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.
What is the antidote to economic idolatry? Sometimes I think to myself, “I hate money.” What I mean is that it can seem like life is one long travail of trying earn money. Do you ever long for financial independence, so that you don’t have to think about whether or not you have enough money? I long for it. The car breaks? No problem, I have plenty of savings to fix it. My family wants to go on vacation? Also not a problem. The finances are there, and off we go. I long for all my loans to be paid off, for a savings account safety buffer that could handle anything surprise life throws my way. Of course my wife and I are working hard toward that reality, seeking to pay debts and save money. I work full-time, she works part-time, and I also work a part-time job. But the reality is that for the last 24 years we’ve been raising a family, and it’s not cheap. We also work in careers that, while they pay solid wages, we don’t have the margin to make fast financial progress. Sometimes we also make bad financial decisions, spending on what don’t need. Sound familiar to anyone? What can happen is the longing in our hearts and minds, turns into economic idolatry. We can place our hopes and trust in money.
It seems the people of Israel in Ezekiel’s day had succumbed to the temptation of economic idolatry, as we learned in the previous post. What does God have to say about that? Look at the rest of the Ezekiel 7, and it is really bleak. Read verses 23-27.
When people have put their trust in money, rather than in God, he turns his face away, and then the end has truly come. It doesn’t matter if it is a commoner or a king. Doesn’t matter if it is in the temple or the town. There will nothing but devastation. Money will not be able to save them.
When the end comes, God says, then people will know that he is God. Money is not God. Money does not have the power to save.
We can strive and strive to make a name for ourselves, to make money for ourselves, to care for ourselves. But in the end, we learn that money will not save us. Sure, money can be a load of help in many ways, but this passage calls us to examine our hearts, our longings, to see if we have allowed money, and what it provides us, to divert our longings and trust away from God. Are we practicing economic idolatry?
To me, this is one of those teachings from God’s Word that, though it is not new, we need to hear it regularly. Just like Israel, we can be enticed by money and the promises it makes to care for us. We live in a culture that regularly tells us so. So what do we do about it? What is the antidote the economic idolatry? We must make sure that our priority is worshiping and trusting God. I think we would all say, “Of course” to worshiping and trusting God. But how does trusting in God and worshiping God work itself out in practical terms when it comes to money? I believe one of best answers to that question is found in what John Wesley preached over 200 years ago: “Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.” You can read the entire sermon here.
What did Wesley mean? First, earning money is not wrong. Some of you are gifted at it, and that is wonderful. Even if you aren’t gifted at earning money, still work hard. It glorifies God to avoid laziness and work faithfully.
Then as you earn, whether you earn a lot or a little, be very careful about the lure of that money in your heart. Once the money starts flowing, it opens doors doesn’t it? We can purchase things we could never purchase before, and it is so much FUN! It feels great. It feels like our money, that we worked hard for, and thus we can finally enjoy life! This happens a lot to younger people who are flexing their earning muscles for the first time. The transition from a high school or college part-time job to a full-time job with a significant salary is heady. After years of working for minimum wages or being the stereotypical broke college student, you now have a full-time job with a real salary. Sure, you might be paying off student loans, but you can also trade in your junker car and get a new one. You can start to think about purchasing a home. You can start to save for vacations. You can update your wardrobe, pick up a hobby, go out to eat. It feels like the world is your oyster.
This is also the case for adults who start earning bigger and bigger salaries as they advance up the ladder. It applies to empty-nesters and retirees. As your expenses go down and your income goes up, then your opportunities to spend go up. That’s when you start hearing words like “travel,” “leisure,” “entertainment,” and the like, which we can believe is our due after decades of working hard and raising families.
