Editor’s Note: Thanks to David Hundert who is our guest blogger this week, continuing our series through Ezekiel.
Do you find it difficult to trust in God? If so, you’re not alone. People of all shapes and sizes can find it difficult to trust in God. Leaders struggle with this just as much as non-leaders. In fact, leaders can not only struggle to trust God, they can go so far as to turn their backs on God. When leaders struggle with trust and turning away from God, they can influence many others. In Ezekiel’s hometown of Jerusalem, this very thing was happening.
In the first post in this series, we heard some famous historical quotes by leaders about history and government. National leadership is a role that can have significant influence on the people in a nation. As we turn to Ezekiel 11, while still in his vision, which started in chapter 8, God talks to Ezekiel about the leaders in Jerusalem. Start by reading Ezekiel 11:1
The Lord’s judgement is turned against the leaders of the city because they turned their backs on God. In verse 13, Ezekiel states, that as he was prophesying, one of those leaders, Pelatiah son of Benaiah, died. Keep in mind that this takes place in the middle of a vision. I found that to be a really interesting statement to add in there, so I did a little more digging. If in fact this happened in real time, while Ezekiel was in the middle of his vision, Wow! What a testimony to have your authority from God and accuracy punctuated by having one of the leaders that you are prophesying against drop dead right then and there! It reminded me a little of the story in Acts chapter 5 of Ananias and Sapphira who died when confronted by the apostles for their sin. Interestingly enough, two different commentaries that I looked into, both state that they really aren’t sure if it was real or just a part of the vision. I think that we can agree though, that the leaders have not only sinned against the Lord, but they failed in their leadership by lying to their people as well. You saw this already in chapter 8, verses 11-13 which states,
“In front of them stood seventy elders of Israel, and Jaazaniah son of Shaphan was standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising. He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’” Again, he said, “You will see them doing things that are even more detestable.”
Consider how similar this is to another event in the history of the nation of Israel. In the book of Exodus, we read about how the Lord, honoring his covenant with Abraham, and looking upon the suffering of Abraham’s descendants at the hands of taskmasters, were delivered from bondage. After the Israelites walked through the Red Sea on dry land, Moses led them to the foot of Mount Sinai, so that he can go up and receive the Law. Starting in Exodus chapter 32 verse 1 it states,
“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him’.”
Because Moses delayed in coming down with the law, and they didn’t know what happened to him, they talked Aaron into making a golden calf for them. Things didn’t happen in what they considered to be a reasonable time-frame, so they turned to a foreign idol.
Can you see yourself doing that? I know that I’ve done it. I don’t mean that I have an alter to a foreign god in my house, but I know that in my life, when I don’t think that the Lord is answering my prayers in a timely fashion, I tend to try to take matters in my own hands! Anytime we sit on the throne of our own lives, the wrong god is on that throne. Have you ever done that? Well, let me encourage you… In my experience, if you can just be patient and trust in the Lord’s timing, He will usually far exceed any expectations that you may have. Take a look at how the picture below illustrates this:
Jesus is asking us to trust him that he has something far better in store for us than we can imagine. Leaders need to trust God too!
Sadly, the leaders in Jerusalem chose not to trust God, and it spelled their doom. But is there hope? When the leaders turn away from God, does that mean the end for the nation? Check back to the next post to find out!
Editor’s Note: This week we welcome David Hundert as guest blogger! Thanks David!
Can you finish the following sentences?
Let’s start with one that might be familiar: “Those who fail to learn from history,___________________________”
Did you get it right? “Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” Do you know who said this? That is attributed to British statesman, Winston Churchill.
This next one is a bit more challenging: “The more corrupt the state, __________________________”
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” Do you know who said this one? It was stated by the Roman Historian, Tacitus who lived between 55-120 AD.
This last one is the most difficult, so I’m not going to have you complete it. I’ll give you the whole thing. I’d just like to see if you can guess who said it and when.
“The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, and the public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest we become bankrupt.”
Sound familiar?
No, it was not stated by a contemporary American politician! This was originally accredited to Cicero, another Roman, in 63 BCE!
As we continue studying the life and ministry of the prophet Ezekiel, I’d like you to keep those in mind while we review the previous chapters of the book of Ezekiel
Ezekiel was a prophet called by the Lord, calling the people of Israel to task for their sin. The Lord was allowing Babylon to force them into exile, which is just a fancy way to say that he used the Babylonians to kick them out of their land. Most of the people were still living in Judah. For the most part, there were about 10,000 Jews from Jerusalem that were exiled at this point. The Lord used Ezekiel to pronounce judgement on them through a series of visions and some really unique “street ministry” to let them know where they have gone wrong.
