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June 29 Daily Reading- Read the Bible in 1 Year
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If you would like to download my FREE calendar for keeping track of your commitment to read the Bible every day, you can find that on my site, here: https://www.inthefamilywaycoaching.com/pages/read-the-bible-in-1-year
Monthly memberships to support this event can be purchased on my site, here: https://www.inthefamilywaycoaching.com/offering_packages
Today's reading will cover Ezekiel Chapter 17. Today we will read about a parable God told Ezekiel about the kingdoms of Babylon, Judah, and Egypt. God will explain that although the king of Judah had been given power to remain in Judah he would be removed due to his failure to keep his promise to be faithful to Babylon. God, in contrast, would keep His promises: He would save a remnant of His people; He would carry the king of Judah off into exile to Babylon; Egypt would not save Judah or the king. We, like God, are to keep our promises that we make. If we are experiencing difficulty in doing so, then we should ask the Holy Spirit to comfort us and Jesus to strengthen us to keep us faithful in what we said we would do. We are made strong in Jesus when we are weak.
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Transcript
Introduction to Daily Bible Reading
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello again everybody. Today is June 29th and we're here for our daily Bible reading. We are going through the Day by Day Kids Bible written by... That's right, Karen Henley.
00:00:17
Speaker
We are going to be picking up in the book of Ezekiel today, but before we do that, we are going to take out our commitment calendars and your sticker or however you're marking that off because guess what?
00:00:30
Speaker
You're about to hear the Bible today. I am so glad that you are joining me on this amazing journey, whether you are following along on your podcast or whether you are watching the video.
Progress and Upcoming New Testament
00:00:41
Speaker
In case you are just finding this event, this event is available wherever you like to listen or watch your favorite recordings. It's available on YouTube, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio,
00:00:59
Speaker
Podbean, podcast, overcast, castoff. And if you use a different search engine for podcast, I'm sure you can find it there too. I have made sure to upload it to every one of the ah search engines for podcasts that I can find.
00:01:15
Speaker
So thank you for being here. We are almost halfway through with the year. We have been going through the Bible. Here's what it looks like here. And look, we are halfway through the Bible.
00:01:27
Speaker
We are set to begin the New Testament on August 10th. So we have a little over a month to go and then we will be finished with the Old Covenant.
Value of the Bible in Daily Life
00:01:38
Speaker
Wow, amazing.
00:01:40
Speaker
You guys are doing a fantastic job, by the way. I hope that you have been enjoying this amazing journey and that you are finding a lot of daily application in every day's reading because the Word of God is so rich and so valuable.
00:01:55
Speaker
It is good for everything, teaching, instructing. We find it it is applicable in every situation of our lives, whatever it is we're going through.
00:02:06
Speaker
I know that God has definitely been using this in my life and I'm not unique. ah So I know he's using it in your life as well. And I'm so thrilled about that. So here we
Parable of the Eagle and the Cedar
00:02:17
Speaker
go. We are going to be reading Ezekiel chapter 17 today.
00:02:21
Speaker
And in today's reading, God himself is going to be giving a parable to Ezekiel to show what he is going to be doing and what is going on is like an eagle.
00:02:37
Speaker
Actually, it's like the branch that the eagle brought.
00:02:41
Speaker
So here we go. It's entitled, An Eagle Plants a Cedar Tree. A cedar tree is a very big tree.
00:02:53
Speaker
Then God said to tell his people this story. A big eagle came to the land. He had strong wings. He had long feathers of many different colors.
00:03:07
Speaker
The eagle held on to the top of a cedar tree. Then he broke the top of the tree off. He took it to a land where people buy and sell things.
00:03:19
Speaker
The eagle planted the tree there. Then the eagle got some seeds from your land. He planted them in good dirt.
00:03:31
Speaker
The seeds got lots of water, so they began to grow. They made a vine. The vine was low, but it grew wide.
00:03:42
Speaker
It grew leaves.
Meaning of the Parable
00:03:44
Speaker
The branches turned toward the eagle. The vine's roots grew down under it. Then another eagle came along.
