True Escape

"But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity.” (Eze 7:16 AV)

This verse seems a bit contradictory.  On the first hand, you have mourning doves that are free to fly.  On the second hand, they are mourning.   On the first hand, they have escaped.  This escaping is total.  On the second hand, they are mourning for their inequity.  What gives?  The context is the battle for Jerusalem.  The inhabitants are told to go into captivity to Babylon lest the Chaldeans see their flight as rebellion and destroy them.  They do not heed and those who tried to escape were slaughtered.  So, we know those who escape above are not this group of people.  There is a remnant left behind by the Chaldeans who are tasked with caring for the land.  These are the only Judeans who escape the captivity of Babylon.  If I were one of these folks, I wouldn’t be mourning.  I would rejoice that I had escaped judgment.  Not these folks.  They have thoroughly escaped.  There is no threat of any pending judgment.  Yet, they mourn.  BTW, the mourning dove gets its name from two behaviors.  The first is its call.  It sounds like a survivor mourning the loss of a loved one.  The second is the mourning dove mates for life.  If its mate dies, it often keeps vigil on the deceased for a time.  There can be no misunderstanding here.  The process of mourning is also the process of escaping.

There was a young man who the LORD placed in my way for the purpose of ministry.  He had made a mess of his life.  There was drug abuse, a pregnancy out of wedlock, a divorce, unemployment; the list goes on and on.  We were able to help him get back on his feet.  We found him a job.  We got him a car.  We provided a place for him to sleep.  Then, he lost this good job and got another.  He slowly got back on drugs again.  He held a job in which he delivered furniture.  These deliveries were cash pick-ups.  He would drop off furniture and would collect cash for the items.  He then returned to the warehouse and dropped off the money.  I got a call from his employer one evening looking for him.  I hadn’t heard from him.  One day turned into two days.  Two days turned into five days.  He finally called me and told me he had embezzled the money from his company.  It took some doing, but I convinced him to contact his employer and tell him he wanted to make it right.  I told him to tell his employer he was willing to work with one hundred percent of his wages going to paying off the debt.  They made an arrangement and I drove him to the company.  Unfortunately, the employer had misled him and he went off in cuffs.  Later, when I took him to his court date, his name did not appear on any docket.  We enquired and they had no record of it.  As far as the county clerk’s office was concerned, he had no case in which to appear.  It seemed as though the grace of God came on this young man and he escaped the consequences of his actions.  But did he really?

The children of Judah, like their northern brethren, were carried off their land because they turned their backs on God.  They turned to other religious systems.  They worshipped idols.  It is one thing to escape the consequences of sin.  Quit another to escape that sin altogether.  When the remnant escaped the hand of the Chaldeans, they also escaped the grasp of the sin which brought this chastisement.  This required mourning over their iniquities.  Paul writes, “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” (Ro 6:20-22 AV)  To escape, one must escape that which caused them to be entrapped, to begin with.  Otherwise, captivity lurks right around the corner.  One cannot escape from iniquity unless they mourn over it.  Escape requires mourning.  Escape from the sin which does easily beset us means we turn our back on it and mourn over it.  Consider it dead.  Consider it never to be enjoyed again.