2:9,10
Again God would frustrate them. The grain and wine came from God, not from any Baal, so He would take it away. She would be exposed. Our dignity comes from being made in the image of God, creation is vital to who we are. But in our rebellion against God we seek to deny this. Today this is most obvious in sexuality and gender. Creation itself tells us that sex is designed to be between men and women. It also tells us that there are two genders, male and female. This is obvious, one does not need to have any belief in God to realise this, just an ounce of common sense. Yet societies in the West are rushing headlong into madness, denying the obvious reality of life. There are others who deny that we are any different from other animals, again something that a little observation of the world quickly shows to be nonsense. In all this rebellion we lose our dignity, our lewdness is exposed.
2:11,12
There will be an end to all joy. In her apostasy the nation was mixing Levitical (ie God’s law) festivales with pagan worship. And Israel claimed that the vines and fig trees were wages that her lovers had given her. Ie they came from the Baals, the false gods. Vines and fig trees don’t mean a lot to us, but in the culture of the time such things were important and could even be gifts of endearment. Tales from surrounding civilisations featured ravinging wild beasts as a typical punishment that a local deity would inflict. It was not the balls that Israel needed to fear, but the Lord.
2:13
We get here the heart of the problem. Israel was devoting herself to the Baals and the worship of them. She went out of her way to be pleasing to them. But she forgot the Lord, so punishment would be her lot. We need to watch ourselves, what are we devoting ourselves? What are we making an effort to please? More positively, are we making an effort to please the Lord?
No comments:
Post a Comment