By the way, there is a previous example for this in scripture! Look at when Israel left Egypt. They were declared to be God’s chosen and were given the law. God performed many signs and miracles, providing for them day in and day out, and all he asked was that they serve Him and Him alone; yet they still rebelled! Could you imagine? So, while they were technically within about 11 days walk of the promised land, their whining, moaning, and groaning, caused Moses’ GPS to get stuck on “recalculating” for 40 years! Essentially, they were kept out of the land they were promised, which is to say they were exiled for 40 years.
So fast forward a bit, and the Lord takes the son of a priest from Judah, living in Babylon after the exile, and has him prophesy to this “rebellious people”. He states in chapter 2 verse 3, “He said: ‘Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day’.”
By the time we reach chapter 11, Ezekiel has pretty much prophesied against everyone… Now, keep in mind that Ezekiel is speaking to the remnant in Judah. He’s talking to God’s chosen. In that regard, not many have been left out at this point. Spoiler alert! He goes after foreign powers at a later point!
Check back in to the next post as we learn what happens in chapter 11, the conclusion to the vision that began in chapter 8.
Wildfires have been ravaging sections of the western USA. It happens every years during the hot, dry months of summer, but 2021 is particularly bad. I heard a news report that the acreage destroyed to this point in 2021 is three times that of 2020, and we thought 2020 was bad. A few weeks ago, those of us in the eastern USA could look up into the sky a see the haze fading out the sun, as smoke from western wildfires was so expansive and hit the right wind current that it traveled the long distance across our country. The wildfires are a serious problem deserving serious attention in their own right. They also serve as a metaphor, as it seems our world is on fire in many other ways.
Is there hope for a world on fire? Do you feel like it is hopeless? Lately watching the Delta variant on the rise, it can feel hopeless. Do you know what I mean? Are you wondering if we’re going to have to start wearing masks again? Have you had disagreements or differences of opinion among family and friends about the vaccine? It can feel so frustrating, right?
Or what about politics? Do you feel like it hopeless? Watching politicians disagree about seemingly everything, and rarely trying to reach across the aisle to work together, can be so disheartening. Each side seems to have gravitated to the extreme ends of their belief system, and they caricature the other side as evil. Have you had disagreements or differences of opinions among family and friends about politics?
Or what about sexual ethics? Do you feel like it is hopeless? The school board meetings, the proposals in government for fairness in sports, and the actual human people affected…it’s all so fraught. Maybe you’ve had discussions and disagreements about that too.
Then there is Critical Race Theory. What is true? What is false? It can feel hopeless.
Last week we left Ezekiel in a bit of a cliffhanger. God had transported Ezekiel through a wild virtual reality vision back to his hometown, Jerusalem, where God gave Ezekiel an unsettling tour through the temple. Room after room in the temple, God showed Ezekiel how the Jews living there were worshiping idols and practicing pagan religion. Then God says he has had enough of the Jews’ adultery, and he not only begins leaving the temple, but he also unleashes judgment on the city. While the judgment is awful, God first saves those who remained faithful. Remember that all of this took place in a vision, meaning that it was a prophecy of what was to come upon the people there in Jerusalem. That is where we stopped, with Ezekiel still in the middle of the vision, a vision that mostly seems hopeless.
There is more to come, including an important message from God that will become a major theme throughout the rest of the book of Ezekiel. Let me give you a hint: it’s not hopeless! But why? Check out Ezekiel chapter 11 ahead of time, then I’ll look forward to discussing it further with you next week. I’m very thankful because we’ll have a guest teacher, David Hundert, leading us through Ezekiel 11.
As we saw in the previous post, we can be especially quick to blame God for difficulties in life, even when we face consequences of our own decisions. Or consider that when a loved one passes away, including passing away of old age, we can bitterly question, “God, how could you let this happen?” as if it was his fault. It seems to me that whenever anything bad happens, we humans are quick to find someone to blame, and God is easy pickings.
In Ezekiel 8, 9 and 10, through the virtual reality vision God gives, Ezekiel, he sees the people in Jerusalem boldly sinning in God’s temple, and yet they were blaming God for leaving them. It’s convoluted, right? Yet we humans have an amazing capacity for believing what is convoluted. To the people in Jerusalem, they might have even said it makes sense, that they had evidence for God abandoning them. How so?
