School For The Performing Arts Part 1 Series

Ezekiel 4: 1 – 8

‘School for the performing arts’ Part 1

1 “You also, son of man, take a clay tablet and lay it before you, and portray on it a city, Jerusalem. 2 Lay siege against it, build a siege wall against it, and heap up a mound against it; set camps against it also, and place battering rams against it all around. 3 Moreover take for yourself an iron plate, and set it as an iron wall between you and the city. Set your face against it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This will be a sign to the house of Israel.4 “Lie also on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. 5 For I have laid on you the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days; so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6 And when you have completed them, lie again on your right side; then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have laid on you a day for each year. 7 “Therefore you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem; your arm shall be uncovered, and you shall prophesy against it. 8 And surely I will restrain you so that you cannot turn from one side to another till you have ended the days of your siege.

I went to a movie the other day with some of my family members. They took me there as a gift for Fathers Day. The movie was a animated film. It was a very well thought out and developed production. I didn’t like it. Oh, not because it wasn’t impacting. It was just the opposite. It left an unpleasant image on my mind. The film showed two young children [ boy and girl ] who loved this adventurer. In an efficient use of various clips the producer showed the two progress through their lives together growing up, getting married, the heartache due to their inability to have children, dreams lost due to the financial emergencies of life, the woman’s illness, and finally to her death leaving the man old and alone. The creators of this movie were able to quickly and with great emotional impact display the brevity of life.

Genesis 3: 19 say, ‘19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

Psalm 39: 4 – 6 also informs us, 4 “LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. 5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah. 6 Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them.”

Our Lord is the Supreme Producer of every person’s life. He is the Creator God Who knows everything. He has seen our entire life played out before Him. We therefore can understand how our God in chapter 4 of Ezekiel use His prophet to act out a future event that is the final siege and destruction of the city of Jerusalem.

We, as humans have the tendency to rely on our past successes. At our jobs we believe that we single handedly have kept the company from bankruptcy. People comment to us along our careers about how the company couldn’t succeed if they ever lost us. Then, to our shock, we get the ‘pink slip’. This couldn’t happen. How could management ever get rid of such a valuable resource? We didn’t do anything wrong that would deserve this kind of evil treatment.

Such, were the thoughts of the people of Israel who were in exile in Babylon. Jerusalem still existed. The people had a hope of being able to return to their homeland. Even with all the current actions taken against the Jews, they would not recognize that God meant what He had previously said – ‘If the people rejected God and His Lordship, then He would have to allow severe actions against His people.’ They had to be made aware of God’s anger against them and that the process of fulfilling every warning of destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple would come true. Jeremiah cried out the same message in Jerusalem but the people would not accept his message either.