Poetry from the Cabin 01/26/2024

A poem on Ezekiel 36:24-28

Ezekiel was prophesying to God’s people as they were being led into captivity among the nations. Roughly from 593-571 BC. Throughout the book there is an acute awareness that God is not done with his people. Along with prophesying the exiles return to Jerusalem fulfilled in 538 BC. He also prophesied a great deal about God’s coming Kingdom. Fulfilled in Jesus, and looked forward to His return. Ezekiel 36 contains a prophecy about hearts of stone being replaced with hearts of flesh. That is our hearts hardened like the heart of Pharaoh, will be made soft again as in the ready and willing to allow God to shape our lives. Many see this prophecy as being fulfilled in Acts 2 and the formation of the Church. I agree, but I also believe it is a repeated process and that once again as God’s people are scattered among the nations we must cry out for His deliverance and for the purification of our hearts.

Collect us once again out of the nations
Where we have been polluted by false gods
We your temple filled with mere religion
O Lord collect us now with shepherd’s rod(1)

Your water wash us clean from our own dung
That clings to us like fruit juice on the lips
Delight of eye and taste and sight on tongue(2)(3)
While we have lived and slept in excrement(4)

Outside now clean made white as snow by you
Though my stone heart still leads me far away
Replace hard heart with new created tissue
That thrums for you and waits for you each day(5)

Gather up O Lord with tongues of fire(6)(7)
Your Church your bride thus burning with desire

1. Psalm 23
2. Gen 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.
3. 1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.
4. Ezekiel 4:12 You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.” 13 Yahweh said, “Even thus will the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.”   
5. Ezekiel 36:24-28  24 “ ‘ “For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. You will keep my ordinances and do them. 28 You will dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You will be my people, and I will be your God. 
6.  Acts 2:3 Tongues like fire appeared and were distributed to them, and one sat on each of them.  (This happened on the day of pentecost or first fruits.)
7.  Exodus 3:2 Yahweh’s† angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.