I am 24 chapters into Ezekiels ministry and I am thinking, "Wow, this was depressing." All he had to deliver was bad news and even then few people took him seriously. Also, I was thinking, why did God do this? Why did He bring judgement upon Jerusalem and Israel, placing them in Babylon as He did? Now I know the knowledgeable answers to those questions, but still. Why this way? Why then? Why? Then it hit me.
If God didn't do something, the promise He had made to anyone who would follow the law of Moses would become a lie. The people said they still believed in God, they still honored the law of God (up to a point), they still went to the temple, said their prayers and offered sacrifices. However, they did it for the wrong reasons.
Two things really strike me here. #1 God is long on patience. I'm thinking that the ability for the Law to change peoples lives had long passed away. But the Lord really did love His people and I know that He would have forgiven them if they would have just prayed, repented and turned away from their sin. That was never going to happen now. #2 What about the church today? Has it's message become something so watered down that it cannot fulfill the promises it makes? God so desires to lead people to a new life through repentance. To bless them with His promises of healing, provision, hope and love. To lift them up as standards before a world that doesn't want to believe in Him, but will run to Him in their moment of crisis.
When that standard is lifted up and people dismiss it as irrelevant what should we do? Pray and I mean pray hard!! Pray that God will make us relevant to a people who need Him. We are the key to leading people to knowing Him in a real way! If we don't ask for Him to empower us with His Holy Spirit to do just that, who is going to lead them? Oprah? Hinduism? New Atheistism? People will fall for anything when there are no good people to lead them to something. We, as the Church of Jesus Christ, must declare His Message to everyone we know or we may be doomed to suffer the same fate of Jerusalem.
If God didn't do something, the promise He had made to anyone who would follow the law of Moses would become a lie. The people said they still believed in God, they still honored the law of God (up to a point), they still went to the temple, said their prayers and offered sacrifices. However, they did it for the wrong reasons.
Two things really strike me here. #1 God is long on patience. I'm thinking that the ability for the Law to change peoples lives had long passed away. But the Lord really did love His people and I know that He would have forgiven them if they would have just prayed, repented and turned away from their sin. That was never going to happen now. #2 What about the church today? Has it's message become something so watered down that it cannot fulfill the promises it makes? God so desires to lead people to a new life through repentance. To bless them with His promises of healing, provision, hope and love. To lift them up as standards before a world that doesn't want to believe in Him, but will run to Him in their moment of crisis.
When that standard is lifted up and people dismiss it as irrelevant what should we do? Pray and I mean pray hard!! Pray that God will make us relevant to a people who need Him. We are the key to leading people to knowing Him in a real way! If we don't ask for Him to empower us with His Holy Spirit to do just that, who is going to lead them? Oprah? Hinduism? New Atheistism? People will fall for anything when there are no good people to lead them to something. We, as the Church of Jesus Christ, must declare His Message to everyone we know or we may be doomed to suffer the same fate of Jerusalem.
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