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The simplest amount of study about the Old Testament prophets will reveal that God chose quite a melting pot of personalities to preach His Word. Jeremiah was known for his teary-eyed poems. Isaiah was known for his eloquent speech and logical orations. Amos was known for his "country" zingers. Hosea who married a woman who would eventually become a prostitute and then a slave was known for his personal life's involvement and relation to his message from God. Elijah dressed in camel hair and was exceedingly hairy and a very wilderness-living, rough-around-the-edges sort of guy. Micaiah was known for his sarcastic wit. Moses was a picture of contrasts: a Hebrew raised in the finest Egyptian schools of his day who then became a loner shepherd boy and then transitioned over into the leader of two million Jews! If anything, the prophets of God were known to be a little eccentric perhaps a little "mad."

But of all of the prophets, one of the strangest has to be Ezekiel. Zechariah, Isaiah, and Daniel all saw visions but none saw the visions that Ezekiel saw. Go read chapters 1 and 10 of the book and you'll be confronted with a description of an angelic creature that is impossible to imagine, nevertheless draw. It has four heads --a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man's face -- upon four bodies that are some how all attached at the wings. In the middle of this strange creature are wheels that contain the minds of it and all along the edge of the wheels are numerous eyes that stare in all directions at once. Given the typical response today of someone who reads this for the first time, I can only imagine what the people who heard Ezekiel's first sermon about all of this was. Think about it. What if I got up and said that God had showed me a vision and I began to try to describe whatever it was Ezekiel saw and I don't know the meaning of it but I'm just repeating what I saw, what would you think? Most of you would have a "funny-farm suit" ready for the pastor!

But it wasn't just his visions that caused Ezekiel to be different. God commanded Ezekiel to do some zany -- even outrageous things -- in his preaching. Ezekiel's favorite way to preach was to use object lessons and the object lessons that God commanded were very, very extreme.

The first thing that God commanded Ezekiel was for him to take a scroll of writing, in those days made of some sort of animal skin, and to eat the scroll in the presence of the people before he preached. It would be the equivalent of me coming in here and eating a copy of the Bible before I preached; just diving in biting into the Word! It was sweet at first and then it turned bitter in his stomach. This was to symbolize that Ezekiel had received a Word from the Lord on the inside and that what was coming out was from God. Call it shock preaching. Before Howard Stern, there was Ezekiel.

The second thing was at times God would cause Ezekiel to have what certainly seemed like seizures. He would spend days in his house, unable to move and unable to speak. But it's clear that Ezekiel is not describing a physical illness, but rather something that God was bringing upon him to prove a point. The point it seems was to show that at least one person in Israel was still under the influence, and submissive to the will of God. Point taken, but what a strange way to prove it!

And then comes the command of God that we read in our text. Ezekiel takes a tile and sets it on the ground and takes sticks and forms a crude arrangement of Jerusalem on the tile. He then takes more sticks and arranges it to represent an opposing army trying to conquer the city. He pushes the dirt up to the wall and causes the sticks to crash into the stick fort on the tile. The entire time he doesn't say a word! This, of course, was God's way of telling the people of Israel one more time that if they did not repent that Jerusalem was going to be conquered by an opposing army no matter how secure that they thought it was. And so the purpose of God was fulfilled as a silent, grown man lays in the street and plays in the dirt.

After he played with the dirt, God then commanded for Ezekiel to lay outside in public on his left side for 390 days! Representing the 390 years that they had served idols. After this was done, Ezekiel then laid on his right side for 40 days representing how long Judah had strayed from God. And when he would go to lay down on whichever side was appropriate, then God would strike him and make him unable to move from that position throughout the day until it was time to go home again for the night. And to really get the people's attention, Ezekiel was commanded of God to take cow patties and use it to burn for a fire over which he would bake barley cakes upon which he would then eat in front of the people. The lesson was that if the people didn't repent and the enemy came to destroy Jerusalem that the food supply would get so bad that they would eat anything prepared anyway!

And then -- as if the people of Israel didn't think that he was strange already -- Ezekiel goes out in public and takes a razor and shaves off his hair and beard and catches the hair and then takes a scale and carefully divides the hair into three equal parts. One part, he burnt in the midst of his little stick and dirt city. Another part of the hair he would toss into the dirt and jab at it with his knife. The third part of his hair he would throw up into the wind and let the wind scatter it. And then as the people of Israel watched, Ezekiel would look around and pick out a few of the hairs that had been burnt, tossed, and blown and bind them up in the hem of his robe to signify safety and then throw the few hairs back into the fire. All of this to represent the awful fate that awaited those people who did not turn back to serving Jehovah God.

