“Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This is the number one commandment the people of Israel were meant to obey. Jesus called it the first and the greatest one (Matthew 22:37). In God’s design, the people of Israel were supposed to put Him first. Their allegiance was to be first and foremost to Him and their hearts were to be His. God has always been clear with His people that He requires their very all. That is why, He commands them to “love Him with all their hearts, all their souls and with all their strength”. This is not a casual love, or a casual relationship as we are used to in our “modern” world, it is one in which commitment is involved. When you think of who God is, and what He has done for us – sending His One and Only son to die on the cross for our sins to rescue us from the punishment that our sins deserve – you understand that God does not deserve anything less from us. He gave us His very all and we in return must give Him our all. I believe this is the same reason God repeats Himself in Scriptures reminding us to “know that He is the LORD”. This phrase was repeated several times in the chapters of Ezekiel I was reading this week and I couldn’t just leave it at that. In today’s post, I would like to dwell upon what it means to “know that the Lord is God” as we are commanded.
The first time I heard the expression “know that I am God” or at least the first time I paid attention to it was in reading the famous Psalm “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Before Ezekiel could prophesy the words “you will know that I am the LORD”, God had already spoken in a similar way to Moses (Exodus 6:7) and to the Psalmist. Indeed, we are called to know that God is God. It seems a bit counterintuitive to have such a command given to people who serve God, yet it is evident that what we say is not necessarily what we believe. We can say we “know God” but our actions reveal the contrary. Hence, the commandment. The next part of Psalm 46:10 says: “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth”. The reason why we must be still and know that the LORD is God is because He alone will be exalted among the nations and the earth. The context of Psalm 46 is in a battle or a war. Here, the psalmist calls God his refuge, the One who fights his battle and wars on his behalf. Essentially, the psalmist is trying to let us know that we are not called to fight on our own; that the battle belongs to the Lord and so does salvation. We must simply be still which in other words means to stop trying to fix things, to stop trying to take matters into our own hands, or to be flexible to know that victory belongs to the Lord irrespective of the outcome of a situation. Some translations like NASB render the words “be still” as “cease striving”. Because God is God, – Eternal, Creator of all things, uncreated and omnipotent – we must know that He will be exalted. How is He exalted? When His words come to pass. When what He has spoken becomes a reality or when what He has decreed, He fulfills then He gets glorified because it is His will that is being done.
The book of Ezekiel is filled with the statement from God to Ezekiel: “you will know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 6:7, 13, 14; 7:4, 27; 11:10, 12; 12:15,16,20). Almost in every chapter you find that statement. God wanted His people to know Him and ironically, the way He ensures they know Him is by bringing judgement upon them; by fulfilling the words He had prophesied against them. In the context of Ezekiel, God had prophesied that Judah would be going into exile, and that had been prophesied even before Ezekiel during Jeremiah’s time. However, the fact that the word of God was not coming to pass led to a dulling of the word of God by its hearers. In fact, there was a common saying during those days that “the days go by and every vision comes to nothing?” (Ezekiel 12:22). People were sick to hear of the word of the Lord against Judah. At the same time, there were false prophets or priests that were leading the people astray so that whatever message was coming out of the mouth of true prophets like Ezekiel was distorted by those leaders. In chapter 11, God announces that He will be judging those bad leaders, and some are even named: Jaazaniah and Pelatiah. God has a high regard for His words, changing what He has said even a little bit is grounds for punishment. Indeed, God has always cautioned his servants to not add anything or subtract from the words He has spoken (Jeremiah 26:2). We see the same idea in revelation (Revelation 22:19). The point is clear, God’s words are His and they represent His Name and therefore cannot be mishandled, modified, or added to. God’s words are as complete as He is. This truth tells us that we too must handle God’s words with care. We should know that it is He indeed that has spoken. We need to learn to not take God’s words casually as though what He said does not matter because it does. In fact, neglecting God’s words is neglecting Jesus who is the Word that became flesh. To take it a step further, it is to disregard God altogether, the all-knowing, all powerful, all-encompassing God. May we strive to believe when God speaks, may we be intentional with His words as He wants us to. May we, as we were commanded in Deuteronomy, talk about God’s words when we sit at home and when we walk along the road; may we be people who impress the word of God to our children; may we talk about it when we lie down and when we get up; may we tie them as symbols on our heads; may we write them on the doorframes of our houses (Deuteronomy 6:6-9). This is the only way to love the Lord with all our hearts, souls and strength. It requires intentionality and discipline. I never knew love could be disciplined but the Lord is very clear that we need discipline to put Him first, to make Him a priority over everything else that demands our attention. When the LORD gave this command, Jesus was not even a thought (for the people obviously, not for the Father), the Holy Spirit was not either, yet the instructions given proved that it was possible to have a heart devoted to God through our actions. However, in our Christian context, we have been given new hearts, hearts of flesh as opposed to hearts of stone, we have the Holy Spirit living in us that is our advocate against accusations from our enemy, he is also our comforter, he is our revelation, the one who reveals the mind of God to us and finally he is our helper. With this much help, one would think, we would not have issues loving the LORD with all our hearts or knowing that the LORD is God. Yet, we still struggle to surrender, we still struggle to allow God to be our justifier, we still struggle to let him avenge us because “vengeance is His” He said. I am convinced we are often approaching this problem from the wrong angle, what if we were to come to God as our Father, knowing that He wants to know us mutually as He commands us to know Him? What if we came to our Father believing that He loves us more than we can imagine and that He only wants what is good for us? When you know that someone loves you, you are free with them and you trust them because love only seeks the good, it is patient and kind, not self-seeking, etc. (1 Corinthians 13). So maybe, just maybe, as we come to the Father and as we become intentional about immersing ourselves in His words, let us be reminded that we are dearly loved by the Father.
I was personally in awe at the fact that when God tells us to know that He is God it is simply another way to tell us to honour Him and to let Him do what He said He would do. In other words, we should let Him be God because that is who He is! Moreover, God’s love for His people is eternal and I can rest on that despite the difficulties of life because He who seats on the throne will come and deliver me at the right time. I pray you catch the revelation from His words and that you learn to engage your heart in the things of God. Amen.
A Word Aptly Spoken 