Ezekiel 14:12-16:42 This passage in Ezekiel speaks of Israel and how God had mercy on Israel and gave Israel life. Ezekiel speaks of Israel’s birth and how no man had pity upon her. Israel was like a newborn cast into an open field with no one even nearby to cut her umbilical cord. Then Ezekiel shares how God has pity on her: “And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!'” (Ezek. 16:6)
Israel was on the verge of hemorrhaging from her own sin if God did not have mercy upon her. The life is in the blood, and sin always brings death, the Bible tells us. I have experienced hemorrhaging, and my hemorrhaging was also connected with an aborted birth. I miscarried a child after my second son was born, and I felt my life draining out of me as the blood from my body flowed freely. When we sin, we also will feel the life draining out of us. If we do not repent, death will come into our body. The fruit of the seed of sin is always death if we let it grow in our lives by watering sin daily with our disobedience. God is a merciful God, however, and just as He had mercy on Israel, He has mercy on us.
At the moment of my hemorrhaging I was too weak to pray for myself. My husband, however, was with me as I was rushed to the hospital. He was praying for me. Not only was he praying for me, but many brothers and sisters in an African American church were praying for me. I had begun an interracial prayer group that met in an African American Baptist church. I was at this meeting when I began hemorrhaging, and one of the brothers there lifted me in his strong arms and drove me to my mother’s home, where we called the doctor for help. In the ambulance I felt my spirit leaving my body, and I truly believe it was the prayers of others that saved my life.
When we sin, we need to call upon the help of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes we are too weak to resist the enemy if he tempts us again in the same area. Their prayers will keep you from hemorrhaging to death spiritually. We have the great privilege as intercessors to speak life into those we see sinning. As we remit the sins of others for them and ask for God to send a spirit of repentance upon them, we will see life come back to these people who were on the verge of dying. Listen to this verse of Scripture: “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it” (1 John 5:16, KJV).
The only sin unto death we cannot remit for another is the sin of rejection of Jesus Christ. If a person has been presented the gospel and refuses to receive Christ, we cannot remit this sin.
READ: Ezekiel 14:12-16:42; Hebrews 7:18-28; Psalm 106:1-12; Proverbs 27:4-6