Word got out about this crazy man's preaching, no doubt. Unfortunately, they did not listen and everything that Ezekiel had acted out would eventually come to pass. I bring up the story of Ezekiel not to regale you with strange tails of the Bible, but because his story illustrates a side of God that we do not often think about. Ezekiel was preaching to a people that had already heard so much preaching that another sermon was not going to faze them. This people had already heard the prophets Elijah, Elisha, Joel, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Nahum, and Habbakkuk. We've already talked about the peculiarities of some of them and so Ezekiel represents desperation, a last effort by God to get His people to live as they should do so -- God pulling out all the stops, so to speak. And so the strangeness, the weird things that God caused Ezekiel to do are a perfect representation that God will do whatever it takes -- whatever it takes -- to get people's attention and get them to turn to Him and serve Him. If it takes a crazy prophet doing strange things to get people to pay attention again to the Word of God, then He'll do just that!

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The name Ezekiel means "strength of God" and that's fitting because what Ezekiel did is absolutely the strength of God. It's what God does best -- doing whatever it takes to reach someone. He can't help Himself. God loves us so much that He has given His Word to teach us about the things that help and hurt us spiritually. And if it takes extreme measures to get our attention back on the Word of God, then God will use extreme measures. If he has to cause a grown man to play in the dirt and ignite cow dung, He'll do it if that gets our attention. It's how much God loves humanity. It's His strength. God you see knows that the only life available is through the kingdom that He has provided and so he'll do whatever it takes to get you to live for Him.

Whatever it takes. Ask Jonah about this strength of God. If it means that a sinful city that has never worshipped God before just having a chance to repent and get things right before judgment comes, then God will send a storm to disrupt the boat of a runaway evangelist. He'll send a great fish to swallow the disobedient prophet and keep in the bottom of the ocean until he has a change of mind about the will of God! He'll let the prophet's life end up in vomit on a beach somewhere all so that a sinful, godless people have a chance to repent. Call Him crazy or zany if you want to, but God will do whatever it takes!

Ask Balaam about God's strength. He's going to curse the people of God's affection and is thus about to get himself in serious trouble with God and His chosen people who before it's all over will be the rulers of the promised land. And God loves Balaam and Israel so much that he sends an angel to block the way and the donkey sees it but Balaam doesn't. Before the day is over Balaam is in a heated conversation with his donkey (!?) before he finally realizes that there is an angel of the Lord standing there. A donkey talking to a false prophet? What's the purpose in all of that? Why bother, God? Well, first of all God wanted Balaam -- a false prophet -- to know what it was like one time to feel His presence and at least know that God is real.

But there's even more to the story than that, because after getting the false prophet's attention, God used Balaam to give some real prophecy about Israel and in it is the prophecy of a star that will signify the coming of the savior of the world! And it will be over 1500 years later that some wise men in a distant land will be reading the strange story of Balaam's infamous donkey and then will look up and to their amazement will see just a star appear! They'll pack up their belonging, get the finest gifts that they have available and travel over the desert to a little town called Bethlehem to worship a baby that was born with the crown of David in it's past and the crown of heaven in it's future! Neither the prophet nor the donkey had any idea what was really going on, but everything was happening so that there would be some men bowing before this baby, God in Flesh and teach us the importance of overcoming any distance and odds to worship Jesus. It's a valuable lesson to learn and one that reinforces the lesson of our sermon: God will do whatever it takes to teach men about worship! And He'll do whatever it takes even making a donkey talk if that means that some wise men who are hungry to know more about the plan of God get a chance to meet Jesus!

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God has gone to prepare a place for you and I to live forever with Him and He intends to have a righteous people join Him! And for that reason, He'll do whatever it takes to reach you and get you to live for Him. But we as human beings can be so distracted and fickle. Like the proverbial sheep we are easily led astray. Just one bad day can keep us from worshipping God as we should. Just one event can distract us from the harvest of souls that God has for us. Just one small hurt in our craw can keep us from serving Him faithfully. It doesn't take much to get us turned around, confused, hurt, tired, distracted, tossed, searching, desperate, or whatever else you want to fill-in-the-blank with!

