Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Oct 1960

We have already written briefly on the sad days at the end of the monarchy of the house of David, and as to what led up to the carrying away of the remnant of Judah and Benjamin by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon. The lengthening of the life of so good a king as Hezekiah was not for the good of the people over whom he reigned. It says that "Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem" (2 Chronicles 32.25). But because Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem humbled themselves, the wrath of the LORD came not in the days of Hezekiah. His son, Manasseh, was the worst of all Judah's kings, and though he humbled himself at the end of his days and prayed to God, vet this did not correct the evil which he had done in his earlier days. His son, Amon, was little better than his father, and his reign was only for two years. He was followed by his son, good king Josiah, who was slain in battle with Pharaoh Neco, king of Egypt, who was passing through his land on his way to Carchemish on the Euphrates where he was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar. After Josiah, came firstly Jehoahaz and then Eliakim (later called Jehoiakim), his sons, and Jehoiachin the son of Jehoiakim, and then the last of Judah's kings, Zedekiah the son of Josiah and brother of Jehoiakim.

The story of these last days is briefly summed up in the words, "They mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets. until the wrath of the Loan arose against His people, till there was no remedy." We have a description of these days and of the conditions of things in the temple at Jerusalem, in Ezekiel 8. Ezekiel, like Daniel, was evidently amongst the early captives who were carried to Babylon (Daniel 1). Ezekiel records in this chapter how he was taken by a lock of his head and. the Spirit lifted him up between the earth and the heaven and he was brought in the visions of God to Jerusalem. In the temple in Jerusalem he saw fearful abominations. There he saw on the northward of the gate of the altar an idol called "the image of jealousy." This was but one of the abominations which the people were practising. Satan had got so great a hold upon God's people, that he and they were determined to drive God from His own house where He had placed His glory and His name. The Loan said to Ezekiel, "Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel do commit here, that I should go far off from My sanctuary? but thou shalt again see yet other great abominations" (verse 6).

Ezekiel having entered through a hole and door in the wall of the Court, saw on the wall inside every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed upon the wall round about, and there stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan (perhaps the same Shaphan as in 2 Chronicles 34.15-19) and seventy of the elders of Israel with censers in their hands and the odour of the incense went up to the vain objects of their worship. In their dark chambers of their imagery they were saying, "The Loan seeth us not; the Loan hath forsaken the earth." Then at the north gate Ezekiel saw the women sitting weeping for Tammuz (by some identified as Adonis, a youth in Greek mythology). Then last of all Ezekiel saw about twenty five men at the door of the temple with their backs to the temple of the Loan worshipping the sun toward the east, It would be difficult to imagine worse scenes of rank idolatry practised in the very dwelling place of God. God had borne patiently and long with His people, but there was no remedy that He knew of that would cure His people of the great evil of their ways, save to bring the Chaldeans, under Nebuchadnezzar, whom He calls time and again, "My servant" (Jeremiah 25.9; 21.6; 43.10). Nebuchadnezzar, though an idolater, was God's servant only in so far as that he carried out God's judgement upon His sinful people. It was a matter of considerable distress to Habakkuk, that a nation who were no better than God's people (both were idolaters) should be used for the punishment of the remnant of Israel. Of the Chaldean he wrote, "He sacrificeth unto his net, and burneth incense unto his drag; because by them his portion is fat, and his meat plenteous" (Habakkuk 1.16). Earlier, in verse 12, this prophet said, "We shall not die. 0 Loan, Thou hast ordained him for judgement; and Thou, 0 Rock, hast established him for correction." The extinction of God's people was impossible.

After describing and showing to Ezekiel, in chapter 8, some of the abominations which were being practised by God's remnant people, which brought upon them the wrath of God in the work of the Chaldeans, God showed to Ezekiel in vision and parable the judgement which would fall upon them, in chapter 9. First of all, we are told of six men with their slaughter weapons in their hands. But there was to be no indiscriminate slaughter, for there was a man clothed in linen with an ink horn by his side who was told to go through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark On the foreheads of the men that sighed and cried for all the abominations that were being done in the midst of the city. God was in Ezekiel's days as Abraham believed of Him in his time, that God would not slay the righteous with the wicked, that the righteous should be as the wicked. Abraham said what is true of the ways of God in judgement, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 15. 25). The just ways of God in all respects cannot be impeached. He cannot do wrong. So here in Ezekiel God makes clear that the righteous were to be spared when God's judgement was executed by the Chaldeans. These righteous people could do no more than sigh and cry. Numerically they were greatly inferior to the people who were bent on wickedness. The king and the elders and the people for the most part were determined to pursue their sinful practices.

When the men who sighed and cried had been marked, the men with their weapons of slaughter were told, "Go ye through the city after him, and smite:

let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: slay utterly the old man, the young man and the maiden, and little children and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house " (verses 5, 6). As Ezekiel saw the desperate work of slaughter, he fell on his face and cried, "Ah Lord GOD! wilt Thou destroy all the residue of Israel in Thy pouring out of Thy fury upon Jerusalem ? " (verse 8). He was told what the elders and people were saying, as recorded in chapter 8, "The LORD hath forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not." Once people get to this state of believing that the LORD hath forsaken the earth and does not see what they are at, then they are on the slippery slope of sins of all kinds, and a state analogous to Sodom and Gomorrah will be embarked upon. Who can doubt that such a state is rapidly developing in this greatly favoured land, a land in which it is alleged in high places that the people never had it so good? In Ezekiel 16. 48-50, God, in speaking to His people, says,

"As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom ; pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before Me: therefore I took them away Os I saw good."

The wickedness of the remnant of Israel was even worse in the Lord's sight than the sin of Sodom. The words of the Proverbs are words of great wisdom:

Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me: lest I be full, and deny Thee, and say, Who is the LORD?" (Proverbs 30.8,9).

It seems to me that Peter, as he wrote in ins first epistle, " For the time is come for judgement to begin at the house of God" (4.17), had the events of Ezekiel 9 before his mind. It is reckoned by scholars that there were five or six years between the writing of Peter's two epistles. We see from chapters 2 and 3 of his second epistle that things were in bad shape in the house of God. Men were bringing in destructive heresies and they were denying the Master that bought them, and were thus bringing upon themselves swift destruction. Alas, many were following their lascivious ways, and the way of truth was being evil spoken of. In consequence of this God was going to judge His house by a time of persecution. Peter said, " Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you" (4.12). As Habakkuk said to the LORD concerning the judgement which Nebuchadnezzar would carry out upon the remnant of Israel, "Thou, O Rock, hast established him for correction" (Habakkuk 1. 12), even so the sufferings of God's people in Peter's day were for correction because of the sad condition existing then.

J. Miller | Oct 1960
Jottings