September 4, 2016 Bible Study — Separating Ourselves From A Sinful Society

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 24-26.

    Ezekiel starts today’s passage with yet another metaphor. He gives the metaphor of a cooking pot. He makes the point that when you throw various cuts of meat into a pot with water and cook it over an open flame before long all of the meat is the same. It doesn’t matter if you pull out a steak or a roast, the texture and flavor will not change. This shows us the danger of being part of a sinful society. It is all too easy to allow the sins of those around us make us insensitive to our own sins. If we allow this to happen to ourselves, we will suffer when God’s judgment is poured out on our society. I was going to say “more importantly” about my next point, but I am not sure it is more important. If we do not find a way to separate ourselves from our sinful society, the entire country will become so corrupted that God will need to destroy the whole thing.

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    The second part of today’s passage is a series of messages to those who rejoiced in Jerusalem’s downfall. Those nations which celebrated Jerusalem’s downfall should not have. They suffered the same fate themselves. We should not celebrate the suffering of others, even when that suffering appears well-deserved. The fact of the matter is that we all deserve to suffer. Rather than celebrate the sufferings of those who we believe deserve it, we should strive to live so that we do not deserve the same fate. In addition, we should strive to be an example and an influence on those others so that they change their lives and become less deserving of suffering.