Well, when an enemy nation, Babylon, attacked them and stole away 10,000 of their people, that would be awful. We would hate it too. The Jews could easily start saying, “Wait a minute, God, where are you? How could you allow this to happen? You are supposed to protect us. This is your fault! You abandoned us! So now we are going to worship the gods of those other nations, because clearly you are not as powerful as they are.”
You see how the mind games works? We can do the same. Just as those Jews sinned and sinned constantly, for decades turning their backs on God, but they blamed him for their problems and were unwilling to see themselves as sinners, we can do the same. We humans can have a very hard time seeing and admitting when we sin, when something is our fault.
I get it. It feels terrible inwardly, emotionally, to admit fault, to admit error, sin, shortcoming or inability. It takes a lot of maturity to say, “I did it. It was my fault.” We would much rather wallow in immaturity, even if it is a total lie, and say, “It wasn’t me.”
But let us remember that there is hope in this story! What does God prize? Who are the mature ones in this story? The people in chapter 9, in the vision, who get the mark (which you can read about here)! They are the ones with a heart for God, the ones who sigh and moan at the wickedness happening around them. Their sighing and groaning is not them being difficult or negative. Instead their sighing and moaning is a longing for truth, beauty and goodness, for God’s way to prevail.
The people who got the mark, though they seem so negative in their sighing and moaning, are actually the ones who have remained faithful to the Lord.
What will it look like for us to have that kind of righteous, proper view of our lives? We could call it an honest view, a sober view, a view of life that grieves about sin, and is especially grieved by sin among God’s people. This is a person who, from their heart and mind, is grieved when God’s people succumb to idolatry.
So to answer the question we started this five-part with, when you have a holy grief like that, you can be an Eeyore, and Eeyores have a special place in God’s heart. Of course, that is provided you’re an Eeyore whose heart is in line with God’s heart. Do you have a desire to call sin what it is, to admit it, and to confess and repent? Do you have a desire to change, to pursue restoration with God and others? Do you have a heart for God’s Kingdom? Do you desire to have a heart that has discovered and is connected to God’s Spirit within you in such a way that you are like the people in Ezekiel’s day who grieved to see their fellow Jews within the walls of the temple worshiping idols other than the living God?
First, let’s ask ourselves if we are worshiping anything other than the living God. Second, are you practicing getting to know the gift of the Holy Spirit within you and staying connected and in worship to the real living God who is among us? Third, once you are that connected it will grieve you when others around you are not.
Then ask yourself: Are there people in your church family who you suspect are practicing idolatry? The past couple weeks we’ve talked about it. Click here for the first in a five-part series on religious idolatry, and click here for the first in a five-part series on economic idolatry. If we see our church family, our friends, or our family who are Christians practicing any form of idolatry, even in the tiniest degree, we should be grieved, sighing and groaning. Then we will do something about it, seeking pull our loved ones, our church family away from idolatry, to repent and give their lives to worshiping God alone.
Friends of mine have been struggling with a family member who is accusing my friends of not loving the family member. (I’m purposefully avoided gendered pronouns to preserve confidentiality.) What you need to know is that my friends’ family member committed adultery, thus damaging a relationship with another member of the family. That act of adultery has led to many years of pain and eventually to divorce proceedings. Now the person who committed adultery is blaming the rest of the family, including my friends, for not loving him correctly. This seems to me to be an example of gaslighting. Have you heard that term before? You can read all about it here.
As we continue following what happens in the virtual reality dream vision that God gives Ezekiel, we need to talk about gaslighting. It seems that there are some people who are trying to gaslight God. But first, let’s learn what happens as the vision continues.
The man with the writing kit returns from marking the faithful remnant to salvation, and we head into chapter 10. Read chapter 10 to learn what happens next in the amazing vision God gives Ezekiel.
If you’ve been following our study through Ezekiel for the past few months, the events of chapter 10 should sound very familiar. The vision of the flaming lightning throne chariot that Ezekiel saw in chapter 1 is back! Remember the cherubim with the four faces and six wings, and wheels? They formed the four legs of a table-like chariot. The table top is called an expanse seemingly made of ice, and sitting on the table top is the throne of God, where the presence of the glory of God resides.
God has the man with the writing kit take fiery coals from the cherubim, and though we don’t know precisely what he does with the coals, the insinuation in Ezekiel 10, verse 2 is that he will scatter the coals over the city of Jerusalem, setting it ablaze and destroying it. That depicts the final judgement of the Lord on the city.
What is most important in this chapter, though, is the movement of the flaming lightning throne chariot as it carries the glory of the Lord. Where does it go? The glory of the Lord is about to exit the temple. This is a significant moment.
