Ezekiel 16:1

Ezekiel 16:1 says, Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,  Ezekiel said God sent another message for Him to share with the people of Israel.  As stated before, as He did with Ezekiel, God will continue to speak to us as followers of Christ, and then we need to share His word with those around us.   

Verse two adds, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, God told Ezekiel that he was to make the abominations of the people of Israel known to them.  Matthew Henry points out that Ezekiel was in captivity in Babylon at this time and Jeremiah was in Jerusalem, and Jeremiah had a message of comfort for the people there, and Ezekiel had a message of conviction of their sins.  They did not see themselves as rivals, but both were proclaiming the word that God gave them.  Preachers today may have messages that are different than what other preachers are preaching, such as one may be pointing to the comfort that believers have even in the midst of adversity and another maybe pointing out the need to repent for sins that have come into the lives of believers.  Still, as long as they are both proclaiming the word that God gives them, they will never be rivals.  I know that preachers also preach to call the unsaved to salvation, but when comparing them the Ezekiel and Jeremiah who were speaking to the people of Israel, then we would be looking at the massage of preachers to people Christians.

Verse three continues, And say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite.  Ezekiel was to tell the people that they were born in the land of Canaan but that their father was an Amorite and their mother a Hittite.  The people of Israel did not just suddenly appear when God called Abraham into a covenant relationship with Him, but they were born as a part of another group of people.  We as Christians were not just born as a  part of God’s kingdom, but wherever we are from in the world, when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, we become a part of God’s kingdom.  Matthew Henry points out that they often looked to other nations for security instead of having destroyed them all as God commanded.  Once we are a born-again believer, we need to destroy all of the things that might lead us away from God and should never look to the powers of this world for protection.   

Verse four states, And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.  God said that the nation of Israel had been like a new-born baby who was not cared for by the people of the world.  They could no longer depend on other people to care for them but must depend on God alone.  When we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord, we are born again as a newborn baby in Christ, and we can no longer look to people of the world to be our source of nurturing spiritually, but we must look to God alone.   

Verse five adds, None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the lothing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.  God said that no one cared for the people of Israel when they were first called to be a new nation under God, but instead they were cast out in the open field where they would have died if they had been depending on people of the world to keep them safe.  He also said that other people loathed the people of Israel.  We know that the people of Israel were often looked on with contempt and that the people of the world tried to kill or enslave them.  As followers of Christ, we should not expect the people of the world to keep us safe, but we should look to God alone.  As a matter of fact, we may find that those who do not believe in God will often want to kill or at least enslave us.  This should never stop us from putting our faith in God and proclaiming His word to the world.