Ezekiel shows that Jehovah makes Himself Known and All will Know that God is Jehovah

The only way we can be pleasing to God is to come forward and believe that He is; God’s only requirement is to believe that He is, and we need to experience Him as our Jehovah God, the One who Is; eventually, all will know that God is Jehovah.

This means that God is everything and we are nothing; He is everything to us and in us, and we are nothing; the life we now live is by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself up for us.

Jehovah God wants to be our God and us to be His people; He wants us to experience Him and enjoy Him as our God, and we as His people. Our God is the I AM WHO I AM; our God is, He is the reality of the verb to be. This means that He is everything that we need.

The reality of all that we need, God is. And it’s all in His name – He is the I AM, that is, He is everything. The length, breadth, height, and depth of the name Jehovah are sufficient to include everything; whatever we need – all the spiritual realities can be added in faith to “I am”.

Every day we need many things; we may think we need more love or patience, but Christ is the reality of love and patience. We think we need more rest and satisfaction – Christ is the reality of our rest and satisfaction.

Physically speaking, we need to breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and exercise – the reality of all these things is Christ, the I AM. As we breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and walk, we can just open to the Lord and take Him as the I AM, the reality of all that we need.

Everything is in Christ, and Christ is everything. We may know this, but to what measure have we experienced this? Have we experienced Christ as the I AM to the point that we are not but He is? If Christ is everything to us, then are we still the ones living and speaking?

Christ wants to be everything to us to the extent that He is the One who lives in us, He is expressed, He speaks, and He does everything in us and through us. We need to experience Christ as the reality of all our needs day by day, and we need to take Him as the I AM in every single thing.

He is the reality – He is the One who is, and we are not; without Him, we are not real, we don’t live a real life, and we are not genuine, but when we are one with Him, He is our reality, genuineness, and sincerity.

Believing that God is and We are Not makes us Pleasing to God, for Faith Pleases God

Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, for if we come forward to God, we must believe that He is (Heb. 11:6). We need to believe not merely that God exists, for things such as cars, flowers, and trees all exist; we need to believe that He is.

God requires us to believe that He is; this means that only God is – and nothing else is. We are NOT – you are not, I am not, but He is. God is because He is real; the things created by Him exist, but they are not real (Eccl. 1:2).

Apart from God, all else is nothing; God is the only One who is, the only One who has the reality of being (Isa. 40:1-18).

We may understand this, but what do we see and experience concerning God as the One who is? Do we realize that God is and we are not? How does this affect our relationship with the Lord and with the church as the Body of Christ?

Andrew Murray defined humility as the realization in the presence of God that we are nothing.

We may think that God is everything to us, but we may also think that we are also quite something. God needs to work in us and do something in all of us, just as He did in Job, to reduce us to nothing so that we may realize that He is, and allow Him to impart Himself into us.

Paul was like this also; he testified that he counted all things loss, and gladly suffered the loss of all things, considering them as dung, on the account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ (Phil. 3:7-8).

We should not fear being reduced to nothing; what we should fear is remaining untouched, whole, unbroken, for our entire Christian life.

The I AM, the Lord Jehovah, will lead us to experiences wherein Christ becomes everything to us and we are nothing to ourselves; we will then discover that it is a relief to be nothing so that Christ could be everything, and to have nothing so that He would be everything to us for the Body, and to do nothing but have Christ do everything in us and for us.

Christ cannot be everything to us and in us unless we are nothing, unless we are reduced to nothing; when we are reduced to nothing by the Lord through our experience of Him, we are reconstituted and organically replaced with Him so that He can be everything to us and in us.

Satan wants to annihilate our being, but the Lord wants to reconstitute us with Himself. All He requires is that we are those believing that God is and we are not, for faith makes us pleasing to God. For this, the Lord has to touch what we are – and the earlier this happens, the better this is.

We need to let the Lord shepherd us and cause us to grow in life, so that we may progress in life in a normal way, and we would no longer be but He would be everything in us. Faith is to believe that God is – faith joins us to God, the only One who is (John 14:1).

To believe that God is, is the only way – the unique way – to make God happy, to be well pleasing to Him. If God is, then where are we? We are buried with Christ, raised with Him, and He lives in us; we simply need to cease from struggling and strife and walk in newness of life!

Our daily living should be, No longer I but Christ. It should no longer be me, mine, I, or my, but Him, He, and His. When we comb our hair, dress up, eat, travel, work, speak, read something, or do anything, we should realize that it is no longer I but Christ, that is, we need to be believing that God is and we are not.

No longer I who speaks, works, does things, or goes places, but it is Christ who speaks, works, does things, or goes places. We must deny ourselves in anything and we must trust in Him in everything.

Lord Jesus, we believe that God is and we are not. Give us the experiences we need so that it would no longer be us but Christ who live in us. You know how much it is still us living, speaking, and doing things. Lord, we want to experience You as the One who is. You should be the One living in us. You should be the One speaking in us and doing things in us. Lord, we pray that it is no longer us but Christ. We believe that You are and we are not. You are everything in us, and we are nothing. May we be joyfully consider everything as a loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ!

