Birds
Revelation 18:2 “And he cried mightily with a strong voice,
saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is
become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul
spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.”
In the beginning, before sin entered our world, all the
birds had lovely songs. But after our first parents chose to
disobey God, what the Bible calls ‘unclean and hateful
birds’ were found in nature.
If you go out to a forest or meadow on a lovely spring
morning, you will hear the sweet songs of many kinds of
birds. It is so kind of dear Jesus, to still let us enjoy
the different pretty birds and their music to gladden our
hearts. They can help us think about how beautiful the
Garden of Eden must have been, and how much we will enjoy
heaven! Jesus gives special care to these little birds, to
keep them for us to enjoy.
But what about the ‘unclean and hateful’ ones? There are
no sweet songs found here; we hear no sweet songs any more,
only screeches, squawks, screams, and other harsh,
irritating noises. Why is this?
Well, these birds are all ones that eat flesh. They kill
and eat other birds as well as animals, and live by hunting
and hurting their fellow creatures.
The songbirds are mostly all fruit and seedeaters, or seed
and insect eaters, but the flesh eating birds, that live to
feast upon their fellow warm-blooded creatures, have no
sweet songs to bring before Jesus.
I want you to stop and think about the sounds you are
producing from day to day before Jesus. Are you sweet and
gentle, do your words and songs bring joy and make others
happy? Are sweet songs to Jesus and kind words rising from
your home like the sweet songs of the birds?
Or are the sounds of noisy, flesh tearing, birds coming from
you? Are shouts of anger and shrieks of selfishness heard
coming from your house? Fighting and quarreling and squawks
between you and your family, pecking and picking to get your
own way? When you go to visit your friends, do you tell some
nasty words of gossip or mean talk about others?
Do you know that Jesus told us in the Revelation that some
churches would finally be like a cage full of ‘unclean and
hateful birds’? What does a cage full of these birds do? Why
they pick and shriek and tear at each other, trying to eat
each other up! What kind of sound is that to come into the
ears of Jesus? He hears the shrieks of the flesh eaters, and
cries rise up before Him from the poor and helpless, that
these nasty birds peck and tear to pieces.
Take notice what kind of sounds come from your throat; Oh
that the sweet notes of kind words and happy songs may rise
from your heart to Jesus, and not the harsh shrieks of
selfishness. When you are tempted to yell and be selfish,
remember the ‘Unclean and Hateful birds” and fly away to
sweet words instead.
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