Ezekiel 13:1-15:8
Jesus called the pharisees and the scribes ‘whitewashed walls’. Here’s what I think he was referencing - a flimsy wall, covered with a daub of white paint that will be torn down and have its foundations laid bare (13:10-16). What was the real crime of the pharisees? They were acting like false prophets declaring ‘peace’ when there was no peace. They were leading the people astray through false reassurance. Essentially the pharisees and scribes were saying ‘follow these 612 commandments and you will be fine’. They had gutted out the heart of the fish and were just flapping around the dead empty skin. Yahweh wanted devotion. Yahweh wanted love. Yahweh wanted worship and faithfulness to the relationship of the covenant. And so Yahweh wanted repentance; mourning for lives gone astray and hearts gone cold. The pharisees and the false prophets of Ezekiel’s day rode roughshod over all of that. They just flapped around this dead fish skin telling everyone they were fine - that everything will be OK. I find I am tempted to be like a pharisee. I’m tempted to be nice to people and to tell them that they are fine, that God loves them so whatever insane things they are doing will be OK and whatever choices they make, he will be big enough to cope with. But that smells a bit like a fish skin. That feels a bit like saying ‘peace’ when there is no peace. There is a way that the Lord wants us to live. There are important things that we need to do to keep ourselves away from harm. So I feel I must overcome this temptation and sometimes speak out words of rebuke and challenge and a call to greater devotion to Jesus. I can’t just take the easy option of always smiling and always being ‘nice’. That leads to foundations being laid bare and I’m getting sick of foundations being laid bare. I want to speak more of the word of the Lord.
Hebrews 8:1-13
Let me get this straight. God called a man - a pretty ordinary sort of man - and made ridiculously generous and long-lasting promises to him. Then the man messed up. But God passed these staggeringly generous and long-lasting promises on to that man’s son and then on to his sons until all these sons messed up so bad that they got themselves enslaved in Egypt. So God responded to this abject failure on the part of the sons (let’s call them the house of Israel) by walking them out of slavery in Egypt and then making even stronger and clearer ridiculously generous promises to them (from the top of Mount Sinai). And then the house of Israel messed up. Again. And again. And again. And then God repeated his ridiculously generous promises over and over until one day the house of Israel (which had now had a bit of a row so had split into the House of Israel and the House of Judah who both hated each other) had gone so far that these ridiculously generous and long-lasting promises were no longer tenable. So how did God respond? He made new promises to them. Except these promises are not scaled-back, slightly-less-risky, minimizing-potential-losses promises. No, these are so staggeringly, incredibly generous and so epically, gong-resoundingly long-lasting that they make the previous ones look pathetic by comparison. He makes himself our high priest. He takes his heart and gives it to us. He takes all of his being and places it at our disposal. God’s level of provision for us is astonishing. This life in Jesus is the most rare privilege in the universe.
Psalm 120:1-7
“I am a man of peace; but when I speak, they are for war”. I wonder what he said?
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