Author: missionspaul

Ezekiel 3

I’ve tasted it, eaten it and now I am consumed by it.
I am speaking it, sent with it and rejected because of it.
It will not let me give up, grow soft, become fearful and remain silent.
The Spirit has lifted me above the problems. He has opened my ears to the sound of His presence and He has fulfilled me with a burning anger to right the wrong. All of this is because of that.
I have been prepared by it, locked in with it, learnt in silence with it. But now I am ready! I am ready to sit with people, empathise with them and wait to speak it.
I am speaking of the Bible. It really is inside me!

Ezekiel 2

The Word and the Spirit came to me. The Word directed me and the Spirit empowered me. I heard the Word outside of me but I felt the Spirit within.

I stood up against the odds. Despite the circumstance I stood up. I got to my feet. I showed I was ready for direction, for something new, for change, for Him to speak.

The Spirit raised me and the Word released me. “I am sending you” is the historical call, past, present and future. For all of us in every generation, “I am sending you”. And it is not dependent on results. And fear will be a battle. But the sending is to live a life, to be someone, among them, within the heart of the community, to be incarnate. This is mission.

Ezekiel 1

I was caught up in the exile, I was not in the place I should have been BUT I saw visions of God, v1

I had spent a few years with no change to my circumstance BUT the Word of God was true, v2.

I was living under the power of the Babylonians BUT the hand of The Lord was upon him, v3.

No matter what your circumstance today …
You can look, v4
You can listen, v15
You can fall down in surrender of Him, v23

Lamentations 5:

So what can we do?

1. Call on God to remember us.
Jeremiah reminded Him of His inheritance. He knew God’s heart for the fatherless. He knew the importance of the title Mount Zion. We need to pray who we are in the Scriptures and the heart of God that is found there.

2. Call on God who reigns forever.
The focal point of the book is this: He is Sovereign.

3. Call on God to restore us to Him
Restoration is not so we have better lives but that we are closer to Him.
The Jews would repeat the end of v22 when it was read in the Synagogue.

The point is He would not abandon them completely. He would bless them in the future. God’s judgment was not final.

IT WILL COME TO AN END

Lamentations 4:

Under siege from the enemy …

They had lost all worth as a people, v2-3

They had lost humanity, v10

They had become unrecognisable, v8

But no matter what has happened or what you have done God brings things to an end, v22.

He will not prolong your agony.

He is the beginning and the end.

3 FAITH STATEMENTS

Lamentations 3:

V22 The Lord’s love is great
V23 Great is Your faithfulness
V25 The Lord is good

How can we say this?

When we have lost homes, lives, when we are broken, killed or dispersed, how can we make such faith statements? When we have lost the worship centre and all signs of blessing are gone, how?

1. This is who He is, not based on what He does.
If we get this the other way round then when it goes wrong for us then His nature is in question.
V2-3 God took them into exile.

2. This is who He is who He is not what we have done.
All well and good if we have been sinless. But v42 “we have sinned and rebelled”.

3. This is who He is who He is not what He has given to us
The Church worker I met was not given great circumstantial blessing:
He was disabled for having been shot in the head, he struggled walking.
He was in a community living in a cemetery.

But it had become his mission field, it became a place of salvation, hope and joy.
Around the corner is The Church of Christ building, all their buildings are exactly the same proportion and size. Perfect in every way.

Is God more faithful to one than the other? Is what we have the proof of His faithfulness to us?
Actually The Church of Christ is heretical (they believe their buildings will be raptured) and the man was the most humble man and lover of God.

The 3 faith statements.

This is who He is.

“All I could do was pray, Help me God,” so were the words of a woman still recovering from the Haiyan typhoon that struck her island 5 months ago.

Sometimes that is all we have left.

Lamentations 2:

We can be drained emotionally, v11
We can struggle for words to say, v13
We can have regret, knowing things could have and should have been different, v14
We can be ashamed of our situation, v15-17
We can be crying constantly, v18-19
This is the condition.
It can get as bad as it can get.
Sometimes our only prayer is:
Look, O Lord, and consider …v20

WHY DID GOD ALLOW THIS?

Lamentations 1:

How many times have we heard that question?
This last week I was privileged to be with the people of only a few of the many Philippine Islands devastated by the Haiyan typhoon.
I actually asked that question to people who had seen such devastation that they thought they would die and many of course did.
I realised it was the wrong question.
For they answered a question I hadn’t asked. God was with us in the typhoon.
The weeping prophet begins “how deserted lies the city” and so Lamentations begins.
What we understand is that the “why God?” Question is actually not that important for the comfort we need. Jeremiah knew why, “because of her sins”v5. Imagine giving that answer the next time someone asks you, “Why God?”
Why is not as important as where.
Where is God? God is here.
Even in this chapter which tells of God rejecting His peoples 15, ultimately they will see God had never left them.
But I can see God.
I can see the foreshadowing of Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem,v1.
I can see the scoffers and those casting insults on Jesus as he hung from the cross, I see this in v12.
I can see him who stretched out His hands, v17.
Can you see Him in your life?
The next time an unbeliever asks you why answer them with the where, that he is here with them just as you are with them.

4,600 TAKEN!

Jeremiah 52:

4,600 who had seen their homes and city broken and their worship centre vandalised.
It need not have happened but it did.
V17-23 is the inventory of what was stolen. Everything that summarised their past blessings from God, taken.
Make a list: what has satan stolen from you?
They were taken from a land that they had possessed for nearly 860 years.
There is no weeping, that remains for the next book in the Bible. It is just the detail.
A gathered people became a scattered one.
They took the land by faith.
They lost it by idolatry.
They wanted to be like other nations.
They wanted to be anyone other than who God had created.
So they lost it all.
He gives and takes away.

The words of Jeremiah end here.

We made it bar one chapter which is a summary of the fall of Jerusalem added not by Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 51.
So looking back what is Jeremiah’s prophecy? What is the main message? Does it have anything to say to us today?
The last few chapters of the messages to the nations tells us simply:
The enemy is no match for God.
God is victor and will crush the enemy of our life, whether that be satan, the world or our flesh.
Everyday the spirit of Babylon and the other nations permeate our cultures. But Gods man and woman can walk through those influences without being influenced. We can stand in faith holding on to God who sustains us in all things.
Tomorrow is our day of victory. Today we live in the light of that victory.