Consider with me the history of the glory of the Lord in the nation of Israel. First, remember the Exodus, when God led the people in the pillar of cloud and fire. Then the glory of the Lord entered the tabernacle. Finally, the glory of the Lord entered the temple, after Solomon built and dedicated it. Now hundreds of years later, God’s glory is leaving the temple. It is similar to God saying, as we read in previous chapters of Ezekiel, “I will turn my face away from you.” Now God’s glory, his presence, leaves the Jews because of their idolatry.
What we have learned in Ezekiel chapters 8-10 is that God has given Ezekiel a vision of judgement on the wicked in Jerusalem. There is hope, though, because God will spare the righteous. But for the wicked, they are in big trouble, as God gets set to leave the temple.
Shockingly, though, those wicked people are blaming God, as if it is his fault. Isn’t that how it often goes? We look for someone else to blame when the natural consequences of our actions catch up with us. That’s one example of gaslighting. As the article I linked above explains, gaslighting is a form of relational manipulation where one person commits a sin against another person, but the person who commits the sin tries to convince the victim that it was their fault all along. It seems like the people of Judah are gaslighting God.
It is a reminder of how far we can go astray, but instead of having a proper awareness of what we have done and a humble ownership of our sin, we blame others, including God. We humans are incredibly good as justifying or explaining away bad behavior, in big and small ways.
How about you? Are you quick to accept correction? Or are you one who right away justifies your behavior? Or worse, maybe you are good at turning the tables around and blaming others?
I am person who dreams almost every night during sleep. How about you? Over the years I’ve had some freakish nightmares. Sometimes they are recurring, going night after night. Others will be one-off dreams that never recur. I also have settings like the home we lived in years ago, or my church’s building, or the school I and my kids attended during our elementary years. Many I’m sure I don’t remember. I can often wake from those dreams mystified as to why my brain works like it does at night. Nightmares can shake you, can’t they?
We’ve been studying the life of the prophet Ezekiel, and this week we are reading about his incredible virtual reality vision which began in chapter 8. God has, in the vision, transported Ezekiel to the temple in Jerusalem. In Ezekiel chapter 9, God takes action, and the vision which had already been disconcerting now becomes a nightmare. Read the whole chapter, because it is one complete episode in this story of Ezekiel’s vision that covers chapters 8-11.
After giving Ezekiel an unsettling tour of the temple in Jerusalem, noting room after room how his people were practicing idol worship, God’s unleashes judgement. First he beckons the guards who will carry out his judgment, and he summons a man with a writing kit. These people come to the temple, and God himself begins to move. In the temple, God’s presence resided above the gold cherubim which were on the lid of the Ark of Covenant stored in the room of the Temple called the Holy of Holies. God’s glory now moves to the threshold of the temple, where he talks to the guards and the man with the writing kit.
I am so thankful that this story includes a hint of hope. Did you notice the hope? I’m talking about the mark. The man with the writing kit was to walk around the city and put a mark on the foreheads of some people, and those people who had the mark would be spared. What people? Was it just random? No. Look at verse 4. The people who got the mark were people who grieve and lament about the evil that had been happening in the city.
That word “lament” jumped out at me. I thought, “I’m going to get to talk about lament in this sermon!” which is a biblical, important way to express oneself to God. But I discovered that the Hebrew word here is better translated, “groan.” When we lament, we speak words. Groaning does not use words. God is describing something very emotional here. While some people in the city are indulging in the idolatry and wickedness, there are other people who are not. Those other people look at the evil around them, evil that their fellow Jews are committing, and in response, they sigh and moan or groan. They are sick about the evil.
Have you ever been in that spot? It is a deep emotion, a deep sadness, to the point where there are no words, and you just sign and moan. I started this week’s five-part series talking about how God just might have a heart for the Eeyores among us. Now we see why. The Eeyores, the people who moaned and sighed, got the mark, showing that they were the faithful ones. They did not agree with the idolatry and wickedness happening in the temple. This was more than just a disagreement that was an opinion. They groaned. They had grief over it. Their hearts were sick as they saw their own family, friends and neighbors turn away from God.
Do you see the hope embedded in this story of judgement? If you got the mark, you were saved from the judgement that was at hand.
Next God instructs the guards to slaughter the people in the city without pity or compassion. Verses 5-6 are rough. We don’t like to think of God that way. But remember the mark. God is not just blindly massacring everyone. He saves the faithful, the people who are truly following him.
