3rd January 2025

3rd January 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Ezekiel 16 focus v59-62)


Message (Alan Burke)


If someone you knew and loved broke your trust, if they deceived you, if they lied to you, stole from you, used a gift you had given them that you gave at a great cost to someone else how would you feel? What if they had done all these things and much more, and they had then taken to social media to tell the world what they had done and how you were worthless to them, how would you feel? What if they had done this and more how would you feel, actually how would you respond? With tears? With vengeance? In these closing verses the Lord responds to how Jerusalem had done all these things and more in the midst of their detestable practices he would once more show his grace. 


If you’re just picking up today, this chapter is striking, it begins with a depiction of an unwanted female child representing God’s people. The Lord God had brought his people from a hopeless and hapless situation. It is a word picture that they would have heard and understood the grace in what the Lord had shown. God had taken her to be his wife and had made her holy, he had set her apart. This is what the Lord had done for his people but as the parable continues we see the ingratitude of his people. They had known the grace of God, but instead of responding with gratitude and relying on him she turned from the Lord, she trusted in her beauty, using what the Lord had given to her to go after idols in the end she was worse than Sodom. 


Faithlessness to God brings his judgement, the Lord dealt with Jerusalem as they deserved. Do not miss this, the Lord deals with all people according to what they deserve, he is just in all his ways. Even in this coming judgement the Lord shows forth his grace and compassion once more. For while judgement would come on Jerusalem, the Lord would remember the covenant that he had made we would likely curse the day that we had ever met Jerusalem but thankfully the Lord is not like us. While Jerusalem had long forgotten that covenant the Lord had not, he would make a new and everlasting covenant, an unbreakable covenant one that would see the sins of those who are his atoned for, it would see the sin of those who are his covered. 


God in his grace even though the covenant relationship between Him and Jerusalem lay in tatters, he gave hope of a new relationship between himself and the future city. God was not overlooking their sin but he was going to cover it by his grace and by this they would remember who he is and what he has done. 


How has he done this? Well this prophetic hope is being fulfilled right now. Jesus inaugurated the new covenant which will be consummated at the marriage supper of the lamb, the Lord’s supper in is a foretaste and a pledge. We are already living under that everlasting covenant. It was inaugurated by Jesus the night he was betrayed he told his disciples as they shared the passover meal, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you (Lk 20:20). The new covenant is the renewed covenant looking back to the covenant God had made with his faithless people, this is an everlasting covenant. Our God has remembered his covenant, bringing about the new covenant, thanks be to God that he did not leave us to die in our sin, instead he redeems us through his Son. He redeemed us out of the situation that we were in and bought us to himself. How we live towards his grace should be to live in response to what the Lord God has done.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q78 What is forbidden in the ninth commandment?
A. The ninth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever is prejudicial to truth, or injurious to our own or our neighbor’s good name.
​