Thursday 24 November

Ezekiel 45:1-46:24

Who the heck is this prince?  Suddenly out of nowhere Ezekiel starts waffling on about some prince who is going to come and be the perfect ruler of Israel.  But who is he?  Where has he come from?  Why is he performing some of the priestly roles?  Why is he going into the temple to offer a freewill sacrifice?  Why is he going to be among the people, going in when they go in and coming out when they come out?  Either Ezekiel got a bit of a knock on the head when he was getting excited about the measurements of the temple, or the Lord has spoken to him about a new form of government that He is bringing to his people.  It is more of this continuity and discontinuity stuff.  We see in this vision of Ezekiel a staggering silhouette of the Prince of Life, and yet he seems to be casting his shadow on an out-of-date background.  But no matter.  The thing is that God spoke to this crazy old prophet about His designs for his people.  God spoke about a coming rule of justice and peace and provision and care.  God spoke of his plans to bring in a new age under the magnificent and beneficent rule of Jesus.  We have the joy of living in that age.  We have the greater joy of heading there still.  Jesus is our prince and he comes in and goes out with us.  Oh the sweetness of that thought.

1 Peter 3:1-22

Yesterday Peter told us we were chosen.  I still can’t get over that.  Flip.  It is amazing.  But he hasn’t just left it there.  In today’s passage Peter pulls out some of the regular issues that are exposed by such a revelation - and then he savages them like a lion on a wilderbeast.  There are some people, often people to whom we are very, very close, who haven’t yet believed the word.  There are some people who are just plain evil to us.  There are people who are slightly confused by the way we choose to live.  There are people who may intimidate us or speak badly of us or make us suffer.  None of these things should make us doubt.  None of these things should cause us to fear.  We need not be frightened.  We can always lean back on the shoulder of Jesus.  He has quite an arsenal at his disposal.  He is in the heavenly realms sat at the right hand of Almighty God.  He has smashed open the prison doors.  Through his death he has shattered and crushed the power of death.  He has brought us into life.  And so we can put up with hardship.  We can shut up when we are abused.  We can keep up our sympathy.  We can offer up our compassion.  We don’t need to smash up those who mistreat us. We don’t need to close up from those around us.  We can do these things because we look up.  We look up to Jesus.  We look up to Jesus as Lord.  We look up to the One who has offered himself up for us.  We look up to the One who has raised us up in Him.  Yes there may be issues but they are nothing compared to Jesus.  They are nothing at all compared to unfading beauty of what he has done to our spirits.  Nothing is worth as much as that.

Proverbs 28:18-28

“A man will do wrong for a piece of bread”.  One man didn’t.