|
|
Daily Transcripts
|
11/06/2015
|
|
Ezekiel 14:12-16:41 ~ Hebrews 7:18-28 ~ Psalm 106:1-12 ~ Proverbs 27:4-6
Today is November 6th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. It’s me, Brian, here with you again today like every day as we march forward through the scriptures. This week we’ve been reading from the New Life Version and we are in the book of Ezekiel.
Commentary
Alright, let’s go into Ezekiel by way of Proverbs. “Anger causes trouble and a bad temper is like a flood.” And yeah, we all know that to some degree.
“But who can stand when there is jealousy?” Okay, if you have been betrayed by a spouse then you know the depths of that sentence. If you have ever been cheated on by somebody you love then you know what that feels like. And if you haven’t then if you’d just imagine what that would be like, it’ll hit you. You can understand all of the range of emotions that happen when you discover the betrayal, how reality all of a sudden gets thrown over on its side and nothing that you are counting on and nothing that you were believing in and hoping in is true. And all of the flood that goes in that, all of the things that you blame on yourself, all of the anger and rage that you blame on the person who betrayed you, all of the stuff that happens in that strange cocktail of hormones that floods our system with adrenaline and all of the other chemicals that bring on this blackness, the hopelessness, this depression that just seems to be bouncing all over the place with anger and jealousy and anger and sadness and hopelessness and depression and anger again and jealousy, just kind of repeat this and it won’t go away. So we can understand that. We can understand what that looks like and what that feels like. Some of you have experienced it firsthand.
Now, when we get to the book of Ezekiel today, we hear from God exactly how he feels about his people and we begin to go a layer deeper. We can surface read some of these prophecies of God saying, “Bad things are coming. Really, really bad things are going to come upon you.” And we can look at God as this aloof, indifferent judge who couldn’t get the people to be robots and uniformly worship him correctly, following all the right steps and prescriptions, and so now since they can’t keep their end of the bargain, he is going to destroy them. But that is not what’s going on here. What we see in the prophets is God spending decades, sometimes, begging people not to leave.
So let’s bring this back into our lives. You have somebody you love who has decided that they no longer want to be with you and you have all of the range of emotions that would go along with that but there’s this desperation. We can be standing in the doorway watching them walk away, tears flowing down your face, snot running out of your nose, like you are a basket case pleading, “Don’t leave me. Don’t do this. Don’t break up this family. Don’t do this.” So, whether we’ve experienced this or not, we can understand what that looks like.
That is far more true to what we are seeing in the prophets and in Ezekiel because God uses this poetry today to explain what’s going on. He talks about finding this baby, this newborn baby who was thrown out, left to die, was not wanted, was hated and so was thrown out into a field and left to perish in whatever way – whether that’s starvation, whether that’s exposure, whether that’s wild animals – just left, left to die to never be thought of again. And God comes along and sees this baby girl and speaks life, “Live. Live!!” And this baby grows and lives and becomes a young woman who is absolutely beautiful. God comes along and restores her and makes her beauty shine and cares for her and enters into marriage with her and has children with her. Only she chases other lovers. She cheats. She betrays. But it just gets worse. She’s not just on the down low having an affair. She’s out there sleeping with anyone that will sleep with her.
She’s precious to God. She’s desirable. She’s shapely. She’s gorgeous. She’s the apple of his eye and she’s sleeping with anyone who will sleep with her and even going further and involving her children in false worship and then taking that a step further and giving their children as a sacrifice. And then it goes on to the point where she’s not really acting like a prostitute because she’s not exchanging dollars for the use of her body, she’s actually giving gifts to everyone that will come to her.
So now if we go back to what this would look like, when you are begging the one that you love not to leave and then they leave and they are betraying you in every conceivable way and cheating on you over and over and over again, that brings up all kinds of emotions and jealousy is one of those. It’s very, very powerful and so we begin to see when God says, “I am a jealous God” what he actually is talking about. This isn’t about vengeance, this is about betrayal.
You don’t feel jealous or betrayed over someone betraying you or cheating on you if you don’t care. So there’s no way to read into this an aloof, vengeful God who doesn’t care what’s happening to people. He cares a ton. He’s at the extreme of caring about these actions and he’s the one that chose this imagery. So it’s imagery that we can understand because we can understand what that might look like in our own lives. He chose this imagery to describe how it was for him.
