On 15th January 588BC Nebuchadnezzar began his siege of Jerusalem. This is a turning point in the book of Ezekiel for now Ezekiel’s oracles of doom were being fulfilled. God tells Ezekiel the very moment the siege began even though official news would have only arrived much later. Jerusalem is likened here to a cooking pot that is put on to boil. It is only a matter of time before all its contents are boiled within it. So it was with Jerusalem. After a siege of 18 months the Babylonians broke into Jerusalem and the city and temple were completely destroyed. It was the choice of the leaders of Jerusalem to set the city up as a fortress in conflict with God. They put themselves in the ‘pot’. God simply turned up the heat. The walls of the city came to represent the walls that the people put up to God, and now they were to perish behind those walls. Any life that is not surrendered to God is in conflict with him. Such a life is like a pot on a fire. Our defences against God become the walls of our incarceration and the furnace of our destruction. God wants to bring every thought and attitude of our hearts into submission to him and he will ‘heat up’ our most resistant areas in order to make manifest what he wants us to yield to him. God will put a fire under the areas we keep behind defensive walls so that we will eventually be unable to live with them anymore. This is how he leads us to purity and freedom.
Ask God to purify your heart.
Read Ezekiel 24:1-14
