Category: Devotions

Ezekiel 5

I have come to realise the purpose of my life is to demonstrate God.
It is not just words, but everything I do speaks, calls out, delivers a message.
That is not always comfortable for those who journey with me and it is certainly not comfortable for me at times.
So I shave my head and my beard, something done to an enemy to humiliate them.
I humiliate myself that others may see that the close relationship between God and His people is cut off. It is broken and now separated, just as my hair is cut off from my head.
I am a priest. We must under no circumstances shave our head.
I am now politically, religiously, ethically incorrect.
I have outcasted myself.
They might as well hang me on a tree accursed, but that’s for the One and Only.
Why do I do this? Why do I live out my faith so publicly?
Why do I embrace such humiliation?
There is no greater love than to lay your life down …

Ezekiel 4

I’m laying down.
This is not me falling face down in worship.
No, this is me laying down for others.
430 days is a long time.
Many have speculated why this long. The captivity of Israel and Judah lasted 430 years.
It feels like a lifetime, laying down here. But I know why I am doing this.
I am carrying the people’s sin upon me.
It’s like I’m a priest, “Give me their sin O Lord, Give them Your righteousness.”
Maybe I should do this for a lifetime.
Lay my life down for others. Feeling their pain and bearing their sin. All my life, from now on.
It is better than cooking food over the dung of men, anything’s better than that!

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.