FBC Morning Light – September 13, 2022

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Hope your day got off, or your week got off to a good start yesterday, and that your day today gets off to a good start as we meditate on some things from God's Word.

Have you heard stories, and they're really heart -wrenching stories to hear, of, for example,

I heard one not long ago, someone who was passing by a garbage dumpster, and they heard what sounded like, sounded like crying from inside the dumpster, and they opened up the dumpster and looked inside, and sure enough, inside that dumpster, some distraught mother had tossed her newborn baby child into that dumpster, leaving the child to die.

And you hear of that, and you think, how in the world could a mother do such a thing?

But I want to think about it from another standpoint. I want to think about that life, the life of that child, because here the child is rescued from what would have been certain death, and taken to a place of safety and security, received excellent care, clothed, given medication if necessary, nourishment and food, and survives, lives.

I've often wondered, what does that child learn of his or her birth and the experience of rescue?

Does the child end up being adopted by a loving, caring family? Well, all of that serves to get us to think about what the

Lord speaks of in Ezekiel chapter 16 in our Bible reading today. He describes the nation of Israel in just those terms.

He says, speaking specifically of Jerusalem and the tribe of Judah, he says,

Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan.

Your father was an Amorite, your mother was a Hittite. As for your nativity, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in swaddling clothes.

No eye pitied you to do any of these things for you to have compassion on you, but you were thrown out into the open field when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born.

And the Lord goes from there to talk about how he, in his grace and his kindness, to this abandoned, left to die infant, he takes care of, he calls that, he brings that child to himself.

He cares for the child, he cleanses the child, he clothes the child, he nourishes and cares for the child and brings that child up to maturity.

And he says, I passed by you in verse eight, I looked on you, indeed your time was a time of love, so I spread my wing over you and covered your nakedness.

Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became mine.

The child grows up to be a young, a beautiful young woman, and the one who rescued her then goes a step further and actually marries her, enters into a lifelong covenant with her.

The problem with this, the reason the Lord gives this analogy, is what God's people, the children of Israel, Jerusalem, does to the one who has so cared for her.

Instead of loving loyalty to that covenant and to the one who rescued her from certain death, this bride, this rescued one, instead becomes an idolater, spurns the love and the grace and the kindness of the one who has been so gracious and rescued her, spurns it all.

Israel turned to idols, turned away from the Lord who saved her, rescued her.

And this was a horrific affront to the one who was so gracious and kind and loving, who did so much for her, a terrible affront.

All of this should serve as a warning and a challenge to us.

If you, by the grace of God, have been rescued from your sin, it's as if you were that infant doomed to perishing, in need of cleansing, in need of being clothed.

And that's exactly what happens in the new birth. As God calls you to himself, he cleanses you from your sin in the blood of the

Lamb, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He clothes you with the garments of righteousness, the the white robes of righteousness of Christ that are wrapped around you, in which you are enveloped.

And he betroths you. He makes you one of his own and brings you into the church, which is the bride of Christ.

All of this Old Testament imagery becomes fulfilled beautifully in the

New Testament work of Christ on the cross, his saving of a people, and his bringing of a people to himself and making a people his bride.

What do we do with that grace? What do we do with that? Jerusalem spurned it and went after other lovers, committed idolatry and spiritual adultery.

Oh, may her failure be a warning and a challenge to us, to keep our hearts and our minds refreshed with the gracious work of our

God and all he has done for us, that that may in turn compel us to love him and to be faithful and loyal to him and to him alone.

And so our Father and our God, we thank you this morning for all that you have done for us in your grace, in making us a people to yourself, in your cleansing, clothing, taking us to yourself as a bride.

Oh, how kind and gracious you have been to us. May we respond with loving loyalty to you.

And this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, listen, have a wonderful Tuesday.