OUR LORD WHO BRINGS RETRIBUTION ON THOSE WHO COMMIT ATROCITIES

Amos chapter 1 verse 7 says this;

I will send fire on the walls of Gaza that will consume her fortresses.

Here, in a prophetic utterance by the prophet Amos, the Lord speaks judgement on Gaza, which is the land Southwest of Israel, because they took entire communities captive and sold them to the kingdom of Edom.

Because of their wholesale cruelty, their walls and fortresses were burned down. A fire was ignited along the perimeter of their cities and it spread to their fortresses and destroyed them.

Without fortresses, these cities were exposed to attacks that would result in those who dwelled in them being taken as captives and sold as slaves.

Their leaders in their main cities, Ashdod and Ashkelon, were slain because of their part in wiping out whole communities for profit by selling them to Edom. For this,  the Lord set his hand to wipe out every last Philistine in Gaza.

This judgement on Gaza is reciprocal in that the evil that they did to others is visited upon them. 

As the Lord Jesus said in Mathew 7 verse 12, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Amen.

 OUR LORD WHO KNOWS OUR FRAME

Ezekiel chapter 4 verses 13 -14 is a excerpt from a conversation between Ezekiel the prophet and the Lord in which the Lord is instructing Ezekiel to lie down for 390 days  in the sight of the people Jerusalem and eat food cooked over human excrement. This action is to be a prophecy of the defiled food the people of Israel will eat when they are sent into exile.  The passage goes like this;

The Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.”

Then I said, “Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.”

Ezekiel responds to the Lord by objecting to eating food cooked over human excrement. He mentions to the Lord that he has never defiled himself by eating animals found dead or those torn apart  by wild animals and that he has never eaten impure meat.

Ezekiel equates eating bread cooked over human excrement with eating defiled meat which  means that the exposing bread to burning human excrement defiles it in the same way that the meat of animals torn apart by wild animals is defiled or how the meat of animals that die of natural or unknown causes is defiled.

The Lord gives Ezekiel a reprieve by allowing him to use cow dung instead of human waste to cook his bread which transmits the same prophetic message  to the observers but without bringing  defilement to Ezekiel. 

Let us bless the Lord who remembers that we are but dust and who lightens our burdens that he  gives us so that we can bear them. 

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO JUDGES HIS PEOPLE IF THEY ARE UNFAITHFUL

Ezekiel chapter 14 verse 15 - 16 is a warning from the Lord to Israel that if they sin against the Lord by being unfaithful towards Him, they would draw repercussions upon themselves. 

The judgement against then would be so sure that even if Noah, Daniel and Job were among them, these three righteous men would be saved but Israel would still suffer judgement. These three intercessors would not be able to allay the punishment of the Lord on Israel.

The passage reads like this;

“Or if I send wild beasts through that country and they leave it childless and it becomes desolate so that no one can pass through it because of the beasts, as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, even if these three men were in it, they could not save their own sons or daughters. They alone would be saved, but the land would be desolate."

In this particular judgement possibility, wild beasts are let loose in the land so that the country is left childless and desolate. If the Lord were to let that occur, Noah, Daniel or Job would survive but even their own sons and daughters would not be saved and  the whole  land would be not escape desolation.

This judgement mirrors Leviticus chapter 26 verse 22 which delineates the consequences of  not obeying the law of the Lord. It reads this way;

I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be desolate.

The wild beasts rob children and destroy livestock  and shrink the population and make the whole place desolate and no one moves along the roadways.

Let us act faithfully towards our the Lord listening to Him only and not to the allurements  of the world and the temptations of the flesh.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO BRINGS DOWN THE PRIDEFUL

Ezekiel chapter 31 is a prophetic pronouncement that uses trees as metaphors for spiritual kingdoms. 

The use of trees to represent spiritual kingdoms in this chapter is  the same as when the Lord Jesus used the metaphor of a mustard seed to describe the Kingdom of heaven in Mathew chapter 13 verses 31 and 32 which reads like this;

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

In Ezekiel chapter 13, the Lord, speaking to Pharaoh  of the spiritual kingdom of Egypt, tells him of the spiritual kingdom of Assyria which He compared to a cedar tree describing it this way;

I made it beautiful with abundant branches, the envy of all the trees of Eden in the garden of God.

Here, the Lord informs Pharoah that it was He who made Assyria beautiful so that even the trees planted in the garden of God envied it.

Nevertheless, when the tree of  Assyria grew tall and pridefully towered over the nations, the Lord cast it aside and it was ruthlessly cut down.

The Lord then informs Pharoah of the spiritual kingdom of Egypt that in the same way, even though his kingdom exceeds all other kingdoms, he will be brought down from his heights and he will lie among the slain. Ezekiel chapter 31 verse 18 says it this way;

“‘Which of the trees of Eden can be compared with you in splendor and majesty? Yet you, too, will be brought down with the trees of Eden to the earth below; you will lie among the uncircumcised, with those killed by the sword.

