Divine Judgment and Symbolism: An Analysis of Ezekiel 4–5

D. A. Carson’s sermon on Ezekiel 4–5 discusses the symbolic actions of the prophet Ezekiel, which illustrate the severe consequences of Israel’s disobedience and the certainty of divine judgment. The sermon delves into the historical and theological contexts, emphasizing the importance of adherence to God’s commands and reflecting on the nature of God’s justice.

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When we were laying out what passages we would address, eventually it fell to my lot to tackle Ezekiel 4 and 5. Before I read it and we begin formally, I would like to say a couple of prefatory things in order to locate this in the sweep of apocalyptic literature.

Strictly speaking, this is not usually considered apocalyptic. It’s just sort of proto-apocalyptic, shall we say? That is, it is beginning to construct the kind of terminological expressions, the kind of disruptive pictures that become the grist for apocalyptic as it develops a little later. But that’s also one of the reasons for choosing the passage. You’re seeing something early on in the whole train. I will direct your attention as we go along to two or three of the sorts of expressions I have in mind that then unambiguously chart out typical apocalyptic literature a little later.

There’s another sense, however, in which this prefigures apocalyptic … apocalyptic precisely because of its absolute polarities (the new heaven, the new earth versus hell, the righteous people suffering and everybody else under the judgment of God). Everything is painted in dark hues. It becomes a very powerful way of depicting judgment.

The first two-thirds of Ezekiel are full of judgment. Now many of the Prophets have chapter after chapter after chapter of judgment, but some of the darkest pictures of judgment are in these opening two-thirds chapters (about to chapter 33, verse 21). For reasons we’ll see in a moment, it all flips.

Although there are some intrusions of hope in these chapters, most of it is very dark indeed. Then it changes, as we’ll see. In that sense too, it prefigures the kind of enforced gloom you find in a great deal of apocalyptic literature. Now then let me begin by reading these two chapters, and then I’ll pray and we’ll plunge in. Ezekiel 4 and 5:

“ ‘Now, son of man, take a block of clay, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it. Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the house of Israel.

Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the house of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side. I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the house of Israel. After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the house of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year.

Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem and with bared arm prophesy against her. I will tie you up with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have finished the days of your siege. Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself.

You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side. Weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day and eat it at set times. Also measure out a sixth of a hin of water and drink it at set times. Eat the food as you would a loaf of barley bread; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel.’

The Lord said, ‘In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.’ Then I said, ‘Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.’

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I will let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.’ He then said to me: ‘Son of man, I am about to cut off the food supply in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce. They will be appalled at the sight of each other and will waste away because of their sin.

Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales and divide up the hair. When the days of your siege come to an end, burn a third of the hair inside the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third to the wind. For I will pursue them with drawn sword. But take a few hairs and tuck them away in the folds of your garment.

Again, take a few of these and throw them into the fire and burn them up. A fire will spread from there to the whole house of Israel.’ This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees.’

Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘You have been more unruly than the nations around you and have not followed my decrees or kept my laws. You have not even conformed to the standards of the nations around you.’

Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds.

Therefore as surely as I live,’ declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will shave you; I will not look on you with pity or spare you. A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword.

Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath on them, they will know that I the Lord have spoken in my zeal. I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by. You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke.

I the Lord have spoken. When I shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food. I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I the Lord have spoken.’ ”

This is the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.

Break down our resistance, Lord God, so that we do not stand aloof from your Word when it speaks judgment. This too is the Word of the Lord. Help us to understand, to fear, to learn from such passages as this, and bring them into this sweep of all of your purposes which come to that place of supreme judgment: the cross itself. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

I suspect we regularly underestimate the amount of Scripture that is given over to judgment. If you simply count up the number of pages, it’s a very significant percentage of the whole Bible. Just work through, for example, the curses of Deuteronomy, countless chapters of denunciation in both the Major and the Minor Prophets, the warnings and threats of judgment in the church and in the Apocalypse and so forth. It is a very, very big theme.