But thank God that even though one of our major weaknesses is to give in to such things, we serve a God whose strength is to "do whatever it takes to keep us on fire and living for Him!" He'll do whatever it takes to keep us trusting in Him and dependent upon Him and seeking His face. He'll do whatever it takes for us to stay kingdom minded.

How many times do we question God about things in our life which actually just prove how much He loves humanity? How many times do sinners exasperatedly throw up their hands and say "I don't understand why God had to let this happen in my life, over and over again?" When actually the answer is that God loves them enough to not let them be comfortable in their sin but He loves them enough to cause them to experience the pain of living away from Him, in the chance -- just the chance -- that they will come to Him and worship Him and make Him number one in their life and live forever with Him one day. The very fact that things are going wrong in the areas that they are not obeying His Word proves His love for them! The real question should be "why does God love me enough to let me keep suffering for my sinful actions and how long is it going to be before I stop having to learn the hard way?" God is simply doing whatever it takes to get you hungry for a change! If he had let everything stay rosy, then you would have never admitted your need for Him!

The scriptures say that:

That's true for us and it's true for God. God doesn't get all worried in bad situations but instead uses them to orchestrate His perfect will. God's strength is beyond your comprehension. He doesn't get nervous in storms and trials and in fact welcomes such things because He'll do whatever it takes to get your attention that you still need to trust in Him and serve Him! He'll do whatever it takes to be saved. If it takes dying on a cross, He'll do it. If it takes walking on water, then He's done that. Go read why they braved the storm in the first place that night, it was just to get to one man full of hundreds of demons that society had rejected but Jesus will brave the storm -- walk on it if He has to -- if it means that the naked, crazy, reject living in the tombs has a chance to worship Him and know Him! Call Him crazy, but He's committed! God will do whatever it takes! Even it means using adversity and storms.

In the book of Acts we read about God allowing Paul to get arrested and shipped off to Rome under Roman guard to face trial. On the way the ship gets in a terrible storm which drives the ship across the Mediterranean Sea at high speed. The sailors on the ship are scared to death. The Roman soldiers are scared to death. The paying and affluent passengers are scared to death. They all gravitate to the one man whom they paid no attention to before because he was a lowly prisoner, but now social rank and pride are forgotten and this prisoner, this Paul, is the only one on the boat that's not scared to death because an angel has appeared to him and told him everything is going to be alright! Paul has learned -- sometimes the hard way -- that God uses adversity and that a storm often means that He is doing whatever it takes to give some people a chance to witness His glory! Paul stands up and says:

Paul realized that there's a purpose to all this. He was able to see the hand of God in His situation. It looks like they are going to die, they haven't had anything to eat in fourteen days, the storm is tearing the boat apart and yet Paul recognizes the fingerprint of God on this situation. This is the works of a God who will do whatever it takes and it's working because everybody on the boat is suddenly listening with rapt attention to what this short prisoner has to say!

It happens just as Paul says it would. The ship breaks up on the rocks off shore from an island. People grab pieces of the ship and float to shore. Not one of them drowns. In Acts 28, when they get to the shore, they find that the natives are friendly and that they build fires for them to warm themselves and give them first aid. What Paul and the Romans don't know is that the leader of this native people, a man named Publius, his father was deathly sick with fever and dysentery. As Paul joins in gathering up sticks for the fires to warm the shipwreck victims a deadly viper native to the island comes out of the pile that he is carrying and bites Paul on the hand. He just shakes off the viper into the fire and keeps on going. The natives knowing that every time any one has gotten bitten by such a snake that they within seconds fall down and die watch astonished as Paul miraculously doesn't die but smiles and keeps working. They are so impressed that when they find out that he claims to be a preacher, they go tell the chief about him and the chief asks if Paul will come pray for his father. Paul goes in and prays for the man and God heals him. Then all of the sick people come from around the island and Paul prays for them and God heals them. Before the whole thing is over, every Roman guard, sailor, and passenger on that ship has seen Paul's God do awesome things, Apostolic revival has broken out among the barbaric natives of Melita, and all of the ship wreck victims are treated royally and given the best of everything to build another ship and wait out the winter!

