“The word of the Lord came to me: Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.”
Ezekiel 12:1, NIV
We are living in days much like they were in Ezekiel’s time. We are living among a people who have eyes to see and ears to hear but they have chosen to turn their backs on the living God in favour of a god of their own making. They choose to substitute God’s laws with man’s choices and reject the Creator in favour of a self-creating universe which invented itself.
It’s easy for believers to look out on the world as we know it and reach those sort of conclusions about the world at large. But God says similar things to his own people – those who do know Him, but still choose to do their own thing and pretend that God won’t mind if we adjust His commands a little bit to suit whatever our own situation might be. The end result is a people who give the impression that they really know and love God, but at the same time are living out a lie in the privacy of their own heart.
In His letter to the Church at Laodicea, Jesus called such people luke-warm and because they were not a true reflection of the nature and character of the God they said they served, Jesus said that he would need to ‘spit them out of His mouth’. God hates hypocrisy which is another word for luke-warmness in our relationship with God.
But the good news of Revelation 3:20 is that Jesus says to those who are luke-warm, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” There is a place for repentance, change and personal transformation for those who have been closing their ears to the voice of God and closing their eyes to the ways of God.
Prayer: Lord, I am sorry for times when I have closed my eyes and shut my ears when You have been trying to get through to me. Please forgive me for the rebellion that there has been in my heart. I choose today to open my eyes and my ears and ask You to forgive me. In Jesus’s Name. Amen.