“He Spread It Out Before Me”

 

“Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you. Then I looked, and behold, a hand was extended to me; and lo, a scroll was in it. When He spread it out before me, it was written on the front and back, and written on it were lamentations, mourning and woe. Then He said to Me, Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll. He said to me, Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving to you. Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.” Ezekiel 2:8b – 3:3.

 

Quite a few years ago a friend gave me a portfolio of Bible pages from old Bibles in various languages. There are pages in German from Luther’s day, others from the early days of the King James Version, some in the language of Native Americans, others in Arabic, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He also gave me a section of Exodus written in Hebrew from a Torah scroll of leather, he is unsure of the date of the scroll or its provenance; it may have been cut up in Europe circa WWII, but we don’t really know.

 

I value this portfolio because it represents God’s Word as transmitted to and through different peoples in different times and places; it represents God’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of His People. From time-to-time I have taken the portfolio to church and detached some of its pages (each page has a description explaining where it comes from), spreading them out on tables for people to view. During my sermon I’ve referenced the pages of God’s Word on the tables and invited the congregation to view them after the benediction.

 

Without exception, few people have taken the time to view the pages, very few. The transmission of God’s Word, God’s faithfulness, the communion of saints, just don’t seem to matter. The fact that men and women often risked their lives to translate and transmit the Bible doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that translation and transmission, even in safe environments, requires significant investment and commitment and diligence doesn’t seem to matter. I am always disappointed and sad – God “spreads out the scroll” and we don’t care.

 

When I gather up the pages and return them to the portfolio my heart is always low, my spirits always down – few care, few care; God spreads a feast before us and we don’t care. It reminds me of the story Jesus told of the giver of a banquet waiting for guests, but those invited had other things to do. We haven’t changed.

 

God spread the scroll out before Ezekiel and Ezekiel saw writing on both sides of the scroll. God tells Ezekiel, “Eat what you find.”

 

In Revelation Chapter 5, John sees a scroll in the right hand of “Him who sat on the throne,” also written on front and back. John hears the question, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seals?”

 

Then John tells us, “And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it…” (Rev. 5:3 - 4).

 

Now we don’t know how long it took to determine that no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, maybe it took “time” and maybe it didn’t – John was in a different place, a different dimension, and yet in Rev. 8:1 he writes that “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour,” so John had some sense of time – but what that was like I don’t think we know. The point is that no one could be found who was worthy to open the scroll and read what was in it.

 

And here is what I’d like us to ponder, only God can open the scroll, only He can open the Scriptures to us, and only God can cause us to read and understand what we read and to retain what we read; only God can cause what we read to grow within us.

 

Imagine God opening the scroll for Ezekiel and Ezekiel saying to God, “I’m not interested.” And yet, in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God opens His Scroll for us…and how do we respond? And yet, God gives us His Holy Word - the Bible, and how do we respond?

 

We cannot understand the Scroll without the Holy Spirit, and so Paul writes (1 Cor. 2:12 – 13): “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words” (NASB).  

 

Jesus’ words to the religious leaders of His day should serve as a warning to us, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39 – 40). If we are not seeing Jesus Christ in the Scriptures then we are not “seeing” the Scriptures – and this means more than seeing the Messiah in some predictive and evidentiary fashion in the OT, or in a historical fashion in the NT, it means communing with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in and through His Word – it means submitting to His Word, obeying His Word, and becoming one with His Word.

 

It means, as Ezekiel, eating the scroll, it means being fed by God, it means filling our stomachs and bodies with His Word.

 

In Ezekiel, God spreads out the scroll. In Revelation, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Lamb of God, “has overcome so as to open the scroll and its seven seals.” You and I cannot open the scroll, we cannot read what is written on the scroll with any degree of understanding without the illumination of the Holy Spirit – and then we must receive God’s grace to respond in obedience to what God speaks to us.

 

“And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain…when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb…and they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are You to take the scroll and break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation’…’Worthy is the Lamb that was slain…’” (Rev. 5:6 – 14).

 

O dear friends, can we see the price the Lamb paid to open the scroll? Can we see the price He paid not only to open the scroll, but to purchase us with His blood? Can we have some sense of the sacredness of the Scroll, of the Word, of the Scriptures – that they are more than ink on paper, but that they have a transcendence flowing from the Throne of God as they are opened by the Lamb that was slain?

 

Can we see that our response to the opening of the scroll is to be worship and glorification of the Lamb? As we worship and exalt the Lamb we may receive His Word, as we glorify Him we can receive greater and greater vision of Him, being transformed into His image and likeness.

 

Many men, women, and their children have paid a price for transmitting the Bible to us, the Scroll; but none of us have paid the price that the Lamb of God paid – and whatever price we have paid, or shall pay, is an extension of our what Lord Jesus Christ has paid.

 

Might we consider this today, as, by God’s grace, we open the Book? The Lamb purchased us so that we might read the Book that He opens. The Lamb overcame the unspeakable forces of wickedness and evil and became our Perfect Sacrifice, so that He might open the Book for us.

 

Shall we not, by God’s grace, “eat this Scroll” which He opens for us?