Ear stretching

“Stretching Your Ear”

The Nation of Israel began their journey into darkness long before the Messiahs arrival. The Torah had begun to lose its freshness when the priests could no longer discern the spirit’s guidance. Their backsliding into idolatry and surfeiting made the daily ministering a labor of duty without the passion for God’s will.

Soon the number of true, spirit led prophets decreased until the false far outnumbered the true. Ezekiel and Jeremiah, near contemporaries, found themselves in a battle against the “peace-speakers.” They spoke profoundly of the mind of God, and his plan of the coming judgment.
There was several men in that day who had the same name; Jaazaniah. From the Hebrew root word it meant to stretch or extend the ear. This name appeared when the Governor of Jerusalem was announced to preside over Jerusalem. Stretching his ear to hear the message that Babylon was to be accepted as a great, benevolent and amiable ruler and Israel had nothing to fear.

Another time the name appeared was when Ezekiel was taken to the gate of jealousy and had a vision of the Elders of Israel worshipping with their censor in their hand and idols of beasts and creeping things around the walls of the temple.

Finally in Ezekiel Jaazaniah is mentioned again as one who stood at the gate with the scorners of the true Prophets.

This is a shadow of a digression that is a plain road mark to the steps of apostasy. First the confidence moves from the scriptural and faith based actions to cultural placebos. The social value system strips the faith that’s challenged by providing a quick substitute that step between God and man by professed good. The cultural and social benefits makes the comfortable saint pacified with a quick solution to a pressing need, and wins over the child of God by the good that comes from it. All this is done with the premise of “all good things come from God.” Yet, they never realize that this action robs the saint of a much needed faith booster in their relationship with God and thereby being not “good.”

The downward spiral continues when the church begins to try to produce the same effect of a move of God by imitation. The censor being handled in a church with Babylonian images, (worldliness) is symbolic of the effort of replacing lost anointing with false fire that erases the need for the fresh perspective of the spirit. God does not play with our promotional ambitions. When we begin the love affair with the world, He withdraws at the same degree from us. He will not compete with the world for our love. And the ear stretchers look for “new” ideas that will pacify the churches need for spiritual re-production.

And finally, the ear stretcher gravitates to the embittered, jealous, watchers, who delegate themselves as the gaurds of offence. They quickly blow the whistle against any who demand to voice the need of truths standards, demanding the reticence and meekness of God’s self-will policies. They condemn any negative feedback from any who claim to have heard from God, also mocking and scorning the indomitable spirit of the preacher.

Jeremiah took the sons of Jaazaniah, the ear stretchers, to the house of the Rechabites. When the Lord commanded the Rechabites to drink wine and they refused because of their fathers commandments. God was ready to bless them in a time that He was searching for any reason not to bring the oncoming judgment to Jerusalem for their backsliding.

The ear stretchers were there when God made it plain His feelings about following what you knew to do right when everyone else was searching for “new” promotions and activities to pretend that God was still involved. He wanted Israel to know that to search beyond the scriptures when its voice became distant and confusing was not the answer.

The answer is to re-tune their ears to the voice and the sound of truth that still held to the old, proven paths. Instead of stretching their ears, they need to squeeze them acutely to the plain commandments of old.
The long, failed journey of turn it, and turn it again philosophies that Israel has taken has not diminished at all. Today many of them are worshipping in the fashion of sorcery and magic.

We must guard our ears and prayerfully tune them to the certain sound of our fore-fathers.