QT 7/11/2023 Ezek 16:41-52, Real life is found in God, not substitutes

Ezekiel 16:41–52 (ESV) —

41 And they shall burn your houses and execute judgments upon you in the sight of many women. I will make you stop playing the whore, and you shall also give payment no more. 42 So will I satisfy my wrath on you, and my jealousy shall depart from you. I will be calm and will no more be angry. 43 Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me with all these things, therefore, behold, I have returned your deeds upon your head, declares the Lord God. Have you not committed lewdness in addition to all your abominations?

44 “Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ 45 You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. 46 And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. 47 Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. 48 As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it. 51 Samaria has not committed half your sins. You have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed. 52 Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have intervened on behalf of your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

 

NOTE: Judah, the last remnant of a country built around the idea of God as King, has been judged. Samaria, her sister, and Sodom, another sister, she has exceeded in their sins. Cooper notes:

 

Judah’s security and prosperity produced pride and self-sufficiency that in turn resulted in disregard for moral righteousness (vv. 49–50).80 Thus because Samaria and Sodom did not escape judgment, neither would Judah (v. 51). So reprehensible were the sins of Judah that Sodom and Samaria appeared more righteous by comparison. This was a cutting indictment filled with irony since the name Sodom was not even spoken by Jews of Judah out of contempt for its evil example.81

80 Fisch, Ezekiel, 96–97, and cf. Jer 3:11.

81 Ibid., 98; cf. Ezek 16:56.

Cooper, L. E. (1994). Ezekiel (Vol. 17, p. 176). Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 

But it is not just the sexual sin, in fact, the sexual sins are the second or third stage of the process. The earlier stage is revealed in 16:49: pride, excess of food, prosperous ease, and forgetting to aid the poor and needy. There are so many steps in this tragic descent into evil. I think forgetting our commitment to God; not being thankful for his gracious gifts, and then pride and the rest of 16:49. Not long after, sexual sin becomes necessary to fill a missing hole in our soul that only God can satisfy. Life is without meaning when it is lived without God.

 

This is the sense of the message of Ezekiel. God is saying, "My judgment against you is not just anger but a desire to bring you back to real true life, and the only tool to make you realize that is pain."

 

PONDER:

1. Are we thankful? Do we take our blessings for granted?
2. Do we still seek God? Is he number one in our life -- what shows or doesn't show it?
3. Are we starting to take pride in OUR accomplishments?

 

PRAYER: Father, I want to be thankful all my life for everything you have given. Thank you. I know I am undeserving. Your grace has been too kind. Thank you. And thank you for the new opportunities that arising in my retired days. I do pray for wisdom to deal with the neck pains. I pray you would give me strength to bear it.