Month: November 2024
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11/16/24 “An Unfaithful Spouse” (Ez. 16)
Reading Time: 2 minutesEzekiel 16 is filled with language that will surely shock the first-time reader! The LORD recounts in metaphors how His people were like an abandoned child that He cared for. Eventually the child metaphor ultimately becomes a bride. Yet, this bride, despite all the love and care of the LORD trusts in…
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11/15/24 “Noah, Daniel, & Job” (Ez. 13-15)
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn Ezekiel 14:12-23 there’s a very interesting reference to Noah, Daniel, and Job, other characters from biblical history. God pronounces judgment upon Jerusalem and says that even if these men were there, they’d spare only their own lives by their righteousness (14:14). In Job’s time, when Satan appeared before the Lord, God…
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11/14/24 “Departure of Glory” (Ez. 10-12)
Reading Time: 2 minutesAs Ezekiel continues to lay out the consequences of Judah’s sin, we see a sobering picture of the departure of the glory of God from the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel again has a vision with the living creatures, here explicitly referred to as the cherubim (10:15) and the glory of the Lord…
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11/13/24 “Secret Sins” (Ez. 7-9)
Reading Time: 2 minutesEzekiel’s prophecy is continually filled with God’s judgment, and in Ezekiel 8 God gives the prophet a firsthand look at why His judgment was coming. Ezekiel is shown a total of four scenes that supported the justice of God’s wrath. First, there is an “image of jealousy” (8:5-6). While we don’t entirely…
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11/12/24 “No Other gods Before Me” (Ez. 4-6)
Reading Time: 2 minutesAs we saw yesterday, Ezekiel was amongst the first wave of captives taken from Jerusalem before the great destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and the second wave of captives. As such, when Ezekiel prophesies coming destruction in this text (the same destruction we saw recounted in Jeremiah and Lamentations) it’s still chronologically a future…
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11/11/24 “A Preview of Heaven” (Ez. 1-3)
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn Ezekiel 1-3 we see the prophet’s commissioning and his visionary encounter with heaven. Ezekiel was a prophet sent by God to the people of Judah during the captivity in Babylon. If you remember, Jeremiah the prophet was sent by God to plead with the people of Judah before the captivity. Then,…
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11/9/24 “Appealing to God’s Nature” (Lam. 3-5)
Reading Time: 2 minutesLamentations is truly filled with the vivid horrors of Judah’s destruction. It’s much easier to talk about it when we weren’t there, we don’t see the effects of Babylon’s siege. Yet, in clear terms the suffering of the people is explained in Lamentations. It’s described as worse than the destruction of Sodom…
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11/8/24 “The Ugly Consequences of Sin (Jer. 52-Lam. 2)
Reading Time: 2 minutesJeremiah’s book closes with a recounting of the final destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and the capture and punishment of King Zedekiah of Judah by the Babylonians. This transitions right into the book of Lamentations, which many believe was also written by Jeremiah although we can’t be 100 percent sure. Lamentations…
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11/7/24 “A Reminder of Who God Is” (Jer. 51)
Reading Time: 2 minutesToday’s passage continues the pronouncement of judgment that began yesterday in chapter 50. Babylon is going to be history. After God is finished with using them, they will be utterly destroyed without any remnant. Again, we know from history that this came to be because Babylon is no longer around despite being…
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11/6/24 God’s Judgment Upon Babylon (Jer. 50)
Reading Time: < 1 minuteClimaxing Jeremiah’s pronouncements upon the nations comes the word against Babylon in chapters 50-51. Just as Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Syria, the peoples of Kedar and Hazor, and Elam all stood under God’s judgment, so did Babylon. What is significant about this is that Babylon was at the time the…