“I made you flourish… You were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine… But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore… You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord God. And you took your sons and your daughters,.. and these you sacrificed. Were your whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire? ..How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute… I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed… I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.” Ezekiel 16:7-8,15-21,30,59-63
Reading this long chapter becomes uncomfortable, verse after verse describing the “whoring” and “lewd abominations” of Israel; I want to skim the descriptions like I want to close my eyes to wickedness in my own heart. Do we have to go here, Lord, be this honest and specific? But every abuse and misuse of God’s generosity is listed here for us to read, and because it is included in Scripture, so we can know better the nature our Lord God. Tears filled my eyes as I came to verse 60, in the sixth column in my Bible for this chapter… “yet I will remember…I [will] atone for you for all that you have done.” The beautiful, unimaginable, inexplicable yet! Can that word embody a more wondrous love, a broader mercy?
Wide and deep are the foreign gods and selfish lusts of the heart. Hard as flint can be our rebellion, our pursuit of temporal gratification, yet living water gushes freely from my beautiful Savior, ready to drink. His blood has atoned once for all, His life alone satisfies, forever. Allelujah! (Isaiah 55:1; John 7:37; Hebrews 10:10,12,14)
Plunge me into Your beautiful “yet,” my Lord God. May my confounding at Your measureless grace transform into constant praise, and the telling of Your “yet” to others.
As the rain and snow 
Powerful words, aren’t they? By rubbing our noses into our own ‘self’ nature and the ‘self’ nature of those around us God gets personal. He also demonstrates His very visceral passion for us. His love is not one of the mind, sterile and erudite, but one of fire, jealousy, and passion. He is our Creator and we cannot even begin to fathom how deep and large His love is for us. Sure, we throw out some vague thank you’s for the cross and Jesus but never really enter into just how wide, deep and far His love goes.
That is until we have to face the one obstacle to love that blinds us to just how fiery His love is. Until we come to terms with the mortal enemy of God and ourselves that dwells within we will never even begin to understand His love. I am not talking about satan, I am referring to ‘self’. It is that nature, given to us by God’s enemy that blind us to this truth. Our ‘self’ nature takes the beautiful, tender love of the Father and tramples and spits on it like some common thing.
These words of Ezekiel are more true today than they ever were. How many Christians take the Beloved’s sacrifice on the cross, accepting this great gift, yet live lives that are an abomination to God? How many think that a 1 hour appearance on Sunday will somehow mollify God’s passion who desires all of our being to be in union with Him?
These words of God through Ezekiel are an indictment of us today. His passion is for us to let go of ‘self’ and all that will entangle to pursue Him with the same passion with which He pursues us. To give Him the same sacrifice He has given us. The Father is looking for a Bride that will look, act, feel and live like Jesus. How many do that today?
His words here need to cut us to the heart; to help us realize that we all have failed Him. We all have cut His heart into a thousand pieces by our betrayal and lustful passion for the temporal gods of this world. May we truly repent of how we have hurt the One who has done everything, including die, so that we might not only live, but to have life in His presence in union with Him.
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Thank You, LORD, for pursuing me in such an unfathomable way. Thank you, Pamela, for pointing it out. I am undone.
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