"Tell them, ‘As sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from
the death of the wicked. I want the wicked to change their ways and
live. Turn your life around! Reverse your evil ways! Why die, Israel?’ Ezekiel 33:11 (TM)
Justice that does not hold evil accountable and punish it accordingly is no justice at all. A just judge may have a heart full of compassion, but cannot allow evil to go unpunished.
Creative Commons photo from Flickr by OpenDemocracy
"Tell them, ‘As sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from
the death of the wicked. I want the wicked to change their ways and
live. Turn your life around! Reverse your evil ways! Why die, Israel?’ Ezekiel 33:11 (TM)
Justice that does not hold evil accountable and punish it accordingly is no justice at all. A just judge may have a heart full of compassion, but cannot allow evil to go unpunished.
Creative Commons photo from Flickr by OpenDemocracy
Madison left this morning for a month in Costa Rica with Global Expeditions. She’ll be in Texas for a few days getting with her team and going through orientation, then it’s off to Central America. They will be working in villages, orphanages – doing a lot of street theater to share the Message with the people there.
Please pray for safety. Also pray that this will be a life-changing trip, both for Madison and the people she ministers to in Costa Rica.
You can also say a prayer for Wendy’s brother, Lucas – who is Madison’s age and is on a similar trip to Chile with a different organization!!
In the eleventh year, on the first day of the third month, God’s
Message came to me: "Son of man, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt, that
pompous old goat: "’Who do you, astride the world, think you really are? Look! Assyria was a Big Tree, huge as a Lebanon cedar, beautiful limbs offering cool shade, Skyscraper high, piercing the clouds. Ezekiel 31:1-3 (TM)
If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? We laugh at the classic question posed by Barbara Walters, but it’s particularly appropriate given today’s passage. God compared Assyria and Egypt to huge trees that grew so tall and proud that they needed to be cut down for firewood (sounds a lot like the Tower of Babel). In Psalm 1, God uses the metaphor of a tree to described the "blessed" person. He says that this righteous person is a "tree, planted by rivers of water, bearing fruit in its’ season".
So am I a tree tall and proud – needing to be pruned and cut down?
Or am I a tree whose roots go deep into the Living Water and bearing godly fruit?
Wendy and I were excited to receive a visit from our friend George Khalil and his wife, Ros, from Nazareth. George was my guide when I visited Israel back in 2003. They are in the states visiting family and raising support for Emmaus Bible Ministry which translates the Bible , Bible Studies and Christian books into Arabic. EBM distributes these throughout the Arab world and via the web. George came down with our friend Chuck Wenger on Tuesday to speak at Pella Rotary. Afterwards they came over for some good Dutch coffee and Dutch letters on the patio!
"‘Your heart is proud, going around saying, "I’m a god." Ezekiel 28:2 (TM)
Pride was more in-your-face back in Ezekiel’s day. The ruling monarchs regularly proclaimed themselves god, announced they were a deity and made people worship them. Thus, we read Ezekiel’s message to the King of Tyre. We read it today and smugly think how ignorant those ancient people must have been. We shake our heads at the notion of any person claiming to be god.
And yet, the same pride exists in us – it’s just become much more subtle. The same sin takes a more heinous form in our enlightened age. Today, we claim that there is no god and act accordingly. In doing so, we erase any sense of spiritual accountability or moral responsibility. If there is no God to be accountable to, we are free to be the center of our own universe. Everything revolves around me. I am free to do what I want, when I want, with whomever I want to do it. Life is about getting all that I can.
I am God.
There is no God.
It’s opposite sides of the same coin.
"‘Your heart is proud, going around saying, "I’m a god." Ezekiel 28:2 (TM)
Pride was more in-your-face back in Ezekiel’s day. The ruling monarchs regularly proclaimed themselves god, announced they were a deity and made people worship them. Thus, we read Ezekiel’s message to the King of Tyre. We read it today and smugly think how ignorant those ancient people must have been. We shake our heads at the notion of any person claiming to be god.
And yet, the same pride exists in us – it’s just become much more subtle. The same sin takes a more heinous form in our enlightened age. Today, we claim that there is no god and act accordingly. In doing so, we erase any sense of spiritual accountability or moral responsibility. If there is no God to be accountable to, we are free to be the center of our own universe. Everything revolves around me. I am free to do what I want, when I want, with whomever I want to do it. Life is about getting all that I can.
I am God.
There is no God.
It’s opposite sides of the same coin.
God’s Message came to me: "You, son of man, raise a funeral song over
Tyre. Tell Tyre, gateway to the sea, merchant to the world, trader
among the far-off islands, ‘This is what God, the Master, says: Ezekiel 27:1 (TM)
I’m amazed at how creative God is, and how creative he expects Ezekiel to be in sharing his message. God asked Ezekiel to produce a couple of street theater productions. He’s written allegories and composed a bluesy lament. Now God asks E-z to write another song, this time a funeral song that reads like a sea shanty. Theater, stories, songs…God uses full range of available medium to proclaim the message.
Shouldn’t we be following that example and using every available medium to share The Message of Jesus’ love? Where along the way did we decide that God’s message should be reserved to a handful of songs and a 20-30 minute lecture on Sunday morning?
A couple of weeks ago, we gathered with Wendy’s family for their cousin’s wedding (on the Hall side). It was definitely a farm wedding. The reception was held in an emptied-out shed on the bride’s family farm. The meal was grilled on-site – just outside the shed. The music had a definite "twang" to it.
We had a great time with Wendy’s siblings. Not only was it a celebration of the cousins wedding, but we celebrated Heidi and Jesse’s announcement that they expect their first child in December!!
Huge acts of vengeance, massive punishments! Ezekiel 25:17a (TM)
One of the difficult parts of reading the Old Testament prophets is the constant, never-ending stream of God’s judgment. It gets so repetitious, God warning his people that they’ve messed up and better straighten up or there will be consequences. Chapter after chapter after chapter.
I was thinking about that this morning and kind of groaning about it, until I realized…
How often do I…
When I read Ezekiel and the prophets, I’m hearing our Heavenly Father talking to His children – and every parent knows that raising children means repeating yourself…constantly.
God, help me listen – the first time.