(Ezekiel 28:24-26) “ ‘No longer will the people of Israel have malicious neighbours who are painful briers and sharp thorns. Then they will know that I am the Sovereign LORD. “ ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: When I gather the people of Israel from the nations where they have been scattered, I will be proved holy through them in the sight of the nations. Then they will live in their own land, which I gave to my servant Jacob. They will live there in safety and will build houses and plant vineyards; they will live in safety when I inflict punishment on all their neighbours who maligned them. Then they will know that I am the LORD their God.’ ”
Right now Israel is fighting a war on seven fronts with its implacable Islamic Jihadist neighbours hell-bent on the annihilation of the people of God. Now another enemy is looming in the nation of Turkey poised on the border of Turkey and Syria presenting another possible eighth front which it would seem Israel will have to face in the near future.
We know from Ezekiel Chapter 38 that Turkey will lead the invasion force against Israel (Ezekiel 38:1-6). God Himself will gather all of the armies of the nations to fight against Jerusalem. The city will be invaded, the city ransacked, the women ravaged and half of the population of the city taken into exile.
However, after this happens the LORD will go out and fight those nations, as He fights in the day of battle and the Messiah our Lord Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives and take the fight to the hordes of Islam (Zechariah 14:2-4) (Isaiah 63:1-6) (Joel 2:18-20;3:1-3,12-16).
As the Second Coming of the Messiah our Lord Jesus gets closer the devil is upping the ante on his malicious twisted appetite to see Israel as a nation completely annihilated. In Ezekiel 28:1-10 we see the rise and the demise of the Antichrist. In verses 11-19 we see the judgement on Satan, the one who indwelt the Antichrist.
We also see in this chapter in verses 20-23 that the LORD singles out Sidon which is located in Lebanon and a city under ‘the iron shod feet’ of Hezbollah. God is going to gain glory in this geographical region in Lebanon when He deals decisively with Hezbollah.
He is going to inflict punishment on all those who have dared to touch Israel, “the apple of God’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8).
As for Sidon He is going to send a plague upon her (Hezbollah) and make blood flow in her streets where the slain will fall within her, with the sword against her on every side and then they will know that He is the LORD and that it doesn’t pay to pick a fight with Him or with His covenant people.
Already we have seen the Israeli air force strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and whether the nations like or not God is fighting with and for Israel! (Exodus 14:14) (Deuteronomy 20:1-4).
God calls Israel’s neighbours malicious who are painful briars and sharp thorns in Israel’s side and whether it is Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza or Islamic terrorists in Judea and Samaria, in Syria, Iran, Iraq and in Yemen or Turkey, they will all know that Israel’s defender is the Sovereign LORD. He who can do all things and whose purposes cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2).
Another exile is coming for the people of Israel. It will be a time like no other time has ever been in the past or to be equalled in the future. This will be a shaking of the nations where every level of society will be affected.
The LORD will devastate the earth and scatter its inhabitants as they have scattered Israel. The religious world will be shaken, the domestic world will be shaken and the business world will be shaken.
No stone of resistance against the Messiah will be left unturned as the plans, the ambitions, the wicked imaginations, the rebellious nature, and the sins of all men and women globally will be laid bare before whom they will have to give an account (Isaiah 24:1-3) (2 Peter 3:10).
Today God has been gathering His people from the nations and bringing them back to Israel and there are as yet many more to come. He is not bringing them back for a picnic but for this time of Trouble for Jacob where the people of Israel will be faced with a dire and deadly situation confronted with the armies of their malicious neighbours and by the armies of the nations that if God does not intervene they will be destroyed.
However, the LORD will intervene because of His New Covenant made withe House of Israel and with the House of Judah through the blood of Messiah their Passover Lamb (Jeremiah 31:31-37).
In that day when the survivors in Israel will see their Messiah crucified for their sins and that through His blood God has opened a fountain for the cleansing of sin and turn to Him with repentant tears of joy, He will deliver every one of them and in that day all Israel will be saved after the Messiah Himself has totally destroyed all opposition.
After this He will reign over them sitting on David’s throne in Jerusalem (Jeremiah 30:1-9). After this the rest of those Israelites (as they are called Biblically) will be brought back from the nations where they had been exiled after the end-time invasion of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 30:10:11a).
God will gather them and show Himself holy among them and to the nations that have survived the Second Coming of Messiah. The remnant from all of the nations will return to live in their own nation bequeathed to them by God, to be for the people of Israel, as “an everlasting possession.” He who swore and oath in Covenant blood to do this with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their decedents the Jewish people (Genesis 17:8; 26:3-5; 35:12).
Israel will live in safety and build their houses and vineyards and prosper as the greatest nation in the world and there they will live in safety when God inflicts His punishment on all those malicious neighbours who maligned them. Then in that day all Israel will know that He is the LORD their God!