Now doubtless, those of you who read the Bible constantly will recall that Ezekiel, born into a priestly family, was transported with other leading citizens to Babylon about 700 miles from Jerusalem (and home) at a time when 700 miles was a long way away. He turned 30 years of age as an exile in 593 BC. The date is important. It is six years before Jerusalem falls.

The rightful king of Judah was also in exile. The puppet replacement, Zedekiah, was as foolish as he was corrupt. Many in Jerusalem back home and among the exiles on the banks of the Kebar River with Ezekiel simply could not believe God would ever let Jerusalem fall. How could he? This was the city of the great king. This was the city of Davidic promise.

This was the city God had chosen for the erection of the temple built in Solomon’s time. This was where the Glory manifested itself on Yom Kippur. This was where the blood of the covenant was spilled, not only for the priestly family but for all of the people. Wouldn’t God’s own covenantal promises be viewed with suspicion? Wouldn’t God be betraying his pledge? Wouldn’t he be showing himself to be weaker than the gods of Babylon if Jerusalem fell?

One of the great burdens of Ezekiel’s ministry was that Jerusalem and Judah were far more wicked than anyone thought. In consequence, God had determined to destroy them. When he turned 30 and should normally have been entering the most active part of his priestly ministry, Ezekiel was called to this prophetic ministry of the Word. Although he would never see Jerusalem again, he served as God’s prophet to his people in declining circumstances.

Can you imagine what that message sounded like to the exiles? If Ezekiel was right, they were not going home because pretty soon there was not going to be a home to go to. If Jerusalem were wiped off the map, they couldn’t even legitimately think of themselves as exiles with some hope of return. There would be nothing to return to, and that in addition to the massive theological implications of the fall of the temple.

Of course the more selfish among them could conceivably argue, “Well, at least it will be Jerusalem that’s getting hammered. I’m safe. I’m 700 miles away. I’m here, starting over as a dirt-poor farmer all over again no doubt, but at least I’m here.” But all of them would have had relatives back home. The destruction of Jerusalem itself was simply theologically, culturally unimaginable, and that’s what Ezekiel was pronouncing.

Can you imagine what that message sounded like to the exiles? That doesn’t mean Ezekiel softens his words. If you recall the first three chapters, he is under strict restraint from God to speak only what God gives him to say. That is, for the six years that lead all the way up to the news that Jerusalem has fallen (which you find in Ezekiel 33:21 and following), Ezekiel doesn’t say anything to outsiders.

Whether he still continues to have chats with his wife is anybody’s guess, but he doesn’t say anything to outsiders. Nothing at all except the specific revelation God has given him. Even the silence is speaking volumes. “I will say nothing. No comment. No salutations on the street. Nothing until God gives me something to say, and then I will say it.” This will have the effect, you see, of making those words astonishingly weighty.

Now we are not in a similar position today of keeping quiet all the time, but we need to find ways to make sure that when we do speak the word of the Lord, what we say is weighty. If, in fact, instead we try to pronounce on every little thing that comes along with equal authority when God has not spoken, we ultimately do damage to the credibility of our word when we are speaking for God.

Although there is no direct application, yet nevertheless there is a principle here that is really quite significant. Even his silence then broken only by utterances conveying the truth of God adds enormous weight to his repeated messages of impending doom. From the beginning of this ministry, Ezekiel pronounces a dominant note of judgment. That flips. Once Jerusalem is destroyed, then God starts offering hope and the promise of transformation and a new temple, but not yet.

In these two chapters then before us, Ezekiel tells us both by parabolic actions and by explicit words what happens when the Lord shoots to kill. That’s his own language. “When I shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you” (chapter 5, verse 16).

Now we may discern three steps in what takes place in these chapters. First, some acted parables of judgment. Chapter 4, verse 1, to chapter 5, verse 4. Then God’s reasons for the judgment. And finally, God’s purposes in the judgment. Then once we have scanned that, I want to reread these two chapters again in the broader context of Old Testament history and New Testament history.

