A Strange Haircut

In the book of Ezekiel God commanded his prophet to give himself an unusual shave and haircut. The Lord said, “And you, son of man, take a sharp sword, take it as a barber’s razor, and pass it over your head and your beard; then take scales to weigh and divide the hair(5:1).” 

This was a strange shave and haircut because a sword was not commonly used as a barber’s razor. In fact, the law given to Moses has precise instructions about the way a beard should be trimmed and the hair cut, and for priests like Ezekiel, there was a second warning to follow the law in this regard. Ezekiel was told to use a sword because it symbolized the coming invasion from the Babylonian army, and the swords they would use to bring judgment on the idolatrous Jews. But the haircut becomes even stranger when we see what God told him to do with the hair. Using scales, Ezekiel was told to carefully divide the hair into three equal parts. 

One third of the hair was to be burned in fire, one third was to be attacked with the sword, and the final third was to be scattered in the wind. These actions symbolized the fact that some of the Israelites would die when Jerusalem was sieged, some would die at the hands of the Babylonians, and some would be taken into captivity and scattered. This was a grim prophecy, but it was the end result of 390 years of national rebellion against God. In this dark prophecy there is still a glimmer of hope at the end. 

Ezekiel was told to hold back a small part of his hair and “bind them in the edge of your garment (v.3).” The edge of the garment referred to the tassels that Jewish men wore at the bottom of their cloaks. Some translations say he tied the hair into the hem of his garment. These few pieces of hair were a picture of the few Jews who would repent of their sin and put their trust in the Lord, and they would eventually return home from captivity. 

Because of this picture in Ezekiel Jews believed that when the Messiah came, there would be healing and protection in the hem of His garment. That is why the woman with the bleeding disorder in Matthew 9 reached out touched the hem of Jesus garment—the tassels at the bottom of His cloak. This act of faith showed that she believed Jesus was God’s Messiah, the promised Deliverer who had healing in the hem of His garment. She stretched out a feeble hand and Jesus did the rest. She was healed immediately, but more importantly, her sins were forgiven. If you are still separated from God under the weight of your sin, reach out your hand to Jesus, and He will do the rest. 

Judging Your Neighbor

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. On their first morning in the new house, while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the laundry outside. “That laundry is not very clean,” she observed. “She doesn’t know how to wash clothes correctly. Maybe she needs better detergent.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent. 

Every time her neighbor would hang her laundry to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About a month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean load of laundry on the line and said to her husband, “Look, she has finally learned how do laundry. I wonder who taught her?” The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”

It is easy for us to see fault in other people, but it seems a little more difficult to see fault in ourselves. That is part of why we often become guilty of improperly judging people. When we judge, we often use hypocritical judgment, holding people to a standard that we do not meet ourselves. We may even be guilty of judging people for something we are secretly involved in. When we judge, we need to use righteous, not hypocritical, judgment. 

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard people remind Christians that they are supposed to “judge not,” but that sadly misses the point of what Jesus was saying. His point was that we will be judged in the same way that we judge others, so we better judge properly. To say judge not and then stop short of the rest of Jesus’ message is to fail to understand that Jesus actually does want us to judge, so long as we do it His way. 

He continued: “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?  Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye;’ and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5).”

Did you notice the hypocrisy He condemns? Calling out someone for sin in their life (a speck—which was like a twig), while you have even more sin in your own life (a plank) is hypocrisy. But do not miss the last part: once you have removed the plank of sin from your eye, Jesus expects you to help your brother or sister remove the speck of sin in their lives. This necessarily involves judging the person to assess the speck. 

The key is learning how to judge without being judgmental. We must never look down our nose or point accusing fingers, and this is a passage about helping those inside the church, not yelling at the unsaved. Jesus went on to say in John 7:24, “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” Let us be righteous judges for Jesus. 

Priorities

I heard a story about a group of four friends that went out deer hunting. They paired off in twos and split up for the day. Later that night one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under the weight of an eight-point buck.

"Where's Larry?" he was asked by someone in the other group.

"Larry had a stroke or something. He's a couple of miles back up the trail."

"Wait! You left Larry laying there, and carried the deer back?"

"Well," said the hunter, "I figured no one was going to steal Larry."

That hunter knew his top priority, and it wasn’t Larry. I wonder, read, what your top priorities are. We have a tendency to stress over things that should not be our top priority, and we often ignore what should be. 

In a very familiar verse, Jesus said to seek “first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33).” Jesus was telling the disciples what ought to be their top priority, and that is God’s kingdom and righteousness. In the verses preceding that one, He told them a few things that should not be at the top of their list, namely what they would eat, drink, and wear. This is admittedly difficult because those are crucial items—it isn’t like Jesus said not to stress over mansions and filet mignon. We cannot survive without food and water, and we probably would not want to survive without clothing, and yet Jesus reminded us that these are only temporary, and therefore, of lesser importance than those things which are eternal. Our Heavenly Father knows our material needs, and we need to trust—not stress—that He will supply our needs according to His riches in glory. 

Our top priority, then, should be to live in light of God’s kingdom. His kingdom will one day come to earth and be fully realized in the Millennial Kingdom, but until then, when we live by His standard of righteousness we are bringing a glimpse of His kingdom to earth now. When we put others before ourselves and love our neighbor, we are giving people a foretaste of when Jesus comes to make all things right. 

When we make righteous living our top priority then “all these things will be added” to us. The “all these things,” in context, refers back to what we eat, drink, and wear. In other words, if we live for Jesus above anything else, He will take care of the temporary and the eternal; if we focus on the temporary, we may miss out on eternal blessings.  

Grieving the Spirit

I heard about a man who, while touring of a large manufacturing plant, noticed a man using a fiery torch of high intensity to work on huge slabs of steel. There were times, however, when the flame would not make any impression and the steel seemed completely resistant to the heat. When this happened, a worker applied a chemical substance to the stubborn area, and immediately the cutting could be resumed. The visitor inquired about what was happening, and his tour guide explained that although the torch was able to go through clean steel eight inches thick, if it encountered the slightest film of rust on the surface, the flame would not penetrate it. The visitor, who was a Christian, later remarked, “It struck me forcefully that this is a picture of the Christian. The Holy Spirit is seeking to produce in us God’s perfect design. If the life is unblemished, He is able to continue His efforts; but if we become carnal or backslidden, His work of shaping us is hindered until the area in question has been thoroughly cleansed.”

Part of the reason God has placed His Holy Spirit into the life of believers is to help mold them into the people He wants them to be. We are not spectators in this process; we can either work with the Spirit or against Him. God’s Spirit is a powerful force, but when He encounters the slightest resistance on our end, He cannot produce His fruit in our lives. When we tell him no or stubbornly refuse to repent of sin or follow His leading, we create an environment in which He cannot work. I believe this grieves the Holy Spirit. 

In Ephesians 4:30 Paul said, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” In his book Forgotten God: Reversing our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, Francis Chan wrote “The Spirit is grieved when there is a breach in relationship, whether it be relationship with God or relationship with other people. When we are disunified, unloving, hateful, jealous, gossipy, etc., that is when we grieve the Spirit of God. And since He is the creator of emotions, I believe that the Spirit grieves more deeply than we can even understand.” 

The choice is simple. If we want God to continue making us into the people He wants us to be, we need to live in unity with each other and love our neighbor as ourselves. If we want to stifle His sanctifying work, we can live at odds with others, grieve the Spirit, and fail to grow into maturity. Don’t grieve the Spirit. Let Him work in you and through you so that you may be conformed into the image of Jesus.