Wednesday 17 Jul 2013

Wednesday Reading: Ezekiel 17:11-21

Key Verse: Ezekiel 17:18
18  Seeing he despised the oath by breaking the covenant, when, lo, he had given his hand, and hath done all these things, he shall not escape.

Devotion:
I used to find reading through the Old Testament hard work, but the more I get to know God the more I understand His Word as He explains it to me with my daily devotions. I do not pretend to understand as much as others who have given their life to studying His Word and I do not pretend to be able to teach everyone, but I am willing to give out what I understand as being the truth because God gives me understanding as I need it!

The prophets had a wonderful, if frightening, relationship with God because He would have to explain things to them in ways in which the world would understand. They then had to make sure what they had heard was from God before giving that truth to the people. If they got it wrong it would mean death! No second chances! But each one of us who steps forward to give other people God’s Word should see it in the same light – we are giving out God’s Word and we are an example to Him. That means we need to give out the truth and live that same truth.

In this case the prophet was caught between telling the king of his horrible sin or risking God’s wrath by not telling him. No real contest when we look at it like that, but I’m sure Ezekiel would have though hard about this and about the risk to his own life. When we look at good and bad we often think of bad things against bad people as being ok in some way because they are bad people. Some religions even say that their people should lie to other non-believers. But God is reminding Zedekiah and all of Israel that we need to tell the truth!

If we give out a promise it must be kept as a promise. Just because we give it out to our enemy does not mean that we can break it as soon as we want to! Oh I know this is going to cause many people to argue, but then when has God’s Word not cause arguments amongst men? We need to take God’s Word as the absolute truth and we need to make sure that we follow on from this example; we need to keep our promises just as God has kept every single one of them to us – even though we act against Him!

Points to Ponder:
Do you trust God’s Word?

Do you think others trust your word?