OUR LORD WHO PAID A VERY HIGH PRICE  TO SAVE US

Ezekiel chapter 19 verse 3 - 5 is an excerpt from a chapter that Ezekiel called a lament. It reads this way;

She brought up one of her cubs, and he became a strong lion.

He learned to tear the prey and he became a man-eater.

The nations heard about him, and he was trapped in their pit. They led him with hooks to the land of Egypt.

“‘When she saw her hope unfulfilled,  her expectation gone, she took another of her cubs and made him a strong lion.

A lament as defined  as a passionate expression of grief  and sorrow perhaps marked by weeping and wailing.

The portion of the chapter in view here, metaphorically describes a lioness who selected one of her cubs and trained him to be a strong lion. He became  mighty and fierce but he was captured in a pit and dragged to the land of Egypt. 

The lioness, upon seeing that her cub that she had placed her hope in had  failed, took another of her cubs and made him a strong lion.

The first cub represents the children of Israel entering Egypt and being trapped there as slaves. Snared as they were, the children of Israel needed the Lord's mighty hand to free them from the oppression and bondage they were under.

The second cub was the nation of Israel being raised to be a strong nation among nations. The second cub was raised to be mighty and able to enforce its own security.

The lioness represents the kingdom of Zion whose intention was to use the children of Israel to fulfill the mandates of heaven to establish the kingdom of God on the earth.

The lamentation of Ezekiel chapter 19 records the grief that accompanies the working of God's holy purpose on the earth while encountering the fierce resistance of mankind against the purposes of God sometimes even without them realizing it.

As Jesus prayed on the cross just before He died  in Luke Chapter 23 verse 34, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Saving mankind from the snare of their fall into sin and death and redeeming them back to life was an arduous, grievious and costly undertaking by the Lord our God.

Bless the Lord for bearing that cost to pay for our redemption. 

Amen.