1. Acted parables of judgment

Chapter 4, verse 1 to chapter 5, verse 4. Probably the strange acts Ezekiel now performs take place just outside his house. In the relatively small exilic community, the story of his strange actions just outside his mud hut, his long silences and his mighty words would spread like wildfire. You could imagine as the folks are going out to the fields in the early morning preparing to work hard for the day, they’ll make sure they wander by Ezekiel’s house because that’s where the interesting stuff is taking place. What’s he doing?

Well, the centerpiece is a large, sunbaked clay tablet of some sort on which Ezekiel draws a city of Jerusalem (verse 1). How he does that, who knows? It might have been a profile just as anybody who travels much knows what the profile of Chicago looks like over against the profile of New York or over against the profile of Istanbul or whatever. He may have done a profile drawing of Jerusalem so that on this large clay tablet, everybody could see what he was doing.

Then following the Lord’s own instructions, he starts playing model war. He builds siege ramps. In those days when you had a walled city, the way you took it down was with a siege. You try starving it out, first of all, but if there’s a good supply of food and there’s a supply of water in there, that could take a long time. Then you started building siege ramps. You gradually built up ramps and ramps and ramps in the hope that eventually you could send some soldiers over the wall.

There are siege ramps and the like, and he is building these things. It could have taken him days if he really made a sophisticated model. We don’t know. “Erect siege works around it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it …” You can imagine little camps of soldiers, little flags in the air, showing there’s a whole array of troops around the city. It would be pretty obvious what it was symbolizing.

Then he does something that’s a little harder to understand. He takes a pan, a pan on which they would have baked bread, something like a big wok. He holds this pan over the city and glares at it. How long or how often I have no idea. That’s what he does. People have walked by and watched this little play-acting taking place. Then he takes this big wok, holds it up, glares at it, and doesn’t say a word.

Now with the various suggestions about this latter symbolism, the most likely in the flow of the argument, is surely this. The iron pan represents massive implacable force besieging the city. All it has to do is come down and smash it, and the whole city is ruined. Ezekiel, as God’s spokesman, represents God implacably staring at this iron force that is threatening the entire city. A word from God, and the whole city is smashed to pieces.

God sets his face against Jerusalem. It’s not just a matter of the relative strengths of the few (relatively speaking) Jewish soldiers versus the huge power of the Babylonian emporium. It’s God who is setting his face against the city. The point is, therefore, not only that the siege will take place but that God himself is behind it.

Probably verses 1 to 3 set up as a more or less permanent prop, a visual aid, while Ezekiel performs further actions around it or beside it in the following verses. In verses 4 to 8, the drama changes. Here Ezekiel represents, first, Israel (the northern tribes), which had been taken off into captivity about 130 years earlier and, then, Judah and Jerusalem (the remaining tribes that were going to lose their freedom in another half dozen years).

If he is lying east/west with his head to Jerusalem on his left side, he is facing north. That is, he is facing Israel. Just north of Jerusalem is where the boundary comes between the two. He is lying there on his left side and facing Jerusalem. As his weight is borne on one side and then later the other, so the weights of their sin press down on him. The 390 years represented by 390 days, probably the counting was from the onset of the northern rebellion under Jeroboam, the son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin (931 BC to the end of the exile). That’s about the right time.

The 40 years again is a rounded-off number. It’s hard to know how they’re counted. Elsewhere, after all, Jerusalem can speak of 70 years, but the years could be counted in different ways. Jerusalem’s 70 years? That’s not really 70 years of exile. It’s 70 years under Babylonian supremacy. From the time of Ezekiel’s captivity to the end of the exile was 59 years. From the captivity of Jerusalem to the end, about 49 years, and so on.

