In episode 297 of the "No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe" podcast, host Greg Ryan continues his series on Ezekiel’s wheel, focusing on the fourth living creature—the ox—as a model for Christian love and service. He reviews the four "faces" (man, lion, eagle, ox) that represent pillars of the Christian life: the Word of God (man), prayer (lion), worship (eagle), and loving service (ox). Ryan stresses that walking in the Spirit requires immersion in Scripture, using the Word as a defense against Satan, and following Jesus’ example of quoting Scripture in temptation. He then pivots to the ox, describing its characteristics—generosity, labor, and love—and ties them to biblical teachings on love, citing Matthew 7:12 (the Golden Rule), Matthew 22:36‑40 (the Great Commandment), John 13:34‑35 and John 15:12‑13 (the New Commandment to love one another as Christ loved). He argues that love for God, self‑love, and love for neighbors are the foundation of the Law and the Prophets, and that serving others is the practical outflow of that love. Ryan uses the yoke metaphor to illustrate how believers, like oxen, can bear God’s light burden when they partner with Christ. He concludes with an exhortation to help neighbors, a promise to wrap up the four faces in the next episode, and a brief prayer.
Welcome to episode 297.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm going to continue to talk about Ezekiel's wheel and how to walk in the spirit and not in the flesh. And I'm going to go to the last animal in Ezekiel's wheel and the living creature, and that is the face of an ox. Now, if you are not an ox or have the face of an ox, you're probably looking at the phone or wherever you're listening to on this device and going, Did he just call me a cow? But I am not trying to call anybody a cow. But if you remember, we are talking about the 4 different pillars in the life of a Christian. And if we're going to walk in the Spirit, we need to learn how to walk in each one of these 4 areas. And the first area is the face of a man. And I believe that that's everybody. We are made in God's image. We have been built up in this like holy faith. We need to be in the Word of God, and we need to allow the Word of God to be in us. And that's our soapbox moment. We have one just about every episode. We have got to be in the Word of God, and if we're not in the Word of God, then Satan is going to just beat the fire out of us. He's just going to wear us out, and there's really nothing we can do about it because we cannot defend against his onslaught without the Word of God. And if you look at how Jesus fought against Satan in the wilderness, you will see that Jesus said, 'It is written.' He did not say, hey, I am the Word of God, I'm here, I'm God's Son, I can do— he was showing us a pattern. I believe he could have done it any way he wanted to. He could have called some angels down and kicked the crap out of Satan. He could have done anything, but he was giving us a pattern and he was showing us how God does it, how God does things. And he does things with the Word of God. The second face was the face of a lion. And that is the power of prayer. We've talked about that in previous episode. And the third face was the face of an eagle, and we talked about that in the last episode, and that's the praising and worshiping God. And now this face of an ox, I want to get to this one because if you are an ox, you know you're an ox, and you know that you love God, and you know that you love people, and you know that you love to serve. You are probably a giver You probably give of your time. You probably give of your money. It is a lot easier if you're an ox to just give to things, give to causes. You see a need and you pour into that need. All of those things oxes do, and we've got them in an ox stable. I believe the number one thing that people that resonate with this face, they love. They know how to love. They know that God is love, and they administer their love by helping others. And I want to go to scripture. Of course, that's what we do here. This is a Bible study. It's kind of a cleverly disguised way to study the Bible and the word of God. We're going to start Matthew 7, verse 12. Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. And I want to stop there. This is called the Golden Rule. Many people talk about this Golden Rule. I just want you to think about how you treat people and how people treat you. And if you do not look out for the other person's interests and you're always looking out for your interests, people are going to sniff that out and they are going to do things to sabotage you and not even mean to. People just get tired of takers. I mean, that's just one of the rules. If you're a taker, if you're constantly taking, or you are constantly wanting someone else to fix this, or you're wanting somebody else to do something for you, then people are going to get tired of being around you because you're constantly in need. You're needy. And I think the world system has this as victims. Now, we're all victimized because we're fighting against the Paul, and he's relentless. But if you see yourself constantly as a victim and unable to ever overcome, I believe it's because you don't get in the Word of God. I believe that you're not properly using the Word of God, and I'm not here to preach to you. I'm just here to encourage you. You need to get in the Word of God. And let's stay in Matthew and let's go to Matthew 22:36-40. