EZEKIEL 3:15 - 6:14
THEIR BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS: A "watchman" in the Bible is a person who prays, then warns when he sees danger coming. When you know that someone is in danger and don't warn them, God will hold you accountable. The results of your warning are not your problem, however. Some people choose to persist in their danger, in this case, their backsliding and apostasy.
FOUR SIGNS OF JUDGMENT: (1) The "tile": God would fight against Jerusalem, not for it. (2) Sleeping position: Left side = Israel; right side = Judah. Both had turned against God to worship their substitutes and counterfeits ("broken cisterns" Jer 2:13). (3) Polluted bread, cooked over human dung: because the people have polluted themselves, famine and drought will hasten the siege and many will die. (4) The shaved head & beard: After the famine, Judah will suffer the humiliation of military defeat by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. After shaving off all his hair, Ezekiel was to divide it into three parts: one part would die in the city by famine & disease; one part would be killed in battle; and one part scattered to the winds. Yet, there would be a righteous REMNANT, "bound up in thy skirts" - protected and preserved by God.
WHY IS GOD SO ANGRY? (5:6-7) There are unbelievers who behave better than some of us do! (5:10) Heart hungers and addictions drive us to do independent-from-God things. (5:11) When we act on those hungers outside of God, we defile our hearts and our bodies. In the end, "They shall know that I am the Lord." (6:7, 10, 13, 14) Delayed judgment is NOT permission to rebel. It is mercy.
RESPONSE: What does it take to get someone's attention? How could anyone get this far away from God? Why does it take such ultra-conditions to get them to repent? And even when their world was torn apart and destroyed, most STILL persisted in their rebellion. Only a handful of hair remained in Ezekiel's skirt!
IMPORTANT - PLEASE NOTE: God does not accept "excuses" for turning our back on Him. When God judges sin, His purpose is not destruction, but restoration. (like a farmer burning over a spent field). Some "reasons" for apostasy are given in Ezekiel and Jeremiah: (1) Unmet spiritual hunger - and subsequent grasping for substitutes. (2) Fear and unbelief when God "changed things up". They "pull away", rather than confront their issues (Heb 10). (3) Intellectually and morally "outgunned" by unbelievers or by leadership who are working to deceive us while they are deceived themselves. (4) Self-preservation that leads to being easily offended. They put externals and temporals above what is internal and eternal. External "treasures", even if they are SELF, are HOOKS. (5) "Love of the world and the things in the world" (1 John 2:15-17). Again, they are "treasures" that serve as HOOKS to draw us away. Hooks lose their allure when we satisfy our hungers with God.
HEBREWS 4:1-16
SECOND WARNING: Be "afraid" of coming short of God's Rest. Rom 3:23 calls it "coming short of His glory". Remember, this isn't speaking about salvation from sin, but of salvation from sinning; of growing up into being a "son" (Galatians 4:1-7), of being "in faith".
The importance of this passage is that we learn that salvation from sin and death is not God's goal for us. It is only our entrance to God's Life. Getting saved is how we "qualify" ourselves to live for God. So many of us have been born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit, and have never realized that there is MORE! We think we have heard it all, seen it all, and even done it all - and have gotten jaded or even bored! Then Hebrews is the book for you! There is not only more, but we are warned to be AFRAID of missing it!
WHY AFRAID? The original language word for "fear" here is "phobos", from which we get "phobia" - an exceedingly terrible, unreasonable fear. We are accountable for the call God has extended to us. Everything in the Bible is about God drawing us to Himself. That is His desire. When we act independent from Him, when we go whole days without even talking to Him, when we don't desire Him, God is not pleased. God's rest is found in His Presence. It takes faith to "labour to enter" His Presence ("the Land"). We train, instruct, and teach our own hearts and minds that God is trustworthy and great and wonderful (Rom 12:2; Mat 22:37; Rom 8:7; Eph 4:23; 1Pet 1:13, et al). We don't wait for the right thoughts to come into our minds. We TELL our minds and our hearts what to think! We can actually push ourselves into being "in faith" by telling our hearts and minds about God's goodness and God's greatness, OUT LOUD. Deuteronomy, the book about entering the LAND, (God's Rest) has for its theme: "Remember God's goodness and God's greatness". This keeps us out of unbelief. It saves us from fear. God LOATHES an "evil heart of unbelief". I don't want God to "loathe" me! Nothing feels as good as knowing you've pleased God. Nothing feels as terrible as knowing you've displeased Him. We should be afraid to back away from God for fear that He won't be enough.
