezekiel was speaking to needed to change.
4/2/2015 11:13 PM
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