Ezekiel 3:1-3 And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” So, I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So, I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
If you haven’t read from
Ezekiel recently, these verses probably strike you as the strangest thing you
have read. Here is the story of a man whom God told to eat a scroll, paper,
ink, and all. And he says it was sweet as honey. I daresay that even if you are
getting hungry about now and I offered you a few pages of the Bible to eat, you
would not find them appetizing. You would probably gag.
What you may have yet to
figure out is the fact that this experience is part of a dream or vision that
came to Ezekiel. We all know that dreams can be strange. They may include
people who look like someone you know but are not quite that person. They may
happen in a place that seems perfectly natural, but when you start to describe
it, it makes no sense. Most of us forget our dreams within minutes after we
wake up. I read that five minutes after the end of a dream, we forget half the
content. After ten minutes, we lose 90% of the dream. But some dreams are so
vivid they stay with us for a long time. And every so often, one affects our
lives in some significant way.
The dream that Ezekiel writes
about is even more significant because, through it, he learns that God has a
call on his life. He knew God was tapping him on the shoulder for a particular
task. God chose Ezekiel to take a message from Him to his people. Ezekiel’s
appointment is at the heart of these verses we are looking at today. And it is
because he accepted this commission from God that we have the book of Ezekiel
in our Bibles today.
Some people think about making
a new start as they wrestle with God’s call on their life. Some know that they
need to make changes. Maybe some have been living a lukewarm life of faith and
realize they must go deeper. Perhaps the bottom has dropped out of their life,
and they know they can’t handle the problems alone.
Some might need to reach out
to God. Wherever you are, these words from Ezekiel bring us hope. God is at
work, and He can come to us in ways we never dreamed possible. Ezekiel knew
without a doubt that God had called him to a task. God’s call on the life of
every Christian becomes just as clear because God has a purpose for all His
followers, and He is calling us to fulfill it.
The first three chapters of Ezekiel revolve around these words. Why are
these words important?
That’s what God told Ezekiel to eat in his dream. Maybe that is not a delicious thought, but let’s think about it. What does the scroll symbolize? It represents God’s Word, and it tells us who God is, how He created the world, and that He has his hand in the history of our world. It tells us how God wants us to live. When we have a question about the meaning of life, where do we turn? To God’s Word. When we have a question about right or wrong, where do we turn? To God’s word. If we want to live God’s way, God’s Word must be at the center of our lives. That was true for Ezekiel; it is valid for all people today as well.
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