The judgement begins with the elders in Jerusalem. We’ve been hearing a lot about elders, haven’t we? I wonder if the elders back in Babylon sitting there in Ezekiel’s house had any sense of the focus on elders in the vision? (As we’ll see next week when we study chapter 11, when the vision is completed, Ezekiel will tell them what he saw.) For the reader of chapter 9 there is a clear literary connection that Ezekiel is trying to make between the elders sitting in his home in Babylon and the elders in the vision in Jerusalem. That connection shows us an important principle: elders are responsible for leading and guiding and setting the tone. The same principle is found in the New Testament description of elders. That’s why our goal when we select people to be on Faith Church’s Leadership Team is to have people who have clearly shown that they love the Lord and are committed to his Kingdom. Not perfect. No one is perfect. But our goal is to have people who have demonstrated that they are mature in their faith, and serious about it. It is not an eldership of age. It is an eldership of maturity. In Ezekiel’s vision, the elders in Jerusalem were very immature, leading the nation to idol worship and apostasy. Now God says it is time to allow those elders to face what they have done.
After dealing with the elders, the guards start carrying out justice throughout the rest of the city. For Ezekiel watching this vision, it must have been like a nightmare. Maybe you know the feeling. You’re dreaming, and in your dream you are at the mercy of whatever your mind concocts. Sometimes it is simply awful, and you wake up shaking, sweaty, heart-pounding, thanking God it was just a dream.
Ezekiel tells us how he responds to this nightmarish vision. He falls facedown, crying out to God in disbelief. God responds saying, “The people have crossed the line too many times, and now I am going to let them fend for themselves.” In verse 10 when he says that he will bring down on their own heads what they have done, it is a way of saying he is going to allow them to face the consequences of their wickedness. It will mean their destruction. He is going to allow the natural consequences of their wickedness to catch up to them.
Was this purge actually happening in real life? It is hard to know, but I would say doubtful. This is a vision. God shows Ezekiel the idolatry and wickedness, but that doesn’t mean that the killings happened in real time. Instead, it seems best to understand this vision as a prophecy of what will happen to the city, but by the hands of an enemy foreign army. Remember that it is a vision given to Ezekiel for the 10,000 Jews living in Babylon. In other words, the vision is God’s way of saying, “My people in Babylon, don’t be like your idolatry-practicing countrymen in Jerusalem. Be like the ones who sigh and moan.”
In the next post we’ll see what happens in Ezekiel chapter 10 as the vision continues. For now, consider this: are you like Eeyore, sighing and moaning at the way people in your life have turned away from God? Or have you become numb to it? What might it look like for you to have a renewed heart of love for God, so that you can express his love to the people in your life who might not be following him?
Brazilian billionaire pastor, Edir Macedo, built a church designed to look like Solomon’s temple. See the picture above. You can read more about it here. It has a sanctuary for worship, a museum, and a helipad for Macedo’s convenience. I wonder what it would be like tour that building? How similar or different is it from the original? And perhaps most importantly, what would God think of Macedo’s massive $300 million dollar building? We can only speculate. Today, though, we will hear what God had to say when he took Ezekiel on a tour of the original temple.
First, let’s try to get in Ezekiel’s heart and mind. Have you ever had that feeling, after having been away from your hometown for a while, and you come back, look around, amazed how much you recognize and yet unsettled by how much has changed. Then you see that your favorite park is gone, and in its place is a superstore with a huge parking lot. No more climbing trees, playing sports in the grass, or using the playground. Instead it is a Big Box Store.
As we continue studying Ezekiel 8, I suspect Ezekiel had some of those disconcerting feelings.
In the previous post, we learned that in Ezekiel chapter 8, God takes Ezekiel, in a vision, to Ezekiel’s hometown, the city of Jerusalem. Ezekiel had not been back there in six and a half years, and now through the miracle of what I am calling a virtual reality dream vision, Ezekiel flies 900 miles to Jerusalem and arrives at the temple. The first thing he notices is that his own people, the Jews, have set up an idol in the temple courtyard. All is not well.
What does Ezekiel see next in this virtual reality dream vision? Read Ezekiel 8, verse 4.
God’s glory is there! Just as Ezekiel had seen before in the previous visions in chapters 1-3! He doesn’t spend much time describing it, but we would do well to pause a moment and consider what this must have been like for Ezekiel. Seeing the glory of God would be amazing. Seeing it once would be astounding. This is now the third time Ezekiel gets to see God’s glory. The first two times, God’s glory came and totally surprised Ezekiel in Babylon. Now he sees God’s glory in the temple, which is where the glory of God resided.
