When God Sends His Rain




 The Lord says, ‘I will send down showers in season—showers of blessing.’ Ezekiel 34 

Ever Faithful. Ever New.

God’s words to His People continue to speak and challenge us today.

Delivered as a prophecy around 600 years before Jesus was born, Ezekiel was given a message to deliver to the household of his own day. Ezekiel in Hebrew is Yehezqel, meaning "God is strength."

 

That strength of God is evident in Ezekiel’s message then, and for the Church today.

It really is very worth reading all of Ezekiel chapter 34; the plight of the household, the neglect of their under-shepherds, the infighting between sheep, the deliberate muddying of watering holes and feeding pasture.

The problems it addresses for the household then can sadly seems very modern today.

 

Ever Faithful. Ever New.

But therein lies the great hope. The remarkable part is the influence and care of God as the Good Shepherd of His flock then and now. None of what happens to His sheep, or the events which Ezekiel describes, go unnoticed by Him. Countless generations of God’s household in the centuries since, have found hope and comfort from Him as the Good Shepherd.

This passage also reminds us that He is with His flock in all and every situation.

 

It’s a passage I first got to know through an old hymn I first heard in St John’s.

I think someone requested it to be sung, and I admit I had to learn it, and that funny little delayed note in the last line.

 

But it isn’t the tune or the music which is striking. It’s the phrase, ‘Showers Of Blessing.’

It sent me on a Bible search. Where is that phrase from, and what does it refer to?

 Ever Faithful. Ever New.

Ezekiel, ‘God is strength’, speaks about the problems in the flock, but also of God moving in great strength, to provide the care for His own flock which the shepherds of Ezekiel’s day were failing to do. And as He moves, and cares, seen especially in the life of Jesus, who came as the great Shepherd of the Sheep, there is a blessing to be encountered and lived and enjoyed.

In practical terms, Israel experienced God’s blessing in days of more secure borders, fertile land

And abundant fruitfulness. But there is a longer-term promise in the prophecy given through Ezekiel. God is entering into a Covenant commitment with His people. One which God Himself will keep and guarantee. Not only will God move to reorder His own flock, but He will also reorder their land for them, and bless them. In the place where God is working, which he calls His Hill, He says that His people and the places around His Hill will be blessed.

That is a remarkable feature of Ezekiel’s words given by God, for Ezekiel’s listeners then, but also extended across the ages to the countless generations since, and every individual who has listened to the voice of the Good Shepherd and allowed Him to reorder their life in Him.

God’s blessing extends today to all who believe.

Didn’t Jesus the Great and Good Shepherd say,

‘But because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow Me.

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.’  St John 10

The showers of blessing mentioned by Ezekiel, is the way God describes His blessing to us.

As a very poor gardener, despite my at times very intermittent efforts, it is more than obvious to see that any flourishing in the graden is not down to me. St Paul puts it more beautifully when he noticed that one plants, another waters, but it is God who gives the growth.

God's showers of blessing are a spiritual reality in the life of every believer. We are abundantly blessed to have a  Good Shepherd. Yes, at times as the flock we are not all we might be, at times our under-shepherding is not all that the Good Shepherd would ask of us, but God’s judgement and promise is that He is able to intervene in the life of His flock, for our good.

I really love the closing phrase in this passage. God promises that 

‘I will raise up for them a garden of renown,’ 

What great assurance, to be promised God’s blessing, but also to know in the words of Jesus

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. St John 15:1-4. 

Our God Is Ever Faithful. He Is Ever New.

To be in a place with God where He is tending His flock as the Good Shepherd, and blessing us by His care as The Gardener is indeed to encounter Showers of Blessing.

Ezekiel well knew the promises of God, and we are greatly blessed to know that they extend to us today.

May God bless you in these set apart days. Amen.

PS Today I'm being encouraged in the words offered in the song 

Jesus, It Is You, from Brooklyn Tabernacle, from their album, I Am Reminded. 

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