Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks from Ezekiel 1–3 in this sermon from The Gospel Coalition Library
During this week, we’re going to be studying the opening chapters of Ezekiel together. This morning, I invite you to turn to Ezekiel 1, 2, and 3. If that seems like a big bite, I’m going to make it worse by reading the whole thing. That is to say, this is probably not a text that we’re as familiar with as we might be with John or Galatians. It’s worth taking the time now to hear the flow of these passages.
“In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin—the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord was upon him.
I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was that of a man, but each of them had four faces and four wings.
Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All four of them had faces and wings, and their wings touched one another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. Their wings were spread out upward, each had two wings, one touching the wing of another creature on either side; and two wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead.
Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.
As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.
When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked like an expanse, sparkling like ice, and awesome. Under the expanse their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.
Then there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking. He said to me, ‘Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.’ As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.
He said, ‘Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day. The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says.” And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them.
And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.’
Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.
Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.’ So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. He then said to me, ‘Son of man, go now to the house of Israel and speak my words to them. You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel—not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you cannot understand.
Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the house of Israel is not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is hardened and obstinate. But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house.’
And he said to me, ‘Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. Go now to your countrymen in exile and speak to them. Say to them, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says,” whether they listen or fail to listen.’ Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a loud rumbling sound.
May the glory of the Lord be praised in his dwelling place! The sound of the wings of the living creatures brushing against each other and the sound of the wheels beside them, a loud rumbling sound. The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord upon me. I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Aviv near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days—overwhelmed.
At the end of seven days the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked man, “You will surely die,” and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.
But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin.
The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself.’ The hand of the Lord was upon me there, and he said to me, ‘Get up and go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you.’
So I got up and went out to the plain. And the glory of the Lord was standing there, like the glory I had seen by the Kebar River, and I fell facedown. Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said, ‘Go, shut yourself inside your house. And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so you cannot go out among the people.
I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, though they are a rebellious house. But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says.” Whoever will listen let him listen, and whoever will refuse let him refuse; for they are a rebellious house.”
So reads the Word of the Lord.
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” The English majors remember that line from Dickens, the opening words of A Tale of Two Cities. That simple paradoxical summary could be deployed to describe many periods of history. Nazi Germany between 1932 and 1939, the outbreak of WWII. It was the best of times.
The shame and ignominy of the Weimar Republic was done away with. The Treaty of Versailles, which had closed down WWII and had shamed Germany so badly it was overthrown. Currency was stabilized. Youth had a sense of direction. The industries were flourishing. It was the best of times, but the freedoms were dying. The churches were being domesticated. The shadow of the Holocaust began to fall across the land. Around the corner was WWII. It was the worst of times.
The same was true in Britain in 1740. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the worst in many ways. Slavery was on the rise throughout the empire. In many parts of London every sixth house was either a brothel or a pub. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer under the impact of the industrial revolution. Children of the age of 5 and 6 were being sent down to the mines, in Wales in Northern England.
Rebellion was part of the talk of the land, but in 1734 God raised up a Welshman by the name of Howell Harris who began to preach the gospel. In 1738, George Whitefield with extraordinary unction began to preach to coalminers outside Bristol. The only time he could get to them was at 5:00 in the morning as the overnight people came out of the mines on the night shift. Their tears washed the coal dust off their faces as they turned to Christ by the thousands.
In 1740 John and Charles Wesley began to preach. Over the next 70 years, the face of Britain was transformed. Out of the converts of the evangelical awakening (as it came to be called) came massive social reform. Ultimately came the abolition of slavery, care for the elderly, and prison reform. Every area of life was transformed under the converts of Whitefield and Wesley. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Many actually have said the same thing about our own day. Worldwide, well, the Cold War is over. For the first time since 1945, we’re actually dismantling more nuclear arms than we’re building. Although there are a lot of regional conflicts, there is no world war on the horizon at the moment. Some regions show at least potential for improvement: Northern Ireland.
In this country, although there are doubtless developments we may not like, there are certainly things for which to be grateful. There is now a higher percentage of young people over the age of 18 in tertiary education than ever before. There are a lot of things for which to be grateful. On the other hand, worldwide many countries in the so-called 10/40 Window are desperately poor.
