Thursday, November 12, 2020

True and Just

 

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Again a message came to me from the Lord:  “Son of man, turn and face the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them.  Proclaim this message from the Sovereign Lord against the mountains of Israel.  This is what the Sovereign Lord says to the mountains and hills and to the ravines and valleys:  I am about to bring war upon you, and I will smash your pagan shrines.  All your altars will be demolished, and your places of worship will be destroyed.  I will kill your people in front of your idols.  I will lay your corpses in front of your idols and scatter your bones around your altars.  Wherever you live there will be desolation, and I will destroy your pagan shrines.  Your altars will be demolished, your idols will be smashed, your places of worship will be torn down, and all the religious objects you have made will be destroyed.  The place will be littered with corpses, and you will know that I alone am the Lord.  “But I will let a few of my people escape destruction, and they will be scattered among the nations of the world.  Then when they are exiled among the nations, they will remember me.  They will recognize how hurt I am by their unfaithful hearts and lustful eyes that long for their idols.  Then at last they will hate themselves for all their detestable sins.  They will know that I alone am the Lord and that I was serious when I said I would bring this calamity on them.  Ezekiel 6:1-10
And I heard a voice from the altar, saying, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and just.  Revelation 16:7

The absolute last words anyone wants to hear coming out of his own mouth are, what’s happening to me is I’m getting what I deserve.  Now, that can be a deceptive sentence, depending upon your idea of what is deserved.  To hear most people talk, we deserve happiness, extreme respect, and an easier life.  The simple truth (from an eternal perspective) is that there is no person alive, or who has ever lived, who fits that model; the one notable exception, of course, being Jesus. 

The prophet, Jeremiah understood our human condition of sin:

Lord, we confess our wickedness and that of our ancestors, too. We all have sinned against you.  Jeremiah 14:20

Ezekiel’s prophecy against the “mountains” of Israel is God’s picture of God’s sinful people.  It is a metaphorical way of identifying the place (the physical mountains) of the sins of Israel as the condition of the hearts of the people of Israel.  You look at the mountain shrines, the place where false gods are worshipped, and you see the darkness of the peoples’ souls, gone astray from their Creator.

What the prophet has said is what the boy’s Father told him as he was about to apply the board of education to the seat of knowledge, you didn’t believe I was serious about not doing that…you’re gonna know it shortly.

We have a tenuous relationship with truth and justice in today’s culture.  What we call “truth” is only what fits our definition of what we think we deserve.  We elect politicians who have a dance-around-the-truth record, because it fits who we are, thinking we will finally get someone in the seat of power who reflects our values and will help get us to the point of getting what we deserve.

Well, we are entirely correct in this.  We are building the case for God’s judgment, which is always true and just.  When that judgment falls on the mountains of America, and the rest of the world, it is going to hurt.

For You Today

 Whenever the judgment of God comes into the discussion people tend to ridicule and mock the messenger.  And that, harsh as it may seem, just adds to the mountain of evidence that God’s judgments on this generation are nothing but true and just!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title image, Pixabay.com   W   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Revelation 16 see:  The Distress of Justice and  Armageddon  



 

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