4/18 Justified Freely

"How to Avoid Rebellion"

But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee.  And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein... So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll.
Ezekiel 2:8-9, 3:2

I love this passage and the message that it has for us.  In Ezekiel chapter 2, the Lord is sending Ezekiel to preach to the children of Israel.  He tells him that they are rebellious and stiff hearted people.  He tells them that they will reject his message.  Then we get to verse 8.

There, the Lord tells Ezekiel to not be like those rebellious children of Israel to whom he is going to preach.  That in itself is an important lesson for us.  We are in the world, but we are not of the world.  We are going to be around sin and rebellion, just as Ezekiel was.  But we are not supposed to take part in that sin and rebellion.

Then the Lord gives Ezekiel the recipe to avoid sin and rebellion: "open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee... a roll of a book was therein... so I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll."  Let's get this straight.  To help him avoid sin and rebellion, God wants Ezekiel to "eat" something.  That somethings turns out to be a book.  So God wants Ezekiel to eat a book.  And that is going to help him keep from sinning.  Hmmm.  How can we make an application to our lives with this?

If we want to avoid sin, we need to eat all of the Bible that we can.  Eat it for breakfast, chew on it throughout the day.  Eat it for a snack, eat it for lunch, eat it for supper.  If we want to avoid rebellion, we need to stay in the book!