What I am describing is the typical American approach to money. This is also the typical Christian approach. It is very easy for that approach to become economic idolatry. It is not, however, consistent with Jesus’ approach. When Wesley sought to teach Jesus’ approach to defeating economic idolatry, after “Earn all you can,” he said “Save all you can.” What he meant was not that we should dump our money in a savings account or in investments. What Wesley meant was that we should not spend our earnings primarily on ourselves. We should save our earnings for another purpose. Wesley’s “save all you can” was a commentary on money and spending. Just as God told the Jews, we can be so enticed by what money can do for us, how it can make us feel, and it so easily becomes idolatry. The antidote to economic idolatry, then, Wesley says, begins with “saving all you can.” That means living simply.
But what is living simply? To determine whether or not you are living simply, I would encourage you to avoid measuring yourself against people wealthier than you. Instead, consider measuring yourself and your spending by comparing and contrasting yourself with Jesus and how he lived and taught. Consider people far less wealthy than you. In fact, I think we not only need to measure ourselves but also have other people measure us. When it comes to spending, we can very, very easily let ourselves off the hook to live an unexamined life. What can result is that we spend God’s money far more on ourselves than we need to. What we want and what we need has been confused. We can survive on far less than we believe or realize. We don’t need luxury. We don’t need most of what our world says we need. Yet how often do we continue to indulge ourselves? Probably quite a lot. To address this in our lives, we can ask someone who will speak bluntly to us to evaluate our entire financial world. Ask someone to audit your investments, your spending, your income. Give them access to every dollar, for the purpose of making change so that you are growing more in line with the biblical discipleship teaching of simple living.
Then take the next step, which is “Give all you can.” We’ll talk about how to do that in the next post.
My wife, Michelle, and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary by going out for dinner. As a bonus, we had a gift card! We made a reservation, arrived a few minutes early, and sat down in the lobby, waiting for the hostess to call us for our table. I pulled out my phone to check notifications, and as I did so, I felt something funny. The gift card came out of my pocket along with my phone and fell to the ground. Whew, right? Don’t want to lose that! I grabbed the card off the floor, put it back in my pocket and eventually we got our table and ate our meal.
About an hour later, the time came to pay the bill, so I reached into my pocket for the gift card, but it wasn’t there. I double-checked all my pockets. No card. I looked on my seat, and I looked on the ground under the table. No card. I started getting nervous. You know how the emotion builds up inside you when something goes missing? On the one hand we didn’t actually need the gift card. But on the other hand, it would sure be nice to have money come off the bill! Michelle suggested that I look in the lobby. I thought to myself, “Impossible. There’s no way, having once already fallen out in the lobby, the card would have fallen out again in the short time we were called to our table.” But I knew it was possible. What if the card did fall out, and now it was gone? I was growing concerned and unhappy, suspecting the card was gone. I retraced my steps, walked into the lobby, and there, to my surprise, sitting on the bench was the card! About an hour had gone by since we had been in the lobby, and no one had swiped it. I was elated! I hate wasting money. If I had lost the gift card, bitter thoughts would have churned inside me long into the night.
As we continue studying Ezekiel 7, learning about what caused God to say “The end has come,” what we will hear about is very similar to the idea of losing gift cards. In the previous post, I mentioned that Israel had been tempted by something. We read about this temptation in Ezekiel 7, verses 10-14.
Did you hear the temptation? Israel, it seems, fell hard for it.
Verse 10 is basically a repeat of what we’ve already heard so far. The day of doom is here. Watch out!
But in verse 11, after starting with more of judgment, the message from God concludes with a hint about the temptation that Israel fell for. “No wealth, nothing of value,” will be left. God brings up money.
Then in verses 12-13 he continues talking about it, referring to buyers and sellers. While it is true that he says his wrath is coming upon the whole crowd, what is his purpose in singling out the buyers and the sellers? What is it about buying, selling and wealth that God is addressing? Clearly, it has God concerned!
In fact, God is so concerned that he says in verse 14, that there is nothing they can do about overturning his judgment. No amount of military preparation will save them from onslaught that is coming. Let’s see how he continues with this already brutal message. Read verses 15-22.
