The statement, \u201cthe word of the Lord came to me,\u201d occurs 50 times in the Book of Ezekiel, more than in any other Old Testament book. The Holy Spirit doesn\u2019t want us to miss that God was speaking over and over again to His people and they were ignoring Him. At this point, after Nebuchadnezzar’s 2nd attack, approximately 10,000 Jews had been captured and taken 600 miles east of Jerusalem to Babylon to live in slavery. Nebuchadnezzar left Jerusalem virtually unharmed, but he took the king of Judah, Jehoiachin, captive to Babylon, and placed Zedekiah on the throne as a vassal puppet king. Ezekiel was also among those taken captive.<\/p>\n
Ezekiel was God\u2019s prophet inside Babylon at approximately the same time Jeremiah was serving as God’s prophet inside Jerusalem. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel were prophesying that Babylon would attack again and would completely conquer Jerusalem and carry the rest of the people captive to Babylon. Ezekiel’s fellow exiles in Babylon were as hardened as those who were still in Jerusalem. They were so intent on a quick return to Jerusalem, that they would not accept Ezekiel’s message of Jerusalem’s destruction. Both the people in exile and the people still in Jerusalem choose to ignore Ezekiel and Jeremiah’s warnings and instead believed the false prophets who claimed that Jerusalem and Judah would soon be delivered and restored. God’s people looked for prophets who would say what they wanted to hear. Their blindness and deafness was a willful choice on their part. They simply chose not to see what God was showing them or hear what He was saying to them. Spiritual blindness can sneak up on any person who is out of fellowship with God.<\/p>\n
There is an old story of a carpenter nailing shingles on a second story roof, who lost his footing and began to slide off. He immediately started praying, “Lord, oh Lord, help me!\u201d When he kept sliding, he shouted, \u201cLord, help me and I\u2019ll go back to church!” Just as he came to the edge of the roof, a nail that was sticking out caught hold of his pants. He came to a stop and said, “Never mind, Lord. This nail saved me.”\u00a0 We can become so blind to God’s work in our lives that we fail to see the various nails God uses to try and get our attention.<\/p>\n
“LORD, please open the eyes and ears of our hearts so that we can see and hear You speaking to us this day.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The statement, \u201cthe word of the Lord came to me,\u201d occurs 50 times in the Book of Ezekiel, more than in any other Old Testament book. The Holy Spirit doesn\u2019t want us to miss that God was speaking over and over again to His people and they were ignoring Him. At this point, after Nebuchadnezzar’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9722"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9725,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722\/revisions\/9725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}