Think about all that had happened. It was an unfair arrest, several nights in jail, a bad storm, a ship wreck, two weeks of fasting, being tossed into the sea in the cold weather, being bit by a poisonous viper, a deadly illness, and an island of barbaric people. What does all of that add up to you and I? Most of us would have said "hell." But to God it added up to a supernatural and Apostolic revival and healing crusade! It was just a method to shine forth among the Gentiles through His chosen servant! You see, life will never look the same again if you will just get a revelation that we serve a God who is radical in His thoughts and methods and He'll do whatever it takes to get your attention! That's why Paul said in our other text:

That's the testimony of a man who had received a revelation of a God who will do whatever it takes! Could it be that your hardships is really not from Satan at all but from a God who will do whatever it takes for revival to break out in your family or this county? Could it be that what you are facing is heaven sent, not hell sent? Could it be that God has a purpose to even the most frustrating or lowest times in your life? If so, it wouldn't surprise me that you one day look back on what you are going through and smile realizing God was working after all! Because He's a God who will do whatever it takes to answer your prayers about your family being saved and you making it to heaven! But His ways are beyond our ways! They are past finding out! His thoughts are deeper than our thoughts and He's a lot smarter than us and stronger! He'll do whatever it takes!

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Think with me back to the lessons of Ezekiel's life and let's identify them with our lives today. They are the signs of the workings of a God who will do radical things that His will might be done. I can't begin to explain all of this, but I will do my best to tell you some of why God does what He sometimes does.

Ezekiel's seizures that kept at home - they represent sickness to us. Certainly not all sickness comes from God, but sometimes -- as in the case of Ezekiel -- God uses it for His purpose and glory.

Bro. Robert Trapani tells the story of how that for some reasons his body makes kidney stones repeatedly. Kidney stones are one of the most painful things that your body can have. After repeatedly seeing doctors and being in the hospital numerous times, Bro. Trapani found himself again sitting in another urologist's office getting examined by yet another doctor that couldn't explain what was happening to him. As he is sitting there in his "mini-skirt" that little piece of cloth that they put on you in such places, he said that he didn't feel very preachy, but his urologist looked over the bio and saw "Reverend" and asked "are you a preacher." He didn't feel very much like a preacher at that point, but he responded, "yes, I am." The doctor said "what belief?" To which Bro. Trapani said "I'm an Apostolic Pentecostal preacher, have you ever heard of the infilling and outpouring of the Holy Ghost?" To his amazement the urologist liked to have dropped his clipboard and said "I've been praying about that for all of my life, and I've never been able to receive the Holy Ghost! I've got a Bible in my office, do you mind teaching a Bible Study and answering some questions for a minute!?" There in the examination room, Bro. Trapani taught that man a Bible Study and today both that doctor and his wife and their family are sitting in an Apostolic church filled with the Holy Ghost because of a few kidney stones! We serve a God who will do whatever it takes!

Don't ask me to explain your situation or diagnose your spiritual problem, because this stuff is way beyond any of us figuring out, but I do want you to get hope that sometimes sickness is just the hand of God bringing revival in our life! And there are other reasons that God brings sickness too. Sometimes after we've been living for God a while we stop focusing or remembering the power of the blood of Jesus. We stop praising God for it as we should. And so when we pray for healing we once again think about the blood that He shed, not just for our sins, but for our healing as well! Sometimes God sends sickness just to see if we will trust in His Word and obey it by calling on the elders of the church to pray and anoint with oil. Sometimes it's to allow us to have something in common with someone else who needs salvation that God is going to one day put in our path. God is a healer and He definitely heals, but we should also think Him for when He doesn't heal us -- as crazy as it may sound -- because it just may mean the salvation of someone else! It just might be God doing whatever it takes!

The hair in Ezekiel's object lessons represented people who had become people of God. A third of the hairs were burned representing trials. A third of the hair were cut with a sword representing persecution. A third of the hair were blown away by the wind representing the storms of life. All three will come against you, but there is a purpose in every one of them! The fiery trials are what causes us to be refined and purified and that shape us and mold us into God's image. The storms of life are what keep us from growing lacksidasical in God and to get a personal revelation that God will keep you through anything! It is in trials and storms that people learn to pray and trust God. It is in the persecution that they learn to turn to the Word of God for answers and hope. It is in such times that people learn the value of church. Those things come but there is quite a bit of good that come with them!