We have a God who cares an awful lot, who has spent pretty much the entire Bible begging people not to leave him. And we continue to leave him as if he doesn’t care, as if it doesn’t matter to him what falseness we chase and give our hearts over into worship, what adulteries we may commit with false lovers as if we can just come back. He’s the constant. He doesn’t really care. He’s merciful. He’ll just forgive us.
That’s not how relationships look. Right? If you think of your spouse and you think of all these circumstances that we’re talking about today, you’d care because you love them. You wouldn’t be indifferent about it. If they returned to you and you took them back, but then they did it again and then you took them back and then did it again and then you took them back, over and over and over, there would come an end to it or you would say this isn’t going to work. There’s no possibility for trust here. You’re always going to break this agreement. You’re always going to cheat on me. There’s no way forward for us.
And yet, this is what we continually do to God and somehow his love is so vast that that’s not what he does. He doesn’t just abandon. He begs for us to not suffer the repercussions of the road we are heading into and he gives foreknowledge of what that’s going to look like and then he begs, “Please don’t do this. Please come back. Please return to me. Please come home. This is better for you. We can be so good together.” And then we continue and continue and continue to betray as if he doesn’t care.
So this is one of the passages in all of the scriptures for me that really locked God’s heart for man into place because of the descriptive language he chose to use, one that any human being can understand, but one that locks into place where God’s heart really is toward us.
So may we sit with it today. May we understand that to be in a relationship with God – which is something we’ve been reframing all year long - to be in relationship with God, to be in love means that the two people that have come together, two parties that have come and entered love, a loving relationship together. They’ve also made themselves supremely vulnerable to each other because once you’ve given your heart, then betrayal is a possibility and betrayal leads to the depths of despair.
God has made himself vulnerable by offering a relationship to us – a very fickle, very self-absorbed people and we’ve always been this way. This isn’t a new phenomenon. We’re reading back thousands of years today and this was going on and He just never gave up. What we’re reading about today and God’s heart towards his people is before he came to rescue us, before Jesus came. So God didn’t give up and abandon. He pressed in and came in person so that we could be rescued.
We’re just not going to find love like this anywhere else and it should really expose us when we have the audacity to go to God and blame him for our own unfaithfulness, as if he’s the one that has been unfaithful. God has never been unfaithful to us, ever. May we realize that and stop blaming him for things he hasn’t done and stop cheating on him.
Song played: “Ezekiel” by Gungor.
|
|
Tamarie 11/06/2015 19:43 |
|
| |
Matteo Masiello
|
11/07/2015 13:28 |
I have to speak my conscience and find Brian's words on this passage, Ezekiel 16:1 - 41, as not very insightful. True, the feelings that one experiences when faced with a spouse is troubling, to say the least, but the explanation fails as does the writer of Ezekiel making the analogy of Jerusalem as an adulterous wife. I don't mean to offend anyone who has experienced the pain of a perceived betrayal in a marriage or close relationship but both parties in a relationship need to take responsibility when this happens. I have experienced the same thing and I was on the end of the one feeling betrayed. When I did some self examination and when my partner and I communicated, it came down to the fact that I didn't Iive up to my end of the relationship. I didn't show her enough respect. Not saying this is always the case, but both parties need to be vulnerability and discerning with one another. If one person is not doing what they should be doing, then if something like this happens, that person should not be too surprised. Maybe they did something to set the stage.
I cannot accept the writer of Ezekiel as portraying a valid relationship about God and Jerusalem. It seems to me that when things happen, we never want to ever say that God is somewhat responsible as well. So the Creator of everything has no hand in anything? Really? Then any leader isn't responsible for anything that happens under their leadership?
This is a paradox I admit that I live in in my faith. A question no one can answer? Why is it that we don't dare hold God responsible for anything and blame ourselves and one another for anything? Despite my faith, the thorn in my side is my unbelief that God doesn't exist - or at least how we portray God is wrong - since this is a Being who doesn't take the blame so to speak the the mess we perceive to be in.
|
|
