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.