Incredible Faithfulness

The more I read the Bible, the more I see that it is truly the story of God and the display of his character.  It’s not about me and it’s definitely not a list of “do’s and don’ts.”  It is a glorious picture of who God is and how he relates to his creation.

I saw this today as I read Ezekiel 16, an intense chapter in which God, through the prophet Ezekiel, likens Judah (the southern tribes of Israel), to a prostitute, only worse, because Judah pays her lovers to sleep with her.  And people think the Bible is boring and only for pious old ladies who never dream of saying or reading the word “whore.”  God says that Judah was destitute and forgotten, abandoned by her parents when she was a helpless baby to die in an open field, swimming in her blood.  But as the Lord passed by her, he saw her and had compassion on her.  He took her into his house, bathed her, and clothed her.  When she was old enough, he married her, establishing a covenant with her.  All this is an analogy for how God claimed the Israelites as his people and promised to look out for them.  He rescued them from slavery in Egypt and brought them into a prosperous and fertile land.  They experienced incredible blessing simply because God chose to bless them.

Instead of remembering how God had chosen them and provided for them so abundantly, Judah turned away from God and worshiped other gods.  They were completely unfaithful to the covenant they made with God to be his people and love and worship him only.  They set up idols and adopted awful practices like child sacrifice to these false gods.  Do we catch the seriousness of this?  Do we understand why God called Judah a prostitute?  Judah chose evil again and again because they liked evil more than God.  They weren’t being forced into evil, they sought it out (analogous to a prostitute paying others to sleep with her).

But here’s what completely amazes me: in this midst of God pronouncing his just wrath and anger over this unfaithfulness of Judah, he says, “Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you” (Ezekiel 16:60).  God had every right to abandon them, but he refused.  Instead, he promised to establish a new covenant, an everlasting covenant.  And this covenant came in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Christ, we are adopted as sons and daughters and given an inheritance, just like Israel, only God gives us things he didn’t give the Israelites.  He gives us new hearts and a new life.  He releases us from our slavery to sin, allowing us to choose not to sin, and instead to choose righteousness.  And he gives believers the Holy Spirit to convict us of sin, teach us the truth, and empower us to live out of our new hearts and lives.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be different from the Israelites, who were doomed to sin, doomed to be unfaithful.

Again and again, God proves himself to be faithful, even when Israel rebelled and turned against him.  He was so faithful that he offered a new covenant to a people that had totally abandoned and taken advantage of his old one.  And he extends this new covenant to the world (bringing the whole world to know him was his plan from the beginning).  This moves my heart to worship him for his incredible faithfulness to me and to you and to the world.  He is so worthy of my trust and adoration.