WE HAVE "HELP": Praise God! We have the Word of God and we have Jesus. If sin has deceived us into thinking the world is man-centered and that what God wants does not matter - then the Word of God will UN-deceive us! It has the "power" and the "life" in it to pierce through our misconceptions, our deceptions, our preconceptions - and show us what is really in us. Even if we are hardened. Because God's Word is "sharp" enuf. And when Truth is laid bare to us and we are laid bare to Truth, we have a "priest" (the one who used the Word to cut us open in the first place) who totally understands us. THEREFORE, we come BOLDLY - knowing God wants us with Him, knowing Jesus has made a way for us and drawn us forward - and obtain "grace to help".
SPECIAL WORD: I love this. The Greek word for "help" is "boetheia" which is the Old English word "fraps". Fraps are the ropes and chains that are wrapped around a ship in a storm, to keep it from being dashed to pieces. A diver drags it underneath and it is drawn upward from the sea and wound around and around to hold the ship together. It is used in Acts 27:17, "helps", referring to the ropes and chains that undergirded the ship. "Grace to help" is intended to keep me from falling apart when I go thru storms of life. It undergirds and holds me together. I obtain it when I push into God's Presence by insisting that God is great, and God is good. By acknowledging that He is greater than anything that comes into my life. That God is in charge, God is working His plan, God will not be thwarted. My rest comes, not because I am weary, but because I am satisfied and content with just God. This is the inheritance of a "son", whom Galatians 4 says has been changed from the inside-out. A real, inward change has taken place. Gal 3:25 says, "faith has come."
RESPONSE: My biggest problem is in loosing my focus. When I "forget God" - don't keep Him in focus, then I get all obsessed with myself again, wanting life to be "fair" - whatever that is. When I keep my mind wrapped around God's goodness and God's greatness, I am actually CHOOSING to be happy and content, no matter what is happening! Christian maturity is measured by how much we are conformed to Jesus' image and likeness. How content am I? How satisfied with Him am I? Have I learned to delight in the Lord? Or do I need something else in order to be happy?
PSALM 104:24-35
Everything created is dependent on God for sustenance. According to v. 29-30 God is in attendance at every death and every birth. Even tho His creations come and go, His glory endures forever.
MY CHOICE: I can CHOOSE to be happy. How? By deciding right now to sing praise to God as long as I have a voice. By deciding that I will draw my satisfaction from God, that whatever I think I may need, I WILL go to God to fill my hungers. My "meditation" (what I tell myself) of God will be "sweet" - give me pleasure, and in turn, please God. NOTE: The wicked are gathered out of the earth, so that the "meek inherit the earth" (Psa 37:11), not the other way around!
HALLELUJAH! "Praise the Lord" is originally written, "Hallelujah". Psa 105 also ends with "Hallelujah", and Psa 106 begins and ends with "Hallelujah". Also Psa 104 begins and ends with "Bless the Lord, O my soul". This Psalm is intended to push us over into God's Presence, as we instruct our hearts with God's goodness and God's greatness.
PROVERBS 26:27
This reads like an American cartoon show: Wile E. Coyote builds a trap for the Roadrunner, then falls into the trap himself. Roll a stone boulder uphill to lie in wait to push it onto an enemy, and as you near the top of the hill, the stone comes rolling back over your own head to crush you.
RESPONSE: It is foolish to seek revenge or to plot someone's harm. God sees it, and turns it on us instead. We may reap before we've actually even sown!
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