Tribalism in Africa fuels butchery veering toward genocide from time to time. The UN says there are a hundred million homeless and abandoned children on the world’s city streets. The percentage of child prostitutes in many of the cities, Bogot· for example, has quintupled since 1985. There are 800,000 prostitutes in Thailand servicing planeloads of sex tourists from Japan and Germany and increasingly from the US. This too is our world.
Is this all that can be said? It’s the best of times and it’s the worst of times, and we turn around and go home? No, we can say more than that, especially if we focus on the smaller scale of the nation, not the world, and if we look for the things that God values and where they are leading. When we quietly think through what God values as disclosed in Scripture and test for our purposes, Western nations (America in particular), the nations from which we spring, in that light it is hard to avoid the conclusion that on many fronts we’re living in declining times.
There is an increasing loss of any sense of objective truth. There is a decline in integrity and morality. Thirty-five years ago a lot of business deals were just clinched with a handshake. Now you need batteries and batteries and batteries of lawyers to protect yourself, because no one trusts anyone anymore.
The residual forms of confessional Christianity are often less interested in the gospel than in methods or ecclesiastical politics or sometimes mere traditionalism. Overall, there’s a long-term decline of the home, which in any society is one of the foundational building blocks of stability. More importantly, there is an ingrained interest in present well-being and almost no concern for eternal well-being, even in the church.
“Christianity is important for what it does for me now!” But you can’t read Jesus without seeing how interested he is in getting ready for eternity, and much more. Against such a scale, the fact that the GDP continues to rise is a relatively minor consequence, a blessing no doubt, but a minor one and perhaps a seductive one.
I think we shall see over the next few days (this is a depressing way to begin, isn’t it?) that we are in many respects living in declining times, but we are not the first to find ourselves in this position. Almost 600 years before Christ, Ezekiel lived in declining times. It is important that I give you three or four minutes worth of history, or the rest of this book just does not make sense. So let me explain that background.
He lived at the end of the Davidic dynasty, the dynasty that sat on the Jerusalem throne that began with David. The last reforming king of the Davidic dynasty was King Josiah: 640–609 BC. He had attempted many godly reforms, but he made a foolish alliance and was killed in 609 still a relatively young man.
His son, Jehoahaz took the throne, but he lasted only three months until the regional superpower, which was Egypt, transported him off to Egypt and replaced him with his brother Jehoiakim, with an M at the end. Jehoiakim. (The reason I say there’s an M at the end is because we’re going to deal with Jehoiachin in a moment with an N at the end. This is the one with an M at the end.)
There were heavy tax burdens laid on the people. Jehoiakim was corrupt. He was religiously perverse. He had grandiose visions of himself. He thought of himself as a world emperor. He reintroduced the pagan cults. Violence abounded in the land. In his fourth year, in 605 BC, the Egyptians under their ruler Necho were crushed at a battle, a battle of Carchemish up in the Northern Syrian border.
He was crushed by Babylon, which was becoming the world empire. This was the superpower of the day. You can read about that in 2 Kings 24. Judah then became a tributary no longer to Egypt in the south, but now to Babylon over to the east in the Tigris/Euphrates system. Four years after that, Jehoiakim rebelled in 601 BC.
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sent contingents of his forces to Judah. Then in 598 BC, in December, he moved his mighty army to besiege Jerusalem. Jehoiakim suddenly died. Why, we don’t know. His 18-year-old son Jehoiachin (that’s the one with the N) came to the throne. He had to choose between surrender and resistance at the age of 18.
He listened to his advisors and surrendered on March 16th, 597 BC. He and the palace retinue and the queen mother and the leading craftspersons, citizens, men of valor, and the priestly aristocracy (including Ezekiel) were transported 700 miles away to Babylon. Yesterday I drove 520 miles. These chaps walked. Seven hundred miles is a long, long way from home when you’re walking.
The young king was in prison or under house arrest for 37 years before he was released. Then he did not return to Judah. He died in exile. He was still regarded by the Babylonians as the rightful claimant to the throne, but back home his uncle Zedekiah was installed as a kind of caretaker king. Ezekiel never even refers to him as king at all. Zedekiah was weak and corrupt. Ezekiel was away with the exiles.
