Speaking truth
This week's study is on Ezekiel 3:1-11:
These verses are God speaking to the prophet Ezekiel thousands of years ago. Ezekiel was just over thirty years old, a priest, living in a refugee camp on the shore of Kebar river, in the land of the people who invaded and destroyed Israel. It was probably a pretty miserable existence. One day he sees a vision of incredible, horrifying creatures, and a glowing man in a sea of rainbow colors ruling over it, which he describes as "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord." Even though it was only a reflection of a copy of a single aspect of God, it was so overwhelming that he fell face down. Imagine that experience!
This appearance of the likeness of the glory of God commands Ezekiel to do things and they just happen. It is difficult to overstate the power of God. It is incredible. The Holy Spirit fills Ezekiel and raises him to his feet. A hand stretches out to him with a scroll. He doesn't even say whose hand it was. He could be describing the tunnel vision that comes from emotionally overwhelming experiences like combat. The scroll was covered on both sides with words of misery and bad news. That's where this week's verses start.
Put yourself in Ezekiel's shoes. An aging man who has had a hard life, whose culture has been destroyed by savages, who has probably been told that God is dead, and that he has no purpose or future. He is powerless, washed up, condemned to an existence where he will never even have a place of his own. He's a priest to a bunch of people who don't want to hear it.
Suddenly, there is shock and awe. Even as watered down as it is, he nearly overdoses on the tiny sliver of God's presence he is presented with. It's a completely overwhelming situation. And now he's handed a scroll describing the future, which is probably even more bleak and hopeless than what he'd come to expect.
God speaks to him in a sort of expanding three part message, like echoes that get stronger instead of weaker. "Eat it up." "Eat it and be filled and it will be sweet." "Allow yourself to be filled completely with what I am giving you, and take it to the people you are ideally suited to reach." It's beautiful. It is sweet.
Almost nothing God shows him or tells him sounds good. He's supposed to eat a scroll? Ick. It's misery and woe, and he's supposed to gobble it up? He's going to be made hard and unyielding and sent to share news of this misery and woe with bad people in an experience that sounds violent enough to be war? And yet Ezekiel describes the scroll as tasting sweet, as sweet as honey.
Up until this point, Ezekiel might as well have been wasting his life. He was nothing but some random priest. Just existing. But the heavens opened that day, and the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God came down in a cloud of violence and action. Ezekiel got pulled into it, lifted onto his feet by the Holy Spirit. Just as God shaped the creatures that surrounded him according to his whims, Ezekiel was shaped by the purpose God had for him. Just as the scroll of misery and woe tasted miraculously sweet to him, the violent bold purpose God had for him was sweet too.
Whether the stubborn rebellious exiles he was being sent to listened or not didn't matter. All that mattered was that Ezekiel was shaped for the experience and was serving his purpose. He was alive. The things that follow in rest of the book of Ezekiel sound like a series of dares. How bold must God have made him!
How many of us long for an experience like this? But we don't hear about what Ezekiel was doing the day before this happened. Maybe he'd read about Elijah and was longing for an experience like this too. Something this intense could just as easily happen to one of us. It's God we're talking about here, not the stock exchange or the weather forecast. God is a unique being who can pick us up and fling our lives in a completely different direction, like a tornado throws a trailer, and with about as much warning.
God revealed himself to Ezekiel because he wanted him to speak the truth to the rest of his people. There's no mention of any special preparation, exceptional lifestyle, book series, youtube video, prayer style, or anything. (People would be copying it superstitiously if he had!) That's part of what makes it so real. The story just starts with Ezekiel, and God's explosive entrance. Can it possibly have been anything Ezekiel did? God chose the place and the time. Ezekiel had no choice in the matter.
How could you not speak the truth after an experience like that? How could you not be bold after you were filled by the Holy Spirit and raised to your feet? When God has a plan for someone, he transforms them to be able to do it. If he reveals his plan to us, we can be sure we are equipped to do it. Nothing else matters. One day, we're just some random priest, and the next we're this fantastic creature, every bit as supernatural as the ones in the cloud of power God appears out of in the vision.
We still have Ezekiel's words, the ones God fed to him, the ones he lived out. It's not because Ezekiel was some great author. It's because God equipped him to speak the truth. I pray God equips us all as effectively, and instead of being some random priest in a dying culture, we'd be reborn as new creatures, according to God's whim, to speak his truth.
