{"id":10782,"date":"2020-08-04T20:00:14","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T03:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/ezekiel-21_18-32-copy\/"},"modified":"2020-08-02T16:08:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-02T23:08:49","slug":"ezekiel-22_1-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/ezekiel-22_1-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Trouble Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ezekiel 22:1-16\u00a0 Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hi GAMErs,<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Ezekiel 22:1-16.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n

Ezekiel 22:1-5 (NIV)\u00a0<\/strong>
\n1\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0The word of the\u00a0LORD\u00a0came to me:
\n2\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable practices
\n3\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign\u00a0LORD\u00a0says: O city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst and defiles herself by making idols,
\n4\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0you have become guilty because of the blood you have shed and have become defiled by the idols you have made. You have brought your days to a close, and the end of your years has come. Therefore I will make you an object of scorn to the nations and a laughingstock to all the countries.
\n5\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Those who are near and those who are far away will mock you, O infamous city, full of turmoil.<\/em><\/p>\n

On verses 1-5:\u00a0 In another message that God gives to Ezekiel for the city of Jerusalem, God confirms that it was the people of Jerusalem who brought trouble upon themselves.\u00a0 He describes Jerusalem as the \u201ccity that brings on herself doom by shedding blood\u201d (v3), that \u201cdefiles herself by making idols\u201d (v3), who has \u201cbecome defiled by the idols you have made\u201d (v4) and \u201cbrought your days to a close\u201d (v4).<\/p>\n

What can we learn from this?\u00a0\u00a0When we sin against God or against others, we are ultimately bringing trouble on ourselves, making our lives harder than they need to be, and cutting short our own days.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0On the other hand, as Psalm 34:12-14 says, \u201cWhoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.\u201d Praise God that Jesus Christ came and died on the cross so as to lengthen our days and to erase the biggest forms of trouble that we get ourselves into with our sin.<\/p>\n

Ezekiel 22:6-16 (NIV)<\/strong>
\n6\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“‘See how each of the princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood.
\n7\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0In you they have treated father and mother with contempt; in you they have oppressed the alien and mistreated the fatherless and the widow.
\n8\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths.
\n9\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0In you are slanderous men bent on shedding blood; in you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts.
\n10\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0In you are those who dishonor their fathers’ bed; in you are those who violate women during their period, when they are ceremonially unclean.
\n11\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0In you one man commits a detestable offense with his neighbor’s wife, another shamefully defiles his daughter-in-law, and another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter.
\n12\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign\u00a0LORD.
\n13\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“‘I will surely strike my hands together at the unjust gain you have made and at the blood you have shed in your midst.
\n14\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the day I deal with you? I the\u00a0LORD\u00a0have spoken, and I will do it.
\n15\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0I will disperse you among the nations and scatter you through the countries; and I will put an end to your uncleanness.
\n16\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0When you have been defiled in the eyes of the nations, you will know that I am the\u00a0LORD.'”
\n<\/em>
\nOn verses 6-16:\u00a0 Notice that in verses 6-12 the words \u201cin you\u201d are repeated over and over, as God points out the sins that He sees His people committing in Jerusalem.\u00a0 Then in verses 13 to 16 God describes what He will do about such sins and, in particular, the punishment He would dole out to show the Israelites that truly He is the Lord.<\/p>\n

Similarly,\u00a0when God saw all the sins in us, He did something about it<\/strong>.\u00a0 Fortunately for us what God did was punish His Son Jesus instead of us, so that we could be forgiven and brought near to Him.\u00a0\u00a0Whereas we deserved a similar fate as the one Jerusalem is described as deserving in these verses, God showed us great mercy instead and did a new work in us.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank You, Jesus, that when You saw so much sin, injustice, and hypocrisy in me, You showed me incredible mercy.\u00a0 You came and You died on the cross to pay for all my sin, injustice and hypocrisy, so that instead of being scattered from You, I could be gathered to You.\u00a0 Thank You that through You the old self in me has died and that in You I have a new identity and a new life.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 name, AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi GAMErs,<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Ezekiel 22:1-16.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n

Ezekiel 22:1-5 (NIV)\u00a0
\n1\u00a0\u00a0The word of the\u00a0LORD\u00a0came to me:\u00a0
\n2\u00a0\u00a0“Son of man, will you judge her? Will you judge this city of bloodshed? Then confront her with all her detestable practices\u00a0
\n3\u00a0\u00a0and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign\u00a0LORD\u00a0says: O city that brings on herself doom by shedding blood in her midst and defiles herself by making idols,\u00a0
\n4\u00a0\u00a0you have become guilty because of the blood you have shed and have become defiled by the idols you have made. You have brought your days to a close, and the end of your years has come. Therefore I will make you an object of scorn to the nations and a laughingstock to all the countries.\u00a0
\n5\u00a0\u00a0Those who are near and those who are far away will mock you, O infamous city, full of turmoil.
\n\u00a0
\nOn verses 1-5:\u00a0 In another message that God gives to Ezekiel for the city of Jerusalem, God confirms that it was the people of Jerusalem who brought trouble upon themselves.\u00a0 He describes Jerusalem as the \u201ccity that brings on herself doom by shedding blood\u201d (v3), that \u201cdefiles herself by making idols\u201d (v3), who has \u201cbecome defiled by the idols you have made\u201d (v4) and \u201cbrought your days to a close\u201d (v4).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10783,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10782\/revisions\/10783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}