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Good Monday to you my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,
Life in 2025 provides us with a wide range of ‘expert advisors’, no matter where we live in the world, ready to help us face almost any challenge, right? Many of them may have a speed dial number on your cell phone. In fact, with technology, it’s now possible your ‘expert advisors’ don’t live in your town or even your State and in a few rare cases maybe not even in your country! And so, we have financial advisors, medical advisors and legal advisors etc.
But what about LIFE advisors? Who are those you turn to for reliable wisdom in living everyday life without regret, especially when facing great life challenges or crisis?
2600 years ago, God raised up three very significant LIFE advisors for His people Israel and anyone else who would listen to them. They were called prophets. Do you remember their names, who God assigned them to advise with God’s wisdom, and where God positioned them geographically?
JEREMIAH lived in Jerusalem and was God’s spokesman to the final few Jewish kings and the final generation of Jews living in and around Jerusalem before Jerusalem was finally destroyed in 586bc, by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army. Often words of wisdom just before cataclysmic disaster are a last opportunity.
DANIEL had been taken captive from Jerusalem as teenager and hauled off to Babylon where he lived a long life, promoted by God miraculously to become advisor to King Nebuchadnezzar himself and several of the most powerful people in the world over the next 64 years!
EZEKIEL, the third key spokesman of God at this unusual time in history, was also taken captive in Jerusalem and marched with 10,000 other captives to Babylon. And for the next several decades he lived as a captive in Babylon speaking God’s messages to his fellow Jewish captives both in Babylon and throughout the Middle East.
For a period of about 40 years all three men were vital spokesmen of God to our world, speaking their God messages simultaneously to different audiences, and their messages still have great validity for us today, which is why we’re spending these days unpacking what God was doing and saying through them at a strategic time in human history.
Yesterday we left Ezekiel in Babylon having received a clear commissioning from God. His role was to be a ‘watchman’ for the people, giving them God’s warnings of approaching danger. The 10,000 other Jewish captives with him in Babylon had ignored, disregarded, and outright rejected similar warnings which Jeremiah had given them back in Jerusalem, and that is precisely why they were captives 700 miles from home!
Now rather than God abandoning them in captivity, God was trying to instruct them, give them good reason to change their hearts and their ways so they could hopefully help their children and grandchildren learn vital life lessons and prevent further discipline or judgment from God.
This calls us to ask ourselves some important life questions:
* How quickly and well do we learn from our mistakes?
* Do we have hearts hungry to learn while God disciplines us or do we have hard hearts making excuses, rejecting God’s work as He calls us to repentance and change?
* How well are we passing along the lessons we learn in life to our children and grandchildren, and how receptive are they to our wisdom?
Ezekiel’s visionary encounter with God continued as he records it in Ezekiel 3:24 “Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said…” Yes, this Spirit is the very same Holy Spirit of God who is very active in our salvation experience in 2025 as He cleanses us from the damage and guilt of repented sin (1 John 1:9) and He regenerates us with a holy spiritual nature, which Jesus called being “born again”. (John 3:3-7) And Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would live within God’s redeemed people as a counselor guiding us. (John 14:16,17,26)
Here with Ezekiel, this same Holy Spirit is fully engaging Ezekiel in a life changing encounter with God and enabling Ezekiel to hear and understand God’s message to him. But God’s messages were not only for Ezekiel’s benefit, but rather Ezekiel as a watchman was also to PROCLAIM God’s messages to the people, so God said to Ezekiel: “I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke the people, for they are a rebellious people. But when I give you a message, I will open your mouth, and you shall say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says…” (Ez. 3:26,27)
Oh my, what an important concept for you and me today, my friends. Have you and I learned to discern when God is telling us to keep our mouth shut, don’t say anything? We’ve all experienced a conversation which unraveled into an argument and finally an all-out conflict! Neither person had the ability to do what God was instructing Ezekiel… glue your tongue to the roof of your mouth and say NOTHING in volatile situations!
Social media has become a global epidemic. Various platforms give people full opportunity for open expression! There is no restraint in saying whatever they want about anything or anyone, at any time in any language. And it’s addictive, especially to young people, so they spend hours everyday posting, reacting, expressing, way too often inflammatory things, malicious things, slanderous things, vicious things, vulgar things and everyday thousands of people’s reputations are ruined! Did you know many people actually commit suicide as a direct result of what some call ‘keyboard courage’ with no accountability!
What if you and I developed such a wonderful relationship with the Holy Spirit of God that we could discern when the Holy Spirit is warning us to STOP talking, DON’t react or respond, WALK away from the inflammatory encounter?!
But at the same time God challenged Ezekiel to be ready to discern when God would direct Ezekiel to speak. Maybe even more important than permission to speak is the wisdom to speak the most helpful words, the truthful words, the very words God wants spoken into the situation!
Are you and I there yet my friends? This is so powerful we need to pause here. If we need to learn for ourselves and teach our kids & grands anything it is this important Life lesson, do you agree? So what have you learned are the keys for you and me discerning WHEN God says to us “BE QUIET” and when God says “SPEAK UP” and WHAT God wants us to say??
Here’s a great worship song built on wise King Solomon’s words: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…” (Prov. 9:10) and I challenge you to link that with this wise advice from God in Ephesians 4:29 “…do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs…”; and tomorrow join me again with more life lessons from Ezekiel.
Today’s Scripture: Ezekiel 3:22-27.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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