Hope: Surprisingly Real

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Opening Prayer

God of Hope, give me an undivided heart and fill me with Your good Spirit that I might serve You in the way that pleases You.

Read Ezekiel 11:14-25

^[14] The word of the LORD came to me: ^[15] “Son of man, the people of Jerusalem have said of your fellow exiles and all the other Israelites, ‘They are far away from the LORD; this land was given to us as our possession.’ ^[16] “Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.’ ^[17] “Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’ ^[18] “They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. ^[19] I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. ^[20] Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God. ^[21] But as for those whose hearts are devoted to their vile images and detestable idols, I will bring down on their own heads what they have done, declares the Sovereign LORD.” ^[22] Then the cherubim, with the wheels beside them, spread their wings, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. ^[23] The glory of the LORD went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain east of it. ^[24] The Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the exiles in Babylonia in the vision given by the Spirit of God. Then the vision I had seen went up from me, ^[25] and I told the exiles everything the LORD had shown me.

Meditate

“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these words ‘Wait and Hope’” (Alexander Dumas).

Think Further

I think one of the biggest challenges for Christians is to follow Paul’s instructions to “rejoice with those who rejoice” and “mourn [weep] with those who mourn” (Rom. 12:15). How can we rejoice when there is so much in our world to weep about? How can we weep without losing our sense of the real joy that the Gospel brings?

Ezekiel was faced with a similar problem. His main task, at least in these early chapters, was to convince the Judean community in Babylon that their exile was not unfair and meaningless but the result of God’s well-deserved judgment on the corruption, injustice and idolatry endemic in their nation. However, that could and should never be taken to mean that they were without hope! At this point those who were still living in Jerusalem saw themselves as heroes and the early exiles as villains who deserved everything they got.

Ezekiel elsewhere makes it very clear that Jerusalem too was going to be destroyed (as happened a short while after this) and that in fact God’s firm intention was eventually not only to bless the exiles but to bring them back to their own land. He calls them to be realistic about judgment but also realistic about hope. Yes, the glory of the Lord had departed from the Temple but that didn’t mean that God no longer cared for the people. In fact–in spite of the mockery of the current Jerusalem residents–that same glory was now to be seen as “above” the group of exiles (22). Wow! God was with them in exile, and, apart from those who deliberately rejected God’s covenant, he would transform them by his Spirit into those who could once more “be my people” (20). Ezekiel’s message of judgment was not meant to bring them to despair but to a real hope!

Apply

Ask God today to show you the areas where your heart needs to be transformed and to fill you with the hope of his glory.

Closing prayer

Lord, the way I live often misrepresents the God I proclaim. I want to reveal Your glory and make Your name famous. Do Your work in me.

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