Ezekiel 12 -- Able To Hear, But Not Listening

God’s words about His disobedient people are heartbreaking.  He said, “They have eyes to see, but they do not see, and they have ears to hear, but they do not hear, because they are a people who refuse to obey … They will know that I am the Lord when I scatter them among the nations and spread them among the countries.”

What I gathered from that was God saying, “I made them capable of obeying Me.  They had within them what it takes to hear My voice and to see what I’m doing!  Yet because of their stubborn willfulness, they are losing that ability.”

The only way for them to regain that ability was to take them out of their comfort zone to a place where they would need him again and cry out to Him and change their hearts and lives.  And God loved them enough, despite their disobedience, to take them there.

Father, I know You’ve done that in my life, too.  Like a song I hear said, “I spent a week away from You last night.”  I’m so glad that You’ve softened my heart to the point where I regret disobedience and that the time I spend away from You seems lots longer than it really is.  Thank You for quickening my heart to Yours.  Keep it beating for You always.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Ezekiel 10-11 -- What God Can Do

The Spirit of God transported Ezekiel from Babylonia to Jerusalem and back in a vision.  He was told to prophesy against the leaders who remained in Jerusalem.  They had been telling everyone that the Israelites who had already been taken to exile in Babylonia were far from God, and that those remaining in Jerusalem were the loyal ones when exactly the opposite was true.

God promised to gather the remnant from all the nations back to Israel and to give them the land again.  That was an amazing promise, but what he said next was even more amazing:

“I will give them a desire to respect me completely, and I will put inside them a new way of thinking.  I will take out the stubborn heart of stone from their bodies, and I will give them an obedient heart of flesh.  Then they will live by My rules and obey My laws and keep them.  They will be My people and I will be their God.”

Father, absent the transforming power of Your Holy Spirit and Your deep love for me, my heart would be unable to love You.  Thank You for taking out the cold black heart of stone that my sin had created and for replacing it with an obedient heart of flesh.  Help me to obey You.  Thank You for allowing me to be Your child and for being my God.  I would have no other!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Ezekiel 7-9 -- We Don't Want To Go There

God has had enough of the wanton disregard that His people have been showing for Him.  God’s righteous anger is easily seen in what He says:  “I will make you pay for the way you have lived [doesn’t that remind you of “the wages of sin is death”?], and for your actions that I hate … I will judge you for the way you have lived and will make you pay for everything you have done that I hate.  I will show no pity and I will not hold back punishment.  I will pay you back for the way you have lived … Look, they are insulting me every way they can.  So I will act in anger.  I will have no pity, nor will I show mercy … The land is filled with people who murder, and the city is full of people who are not fair [sounds like these are equal sins] … I will bring their evil back on their heads.”

So many people look upon passages like these, compare them to the peaceful words of Jesus, and decide that the God of the Old Testament was a mean, vengeful God – very different from the God of the New Testament.  Once I said that myself.  I was wrong.  Just like them, I conveniently failed to mention what the people were doing, instead blaming God for being vengeful!

But there is no shadow of turning with God.  The shadow was on us.  The people had decided that their individual freedoms were more important than His presence in their lives.  Absorbed with self, they wanted to be able to do anything they desired without consequences. 

Had God allowed that to go unpunished, what would that say about His character and His holiness?  His word and His promises would carry no weight.  He would become just like the idols that the people were worshiping, easily swayed by bribes from their subjects (or so the people thought).  That doesn’t describe God at all.  Instead, it only highlights man’s sin and his need to bring everyone around him down to his own level of misery.  God won’t do that.  He can’t.  He has to be the One constant and the One ideal in a world severely infected with sin.  We need a God like that, not one that caters to our whims.

Father, please make me miserable when the way that I live doesn’t agree with Your Word.  Cause me to ache when my sin disappoints You.  Use those hurts to lead me to repentance.  Don’t let me ever believe that I can do anything I want.  You show here what happens to those kinds of people, and I never want that to happen to me.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Ezekiel 4-6 -- Living Out A Lesson

I’m sure the Israelites were stunned to hear Ezekiel’s pronouncements from God.  After all, they’d encouraged humanism and individual rights to the point that God had become an afterthought to them.  They’d tolerated the sin of the existing inhabitants of Canaan despite God’s clear commands as they’d taken the Promised Land.  And just as God had predicted, that small remnant of idol worshipers had swayed the entire nation.

God had watched patiently as they’d run headlong into sin, establishing idol worship altars on all the beautiful mountains surrounding the City of David – His original creation, prepared for His people, now being desecrated by their sin.

The images that God directed him to portray were of destruction.  The profane things would be destroyed and uncleanness would describe everything that remained.  “I will use My power against them to make the land empty and wasted from the desert to Diblah, wherever they live.  Then they will know that I am the Lord,” God said.  “They will remember how I was hurt because they were unfaithful to Me and turned away from Me and desired to worship their idols.  They will hate themselves because of the evil things they did that I hate.  Then they will know that I am the Lord.  I did not bring this terrible thing on them for no reason.”

God longs for us to know Him.  He desires our close communion with Him that Adam and Eve first enjoyed in the Garden of Eden.  That had been His original plan for us.  But our sin got in the way.  We distrusted Him and His motives, as we often still do today.  Because we aren’t capable of loving with perfect love, we find it impossible to believe that He is capable of it.  And that distrust leads us to feelings of entitlement – that He is somehow holding out on us – the same thing Satan worked to convince Eve  that God was allegedly doing back in the Garden.

