Last week I came across a passage while preparing for our midweek service. We didn’t have a missionary scheduled so I was planning to preach the message. The message was from Matthew 5:13 and we being the salt of the earth. I was running references on salt and a curious passage raised its head in Ezekiel 16. It is always amazing to me that while studying a certain topic or thought, certain other things pop into your mind. Once these thoughts are birthed in my mind, I find myself desiring to develop them, so I have been reading and meditating on this Ezekiel portion of scripture. The chapter is a sad one, but God in His mercy and grace does the magnificent. It is a picture of ancient Israel before she became a nation. It is also a picture of you and me, lost and in our wretched sinful condition. It also reveals to us that after God saved Israel, they turned their backs to the Lord in seeking other gods and I see that with God’s people today. I have often said from the pulpit that perhaps the scariest verse in the Bible for me pastoring a church is Revelation 3:14-19. The church was lukewarm, room temperature, and they were vomited out of God’s mouth. They were blessed materially, but spiritually they were blind, naked, and wretched. This passage today in Ezekiel would be a parallel passage in my thinking. God had been so good to them and yet God was thoroughly despised by them. Let’s look at some things about Israel and ourselves.

  1. Their Condition. 16:1-6a. The nation of Israel was born in the land occupied by the Amorites and the Hittites. The conception pictorially is that the peoples of this parcel of land were their parents. These people, the Canaanites, were a pagan people that cared little for children, often using them as human sacrifices in their godless rituals. The prophet Ezekiel is instructed to write to them reminding them of their beginning. They were outcasts, unwanted, and evidently loathed so much that they were put out into fields to die immediately after being born. These peoples weren’t even chosen to be sacrificed to the pagan gods. That is how much they were thought of. They were left to die and nobody in Canaan cared. They were left in an open field (v.5) waiting on predators to devour them. Their little, small, frail bodies, bloody and still attached to the placenta by the umbilical cord (6a). That was also a picture of us. We were lost in our sinful condition with no hope whatsoever. We were born alienated and enemies of God. The world, with the exception of our families, didn’t give us much of a thought. We weren’t important in the world population’s mind. Just another baby. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The world today still looks at babies as a problem. The globalist, one world order types, would love to see the population of the world go from 8 billion to 500 million. The big questions in my mind are things like, “Who has to leave (die) and who makes that decision?” We have an election coming up in the United States in about a month and a half. One of the major items that will drive many people to vote is the right to kill your baby, abortion. In the presidential debate a few days ago, this topic came up and third trimester abortion was mentioned. One of the moderators interjected herself by saying there were no states that allowed this. Perhaps she is ignorant concerning this statement or she just lied, but at least eight states allow third trimester abortions as well as the District of Columbia. We don’t value babies, so let’s not think too highly of ourselves thinking we are so much better than those of ancient times morally.
  2. Their Crowning. 16:8-14. The Lord passed by seeing the sad condition of this throw-away baby and had compassion. No one had pity on the baby, but God did. The baby was helpless in itself, but God could, and God did have compassion. The Lord said “live” twice and when God speaks it happens (v.6b). The Lord spread His skirt (protection) over the baby, and nothing would nor could happen to that little child. The Lord washed and salted (killing bacteria and drying the skin) of the baby. The baby was rubbed with olive oil and then clothed in royal garments and fed the best of foods. This little nation was loved by God, protected by God, and shown off to all those other nations by the blessings God bestowed on her. Is that not what the Lord did for you and me as well? The goodness of God in our lives is beyond comprehension to me. The Lord has done so much for me that I can’t express it verbally to the extent I want. At this moment the song “The Love of God” is rolling in my head. The last verse says, “Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.” Yet a great tragedy had happened.
  3. Their Cruelty. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” That phrase is from Shakespeare and his “King Lear.” I think that sentiment must have been in the Lord’s mind. Notice the verses from 16:15-34. The prophet describes the sins of Israel. God made them beautiful and they took that beauty and became a harlot. The nation chose to be unfaithful to the Lord embracing the godless practices of the Canaanite peoples. God’s blessings and him giving them the desires of their hearts was met with ingratitude and disloyalty. I often think about people that have walked through the doors of our church that were in a bad spot personally. Family issues, moral problems, financial troubles just to name a few. Over a short period of time, they saw light at the end of the tunnel. The sun was brighter and God had blessed their obedience. The jobs got better, the families got stronger but before long they forgot what God had done only to think foolishly “look what I have done, I am so smart, I must be a genius.” Perhaps the number one aggravation I have is ingratitude when it is in the life of a Christian. When our children were small, they would receive gifts and small amounts of money for holidays and birthdays. Deb would not allow our kids to use the gift or spend the money until they wrote a “thank you note” to the sender. The church has helped hundreds over the years, but once the help was received it was adios amigo. “When gratitude dies on the altar of a man’s heart that man is well-nigh hopeless” were words spoken by the great Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. Israel had turned her back on the Lord and gone after the gods of Canaan using what God had given her materially in her seductions. Are we not prone to wander? Do we not act like Israel with our unfaithfulness? Do we not nuzzle up to the world when we should be drawing night to the Lord?

My space today is gone but a quick final thought. God chastised His nation, Israel. Several times in her history He has used invading armies to call Israel to repentance. For Christians, He uses chastisement also. When chastisement comes into our lives, may it drive us to the Lord in repentance. If that is the response, fellowship can be restored. Israel had the promise that God would remember His covenant He had made with Abraham (16:60). We have the promise of forgiveness in I John 1:7-9.