00:03:54
Speaker
He had strong wings. He had lots of feathers. The vine's roots turned and grew toward the other eagle. Its branches turned towards him.
00:04:08
Speaker
The vine waited for him to water it. It forgot there was good dirt and lots of water right where it was planted. The vine should make fruit, but it will be pulled up.
00:04:23
Speaker
The fruit will be pulled off. Then it will dry up.
00:04:29
Speaker
God said to tell his people what this story means. The king of Babylon is like the first eagle. He went to Jerusalem.
00:04:40
Speaker
He took away the kings and leaders. He took them to Babylon. Then he put a new king in charge of Jerusalem. He made the new kingdom low, like the vine.
00:04:54
Speaker
It had to obey Babylon. But the new king turned against Babylon. He sent people to Egypt for help. Egypt is like the other eagle.
00:05:08
Speaker
The new king asked Egypt for horses and an army, but Egypt's army won't help. Jerusalem's king promised to obey the king of Babylon.
00:05:19
Speaker
He did not keep his promise, so he won't get away.
Reflection on Faithfulness and Repentance
00:05:24
Speaker
I, the Lord God, will set a trap for him. He will get caught.
00:05:30
Speaker
I will take him to Babylon. I will pay him back for the wrong he has done. i will save some of my people. They will be like the top of the cedar tree.
00:05:41
Speaker
I will plant my kingdom on a high mountain. I am God. I said it, and I will do it.
00:05:55
Speaker
That is the end of our reading today.
00:05:58
Speaker
Short but powerful, don't you think?
00:06:03
Speaker
God is so illustrative. He gives us pictures of what it is that he is talking about. And Jesus did the same thing. He gave us stories to show us what things are like.
00:06:15
Speaker
A parable is a simile. A simile is something that compares two things using the words like or as. So when he is comparing things, he is trying to show what one, how one thing is like another. And in this case, God has shown us that the two eagles are the kingdoms of Babylon and Egypt and the vine that was growing from the top of the cedar tree that was planted was the people.
00:06:48
Speaker
And i love how God's illustrates with this. He gives us such beautiful pictures of things that we can understand. God had sent the Babylonians to take Jerusalem.
00:07:02
Speaker
But as we've been discussing, he would save part of the people. And those people, he told them to plant gardens, to build houses, to have children, to let their children get married, to pray for peace in the city, and that their numbers might increase so that if things went well and where they were planted,
00:07:25
Speaker
that things would go well for them as well. So God is trying to give the people the best. He is even taking care of his people. But the king of Jerusalem, Zedekiah, he is not taking care of the people.
00:07:41
Speaker
He is trying to protect himself. So while he was appointed king of Jerusalem by Babylon, we know that God is in charge of everything.
00:07:53
Speaker
And he seems to think that he is in charge because he is the king. But he is completely disobeying and dishonoring God. We saw that the the the leaders were worshiping idols and not practicing what God had told them to do.
00:08:11
Speaker
So this king, he will not be saved. We saw yesterday that Ezekiel told him that he would be taken to Babylon, that he would be saved.
00:08:22
Speaker
in exile. And Ezekiel was to act this out by dressing up and packing his clothes and going through a hole in the wall and by covering his face so that he couldn't see the land.
00:08:38
Speaker
And the king of Jerusalem now, he of Judah, he is going to be taken away. And God has given him so many opportunities and he just doesn't think that anything that Jeremiah, or rather Ezekiel, tells him is going to actually happen.
00:08:57
Speaker
He is telling the people that and that he's he's looking for help from Egypt. He's looking for all these outside sources to help him so that he doesn't have to do what God is saying is going to happen, and that's go to exile.
00:09:13
Speaker
he's He's grasping. He's trying everything he can to protect what he thinks he needs to protect instead of looking to our God for protection and to obey what he is supposed to be doing.
00:09:26
Speaker
And God tells us, that He is the Lord God. He has said it and it will happen. So our main application for today's daily application is to remember that God always does what He says He's going to do.
