Two year Bible reading program.

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 27:7 Understanding to grow in The book ends recording the division of the land, but not just for Judah, for the northern kingdom too (two portions are to be given to Joseph because his two sons were originally given a tribe’s portion each). As the northern kingdom no longer existed, the Lord must have been predicting the reunification of the nation in Christ, including those from the nations. It is just this that we see in the book of Acts. And the man tells Ezekiel that the latter group in particular are to be considered as equal as native-born Israelites, sharing equally in the inheritance, which through Christ encompasses the entire earth renewed (Mat 5v5). We should be much encouraged. F...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 27:5-6 Understanding to grow in 45v1-8 records how a section of the land is to be kept as a sacred space. It is stressed that the leaders will no longer be taking the people’s land to themselves. It seems the outline of the temple and land for the new order is expected to be a motivation for the rebellious princes to make a new start of their practices and responsibilities (45v9-12). Knowing we are destined to be glorified should be its own motivation to us, to live accordingly in the present. Whatever God has allotted as an inheritance for the princes or the people should be maintained, reminding us that the land - indeed, the earth, is the LORD’s. It reassures us too, that he will ensure we rec...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 27: 4 Understanding to grow in The Spirit takes Ezekiel to the inner court where he sees the temple filled with God’s glory. The people are reassured that God will return to the city and worship will begin again in a temple there, patterned in some way on this vision. The LORD states he will live amongst the Israelites forever, and that they and their kings will never again defile his name with their idolatry. And he then tells Ezekiel to write down the vision for two reasons: First, to make the people ashamed of their sins. Second, so that they will be faithful to its design and regulations (43v9-11). To be “faithful” to the temple’s design and regulations then, may have meant that the...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 27:3 Understanding to grow in The measurements are significant numbers – multiples of 10 (symbolising many), multiples of 7 (symbolising perfection or completeness), 12 (symbolising Israel) and 3 (another number of completeness). The decreasing size of entrances towards the inner sanctuary stresses its holiness and exclusivity. Only the man enters it, as it is forbidden for any human but the High Priest. The man must therefore be either a representation of God himself or an angel. The length of the temple, of the yard and building to its west, and the breadth of that building and the inner court were all 100 cubits. Such detail seems strange to us, but it all symbolised the perfection of the temp...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 27:2 Understanding to grow in What the people in Ezekiel's day longed for, was for God to once again be with his people in their land. So in this vision Ezekiel is taken to Jerusalem, where he sees a new temple - the place of God's presence. It's possible this was to encourage the returning exiles to rebuild the temple, as they did. But it may be this vision was given simply to symbolise God again residing with his people, rather like the detailed image of a new Jerusalem in Revelation symbolising the people of God (Rev 21v1-21). The thickness of the wall may imply it is impenetrable, and the recesses for guards may also speak of its security. The point would be that God's presence wi...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 27:1 Understanding to grow in These chapters are notoriously difficult to understand, and we should note they come as the book becomes increasingly figurative in nearing its end. Ezekiel is to set his face against a king called “Gog” of “Magog” (literally, land of Gog), who also rules over Meshech and Tubal. Most likely these three lands refer to places far north of Judah, that were known for their barbarity (see Ps 120v5-7). God declares he is against them but will still use them by bringing Gog and his army against Judah (38v1-9) so that he can then defeat them in a spectacular way and so show that he is "the LORD," and prove that the people were exiled not because of any weakness in him,...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:28 Understanding to grow in These are such important chapters. God condemns those who rejoice at his people's downfall. But he is concerned too, that because of Israel's sin his own name is profaned as the nations consider him wicked because his people are, or weak for allowing them to be conquered. He therefore promises not just to show his strength in bringing them back to their land, but his purity in cleansing them from their guilt and renewing their hearts by his Spirit so that they can keep his laws in a way they never could previously, and mourn over their past sin. And because the people will then keep the law, they will finally experience the blessing God promised in Deuteronomy 2...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:27 Understanding to grow in To some extent, Ezekiel's earlier messages are repeated: God is ever-willing to show mercy to those who repent. But because one cannot rely on their righteousness for acceptance by him, those who turn from good to evil will be punished. This is God's justice, to be seen in the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet there is hope for the nation in God. He condemns the people's leaders (shepherds), but promises like a good shepherd to bring them back from their exile to the pasture of their land, where he will tend them, and enable them to flourish in all security. But he will also seperate the sheep from the goats and sheep from sheep, setting up a davidic descendant ...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:23-26 Understanding to grow in Even a little knowledge of history testifies to the transience of nations and empires. And so, we read of how the LORD will bring down the arrogance of might Egypt - a nation that had been the pinnacle of civilization for millenia. The point is that although a thousand years are like a day to the Lord (2 Pet 3v8), in time his justice will be done against the wickedness of men. And this is not just a final eternal justice, but a temporal earthly one too. It is European civiliation that has dominated the last 300 years at least, colonizing and shaping much of the world, and impacting in some way the culture of every nation. It increasingly exalts reason, celebratin...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:22 Understanding to grow in Does God really care about false religion? Does he care when people worship themselves as if achievements are their doing apart from God's gift? He does. Here he declares judgment on Pharoah for presuming himself the divine source of the Nile, that gave life to Egypt. It is judgment too on how Pharoah harmed Israel who sought to rely on him with alliances. For both sins, God promises that Babylon will come against Egypt and make it desolate for forty years. And this is so that his people will know that he "is the Sovereign LORD" and so rely on him rather than the nations. It's a word that speaks against the arrogance of western culture that presumes it...