Welcome to the Daily Blade. The word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

All right, back again. Let's get to work. This week is about waking up your appetite for the word of God. See, men are wired for hunger, you know, for success and comfort and pleasure, but I want to aim higher. Okay? By digging into biblical stories, we'll see why knowing God through his word changes everything. So today we're actually going to be in Ezekiel 3. And to set the stage, after the deaths of King David and King Solomon, Judah is in power. But Judah is turning increasingly to idolatry, just like Solomon did. And God sends Judah a bunch of different prophets to put him back on the right track, but he stays in rebellion towards God. So because of this, God sends the Babylonians in to conquer Judah. So the Babylonians take a bunch of captives with them back to Babylon, and Ezekiel is one of those captives. So Ezekiel starts to get visions from God, and God raises him up to be a prophet. And at the end of Ezekiel 2, we see that God gives Ezekiel a scroll. So verse 10, and it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe. And then we see this recorded in Ezekiel three. I'll start in verse one. This is God talking to Ezekiel. And he said to me, Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. So God didn't just give Ezekiel this scroll and tell him, Hey, you know, just kind of skim this from time to time if you're bored, you know, hey, go get you a Devo that has some of these words on it, and read it if you can make time for it, of course. And hey, buddy, just go uh to a building once a week, you know, as long as it's not traveling baseball or lake season and let someone else read these words to you, right? And let no, right? He says, eat this scroll. He's telling him directly. And when I read that, and when I read that, I immediately thought of a section from Joby's first book, If the tomb is empty, which is how he and I originally got connected. So if you go to if the tomb is empty, go to page 218. I'm starting to read from there. Jesus was a rabbi, and rabbis had four levels of exegesis and of four levels of interpretation of the scripture. And the second level of interpretation of the scripture was called a remes. Remez is a Hebrew word that just means hint. It's a small part of something bigger. So as soon as he says the words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Every Jewish boy and girl there, every Jewish man and woman immediately knows that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22. The Psalms were songs, and every little boy and girl, when they were in it, the equivalent of first grade, would go to Hebrew school and study the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Not only would they study them, they'd memorize all of the Torah and all the Psalms. All of them. In fact, most of the time when they would show up on their first day of school, they would get a tablet. If you're in your twenties, note that this tablet was not electronic, it was a chalkboard kind of a thing. During class, they would write the words of God and do their schoolwork on that tablet. But on the first day, the main rabbi, the main teacher, would have soaked their tablet in honey. Honey was very expensive, very precious, and obviously very sweet. These children had heard of honey, but probably never tasted it. When given their honey soaked tablet, these little first grade Jewish boys and girls would just lick the honey. Had honey everywhere, in their hair, on their elbows, on their neighbors. It was everywhere, causing each of them to think, I love school. This is the greatest day of my life. And about that time, the rabbi would say something like Just as you crave the sweet taste of honey, may your soul crave the life-giving taste of the word of God. And they would memorize the scripture, the whole thing. Now, I had never heard this until I read If the Tomb is empty, and I just remember thinking how awesome it was. I mean, these kids were at a very impressionable age, and the wise sage rabbis knew that they couldn't just yell at these kids and demand, you will love these scriptures, you will love the process of memorization, and if you don't do exactly what I say, I'm gonna kill you. Like they I mean, God, you can't approach it that way. I mean, that may have worked on some of the kids, but even on those kids, they would have not gained a sincere admiration nor nor, you know, dedication to the text. They would have just been learning rotely in order to avoid punishment and wrath, right? No, these men were smart and experienced, and they knew they needed to communicate to these young minds in a way that would attract them to the word of God because these rabbis didn't just want these kids to just admire the word of God, they didn't want them to be passive fans of the word of God, they wanted them to feed on it, they wanted it to sustain them in a way that only the word of God can. And that's what I want for you guys. I want you to feed on God's Word, and not just when it's convenient, and not just when you can find the time, and not just the morning before your men's Bible study, so you know you don't look like a fool when you pipe up during discussion time. I want you to eat this scroll, just like God commanded Ezekiel to do. All right, guys, be back here tomorrow as we wrap up the week.

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