But the vine was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground. The east wind dried up its fruit. They were stripped off and withered. As for its strong stem, fire consumed it. Now it is planted in the wilderness in a dry and thirsty land. And fire has gone out from the stem of its shoots, has consumed its fruit so that there remains in it no strong stem, no scepter for ruling.
– Ezekiel 19:12–14
So when you hear this imagery, if you picture it, it’s a potent picture of how the sinfulness of man leads to the destruction of man. Sin always leads to destruction. Sin does not ever lead to life. And sin does not ever lead to good. It promises these things. It promises so much in ways that it never delivers.
So I just want to encourage you to think today, even as I think in my own life, how am I tempted? How are you tempted today to sin? In what ways are you tempted to think that sin is good for you? That doing, thinking, desiring, speaking, acting in a way that is not in accord with God’s word would be good for you.
Ezekiel 19:12–14 Reminds Us to Save Us from Sin
And let’s pray together, “God, save us from the deception of sin. God save us from the deceit of sin and the destruction that comes through it. Oh God, we need your grace continually, all day long. Left to ourselves, left to myself, I wander from you. We wander from you. We need your grace every day. And we need time with you every day to refocus our hearts and our minds on you and your word. We need your word to meditate on day and night, that we might be careful to do according to all that is written in it. So, God, we pray for salvation from sin today.”
“God, we pray for pure minds and hearts, for pure desires, for pure and holy lives. We say today, we want to be holy as you are holy. We trust your ways are better than our ways. You are wiser than we are. Your word is what leads to life, not our ways. So God help us all day long to turn from our ways, to trust in your words, to follow your word by the power of your spirit in us.”
Pray for the Monpa People of India
And God knowing that the sinfulness of man leads to the destruction of man, that leads to death, we pray for people groups around the world today who have not heard the good news of how they can be saved from the sinfulness in their hearts. God, we pray for the Monpa people of India, small people group of Buddhist men, women and children where the Taiwan Monastery is the spiritual mainstay of their lives.
God, we pray that the good news of salvation from sin would spread church near the Monpa people would spread the gospel to them, that you would send out missionaries from different places in the world who are far from the Monpa people to take the gospel to them. Oh God. As people who have been saved from our sin, we all lay our lives down daily and say, use us to make salvation from sin in Jesus, the salvation we enjoy known wherever you want to use us to make it known in the world in Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
