Ezekiel 44:9-14 ESV
“Thus says the Lord God: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary. But the Levites who went far from me, going astray from me after their idols when Israel went astray, shall bear their punishment. They shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the temple and ministering in the temple. They shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before the people, to minister to them. Because they ministered to them before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel, therefore I have sworn concerning them, declares the Lord God, and they shall bear their punishment. They shall not come near to me, to serve me as priest, nor come near any of my holy things and the things that are most holy, but they shall bear their shame and the abominations that they have committed. Yet I will appoint them to keep charge of the temple, to do all its service and all that is to be done in it.
These Levites sinned and yet continue in service to God, but carry the shame of their idolatry as they perform their duties. God's mercy is bigger than their betrayal. His mercy is bigger than any sin we have committed. All we do is repent and ask forgiveness. Then live in the new kingdom life. There we are to perform our duties serving the living God.
One of our chief duties is the building of the church, the preservation and edification of believers which is part of our fellowship. It is the lifting up of one another and steadying one another when we stumble. We love God when we love each other.
In Ezekiel 3 below we get a sense of the working out our own salvation and the sense of fear and trembling of a reverent kind which acknowledges the seriousness of the matter.
God sent His own Son to make a man righteous that he might live. We are continuing His work as we help our brother.
Ezekiel 3:20-21
Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.”
Here we are told a righteous man can fall away from that righteousness and die. God will not remember righteous deeds or sins, but it depends on our choice. We are to warn our brothers and neighbors. We are to do this in love through love.
No comments:
Post a Comment