the Fourth Week after Easter
Click here to learn more!
Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 4 of 5
Ezekiel 17:22-24; ; Ezekiel 18:1-9
The riddle of ch. 17 is solved in a divine way. The LORD here speaks of the twig that He Himself – no longer this time the great eagle – will take from the same royal cedar of David, and which He will establish on a high and eminent mountain as a goodly tree laden with fruit. We understand that this concerns the Lord Jesus and His future reign (cf. Isaiah 1:11; Psalms 2:6).
In ch. 18, the LORD takes issue with the men of Israel. These, instead of humbling themselves on seeing punishments being meted out, seek to justify themselves by an insolent proverb of their own invention (v. 2), "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge"; in other words, "Our generation is paying for the preceding one; our parents have sinned and it is we who have to bear the consequences" (see Jeremiah 31:29-30). That amounts to accusing God of unrighteousness! But this chapter destroys their perverse reasoning: they are reaping what they themselves have sown (Galatians 6:7).
We can recognise on the part of these men a sad tendency of our own hearts, that of throwing back onto others the responsibility for our misdeeds. It is this which betrays our blindness and our pride, and robs us of the salutary lessons the Lord would teach us (see Genesis 3:12; Romans 2:1).
