SPIRITUAL ADULTERY

“But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it.”  (Ezekiel 16:15) 

God is love—and He is a jealous God.  He will share us with no other lover.  God demands that we who are loved absolutely, return that love to Him exclusively.  To fail to love the Lord with all our being is tantamount to spiritual adultery.  With graphic words that are enough to make a sailor blush, Ezekiel 16 describes the unfaithfulness of Israel.  These lessons are still applicable to the church today as the bride of Christ. 

The chapter begins with a description of Israel’s pitiful condition (v.1-5).  God tells how He came to love them.  They were a tiny people without promise of life.  Like a baby abandoned at birth—cast away and without hope—that is a picture of their spiritual condition.  There was nothing they could do to save themselves.  That is our state without Christ.  We are hopeless and helpless, dying in our sins. 

The saga continues with a picture of God’s precious compassion (v.6-14).  In their death throes, God reached out to them in sovereign grace and imparted life to them.  Not only did He rescue them, He cared for them as they grew, and brought them into His heart as His bride—clothing them and entering a covenant with them.  They were exalted as the bride of the King.  The church is the Bride of Christ through His grace as He has redeemed us, and promised us His fidelity.  He has clothed us in righteousness.  How could we be unfaithful to such a Lover? 

Israel did, and we may.  Next we witness Israel’s pornographic corruption (v.15-34).  Pornographic is the best description for the vile manner in which they gave themselves to idols.  Corruption defines the moral filth that marked their depravity.  God is serious about this sin.  The first two of the Ten Commandments—those fundamental moral standards—demand that we worship God exclusively and properly.  They were insatiable in their idolatry—even offering their children as sacrifices!  When we look lustfully at the things of this world, surrender our hearts to them, and give that which God has bestowed on us to another, it is a foul and filthy thing!  So quickly we forget the goodness of God and wander from the Lover of our Soul! 

This brought God’s painful correction (v.35-59).  God would begin by exposing them to shame by the heathen nations with whom they had cavorted.  As death was the penalty for those who committed physical adultery, the death of multitudes in Israel would be the tragic consequence of their lewd behavior.  God loves us too much to let us go.  It is not only for His glory, but for our good as well, that He uses the chastening rod to break us of our rebellion.  God may have straying children, who become suffering children, but He will not have spoiled children! 

The chastening will do its job as the chapter closes with God’s promised covenant (v.60-63).  The covenant God makes is an everlasting one.  Their unfaithfulness would not void God’s everlasting love.  There is coming a day when Israel will return with tears of repentance to the Lord.  They will find Him waiting with open arms!  Someone has said, “It is impossible for you to do anything that would make God love you more and impossible for you to do anything that would make Him love you less!”  Let us love Him with all we are!

EVERLASTING LOVE

The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”  (Jeremiah 31:3)

God’s love for His people is everlasting.  If there were ever a people who deserved to be forsaken, it would have been the nation of Israel.  Their rebellion was met with God’s discipline, but He reminds them in this thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah’s prophecy that though He disciplines them, He will not desert them.  They are covenant people, and God will be faithful to His promise, even when His children are not.  Christians in this dispensation are under the New Covenant, and the God of Israel is our God.  He cannot be other than loving to us for it is His immutable nature.

Some would say that such doctrine gives a license to sin, and they want you to believe God’s love is conditional—rooted in our changeable nature rather than in God’s unchanging one.  The reality is that His love will not let us go.  No matter what it takes to bring us back to Himself, God will exert that pressure.  He holds us in His hand and no one can extract us.  Should we seek to foolishly break His grasp, He squeezes ever tighter.  Picture a small child holding his father’s hands as they cross a busy street.  The little fellow may want to pull away—even cry that he is being restrained—but what kind of father would let him loose?  No, love squeezes tight.  If we love like this, how much greater is God’s everlasting love!

God speaks of how Israel received grace (v.2).  Grace is God’s unmerited favor.  It is given by the decree of God based solely on His nature and having nothing to do with any merit of ours.  We did not deserve grace when God gave it at the first and we cannot keep it because we deserve it at the last.  From start to finish, it is all of grace and all of God! 

God’s everlasting love means that it was set on us before the world was created.  Before there was a man or woman formed by God, He knew you and had purposed to love you.  In time, you who were chosen by Him from eternity, were regenerated by the Spirit—God’s love indwelling you and sealing you as His own.  When time shall be no more, His everlasting love remains and our love for Him will be perfected.

The consideration of God’s everlasting love is meant to lead to celebration (v.4-9).  Israel will go through some suffering yet.  They are a people—save for a remnant—still in unbelief.  That will change.  God’s love for them will prevail, and what a day of rejoicing that will be when God brings them home!  We may be sure that though God allows us to go through fiery trials, it is not evidence of His condemnation, but His compassion.  He is refining us—consuming the dross—so that only the pure gold remains.  At all times we can glory in His grace, and worship the Eternal God of everlasting love!  Imagine what it will be like when we reach heaven with all the redeemed of all the ages in an environment of infinite love!  That is the joy that awaits.  We can begin to experience a foretaste today by meditating upon the everlasting love of God.  The Lord our Shepherd will gather all straying sheep of His flock (v.10).  He is our Redeemer (v.11).  Praise His name!

