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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I Myself am
against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of
the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have
never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst, parents
will eat their children, and children will eat their parents. I will inflict
punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds. Therefore
as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because you have defiled My
sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I Myself will
shave you; I will not look on you with pity or spare you. A third of your
people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall
by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and
pursue with drawn sword.”
“Then My anger will cease and My wrath against them will
subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent My wrath on them, they
will know that I the Lord have spoken in My zeal.”
“I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations
around you, in the sight of all who pass by. You will be a reproach and a
taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I
inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the
Lord have spoken.”
“When I shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows
of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I will bring more and more famine upon
you and cut off your supply of food. I will send famine and wild beasts against
you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through
you, and I will bring the sword against you. I the Lord have spoken.”
Ezekiel 5:8-17
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
In yesterday’s devotion, we examined how
God defines a rogue nation and in doing so, found that there may be many more
wicked nations in the world than we might first expected. A lot more.
Now that discussion is all well and fine
but it is one that might be easily dismissed without some form of reinforcing
deterrent, a possibility of consequences that might have a nation think twice
about even going down the road of becoming rogue in God’s eyes.
As we finish our study of Ezekiel,
Chapter 5, we find God giving us such a deterrent and He does so by
highlighting the punishment placed on the Israelites for their sinful
disobedience and all out rejection of God and His commands. Look again at these
verses and, be warned for the events contained within are not for the faint of
heart:
“Therefore this is
what the Sovereign Lord says: I Myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will
inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your
detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never
do again. Therefore in your midst, parents will eat their children, and
children will eat their parents. I will inflict punishment on you and will
scatter all your survivors to the winds. Therefore as surely as I live,
declares the Sovereign Lord, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all
your vile images and detestable practices, I Myself will shave you; I will not
look on you with pity or spare you. A third of your people will die of the
plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside
your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn
sword.”
“Then My anger will
cease and My wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I
have spent My wrath on them, they will know that I the Lord have spoken in My
zeal.”
“I will make you a
ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass
by. You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the
nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and
with stinging rebuke. I the Lord have spoken.”
“When I shoot at you
with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I
will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food. I
will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you
childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the
sword against you. I the Lord have spoken.”
Ezekiel 5:8-17
First, note that the God who was once
with His people was now against them and poised to bring punishment on them “in
the sight of the nations”. God’s word tells us that the Israelites defiled
God’s sanctuary with “vile images and detestable practices”. The Israelites had chosen to worship
detestable idols and false gods, essentially abandoning God and so God would
show them what it would feel like to be His enemy.
How harsh would the punishment be?
So harsh that the people would resort to cannibalism in the
midst of the deep and deadly famine that would come upon them as God cut off
their food sources. Scriptures tell us that parents would eat their parents and
children eat their parents, horrific imagery but one that could and would happen
when starvation set the stage for life or death situations for the Israelites.
So harsh that God was going to scatter His people who
survived Babylon’s onslaught “to the winds”. Indeed, the Israelites were hauled
away from their homeland and into captivity in Babylon, an arrangement that
would be in place for seventy years.
So harsh that God would withdraw His protection and
compassion from His people. He says so Himself:
“I will not look on
you with pity or spare you. A third of your people will die of the plague or
perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls;
and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword.”
Two-thirds of the Israelites were going to perish. The rest
would be taken away and continue to face hardship and enslavement before God
would bring them back to Him and move forward after His wrath, rebuke, and
vengeance had run its course. In between, God would take the once revered holy
nation of His choosing and make it a “ruin and a reproach among the nations”,
an “object of horror” to other nations. The idea was for all other nations to
turn away from their wickedness or run the risk of having to experience what
the Israelites were suffering through, a suffering that included famine,
plague, and blood shed by the swords God would bring against His people.
Friends, this is just a snapshot of what can happen to a
real rogue nation, to any nation who chooses to rebuff, dishonor, and openly
sin against God without desire for repenting and changing their ways.
It happened to God’s beloved nation of Canaan and His
people.
You had better believe it can and will happen to any other
nation as well, today and beyond.
Amen
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
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