Luke 9:18-27 Ezekiel 24: 15-18
The verses in Luke 9:23-27 are often quoted, but most often out of context. Jesus had just performed a great miracle. In verses 1-17, He had fed the 5000 men plus women and children with the loaves and fishes. Then He goes off to pray, and the disciples are there with Him. He asks them who do the crowds say that I am? And this leads to Peter’s great confession; it was seconded by the other 11: You are the Christ of God. Jesus quickly tells them that He will suffer many things at the hands the leaders, that He will be rejected and then crucified, and that He will rise on the third day.
Then Jesus says to them that all who want to follow Him will need to deny themselves, take up their cross and to follow Him. The idea of crucifixion was so traumatic that Roman citizens were forbidden by law from being crucified. The cross was associated with shame, pain, and suffering. People were tied up naked, humiliated, spit on, and then killed in one of the most painful ways ever invented by man.
Jesus was telling us that obeying Him, to truly want to serve Him with all of our hearts, minds, bodies and souls, would often cause pain in our lives. Jesus said that we should be prepared to lose our lives (Luke 9:24). Most would say Yes, I will die for Jesus.
What about losing all the things and people in our lives?
Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:36 that a man’s enemies will be the people in his own household. Are we ready for that? We are seeing this a lot today, where liberal family members are cutting off their parents and excluding them from the lives of their grandchildren. I have heard stories of kids that have not attended Thanksgiving or Christmas or Birthdays for years on end. Are we ready for that? Is that part of the life that we were ready to give up? Are you ready to serve God even when it taxes you to the nth degree? When it costs so much? When you are emotionally exhausted?
In Ezekiel 24:15-18, the prophet is called to do something in the execution of his duty as a prophet. His wife was going to die, and God told him that he, Ezekiel, was not allowed to mourn her. He was allowed to sigh in private (verse 17). But he could not mourn for her at all.
Then in verse 18, we are told that he, Ezekiel, did what he was told. He obeyed the word of God. Wow, this moves me! My dad recently died, and while we celebrated his journey home, we shed tears, we sighed out loud, we lamented and mourned. But this man did not mourn his wife, and she is called the desire of his eyes; Ezekiel loved this woman. He enjoyed just looking at her; she was his balm at the end of a long day of prophesying. Yet, God forbade him from mourning her. Why? Why would God place such a burden on someone?
We then need to look at verse Ezekiel 24:19; the people asked what his action signified to them. That is the point; often God will call us to go through hard things so that when people ask, we can testify of His grace, His kindness, His provision, and tell them the things, the details they did not see. That is all we should be about; our lives should be lived to glorify God. Even in our tragedies, even in our hardest days, we can live our lives so as to point others to Christ.
Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario
The post When God Calls Us to Do Hard Things :: By Sean Gooding appeared first on Rapture Ready.
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