Bible Reading Challenge Blog

What a tragic chapter.  It reminds me of Abraham trying to deal with God in order to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18.  Read it again if you haven’t read that chapter in a while.  Abraham really goes to bat for the towns, even though ostensibly it is only to save his nephew Lot.  Look at the difference between that chapter and this chapter.  Tragedy is the only way to describe this chapter as we see Ezekiel in vs. 8 who is distraught as the killing is taking place and asks if he is going to destroy everyone.  God basically says yes, I am.  The guilt of the house is exceedingly great.  There is no way around that.

Notice that there is a differentiation between those who are upset with the current state of things and those who are just accepting it.  A mark is placed on those who are not happy with the mess that the people of Israel have gotten into.  The others have no mark because they are satisfied to live with what is going on in the culture around them and don’t feel like they can do anything about it anyway.

In some ways it takes us to today where we also have choices that we can make.  We can choose to be upset and unhappy with those times that it is obvious that as a society and culture we are moving away from the God’s desires, or we can throw our hands up in the air and put our heads in the sand and say there is nothing we can do so I am going to do nothing.  Those are the differences.  This chapter tells us that if we choose to remain neutral we will not get the mark of the Lord, which in the end is not a good thing.  Again, just like in Revelation where we read that God wants us to be either hot or cold, if we are lukewarm then the guy with the linen suit is going to find us.  As I said, a tragic chapter.  

The prophet is led by God to witness a whole slew of abominations, some of which might have been toned down, but were probably in the original fairly obscene.  Ezekiel is taken from his place in exile in Babylon and transported to the temple in Jerusalem by the locks of his hair.  Remember the locks represented his faithfulness to God in that not a razor would go to his head in his devotion to God.  It is in the temple where he experiences and witnesses the abominations that come in a form of three.

The first that he witnesses is the jealousy that the people of Israel were experiencing because the nations around them had idols that were tangible and able to be seen and touched and so they also wanted that.  They made the steps to worship idols so that their jealousy could be sated.  Be careful of wanting what others have when you know what you have is what God wants you to have.  Those idols are described as creeping things that are visible through a hole in the wall.  The elders of Israel were worshiping them on their own time and in secret hoping that God would not notice.  As if…

We then see women weeping for Tamuz…, who is Tamuz?  Well, as you might have guessed, Tamuz is a god from Mesopotamia who is said to have descended into the underworld.  They were weeping for a false god who had no impact on their lives.  This is how far they had come.  Finally, we see the people of Israel with their backs to the temple as they worshiped the sun.  They were prostrated toward the sun on the east as an act of worship and reverence.  But it gets worse.  Look at the end of vs.17 where you have this quixotical reference to the branch to their nose.  It is thought that this is considered a vulgar reference to show, again, how far the people of Israel had sunk.  Things are pretty bad now in the times of Ezekiel.

This is a very direct and powerful oracle against Israel, even to the point where it states that the home of the Lord, which would be the temple, would be filled with the violent and they will profane it.  You can see this in vs.22 where the prophet says God calls the temple his: “treasured place” which can also be translated as “secret place”.  

You know that song his eye is on the sparrow, right?  I love that song primarily because it was one of my favorites when we were in Russia because there was a guy names Sydney in our choir who could sing it and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the place.  Sydney, a refugee from Liberia, actually came and worshipped with us a few times here in Strasburg.  But look at vs.4 where we read the Lord say that “my eye will not spare you, I will have no pity.  I will punish you for your ways.”  That is quite a bit different from the song that we have below. 

But that tends to be the direction that Ezekiel takes us, at least in the beginning of this book of the Bible.  Israel has crossed the line, they have worshipped other gods, and they have relied upon their wealth to provide them with security.  God does not take kindly to that.  A lesson for any of us who might be worshipping other gods or find refuge in our wealth.

