4th April 2025

4th April 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Ezekiel 29:1–30:19 focus 30:1-19)


Message (Alan Burke)


One of the places that I lived as a wain had in the cul-de-sac a bit of waste ground, I checked on google maps and it is now has a house but when I was a wain it was one of only two plots yet to be built on. What it became was a dumping ground, actually it became   our playground. It had rubble from some of the buildings that had been built, old pallets, bits old bathrooms, pallets, pipes, two old engines and the best was when you came across a big rat. It was an absolute mess but I wasted many a happy hour there with my mates building forts after borrowing tools from our dads which many of them are likely now buried under that house, and lighting fires. Imagine the whole of Crossgar, Ballynahinch or every settlement being levelled across the Island and just a wasteland. That here is what the Lord is promising to do on Egypt.  


This judgment is against Egypt and her allies, they would all fall by the sword and know that the Lord is God when they fall, there will be desolation, cities in ruin, fire will consume all that is left and will be destroyed, all those who helped Egypt will be crushed. Such is the judgment that is coming nothing will be able to stand in its ways, it was sure to come. In this judgement the once fertile land of Egypt would become a waste, everything in it, their idols would be destroyed, all would face the wrath of God. All of this so that they would know that the Lord is God. There is a bit in this that we might find this shocking, offensive to our modern sensitivities but the Lord is the God of the nations, he is absolutely sovereign over it all. Every soul belongs to the Lord (Eze 18:4), he rightfully demands the devotion of his creatures, he has made all that is and it rightfully belongs to him and the idolatry and the sin of Egypt deserved his judgement. We may say that this is unjust but for all who call upon the name of the Lord they will be saved, not from the temporal judgment of the Lord but the eternal judgment that is due to all of his people for how they have not loved the Lord our God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind and with all their strength.


None of us can, before the Holy Holy Holy Lord God all of us are abhorrent sinners but the Lord sent his horn, Jesus Christ who did what none of us could do, he loved the Father as none of us have, and through his obedience to the Father and all that is required of us we can know salvation from what we rightly deserve. Because there is another day of the Lord coming, a fearful and dreadful day that this world will face, just like Egypt and its allies the whole world will face the Lord’s judgement, it will be a day when The Lord will Brings Desolation Against all His Enemies. It is the day when this present world will be burned up and there is nothing that we can do to stop its end, for the Lord will come for as we are reminded in 2 Peter, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (2 Pe 3:7) but for all who trust in Jesus they will inherit the new heaven and the new earth.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q49 Which is the second commandment? 
A. The second commandment is, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me: and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
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