[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 1

[Donnie Parrett]

DONNIE DAILY GEMS FOR THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 1

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's
grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of
God's grace.

___

DAILY DEVOTION

Hatred for Sin


Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that
which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in
honour preferring one another; Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit;
serving the Lord; Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing
instant in prayer; Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to
hospitality.
Romans 12:9-13

All of us know people who were once active in church and displaying all of
the outward evidences of obedience to God, but who left that behind and
followed the allure of temptation into sin. How does that happen? There are
a variety of possible reasons, but one reason is that the allure of sin is
strong. For this reason, we should never settle for tolerating a certain
level of sin in our lives, assuming that we can handle not being pulled into
its deceptive grasp. To live a holy life as God calls us to live, we must
hate sin. The Scottish preacher William Arnot wrote, "The difference between
an unconverted man and a converted man is not that one has sins and the
other does not; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against
a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his
hated sins."
While we should always treat people with courtesy and respect, we must not
accord sin the same toleration. Instead we should hate it in all of its
forms. We cannot love that which is good without a corresponding contempt
and disdain for that which is evil. Too many Christians allow themselves to
sin, thinking only of the attraction of sin rather than its bitter fruit.
They tiptoe up to the line, like Lot pitching his tent toward Sodom. That
course can never lead to holy living. Instead we must respond to temptation
with utter rejection, not allowing anything to overcome or lessen our hatred
of sin. Someone said, "What makes resisting temptation difficult for many
people is they don't want to discourage it completely." We need to be
willing to do whatever is necessary to reject temptation, not in some mild
or halfhearted fashion, but completely. Only then can we hold fast to what
is right.
When we consider what our sin cost Jesus, it should be easy for us to hate
and shun it.

___

DAILY BIBLE READING

Ezekiel 7-9 New King James Version
Judgment on Israel Is Near
7 Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 "And you, son of man,
thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel:

'An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.
3 Now the end has come upon you,
And I will send My anger against you;
I will judge you according to your ways,
And I will repay you for all your abominations.
4 My eye will not spare you,
Nor will I have pity;
But I will repay your ways,
And your abominations will be in your midst;
Then you shall know that I am the Lord!'

5 "Thus says the Lord God:

'A disaster, a singular disaster;
Behold, it has come!
6 An end has come,
The end has come;
It has dawned for you;
Behold, it has come!
7 Doom has come to you, you who dwell in the land;
The time has come,
A day of trouble is near,
And not of rejoicing in the mountains.
8 Now upon you I will soon pour out My fury,
And spend My anger upon you;
I will judge you according to your ways,
And I will repay you for all your abominations.

9 'My eye will not spare,
Nor will I have pity;
I will [a]repay you according to your ways,
And your abominations will be in your midst.
Then you shall know that I am the Lord who strikes.

10 'Behold, the day!
Behold, it has come!
Doom has gone out;
The rod has blossomed,
Pride has budded.
11 Violence has risen up into a rod of wickedness;
None of them shall remain,
None of their multitude,
None of [b]them;
Nor shall there be wailing for them.
12 The time has come,
The day draws near.

'Let not the buyer rejoice,
Nor the seller mourn,
For wrath is on their whole multitude.
13 For the seller shall not return to what has been sold,
Though he may still be alive;
For the vision concerns the whole multitude,
And it shall not turn back;
No one will strengthen himself
Who lives in iniquity.

14 'They have blown the trumpet and made everyone ready,
But no one goes to battle;
For My wrath is on all their multitude.
15 The sword is outside,
And the pestilence and famine within.
Whoever is in the field
Will die by the sword;
And whoever is in the city,
Famine and pestilence will devour him.

16 'Those who survive will escape and be on the mountains
Like doves of the valleys,
All of them mourning,
Each for his iniquity.
17 Every hand will be feeble,
And every knee will be as weak as water.
18 They will also be girded with sackcloth;
Horror will cover them;
Shame will be on every face,
Baldness on all their heads.

19 'They will throw their silver into the streets,
And their gold will be like refuse;
Their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them
In the day of the wrath of the Lord;
They will not satisfy their souls,
Nor fill their stomachs,
Because it became their stumbling block of iniquity.

