Monday, September 7, 2015

Mon.’s Devo - If God is For Us…Who Can Be Against Us

Read: Ezekiel 35-37
Finally some hope! I know Ezekiel must have been happy to be able to deliver more than one sentence of hope and thirty of doom. Today’s is just the opposite. We start seeing more of the end and it is good. We start out with a judgment against the people of Seir which were one of Israel’s enemies. They spoke curses against Israel and it is now time for them to pay. They were happy when Israel was down but now the tables are going to be turned on them. To Israel, God reminds them that He is for them. He is going to multiply them and build up their waste places. It will be better than in their beginning. God was going to bring people back to Israel and other nations were not going to harm them anymore. God promised to make his name holy and greatly esteemed once more. God was not going to do this because they deserved it but because he wanted to clear his name.
God gave them the illustration of what it would look like in the famous chapter of the dry bones. God took Ezekiel to a valley full of dry bones and step by step showed him what death from life looks like. First there was a shaking and the bones got outer covering. Then their spirit returned and they could breathe the spirit of life. Then they became a great army. God gave him two sticks which stood for Israel and Judah and he told him to make them one stick because there was coming a day when his people would no longer be divided.
We have seen the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy when Israel became a nation in 1948. Even today, there is a prominent business man who is calling his Jewish brethren to move back to Israel. He was told by God to call His people home. God is not finished with his people. We, as Gentiles are spiritual Israel and God is calling us to become one people. Our covenant is through Jesus and he prayed that we all be one as He and the Father are one.
Lord, call us home to Your heart. Thank you that You are for us!

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