Ezekiel 2

Ezekiel’s Call and Commission

“Stand up, son of man,” said the voice. “I want to speak with you.” ² The Spirit came into me as he spoke, and he set me on my feet. I listened carefully to his words. ³ “Son of man,” he said, “I am sending you to the nation of Israel, a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me. They and their ancestors have been rebelling against me to this very day. ⁴ They are a stubborn and hard-hearted people. But I am sending you to say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says!’ ⁵ And whether they listen or refuse to listen—for remember, they are rebels—at least they will know they have had a prophet among them.

⁶ “Son of man, do not fear them or their words. Don’t be afraid even though their threats surround you like nettles and briers and stinging scorpions. Do not be dismayed by their dark scowls, even though they are rebels. ⁷ You must give them my messages whether they listen or not. But they won’t listen, for they are completely rebellious! ⁸ Son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not join them in their rebellion. Open your mouth, and eat what I give you.”

⁹ Then I looked and saw a hand reaching out to me. It held a scroll, ¹⁰ which he unrolled. And I saw that both sides were covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow, and pronouncements of doom.

Ezekiel 3

The voice said to me, “Son of man, eat what I am giving you—eat this scroll! Then go and give its message to the people of Israel.” ² So I opened my mouth, and he fed me the scroll. ³ “Fill your stomach with this,” he said. And when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

⁴ Then he said, “Son of man, go to the people of Israel and give them my messages. ⁵ I am not sending you to a foreign people whose language you cannot understand. ⁶ No, I am not sending you to people with strange and difficult speech. If I did, they would listen! ⁷ But the people of Israel won’t listen to you any more than they listen to me! For the whole lot of them are hard-hearted and stubborn. ⁸ But look, I have made you as obstinate and hard-hearted as they are. ⁹ I have made your forehead as hard as the hardest rock! So don’t be afraid of them or fear their angry looks, even though they are rebels.”

¹⁰ Then he added, “Son of man, let all my words sink deep into your own heart first. Listen to them carefully for yourself. ¹¹ Then go to your people in exile and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says!’ Do this whether they listen to you or not.”

¹² Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard a loud rumbling sound behind me. (May the glory of the Lord be praised in his place!) ¹³ It was the sound of the wings of the living beings as they brushed against each other and the rumbling of their wheels beneath them.

¹⁴ The Spirit lifted me up and took me away. I went in bitterness and turmoil, but the Lord’s hold on me was strong. ¹⁵ Then I came to the colony of Judean exiles in Tel-abib, beside the Kebar River. I was overwhelmed and sat among them for seven days.

A Watchman for Israel

¹⁶ After seven days the Lord gave me a message. He said, ¹⁷ “Son of man, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel. Whenever you receive a message from me, warn people immediately. ¹⁸ If I warn the wicked, saying, ‘You are under the penalty of death,’ but you fail to deliver the warning, they will die in their sins. And I will hold you responsible for their deaths. ¹⁹ If you warn them and they refuse to repent and keep on sinning, they will die in their sins. But you will have saved yourself because you obeyed me.

²⁰ “If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior and ignore the obstacles I put in their way, they will die. And if you do not warn them, they will die in their sins. None of their righteous acts will be remembered, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. ²¹ But if you warn righteous people not to sin and they listen to you and do not sin, they will live, and you will have saved yourself, too.”

²² Then the Lord took hold of me and said, “Get up and go out into the valley, and I will speak to you there.” ²³ So I got up and went, and there I saw the glory of the Lord, just as I had seen in my first vision by the Kebar River. And I fell face down on the ground.

²⁴ Then the Spirit came into me and set me on my feet. He spoke to me and said, “Go to your house and shut yourself in. ²⁵ There, son of man, you will be tied with ropes so you cannot go out among the people. ²⁶ And I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be speechless and unable to rebuke them, for they are rebels. ²⁷ But when I give you a message, I will loosen your tongue and let you speak. Then you will say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says!’ Those who choose to listen will listen, but those who refuse will refuse, for they are rebels.

Ezekiel 4

A Sign of the Coming Siege

“And now, son of man, take a large clay brick and set it down in front of you. Then draw a map of the city of Jerusalem on it. ² Show the city under siege. Build a wall around it so no one can escape. Set up the enemy camp, and surround the city with siege ramps and battering rams. ³ Then take an iron griddle and place it between you and the city. Turn toward the city and demonstrate how harsh the siege will be against Jerusalem. This will be a warning to the people of Israel.