Back home, the prophet of God was Jeremiah. Ezekiel and Jeremiah are contemporaries. Jeremiah in Jerusalem and Ezekiel off with the remnant, the exiles. Jeremiah, the prophet at home, warns against further rebellion. Eventually however, Judah revolted and Babylonian retaliation was swift and brutal. In 588 BC the Babylonian army was again at Jerusalem’s gates. After some delay, Jerusalem was destroyed in 587, the temple razed, and the walls broken down.
Zedekiah tried to escape, but he was captured near Jericho. He was taken to the headquarters of the Babylonian army at Riblah. There he saw his sons executed before his eyes. Then his eyes were popped out, so it was the last thing that he saw. Now Ezekiel’s prophecy, we’re told in verse 1, begins in the thirtieth year. That is the thirtieth year of Ezekiel’s life.
Then, verse 2, we’re told in the fifth year of King Jehoiakim. That is in 593 BC. That is, when the exiles are in Babylon but Jerusalem has not yet been fallen. It has not yet been finally destroyed. We’re six years before the final destruction of the city. So it’s important to remember the tension. The most gifted people from the nation are all with Ezekiel in Babylon, in exile.
Back home is Zedekiah and a corrupt bunch planning and plotting rebellion against the superpower Babylon, and there’s six years to go before the city is finally destroyed. That’s the situation in which we find ourselves. We’re told that they’re by a river. They’re probably building mud huts and the like, starting to settle there, beginning to farm and rebuild.
Here, we’re told the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel. Verse 3: “The hand of the Lord was upon him.” Now what is vital in these opening three chapters is the nature of God’s call on Ezekiel’s life. Skim through the Old Testament and you discover that the way God calls people is not always the same. There’s Samuel, just a lad, hearing God speak in a night vision, doesn’t even know where it’s coming from.
Some are happy farmers like Amos when God suddenly intervenes, but here is a peculiar call of a man in declining times. In fact, Jeremiah also living in declining times has a somewhat similar call. In these peculiarly declining times amidst cultural decay, this call is characterized by four striking elements.
In a sense, they serve as a beacon to God’s people whenever they are called to utter prophetic witness in declining times. If you live in a culture that is in some ways in decline and you are called to a prophetic witness in your campus or in the broader world, you need to understand the call of God upon your life. It is stamped by four characteristics.
1. It was a call to see God and be humbled.
We’re running now from 1:4–2:2. Verse 4 begins with a dust storm. This may be visionary, but it may have begun with a real dust storm and ended up in this extraordinary vision. Now the kind of symbolism you get here is apocalyptic. That is, it’s a kind of symbolism where you don’t try and put things together in a linear picture. You can have mixed metaphors.
For example here we’ll discover in a moment, there are wheels with eyeballs all around the wheels. Now that’s not the way wheels are normally built, but the symbolism (we’ll see in a moment) is still pregnant. It’s important to understand that you’re not supposed to draw a picture of the whole thing. Each individual vision makes its effect and when you begin to see that, the vision begins to make some sense.
We can go through it very quickly. In this dust storm, this natural picture gradually becomes supernatural in this vision. Out of this windstorm (they’re on the edge of a desert, after all) there’s “An immense cloud suddenly with flashing lightening surrounded by brilliant light and the center of the fire looked like glowing metal and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures.”
What you begin to discover here is a mobile throne for God. That is you have these four living creatures (I’ll say more about them in a moment) and above the four living creatures is like a big wok supported by these four living creatures. Above that is a throne and on that is God. That’s the general picture.
This becomes a kind of vision of the mobile throne of God. Most Jews at this point were thinking of God, if he manifests himself to the people, parked back in the temple in Jerusalem. But here we discover that he’s manifesting himself to the remnants on this mobile throne in Babylon. Now the four living creatures.
We’re told that they have four wings and four faces. Verses 5–11, the four faces are human, lion, ox, and eagle. The symbolism is pretty straightforward in this kind of literature. It recurs in the book of Revelation. God’s throne is intelligent. His administration is intelligent. That’s the human face. In the created order, believe it or not, we’ve got the most intelligent face there is. It may not be saying much, but that’s the way it is.
The lion’s face, the lion then, as now, was a symbol of royalty. It was the king of the beasts. The ox was the symbol of strength. The Egyptians, for example, had a god whom they pictured as an ox, Apis, because the bullock was supposed to represent strength. The eagle probably represents compassion or care because certain species of eagles in the Middle East have a particular way of teaching their eaglets to fly.
