Ezekiel is commissioned as a prophet and told that he is to
preface his remarks with the words, “Thus says the Lord.” He is to be careful what he speaks because he
speaks for God. He is also told that
they won’t listen, they are rebellious in the extreme. If the Lord had commissioned him to speak to
foreigners it would seem like a difficult thing but they would be receptive to
the message while Israel will not. Jonah
could attest to that surprising reality, as could Paul. Nonetheless, they are the Lord’s own people
and He has not quit on them. Ezekiel
goes from the presence of God back in the spirit to where he saw the vision,
back to the tents of the exiles and for seven days he is among them in
dismay. Where does he begin and
when? It is miserable to go from God’s
throne to this reality of exile and also he is more hopeless than any exile, he
has heard that he shouldn’t have high hopes for his ministry either. He can’t, however, begin until the Lord
speaks and now He does.
Sometimes you just have to shake your heads at the
disciples. They couldn’t heal the boy,
they didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about when He spoke of His death,
and yet they still wanted to argue which of them was greatest. Did it really matter which of them was
greatest when Jesus was so much greater?
The three had seen He is greater than the two greatest heroes in the
nation’s history and all had seen His ability to do what they could not. Is
greatness even a category for us if we know Jesus? It is like righteousness, in comparison we
are neither great nor righteous so what is the point in talking about such
things, the category should simply be retired.
We can’t receive His word or His authority so long as we fail to see
things as they truly are, and see ourselves for what we are and all that is
dependent on seeing Him as He really is.
When the writer of Hebrews looks for a human analogue for
Jesus’ priesthood, he rejects the possibility of Aaron and goes to the most
enigmatic character in the Bible, Melchizedek, the king and priest of the
kingdom of Salem which later is chosen as God’s city, His dwelling place, and
named Jeru-salem. This priest is greater
than Abraham, Abraham offered tithes to this man of whom we know so very
little. All we know is that he was a
priest of God and we know that because Abraham recognized him as such and Yahweh
did not rebuke him. Was Melchizedek a
theophany, a pre-incarnation manifestation of Jesus? The writer is speaking to a community who has
allowed their doubts to cause them to hedge their bets on Jesus, to wonder if
perhaps they have been hasty in abandoning the practices of Judaism since He hasn’t
returned. They are told, “solid food is
for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by
constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” We can’t waffle between opinions, whether
those be Moses and Elijah or something else, there is no both/and, it is Jesus
or nothing. He is without peer and until
we see that we don’t have faith, we have an opinion.
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