WHEN I SEE THE BLOOD

Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you  (Exodus 12:13a)

The Passover was instituted for a memorial meal to remind Israel how God set them free from the bondage of Egypt.  The term came from the promise of God that the Death Angel would “pass over” the judgment of any house marked by the blood.  When Jesus gathered His disciples in the Upper Room mere hours before He was offered up as the Lamb of God, they met to commemorate the Passover.  With those elements, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper—the old covenant giving way to the new—as it would be fulfilled in Christ.  Paul said, “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.”  (1 Cor.5:7b)

The Passover speaks to THE CONSEQUENCE OF OUR SIN (Ex.12:12-13).  Sin is the reason the lamb had to die—and why Jesus, the Lamb of God, did.  The justice of God demanded payment for sin—and that payment was death.  The Passover Lamb’s blood was shed, so that we might be spared.  Being a Jew did not exempt them from the need to apply the blood.  If they did not, they would have been judged.  Being an Egyptian did not exclude them from being spared.  Had they applied the blood, they would have lived.  Only the blood makes the difference!

The Passover also reminds us of THE COST OF OUR SALVATION (Ex.12:1-7).  The price of redemption from enslavement was the blood of a lamb.  That is what it cost for us to be redeemed—the blood of Christ, as of a Lamb (see 1 Pet.1:18-19).  God took the initiative in revealing the plan of salvation to Moses.  While it is true, they had to respond in faith and obedience, the act of deliverance was by the power and according to the plan of God.  God’s plan was ever to save us from sin by the Lamb of God.  Calvary was not an afterthought or just a response to our need.  Jesus is the Lamb “foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet.1:20).

Furthermore, the Passover teaches about THE CONFESSION OF OUR SAVIOR (Ex.12:7,13).  This was a public matter—a visible sign.  It set apart those who were believers in testimony to all who witnessed the blood.  Likewise, those who have the blood applied to them today are to confess the Lamb of God (Rom.10:9-10).  It was an act of faith to trust the blood of a lamb to spare the firstborn from wrath, but they trusted the promise of God.  How much faith did they need?  Just enough to apply the blood!  Then, they would be like an army ready to move out in obedience with the Lord going before them.  The illustration should be plain for the Christian.  We are saved by faith in the blood of the Lamb.  It is not the amount of our faith, but the object of our faith that saves us.  Saving faith is expressed in a willingness to identify with and follow the Lamb of God.

Has the blood been applied to your life?

GOD IS NOT THROUGH WITH THE JEW

 

“And so all Israel will be saved….”  (Romans 11:26a)

It would only take one word to convince me of the existence of God and the authority of Scripture: ISRAEL.  There is no explanation for how the Jews have survived and thrived unless God exists and the Bible is true.  Jews comprise less than a quarter of 1% of the world’s population, yet, they have known more prejudice and persecution than any race.  The four most influential people in human history are all Jews: Moses, Jesus, Paul and Marx.  This tiny nation is continually at the center of world events.  Why?  They are God’s chosen people.  Paul wants us to know that God is not through with the Jew!

When the church was born on the Day of Pentecost, it was exclusively Jewish.  A Jew named Peter preached about a Jewish Messiah and about 3,000 Jews were converted.  As the Gospel penetrated the Roman world, increasingly there was receptivity by Gentiles, and rejection by most Jews—and judicial hardness set in to a nation that predominately rejected Christ.  Still, God has never lacked a remnant of Jews who were not only racially identified with Abraham’s line, but religiously infused with Abraham’s faith!  This is spiritual Israel—and though they are few, there are Messianic Jews today—not only born with Abraham’s DNA, but born again in Christ (Rom.11:1-6)!

The tragedy of Israel, as a whole, is a nation of great privilege, but grave rebellion.  Prophet after prophet issued a call to repentance. They were chastened and carried into captivity.  At last, God sent His Son to them, but they demanded His death.  God raised Him from the dead, and still they would not believe.  No one—Jew or Gentile—can harden their heart for so long without it having a spiritually deadening effect.  That blindness is the judgment of God for those who refuse to see and come to the Light (Rom.11:7-10).

Paul reaches into the realm of agriculture to illustrate this spiritual principle (Rom.11:11-24).  The salvation of the Gentiles has Jewish roots—the law given to Israel convicts us of sin.  The Savior who converts us was a Jew.  The Apostles who shared the Gospel were Jews.  I’m a Christian today because of the outreach of Jewish missionaries 2,000 years ago!  Israel is God’s cultivated olive tree.  Gentiles are branches of a wild olive tree.  The branches of unbelieving Jews were broken off, and believing Gentile branches were grafted in.  God is looking for fruit, and Israel as a nation had none, and so were judged—as will Gentiles be who spurn His salvation.

 God is not through with the Jew!  They will be grafted back in!  God’s covenant to Abraham was a covenant of grace with that man and his descendants.  It was renewed with Isaac and Jacob, and expanded with David.  Those promises cannot be broken (Rom.11:25-32).  That covenant was unconditional.  Israel’s sin brought chastisement and is still doing so today, but God has not and cannot ultimately cast them away!  The world is turning once more against the Jews—even our own government—which will bring our destruction.  Christ will return and deliver Israel, ushering in earth’s golden age!  How exciting!  Let’s sing the doxology (Rom.11:33-36)!