Ezekiel 14:12-16:41, Hebrews 7:18-28, Psalms 106:1-12, Proverbs 27:4-6
Today is the 6th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy and a privilege and an honor and…and anything else that I can think of that I would be like that…all those things to be here with you today. All of these steps that we’ve taken, all of these days together, one by one step-by-step, they’ve brought us here. And sometimes you just realize, “man, I’ve taken the steps. I’ve made it here.” It’s remarkable. It’s remarkable we’ve been able to do this together in community. And, so, what a joy. And we’ve come here to do what we do every day, to dive in to the Scriptures, to come in out of the cold or whatever’s going on, the chaos of life and the world and all of our uncertainties and all of our speculations and just leave em’ at the door. They can stay there. We can pick em’ back up. We can carry em’ around. But when walk in here around the Global Campfire, those things, there’s just no place, there’s just no room for all of that this is where we come to the exhale, to breathe, to catch our breath, to find some peace and serenity and some truth and some focus as the word of God washes over us. So, let’s just leave everything behind and center ourselves as the Scriptures come for today. We’re reading the…from the Evangelical Heritage Version this week. Back into the book of Ezekiel. Today chapter 14 verse 12 through 16 verse 41.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we’re working through the books of prophecy, we can see that they, you know, they seem somewhat disjointed because they’re not narrative in form, at least not fully narrative in form. So, there the utterances of God through a profit, And, so, we can jump from one prophecy to the next prophecy to the next prophecy with kind of no context in between them. These are the utterances of God about certain things, His declarations. So, we can find them often when they’re back to back to back to be the issuance of some sort of judgment. And…and the details of what that judgment might look like or could look like, typically we hear the judgment that is that is coming and then we find that there’s an alternative - you don’t have to go that way - which is the sort of like the backdrop for life. We can head in a certain direction that leads to destruction, and then when it destroys us, we can’t be mad…it’s where we took ourselves. There was an alternative. We could’ve gone in another way. But we hear back to back to back all these words of woe and doom and destruction and just pain and suffering and sadness. And you…you start thinking God’s really an angry being very put out, very fed up. And, so, you get this kind of angry God, idea. And then…and listen…my hand is raised…like I’m waiving…literally…you can’t see me right now but I’m waving my hand. I grew…I mean I…I grew up thinking these kinds of things, that Jesus loved me, but His dad is just so thoroughly put out with me. Just…to go to the Father is like to go to a being with their arms folded, shaking their head in disappointment. And, you know, I know I’m not the only one. I know that. And, so…and a lot of things go into that. A lot of things play into that. But one of the things that plays into that is really some of…some of these words of judgment in the prophets. So, how does God feel? Like does He even feel? Apparently, He feels because we’re just talking about how we think He feels disappointed. But then we go into grace and we’re like, “he doesn’t really care about our sins. He’ll forgive our sins. He’s faithful and just to forgive our sins. So, He doesn’t really feel anything about those sins. So, you have this juxtaposition of His judgments in the prophecies and His faithfulness to grace and mercy. And then you’re like, “how does He actually really feel then? Like what's…or does He even feel? He’s God. Like does he feel in a way that a human being could understand? What’s going on here?” We find a piece of Scripture today in the book of Ezekiel that really does flesh this out in a way…like in His grace speaking through the prophet Ezekiel He gives us a picture that we can understand. And ironically, although this is thousands of years old, we still can understand very clearly the poignancy of what’s being said. And, so, in the 16th chapter of Ezekiel God essentially says, look, this is your story. This is what happened. This is how you got here, and then He tells a story about a little baby girl that was born, an infant, a new born baby girl that didn’t even have her umbilical cord cut and nothing was done to care for her after her birth. And this kind of harkens back to ancient times, but not so ancient as you might think where the value of a male child is more than the value of a female child because of the work that a male child can produce as they age and grow, what their value and output is going to be. And then we even enter into a highly patriarchal worldview that has been part of world history, not just like religious history, world history for…for millennia. So, there were times then if a baby girl was born, she would be left to die. Just left. Not cared for, not loved, not attached, nothing. Just left in a field to die. Through the prophet Ezekiel God is saying to His people, “that was you”, which is striking imagery if we want to think of God as a fully patriarchal being. He’s going to the unloved, tossed out infant baby girl who wasn’t cared for at all, who had been left to die. And He came to this baby girl and said, “live! Live!, Live!” And she lived. And He cared for her and He nurtured her, and she grew up and He fell in love with her and she became His…His wife. Like, this is the imagery God is choosing to use to explain Himself to His people and why He feels the way that He does. He nurtured this relationship. He loved her. He lavished all the good things upon her. She became beautiful. She became a queen. They were in love. They were in a covenant together. And then she realized that