Ezekiel 16:1-14

“Again the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ² “Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, ³ and say, ‘Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: “Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. ⁴ As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you; you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. ⁵ No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you; but you were thrown out into the open field, when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born.

⁶ “And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ ⁷ I made you thrive like a plant in the field; and you grew, matured, and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare.

⁸ “When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord God.

⁹ “Then I washed you in water; yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you with oil. ¹⁰ I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin; I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. ¹¹ I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, and a chain on your neck. ¹² And I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. ¹³ Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty. ¹⁴ Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you,” says the Lord God.”

Every day, our news cycles are overrun with the war that is going on in the Middle East. We hear about the missiles that are launched at or by Israel, and we hear about the loss of life and how many military personnel or civilians were killed. We get to see, as I did today, the Iron Dome defense system at work. Someone from my Facebook network had videos sent by a friend living in Israel. There is a hatred for Israel, and the media is naturally turned against her. Everything is skewed, and it seems that it is okay for the enemies of Israel to launch attacks but wrong for her to defend herself or try to hit back at the ones hurting her citizens.

Many in the Christian world have a messed-up view of Israel. Some think that God has abandoned Israel and that now, the local church has replaced Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. The passage that we have above is God telling us how He found Jerusalem as a baby, and no one cared for her. No one loved her, no one showed her the care to nurture her and to help her live. But God commanded her to live, verse 6. God made her grow and thrive, verse 7, and watched as she became beautiful. Then, God claimed her as His own, verse 8. God performed the act of marriage with the idea of covering her with His wings, and she became His own, Mine, verse 8.

God made her beautiful, made Jerusalem the desire of all the nations, and nation after nation pursued her. But she is God’s, and while at times she is wayward, at times she plays as the adulterous wife (see the rest of the chapter), God is faithful to her and always will be. The New Testament church has not replaced Israel. Paul spends three chapters in Romans telling us this: Romans 9-11. He, Paul, was evidence that God was not done with Israel because God redeemed him, a Jew. In Malachi 2:16, we are told that God hates divorce.

“For the LORD God of Israel says That He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘Therefore, take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.'”

God wrote the entire book of Hosea to tell us about Israel’s adultery and that even in that, God will redeem her and take her back. He will buy her back from her lovers, and she will be His. The entire point of Hosea 3 is that although Israel has been an adulterous’ wife,’ she will return and worship with David, her king, and seek the Lord in the latter days. In Deuteronomy 32: 8-10, we see that God chose Israel as His inheritance.

“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance. He found him in a desert land, in a barren, howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye.”

God will not abandon Israel, just like we can be assured that He will never abandon us even when we are the adulterous ones and when we fail Him. Gradually, the focus of the world will come back to Jerusalem, and somehow, some way, she will be the key to ‘world peace.’ The Anti-Christ will set his sights on Jerusalem, God’s temple and Jesus’ earthly throne, and she will be front and center on everyone’s mind. The whole world will be once again focused on her; they will watch what happens with bated breath, and what happens there will determine the mood of the whole earth.

Make no mistake, Jerusalem will not fall again. We are told in many places that she is the ‘apple of His eye’; she is special to God, and yes, at times, God allowed armies to run over her and punish her for her sins, but He, in turn, destroyed all of those civilizations, and the last one to be destroyed is the sleeping Roman Empire. If you look at Daniel 2, you will see that it is the mountain ‘not made with hands’ that destroys the feet of the iron and clay mix. The final vestiges of the Roman Empire are portrayed by the legs of iron.

Pray for Israel; pray for her to repent and turn to the Lord. Thank God that He is faithful and that we can see his faithfulness played out in His love, commitment, and care for Israel. Soon, very soon, all of her enemies will be gone. Jesus will rule, and she will be the center of the world’s political system. There is about to be a switch from the church age back to Israel and the fulfillment of promises that are millennia old, waiting for them to repent and return. I leave you with Zechariah 12:10.

“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.”

Pray for the peace of Israel.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/

Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Hebrews 9:27 “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.”

2 Corinthians 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Romans 14:11-12 “It is written: ‘As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will confess to God.’ So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.”

I pray that you are all well. As I get older and older, the thought of meeting Jesus plays in my mind. How will that meeting go? Over the past few years, I have had a few close friends, a mom, and church people die, and all of them, as far as I know, knew Jesus. How did those first few minutes in heaven go? How did the judgment go for them as they entered the presence of our Lord? In 1 Corinthians 11: 31-32, the apostle Paul tells us to judge ourselves:

“For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.”

Paul tells us to judge ourselves; we should always be making an assessment of our living in Jesus. Are we maturing? Are we becoming more like Jesus? Are we like Galatians 5:22-23?

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

Do we see this fruit in our lives? Are these evident in our lives? The goal here is not to become a ‘holier than thou’ group but to be humbled by either the distance we have come or the distance we have to go. Those of us who truly believe that Jesus is real, that He will come to get us soon, and that we will have to give an account of our lives to Him should be constantly assessing ourselves, constantly judging ourselves, and repenting as we get closer and closer to meeting Him.

Would you say that your life has this ‘fruit’ clearly showing in it? Many of us are better at some than others, but these attributes are described as ‘fruit,’ singular. They should all be developing in our lives and showing to those around us. I take a look at my life, and some of these are growing, others are not as prominent. I don’t always have good self-control, I am not always long-suffering, I am not always kind, and on I can go. How about you? Jesus has given us all of these benchmarks to check ourselves and with which to make an assessment of our growth in the Lord.

In 2 Corinthians 5:10, we are reminded by Paul that we will give an account to Jesus of the things ‘done in the body’ as we worked and waited to meet Jesus. In Romans, Paul tells us that we are to be sure that we will give an account to Jesus, and again, in Hebrews, Paul tells us that judgment comes after death. There is no escape here, no way out, no avoidance. You and I, as children of God, will be judged according to the scriptures about how we lived for the Lord once we were saved. This is not about Heaven and Hell. If you are at this judgment, you are saved, and the assessment is about how you lived out the salvation that Jesus purchased for you. In                1Corinthians 3:13-15, we have this warning from Paul:

“His workmanship will be evident, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will prove the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive a reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames.”

We can see here that there is reward and there is loss at this judgment, but one is saved even if he suffers loss. I cannot imagine what this judgment will be like for me; I wonder. What will it be like to have Jesus judge my life? What will stay, and what will burn up? I think about these things. I have not always lived for the Lord, have you? What if you and I took this judgment seriously? According to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, we have all been gifted within our abilities, and we will be judged on what we did with those ‘talents.’ There is no escape here, no way out, no bargaining; all of us will stand to be judged by the Judge of the Universe.

If you, by having put your faith and trust in Jesus as the Messiah, are at this judgment, you are far ahead of the billions who denied Him. Rejoice in this. But even more so, let us live out with diligence the life that Jesus bought for us, and let us serve Him willfully and honestly, knowing that we must all stand before Him and be judged for how we lived out our saved lives.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

Online: https://mmbchurch.ca/

Email: seangooding@mmbchurch.ca

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

You can support our Ministry at https://tithe.ly/give?c=6452630 OR eTransfer at mmbchurch9@gmail.com (if you are in Canada)