Ezekiel 5
Okay, this is the second chapter in a row where God has asked Ezekiel to do something that, as a priest, he “shouldn’t” do: “Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales and divide up the hair. When the days of your siege come to an end, burn a third of the hair inside the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third to the wind.” (vs 1-2)
Ezekiel 4
What a strange chapter! One thing’s for sure: God certainly asked His prophets to do weird things at times. And I don’t know about you, but if I had answered the call to be a prophet, and the first assignment God gave me was to lay on my side(s) for 14 months, I might have to lodge a complaint!
Ezekiel 2
At a time when God was “giving up” His people into captivity, He wasn’t actually “giving up” on them at all. That’s one of the things I’ve discovered on this trip through the Bible: at a time when Israel seemed to be at its lowest possible point, God was communicating with them more thaan ever. Far from abandoning them, He was pursuing them all the more.
Ezekiel 1
Sometimes you just have to stand in awe of God. We need look no further than this chapter to realize that God is pretty much indescribable. I mean, Ezekiel tried really hard, but didn’t you chuckle your way through most of this chapter? I tried to imagine four-faced, four-winged creatures who speed around on burning wheels of fire, but the images in my head were most ridiculous.
Lamentations 5
Ever since my first child was in her first year of life, I tried to live by a parenting principle I picked up from one of the books I read. It advised: Begin as you mean to go. In other words, that book suggests that parents begin training their children with the long view in mind. This way, training is purposeful and not erratic. For example, when I wanted Caroline to learn to feed herself in a certain way, I didn’t allow her to throw food onto the floor for three months before having to “re-train” her to keep her food on her plate. I started by never allowing her to throw food on the floor. I began as I meant to go. And I still do.
Lamentations 4
The King of the Jews died a long time before He was hung on a cross at Calvary.
Yes, long before that Good Friday, God succumbed to the longstanding idolatry of His chosen people, and when Jerusalem (along with the Temple) was razed, He died in the minds of all the heathen He had been working so hard to reach. And even if His “death” at that time was just as temporary as the death Christ died on the cross, the total devastation of Israel nonetheless meant that God would have to start all over again in His bid to reveal Himself to humanity.
Lamentations 3
I hear the questions often: if God is so good, why are things in this world so bad? How can a loving God tolerate evil? How can He just let us suffer? Actually, there is much in Scripture to suggest that the assumption behind these questions is misguided. God isn’t sitting back with His arms folded in some distant locale, letting evil run rampant.
Lamentations 2
Of all the things you want to say about God, that “He is like an enemy” is not one of them! But neither do I wish to ignore or “gloss over” issues in the Old Testament that may be troubling to some Christians. And when you’re writing a blog about what the Bible has to say about who God is, it seems only fair to tackle the descriptions that seem “bad” right along with the “good” ones.
Lamentations 1
Most people refer to this book of the Bible as The Lamentations of Jeremiah, because most scholars agree it was written by the prophet Jeremiah. But these aren’t the lamentations of Jeremiah. They are the lamentations of God. Oh, Jeremiah might have also been distraught over what happened to his nation, but I believe the anguished heart cry here is all God’s.
Jeremiah 52
Once again, in this chapter, we are reminded of how the residents of Judah were finally carried off into Babylon, and Jerusalem was destroyed. How depressing. And even though he was given every opportunity to change his course, I still couldn’t help but feel bad for Zedekiah, whose sons were killed right in front of him before his eyes were plucked out. That would be an awful image to have to remember for the rest of your life. It’s just another stark reminder of the evil darkness we face when we try to live life without God.
Jeremiah 51
To the Hebrew mind, the sea was associated with evil. In Isaiah 57, Isaiah wrote that the wicked were like the sea. In Psalm 89, the psalmist wrote that the raging sea was akin to the opponents of the Lord. In Revelation, the sea is pictured as the birthplace of the Satanic beast (Rev 13) and the place of the dead (Rev 20). No wonder, when John pictured the earth made new, he wrote that the sea had disappeared (Rev 21).
Jeremiah 50
As I read this chapter (the first of two that details the end of Babylon), I couldn’t help but ponder the fact that every single “great” kingdom of this earth hasn’t lasted. All the formidable kingdoms or empires that once conquered and ruled most of the world—the Assyrian, the Roman, the Babylonian, the British, the Egyptian, and many others—have either been totally destroyed or divested of their power.
Jeremiah 47
Because of my parent/child context on this trip through the Bible, this jumped out at me from today’s chapter: “The people will cry out; all who dwell in the land will wail at the sound of the hooves of galloping steeds, at the noise of enemy chariots and the rumble of their wheels. Parents will not turn to help their children; their hands will hang limp.” (vs 2-3)
Jeremiah 44
Once again, the people of Israel have (1) promised to follow everything God says to a T, then (2) done the exact opposite of what He says. In our last chapter, God not only warned them that things wouldn’t go well for them if they moved to Egypt, but also promised that they would have a good life if they stayed in occupied Israel. But, the people didn’t listen. They were determined to substitute true security for perceived security.