It may seem a bit strange that God is going to lay to waste the mountains of Israel, the hills, the ravines and the valleys.  Why?  What did they do?  How are they to blame for anything.  So keep in mind that we know that in those places is where all of the rituals to the false gods would have taken place, even human and child sacrifices were seen as taking place on the mountains, the hills, the ravines, and the valleys.  If you read vs.5 you will see God tells Ezekiel: I will lay the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars.  

He ends this chapter by stating that: “Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”  What will it take to turn the people away from their evil deeds to a recognition that God is Lord and ruler of all of our lives?  Sometimes it takes the destruction of that which we believe is innocent and has had no hand in the atrocities that we see around us.  The mountains, the hills, the ravines and the valleys were created by God and yet they will also be destroyed by God so that: They shall know that I am the Lord.  What will it take to get our attention?  

Now we have what I consider a more or less normal object lesson that Ezekiel is commanded to give to the people of Israel.  He is to shave his hair from his head to also his face and use it in three different ways.  Each way represents how the people of Israel have been either taken away in to captivity into Babylon, or killed within Jerusalem because they rebelled and fought back, or were simply left behind by the Babylonians because they were either too poor or too weak to be of any use to them.  

If you look at the words starting in vs. 17 you read that God will send a famine against the people and specifically against “your children.”  This famine will rob the people of Israel of their children which would have been their most precious, and in their captivity, their only possession.  Can you imagine?  This sword which Ezekiel is called to brandish to shave his hair will be used to pass through the people and the nation of Israel because they have turned their back consistently on the Lord.

Once again Ezekiel is provided with an object lesson which he is to perform himself in the sight of all the people.  He is to play with toy soldiers and toy people.  If they had Legos he would have to build Jerusalem with them and put figures that were casting a siege on the city.  Instead, he is to take a brick and pretend the brick is Jerusalem.  He is to lie on his side for the same period of time that Israel was besieged which was 390 years, but he was to do one day per each year.  Then he was to do the same thing for Judah and Jerusalem which was only 40 days which equated to 40 years.  

God was going to tie him up in cords until his time was finished.  He was to eat a select menu of bread which was to be cooked over human excrement.  Wait, what?  Yes, Ezekiel does actually object to this because God had commanded him not to allow anything unclean to enter his mouth, and this would disqualify him from that commandment.  God sees his side of the argument and so moves to allow him to cook the bread on cow poop instead.  Whew, that was close.  Wait, cow poop?  We move on.

Ezekiel is commanded to do a number of things and given a number of challenges as he is to go out and do God’s bidding.  He is first commanded to eat the scroll that the Lord gives to him.  I would interpret that as eating the word of God.  This should remind us of Jeremiah’s calling in chapter 1:9 where we read: “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.”  So Ezekiel also has the word of God put in his mouth at the very beginning of his ministry.

We will find Ezekiel a few times in a valley, and this is one time where he goes and is caught up in the whirlwind that is a part of God’s presence and as a result he has to rest for 7 days before he can catch his breath again.  It is in this valley where Ezekiel receives the Spirit of God.  You will find later probably what I consider the most powerful verses of Ezekiel, about 20 chapters later, that describe the Holy Spirit in a way that is very interactive and present.  Ezekiel could be called the prophet of the Holy Spirit.  I like it.  I just thought of that.

Ezekiel is then bound by cords because God does not want him to wander among the unfaithful of Israel.  But when God speaks again to him then he will be freed to perform the duties that God has placed upon him.  Sometimes God binds us so that we are limited until we find ourselves experienced enough, or full enough of the Holy Spirit to be able to do the work of God.  

We find that Ezekiel the prophet is on the ground because of the image that he saw which caused him to “fall on his face.”  God speaks to him directly and sends him out to the people of Israel.  Now, what I would love for you to do is substitute the word United States in vs.3.  Here is how it would read: “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of the United States, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day.  The descendants are impudent and stubborn…”  He is commanded to say to them that God is still speaking in their midst.  That is pretty daunting.