Bless our Lord whose power and might can bring down the kingdoms of the oppressors even though they are formidable and entrenched.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO CLEANSES HIS PEOPLE

Isaiah chapter 4 verses 1 - 5 says this;

In that day seven women  will take hold of one man and say, “We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!”

 In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.  Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire.Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy.

This passage reveals some surprising aspects of the day of the Lord which is the day of judgement as revealed in Isaiah chapter 3 verse 13 which says; "The Lord takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people."

Starting off, the women scramble to get the attention of a limited number  of men asking them if they could be called by their names in order to "take away their disgrace."

This verse implies that on the day of judgement, there will be a category of women who will realise that they are in a state of insufficiency that could potentially be mitigated by attaching themselves to a man and so a bidding war begins with women trading their requirements down to even where they would cover  their own expenses as long as they could be called by a man's name.

Next, the branch of the Lord, which is the church (as Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches"),  is described as "beautiful and glorious" the fruit of whom is the pride of Israel.

The passage goes on to say that those who are holy will be the ones who remain and are found in Jerusalem.

The passage then speaks of the filth of the women being washed away by the Lord and the bloodstains of Jerusalem being cleansed by a spirit of judgement and a spirit of fire which reveals that the Lord himself will wash away residual stains among His people so that they are presented holy and blameless. 

Then, the Lord will create a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming  fire by night as a canopy over everything. This canopy will provide shade and shelter for God's people which is reminiscent of the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire that led the children of Israel in the wilderness.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO CURTAILS THE SCHEMES OF HIS ENEMIES

Revisiting Isaiah chapter 19 verse 13, let's look again at what this verse  says about the oppressors of God's people, represented by Egypt;

The officials of Zoan have become fools, the leaders of Memphis are deceived; the cornerstones of her peoples have led Egypt astray.

The backdrop of this verse is that Egypt's leadership had decided to enslave the children of Isreal because they believed they were becoming too numerous and that they represented a political threat to their establishment.

When the Lord moved to free His people from the bondage of slavery, He targeted the leadership of Egypt by pouring a spirit of dizziness on them. 

The officials of Zoan, which at the time was an important administrative center of Egypt, became fools. Their perceptions of reality were distorted and they could not properly formulate rational decisions.

The leaders of Memphis, which was an important religious center,  were deceived. In their religious pursuits, they became gullible and followed bad spiritual counsel.

All the leaders of Egypt who should have been the cornerstones of the nation to bring knowledge and wisdom for the guidance of the country, instead, led Egypt astray.

For the oppressors who conspire to subjugate God's people using administrative weapons and spiritual deception, the Lord has means of His own to render the  schemers mentally  unable to plan and execute their ambitions.

Bless the Lord who saves His people from oppressors no matter how formidable they appear.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO IS NOT MOCKED

Ezekiel chapter 35 verses 1 - 3 reads this way;

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, set your face against Mount Seir; prophesy against it  and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand against you and make you a desolate waste.

This prohecy of woe against Mount Seir stems from their ancient hostility against the land of Israel. As it says in verses 5 - 6;

“‘Because you harbored an ancient hostility and delivered the Israelites over to the sword at the time of their calamity, the time their punishment reached its climax, therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will give you over to bloodshed and it will pursue you.

The kingdom of Mount Seir wrongly positioned themselves against the kingdom of Israel because the Lord had explicitly instructed Israel as they were approaching the promised land, not to claim any of the land of Mount Seir because He had given it to Esau, the brother of their forefather, Jacob.  Deuteronomy chapter 2 verse 5 says it this way;

don't contend with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on; because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession.

Nevertheless, Mount Seir, in verses 10 - 11 of Ezekiel chapter 35, claimed Israel as their possesion. The passage says this;

 “‘Because you have said, “These two nations and countries will be ours and we will take possession of them,” even though I the Lord was there, therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will treat you in accordance with the anger and jealousy you showed in your hatred of them and I will make myself known among them when I judge you.

Most offensive about this claim over Israel by the Kingdom of Mount Seir, was that it overlooked that fact that Lord, God of Jacob was there even though it was He who underwrote their protection from invasion by the approaching Israelites.

Because of their hatred towards Israel while they  ignored the presence of the Lord, the prophecy declared that their judgement would be according to their behaviour and attitude toward the kingdom of Israel.

In present times, the enemies of God's people have presumed to oppress the Lord's inheritance as though the Lord Himself were not there and they have rashly spoken against them and against the Lord.

In fact, the Lord is there and His judgement looms over those who do not have His salvation which is given as a gift through believing in Jesus, the one who died and shed His blood to pay for our sins.

Amen.