The Gift Giver.
“Turn your backs on your rebellious living so that sin won’t drag you down. Clean house. No more rebellions, please. Get a new heart! Get a new Spirit! Why would you choose to die, Israel? I take no pleasure in anyone’s death. Decree of God, the Master, Make a clean break! Live!” -Ezekiel 18:31-32
We were made to live clean. Clean does not mean an outwardly religious, uptight, self-righteous clean, but instead, clean and pure, alive in love. Lives that aren’t cluttered and toppling over with things that only leave us unsatisfied and still wanting. We were created to drink from the source of love, the source of All-in-All, nourished and satisfied, then live-in and pour-out this same love. Clean. Pure Beautiful. Ezekiel followed up his plea to make a clean break from death with this parable:
“Here’s another way to put it: Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard, transplanted alongside streams of water, luxurious in branches and grapes because of the ample water. It grew sturdy branches fit to be carved into a royal scepter. It grew high, reaching into the clouds. Its branches filled the horizon, and everyone could see it. Then it was ripped up in a rage and thrown to the ground. The hot east wind shriveled it up and stripped its fruit. The sturdy branches dried out, fit for nothing but kindling. Now it’s a stick stuck out in the desert, a bare stick in a desert of death, good for nothing but making fires, campfires in the desert. Not a hint now of those sturdy branches fit for use as a royal scepter!” -Ezekiel 19:10-14
We were made for so much more than the machine of this world; it will only dry us out and leave us as kindling…
“‘I am God, your personal God.’ On the day that I raised my hand in the solemn oath, I promised them I would take them out of the country of Egypt and bring them into a country that I had searched out just for them, a country flowing with milk and honey, a jewel of a country. At that time I told them, ‘Get rid of all the vile things that you’ve become addicted to. Don’t make yourself filthy with the Egyptian no-god idols. I alone am God.’” -Ezekiel 20:5-7
God alone can fulfill our desires, our real true desires, and fill us to overflowing. He longs to lavish his love on us. How hard it must be for him, wanting so badly and having every means, to give us gifts, while knowing we will only worship the gift instead of the Gift-Giver… but he offers us a new heart, a new Spirit - One that wants to live instead of die. One that will live in thanksgiving to the Only True Gift Giver.