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two hang all the Law and the Prophets. And I want to stop right there for a minute. I want you to think about what we just read in Matthew 7:12. Whatever you want men to do to you, you do to them also. He said, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Jesus is telling us that the law and the prophets is summed up in love God and love people. And by loving people, what we do is we see how we want people to treat us. And instead of demanding that, the best way to do— give and it shall come back to you, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that you give ask, it will be given unto you. Again, I did not write not one word of this Bible, but I am here to help you just get into it and just to see this for what it is. We need to learn to love one another. And the next two scriptures that I want to highlight are both in the book of John. Let's go there right now. It's John 13:34 and 35. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. That you also love one another. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. In other translations it says love one to another. You know, I'm not here to split hairs. Part of one of the things that just fires me up is Satan has us fighting against one another in the church. And we've talked about this multiple episodes, that we do not war against flesh and blood. That we are warring against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age and the spiritual hosts of wickedness. Those are who we're fighting. We can see them, we're not fighting them. And a lot in the church want to line up and be the smartest person in the room. They want to be the best theologian in the place, and they want to take exception to things that I say and other people say. And you know, I'm here to tell you, I'm going to mess up. I'm not here to tell you that I've got it all figured out, but I am here to tell you that I understand that I'm going to answer to God for what I say and how I teach. And I've asked God up front, and daily I tend to ask for forgiveness if I've messed anything up. And I tell you, look, you read the Bible for yourself and you ask the Holy Spirit, what is this word trying to say to me? And what are you trying to say, Holy Spirit? And if I get it wrong, I I know the Holy Spirit is not gonna get it wrong. And if all I do is get you into the Word of God so that you can get it right, how have I hurt you? And so what I wanna do is I wanna encourage you to get into the Word of God, but this thing here is a big deal. And I wanna finish up with John 15:12 and 13. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. And Jesus was talking to his disciples in these verses about the love you have one for another, and that you will lay down your life for your friend. And if you can just picture when Jesus talked in Matthew where it says, on these hang all the law and the prophets. I've talked about this in previous episodes that I think that this is your Cliff Notes. That if you want to know the whole Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, just love God and love people as yourself. And we don't talk about this near enough, but if you don't love yourself, it's going to be real hard to love other people. So we need to get ourselves right. Jesus talked about this, I think is in the Beatitudes, maybe not, but he— when he was talking about pull that plank out of your eye. My wife and I kid one another when we start trying to change each other or try to correct something. I say, look, I'm just going to beat you to death with the board that I have in my eye until I get that little speck out of yours. But it is a true statement. If we want to correct something, correct ourselves, we need to look at ourselves. We need to correct what it needs correcting, and we need to learn to love ourselves, and then we can love our neighbors as ourselves. So step one is to love God with all our hearts, with all our mind, with all our spirit, with all our being. And then the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. So we learn to love God, then we learn to love ourselves, and then once we do that, then we can love our neighbor. If we can wrap our mind around loving God's people and serving God's people, and if we see a need— that's what the ox does. The ox is a worker. The ox is a work animal. He is the beast of burden. They throw a yoke on an ox and he gets to working. I want to remind you, the only place in the Bible where Jesus said that you would have it light and easy is when you entered the yoke with Jesus. Jesus said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I believe it's, you know, I'm not even going to tell you. I want to say it's in John 11, but he said, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And I want to just pull that all together. I wasn't even prepared to talk about that in this episode, but I think if you can see yourself as an ox and you're in this yoke and you're working, if you are doing what God has called you to do, Jesus is right there working with you. Jesus is the, the lead ox. Nobody loves like God. God is love. So God is in that with you. He's pulling you're really just following behind. If you're in this and you're doing it for God and his kingdom, you're going to find that it's very easy to do. And I want to encourage you that if you haven't been helping your neighbors, there's a lot of people that need help out there, and there's a lot of people that God's calling you to help. And I just want to encourage you that we're going to wrap this all up in the next episode. We're going to kind of put a bow on all of these four faces, and we're going to try to pull it all together. And we're going to have a conclusion to Ezekiel's wheel. I'm not finished talking about it, but I'm finished talking about it on the podcast. But let's pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for your Holy Spirit. Jesus, thank you for coming and living a perfect life and showing us how we can love one to another. And God, we thank you, we love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.
Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.