20 'As for the beauty of his ornaments,
He set it in majesty;
But they made from it
The images of their abominations-
Their detestable things;
Therefore I have made it
Like refuse to them.
21 I will give it as plunder
Into the hands of strangers,
And to the wicked of the earth as spoil;
And they shall defile it.
22 I will turn My face from them,
And they will defile My secret place;
For robbers shall enter it and defile it.

23 'Make a chain,
For the land is filled with crimes of blood,
And the city is full of violence.
24 Therefore I will bring the worst of the Gentiles,
And they will possess their houses;
I will cause the pomp of the strong to cease,
And their holy places shall be defiled.
25 [c]Destruction comes;
They will seek peace, but there shall be none.
26 Disaster will come upon disaster,
And rumor will be upon rumor.
Then they will seek a vision from a prophet;
But the law will perish from the priest,
And counsel from the elders.

27 'The king will mourn,
The prince will be clothed with desolation,
And the hands of the common people will tremble.
I will do to them according to their way,
And according to what they deserve I will judge them;
Then they shall know that I am the Lord!' "

Abominations in the Temple
8 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth
day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting
before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell upon me there. 2 Then I
looked, and there was a likeness, like the appearance of fire-from the
appearance of His waist and downward, fire; and from His waist and upward,
like the appearance of brightness, like the color of amber. 3 He stretched
out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my hair; and the Spirit
lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to
Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat
of the image of jealousy was, which provokes[d] to jealousy. 4 And behold,
the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the
plain.

5 Then He said to me, "Son of man, lift your eyes now toward the north." So
I lifted my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, was
this image of jealousy in the entrance.

6 Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing,
the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go
far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater
abominations." 7 So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I
looked, there was a hole in the wall. 8 Then He said to me, "Son of man, dig
into the wall"; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door.

9 And He said to me, "Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are
doing there." 10 So I went in and saw, and there-every sort of creeping
thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel,
[e]portrayed all around on the walls. 11 And there stood before them seventy
men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah
the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of
incense went up. 12 Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the
elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his
idols? For they say, 'The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the
land.' "

13 And He said to me, "Turn again, and you will see greater abominations
that they are doing." 14 So He brought me to the door of the north gate of
the Lord's house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for
[f]Tammuz.

15 Then He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again, you
will see greater abominations than these." 16 So He brought me into the
inner court of the Lord's house; and there, at the door of the temple of the
Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their
backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and
they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

17 And He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial
thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit
here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned
to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to their nose. 18
Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have
pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear
them."

The Wicked Are Slain
9 Then He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, "Let those who
have charge over the city draw near, each with a [g]deadly weapon in his
hand." 2 And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate,
which faces north, each with his [h]battle-ax in his hand. One man among
them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkhorn [i]at his side. They
went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it
had been, to the threshold of the [j]temple. And He called to the man
clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; 4 and the Lord
said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of
Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over
all the abominations that are done within it."

5 To the others He said in my [k]hearing, "Go after him through the city and
kill;[l] do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. 6 Utterly[m] slay old
and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near
anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary." So they began with
the elders who were before the [n]temple. 7 Then He said to them, "Defile
the [o]temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went
out and killed in the city.

8 So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell
on my face and cried out, and said, "Ah, Lord God! Will You destroy all the
remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?"

9 Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is
exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed, and the city full of
perversity; for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does
not see!' 10 And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have
pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head."

11 Just then, the man clothed with linen, who had the inkhorn at his side,
reported back and said, "I have done as You commanded me."

Footnotes
Ezekiel 7:9 Lit. give
Ezekiel 7:11 Or their wealth
Ezekiel 7:25 Lit. Shuddering
Ezekiel 8:3 Arouses the Lord's jealousy
Ezekiel 8:10 Or carved
Ezekiel 8:14 A Sumerian fertility god similar to the Gr. god Adonis
Ezekiel 9:1 Or destroying
Ezekiel 9:2 Lit. shattering weapon
Ezekiel 9:2 Lit. upon his loins
Ezekiel 9:3 Lit. house
Ezekiel 9:5 Lit. ears
Ezekiel 9:5 Lit. strike
Ezekiel 9:6 Lit. Slay to destruction
Ezekiel 9:6 Lit. house
Ezekiel 9:7 Lit. house