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