Daily Manna

Tuesday 11th November 2014

Topic: Don't Waste God's Mercy.

TEXT: Ezekiel 22:13–22

Key verse: “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it, and will do it” (Ezekiel 22:14 ).

If people are guided by lessons from history, particularly of punishment God had handed down on mankind at one time or the other, there would be less of evil practice today. For the fact that God never changes, neither does His standard vary, men should have heard of the fiery judgment of God against some forms of evil in the past, and should have done everything humanly possible to avoid incurring His judgment now or in the future.

Sinners provoke God either because they forget Him or simply because they are ignorant of His demands. Jerusalem, in today’s passage, has filled the measures of her sins. Those who give up themselves to be ruled by their lusts and those who resolve to be their own masters, should expect no other happiness than their own hands can furnish; and a miserable portions it will prove.

God had revealed how He had ‘smitten’ His hands at “thy dishonest gain which thou has made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee,” following up with detailed threat of how He will still punish the same erring persons. What God did to those who sinned in times of old, He is still able to do to sophisticated sinners of contemporary time.

Israel, compared with other nations, had been as the gold and silver compared with baser metals. But they were now as the refuse that is consumed in the furnace, or thrown away when silver is refined. Sinners, especially backsliding professors, are - in God‘s account - unfit for heaven. When God brings His own people into the furnace, He sits by longer than is fitting and needful. The dross shall be wholly separated, and the good metal purified. Let those who suffer pains or lingering sickness as a result of sins take warnings to flee from the wrath to come. The trials may just be sanctions to cleanse their hearts and hands from sin. Keep yourself holy and pure.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Run from God’s wrath!

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