When you buy a can of frozen orange concentrate you have to add water to bring it down to the right strength to drink it as orange juice. But what happens if you add twice the water it calls for? How about four times? It you keep adding water, pretty soon there is almost nothing recognizable as “orange.”<\/p>\n
That’s what a guy named Ezra in the Old Testament was distressed about regarding God’s people. Israel had been in exile for seventy years due to their apostasy. It was a long punishment but now, as God promised, they had another chance to be a nation serving only one God.<\/p>\n
Ezra was the priest putting it all together, bringing back their worship and temple sacrifice as originally prescribed through Moses. So when he heard that the men were taking wives from among the peoples in their land he was beside himself.<\/p>\n
He said; “I tore my garment and my robe, and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard, and sat down astonished.”<\/b> (Ezra 9:3) He knew that if the Israelites mixed with the idolatrous Canaanites, Hittites, etc. they would become diluted again. Finally there would hardly be a hint left of true worship to one true God.<\/p>\n
There is a modern day application for us in this story. When we mix ungodly things with God’s truth, we dilute ourselves. We compromise little by little and inch by inch. As our spiritual eyes become weaker and weaker it is harder to hold fast to the truth we believe. Dilution leads to delusion.<\/p>\n
If the truth you once held seems a little fuzzy now, check it out. What have you mixed in?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you buy a can of frozen orange concentrate you have to add water to bring it down to the right strength to drink it as orange juice. But what happens if you add twice the water it calls for? How about four times? It you keep adding water, pretty soon there is almost nothing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n