“When I {the Lord} shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food.” Ezekiel 5:16
Have you
ever had one of those days where enough is enough? Most of us will answer yes to this
question. The bills are piling up and
then the car breaks down. You’re running
late on a project at work and your boss comes by to give you yet another project
to complete in an even shorter timeframe.
There is only so much we can take before we explode. There is always that point at which we throw
up our hands and lose it. In most cases
someone is going to get the outburst of our frustration, whether they deserved
it or not.
We have studied in many past devotionals that God is immutable, never changing. His love for us today is equal to His love for King David, Moses, Paul, Peter and the other saints from the scripture. He can neither love us any more, nor any less than He does today. We adhere to this principle, and focus much of our attention on His loving grace and mercy. It’s important that we do not lose sight of the fact that God is all powerful and capable of unbelievable wrath, like nothing we have ever experienced in our lifetime. He is truly immutable, but that does not only refer to his loving side. Here in the 5th chapter of the book of Ezekiel we read about the city of Jerusalem and His wrath that would fall down upon them. His chosen city, the city set up on a hill, where His temple was built and the Arc of the Covenant was held. When His wrath is poured out upon this city, devastation, chaos and mourning are heard in the streets.
I reference this scripture this morning because God is to be feared even today. It is my hypothesis that we have forgotten just how vengeful and omnipotent God truly is. He is not this loving Santa Claus that will give us everything we want in life. He is a Father and fully capable of disciplining His children out of pure love whenever necessary. You see it is my belief that God has zero tolerance for sin. Time and time He has demonstrated His wrath over the sinful nature of mankind and their blatant disobedience of His word. This is not a reality show or a game called life, this is living for Him and His Kingdom, and nothing else. Understand that the only reason you have breath each day is to glorify Him, and to serve Him and build up His Kingdom.
We have studied in many past devotionals that God is immutable, never changing. His love for us today is equal to His love for King David, Moses, Paul, Peter and the other saints from the scripture. He can neither love us any more, nor any less than He does today. We adhere to this principle, and focus much of our attention on His loving grace and mercy. It’s important that we do not lose sight of the fact that God is all powerful and capable of unbelievable wrath, like nothing we have ever experienced in our lifetime. He is truly immutable, but that does not only refer to his loving side. Here in the 5th chapter of the book of Ezekiel we read about the city of Jerusalem and His wrath that would fall down upon them. His chosen city, the city set up on a hill, where His temple was built and the Arc of the Covenant was held. When His wrath is poured out upon this city, devastation, chaos and mourning are heard in the streets.
I reference this scripture this morning because God is to be feared even today. It is my hypothesis that we have forgotten just how vengeful and omnipotent God truly is. He is not this loving Santa Claus that will give us everything we want in life. He is a Father and fully capable of disciplining His children out of pure love whenever necessary. You see it is my belief that God has zero tolerance for sin. Time and time He has demonstrated His wrath over the sinful nature of mankind and their blatant disobedience of His word. This is not a reality show or a game called life, this is living for Him and His Kingdom, and nothing else. Understand that the only reason you have breath each day is to glorify Him, and to serve Him and build up His Kingdom.
You and I are unbelievably sinful beings.
From the moment we awake until the moment we lay our head upon the
pillow, sin fills our thoughts, our actions and our heart. As a society, the human race has fallen to a
place in history where our actions, our wickedness and debauchery far outweigh
anything in the scriptures from those societies of old that fully experienced
God’s wrath and were completely wiped off the map. Why are we still here? There is only one reason that God has not
poured out His wrath on you and I. That
one reason is the man Jesus Christ. When
God sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross, the sins of mankind were placed upon
Him. Not just the sins of those standing
on the hill in Jerusalem watching that day, no, the sins of all mankind before
and those to come after. God’s wrath that
was poured out on Sodom, and the wrath He poured out on Jerusalem, and the
plagues He poured out on Egypt are nothing compared to the wrath He poured out
onto His own Son, hanging on that cross.
Grasp this, if nothing else when you read John 3:16 from here
forward. Jesus stands between you and God. If God were to look down upon the earth He would see the evil and unrighteousness of mankind. Yet, with Jesus as our Savior and Lord, He sees us as forgiven, washed clean and redeemed. Imagine Jesus as a filter between you and God, taking away all of the sin that corrupts our lives and heart, such that we are presented fully righteous and worthy of God’s perfect heaven. Only Jesus can act for us in this manner, for He alone was perfect through His life, death and resurrection. Perfect in God’s eyes and worthy of God’s loving grace and mercy. Therefore through Him we are given this same grace and mercy. The opposite is also true though. Those without Christ as their Savior will stand before God one day on their own and try to justify the sins of their past and their worthiness, which will fall well short of the perfection required.
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