So just how these 40 come in there, there might even be some symbolism meant to recall the years of the wilderness wandering, a kind of new entry into the land all over again. In any case, what takes place is pretty clear. Ezekiel lies down on his left side and, in some sense, is tied up with ropes, whether these are metaphorical or his wife is helping him in this, who knows. It’s not that he is tied there so he can’t move for 390 days, because transparently in the following verses, he gets up on each day and does certain things.

In other words, each day he goes through being tied up and lying down and facing the north. Then with one arm free, he is supposed to thunder the wrath of God, the threat against Israel. In one sense, all of these Judean believers could say, “Well, they deserved it. You know? I mean, they rebelled against the Davidic line, and they were pretty wicked, far more wicked than we were.”

It’s still them. It’s still them, fellow Israelites in the national sense, but that was still Israel the nation. For three centuries there had been a division, after all, between the north and the south. It’s still them, and during that time, day after day they go to the fields and watch as Ezekiel in active stance of some sort condemns Israel. Day 1, day 2, day 10, day 20, month 1, month 2, month 6, still condemning Israel. One-year marker. Day 365, day 366, day 370, day 380, day 385, 386, 387, 389, 390.

The next day they show up, and he is facing the other way. Boy, you’d have to be a twit to miss that one. Now he has rolled over on his side, and he is condemning Judah with exactly the denunciations he poured out upon the north. In other words, these actions insist that the sin of the south will be requited. There will be judgment. There is no ducking it. It is as sure as the exile of the north.

Then in verses 9 to 17, now the prophet’s action draws attention to the famine that would take place in Jerusalem under siege and before the exile, and then later the language describes what takes place in the exile. The point is that both Israel (verse 13) and Judah (verse 16) will eventually live on famine rations and eat unclean food. Look at the mix of grains and beans and so on in verse 9. This is not meant to give you an idea of luxury.

The first bit, wheat and barley, you do make bread from that. You don’t make bread from beans and lentils, from millet and spelt. The point is there’s not enough wheat and barley to make bread. So they take a mixture of vegetables and let them dry out in a jar too and pound all that down into some sort of disgusting quasi-flour, because you’re showing what it’s like in exile. Do you see? You make do with what you have.

How do you cook it? If you’re in a city under siege, eventually all the firewood is gone. How do you cook it? You use shit. It’s the same word for both cows and human beings. We use excrement for one and dung for the other, because we’re polite, but in point of fact, you’re using manure … human manure, cow manure, whatever. Whatever burns. That’s how desperate they are, which is not only pretty appalling intrinsically; it’s unclean. It’s unclean and a little more than even this prophet can take. God says, “Okay, cow dung will do.”

Now this does not even necessarily mean this was all the prophet ate during all that time. This is starvation ration. He might have been home with his wife in the evening having a steak dinner now and then, but in terms of what he did publicly outside, this is what he did. It’s not possible eventually in that heat to survive on these quantities. That’s the whole point. Twenty shekels of grain is about eight ounces. One-sixth of a hin of water? That is a bit over an imperial pint, about 1.2 of an American pint.

In that kind of heat, you can’t survive on that. They eat at set times. That’s what you do when you’re under siege. Instead of eating as much as you want whenever you want and go to the fridge, pull out something else, and have a snack, what you do is you have it at set times. You parcel it out. You ration it out. Starvation rations at set times.

Worse is yet to come (verses 12 to 15), because these now describe not only siege conditions but exilic conditions. Verses 1 to 3 drive home the inevitability of the siege of Jerusalem under the judgment of God. Verses 4 to 8 drive home the duration of the banishment, although they don’t know how long it’s going to be until we finish counting the 40 days. Verses 9 to 17 drive home the famine conditions of siege and exile.

Then chapter 5, verses 1 to 4. This depicts what will happen to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The scene is pretty awful. He takes a very sharp sword honed like a straight razor, and he shaves off all of his beard. Then he divides it carefully into three parts. One-third he puts in the middle of the city. That is, the clay city, that which represents the city, this tablet. That’s what he does. He puts a coal in it, and it all burns up.

