BIBLE LESSON

“Then the LORD said to me, ‘Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.’ So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.”

— Ezekiel 3:3 After the Babylonians defeated the Kingdom of Judah the first time in 597 BC, they deported exiles from Jerusalem to Babylon, but these Judean exiles refused to turn from their idolatry and immorality back to God. They remained obstinate and unwilling to listen to God or Ezekiel. Still, they expected to return home quickly because their temple was in Jerusalem and they trusted in their God-given temple. Therefore, in 593 BC, God called Ezekiel to tell them that their expectations were false. Because the Judeans would not repent under Jeremiah’s preaching in Jerusalem or Ezekiel’s preaching in Babylon, God justly punished them as He had warned. The Babylonians destroyed their temple and Jerusalem in 587 BC, and then the Babylonians sent more Judeans into exile. Many of these exiles finally turned back to God.

Ezekiel epitomizes the life of true believers. He did not conform his life to the cultural decline of the Judeans. He listened carefully to God, took God’s words “to heart” (resolved to do all God said), and obeyed God. He obeyed God when God told him to eat all the words of God and to fill his stomach with them, which meant he was to read and learn all the words of God until they became a part of his life and directed what he did and said. As Ezekiel learned and obeyed God’s words, they tasted as sweet as honey, and that is one reason more than 2,500 years later so many of God’s people still study the Bible.

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