Now here is an interesting thought.
In today’s reading from the One-Year Bible, God uses the prophet Ezekial to tell the Hebrews that the future deliverance from bondage would not happen because of national goodness, but instead for the sake of God’s holy name.
God knew that the world was seeing the Israelites’ shameful behavior and was losing respect for God as a result.
God would allow a season of punishment at the hands of pagan nations lusting for payback time toward the Hebrews who had tormented them in years past.
But God would also draw the line eventually and rescue enough of the Hebrews to start rebuilding the Promised Land nation.
If you’d like to read this fascinating sequence, it is found in Ezekial 35-36.
Here is what really got my attention this morning:
“Then the nations around you that remain will know that I the Lord have rebuilt what was destroy and have replanted what was desolate. I the Lord have spoken and I will do it” (Ezekial 36:36).
Why is this passage significant?
It’s because God had you in mind when He patiently restrained His hand of judgment 2,600 years ago, that’s why.
Huh?
I want to say this as simply as possible.
God made a promise to Abraham that all mankind would be blessed through his seed.
Later, God promised David — from the seed of Abraham — that the future Messiah for all mankind would come through his seed.
If the people of God were wiped out because of deserved destruction, the promises to Abraham and David would have failed.
The Word of Truth promised in the days before Jesus would not have come to life in the flesh of Mary’s firstborn Son, the perfect Messiah from the line of David.
If you were to have the hope of accepting Jesus as Savior generations later, then God could not abandon His promise simply because of the sins of His Promised Land people.
God loved you too much in advance to allow that promise failure to happen.
And so He bit His lip in unimaginable ways and restored that which deserved destruction.
He did so to show the world that He could rebuild and replant what sinful man had destroyed.
“I will rebuild it,” He said.
And He did.
For you.
For me.
And, ultimately, for Himself.
Thank God.
Please, my friend, whatever you do today, whether in deed or in word, do it all for the glory of your God in heaven.
Lift up His name in the eyes of all those around you.
God saved us to shine, not whine.
God saved us to serve, not just observe.
Lift up His name in all ways.
God saved sinful Israel for the sake of His name and the sake of your soul.
Do all you can today for the sake of His name and for the sake of another’s soul.
As always, I love you
Martin
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