Ezekiel 13:3 Thus saith the Lord God; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!
A Blind Heart
Isn’t it fun to watch your little nephew? He is a one-year-old floor-crawler. Everything he comes across goes into his wet, little hand and eventually to his mouth. What is he doing? He is gorging his senses in order to perceive and develop a 3D picture of his world. There is a lot in the world that can be perceived through your senses. That is why God gave them to you. But, there is another world beyond your senses. For instance, what is the truth? What is God’s will? What about your future?
Separated by the miles, the exiles in Ezekiel’s day could not perceive far-away Jerusalem. They could not see her future. So, they had to accept or reject God’s words through Ezekiel about the future of Jerusalem. They could not verify those words with their sight. They decided to reject God’s truth.
God said to Ezekiel, “Look, you dwell among people who have eyes, but can’t see. They have ears, but can’t hear.” What makes sense is not merely a matter of your senses. Ultimately, how much you perceive and understand is a matter of your heart and will.
In Jeremiah 13:2 God says that the prophets of Ezekiel’s day “prophesy out of their own hearts.” Verse 3 says, “Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!” It gets worse in verses 6-7 where He says that these prophets have seen vanity.
The only thing worse than seeing nothing is seeing something that isn’t there. It is one thing to know nothing; it is another thing to know something that is not so. Both are bad; one is worse. Both can be the result of having a heart that is in rebellion against God. My senses cannot make up for my submission to God. I will not understand anything from God that I do not have a heart to understand. There is more of God than can be perceived simply through your senses.
The bottom line is that a rebel cannot perceive God’s will with his senses because his heart is blind. I want to live on the facts, and I want to give the facts. But I want to understand those facts because I have a heart to hear God’s truth and a will to obey it.