And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.
Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them. You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel— not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”
And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.”
These verses are God speaking to the prophet Ezekiel thousands of years ago. Ezekiel was just over thirty years old, a priest, living in a refugee camp on the shore of Kebar river, in the land of the people who invaded and destroyed Israel. It was probably a pretty miserable existence. One day he sees a vision of incredible, horrifying creatures, and a glowing man in a sea of rainbow colors ruling over it, which he describes as "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord." Even though it was only a reflection of a copy of a single aspect of God, it was so overwhelming that he fell face down. Imagine that experience!
This appearance of the likeness of the glory of God commands Ezekiel to do things and they just happen. It is difficult to overstate the power of God. It is incredible. The Holy Spirit fills Ezekiel and raises him to his feet. A hand stretches out to him with a scroll. He doesn't even say whose hand it was. He could be describing the tunnel vision that comes from emotionally overwhelming experiences like combat. The scroll was covered on both sides with words of misery and bad news. That's where this week's verses start.
Put yourself in Ezekiel's shoes. An aging man who has had a hard life, whose culture has been destroyed by savages, who has probably been told that God is dead, and that he has no purpose or future. He is powerless, washed up, condemned to an existence where he will never even have a place of his own. He's a priest to a bunch of people who don't want to hear it.
Suddenly, there is shock and awe. Even as watered down as it is, he nearly overdoses on the tiny sliver of God's presence he is presented with. It's a completely overwhelming situation. And now he's handed a scroll describing the future, which is probably even more bleak and hopeless than what he'd come to expect.
God speaks to him in a sort of expanding three part message, like echoes that get stronger instead of weaker. "Eat it up." "Eat it and be filled and it will be sweet." "Allow yourself to be filled completely with what I am giving you, and take it to the people you are ideally suited to reach." It's beautiful. It is sweet.
Almost nothing God shows him or tells him sounds good. He's supposed to eat a scroll? Ick. It's misery and woe, and he's supposed to gobble it up? He's going to be made hard and unyielding and sent to share news of this misery and woe with bad people in an experience that sounds violent enough to be war? And yet Ezekiel describes the scroll as tasting sweet, as sweet as honey.
Up until this point, Ezekiel might as well have been wasting his life. He was nothing but some random priest. Just existing. But the heavens opened that day, and the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God came down in a cloud of violence and action. Ezekiel got pulled into it, lifted onto his feet by the Holy Spirit. Just as God shaped the creatures that surrounded him according to his whims, Ezekiel was shaped by the purpose God had for him. Just as the scroll of misery and woe tasted miraculously sweet to him, the violent bold purpose God had for him was sweet too.
Whether the stubborn rebellious exiles he was being sent to listened or not didn't matter. All that mattered was that Ezekiel was shaped for the experience and was serving his purpose. He was alive. The things that follow in rest of the book of Ezekiel sound like a series of dares. How bold must God have made him!
How many of us long for an experience like this? But we don't hear about what Ezekiel was doing the day before this happened. Maybe he'd read about Elijah and was longing for an experience like this too. Something this intense could just as easily happen to one of us. It's God we're talking about here, not the stock exchange or the weather forecast. God is a unique being who can pick us up and fling our lives in a completely different direction, like a tornado throws a trailer, and with about as much warning.
God revealed himself to Ezekiel because he wanted him to speak the truth to the rest of his people. There's no mention of any special preparation, exceptional lifestyle, book series, youtube video, prayer style, or anything. (People would be copying it superstitiously if he had!) That's part of what makes it so real. The story just starts with Ezekiel, and God's explosive entrance. Can it possibly have been anything Ezekiel did? God chose the place and the time. Ezekiel had no choice in the matter.
How could you not speak the truth after an experience like that? How could you not be bold after you were filled by the Holy Spirit and raised to your feet? When God has a plan for someone, he transforms them to be able to do it. If he reveals his plan to us, we can be sure we are equipped to do it. Nothing else matters. One day, we're just some random priest, and the next we're this fantastic creature, every bit as supernatural as the ones in the cloud of power God appears out of in the vision.
We still have Ezekiel's words, the ones God fed to him, the ones he lived out. It's not because Ezekiel was some great author. It's because God equipped him to speak the truth. I pray God equips us all as effectively, and instead of being some random priest in a dying culture, we'd be reborn as new creatures, according to God's whim, to speak his truth.
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