Verses 15-18 are a callback to what we have been hearing now in chapters 4-6. In chapter 4, through a 430-day long skit, God said that an enemy army was going to attack Jerusalem and put up siege works around it. Then in chapter 5, he said that the siege would affect the people of Jerusalem in one of three ways, which was symbolized by Ezekiel cutting his hair into thirds. This same theme was repeated in chapter six, when God gives a three-part judgment about Israel’s religious idolatry. The three parts are the same each time. The people will die by sword, famine and plague. It will be awful. Notice verse 17, where the image is quite vivid. In the old NIV it says, “every knee will become as weak as water.” What does the new NIV say? “Every leg will be wet with urine.” You know what that means, right? People will be so upset, so scared, so beside themselves, they will not be able to control their bladder. Why? What was the reason, or one of the reasons for this soon-coming devastation?
In verse 19, God returns to the theme of the passage, making clear the reason. The people will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be an unclean thing. You and I both know that you don’t throw money in the garbage. Have you ever had one of those scares where you are a digging through a trash bag full of nasty, smelly food and trash because you suspect that a missing check got tossed with the mail? Yeah, I can describe that so vibrantly because I’ve had to do some of that digging. Very similar to my walk of shame back to restaurant lobby to look for the missing gift card.
Yet there in verse 19, we read that the people are throwing money out like it is garbage. Worthless. Even unclean. Why? God says that silver and gold will not be able to save them from God’s judgment. That is an interesting phrase. Silver and gold will not be able to save them. Why would God say that unless the people were looking to their silver and gold to save them?
They were looking at their silver and gold as their salvation! For evidence of this, read the final sentence of verse 19, where God describes how their trust in money will turn out to fail them. It will not satisfy their hunger, it will not fill their stomachs, because it made them stumble into sin.
So last week we learned in chapter six that the people had worshiped idols, including the detestable practices that were part of pagan worship. Now this week we learn that they were trusting in money to save them. Look how God describes their love of money in verse 20. They used jewelry to make detestable idols. That brings both issues together. But it was more than just using jewelry to make idols. God’s words in verses 19-20 show how much the Israelites had trusted in their money to save them. They were practicing economic idolatry.
God reveals what is most important in this discussion of economic idolatry. The heart. Our motivation. Our desire. As Paul would write to Timothy, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Money itself is not the problem. Gold and silver are just metals. But when our hearts become entranced by what money can do for us, we can be tempted into idolatry. For Israel, God is saying that they moved their allegiance from trust in God to trust in money. Rather than see God as their savior, they saw money as their savior.
It makes sense, because money can buy us what we need. We need food. Money buys the food. We need clothing. Money buys the clothing. We need shelter, and money pays the rent or the mortgage.
Often, though, our hearts become enthralled by the promise of money, that it will provide our hopes, our dreams, our care, our peace, our joy. God lays bare how the Israelites were doing just that. Trusting in their money and possessions, rather than him. They even crafted it into idols, which shows how far their allegiance had traveled away from him.
So what will happen? In verses 21-22, he says that he will turn over all their money and possessions to foreign oppressors and robbers. And God himself will turn away from them. God will allow them to experience what it means to trust in their money. That will reveal to them that money is not actually able to protect them. Then they will know the truth about where the real power, the real security, the real hope lies. That phrase, “I will turn my face away from them,” is the worst thing that could happen to them.
I know that you and I don’t see God’s face right in front of us. God doesn’t actually have a face. What he is doing here is using a literary device called anthropomorphism, which is when you explain a concept by giving it a human characteristic. In this case, a face. What God means is that he is watching out for, protecting, providing for his people. But because they are putting their trust in money, which is tantamount to them saying they don’t trust him; they are saying to him, “Lord, we don’t need you because we have money.” So God says he will stop supporting them. And then what will happen? If God turns his face away from us, if he stops caring for us, we are finished. And you might as well throw the money out with the garbage because it will not care for you.
And then what? God says things get really bleak. Check back to the next post to learn more.
Have you ever experienced the frustration of loving someone who isn’t loving you back? It is a common human relational reality. Spouses that are scorned or betrayed. Kids neglecting their parents, and parents neglecting their kids. Friends that don’t care when you are struggling.