00:09:44
Speaker
The exception to that is that if we repent and we are sorry for what we have done, then he will lessen or remove a consequence that he has said he will bring as a result, as a warning.
Encouragement to Trust God's Promises
00:09:59
Speaker
And we've seen that over and over. And he has always shown us, like we looked at yesterday, such mercy. yeah he doesn't want to have to cause these things to happen.
00:10:11
Speaker
But the point of it is to bring the people back to him, is to get their hearts turned back around because he disciplines those whom he loves.
00:10:22
Speaker
And he loves us, so he will discipline us. And he will do what he says he is going to do. And jera ah in here in Ezekiel, we are seeing that the king ah ah Judah simply doesn't believe that these things are going to happen.
00:10:38
Speaker
The people were talking about and saying, oh, these things, they're not going to really happen. They had false prophets telling them otherwise. And so they they really weren't listening to who they needed to be listening to They were not using discernment.
00:10:55
Speaker
They were not practicing discernment. looking at what was actually happening and obeying who was following God. But our God is so faithful. He is so trustworthy.
00:11:05
Speaker
And when he says he will do something, he will do it. In the same way he said he would bring about the new covenant, And he did. He brought us that.
00:11:17
Speaker
So we are all forgiven because he made promise after promise that he would do so. And we are living in grace now because of his promise and the fact that when he says he will do something, he does it.
00:11:32
Speaker
And he says he will remember our sins no more. So we don't need to be worried about things that we have done in the past ah because once God has forgiven you for your sins,
00:11:43
Speaker
He says that he will not remember them as far as the east is from the west, meaning unending. He will never go back and remind you and say, well, remember about this that you did?
00:11:56
Speaker
That's not the way our God works. What he has said he will do, and he has done it. So that is our application today, is to remember that God is faithful, and he has been faithful to forgive us of our sins now and forever, because Jesus paid the price for that.
00:12:16
Speaker
So I hope that you find that that is encouraging and that you know that you can put your faith in God. You can put your trust in God. He will never go back on something he has said that he will do, that he has promised for us.
00:12:30
Speaker
We have so many promises in the Bible, and God is faithful to keep every single one of them. One thing we do want to remember is that God gives us examples of how we are to behave.
00:12:44
Speaker
So as well as in our daily application, we want to remember that in the same way that God is faithful to us and keeps his promises to us, he wants us to be truthful.
00:12:56
Speaker
That is part of his commandments to us. And he wants us to honor any promises that we make. So think carefully before you make a promise or a vow and remember that you made that promise.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:13:09
Speaker
And it may be difficult when times come that are hard to keep that promise. But we need to remember God's faithfulness and remember that we too are called to be faithful the way he is faithful.
00:13:23
Speaker
If we are weak in our and that time and we find it so hard to keep that promise, that is where we can go to Jesus because we are taught that in our weakness, he makes us strong.
00:13:37
Speaker
So I would encourage you if you are having difficulty in keeping a promise or in keeping a vow, that you look to the Holy Spirit to strengthen you and to comfort you in your time of weakness and that you ask Jesus to strengthen you, to help you keep that promise that you are having trouble keeping.
00:13:57
Speaker
because of somebody doing something and you don't feel like it, you feel like they've dishonored their portion. Despite the fact that the people were disobedient and had turned away from him, God still kept every promise he made to them.
00:14:12
Speaker
He never stopped loving us unconditionally. He did have consequences for us and we had disciplines. here we as we have seen, but he always kept his word.
00:14:25
Speaker
And so too, do we need to keep our word as well. So thank you very much for joining me. I hope that you are encouraged by this and that you feel that God has lit your light.
00:14:37
Speaker
If you have, please click that follow or subscribe button so that other people can be made aware of this event. Click that light button, share this event, share this episode with somebody.
00:14:49
Speaker
and just maybe to your social network feed, however you want to share that. But share it so that we can spread the word about reading God's word, so that other people will also know how faithful our God is, that when he says he will do something, he will do it.
00:15:07
Speaker
And so should we. So I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, and I will be here for everyone again tomorrow.