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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
You and I live at a time in history when ‘front page news’ is happening in thousands of places around the world all at the same time, right? Amazingly that news travels around the world at the speed of technology so anyone can be well informed at any time, almost anywhere in the world! One of the first things I do each morning is check my favorite news sources to see what happened on the other side of the world while I was sleeping!
Of course, none of that was reality 2600 years ago in the days of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, the three spokesmen of God we’ve been traveling with lately. Oh, there were certainly big, newsworthy events happening in many places in their day, as we’ve seen in our journey through the Bible books with their names, but communicating that news was primarily word of mouth, so it took time!
Yesterday we followed Jeremiah on his final trip to Egypt in about 584bc where he died sometime later. You’ll recall Jeremiah had given the Jewish refugees from Jerusalem God’s message to NOT flee to Egypt seeking safety and refuge there, but they rejected Jeremiah’s advice and forcibly took Jeremiah with them to Egypt. (Jeremiah 42:7-22)
While we have no Biblical record of the event, history tells us King Nebuchadnezzar led his Babylonian army to invade Egypt in 567bc and many of those Jewish exiles were killed in that invasion as God had predicted through Jeremiah. (Jeremiah 42:15-17)
Meanwhile, back in Babylon both Daniel and Ezekiel were busy men! Daniel, you may recall, had been promoted by King Nebuchadnezzar to the highest level of the Babylonian advisory council. (Daniel 2:47-49) These advisors were the men the Babylonian leaders trusted to give them wise advice and great understanding of things discernible only by interaction with the spirit world.
For millennia great world leaders trusted in astrologists or sorcerers, remember the Pharaoh of Egypt in Moses’ time? But Daniel was given wisdom directly from Almighty God, sometimes through visions or dreams as we saw in Daniel 2, and thus King Nebuchadnezzar trusted Daniel more than any other spiritual advisor during most of his 43 year reign as the world’s most powerful ruler.
Ezekiel, you may recall, had been among 10,000 Jewish captives marched from Jerusalem to Babylon as a result of King Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem in 597bc. Ezekiel was God’s spokesman to the large and rapidly growing number of Jewish exiles in Babylon. Occasionally God gives us a glimpse, through one of His prophets, of how news traveled in those days. Ezekiel 33:21 records: “In the twelfth year of our exile in the 10th month, on the fifth day, a man who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me with the news: ‘The city has fallen!”
Bible scholars have determined that newsflash date to be January 8th 585bc. The route this person would have taken from Jerusalem to Babylon would likely have been about 700 miles! As this horrible news spread among the Jewish exiles in Babylon, can you imagine the widespread grief and sorrow?
What both Jeremiah and Ezekiel had been predicting for several years was finally now reality. Both the city of Jerusalem and the great Jewish Temple were nothing but burned, broken piles of rubble.
That sad news evidently stirred Ezekiel deeply and God gave him several important messages which are relevant even in our day. Ezekiel’s record continues in Ez. 33:22 “Now the evening before the man arrived with this news, the hand of the LORD was upon me, and He opened my mouth…” God’s Holy Spirit was speaking into Ezekiel’s mind and heart with important messages and giving Ezekiel not simply permission but motivation to speak and write these God sent messages. Ezekiel recorded these important messages in Ezekiel 33-37. Once again, even though they are 2600 years old, it’s amazing how God is speaking to me through these messages today, and hopefully to you as well.
Did a wise person ever say to you: “don’t just listen to wisdom, put it into action!” God warned Ezekiel that there was a problem among the exiles who listened to Ezekiel’s words from God. It wasn’t a new problem and maybe you know someone who has the same problem. Here’s how God said it to Ezekiel: “Your people are talking about you, saying to each other: ‘Come, let’s hear the message that has come from the LORD.’ My people come to you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.” (Ez. 33:30-33)
Oh, there’s more, but that’s the meat of this first message and it challenges you and me to ask ourselves an important question: When we receive words of wisdom, from friends or older, wiser people, or especially from God, what do we do with that wisdom? Do we think about it, and seek to integrate it into our lives; or is it just noise we disregard? If we disregard wisdom, especially God’s wisdom, WHY?
We need to pause here my friends. Ezekiel was surrounded by thousands of people living destitute, in captivity, far from home. The reason? They had refused to hear and apply the wisdom and warnings God’s prophets like Jeremiah and others had been speaking to them for generations. Now Ezekiel was experiencing the same hard-hearted resistance when He spoke God’s new wisdom and warnings.
Look around at your extended family, the people you know in your city. Do you see some people today who are paying the painful price for their refusal to hear and honor God’s wisdom and warnings? Are you and I in that painful place and are we willing to admit that our refusal to honor God’s wisdom and warnings is the reason for our mess?
May I give you a closing word of wisdom today? Read the chapter of Proverbs which matches the date on the calendar, EVERY day. So today that would be Proverbs 27. Read that chapter of wisdom slowly, carefully, and keep a journal in which you can make notes as God stirs your heart with wisdom and warnings. Here’s one for today: Proverbs 27:12 “The prudent person see danger and takes refuge; but the foolish keep going and they pay the penalty.” Do you see the wisdom and warning in that statement? What will you do with it? I will live it and pass it on to my family and friends!
No song today my friends…instead I urge you to pause and reflect on what God is saying to us through Ezekiel and the Proverbs. It could change your life and spare you much pain and misery in the days ahead! I’ll see you right back here tomorrow…
Today’s Scripture: Ezekiel 33:21-33.
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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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