Even though he sees God’s glory, he has also seen an idol in the temple. What is going on? Continue reading, and we’ll see what else God shows Ezekiel in the temple. Read Ezekiel 8, verses 5-18.
God takes Ezekiel on a tour through room after room in the temple, and in each room the people of Israel have desecrated the temple with worship of idols and foreign gods. On the tour, four times God asks Ezekiel a question: “Do you see this?” If God were talking in contemporary English, I think he would say, “Can you believe these people???” Why is God so astounded? Because his own people, in his own temple, are participating in one desecration after another, right there in his place of residence.
Each time, after he asks the question, “Can you believe it?”, God says, “You better believe it, because guess what? When we head into the next room, you’re going to see things even worse than that!”
On God’s tour of the temple, things are going from bad to worse. In each of the rooms there are descriptions of various kinds of idol worship. The room in verse 10 is likely describing Egyptian idol worship. Notice in verse 11, the elders of Israel are in another space using pagan religious worship. These are not the elders in Ezekiel’s house in Babylon who we met in the previous post. They are the elders who were living in Jerusalem all along, and Ezekiel sees them practicing pagan religion in the temple.
What is worse, did you hear what the elders said? Look at verse 12. Amazingly, they claim that God doesn’t see them, that God has forsaken them. I find that fascinating. Though they have constantly disobeyed him, though they abandoned him, including the audacious rebellion of allowing idolatry in God’s temple, they blame God??? It is also interesting that at this point neither God nor Ezekiel comment on the elders’ convoluted logic.
Instead, as the tour continues, in verses 14-15 we read that God brings Ezekiel to another room where woman are worshiping the Babylonian fertility god Tammuz. Then in the next room, in verse 16, twenty-five men have turned their backs on the temple and are worshiping the sun.
In the concluding verses 17-18, God has had enough, and he tells Ezekiel that he is done with the people in Jerusalem. No matter how much the people cry out, God will not listen to them. This sounds very ominous. In chapter 9, God takes action.
Check back to the next post as we learn what God does about the apostasy in his temple.
Do you have an Eeyore in your family? Maybe you are the Eeyore! You know the person who is sigher, moaner and groaner. Because life is sooooo hard! We say to that person, “Why are you grumpy? Cheer up!” or we try to cheer them up, giving them suggestions for how they can change. We would much rather them be smiling and laughing! But the fact of human personality is that some people are naturally more like Eeyore. More melancholic, maybe seeing the glass half-empty. It doesn’t necessarily mean that anything is wrong with them. Though it seems to me that our culture tends to give the impression that cheeriness and positivity is right, and sighing and moaning and groaning is wrong. But is that always true?
Would it surprise you to hear that the people who sigh and moan and groan just might have a special place in God’s heart?
We’ve been studying the life of Ezekiel, and this week in our five-part series on Ezekiel 8, we’re going to find out if the Eeyores of the world have a special place in God’s heart. Turn to Ezekiel 8, verse 1, which begins with a date.
Scholars tell us that the likely date in chapter 8 verse 1 is September 17, 592 BCE. But it literally says that it was the sixth year, sixth month and fifth day, which is a reference to how long Ezekiel and the 10,000 Jews from Jerusalem had been living in exile in Babylon. Then we read that Ezekiel is sitting in his house, and the elders of Judah are sitting before him. That detail jumped out to me. This is the first time we’re hearing about people possibly listening to Ezekiel. All we’ve heard so far is God telling Ezekiel that the people wouldn’t listen. Yet here are the elders of the people sitting in his house. Why are they at his house?
First of all, who were the elders? Like Ezekiel, the elders were part of the 10,000 Jews who were exiled from Jerusalem. They were the ones in charge, kind of like local government leaders. The way Ezekiel writes it in verse 1, it almost sounds normal that elders were there.
But all along we have been noting how unusual and unconventional Ezekiel’s method was, and as a result, how much of an outcast he must have been. Even though the elders have come to visit him, I still think that Ezekiel’s unusual prophetic skits and doom-and-gloom messages of judgement must have been really off-putting to most people. Might it have been possible that the elders were curious that God might actually be speaking through Ezekiel. Have these elders had a change of heart? Are they here to repent and return to the Lord?
Will God give Ezekiel a message for the elders? Normally messages from God are introduced with the statement, “the word of the Lord came to me.” In chapter 8, verse 1, Ezekiel says something different, “the hand of the sovereign Lord came upon me there.” Does that sound familiar? It should. We’ve heard that phrase before. In Ezekiel chapters 1 and 3, we learned that the hand of the Lord was on Ezekiel. The hand of the Lord is very different from the word of the Lord. When the hand of the Lord comes upon Ezekiel, God’s power is going to be displayed or at work in his life. How so? Read verse 2.