Then he takes another third outside the city, and he takes this sword, and he whacks and whacks and whacks and whacks and whacks it until all you have are tiny, little pieces of hair left, not this long, bushy beard anymore.

Then he takes the last third, and he tucks a few hairs in his belt. Then waiting for a nice, windy day, he takes a few strands of hair and throws them to the wind and a few more and a few more and a few more until it’s all gone. Then he pulls a few of the strands that are in the few strands left in his belt and puts them back into the city, and they burn up too.

The symbolism is spelled out for us, the symbolism of the earlier verses at the end of chapter 4. “Son of man, I am about to cut off the food supply in Jerusalem.” That means a siege. “The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce.” Why? They’ll “… waste away because of their sin.”

Now chapter 5. You have all of these prophetic actions, but they’re spelled out for you. They’re spelled out for you! “I myself will shave you; I will not look on you with pity. A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you.” That is, in Jerusalem. “A third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword.”

Sometimes even without any exact representation in the symbolism, the actual awfulness of a siege is unpacked. “In your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents.” That’s what hunger will do to you in a siege. Did you notice verse 9? “Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.” That expression is picked up by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 24 when he is describing the siege and fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

How can you start saying, “Yeah, well if that one was the worst one, how can the next one be the worst one?” It becomes a standard apocalyptic formula that means something like, “This is as bad as it gets.” The truth of the matter is this was as bad as it gets (starvation all the way down to cannibalism) in the covenant city of God in 587 BC and again in AD 70 and again and again and again and again in wars and devastations. Again and again. This is as bad as it gets.

2. God’s reasons for the judgment

Verses 5 to 12. The fundamental reason in these verses is that Judah has not only rebelled against the covenant but has become more wicked than the surrounding nations. Verses 5 to 6: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more that the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees.’ ”

Verse 7: “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says …” It is a constant principle in Holy Writ that to whom much is given, from them also shall much be required. There are many texts that teach that.

Think of Jesus’ utterances in Matthew, chapter 11. “Woe to you, Bethsaida! Woe to you, Capernaum! If the gospel preached in you, if the miracles performed in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon [pagan cities up the coast], they would have repented. If they had been preached to the nations Sodom and Gomorrah, those cities would still be here today. They wouldn’t have faced judgment.”

Now this does not mean that on the last day, they will be exonerated. They are still condemned for their sin. There is no rewriting of history. It does mean that God on the last day will take into account not only what has been done, what is being done, what will be, but what could have been done under different circumstances. He takes it all into account. His justice is perfect.

By that light, though by merely sociological phenomena, Capernaum might be quite a nice place compared with Tyre and Sidon, thank you, and certainly a cut up on Sodom. Yet in point of fact, on the last day, it will fare worse for Sodom. Where will America stand on the last day? Where will the church in America stand on the last day? Where will the church of the last four centuries in Europe stand on the last day? A center of reformation? Waves of revival?

Of course, there are all those nasty Muslims out there. To be frank, there are Muslim cities I occasionally visit where I feel safer on the streets than in some parts of Metro Chicago. There is certainly much less rape, much less porn, much less premarital sex and adultery. I’m not suggesting the way they get there is all good. Not for a moment! Yet considering the heritage we have of gospel and books and truth and revivals …

I work comfortably in a few languages, but there is no language to be compared with English for the heritage of Christian literature. Nothing even comes close. Not close! German is about as close as you get. There there’s a lot of academic stuff, but there was never a great sort of Puritan movement to produce that kind of literature. The closest you get is Spener and the Pietismus. France? Let alone Swahili or Kikuyu or languages like Mandarin?