When the mother eagle thinks that the eaglets are ready, she shoves them out of the nest. The father is down below, circling, so that if there’s been a miscalculation, then the father comes up underneath the eaglet and picks it up. So God says in Exodus, “You have seen how I have borne you up on eagle’s wings.” That’s the image that anybody in the near east would’ve understood.
So God’s throne thus is intelligent. It is royal. It is strong. It is compassionate. It is caring. At the same time, we discover that there are burning coals in the midst of the hollow square, verses 12–14, “flashing lightening.” That commonly in the Old Testament symbolizes God’s terrifying presence.
In the age before nuclear power, the most demonstrative display of sheer raw power was a violent storm. So at Sinai, for example, when God gives the Ten Commandments, we’re told of lightening and thunder and flashes of fire. The storm was so violent the people didn’t dare come any closer to the mountain.
So God’s throne here is flashing with fire and lightening and the like. Moreover, the creatures don’t have independent movement. If you look at the Clinton administration or the Bush administration or any other administration, you discover that with the best will in the world, the various parts of the administration can go their own roots once in a while. Sometimes the chief executive can impose a certain kind of order, but you can get people flying off in different ways in any large administration, except God’s.
God’s throne only moves in God’s direction by God’s sanction. God’s throne is not flying apart, as it were. It’s not crumbling. God’s throne, God’s administration moves by the Spirit that animates it, the vital energy by which God acts upon them so that the whole throne moves in one direction. We’re told then that these creatures then stretch out their wings (you have to envisage it) one pair of wings they stretch them out so that the wingtips of one creature touch the wingtips of the next one.
So that’s where you get the hollow square. In the midst of the square, these four creatures with their angel’s wings tipped out then, all this fire is going back and forth. Then the head of each creature has got this square-shaped design: human, lion, ox, eagle. Then we’re told the whole thing, this whole contraption, goes only in the direction of one of the heads.
It’s like a cursor on a monitor. It doesn’t go diagonally. It goes this way or it goes that way. Then (we’ll discover in a moment) also goes 3D, this particular throne. The idea is that it only goes where the Spirit wants it to go. The whole thing goes in one direction or another at the same time. It moves as the Spirit of God animates it.
Then, we’re told, verses 15–18, beside each creature there is this strange wheel made of chrysolite, probably topaz. We’re told that there’s a “wheel intersecting a wheel.” If you just put a wheel down it’ll fall over when the thing’s at rest, but if you have a wheel intersecting a wheel, it can’t fall over. That’s the idea.
Then, instead in this strange contraption, instead of the wheels turning like this to steer it, because this thing is running on a square grid like a cursor on a monitor, these wheels don’t turn. That’s what we’re told in verse 17. The wheels do not turn about. It doesn’t mean turn around, it means they don’t turn to steer the thing. “The rims were also high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.”
That is standard symbolism in apocalyptic literature for omniscience. The throne of God sees everything. In less symbolic terms, Hebrews says, “Nothing is hidden from the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” So God’s throne is now mobile, but always moves by the Spirit of God. It’s royal. It’s strong. It’s intelligent. It’s compassionate, and it knows everything. It sees everything. “Nothing is hidden from the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”
All of this preceding material is description then for what follows in verses 19–21. There’s effortless motion, not only on the ground, but above the ground, all directed by the Spirit of the creatures. Then verse 22, above this contraption (that is these four beings with a fire inside), resting on their wingtips, maybe on their heads, resting on top of them is this expanse, we’re told, like a big wok, a big pan of some sort.
This platform glows awesomely like ice or hoarfrost. Then, verses 23–24, “under the expanse the wings were stretched out one toward the other”
supporting the whole expanse. “Then when the creatures moved,” we’re told again, “I heard the sound of their wings” because on each creature there were four wings. Two stretching out to hold this thing up and two to actually move. “I heard the sound of their wings like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army.” The kind of sound that is pervasive, omnipresent.
