August 5

Ezekiel 4
I once owned some land in a community which was built on land that was a drained swamp. Before I built on the land, the house behind it had caught fire and burned to the ground and caught the land on fire. In order to contain the fire, the fire department plowed fire breaks in the peat/ground around the fire to keep it from spreading. One place, where the furrows met, greatly resembled the topography of Jerusalem of where the Kidron, Tyropean and Hinnom Valleys meet. At one point in time, I daydreamed about making a model of Jerusalem on the little mounds. I thought it might be a good teaching lesson for teaching the Scripture.
Ezekiel was given a rather bizarre job. He had to make a model of Jerusalem on a clay tablet and set it up where people would see it. Then he built siege walls all around it. Sounds like something that I would have loved to have done when I was a boy. He had to lay on his left side for 390 days and lay siege to the city to represent the years of Israel’s captivity. Then he had to lay on his right side for 40 days to represent the years of Judah’s captivity. He could only eat 20 ounces of mixed grain per day as representative of the famine that would be in Jerusalem as Nebuchadnezzar lay siege to it. He was limited to a quart of water per day. Definitely siege rations. Since in the midst of a siege, no firewood could be gathered, the Lord instructed him to cook his grain into bread using human dung as fire fuel. That was a little over the top for Ezekiel, so the Lord allowed him to use dried animal dung instead.
It reminds me of a line from an old cowboy song from the Chisolm trail of Oklahoma, “Pickin’ up chips to keep from freezin’, way out west in No Man’s Land.” To this day the town of Beaver, OK, hosts the world’s cowchip throwin’ contest. What a great claim to fame!
I wonder what it was like for Ezekiel to lie on his side and play army for a year and two months. His neighbors in Tel-Abib must have thought that he was mentally ill. I can only imagine having made the model of Jerusalem in my side yard and spending the next 430 days lying in front of it. I am sure the neighbors would have all thought that I was losing my mind. But for Ezekiel, Tel-Abib was the city where the exiled elders of Israel came to discuss what to do about eventually going home. It was more than a weird diversion; it was a clear object lesson to the exiles. The city was going to be lay siege, breached and destroyed. It was clear to Ezekiel’s audience what he was communicating. Did he have fun playing army each day?
Where is the glory of the Lord in all of this? He communicates to us let us know our end. Today in the park a little three-year-old boy came singing, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” I told him, that’s right, you keep singing it. Moments later he collided with his older brother and fell to the ground hitting his head on the ground. He cried for the next 20 minutes. I couldn’t ask him, “Do you still think God has a wonderful plan for your life?” Suppose I did, would he still say, “Yes?” Most 3-year-olds would probably say, “No.” But as an adult, I know that life has its moments, but over the long haul, I can say, “God has had a wonderful plan for my life.” If you asked someone in the siege of Jerusalem, “Is this God’s wonderful plan for us?” they would likely have answered, “Absolutely not.” But ultimately as we saw in Jeremiah, God knew the plans for them, plans for welfare. The siege was to cure them of their idolatry and iniquity. Where is the glory of the Lord? In the times in which we would deem evil, if we yield to Him, He will turn those times into times of welfare. He calls us to yield to Him and hold fast to the end. Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!
--Pastor john