A lot of material is going into Chinese today, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared with the heritage we simply take for granted. It’s unbelievable what you can get on the Internet, besides all the bad stuff. It’s unbelievable how you can find Thomas Boston on the Internet … for free! On and on and on. Have we become good stewards of the grace of God, or have we simply multiplied our guilt and actually become, in some respects, more wicked than the nations around us?

Now, of course, this is directed in the first instance not only to the nation, but to the nation which was the locus of the covenant community. Thus, there is a sense in which when we apply it today, we have to apply it, first of all, to the church of our day, to the covenant community of our day. But then it is a nation, and it is a principle just the same.

“Righteousness exalts a nation: and sin is a reproach to any people.” God still holds nations to account too. Therefore, God himself sets himself against the land in verses 8 to 12. “You have defiled my sanctuary [all these covenantal structures] with your vile images and detestable practices, and I will scatter you to the winds.”

3. God’s purposes in the judgment

Verses 13 to 17. His first purpose is …

A) To vent his anger

I don’t see how you can put it more calmly than that. “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside.” Now you must not understand this to be venting his anger so he can regain control of himself. God never loses control. His anger is always principled. It always operates within the context of all of his perfections, with all of his holiness. It’s not losing it. God does not fall in love, and he does not explode in undisciplined anger.

It’s always willed and chosen and part of the perfections of all of his virtues and attributes and character, but it is anger, it is personal, and it must be vented, because he is a holy God. This is not a question of a bad temper but of a principled holiness. The alternative to this, of course, would be to have an amoral God who could look at all of these detestable things and say, “Oh, I don’t care. I don’t mind. They can do whatever they want.” Would that make him more admirable? Next, it’s …

B) To make his people realize he has done it

Verse 13b: “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath on them, they will know that I the Lord have spoken in my zeal.” That is a constantly recurring theme in both Isaiah and in Ezekiel, and elsewhere too. It recurs again in apocalyptic literature.

One of the reasons why God announces in advance what he is going to do is precisely so when it happens, the people will know he is the one who is doing it; it’s not simply the result of the accidents of history, changing fortunes of political powers, the rise and fall of nations, the consequences of economic injustice, or whatever. Then, quite frankly, it’s …

C) To make his people a reproach

Verses 14 and 15: “I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by. You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke.”

You see, they thought of themselves as the elite of the elect, the chosen, because they were choice. They thought of themselves as competing for the good will of the nations, sucking up to this empire, sucking up to that empire, and always at the expense of covenantal fidelity. So God says, “I can fix that. I’ll make you a joke.”

If the church today tries to make its way in the world by sucking up to every passing fancy, to every passing fad, in order that we too might be thought with it or cool or hip or whatever the appropriate expression is these days, God will say, “I can fix that.” I think he is in the process of fixing it. Christians are becoming more and more of a joke, a taunt, an object of ridicule. If it stills our pride, it may be a jolly good thing. Quite frankly, in the most severe case as here, his purpose is simply …

D) To destroy them

Verses 16 and 17: “When I shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food. I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I the Lord have spoken.”

There does come a time in the affairs of men and women, in the affairs of the church, in the affairs of history, when God says, “Thus far have you gone. No farther will you go.” The Lord raises up a spirit of blindness so that people will believe the lie. God, help us if we hit that point. But if it is important to understand these two chapters in the context of Ezekiel, it is no less important to understand them in broader, biblical frameworks. Let me outline several.

1. Set this passage within the framework of Old Testament history.

You run from the fall to the flood. What do you find? After the fall, the first murder. Then the repeated refrain, “So and so lived so many years, and then he died. So and so lived so many years, and then he died.” That’s Genesis 5. Then catastrophic judgment because of all of the sin.

Though Noah and his family are saved, he promptly gets drunk. Within a few chapters (the flood is over in chapter 9), you have the Tower of Babel in chapter 11. God, in his mercy, eventually calls Abraham, who is not persistently faithful; Isaac, who in some ways is a bit of a wimp; Jacob, who is a deceiver; and the 12 patriarchs.

