).png)
God’s Love for Jerusalem Part Two:
You trusted in your own beauty: This pride was the root of Israel’s decline. They forgot that they were nothing when God found them, and that He had bestowed their beauty upon them. Brought to beauty by God’s blessing, they trusted in the blessing God gave instead of in God Himself. God gave Israel a place of status and royalty among the nations, but they used that fame to seek after the idols of the pagan nations. They ran after pagan idols like a harlot runs after customers.
The Lord God saw that the problem with Israel went far deeper than their actions. Their heart had become proud and dissatisfied with their covenant God. This decline was truly degenerate. The deeds of a brazen harlot: Israel’s decline began in the heart, but it did not end there. In their wickedness and idolatry they did the deeds of unashamed prostitutes. Israel was an adulterous wife, who takes strangers. The sense is that the harlot does it for pay, but the adulterous wife for free, merely for the thrill of transgression and a combination of weakness and hardness of heart. Israel was like the adulterous wife who not only gives herself away for free but buys lavish gifts for her illicit lovers.
No one solicited you to be a harlot: In her metaphorical harlotry, Israel had no pimp. She was not forced or persuaded to do what she did; it came from her degenerate heart. Even though it cost her (you gave payment), she still continued unfaithful to her God. Lord will gather them from all around against you and will uncover your nakedness to them: God promised to humble and to humiliate Israel before her pagan neighbors. The beauty and adornment she had traded upon before the nations would be stripped away, and they would see what Israel was without God. God’s judgment against and anger towards Israel was not to last forever. When their hearts were turned away from their gross idolatry, God would change His disposition toward them. Because you did not remember the days of your youth. However, Their self destructive pride was based in their failure to remember that all the good they had was a blessing and gift from God. "And in all your abominations and acts of harlotry you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood" Ezekiel 16:22 (NKJV). God had called Israel to be different from the pagan nations, and instead she became just like them.
Members of local churches commit the same sins we read about in the newspapers, but the news doesn’t always get to the headlines. Congregations are being torn apart because of professed Christians who are involved in lawsuits, divorces, immorality, family feuds, crooked business deals, financial scandals, and a host of other activities that belong to the world. "How degenerate is your heart!” says the Lord God, “seeing you do all these things, the deeds of a brazen harlot" Ezekiel 16:30 (NKJV).
God wanted Jerusalem to remember the old covenant, and promise to make an everlasting covenant. Despite the certainty of the coming judgment, God would not forget His covenant with Israel. They would continue to have a special place in His plan of the ages, and therefore in His heart. “Nevertheless I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed, when you receive your older and your younger sisters; for I will give them to you for daughters, but not because of My covenant with you. And I will establish My covenant with you. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I provide you an atonement for all you have done,” says the Lord God’” Ezekiel 16:60-63 (NKJV). The restoration would bring humility to Israel, not only toward God but also towards those they had previously despised and judged. The coming judgment would be so great that Israel would be tempted to believe there was no more hope for them with God. Yet again and again Yahweh promised to establish His covenant with them again. Through Ezekiel, the Lord hinted at the nature of the future covenant. The idea of a God-provided atonement is an important aspect of the new covenant, mentioned in Ezekiel 11, however, this would be the true and ultimate restoration of Israel. "Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.”’ And they will go there, and they will take away all its detestable things and all its abominations from there. Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord God " Ezekiel 11:17-21 (NKJV).
댓글