other people were noticing her, that she was beautiful, that she was desirable. And, so, as the story goes, she prostituted herself. So, she broke the covenant and committed adultery, not once, not twice but repeatedly, over and over and over and over again. If we just cause there because we can understand what we’re talking about here, we can understand why that would bring about unbelievable upheaval in the heart of the person who’s being cheated on. But then it goes beyond that. It’s like she stepped out so bad to the point that she’ll commit adultery, that she’ll sleep with just about anybody, that she’ll show anybody anything, that she’s is open to any kind of liaison so much that it comes to the point that she’s acting like a prostitute but instead of actually just saying this is my vocation, “I’m a prostitute” she’s the one doing the paying and she’s paying with the goods and gifts that had been bestowed upon her by the one who really loved her. Okay, that takes things up a notch. If we put ourselves in that position, we’re like this is a no go. I would be so upset, right? Like I’d be so angry about this. I would be so hurt. My feelings would be frayed. This is what God is…this is the imagery God is using to describe Himself through the prophet toward His people. But wait, there’s more. Not only all of that but God and His beloved, the little baby girl who was left to die, that he nurtured back to life and health then married her and she became a queen and prostituted herself. They had had children and the children were sacrificed to other gods. And, so, through the prophet God’s like, “wasn’t it enough for you to just do what you did with all of your lovers? Did you have to burn my children, our children in the fire to a false god?” Okay. So, if we think it through from that perspective, we could understand why we would look at the situation and say, “judgment is gonna come on that situation eventually. That is wrong, very wrong. That will lead to destruction.” And, so, for God to come through a prophet and say, “that will lead to destruction.” That shouldn’t be a surprise. It doesn’t make God an angry God who got up on the wrong side of the bad and decided to smite, to just smite the first thing that He saw. The imagery that God is using, the way that it’s supposed to hit us is that we would open our eyes and understand God’s not an angry, spiteful being who gets up on the wrong side of the bed with lightning bolts in His right and left hands. He’s a brokenhearted lover. He’s a jealous God and He uses this imagery to show that He’s jealous for His people. This little girl represents His people it represented the Hebrew people thousands of years ago. We are His people. The little girl in this story is us. And, so, the mirror comes up when we start to think about that God could feel this way. And have we been the adulterer? Like have we…have we be added to that or have we been faithful as He has been faithful. Have we chased after other lovers? Have we just continued to buy toys? Have we been the one paying? Like, I…I realize that the analogy that’s been using Ezekiel is a very, very personal marital and sexual in nature and in this example, she’s the one doing the paying for the favors but do we just run from toy to toy to toy to toy to from distraction to distraction to distraction ignoring what we’re paying for and using the gifts that God has given us to do it. Ahh…that bring things a little more close and it leaves us in a position like the Bible often does where we need to allow this to settle into the soil, that we need the Holy Spirit to hover over that soil as this is sinking in, as we begin to see ourselves in the story and the role of God as the one who loved us when we were unloved, the one who wants nothing more than we would return to Him, that we would come back. Not that we would come back only to cheat again. We would come back into a faithful covenantal relationship.
Prayer:
Father, we come humbly into Your presence. We come aware that we have been unfaithful. We come with the awareness from Ezekiel that You’re not aloof about that. It's…You’re not indifferent to it. You want our best. You want our good. You want to bestow upon us all of the goodness of life forever. For while we are here upon this earth and for evermore to be in Your presence. And we seem to chase every little lie that promises life and we get so distracted and so confused that we don’t even realize that we have offended You, that we have betrayed You. And, so, our first responses is…is repentance, is humility, is to fall down before You with an awareness of what we’ve done and to sit with it, to sit with what it means to repent and change by sitting here and absorbing that we have broken Your heart. The irony is that we may need to sit there for a long time, but You don’t expect that we would stay there. That’s not Your goal. Your goal is our restoration and our restoration can only happen when we return to You. And, so, we are returning to You and humbling ourselves before You in taking this image of this priceless little baby girl who was left to die as the story of our own lives. You came and got us. We’re here because You came and got us. May that sink into the soil today changing us irreversibly. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Song:
Ezekiel by Gungor
I found you naked
I found you lying there
In blood.
Your mother left you,
Your father threw you out.
Unloved.
I clothed your body
I washed the blood and dirt
From your hair.
I gave you jewelry
I gave you everything
I had.
I gave My heart
My heart, My love
I gave my heart,
My heart, My love
You became like
You were a stunning Bride
The world, they saw you
And how you loved their wives
My Bride
You broke My heart
My heart, My love
You broke My heart
My heart, My love.
You sold your body;
Exposed to all, My love
You slept with Stranger
You gave them everything we had.
Come back, My love
My love, come back.
Come back, My love.
My love, come back.