Ezekiel 29
1 In the tenth year, in the tenth month,in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt:
Ezekiel was wise when he recorded when the Lord spoke.
If you cannot recall that the Lord has spoken to you then you’re a dead Christian.
May it be that the Lord has spoken to you in such a memorable way that even if you should not remember the exact date, you do remember clearly what He said.
Jesus said, ‘My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me.’
Is your relationship with God dead or alive?
When your loved one is dead you cannot talk to them. So it may be that to you God is dead, and days and weeks and months go by and you’ve not heard from Him.
Billy Graham was once driving in a train and a man said ”there is no God”. Billy Graham replied, “that is surprising, we were speaking together this morning.”
So the first point is, ‘the Word of the Lord came to me.’
The question also comes to us, have you spoken to God? If someone asks you what you prayed it may be that you cannot remember your own prayer – then those prayers are vain.
God’s word says, ‘remember your vows.’ Have you fulfilled the promises you’ve made to God? Or are you a liar?
Have you experienced such a crisis in your life that you made a promise to God. Have you fulfilled it?
There must be an intimate two way communication – God speaking to you and you to Him.
When you make a promise to God write it down and remember what you’ve promised and do what you’ve promised.
Some say God had spoken to them but change their story afterwards. Such people are not trustworthy. Another person says I will cling to the Lord right to the end, but soon depart from Him. One cannot understand such people.
Jesus said at the end of the sermon on the mount that the one who hears His Words and do them is wise, even like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. Even when the winds and rain came upon that house it did not fall for it was built upon the Rock.
If you listen to the Lord and follow His guidance you can be sure no matter what trials should come across your path, you will be able to stand and overcome as you continue to listen to the Lord and follow Him.
The house built upon the Rock of ages will stand.
But Jesus also said that the one who hears His Words but doesn’t obey them is like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand and when the winds and waves came against that house it fell and it was a terrible fall.
Some start well but end badly.
It is amazing that the same words that came to Ezekiel also came to Isaiah and Jeremiah. They spoke in unity.
It reminds one of the early church in Jerusalem. They were of one spirit and one heart.
Some people idolise their conscience and don’t realise that their conscience is an idiot of their own imagination. Yes, the Bible does say we must strive to have a clear conscience but it also says that the conscience of some is dead and the conscience of others is seared as with a hot iron.
If your conscience is not in alignment with the Bible, ignore your conscience and obey the Word of God. Your conscience can deceive you being made crooked by many things, but God’s Word is always true.
The unity of the Word of God is miraculous. The Bible consists of 66 Books, 39 in the OT, 27 in the NT. These books were written by almost 40 writers over a span of about 1500 years. The writers were in different occupations, in various settings, yet they all agree, writing the same thing. Amos was a herdsman, others were fishermen, another a tax collector, another a doctor, another a general of the military, others serving in government in the palaces of kings, others kings themselves. Nehemiah was the cup bearer of the king in the royal household. A few of them, Luke, Paul and Moses, had the best academic education of their era.
They all wrote the same thing, all in full agreement with the other. Many of them never even knew each other. Humanly we would expect chaos from these different writers.
In comparison: take a look at science over the last few hundred years and see how radically it changed its opinions. Even medical science is as fickle as the wind, changing their opinions constantly about the best treatment or cause of sicknesses. But each book of the Bible is fully consistant with the others. Only the Spirit of God could do this.
Is the Christian world today united with the same unity we find in the Bible? Are we as united as the books of the Bible?
Perhaps you blame others in the church. But God says, then you must go and sort things out with that person. In Hebrews we read we must strive after peace. In the German Bible it is to run after it.
It breaks one’s heart when two Christians both claim to have the Spirit of God but they are at enmity with each other. This cannot be the Spirit if God.
Are you a genuine Christian or a false one and you are living in a fool’s paradise? It is easy to test this: is your life in accordance with the Word of God? Can you say with Ezekiel that on such-and-such a day God spoke to you? And you are obeying what He has said. Will you acknowledge your true state before the Lord, or will you only wait until you are thoroughly exposed before acknowledging that you don’t know the Lord?