Have you ever been down to Niagara? I don’t just mean at the top, I mean down in the glen down below or on the Maid of the Mist. You can talk to the person next to you (put your heads pretty close together and you can talk back and forth, almost at a normal voice), but the sound is awesome, all-pervasive, inescapable. It’s everywhere. So when God’s throne moves, it’s as if the sound of God moving is so pervasive and overwhelming, it’s like “the sound of a massive army or mighty rushing waters,” we’re told, “like the voice of God Almighty.”
Still, this is just preparation for what comes. Verse 25: “There came a voice from above the expanse over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man.” Yet the closer you get to this figure now, the more and more the elements of the vision are cast in simile or metaphor.
This was like something. This was like something else. So we read. “Was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.”
The point of that is clear if you have children. You give a set of crayons to a 4- or 5-year-old and say, “Draw me a rainbow.” They make this rainbow with discrete colors. The red is very clear. The orange is very clear. The yellow is very clear. All the way down to the blue, it’s very clear. There’s this strip and then there’s that strip and that strip. When you look at nature and you see a real rainbow, the strips aren’t so clearly divided. By focusing your attention, you can see the spectral change, but it’s all sort of mashed together and fuzzy.
On the one hand we’re told this vision is a brilliant light and flashing fire, but at the same time the more Ezekiel sees the figure on the throne it’s fuzzy. He can’t quite see it. It’s not focused. It’s like a rainbow on a rainy day, which may also have echoes of the first rainbow recorded and God’s covenantal promise to Noah. I won’t even go in to that one.
Then we’re told, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” You can’t draw a picture of that. Despite the hardness of the symbols, the concreteness, you can’t go away and draw a picture of this God. He’s not that domesticable. You can’t go home and draw a picture and say, “This is my God” and put it up on your notice board in your bedroom and fall down and worship.
“This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking to me, ‘Stand on your feet, son of man, and I will speak to you.’ ” The first element, in other words, in Ezekiel’s call is this: it was a call to see God and be humbled.
It is always important to see God. It is always important, but in a declining culture, when it is less and less popular to speak of knowing God, seeing God, and embracing this transcendent personal God, it is more and more important that you grasp him. That you see him. That you are humbled by him. Otherwise, you cannot be strong. You cannot be.
Thus, the massive visions of God you find dotted throughout the New Testament intriguingly again and again and again they’re bound up with people who need to be strong in moments of peril or decline. Isaiah living in an earlier time of decline and his great vision in chapter 6. John, the seer, in Revelation, chapter 1 and successive visions after that in a time when the church is facing the threat of massive persecution. They saw God, oh in symbol-laden terms no doubt, but they saw him and they were humbled.
2. It was a call to speak God’s words and be fearless.
From 2:3–8: This is what God says to Ezekiel. “He said, ‘Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me.” In other words, the primary rebellion has not been against Babylon, but against God. God’s prophets had said what to do in this particular case, but the people wouldn’t listen.
The whole decline of the Davidic dynasty and of the nation was bound up with the loss of obedience and faithfulness to God. “They and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day. The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them.”
Then almost as if God knows what Ezekiel is thinking, in fact God does know what Ezekiel is thinking, he says, “And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them.
You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house.” Note the emphasis on getting God’s words right, not fudging in verses 6, 4, 7, 8. It is always important, again, for those who bear witness to God to speak God’s words. It’s always important. It’s one of the reasons why God has given us the Bible.
It’s always important, but at a time when the culture is at the tail end, for example, of a massive reformation and revival, then it’s popular to be a preacher. In the early days of Whitefield and Wesley, those men got beaten up and had eggs thrown at them, their lives were threatened, and some Christians were in pretty brutal form.
I was brought up in French Canada. Baptist ministers alone in French Canada spent eight years in jail between 1950 and 1952 when I was a little tad for preaching the gospel. It was dangerous. We saw many people who got converted and then had their businesses burned out or their homes destroyed or they’re cut off by their family and so forth. It’s very different now, but that’s the way it was.
That’s the way it was in Britain at the first meetings of Whitefield and Wesley, but by the end, the gospel had made such massive advance that preachers were respected. It was an honorable thing to be a preacher of the gospel. It doesn’t mean that they were always liked, but they had earned a certain kind of respect.
At the tail end of the sort of Western Christendom that prevailed in the west until some years back, that was largely true. It’s still true in parts of the Bible Belt. But once you get a culture that is dead-set against biblical Christianity, as in many of your universities where there’s a kind of deep-seated secularization, where it’s all right to say you believe something so long as you don’t also claim that it’s the only way.
