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Daily Devotions

Ezekiel

Ezekiel 
Day 
Day 205

"I pronounced them unclean"

Text: Ezekiel 20:26

GOD’S SOLEMN DECLARATION

Israel disobeyed God repeatedly. The Lord had spoken to the nation generation after generation. But His words fell on deaf ears. Rebukes made negligible impact on the people. Even punishments did little to deter the people from sinning.

“Therefore I also gave them up to statutes that were not good,
and judgments by which they could not live;
and I pronounced them unclean because of their ritual gifts,
in that they caused all their firstborn to pass through the fire,
that I might make them desolate
and that they might know that I am the Lord.”
Ezekiel 20:25-26

1. Therefore I gave them up.

a) This was another approach the Lord brought across.

b) He would give them up to their devices!

2. Giving the people to what?

a) The subject of “statutes”.

i) Israel had decided that God’s statutes were no good.

ii) They could produce statutes that would be better.

iii) This was not true.

iv) But Israel would not be convinced.

v) Hence, God would allow them to live up to the statutes they concocted.

b) The subject of “judgments”.

i) Israel did not like the “judgments” God made.

ii) The nation would come up with its own judgments.

iii) But could their judgments actually be better?

iv) The answer is an obvious “No!”

v) God would let them produce their judgments but they were bound to come up short!

3. On God’s side.

a) He would pronounce them “unclean!”

b) Their rituals were not accepted by God.

c) They made their children pass through ritual fires.

d) The fires that they imagine would make them clean were the things that made them unclean.

4. The hard way.

a) Israel would become desolate.

b) They would lose the support of God.

c) They would learn that the Lord is God finally.

d) But they would learn it the hard way!