He tells them not to be afraid of them, he is commanded to speak the words of God and not to be dismayed at their looks.  He is commanded to speak God’s words whether they listen or not.  But as far as Ezekiel is concerned, he is not to be rebellious like the people that he is sent to minister to are rebellious.  He is to hold fast to whom he is in the sight of God.  God then hands him a scroll.

I don’t know about you, but I find this extremely empowering and powerful.  God sends us out to speak the Gospel regardless of the result of our speaking.  God calls us to live out the Gospel, regardless of the result of our life.  The responsibility to live and to speak is on us, the responsibility of the results are on God.  What a breath of fresh air that is.

We find ourselves in a new book of the Bible, and the final book for this 100 Day Challenge.  Ezekiel means in Hebrew: “God strengthens”  Think about that as you begin reading this book, because some have seen it as somewhat problematic in that it is not a simple narrative with stories that astound us.  It is much more metaphorical with many examples which had meaning in the centuries in which it was written, but those meanings may have eclipsed their utilities to us now these many years later.  Ezekiel is considered the last of the three major prophets, with the others being Isaiah and Jeremiah (which we just saw).  

Some background on Ezekiel.  He was a refuge living in the camps of Babylon.  Once again, just like Jeremiah, he is writing in the midst of the Babylonian captivity, but at the time later than Jeremiah was living.  Let’s look at chapter 1

We find the calling of Ezekiel who describes himself as a priest, the son of Buzi as he was in the land of the Chaldeans (remember we said earlier that the term Chaldean is synonymous with the term Babylonian).  Babylon was in the north of Israel.  Below you will find a map which I had shared with you before.  It is important to see it and understand the different countries that are represented there.  

This creature which is depicted may not make any sense to you, but let’s try to figure some of its features out.  There is a sense that these creatures depict those who are part of God’s heavenly reign.  They each had faces of living creatures and the creatures are that of a human being, a lion, an ox, an eagle.  See if these figures below rings a bell.  Each of these is in a corner of the basilica in St. Peters in Rome and they represent the four Gospels.  The lion represents Mark, the person represents Matthew, the ox represents Luke and the eagle represents John.  

We find a synopsis of all that has taken place in the Babylonian captivity which is basically identical to the verses which we find in II Kings 24:18-25:21.  If you read that again, as we already have together, it should sound familiar.  Zedekiah is the last king of Judah and his reign ended tragically with his last sight being the death of his children before he had his eyes gouged out.  There were other deportations mentioned into Babylon, which we touched upon in II Kings.

This is also a description of the assured destruction of the temple and the deportation not only of the people but of all the goods and items that were in the temple, probably including the ark of the covenant which Harrison Ford is still searching.  Jehoiachin is mentioned as the king who cozied up to the Babylonians, just like Jeremiah told the people to do, and he was treated as royalty until his death.

There are times that we are called to fight against injustice.  There are also times when we are called to accept our fate because what we are experiencing is a result of our own doing.  There is a necessity to be able to distinguish when we are called to stand up against injustice, and when we are to take our lumps because we deserve what we are getting.  I would guess that being able to distinguish between the two should not be very difficult.  Think about it.  

Israel was disobedient and so God allowed the Babylonians to conquer them.  In our society there should be an opportunity to see those areas where people are historically downtrodden at no fault of their own.  I would define that as an injustice which we ought to stand against.  If we find ourselves in difficult times because of our own poor decisions, we deserve pity, but this is not an injustice.  We are called to rally around all people for all situations and not to pick and choose whom we will have support and whom we will not.  

This ends our time in Jeremiah.  It has been quite a journey, and what I’m hearing from many of you, a difficult one.  I think it is an important one as the people of Israel felt like God had abandoned them in a very difficult time in the life of the nation.  We find ourselves in a difficult time in the life of the nation.  But God has not, and never will, abandon us.  Believe it!