"Wow..Look! An Eagle!"

Scripture Passage

Ezekiel 17:-19:14

Scripture Focus

“So now the Sovereign LORD asks:

Will this vine grow and prosper?
     No! I will pull it up, roots and all!
I will cut off its fruit
     and let its leaves wither and die.”
                           (Ezekiel 17:9 NLT)

Observation

Ezekiel is one of Scripture’s most abstract writers. Visions of four-faced cherubs and wheels within wheels are perhaps some of the most familiar of Ezekiel’s visionary images, but today’s passage threatens to be just as difficult to bring down to earth. A person has to read with an eye (ear?) for the poetic—not exactly a strength of mine!

Still, the basics are clear enough. Ezekiel creates an allegory involving two equally remarkable eagles. The first represents Babylon exiling King Jehoiachin and Israel’s upper crust and installing Zedekiah as regent over Judah—the “seedling from the land…placed…beside a broad river” (17:5). The second eagle Egypt, with whom Zedekiah made an alliance in an attempt to break away from Babylonian domination.

King Zedekiah’s plan failed, but not simply because it was somehow an ineffective plan. Zedekiah’s plan failed because God promised to see to it that it failed! And God made that promise because—in allying with Egypt—Zedekiah broke the covenant he’d sworn to keep with Babylon (17:18).

Apparently, God takes covenants—and the violation of them—very seriously. (Duh!) It was the violation of Israel’s covenant with God that got them in this pickle in the first place. Seems rather foolish for Zedekiah to think that he could have broken yet another covenant without any consequence whatsoever.

To some degree this makes today’s challenge sound/feel a bit like a broken record. I've certainly declared this challenge before, but here it is: I'm in a covenant agreement with God. I've made covenant promises to God.  I must walk in covenant integrity with God or face consequences I'll simply regret having to deal with! But isn’t that the ongoing challenge of faith? Isn’t that the ongoing challenge of responding with full obedience to what God has done for us through Jesus Christ our Lord? “Today, God, I will walk in covenant integrity with You!”

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