Ezekiel Chapter 4 – Surrendering to God
Much of what God wants of us can be condensed into one word:
Surrender.
God asks this of Ezekiel in symbolising the siege that Jerusalem would face.
After setting up a symbol for Jerusalem—a brick—and the siege works against it, Ezekiel must use his body to prophetically symbolise what is to come.
Ezekiel must lie on his left side for 390 days, and then lie down on his right side for 40 days. Each day represents a year that the house of Israel (left side) and the house of Judah (right side) must bear punishment for.
Even Ezekiel’s food and water intake is dictated by God (verses 9-11). His bread is to be cooked… over cow dung!
Imagine this routine for 430 days. That’s more than 1 year and 2 months. How difficult and even repulsive this must be.
Yet Ezekiel surrenders to God. Entirely. Right down to how many millilitres of water he can drink.
For our generation of believers who are inundated with messages of autonomy, Ezekiel’s submissiveness might seem out-dated or even torturous.
But rather than judge him with the standards of our 21st century zeitgeist, it’s more productive for our spirituality to look at him through God’s eyes.
God made use of Ezekiel because he had consistently surrendered to God. Despite living in a wicked community far from God, Ezekiel showed relentless obedience. It must’ve been challenging that he had “never defiled [himself] from [his] youth till now” (verse 14).
If we want God to make use of us, surrendering is essential.
This must happen even before the work comes. “I’ll be better if the church asks me to be a teacher / fellowship leader / deacon etc.” is not how surrender works.
Ezekiel had not fought his calling to be a prophet. But though he now knew his daily tasks for the next 1 year and 2 months, he did not back out. As Gen Z might say, Ezekiel locked in (totally concentrated on the task).
Sometimes you and I tell God that we’d do something—keep the full Sabbath with a focused heart, attend this or that fellowship, or pray X number of minutes daily.
But we don’t lock in. We don’t surrender. We like the un-surrendered versions of ourselves. We rather be slaves to our own desires than be a slave of the God Most High.
In surrendering entirely, Ezekiel shows us a difficult way. But it is a better way, for he will be greatly rewarded for standing entirely with God, our King.