⁴ “Now lie on your left side and place the sins of Israel on yourself. You are to bear their sins for the number of days you lie there on your side. ⁵ I am requiring you to bear Israel’s sins for 390 days—one day for each year of their sin. ⁶ After that, turn over and lie on your right side for 40 days—one day for each year of Judah’s sin.

⁷ “Meanwhile, keep staring at the siege of Jerusalem. Lie there with your arm bared and prophesy her destruction. ⁸ I will tie you up with ropes so you won’t be able to turn from side to side until the days of your siege have been completed.

⁹ “Now go and get some wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and emmer wheat, and mix them together in a storage jar. Use them to make bread for yourself during the 390 days you will be lying on your side. ¹⁰ Ration this out to yourself, eight ounces of food for each day, and eat it at set times. ¹¹ Then measure out a jar of water for each day, and drink it at set times. ¹² Prepare and eat this food as you would barley cakes. While all the people are watching, bake it over a fire using dried human dung as fuel and then eat the bread.” ¹³ Then the Lord said, “This is how Israel will eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands to which I will banish them!”

¹⁴ Then I said, “O Sovereign Lord, must I be defiled by using human dung? For I have never been defiled before. From the time I was a child until now I have never eaten any animal that died of sickness or was killed by other animals. I have never eaten any meat forbidden by the law.”

¹⁵ “All right,” the Lord said. “You may bake your bread with cow dung instead of human dung.” ¹⁶ Then he told me, “Son of man, I will make food very scarce in Jerusalem. It will be weighed out with great care and eaten fearfully. The water will be rationed out drop by drop, and the people will drink it with dismay. ¹⁷ Lacking food and water, people will look at one another in terror, and they will waste away under their punishment.

Ezekiel 5

A Sign of the Coming Judgment

“Son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a razor to shave your head and beard. Use a scale to weigh the hair into three equal parts. ² Place a third of it at the center of your map of Jerusalem. After acting out the siege, burn it there. Scatter another third across your map and chop it with a sword. Scatter the last third to the wind, for I will scatter my people with the sword. ³ Keep just a bit of the hair and tie it up in your robe. ⁴ Then take some of these hairs out and throw them into the fire, burning them up. A fire will then spread from this remnant and destroy all of Israel.

⁵ “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is an illustration of what will happen to Jerusalem. I placed her at the center of the nations, ⁶ but she has rebelled against my regulations and decrees and has been even more wicked than the surrounding nations. She has refused to obey the regulations and decrees I gave her to follow.

⁷ “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you. ⁸ Therefore, I myself, the Sovereign Lord, am now your enemy. I will punish you publicly while all the nations watch. ⁹ Because of your detestable idols, I will punish you like I have never punished anyone before or ever will again. ¹⁰ Parents will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents. I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few who survive.

¹¹ “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will cut you off completely. I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my Temple with your vile images and detestable sins. ¹² A third of your people will die in the city from disease and famine. A third of them will be slaughtered by the enemy outside the city walls. And I will scatter a third to the winds, chasing them with my sword. ¹³ Then at last my anger will be spent, and I will be satisfied. And when my fury against them has subsided, all Israel will know that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my jealous anger.

¹⁴ “So I will turn you into a ruin, a mockery in the eyes of the surrounding nations and to all who pass by. ¹⁵ You will become an object of mockery and taunting and horror. You will be a warning to all the nations around you. They will see what happens when the Lord punishes a nation in anger and rebukes it, says the Lord.

¹⁶ “I will shower you with the deadly arrows of famine to destroy you. The famine will become more and more severe until every crumb of food is gone. ¹⁷ And along with the famine, wild animals will attack you and rob you of your children. Disease and war will stalk your land, and I will bring the sword of the enemy against you. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

1 Peter 4

Living for God

So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. ² You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. ³ You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.

⁴ Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you. ⁵ But remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead. ⁶ That is why the Good News was preached to those who are now dead—so although they were destined to die like all people, they now live forever with God in the Spirit.

⁷ The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers. ⁸ Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. ⁹ Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay.

¹⁰ God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. ¹¹ Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.

Suffering for Being a Christian

¹² Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. ¹³ Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.

¹⁴ If you are insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you will be blessed, for the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you. ¹⁵ If you suffer, however, it must not be for murder, stealing, making trouble, or prying into other people’s affairs. ¹⁶ But it is no shame to suffer for being a Christian. Praise God for the privilege of being called by his name! ¹⁷ For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God’s Good News? ¹⁸ And also,

¹⁹ So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.

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Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.