Who could blame God for His reaction?  No one!  He is absolutely justified in every action and reaction.  His motives are pure.  He takes us to the bottom of the well sometimes so that we will realize our sin and look up to Him for grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  He has to bring us to that point once again where we are willing to admit, “You’re God, and I’m not.”

Father, forgive me for the times I’ve ever doubted Your absolute love for me.  Help me to always trust that everything You are doing in my life is designed to bring me closer to You and closer to the life You intended for me, but which I thoroughly made a mess of, just like the people in Ezekiel’s time.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Ezekiel 2 & 3 -- Commanded And Enabled

As I read this morning, it seemed that God kept bringing to mind something I’ve read many times in my commentary:  “God’s commands are His enablements.”  In other words, when God commands us to do something, at the same time He grants us grace to get it done.  For instance, He told Ezekiel to stand up on his feet (Ezekiel was bowing before the presence and glory of God).  Then Ezekiel said, “While He spoke to me, the Spirit entered me and put me on my feet.”

God ordered him to speak His words to the Israelites and even warned that they’d be stubborn.  He gave Ezekiel confidence by saying, “But they will know that a prophet has been among them,” and three times He tells Ezekiel not to be afraid.”

God also assured Ezekiel that there would be many who would not listen because of their stubbornness.  Then God once again commands and enables Ezekiel by changing his personality.  “I now make you as stubborn and hard as they are.  I am making you as hard as a diamond, harder than stone.” 

The first thing Ezekiel had to do was buy into the message he was to deliver.  God said, “Human, believe all the words I will speak to you …”  Once again, His commands are His enablements, and Ezekiel believed.

After being empowered by God, Ezekiel was “unhappy and angry.”  That’s because he agreed with God about the condition of the people, and he now possessed the hardness of a diamond which enabled him to possess the stubbornness to want to see them change their lives despite the unpopular nature of the message.

God warned him of his own blood-guiltiness if he failed to deliver the message.  Once the people heard, then his part was done and they would be the guilty ones.  I also noticed a clear reminder that works do not save.  In 3:20, God says, “They will die because of their SIN, and the good they did will not be remembered.”

My commentary also noted in the last part of chapter 3 that Ezekiel was prevented by God from talking for awhile and this serves to show us that we aren’t to cram the Gospel down the throats of everyone, but instead to those God directs.

Father, I believe that a little of the stubbornness – that diamond-like quality You describe – is what all believers need to enable us to persevere until we break through the tough crust that sin forms around the souls of those who’ve practiced sin for years.  Please enable me to not be shy in speaking to those You direct me to, and to have that diamond-hardness of caring where they spend eternity.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

Ezekiel 1 -- What Am I Hearing?

As this book opened, I was reminded of a prisoner of war, scratching a mark in the walls of his prison cell as he tried to keep up with the passing of time in captivity – “the fifth day of the month of the fifth year that King Jehoiachin had been a prisoner.”  For five YEARS Ezekiel had been away from home – Jerusalem. He was being held in enemy territory – Babylon – modern day Iraq.  Even the king had been taken captive, and Ezekiel had no word on the condition of the capital.

But in the middle of this war, God showed up.  He had a message for His wayward people that Ezekiel is about to receive.  God hadn’t forgotten them.  Instead, He was retraining them to trust Him again and to follow His commands.  In this first chapter, Ezekiel records his visions of God, and they are so far beyond his ability to describe and our ability to comprehend that what he tells us about what he saw when the sky opened sounds incredulous.  Two things seemed to be pounding his subconscious:  These were living creatures he was seeing, and they were Spirit-led and Spirit-directed.  God was directing them, not aliens (as some might suggest).  And if God was in control, Ezekiel had nothing to fear.

Father, it feels like our country is in captivity now – not off in some foreign land as Ezekiel found himself, but perhaps taken by some occupying force.  Our minds have trouble comprehending that it is actually happening, but our hearts tell us otherwise.  Like Ezekiel, I may not understand what is going on, but I can take a lesson from other times when I haven’t understood.  I simply say, “I trust You, God.”

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford

1 Corinthians 16 -- Do I TRUST Him Or Not?

Paul gave the Corinthians – and us – instructions about giving to the Lord’s work.  Verse 2 says, “On the first day of every week, each one of you should put aside money as you have been blessed.”

My commentary noted some very important stuff about what was said here:

First, every believer was asked to do this.

Second, It was to be systematically done, not haphazardly.  Once we get into a habit of giving, it becomes natural for us to do so.  It also keeps us from the temptation to horde material wealth.

Thirdly, It was also to be done proportionately – “As you have been blessed.”  Those who have little were still to have a part in giving, while those who had much could give accordingly as well, not sparingly.

What an amazing work could be done if all believers simply trusted God enough to follow through with Paul’s commands!  Those in the world could so easily see the hearts of Christians as new programs touched the lives of the lost and the hurting!  After all, these collections were for the welfare of those who were being ostracized because of their faith and had lost their jobs, families … everything.

Father, I pray that You will speak to the hearts of every believer about this.  Our world would be a totally different place!  It simply comes down to trust, and I trust You, God!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford