An oracle concerning Damascus:My Understanding: God initiated a judgment against Damascus, which also inflicted Israel, because of her close link (ties) with Damascus. Due to this close association with Damascus, Israel (God’s chosen people at that time) had to partake in the consequences of that association. That is why the Bible tells us to “Come out from her so that you don’t share in any of her sins,” meaning we are to come out from the world and the world’s political, social and religious system that stands opposed to God and to his will for our lives. If we don’t come out and be separate from the world’s influences and patterns, then we will share in the judgments against her because of her sins. This is not to say, though, that the innocent will not suffer through God’s judgments on mankind, but it does say that if we choose to make friends with the world, i.e. with the things, patterns, philosophies, etc. of this worldly and sinful nature, then we can be assured that we will share in her judgments.
“See, Damascus will no longer be a city
but will become a heap of ruins.
2 The cities of Aroer will be deserted
and left to flocks, which will lie down,
with no one to make them afraid.
3 The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
and royal power from Damascus;
the remnant of Aram will be
like the glory of the Israelites,”
declares the LORD Almighty.
4 “In that day the glory of Jacob will fade;
the fat of his body will waste away.
5 It will be as when a reaper gathers the standing grain
and harvests the grain with his arm—
as when a man gleans heads of grain
in the Valley of Rephaim.
6 Yet some gleanings will remain,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
leaving two or three olives on the topmost branches,
four or five on the fruitful boughs,”
declares the LORD, the God of Israel.
7 In that day men will look to their Maker
and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
8 They will not look to the altars,
the work of their hands,
and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles
and the incense altars their fingers have made.
9 In that day their strong cities, which they left because of the Israelites, will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation.
10 You have forgotten God your Savior;
you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
and plant imported vines,
11 though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud,
yet the harvest will be as nothing
in the day of disease and incurable pain.
12 Oh, the raging of many nations—
they rage like the raging sea!
Oh, the uproar of the peoples—
they roar like the roaring of great waters!
13 Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters,
when he rebukes them they flee far away,
driven before the wind like chaff on the hills,
like tumbleweed before a gale.
14 In the evening, sudden terror!
Before the morning, they are gone!
This is the portion of those who loot us,
the lot of those who plunder us.
When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, he took upon himself the sins of the entire world, having crucified and buried them with him, and then he rose from the grave, triumphing over death, hell, Satan and sin – the ultimate penalty of sin and the control of sin over our lives. When we believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, by his work of grace in our lives in convincing us of our need of him, in drawing us to Jesus, in having provided the way we can be saved, and then in giving us the faith to believe, provided we appropriate it to our lives, he delivers us from bondage to sin and he sets us free from the ultimate penalty of sin (eternal separation from God in hell), as well as he frees us to serve, worship and obey him. Yet, he does not promise us that he will not discipline us. In fact, he says that those he loves he disciplines and that we should consider judgment as his discipline, because the ultimate goal of judgment is to bring God’s people back into a right relationship with God. So, although we will be spared the ultimate judgment of hell fire, if we are in a true faith relationship with Jesus Christ via repentance and obedience to his commands, that does not mean we will never have to suffer God’s discipline and correction in our lives.
The result of this judgment of Damascus was that the people now looked to Almighty God and they turned their hearts and eyes to him. They no longer looked to the work of their hands (their idols and their other gods) to bring them comfort, satisfaction, relief from suffering, etc. In other words, they repented of their sins, which is the ultimate goal of judgment, to bring about repentance in the hearts of God’s people. God does not like inflicting punishment upon us, but he will eventually, if we continue to go our own way and we forget about him. The way we forget about God the Father, and about Jesus Christ, our Lord God, the Son, is by making other things in our lives our gods, i.e. making the things of this world more important than our relationship with Jesus Christ and more important than walking in faith and obedience to him. God/Jesus barely is even a thought in many believers’ lives throughout the day. He gets shoved in a corner and is barely noticed until something happens in our lives that causes us to seek his face. This should not be. We should be so in love with Jesus Christ that we make him truly first in everything that we do – in our thoughts, attitudes and actions.
There is presently an uproar of many nations which are coming against God and against God’s people, the church, and God is using them right now as his divine instruments of judgment, yet they will not escape God’s judgments. One day God will be finished using them and then he will turn on them in judgment. I believe that the government of the USA in cooperation with NATO, the UN Security Council and the New World Order is one of those nations that is presently in an uproar and is coming against God and against God’s people, yet God is using them as an instrument of judgment. Yet, what goes around comes around and one day it will come back to us and the USA will face the judgment of God unlike anything we have ever seen before. We are a proud nation, but God will one day humble us.
When God pronounces his judgments and when he carries them out, he is making a strong statement to us about how he feels about our sin. The passage in Matthew 18:1-9 is one such passage of scripture where the language is such that it emphasizes with extreme contrasts how strongly God feels about sin. God is calling out to his church, his people, to “Come out from her so that you don’t share in any of her sins.” May we take this seriously.
Child-like Faith / An Original Work / May 24, 2011
Based off of Matthew 18:1-9
Child-like faith He requires of us all:
“Who is greatest in God’s Kingdom?”
“Unless you change and humble yourselves,
You will never enter His Kingdom.”
“Whoever welcomes a little child
Like this in My name, he welcomes Me.
If you cause a believer to sin,
You stand in danger of God’s judgment.”
“Grief to you ‘cause of what causes sin.
Grief to the man through whom these things come.
If some part of you leads you to sin,
Throw it off, and never give in.”
Song Lyrics @ Public Domain
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