It Stinks to be Young!

“Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.” (Eze 16:60 AV)

This is the only encouraging verse in an otherwise very discouraging chapter.  The entire chapter describes Israel from the time the LORD rescued them from Egypt until the time they were carried away.  The first part of the chapter tells of God’s grace and what He did for them.  Then, the LORD rehearses just what it was they did in response.  Some pretty discouraging things.  They completely rejected and embarrassed the very gracious God who took them from slavery, cleaned them up, and used them to glorify Himself.  The verbiage used is very dramatic.  It speaks of a promiscuous woman who is worse than them all because she gives away her wealth, rather than demanding it from, her lovers.  A truly immoral and hideous creature.  All this verbiage to describe what Israel did is, in the above verse, described as her youth!

Herein is the encouraging thing.  This everlasting covenant will be established at the beginning of the reign of Christ!  When their Messiah returns and sits upon the throne of David, this covenant will be in force and Israel will fail no more.  This covenant, although never voided, will come completely to pass when Jesus comes back.  But here is the encouragement for the believer:  All the mess we have ever created was in our youth.  Just like Israel, there will come a time when we will fully mature and failure is no longer possible.  Sin will never again corrupt our minds, bodies, or souls!  All this failure we succumb to is our youth!  Our immature, impulsive, selfish natures will mature at our glorification.  When transformed into the image of Christ, we will never again battle a youthful sin nature.  Glory!

Just as physically growing older is inescapable and inevitable, so too is spiritual maturity!  Just as my children could not wait to grow older and get on with their lives, the true child of God who walks with God looks forward to shedding the sinful body of our youth!  This is why God is so gracious to us.  We are in our youth. We will get it!  Sooner or later, we will understand by and by!