Key Verse: "I will place over them one shepherd, my
servant David, and He will tend them; He will tend them and be their
shepherd."
Ezekiel 34:23
Ezekiel speaks to encourage a discouraged remnant of Israel
as they live out their exile in Babylon.
It is hard to feel like the blessed, chosen people of God right now. They are far from their Promised Land. Their king, the representative of the line of
David is gone. They are a miserable
people. All has been lost. One of their Psalms from the period goes like
this.
"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we
remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our
captors asked us
For songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said,
"sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of the Lord While in a foreign
land?
Psalm 137:1-4 (a Psalm from the exiles in Babylon)
How easily could you sing praise songs to the Lord in
prison; in a concentration camp? That is what the people were being asked to do
here by their captors. They were being
asked to sing, not to witness to their captors, not so that their captors could
join in. They were being asked to sing
songs of joy so that their captors could make fun of them as they did so. That is what the faithful remnant faced as
they tried to understand why their loving God was allowing all of this to take
place.
In this chapter of Ezekiel, we see that God continues to
blame the priests, "the bad shepherds," (Ezekiel 34:2-5) for much of
the reason that the people are continuing to suffer as they are. God, however, the good shepherd, through
Ezekiel, assures the people again that he has not forgotten or abandoned those
in exile. He gives them something to
look forward to. Another David will
arise to be the good shepherd. He will
judge fairly between the sheep, or chosen people, and they will live in safety
and harmony in a good place. No harm
will come to them and they will not know fear any more. Jeremiah's messages were for the people still
in Jerusalem who had no hope. Ezekiel
gives a similar message to the remnant who must have also been feeling
abandoned by God. How could the exiles
be the fortunate ones? Yet, God assures them that they are!
Jeremiah and Ezekiel were contemporaries. They lived hundreds of miles apart. There was no phone or fax or texting
possible, yet God made sure that both were on message. God looks forward to a new covenant of peace
between Himself, the good shepherd, and we, the sheep of His pasture. He is still working toward the fulfillment of
His plan. According to God, we are still
on target even though it doesn't seem like it to those here below.
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