Then suddenly, it’s easy to be afraid: afraid of what people think, afraid of what our friends will think, afraid of what the professors will think, and afraid of being the ugly duckling. Ezekiel understood that. He had a message that was pretty unpopular in his day. God said, “What I want from you is that you speak my words without fear. Don’t rebel the way this house rebels.”
Notice that God does not promise that there will be revival. He leaves it open-ended. “Whether they listen or fail to listen,” Ezekiel is not going to know that. Not in advance, anyway. “Whether they listen or fail to listen, remember they are a rebellious house. They will know that a prophet has been among them.”
In other words, although it is always crucial in a fallen world to speak God’s words, it is especially so in declining times for two reasons. First, because it demands more courage. Second, because this is also the means by which God does his work. Whether through the articulation of God’s words, judgment is pronounced (it’s still God’s work) or this becomes the means by which reformation is introduced. It’s still God’s work.
Who knows what God will do in this country? I don’t! It may be that out of people sitting here right now, God will raise up a whole new generation of powerful, effective witnesses, speakers of the words of God. Maybe here there’s another Countess of Huntingdon or another George Whitefield. Hundreds of thousands will be converted and the social fabric of America will be changed in the next 50 years.
It may be. I don’t know. I do know that it won’t happen out of the mouth of anyone who’s fudging God’s words every time you turn around. It won’t happen that way. It’ll happen out of people who want to be faithful to God’s Word. In fact, the only way you can fail from God’s point of view, the only way you can fail is by keeping your mouth shut.
Your failure is not measured by how many people do or do not get converted, not according to this chapter. Your failure is measured by what God calls rebellion. That is a failure to speak God’s words. This is becoming increasingly urgent as our surrounding culture knows less and less and less of the Word of God.
When I do university missions (I still try to do a couple a year), the people whom I evangelize, the people that you’re in contact with all the time, they don’t know the Bible has two Testaments. They’ve never heard of David or Solomon or anything. If they have heard of Moses, they confuse him with Charlton Heston. They don’t know how the Bible is put together.
Part of our teaching the Word of God now is learning how to teach the big picture. It’s a whole worldview formation thing. It’s not just giving a little testimony. “Jesus changed me.” “That’s pretty good. Studying crystals changed me too.” Then where do you go? You’ve got a whole worldview question at stake, learning how to convey all of God’s words, the whole Word of God. I’d love to spend an hour just on that one.
I don’t have time, but it is becoming increasingly urgent to teach the whole counsel of God in this biblically illiterate generation because people don’t know it. It’ll reshape our evangelism and a lot of other things, too, in the years ahead. Brothers and sisters in Christ, I am not discouraged by the decline in the culture. I have a friend who’s a seminary president who says, “For the Christian, optimism is naÔve, but pessimism is atheistic.” Optimism is naÔve because we believe in the fall. Pessimism is atheistic because we believe in God. God is always powerful and can reverse things.
3. It is a call to empathize with God’s perspective and be unyielding.
2:9–3:15. If chapter 2 commissions Ezekiel, this chapter equips him. You get the scroll, first of all. It’s a scroll written on both sides. Most scrolls in the ancient world were written on only one side because of the way that the papyrus strips were put together. On the inside, they all went left to right, so if you were writing Hebrew or Greek, which is a horizontal script, then you were writing with the strips of papyrus.
On the back side, the papyrus strips went the other way, so your quill pen was bumping over all the joints. You tended not to write on the back side of the scroll. But you might write on the back side of the scroll if for some reason you wanted all the material in one place. You didn’t want to use another scroll. You wanted it all in one place.
For this scroll to be written on both sides is a way of symbolizing, “Here is the scroll of all of God’s judgment. It’s all coming down. Here is all of God’s written words of lament and mourning and woe.” He’s told (in his vision) to eat the scroll. It’s only a vision, but he takes the scroll and he eats it and we’re told, “I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” Give me a break!
All of the terrors and judgments and warning and lament and woe, and this guy finds it sweet. What’s the point? The point is that Ezekiel is now so aligning with the perspective of God his heart empathizes with God’s outlook, so that even when God pronounces judgment and woe as painful as it may be (he will protest later), there is something deep within him that still says, “Yes, God is right!”