A glowing figure appears! Does the description of this figure sound familiar? It’s very similar to what Ezekiel describes in chapter 1, verse 27, which was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord! Amazing! Has God’s glory shown up again? It doesn’t seem that way. Here in verse 2, it seems that this glowing figure might be an angel.
I wonder if the elders there in Ezekiel’s house could see it. I doubt it. I get the sense that the hand of the Lord was only on Ezekiel, allowing only Ezekiel the privilege of seeing the glowing figure. Think about being in that room watching Ezekiel have that experience. Did Ezekiel’s eyes glaze over, did he go into a trance? Did his body move at all, or was he totally still? Did Ezekiel lose consciousness of the room around him? So many questions! It only gets more interesting. Look at verse 3.
What???? The glowing figure grabs his hair??? The Spirit lifts him between heaven and earth, in a vision? What is going on here.
I will admit that I was fascinated over the past few weeks watching the billionaire space flights. (Aside… I was also a bit sickened by the amount of money spent on those very brief flights so a handful of people could experience a few minutes of weightlessness.) But those space flights took people way up into the sky, into the space that could be described very similarly as what Ezekiel experienced.
Still, the Spirit’s transportation of Ezekiel is so much better! I love sci-fi, and what I read in that verse seems to me to describe what you might see in a sci-fi movie. Doesn’t it sound like he is being teleported like Star Trek? Except that it seems like Ezekiel is describing flying! So did Ezekiel physically leave his house? Did the elders sitting there have a shock of their life as Ezekiel suddenly disappeared in front of them? Maybe. We don’t know.
It seems more likely, given the word “vision” that this was all happening in Ezekiel’s mind, rather than in his body. Just because the glowing metal fire angel grabs his hair, it doesn’t mean that it physically happened to him. It was likely a vision, a dream, a work of God, an experience in his mind that was a purposeful gift from God to him.
Also, did you notice the work of the Spirit? The Spirit was heavily involved in Ezekiel’s life when God first gave him a prophetic vision and called him to be a prophet. The Spirit is real. The Spirit is at work. As Christians we know that the Spirit lives in us. It is so good to be reminded of that over and over again in Ezekiel, because we can forget about the Spirit in the busyness of our day to day lives. The Spirit is the gift that Jesus said he would give us. In John 16:7 and Acts 1, Jesus said that it will be for our good that Holy Spirit will be within us and with us. It is only to our benefit to remind ourselves of John 15 and the importance of our connection to the vine and to the Spirit. To discover and get to know the one who lives within us and with us.
The Spirit was clearly at work in Ezekiel’s life, transporting him, through the vision, to Jerusalem. Ezekiel can vividly see what is happening in Jerusalem. It’s like Ezekiel is wearing a virtual reality headset, and he feels like he is there at the temple in Jerusalem. Have you ever tried a VR headset? It is amazing. You feel like you are there. VR is a lot like dreaming, especially if you have vivid dreams. When you dream, what you experience is happening in your mind, and you feel like you are there, though you are asleep. It is simply amazing what our minds can do.
In this vision dream Ezekiel flies into Jerusalem, his hometown. Remember that Ezekiel hasn’t been back there in six and a half years. How amazing it must have been for him! You know that feeling when you’ve been away for awhile, and you return? It can give you the chills. You miss home. You miss the familiar. You miss family and friends. When I’ve gone on international trips, though I’ve had the privilege to travel and live in some beautiful places, I always come back to Lancaster and think, “This place is amazingly beautiful. I have missed home!” Ezekiel had to be feeling some of that excitement.
We read that he flies into the temple. It seems to me that it is not a fictional Jerusalem, or a Jerusalem of his dreams. I can’t say for sure, because this is prophecy, which tends to be highly symbolic. If Ezekiel is seeing what is happening in real life in Jerusalem, his is being given a vision that is very different from how many of us dream. I don’t know if your dreams are like this, but mine tend to be really weird. They are based in reality, but things get warped and wild. My friends from different eras in my life, friends who don’t know each other, can be part of the same dream. Locations get mixed up. Our minds create amazing stories in our dreams.
It does not seem like that is happening in Ezekiel’s vision. It seems like God’s Spirit has enabled Ezekiel to see the real Jerusalem.
While that must have been thrilling for Ezekiel, the thrill evaporates very quickly. All is not well. Notice that last phrase, “…where the idol that provokes to jealousy stood.” Yikes. There in the inner court of the temple was an idol from a pagan religion. Of course that would make God jealous. Consider how Ezekiel would have felt. It would be a major shock, if Ezekiel didn’t previously know it was there.