Have you ever considered that God might feel like that? In Ezekiel we find God in the position of scorned lover.
In the previous post, God told Ezekiel to prophesy that the end has come! What “end” is God talking about? And what will happen at this end? Let’s keep reading. Look at verses 3-9.
Brutal words from God, aren’t they? Imagine being the people living around Ezekiel there in Babylon, as he conveys this prophetic word from God. Good times, right? I can imagine them saying, “Man, Ezekiel, you are really downer. We don’t even live in Israel anymore. Why are you telling this to us?”
If they listened closely, they would have heard why he was saying this to them. First of all, it was a message from God. Isn’t that alone enough reason for them to pay attention? Just because this message was from God. God is speaking! Well, apparently it was not enough reason, because we know the people did not pay attention to God. They hadn’t paid attention to him for decades. Which is not that hard to understand, because you and I often read God’s word and then go and do something different.
But there is another reason why God was communicating this message of doom and gloom through Ezekiel. As God says in verse 4, when the end comes, they will know that he is God. The insinuation is that they currently did not know that he is God. They might have said in response, “Uh no, that’s not true. We believe in God.” But their actions told the real story. Observe their current practices, and the people did not show that they knew that he was their God. That’s not hard for us to understand either. We can say we believe one thing, then live a life that is inconsistent with that belief.
So the people of Israel have wandered far afield from God, and therefore the end will come. Then they will know, God says, that he is Lord. We heard God says this phrase, “Then you will know that I am the Lord” four times in chapter six. Why does he keep saying it?
What we hear in that phrase is God longing to be close to his people. They don’t know him, and he wants to be known by them. He wants restoration and reconciliation with his people who have turned their hearts and minds away from him. That emotion from God, that longing from God is continuing here in this next prophetic word in chapter seven.
It causes me to think about why this would have happened in the first place. Why should God have to be in this place of longing and crying out for his people? Think about it. Last week in chapter six, God said he was so upset because the people were worshiping other gods, who were actually false gods, meaning that they weren’t even gods at all. There is only one true God. And his name is Yahweh. How often do you think about that? God has a first name. He actually uses his first name many times in Ezekiel.
Notice in Ezekiel 7 verse 4 that the word Lord is in all capital letters? Most English Bibles print it using a capital L, then small caps for O-R-D. When you see that, the translator wants you to know that the Hebrew word being translated there is the actual name of God, Yahweh. You might ask, why don’t English translations write out the word Yahweh? It is out of respect for Jewish culture and practice, which views the actual name of God as so holy and revered that they do not say it or write it. But translators of our English Bibles still want us to know when the actual name of God is being used in the Hebrew. So look for that capital L-O-R-D. When you see the word Lord with a capital L and lower case o-r-d, however, it is the generic title for a Lord, a ruler, a master, not the name. That helps us know when the personal name of God is being used.
I point that out because it shows us God’s heart. He wants to be in a first-name basis relationship with his people. He wants to be known by them, to be in a genuine relationship with his people. He cannot fathom that they have allowed their hearts and minds to be wooed by gods that aren’t even gods at all. Worse, there might have been demonic forces behind idol worship, including demons performing supernatural acts. No doubt, that display of power can be enticing. But we know demonic power is nothing in comparison to the power of God. What’s more is that the people of Israel had plenty of evidence in their history to remind them of the power of God. How could they have allowed themselves to be enticed to the point where God would say, “They don’t know me anymore”? You can hear the sadness in God’s voice.
I wonder if that resonates with you at all. Do you feel a distance from God? Could God say the same to you, “I want you to know me”? He does want you to know him, to be in a real relationship with him. Evaluate your relationship with God. Have you turned away from him? Can it be said of you that you are not striving to grow a relationship with him? And why? What might entice you to ignore God? What tempts you? The Jews in Ezekiel’s day were tempted in other ways too. And God, through Ezekiel, points another specific temptation that very much relates to us today. Check back to the next post to learn about that temptation.
Engaging Scripture 