It’s very difficult to pronounce the judgments of God if deep down you wish God would go away or you don’t think God’s quite fair. But if you come to see the sheer holiness and rightness of God, then even when God pronounces his judgments and woe, although there is one side of you that will argue with God as Ezekiel later does, there is another side of you that finds these words too, “Sweet.”
But it’s stronger yet in the following paragraph. This is an extraordinary paragraph. “Look Ezekiel,” God says in effect, “I’m not sending you off to learn Gikuyu in Eastern Africa.” That’s a tough language, full of glottal stops and things. “I’m not sending you off to learn Mandarin Chinese, script included. I’m sending you to people who speak decent Hebrew, like you. In fact, if I had sent you off to Kabul, Afghanistan, they would’ve listened, but these people are not willing to listen to you because they’re not willing to listen to me.” He says.
“This is what I’ll do about it (verse 8). I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, although they are a rebellious house.” Do you see what God is saying? He’s going to put Ezekiel in a kind of head-butting contest. He’ll equip him by giving him a forehead that’s harder than their forehead.
In times of reformation and revival, you take a look historically, both in the Bible and in the history of the church, at the leaders who God has used to transform the culture, and without exception, though they may be soft inside, they may be gentle, they may be broken, they may be very compassionate people, nevertheless they are unyielding. They are not wimps. Jesus himself has shown us how to be unyielding while not being a bully.
We must not confuse servanthood with servility. We must not confuse strength with brutality. But there is a kind of unyielding faithfulness to leaders in declining times if there is any hope at all for turning things around. They just don’t bend! Or to use the metaphor here, they’re given foreheads like flint. They’re engaged in this kind of head-butting contest, strengthened by God himself, as it were. They just don’t bend!
It’s not because socially they’re not flexible or organizationally they’re not strategic or personally they’re not compassionate. It means that when it comes to fidelity to God, that’s just the bottom line. “I’ll make you unyielding. I’ll give you a stubborn flint forehead.” Even the last bit is quite remarkable, isn’t it?
The Spirit calls him up again, verses 12 and following. He breaks out in a kind of exclamation he can’t keep in, “May the glory of the Lord be praised in his dwelling place! The sound of the wings of the living creatures brushing against each. The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit.”
The word is not bitter, it’s anger and heat of my spirit. The man is now so aligned because of this vision with God’s perspective that when he sees the moral decay and the decadence and the failure and the lies of his whole culture and heritage, there is something that rebels in him. He’s full of the anger and bitterness, heat of the Lord.’
And yet, when he comes out of his vision he sits with the exiles by the Kebar river, and they’re his own brothers and sisters, his own relatives, his own tradespeople, his own nobility, his own royal family, his own priestly craft. He sits among them and keeps quiet, overwhelmed. There’s something glorious about this. Leadership that really does empathize with God’s perspective in an unyielding way, and yet that is empathetic with the people to whom you minister.
You get some preachers who have God’s perspective, but they’re angry all the time. They’re nasty people. They’re the Elmer Gantrys. They’re just talking down. They’re condescending. They really are obnoxious, especially in a postmodern age. The only people who want to be associated with them are the most far right of the far right of the fundamentalists. They’re just angry young men all the time. Not Ezekiel.
Then on the other side you get the wimps who are just always telling you what you want to hear, whatever goes with the flow. Ezekiel is not that either. On the one hand he is unyieldingly aligned with the empathies of God and there’s a sense in him that is outraged by all the sin and decadence. On the other hand, he identifies with his own people and sits among them overwhelmed, quiet. You’ll hear his compassion in the chapters ahead.
4. Finally, there’s a call to utter warnings and be careful.
Verses 16–27. I don’t have time to unpack this passage. I’ll merely draw your attention to the last symbolism. Ezekiel, in some symbolism forced upon him, is now going to be allowed to speak for a while only when God gives him something to say. God’s going to tie up the tongue, we’re told, to the roof of his mouth.
Now this is in a culture everybody talks all the time. All the social forms demanded you go down the street, “Hi, Ezekiel!”
“Hi.”
“How’s the wife doing?”
“Fine.”
