YEAR 2, WEEK 37, Day 5, Friday, 15 September 2023

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Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Friday, 15 September 2023:

Ezekiel 16:15, 16 — But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore.

God describes His relationship with His people as a marriage and describes sin as adultery. It starts when pride creeps in, and we become selfish, self-centered, and self-righteous; we start to believe that the talents, abilities, resources, and opportunities God gave us are from ourselves and for ourselves. We seek to please ourselves more than we seek to please God, and we are motivated by our own desires, passions, and emotions rather than by the Holy Spirit.

Ezekiel 16:15, 30-34 — How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute…. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

How differently does God describe sin than your church describes sin? While we tend to make light of sin, God describes it in the worst way, comparing it to unimaginable whoring and sin deserving of death. To fully appreciate the grace offered through Jesus, we must fully understand the severity of our sin and the nature of the One against whom we have sinned. True love for Jesus makes unthinkable sin unthinkable again. How well does the church communicate these words today? When was the last time you heard your pastor or preacher use the word sin or the word repent?

“How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God?” A good question to continually meditate upon as you grow in your appreciation for Jesus and His grace and as you grow in your desire to have His heart.

Ezekiel 16:20 — And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured.

When we stop truly loving God and draw away from Him, we lose our ability and desire to truly love others. People become instruments for our own pleasure, and when they do not fulfill our perceived needs, we view them as obstacles to happiness and resent them. One of the first places love is lost is within the family, those closest to us to affect us the most. This is why so many marriages fail today and why so many kids lose the benefit of sacrificial parenting.

Ezekiel 16:22 — And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

All sin is the product of forgetting the reality of our relationship with God and forgetting the mercy and grace we depend on.

Ezekiel 16:28 — You played the whore also with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied; yes, you played the whore with them, and still you were not satisfied.

Sin is a lack of satisfaction with God and with His provision in your life. We want more than what God desires for us.

Ezekiel 16:48 – As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done.

God expects more from those who claim to know Him and follow Him. When a Christian sins like an un-believer, his sins are actually much worse than those of the unbeliever.

Ezekiel 16:49 – Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

Sodom is most remembered for “sodomy” and the terrible sin of homosexuality. However, God points out that the root of that sin was pride, gluttony, and self-centeredness. In their prosperity, they forgot God and became lawless to the basest degree. This is now a popular verse within the homosexual community who claim that it implies that homosexuality was not really the issue that brought about God’s judgment in Sodom (where we get the word sodomy) and Gomorrah. However, many, many other verses in the Bible, such as those found in Romans 1, reveal otherwise.

Ezekiel 16:59, 60 — For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant.

God’s ultimate aim is reconciliation, and He has given us, His ambassadors, the mission of reconciliation. Reconciliation usually includes the forgiveness of sin but does not include acceptance of sin. We must reconcile with God on His terms, starting with repentance.

Ezekiel 16:60-63 — Yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed…. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.

Despite our whoredom, sin deserving of death, God establishes a new, undeserved, marriage covenant with us that should leave us totally humbled, speechless, grateful, submissive, and obedient. To sin (whore) again should be totally unthinkable. What is your response to grace?

Hebrews 2:1, 3 — Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it…. how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?

You must pay very close attention to God’s word, not just casually reading it but meditating upon it and applying it each day. We are always in danger of drifting away from Jesus’ side. Grace is not a license to be complacent; quite the contrary, grace should compel us to strive with all our might for holiness and unity with Christ. As the Greatest Commandment says, we must love the Lord our God not only with all our heart and soul, but also with all our mind and strength. (Luke 10:27) Loving as we are called to requires diligent mental and physical effort – study and practice.

• 2 Timothy 2:15 — Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
• 1 Timothy 4:15 — Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.
• Hebrews 5:14 — But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
• 2 Peter 1:10 — Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.
• 1 John 3:7-10 — Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

The ‘casual Christian’ doesn’t really understand the value of grace. If you were gifted a $200,000 car, would you care for it differently than you would an old beater car? How much more valuable is the grace you have received through the blood of Jesus? How do you treat this magnificent gift from God? The Bible says that carelessly continuing in sin is trampling on the blood of Jesus, profaning His Name, and outraging the Holy Spirit. (Hebrews 10:26-29)

• Hebrews 10:26-29 — For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

Saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, not by our deeds, we have been freed from the penalty of sin, are being freed from the power of sin in our lives, and will one day be freed from the presence of sin when Christ returns and makes all things new. As Paul pointed out, in this life, we will continue to struggle with sin – “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:18-19; see all of Romans 7) However, as Paul also pointed out, we must struggle with all our might against sin – “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27) The struggle against sin isn’t won halfheartedly; neither is genuine love halfhearted – “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)

• Hebrews 12:3-4 — Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

Finally, though we are called to struggle against sin and strive for holiness (despite being saved by faith and not works), we must do so relying on the power of the Holy Spirit and with complete confidence and joy that God will bring about our ultimate victory over sin despite our weakness and continual failures.

• Mark 10:27 — Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”
• Romans 6:6 — We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
• Hebrews 9:14 — How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
• Hebrews 10:14 — For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
• Philippians 2:13 — For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
• Philippians 1:6 — And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
• Romans 8:28, 29 — And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Hebrews 2:18 – And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them.

From Henry T. Blackaby — “You will never face a temptation so strong that God has not made complete provision for you to overcome it. God, out of His love, has done everything necessary for you to be victorious whenever you face temptation. He has clearly revealed His will to you in Scripture so that you will not be confused about the right thing to do. He has placed the Holy Spirit within you to guide you in your decisions and to convict you when you make harmful choices. With every temptation God also provides a way of escape so that you never have to yield to it (1 Cor. 10:13). Everything is in place for you to experience victory over every temptation.

God in His infinite love, however, has done even more to safeguard you from temptation. He has allowed Himself to suffer the full brunt of temptation. The very Son of God humbled Himself, taking on all the limitations of frail human flesh, and was tempted in every way that we are. Jesus knew what it was like to grow tired, to be hungry, to experience the same limitations we have; yet He was without sin. It is to this One that we turn when we are facing temptation. Ours is not an unsympathetic God who is unconcerned with our struggle to live righteously, but we follow a God who knows how difficult it is to resist sin and withstand temptation. We can approach Christ with confidence, knowing that He understands our plight. He knows how to aid us when we are tempted.”

“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 15 September 2023: Today, show appropriate appreciation for the grace you have received in Jesus by observing all that He commanded (Matthew 28:20), and share your joy with others.