Well, one of them is sleeping with his daughter-in-law. Another is sleeping with his father’s concubine. Ten of them are trying to sell the eleventh into slavery unless they actually bump him off by murder instead. These are the patriarchs. When you read the much later document, the testaments of the 12 patriarchs, what you discover, written about the first century AD, what you discover in this recreation, is that everybody is trying to whitewash everybody. Read Genesis, and it doesn’t feel like a whitewash.

Now you have slavery. Where did that come from? Then the exodus. Wonderful stuff, which leads promptly to the golden calf. Then Merari and Medeba and the rebellious sons of Korah and all that sort of thing. Eventually, they get to the Promised Land. On the first approach, what happens then? Ten out of twelve say, “We can’t go in. God is not big enough to take us in.” Forty years of wandering in the desert until a whole generation dies off.

Then they get in, this time with victory, with faith. They cross the Jordan. They take Jericho, which, of course, leads to Ai. The text does not simply say Achan sinned but that Israel sinned. In some sense, it was a corporate failure again. Then, of course, you have the period of the judges where everyone does that which was right in his own eyes.

“Oh God, how we need a king.” So they get one. He promises well. He ends up badly. So God provides a king, a Davidic king, a man after God’s own heart, who manages to commit adultery and murder. Two generations later, the monarchy splits. Do I need to keep going? Are we any better?

When I was a boy, I sometimes read the Old Testament and thought to myself, in my self-righteous 10- or 12-year-old mind, “How stupid can these people be? You know? All of these threats and judgments, and they go and do it again and then do it again and then do it again. I mean, if I had been there …” Anybody who understands anything of the history of the church in the West knows we do do it again.

I reread recently what Kenneth Kantzer said at the inauguration of Trinity International University. That is, where the bits and pieces came together to constitute a university. In that address, he said he would be pleasantly surprised if the school remained robustly orthodox for a full generation and frankly astonished if it lasted a hundred years.

If you know anything of the history of Christian schools in the West, that does not seem too cynical. Set this passage against the framework of Old Testament history and you see that in one sense, as shocking as the language is, it is of a piece.

2. Set the passage within the framework of New Testament history.

Immediately you cannot help but think of Jesus weeping over the city. “If only you had known what had happened in your day.” Or Jesus actually quoting, “From then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.”

It’s drawn, you see, right from this passage in Ezekiel. It means this is as bad as it gets, all over again, and it keeps happening all over again. Matthew 24:21, drawn from Ezekiel 5:9.… If you think it doesn’t happen again, that’s AD 70. Jerusalem falls again in AD 132 to 135 and this time is razed to the ground.

3. Set the passage within the framework of New Testament warning.

Not New Testament history but New Testament warning. Warnings against churches, for example. Revelation 2 and 3. In five out of seven cases, “Unless you repent, I will take away your candlestick.” Peter, in 1 Peter 4, reminds that judgment begins with the house of God, even though it is finally far worse on those who do not obey the gospel.

Then you survey early Christian history. The seven churches’ area is, of course, the western third of modern Turkey. As recently as 1972–1973, there were 35 known evangelical Christians in all of Turkey, and one-third of them were converted at Tyndale House in Cambridge, largely under the influence and ministry of Colin Hemer. Today the numbers are probably about 2,400 to 2,600. It’s hard to count them. Pretty divided, but out of a population of 60 million or so …

Or North Africa, the turf of Augustine, for goodness’ sake. North Africa is not today broadly considered a theological lighthouse. Europe? What shall we say of Europe? The experts tell us there is a small uptick in the last two or three or four years in interest in the gospel again. It’s pretty small.

I wonder in dark moments whether the demographics are such that if the Lord returns, Europe itself will be re-Islamicized or if the Lord, in his mercy, will in fact bring in reformation and revival, the likes of which we have not seen for 500 years. I don’t know. I know what we deserve.