Hang around long enough and you will notice that any time anyone gets the Holy Ghost and baptized in the name of Jesus and repents of their sins and starts to live Godly, that they always face the knife of extreme persecution from their families and friends. It’s such a fact that one of the first things that we teach people in Bible Studies is about the persecution that will come when the “seed of the Word of God” finds “good ground.” Why is that? And why would God let such a thing happen? Because those who respond Godly learn to rely on the instruction and encouragement of the pastor and ministers of the church during that time. God knows that people don’t naturally trust ministers but that you are going to have to have a man of God in your life to be saved and to navigate through the many twists and turns of becoming what God wants you to be, so He allows persecution to come to cause you to depend upon the man of God!

And going along with that, you must learn, as Ezekiel did, to partake of the Word of God. Sometimes the sermon will be “sweet” and you will be excited and ready to shout when you take it in, and then there will be times that it will be bitter and it will identify the things in your life that need to change. Whatever you do, eat it! Take it in readily! Because the Word of God has the power to save you!

Ezekiel's eating defiled bread represents that sometimes God allows you to have to eat the bread of sinful reaping. Sometimes you have to pay the price for what you did. Sometimes God is merciful and He blunts the blow but sometimes people pay the price for a lifetime for what they did. They eat the bitter and nasty bread that they have baked with their actions. Some times God will let you learn the hard way, but if He does, know that it is an extreme measure for you to have a chance at salvation. I could tell you story after story about people whose lives were destroyed because they went back into sin and yet ended up their lives as broken and pain-filled people but in the mercy of God got things right with Him before they died! God will do whatever it takes!

I read Friday in the news about a little girl in Georgia which is one of less than a hundred people with a rare disease. The issue is that she can’t feel pain. She has feeling in her hands and she can tell the difference between soft and hard, fuzzy and metal and such but the receptors that identify pain are absent in her body and so she can’t feel pain, hot, or cold. In the article, they interviewed the mother and she said something that caught my eye. She said “I’m tired of people coming up to my little girl and telling her ‘that must be great not to be able to feel pain.’ It’s not great, it’s the worst possible disease. If you can feel pain, you ought to thank God for it. Pain stops you from doing things that hurt yourself. It’s God’s way to tell you to quit.” After every play session, the teachers have to examine her head to toe to make sure that she’s alright. She has to be watched carefully at all times and has to have a thorough medical examination every week to make sure she’s alright. To prove her point, the mother showed pictures of past Christmases and the little girl looks like she has been through a war. She has wounds and bandages and burns and sores all because she can’t feel pain!

God uses pain. He allows pain. He created pain. Pain is His way of letting you know something needs to change. That something’s not right. That you need a higher opinion. We understand the principle in the physical but never forget that it also applies to the spiritual as well. God will let you hurt to identify the areas in your life that need His attention! Pain is often the working and mercy of a God who will do whatever it takes!

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I close with this:

Like Ezekiel’s sticks and dirt fort, sometimes God allows outside agencies to come in and knock down the defense of comfort that we have erected to remind us to trust only in Him. Sometimes God uses wars and current events to get our attentions back on His power. Such things are just Him doing whatever it takes for us to be saved. If God has to use tragedies to get a nation’s attention, then He will let it happen. If it takes such things to get the Godly men and women praying for their countries and leaders again, then He’ll use such things! 9-11 was horrible. The wars and recent events in the world have not been good. The hurricanes in Florida this year were devastating for those in those regions, but I must say that now there are more of the Christian people praying for our troops, our country, and our leaders than were a few years back. And -- dare I say it? -- thank God for that because our country was going down a dark, dark road without prayer and it’s a fact that the sleeping giant of the God-fearing has been awakened and is now finally focusing on the things that should have been important all along!

Jesus said this:

If it takes all of that to bring a revival in this world, then God will do it. But you have a promise that when even the worst things come to pass “it shall turn to you for a testimony!” Somebody get a revelation and then never forget it: we serve a God who will do whatever it takes for world-wide revival and whatever it takes to reach your families and neighbors and to keep you where you need to be. He’ll use an Ezekiel if He has to. He’ll employ radical means if that’s needed. Read the Book of Acts and you’ll find that He’ll use persecution if that’s what causes an Apostolic church to spread the Gospel. But it’s because of His love for people. It’s a show of mercy. It’s because of His mighty strength and awesome compassion that God will do whatever it takes!