Monday, June 10, 2019

Tell the Exiles

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Then this message came to me from the Lord:  “Son of man, the people still left in Jerusalem are talking about you and your relatives and all the people of Israel who are in exile.  They are saying, ‘Those people are far away from the Lord, so now he has given their land to us!’  “Therefore, tell the exiles, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:  Although I have scattered you in the countries of the world, I will be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile.  I, the Sovereign Lord, will gather you back from the nations where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel once again.’  “When the people return to their homeland, they will remove every trace of their vile images and detestable idols.  And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them.  I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, so they will obey my decrees and regulations.  Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.  But as for those who long for vile images and detestable idols, I will repay them fully for their sins.  I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”  Then the cherubim lifted their wings and rose into the air with their wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them.  Then the glory of the Lord went up from the city and stopped above the mountain to the east.  Afterward the Spirit of God carried me back again to Babylonia, to the people in exile there.  And so ended the vision of my visit to Jerusalem.  And I told the exiles everything the Lord had shown me.  Ezekiel 11:14-25

Dateline 594 B.C. – At this point in Israel’s history they are experiencing a second major defeat by hostile neighbors, followed by the humiliation of being dispossessed of their land, and exiled to foreign soil.  This time it is the Babylonian king who has destroyed Jerusalem, looting the temple and carrying-off all the leaders and the strong young people.  What’s left is a land of rubble and disheartened seniors.  They’re only a year or two into what will be a seventy-year prison sentence.  This punishment is for the crime of turning their national backs on God.  Israel hadn’t learned anything from the self-inflicted pain of the consequences of forsaking their God by the Northern kingdom a century earlier; a pattern was painfully emerging of God’s salvation of His people, followed by that peoples’ fading worship of Almighty God and disobedient, petulantly-selfish idolatry, precipitating a weakening of their national identity and another downfall, captivity by a pagan nation, and God having to save them all over again.
Enter Ezekiel.  The vision God gave to the prophet was a message to the captive exiles in Babylon:  I Am will save you; I will bring you back to your land and restore everything.  But this time you’ll have a new spirit.  This lesson will teach you much about who’s in charge in history, the present, and the future.  If you learn the lesson well, what has been lost in the past will be just a shadow compared to everything I’ll give to you…there will be nothing lost, only the passing of your sin under my forgiving covenant.
Almighty God commissions Ezekiel, His prophet, to tell the exiles there is hope!
At the risk of “spiritualizing” Ezekiel’s prophecy to Israel in such a way as to suggest it is a type of what we experience in contemporary life, let me say there is just too strong a resemblance to ignore what is happening in the church (particularly in America), and in American culture.  By the empty churches on Sunday morning, and the startling nature of rejection of godliness and even the façade of holiness, we see a parallel of Israel’s folly unfolding once again.  When a nation, claiming to be blessed from sea to shining sea, praises God in the sanctuary on Sunday and acts like children of Hell the other seven days of the week, it denigrates the forgiveness which birthed its’ freedom.  It also presumes upon the forbearing patience of a holy God.  That is a position that begs a woodshed meeting with the Father.
For You Today
There are exceptions to the disobedience to God’s way we are seeing today; God always has His remnant.  Be part of that remnant people; and tell the exiles you meet to keep honoring God; there IS hope!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com  
             Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

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