When I traveled with my wife to Cambodia a few years ago, we visited some Buddhist shrines and temples. Though they were active Buddhist places of worship, they allowed tourists to walk through them. They were ancient and impressive, filled with pictures and statues of Buddha and Buddhist symbols. Given my belief in Christianity, I wasn’t worshiping, but I because I was in the sacred space of a different religion, I remember walking through them feeling a discomfort, an awkwardness.
Now imagine how it would feel if you walked into your church building, and especially into your church’s worship space for Sunday worship, and someone had placed the statues and symbols of another religion there. I suspect there would be some righteous outrage. That is exactly what Ezekiel sees in the temple of God. Something is very, very wrong in Jerusalem. What does Ezekiel see next in this virtual reality dream vision?
I would like to introduce you to what I consider to be one of the strangest (and maybe most interesting!) verses in the Bible. Ezekiel 8:3,
“He [the glowing metal fire creature] stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and in visions of God he took me to Jerusalem, to the entrance to the north gate of the inner court, where the idol that provokes to jealousy stood.”
Did you get all that? Do you need to read it again? Yes, that is a real Bible verse!
We’ve been studying the amazing book of Ezekiel for a few months now, and lest there be any doubt of its uniqueness, I think what happens next will seal the deal. So far Ezekiel has experienced some very shocking visions, and God has asked him to perform unsettling prophetic dramas, living among his fellow 10,000 Jews in exile in Babylon. In chapters 1-7, therefore, we learned that Ezekiel’s ministry is unconventional. It is true that last week in our study of chapter 7, we heard Ezekiel preach a fairly standard prophetic word. Get ready, though, because what happens next is anything but. Just read that verse again up there. What do you think it means?
Check out Ezekiel chapters 8, 9 and 10 ahead of time to see for yourself, then I’ll look forward to talking about it further on the blog next week! I think you’ll find that what happens next in Ezekiel’s life is very applicable to us. I know…whatever is going on in Ezekiel 8:3 seems like the last thing that might relate to life in America in 2021. But there’s a lot more to the story. More than you and I need to consider, as we seek to be faithful disciples of Jesus in our world.
We conclude this five-part series studying Ezekiel 7 with the final element of the antidote to economic idolatry, as taught by John Wesley: “Give all you can.” If you are earning, and if you saving, as we learned in the previous post, you will have the ability to give generously. Living simply and practicing generosity are greatest antidotes to economic idolatry. When we give generously we show in a very practical way that we trust in God, not in money. Are you giving sacrificially?
Often when we have these kinds of passages, the topic of tithing comes to mind. A tithe is the concept of giving 10% of your income back to God. God told Israel to tithe to him, and somehow or another that idea got carried over the Christian Church, as if that is what God wants for Christians too. The problem is that there is no teaching about tithe in the New Testament. Furthermore, God told Israel to give three tithes. Two of them were annual, and one was every third year, so they gave the equivalent of 23% every year. But a portion of that was kind of like the taxes we pay, as they were supporting a nation. So the better question is, what does the New Testament teach? 2 Corinthians 8 & 9 are the best chapters to learn about generosity in the New Testament, and I can sum it up with these principles: Give consistently, joyfully and sacrificially.
For some of you the idea of giving 10% of your income sounds impossible. If so, as an act of trust in God, challenge yourself to take a sacrificial step in the direction of being more generous. For others of you, giving 10% is nothing. What would sacrificial giving look like for you? 20%, 30%, more? 70%, 80%? If a person has a net annual income of $1 milllion per year, they can give 90%, and still have a lot more to live on annually than most everyone in the world.
But what about the wisdom of investing? Yes, investing is wise. But I have to ask, investing toward what? Investing to build up an estate that will do what? Be turned over to your family when you pass away? Are you sure that your family will use the money in your estate, which is God’s money, in a way that is honorable to God? Don’t give your money to your family if you are not absolutely convinced that they will use it according to biblical principles. Create a giving plan so that your estate benefits God’s Kingdom. I think everyone should include their local church in their will. Too often people talk about investing, because they want to be wise stewards of their money, but they don’t end up being as generous as they could be.
Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can. John Wesley himself was an example of this. Take a look at this video:
Examine your heart. What has your heart? Does money? Or does God? When God has our hearts, we will live a life that turns away from economic idolatry by practicing simple living and consistent sacrificial joyful generosity.
Engaging Scripture 