27th November 2023 – Ezekiel 20:45-49

45  And the word of the Lord came to me: 46 “Son of man, set your face towards the southland; preach against the south, and prophesy against the forest land in the Negeb. 47 Say to the forest of the Negeb, Hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree in you and every dry tree. The blazing flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from south to north shall be scorched by it. 48 All flesh shall see that I the Lord have kindled it; it shall not be quenched.” 49 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! They are saying of me, ‘Is he not a maker of parables?’”


The chapter concludes with a parabolic statement of divine judgment. What Ezekiel means is this: he has given them the word of the Lord, surveying the whole history of His people so clearly and simply that one would have thought that anybody would have understood what he was saying. Yet they could not - perhaps would not - understand the message, because their eyes were blinded by their sins, and they had become incapable of seeing the plain lessons of history. This is where Ezekiel's word becomes highly relevant for us. One of the tasks the Church has today is surely to interpret history in the light of the Word of God. Look at the 21st century and see what God is saying to our nation, look at the change in the fortunes of our people in the past few decades! Yet, when someone makes bold to stand up and say 'We have lost our greatness because we have forgotten God' - as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said - he is immediately dubbed as fanatical, and as belonging to the 'lunatic fringe'. This was Ezekiel's plaint, and his distress and sense of desolation, that the word that God had given him to speak was not getting through to men, they were refusing it and incapable of understanding it. Their eyes were blinded that they could not see the plain truth before their eyes. This is so often the way, when the judgments of God are abroad upon the earth: men are bemused, and lacking in perception, and however plainly and starkly the message is held forth, they think that we speak in riddles, that we are off-centre, eccentric and odd. This is the force of Ezekiel's words in 49, 'Ah, Lord God! They say of me, Doth he not speak parables?' What a commentary, and what a relevance for our day.