“How are your kids?” You expect people to talk and chat. Now you look to Ezekiel, “How’s it going, Ezekiel?” Not a word. “How’s the wife, Ezekiel?” Not a word. “Ezekiel, had any messages from the Lord recently?” Not a word. He doesn’t say a thing, not a thing. For six years.
We’re told about when this stops in Ezekiel 33. When he hears that Jerusalem has fallen, then the Lord loosens his tongue again. Ezekiel doesn’t say a word, except when God gives him a particular message or a particular speech, a particular utterance. Then Ezekiel says something. Can you imagine the impact? He doesn’t say anything. Then all of a sudden, he starts to talk. “Thus says the Lord.” Then he gives his message.
Suddenly, that’s a far more powerful thing because he’s not saying anything else. Every time Ezekiel speaks it’s the word of the Lord. For six years, that goes on, six years from 593 to 587 BC. You find the end of it in chapter 33, verse 22. Obviously, that’s not applicable to us directly. But there is an important sense in which we too need to make very clear when we’re speaking God’s words and we’re unyielding and when we’re merely giving our judgment on politics or whatever.
The other day at suppertime my daughter, who’s at the age where she likes to argue about almost everything, but it’s not that she’s an argumentative kid particularly, she’s just at the age where she’s trying out ideas and wants to see how they’re going and takes a strong position and so on. I’m not sure we always handle it rightly. We’re still learning how to be parents, too.
So she took a political position that we thought was a bit daft. We argued back and forth afterwards and I don’t really give a rip what she thinks about that particularly, but afterward on reflecting on it I thought to myself, “Don, you have to give her more scope. You have to give her more room to hold daft ideas.”
Because at the end of the day what she thinks about this or that in the political world is not as important as what she thinks about the gospel. There too she’s got to find her own way in her own stability, but at the same time she must see in me, she must see in my wife, she must see in us a passionate commitment to the unyielding disclosure of God in the gospel.
About politics, we may have our own views, about economics we may have our own biases and about certain social customs and trajectories we may have our own differences. My wife comes from England. I come from Canada. The kids were born in the US. No wonder they’re a bit confused. But at the end of the day they must see that those things don’t matter that much to us!
We may prefer this element or that element but it’s not life and death. What is life and death is the Word of God. She must see in us that at that point, whether she adopts it as her faith or not, she must see that there we are unbending, unflinching. There we speak for God. Likewise in your witness (I’m not suggesting you put some superglue on your tongue to keep it tied to the roof of your mouth until God gives you the next revelation) yet there is a sense in which your friends must see that when you speak God’s words, there you’re on a different track.
There you speak the truth. What you hold be the truth absolutely, unflinchingly, courageously. So here it is. The call of a prophet in declining times. It’s a call to see God and be humbled. It’s a call to speak God’s words and be fearless. It’s a call to empathize with God’s perspective and be unyielding. It’s a call to utter warnings and be careful.
All of this applies at least as powerfully under the new covenant as under the old. Ezekiel is 600 BC, I know. Read the book of Revelation and many of the same symbols come back again, picked up by the New Testament writer, hulled out of Ezekiel and Isaiah. There too when John the Baptist sees a vision of Christ exalted in the opening chapter, he falls at his feet as one dead, he says. So we too learn to sing:
At your feet we fall, mighty risen Lord
as we come before your throne to worship you.
By your Spirit’s power you now draw our hearts,
and we hear your voice in triumph ringing clear:
“I am he that liveth,
that liveth and was dead.
Behold I am alive forevermore.”
There we see you stand, mighty risen Lord,
clothed in garments pure and holy, shining bright;
eyes of flashing fire, feet like burnished bronze,
and the sound of mighty waters is your voice.
“I am he that liveth,
that liveth and was dead.
Behold, I am alive forevermore.”
Amen. Let us pray.
Forgive us, Lord, when our understanding of who you are is so truncated and clipped and small that you are nothing more than a kind of souped-up human being. Grant, rather, that as we study the pages of this book together our vision of who you are may so be enlarged and increased that like Ezekiel, like Isaiah, like John the seer we will fall before you in worship and be humbled.
We will learn to be faithful to your words. We will learn to be unyielding to your perspectives while being compassionate to all around us. Oh Lord God, call us, we pray, to bear prophetic witness in our declining culture. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
