The Matthew 28:19 Project

Life isn’t easy, and most of the time, it’s filled with things that really irritate us. One of the things that irritates me is when I’m commuting to work and I get behind a dump truck or a school bus because they never drive very fast, and they impede the flow of traffic. I know that my commute will take longer than it should, and what usually takes a quick hour to get from my house to my office in downtown Raleigh often ends up taking much longer, and I’m almost always late for work.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the middle of a bad day at work. I had both of my attorneys in court, and so I had to prepare additional last-minute exhibits for them. It was just a hectic morning, and I couldn’t catch my breath. In the middle of all the last-minute trial prep, I get an email that one of my closest friends in Oklahoma had passed away. I wanted to go home and have a good cry!

When I’m having a bad day, I like to tell myself, “Well, at least I’m not Job.” When we think about people in the Bible having a horrible day, our thoughts almost always go to Job. He lost his house, his family, his crops, his livestock, and was saddled with the most horrible boils on his skin.

Someone we do not think about as having a bad day, or even associate with having a bad day, is the prophet Ezekiel. As you know, I’m doing Tara Leigh Cobble’s The Bible Recap, and we are now reading through Ezekiel. I read this book last year, but this year I’m learning so much more, and I’m retaining so much more of what I’m reading. Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry is one of the most descriptive in the Old Testament. He also has one of the most thrilling descriptions of Angels that I’ve ever read. We are studying Angels in my Wednesday night Bible study, so I can’t wait to do a deep dive into this.

Anyway, as I am reading through this book, I started to notice that God made him do some crazy stuff! When I’m having a bad day, I tell myself that at least God is not making me do what he made Ezekiel do! I noticed that God often asked Ezekiel to act out symbolic signs to deliver His message to the people of Israel. Let me tell you about some of the things that God made Ezekiel do. For instance, he made him eat a scroll! In Ezekiel 3:1-3, Ezekiel tells us that: “The voice said to me, ‘Son of man, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth, and he fed me the scroll. ‘Fill your stomach with this,’ he said. And when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.”

I understand that God wanted Ezekiel to do this because He wanted Ezekiel to take the Word of God into himself before delivering it to the people of Israel. We do this today by actually reading the Bible. Even though I know that, I don’t think I would be as obedient if God came to me and told me to eat the Bible, but Ezekiel did what God asked without question. I think the scroll tasted like honey because Ezekiel immediately obeyed him. I think if he hadn’t immediately followed God’s commands, that scroll would have tasted nasty. I don’t know for sure, but that’s what crossed my mind when I read that. Note to self: Being obedient to God is much better than not being obedient.

Another crazy thing Ezekiel had to endure because God told him to do it was to shave his head and beard. “Son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a razor to shave your head and beard. Use a scale to weigh the hair into three equal parts. Place a third of it at the center of your map of Jerusalem. After acting out the siege, burn it there. Scatter another third across your map and chop it with a sword. Scatter the last third to the wind, for I will scatter my people with the sword.” (Ezekiel 5:1-2) Once again, even though God told him to do something he probably didn’t want to do, Ezekiel was obedient and followed through.

God sure is sneaky because all this time, I’ve been telling myself that at least I’m not Ezekiel, but maybe I should be more like Ezekiel because even though God made him do some crazy things, Ezekiel’s life became a living message. God used his obedience to warn, teach, and remind His people of both judgment and restoration. So, if God is telling you to do something wild and crazy, perhaps you should take a page out of Ezekiel’s book and follow through.