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:20-21 Understanding to grow in Even the most secure of nations cannot stand against God. These prophecies describe the great wealth of Tyre that was gained through trading. The city's wisdom, seen in its ability to prosper, had led it to pride, but it had also held a desire to gain from Judah's defeat. For both sins it would be destroyed by Babylon. The king of Tyre's downfall is likened to that of Satan. Like him, he had much but it went to his head, so that he considered himself a god and brought about great sin. He will therefore be brought down in a way that will be striking for the watching nations. And with the removal of Tyre and its neighbouring Sidon, Israel will be more secur...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:18-19 Understanding to grow in To be a prophet was wa hard calling, Not only did you have to declare what people didn't want to hear, and so face their hostility. At times the LORD asked his proohets to act out their prophecies at the greatest cost. Here, Ezekiel must lose his wife and not mourn her, to bring home that Judah is about to lose the temple that they love and delight in. Because they so adore it, God's instruction not to mourn is probably a way of stressing that it's their fault that it has been lost, by provoking God's wrath. But that doesn't mean it is acceptable for other nations to rejoice. The LORD condemns Ammon and Moab for doing so, and Edom and Philistia fo...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:17 Understanding to grow in It's not an easy passage to read. But that makes the point of how serious and outrageous the spiritual prostitution of the northern (Samaria) and southern (Judah) kingdoms of Israel was. Rather than displaying love and devotion to God, the people gave themselves first to the gods and ungodly culture of Egypt and later to those of Assyria - having them rule over them rather than the LORD. There is a lesson too, about learning from the errors of others. When the north kingdom was exiled in punishment, the south failed to learn, but continued to do the same. We must recognize that this language can be equally applied to the church when it gives itself to the gods and u...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:13-16 Understanding to grow in We should not trivialise or soften ideas of God's judgment. It is truly terrible. And that is the stress of this passage. It is for God to have his face set against people and pour out the extremity of his burning anger. It should therefore instil terror. And it will bring low the pride of kings, false prophets and wicked people. Of course, the judgment Jesus promised will be more terrible still. That of Jerusalem in Ezekiel's day meant handing the people over to the horrors of war executed by Babylon. But the final judgment will be one of casting people into hell, which Jesus described as a place of unquenchable fire and outer darkness, where there will be w...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:11-12 Understanding to grow in The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in love. That's clear from the history of Israel. Those who haven't read through the Old Testament assume God is presented there as merely wrathful. And wrath is expressed. Anger towards persistent unfaithfulness and sin is right. But in reality Israel's is a history of God's patience as he persistently perseveres with the people like the most long-suffering of parents. However, there is another concern that dominates this section: his concern for his name - that people "know that I am the LORD." For someone not to gain the credit that is their due is wrong. To be charged with doing evil when one has d...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:7-10 Understanding to grow in The problem is a simple refusal to heed God's word. So, Ezekiel tells a parable of how Babylon exiled one of Judah's kings with the people whilst putting a relative on the throne, no doubt as a Babylonian puppet. But this king rebelled by looking to Egypt for help and breaking his oath with Babylon. The Lord's point is that because of this, he will fall, but as a judgment for his breaking of his covenant oath with God. Rather than looking to Egypt for deliverance, he should have looked to God with repentance. But there is a promise: a shoot from the tree of the davidic line that will flourish and have birds shelter in it. Christ makes exactly this point ab...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:6 Understanding to grow in This picture of a woman growing to be married tells the story of Israel. Born to Abraham and Sarai, God's love caused their descendants to grow to be a nation - the young woman, who God then "married" through the Mosaic covenant, and caused to become a beautiful queen of nations in the time of Solomon, whose fame was known throughout the world of the day. But she then turned from God as her husband to numerous nations and their gods, prostituting herself to them for the sake of gain in acceptance, trade and security that she should have looked for in God. Ezekiel's message is that God's love for the nation is seen in his jeleous fury at what she has...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:4-5 Understanding to grow in It must have been an uncomfortable thing to visit Ezekiel, knowing the LORD might reveal the secret things of your life to him. And so here, as elders engaged in idolatry come to enquire of God through him in Babylon, the Lord asserts that he is against them, and that he will remove them from amongst his people just as he will bring destruction on the Israelites still in Jerusalem because of their idolatry. Moreover, he is clear that the presence of some who are righteous (that is faithful) will not stop that. They will be saved, but unable to save others. It reminds us that if we have substituted anything or anyone for God, giving it our ultimate allegiance and lo...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:3 Understanding to grow in It is most serious to proclaim something is a word from God that isn't. And so, having acted out the coming exile of more Jews from Jerusalem, Ezekiel condemns the false prophets who proclaim a false message of peace saying his words refer to a distant future. They paint over the cracks in the people of God, thinking that means they won't be destroyed when the flood comes. Jesus' condemnation of the Jewish leaders as "whitewashed tombs" comes too mind (Mat 23v27). And one cannot but think of those in the church who scoff at the idea that God might judge or punish people at all, or of church leaders who boldly express this and teach that most are goo...

BEGIN WITH PRAYER "Lord open my eyes and my heart." Read slowly so that you take in. And as you do, turn your heart to God, thanking him for the good you discover and praying his will home for you, your family, your church and the world. Wisdom to chew on Proverbs 26:2 Understanding to grow in Here we get an insight at what a prophetic vision involved. Ezekiel is sitting with some people in and enters into a trance in which he sees and interacts as if in a waking dream. And what he sees, is idolatry being conducted in Jerusalem's temple. God's declaration of how "detestable" this is, signals to us how outraged he is when idolatry takes place in his church - whether inter-faith services in cathedrals or the worship of the spirit of the age in celebrating the like of pride events. He is also provoked by wider ungodliness in which his people "have confirmed to the standards of the nations around" them (11v12). Because of all this, Ezek...