Dr Paul Allen

I dwell...with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit. (Isa. 57:15) Matthew Henry, in the eighteenth century, wrote,  “He that dwells in the highest heavens dwells in the lowest hearts, and inhabits sincerity as surely as he inhabits eternity. In these he delights.” 1 Franz Delitzsch, in the nineteenth century, put it beautifully:  The Holy One is also the Merciful One. . . . The heaven of heavens is not too great for him, and a human heart is not too small for him to dwell in. He who dwells among the praises of the seraphim does not scorn to dwell among the sighs of a poor human soul.2 John Oswalt, writing in the twentieth century, says it this way:  “He offers life to those from whom the life has been all but crushed out; he offers life to those whose spirit has been ground down to nothing. They need not be captive to their sin and shame.”3 Our tenderhearted King knows that being alone at rock bottom is unspeakably painful. He vividly remembers that day on his cross ...

Have you ever felt abandoned by God? For the Christian, there is perhaps no worse experience. Like a four-year-old girl suddenly lost from her parents in the hustle and bustle of a crowded mall, you feel separated, alone, forgotten. In some of the Psalms, not only does the psalmist feel lost in the crowd, but he fears God hasn’t even begun to look for him (Ps. 13:1–4). Psalms 42 and 43 paint just such a picture. Although in our English Bibles they form two separate songs, most scholars believe they originally belonged together. The same questions pepper both laments: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” (Pss. 42:5, 11; 43:5) and “Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” (Pss. 42:9; 43:2). Of the two, only the first has a title, and Psalm 43 rather nicely concludes the flow of thought from its predecessor. The psalmist’s pain is sharp, and his point is clear: he feels forsaken, and he wants to know why. When we go through such seasons (and we will), how shou...

Before we can appreciate this truth, we must get our bearings. Ezekiel was a prophet to the people of Judah during their years of captivity in Babylon. This captivity came about in three stages. In 605 B.C. when Daniel and his friends were taken. In 597 B.C. when ten thousand more of Judah’s citizens, including Ezekiel, were taken. In 586 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar and his forces dealt the final blow to Judah by destroying the city of Jerusalem and carrying away even more captives. Ezekiel seems to have begun his prophetic ministry around 592 B.C. and continued it until the year 570. It was there in Babylon that Ezekiel received this vision of the cherubim. What did this mean? Many of the Jews had a tendency to believe that God was present only in the temple. On the basis of this vision, Ezekiel could assure his fellow captives that God was present there in Babylon just as he was in the temple of Jerusalem. Our circumstances can be such that we can also be tempted to belie...