2010 – August 17 – Sins of a Nation

Study from God’s Word… Ezekiel, Chapters 12 – 14 … Passage for Reflection: Ezekiel 14: 12 – 14 … NIV 12 The word of the LORD came to me: 13 "Son of man, if a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it and kill its men and their animals, 14 even if these three men — Noah, Daniel and Job —were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign LORD.”

My Journal for Today: After reading the designated Chapters in the Book of Ezekiel today from The Daily Bible in Chronological Order as well as Dr. LaGard Smith’s devotional in The Daily Bible Devotional if I had any lingering doubts that this country, One Nation UNDER God, whose motto is almost laughingly, In God We Trust, will in some way experience God’s wrath coming down upon those who have been and are mocking His sovereignty, they are gone.

However, I do find it most interesting that there is also a message of reassurance for those, of whom I count myself to be one, who stand firmly for right and take action to alert the people of THE God Who saves. But my reassurance is tempered when I see those mentioned as examples of that remnant, especially Job and Noah, who were not able to help many of their family and/or friends, who became consumed when the wrath of Satan was visited on Job and upon all but Noah’s family when God wiped the earth clean of unbelieving people via the great flood. As I’ve said and speculated in the past, “When the rains fall on the unrighteous, the righteous often get wet as well.”

It would frighten me, if I were our President, to declare that America is “… not a Christian nation.” I’m concerned that my kids/grandkids, being Christians (save maybe the youngest of our grandchildren) live in a culture that is becoming increasingly anti-Christ. But, as Job learned, and Noah experienced, God will some how save the righteous remnant unto eternity to be with Him. Job may have lost his kids to Satan’s attacks; but God kept them for Himself in heaven where Job would one day be reunited with them. Daniel’s young friends, renamed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, declared, before they were put in the fire of the furnace, “[in Daniel 3] 17 If that is the case [that the boys would be put in the fire], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. 18 But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.”

But we know the outcome of the latter true story. God did deliver the faithful boys; and I believe, as God did with Noah, He will deliver or take directly to heaven, those who stand for righteousness when His wrath of wrath of abandonment or death is delivered upon those who now mock Him or turn from Him into evil idolatry and wicked practices.

That is why it is so imperative that we do all we can to fulfill the Great Commission, even, and especially, in our own families, so that whenever God decides to lift his mantle of protection – by the Holy Spirit – off of this “Christian nation” in denial, those who have come to know Christ will be saved eternal destruction. Oh, we who believe and stand for Christ in these modern days of Sodom and Gomorrah may be martyred by Satan or the evil in the world; BUT … we will live on with Christ in glory because of our belief in His saving grace and the reality of His death on the cross, His resurrection, and His now sitting on the Throne of Glory at the right hand of God, the Father.

My Prayer for Today: Save us from peril, oh, Holy Spirit!! Amen