Not only warnings in the New Testament against churches but warnings against nations that are nothing more than historical manifestations of Antichrist. Here I would love to unpack chapters 12, 13, and 14 against the background of chapter 17. What you have here is the manifestation under the first beast of historical antichrists that recur and recur and recur and the False Prophet or manifestations of false teaching against Christ that recur and recur and recur.

One day, all the nations of this world will be destroyed as such, and the kingdoms of this world will bow down before their Maker, before his Messiah. What shall we say about warnings against individuals? You see, there’s a sense in which every adumbration of judgment in a passage like Ezekiel 4 and 5 is an anticipation of hell.

The shocking thing today is that even in Christian circles, let alone in the world, by and large, believers are far more shocked by the description of judgment in Ezekiel 4 and 5 than they are by the depictions of hell on the mouth of Jesus or in the book of Revelation. Do you know why? Because we’re more frightened by things that take place in this life than we are about things that take place in the next, because deep down, apart from at some sort of flimsy creedal level, we don’t believe them.

If you really do believe with your whole heart what Jesus says about hell, what Revelation 14 says about hell, what Revelation 20 says about hell, let me tell you, what we’ve just read in Ezekiel 4 and 5 is kids’ stuff. It’s merely an adumbration. In fact, in one of the most penetrating atonement passages in all of Holy Writ (namely, Romans 3:21 to 26), that very point is made, because there we are told God passed over the judgment that should have come to them.

He didn’t pour it all out upon them. He suspended it, waiting for the ultimate provision of the ultimate sacrifice. The same sort of message is drawn precisely by Hebrews. If there was judgment in those days, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?” Today in many Christian circles, there is much more fear of famine or war or plague (Can you think of parallel examples the last few months?) than there is of hell. That brings me to the last setting.

4. Set this passage within the framework of the cross.

What we must do is picture two Old Testament themes on a, frankly, collision course. On the one hand, there is a rising portrayal of devastating judgment on nations; on the covenant community, whether the north or the south; on individuals, threatening more and more judgment, each picture belonging to a typology that anticipates the ultimate judgment. It barrels through the Old Testament.

On the other hand, there is the promise that the seed of the woman will ultimately crush the Serpent’s head. There is the promise that in Abraham and in his seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. There is the promise that eventually there will be a new Prophet like Moses. There is the promise that one day there will be, along a certain typological line, another kind of Passover that ensures the wrath of God will pass over.

There will be another kind of Day of Atonement. There will be a King Priest, and those themes of hope promising ultimately, in the words of Isaiah, a new heaven and a new earth, they barrel through the text as well. They both barrel through with accelerating speeds until finally they collide. We call that Calvary. Or, to change the metaphor, justice and mercy charge toward each other and kiss.

That’s what Romans 3:21 and following is all about, so that God remains just and the one who justifies the ungodly. Apart from him, there is only a fearful expectancy of judgment. There is no alternative. None. Do you want to see the love of God? Then study the cross. Do you want to see the wrath of God? Then study the cross. We sing it, don’t we?

Come and see. Come and see.

Come and see the King of love.

See the purple robe and crown of thorns he wears.

Soldiers mock. Rulers sneer

As he lifts the cruel cross

Lone and friendless now he climbs towards the hill.

We worship at your feet

Where wrath and mercy meet.

Let us pray.

In all of our exegesis, merciful God, forbid that we should ever be minutely examining individual tree trunks and lose sight of the forest. But with all of the attention we pay on words and arguments, help us constantly to keep in mind the whole counsel of your revelation, culminating in Christ Jesus, his death and resurrection on our behalf.

A gospel that consummates in the new heaven and the new earth, such that we who have been redeemed by grace and who have been given the gift of faith and who have tasted already of the powers of the age to come and have received the Holy Spirit, the down payment of the promised inheritance, and who enjoy something of the partnership, the fellowship, of the communion of saints, we too cry with Christians in every generation, “Yes. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” In whose name we pray, amen.