Ezekiel shows that Jehovah makes Himself Known and All will Know that God is Jehovah

Eventually, all will know that God is Jehovah (see Ezek. 36:11, 23, 38; 37:6, 13-14, 28; 38:23; 39:6-7, 22, 28). When the Lord opens our graves, raises us up from our grave, and enlivens us, all will know that God is the I AM (Ezek. 37:13).

What God is doing among His people is to make His holy name known, and He will not allow His holy name to be profaned anymore; then the nations will know that God is Jehovah, the Holy One in Israel (Ezek. 39:7).

Whether we are God’s people – His physical people (Israel) or His spiritual people (the believers, the church) – or we are unbelievers, Gentiles, God is making Himself known to us, and all will know that God is Jehovah.

All will know that God is I AM, and today we can see and experience this in the church life. In Ezekiel we can see eight ways in which Jehovah makes Himself known, and all of these are applicable to us.

1. God makes Himself known through heavenly visions shown to man. Ezekiel saw visions of God, and the heavens were opened to him (Ezek. 1). The I AM makes Himself known through a revelation, through a shining vision. Paul prayed that we would have a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him (Eph. 1:17).

2. God makes Himself known through His express words. The word of Jehovah came to Ezekiel expressly, in a specific and express way. We need express words, the word of God, communicating God’s thought, God’s view, God’s feeling, to help us understand His visions.

3. God makes Himself known through the apostles and prophets, making them a sign to the people. In Ezek. 24:24, 27 God made Ezekiel as a sign to the people, so that they would know that God is the I AM.

Paul also said that he was a captive in Christ’s triumphant procession, and in 1 Cor. 4:9 he said that God has set forth the apostles as doomed to death, for they have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. God makes Himself known through the apostles and prophets, and they are a sign to us, their being communicating a testimony of God to us.

4. God makes Himself known to us through His dealings with us; some are quite severe, for He deals with us according to His holiness, glory, and righteousness. God dealt with His people Israel and with the nations in a severe way, and in this He made Himself known. Our God deals with us not to punish us but to discipline us, and as He does so, He manifests Himself to us, and we know Him.

He touches our self-expression so that we may know Him in His glory; He touches us in our common way of speaking so that  we may know Him in His holiness; He touches our unfairness so that we may know Him as the righteous One. His judgment always leads to recovery and to His expression.

5. God makes Himself known by recovering the people of Israel, that is, by recovering us, His people. He opens our graves, revives and enlivens us, and brings us back to our land, makes a covenant with us, and is sanctified in us. The more He recovers us, the more we know Him as the I AM; He touches us deeply, tenderly, lovingly, precisely, exactly, and within the exact measure, and we know Him more, love Him more, and know that He is the I AM – He is the I AM to us!

6. God makes Himself known to the nations by the judgment and recovery of Israel. Ezek. 39:7 tells us that, eventually, all the nations, peoples, and ethnic groups, will know God – for He brings a judgment on the earth as the earth has never seen, and all will know God.

7. God makes Himself known by dealing with His enemy. In Ezek. 38 we see a matching portion to Isa. 14, in which Satan is exposed as the one behind the prince of Tyre, typifying the pure commerce, that is, adding money to your pocket by diminishing the money in others’ pocket – yet without working for it or producing anything.

The Lord makes Himself known by dealing with His enemy. In Rev. 18 the Lord will deal with the entire commercial system on earth, and all the merchants will be weeping, and Babylon will be destroyed, and all will come to know that God is Jehovah.

8. God makes Himself known through His building. In Ezek. 37:26-28, when the sanctuary of God is built in the midst of God’s people, all will know that God is Jehovah. The Lord wants to build up the church, His sanctuary, His house, His temple, His city, and when He has this, all the nations will know that He is the I AM.

These verses in Ezekiel correspond to the Lord’s prayer in John 17:21 where He said, That they all may be one, even as We are one….that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

When the church is built up in oneness, God will be glorified in His house, and all the world will know that God is Jehovah, and Jesus is the One He sent to be the I am, the Savior, the Redeemer, the life, and everything to His people. May we know God as the I AM.

Lord, may we know You as the I AM, as the Jehovah God. Make Yourself known to us, Lord. May we know You in a subjective way, in the way of experience. May we know You as the I am even through Your dealings and Your judgments. May we experience You as the I AM as You recover us, enliven us, bring us back to the enjoyment of Christ, and touch us deeply and within the exact measure. Make Yourself known to us and through us to all the nations. May we become Your expression and manifestation. Lord, build up the church so that You may be made known to all the nations through the church!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans, msg. 7 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Ezekiel (2), msg. 3 (week 15 in the HWMR), “Know That I Am Jehovah”.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Oh, to be saved from myself, dear Lord, / Oh, to be lost in Thee, / Oh, that it may be no more I, / But Christ that lives in me. (Hymns #591)
  # We have seen Christ is reality: / But it’s not sufficient just to see: / He in our experience must be / Everything to us. (Hymns #1178)
  # Cause us to grow in life divine each day / That we may be transformed and built by Thee / Into a body to express Thyself, / That Thou in us Thy Church and Kingdom see. (Hymns #829)