Ez. 47-48
The land portions that God allotted to His people were important to Him. There were many laws about not moving the boundaries or taking someone’s inheritance away. There were also provisions, such as the kinsman redeemer we read about in Ruth, so that people would not lose their inheritance. Sadly, seeing that something is significant and understanding what that significance is are not the same thing. I am curious about it, though, as I see three separate times that God organized His people around His presence. The first was in the wilderness where God ordered their camps around the Tabernacle. The second was the original inheritance when they entered the Promised Land under Joshua. And the third is in this vision revealed to Ezekiel. None of them are the same.
One thing that is the same in each of these cases is that God set the Levites apart for Himself and treated them differently than the rest of the tribes. He gave them charge of all that was holy and set them as mediators between Himself and the people.
The thing that keeps jumping out at me in Ezekiel’s vision is that God specifically calls out one group of the Levites – the sons of Zadok. God set aside the choicest and holiest part of the land for this group, whom he called “the consecrated priests”. Of the sons of Zadok God said, “who kept my charge, who did not go astray when the people of Israel went astray, as the Levites did” (Ez 48:11b). Wow – what a commendation! And I somehow find it encouraging. It gives me hope that there will always be a group that stays true to God, no matter what the circumstance. I pray that I am found in that group.
1 John 3
John says that we can identify the children of God because they practice righteousness and love their brother. Sounds simple, right? But I think that we often misconstrue what these things are and count them for what they aren’t. What I mean is that I often see a lot of conflict as to what the righteous or loving thing to do is. One man’s “loving behavior” is another man’s “breaking God’s heart”. So maybe it’s not as cut and dried as John makes it sound.
Some things are obvious, but we’re not concerned with the obvious here. Satan is the Father of Lies, the Great Deceiver. He doesn’t make things obvious. The apostles warn the churches over and over again not to be deceived, as John does in verse 7 here. We know that practicing righteousness is not the same as being self-righteous. The Pharisees show us that. And I see far too many people who think that loving someone means being nice to them and not hurting their feelings. But Jesus’ words and actions toward those same Pharisees tells me otherwise. So what does it really mean to practice righteousness and to love our brother?
I don’t have all the answers to such complicated questions, but here’s a place to start. First, anything that is done out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, no matter how it looks on the outside, is not from God. Period. There is no Biblical justification for pursuing fleshly desires. Second, anything that puts a stumbling block between someone and God is not love. It is not our place to condemn others, but we should not be helping people to be comfortable apart from God. We are to be God’s love AND God’s truth to them, even if it hurts their feelings. Love NEVER compromises truth. And remember, we have God’s Holy Spirit to help us do and discern all of this.