PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

Now Ezekiel has a word against the prophets and priests and religious leaders of Israel.  He says that they only speak “out of their own imagination.”  That is a pretty serious accusation and one that no religious leader would ever be able to overcome if it were proven that this is how they approach their faith and their relationship to God and to the people.  Just saying what comes out of your imagination and attributing it to God is dangerous.  Ezekiel focuses on that point by saying that they have uttered falsehoods and used the terms: “Says the Lord” in order to justify what they have said.  God takes no responsibility for the words of the religious leaders even though they begin their statements with the phrase: “Says the Lord.”  No, the Lord did not say it, you said it out of your own imagination.

Then there is this talk of this wall that was built by the people but the prophets just kind of smeared their presence on it.  The wall came crashing down due to the wind and the storm that the Lord sent because, again, it was not of the Lord.  The prophets were saying flippantly peace, and there was no peace.  But it was what they wanted to hear, so they said it out of their own imagination…again.  

I’m not sure where the author is going in vs.17ff in which there is a hunt spoken of that the women are involved in.  The only idea would be that this could be a reference to human sacrifices that the people of Israel had been caught up in because the nations around them were involved in it as they worshipped their own false gods through human sacrifices.  God promises that he is going to save his people himself.  He promises in vs.23: “I will save my people from your hand.”  I love it when God intervenes directly and basically says, yeah, you guys have really blown it.  Step aside, I’m taking over.

Once again Ezekiel is given an object lesson in order to teach the people of Israel and he is told to act out what is going to happen to the “prince” or the king of Judah who lives in Jerusalem.  I know that I am using Israel and Judah interchangeably and I shouldn’t, so I hope you are able to follow.  The object lesson he is to perform is he is to pack his belonging as if he were going into exile.  Remember, he is already in exile.  He is to dig his way through the wall that surrounds the city and then head out as if he were sneaking out in order not to get caught.  But all of this he is to do in the day so that the people of Israel are able to see what he is doing and understand that the object lesson that he is enacting is supposed to represent what will happen to the ruler of Jerusalem, the king of Judah.

He goes ahead and packs himself up in the daytime, he digs out of the wall, and when the people ask him: “What are you doing?” vs.9, he tells them: “I am a sign for you.” vs.11.  He tells them that they will be going into exile and the king will not see Babylon, but will die in Babylon.  Remember, the king sees his children killed and then has his eyes gouged out so that is the last thing that he sees.  This will happen in the future and the object lesson that Ezekiel is giving to the people will  happen in the very near future.

There was a saying in the land that “I will put an end to this proverb.”  It was thought that God no longer spoke in oracles, but Ezekiel said no, this will come true, and not in the long run, but rather pretty quickly, so prepare yourselves.  That is something that we do not really put much stock in.  We don’t have people that we believe are speaking oracles which dictate how we ought to act in order to curry God’s wrath or favor.  I guess the closest thing we have is when a pastor is said to be speaking prophetically.  

Ezekiel is given good news to give to the exiles who found themselves scattered in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon.  God points out to Ezekiel the root of the problem which was found in the individuals named Jaazaniah and Peltiah who were officials of the people.  It is because of them that the city of Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and all who inhabited that city would be driven out.  

As Ezekiel was relaying this news and Peltiah was actually in attendance, one of the folks who were at the root of the problem, Peltiah died.  This kind of shook Ezekiel up.  He fell on the ground and asked if there would be any of the remnant that would remain after God was done with all of the work, all of the massacre, that he promised he would do.  

This is where the good news comes and this is where we find verses which we should have heard before in some setting.  Look at vs.19 and we hear that God will give those who come back to him after this tragedy a heart of flesh after he has sent His Spirit upon them and removed their heart of stone.  A heart of stone is one which is set in its ways and which cannot change or adapt based upon what God wants us to do.  As a result of all this once again: “They shall be my people, and I will be their God.”  God will gather His people from all the places where they were scattered and bring them back again.  This is good news for Israel.

As Christians we have taken this Scripture and applied it to our understanding of the new covenant which will be placed upon our hearts.  It is a covenant not based upon the law, or the stone, but based upon the life, death, and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, or flesh.  

While this chapter can be extremely confusing, if you look at the overarching theme we find it as God is working in complete concert with God’s creation.  All that God does, all that God says, all that God creates, all that God makes happen is working in the same direction and is working in concert.  Nothing from God is contradictory to that which is God’s intention.  All that God does, we also read in  the New Testament, is to ensure that all things work together for our good.  So when you read about the wheels turning and they are always moving in the same direction and there is no tension and there is no contradictory movements away or stresses which strain the movement of God or his creatures, then we can take that God is always working in concert to ensure that all things work together for God for those who trust and love Him.  

But while we are talking about wheels in the sky, don’t I have to insert this?  

The presence of this guy in white linen at the beginning of this chapter is the same one who had served the chapter before as the great executioner, now serves as the great pyromaniac who sets Jerusalem on fire.  God’s destruction is not finished.  But then when he includes the four creatures, which we saw earlier who represent the Gospels in latter Christian art, shows that God is pulling things together on the earth so that there can be a remnant and a hope for those who still do love the Lord.  

That is encouraging to us because we know that no matter how far we go from God He will always welcome us back, even if he has already turned is eye against us.  

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.