19 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When I make you a desolate city, like cities no longer inhabited, and when I bring the ocean depths over you and its vast waters cover you, Ezekiel 26
There's a lot of verses in this chapter that relate to what God's been pressing on me this week, so this is the brief one verse that I thought would pick.
Tyre, along with many other cities and many other peoples, did things that were evil in God's eyes. God promised his vengeance and destroyed cities. There's example after example of this happening in the Bible. It's brought up as a point of argument by non-Christians - "Your God was quick to destroy cities in the OT, but now in the NT, he's all lovey-dovey. Where's the consistency?"
I had a lightbulb moment with my son this last week. I can't remember what it was exactly, but he was being stubborn and defiant over something. I think i threatened him with taking his toys away if he didn't straighten up, and he immediately did. It got me to thinking, this same threat won't work in a few years. He'll probably shrug and tell me, "Whatever Mom." I'm not looking forward to those days.
That led me to think about my relationship with my own parents. When we had arguments when I was my son's age, which I don't remember, I'm sure my parents didn't handle things the same as when I was ten, thirteen, eighteen or even now in my adult life. During that time, did my parents ever change? No. Who changed? I did. I grew up. And the same thing will happen with my son. He'll grow up and those arguments will come up and I'll have to handle them differently because he's different.
And here was my "Aha!" moment. Over all these years, from OT, to NT, to present day, God hasn't changed. We've changed. As a society, we've learned, we've matured, and we've grown. Think about it, even Moses was given very strict rules about sanitation in the Israelite camps to give to the Israelites. The Israelites didn't have soap! God wasn't giving them these rules because they needed to be super restrictive, he was giving them rules so they could stay hygenically clean!
Think of this, the way God was giving rules in the early OT times is just like a parent sets rules for a young child. "Do this because I say so." The NT is more like adolescent and teen years. "Here are some things to think about. You'll probably fight and argue about it, but you'll come around in time once you see that I'm cool." Where are we now? We've grown up and moved out of the house. It's up to us now to search him out. He's given us all the tools and resources we need, and it's up to us as to how we use them. We can go our own way or we can choose to do his will. Over all these years, God didn't change - we did.