All right, everybody. I know I know most everybody, but I'm Jake. Again, helping Phil in since Stephen's a little out of commission. But I heard he might be here today, possibly. But looking forward to him taking his rightful spot. But until then, let me pray and get it started. Father, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for another Lord's Day to gather with your people and to hear your word preached and to open your word and to worship you together with brothers and sisters in Christ. And we're thankful for this Advent season where we can anticipate the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're grateful, Lord. I pray you'd be with us this morning, help us to learn about you, to honor you in all that we do and see you clearly. So in the name of Christ, we pray, amen. All right, today we'll be in the book of Ezekiel. So you can turn there, although we won't be going, well, I'll get into that in a minute, but turn to Ezekiel. That's where we'll be today. So last week we heard about the prophet Jeremiah from Logan. Today we're in Ezekiel. He lived, so the way we'll structure this is I'm going to do a kind of broad overview and structure of the book of Ezekiel. We'll spend some time there. And then we'll really only get through the first chapter of Ezekiel because that is a kind of a glorious vision and we'll spend a lot of time there. So as far as working through the book progressively, we'll do most of that next week when we come back and return. Could have done it all in one week, but it's just a lot, so I think it's better to slow down. So don't be alarmed that we only get through one chapter today. We'll finish the rest of the book next week. So this morning we encounter the prophet Ezekiel. He lived around the same time as Jeremiah. If we remember, Jeremiah prophesied during the exile, but he was not in the exile. Ezekiel is different. He was actually set in the exile. So remember, Israel was split into two nations at the end of Kings. Who can tell me what happens to that northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah? Does anybody remember? Exactly. Precisely, exactly. So the Northern Kingdom, which had the capital city of Samaria, so often you'll be reading through some of these Old Testament prophets, and it'll refer to the Northern Kingdom as Samaria, was overtaken by the Assyrians in around 740 BC. First Chronicles 526 said, so God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul, king of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, and he took them into exile, namely the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Harah, and the river Gezon to this day." Does anybody remember anything specific about the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh? Right. Exactly, so those are the ones that were still on the east of the Jordan. And then second king, so that was kind of one phase of that Assyrian exile. And then in second king 17, this is 20 years later, then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria. And for three years he besieged it. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah on the Habor, the river of Gazan in the cities of the Medes. So that's what happened to the northern king of Israel. But what about the southern king of Judah? Also, what is, remember we're trying to think big picture here, biblical theology, the whole Old Testament survey, the whole scope. What is significant about Judah? We've talked about it a little bit, but what is specifically, there's something specific I have in mind. What is special about Judah? Right. Exactly. She said David was from Judah. So the promises that God has been giving throughout the Old Testament has been preserved. Israel didn't have a Davidic king. They were banished, or kind of mixed with the Assyrians and exiled, but a little bit of both. But in Judah, we have that remnant. We have the Davidic lineage within the southern tribe of Judah. So the southern kingdom of Judah lasted a little bit longer, it was about 140 years before God sent them into exile, as we heard, to the Babylonians led by King Nebuchadnezzar. So that kind of happened in three phases, you can read about that in 2 Kings, and we will here, 2 Kings 24. And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to the city while his servants were besieging it. And Jehoiachin, the king of Judah, gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself and his mother and his servants and his officials and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon, king of Israel, had made, as the Lord had foretold. He carried away all Jerusalem, and all the officials, and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land." So Nebuchadnezzar's coming. He's taking a huge chunk of the Judahites. to Babylon. I bring this up because Ezekiel was one of these people. God, he was in the midst of, this is really about that second phase, but this is the context that, have this in your mind when we read things about Ezekiel, both today and next week, because this is where he was at. So he was among these captives, carted off to Babylon, and it is in this context that he performs his prophetic ministry. At this time, the nation of Judah continued to exist, And it is here where the book of Ezekiel starts. So Ezekiel had been trained as a priest in Jerusalem. So he knew the religious life of the people. That was his plan, was to be a priest. He was a Levite. Since he lived around the same time as Jeremiah, some think he may have even heard Jeremiah preach in Jerusalem before he was taken away. But once in exile away from the temple, It may have looked like this priest had no future in serving God. He was supposed to be a priest, but now he's ripped apart from this context of the temple, from the city of Jerusalem, city of Zion, and he's taken away off to Babylon. How can he be a priest in this context? That's something to think about as we go on. Because a priest's work was tied up to the temple. So that's a big question and theme in Ezekiel is, will still God be with his people in exile? And that's the question God prepared this young priest to answer. So Ezekiel is a very strange book, really. It's very prophetic. It's got a lot of symbolisms. Actually, the structure is not so strange, but it's a strange book. No getting around it. There's actually a story that some Jewish rabbis wouldn't even let men read the book of Ezekiel until they were 30 years old. I'm assuming it has something to do with just how prophetic and strange it can be. But really, the structure is not too strange. It's a pretty straightforward book, structure-wise. Sometimes, you know, in like Isaiah and Jeremiah a little bit, you have kind of time periods kind of scattered. Ezekiel's not like that. It's very chronological. So you start in chapter 1, and it spans over about 20 years. But chapter 1 all the way to the end is about 20 years of time, and you can just read it, and as you go along, time has been moving forward. So the structure is not too hard. First it falls in, you can structure it with really two halves. The first 24 chapters, the Lord is telling his people through Ezekiel that the Babylonians are going to destroy Jerusalem. So remember, they're in exile already at this point, but Jerusalem in Judah is still standing. The temple is still there. There's still people there, so it's still existing, much less than before. So the first half of Ezekiel is the Lord pronouncing judgment. And actually, It's a little bit less of a call to repentance in this scenario, and if you read it carefully, it's more God saying, like, this is what's going to happen, and less of a, kind of the repentance part at this stage is almost over. The curse for the disobedience is now being applied, and he's foretelling that this is going to occur. So that's the first 24 chapters. The climax occurs in chapter 24 when the word comes to Ezekiel that the siege has begun. And then the second half of the book, chapters 25 to 48, have a bit more of a still-pronouncing judgment, but a little bit more of a hopeful flair to it, especially at the very end. They begin with condemnation of the surrounding nations. That's important. Specifically, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, and Egypt. And then, in chapter 33, verse 21, word arrives that Jerusalem has fallen and the temple was destroyed. From that point, Ezekiel prophesies about hope and restoration. We get a much more hopeful turn. And the book, like I said, the book largely occurs in chronological orders. So this all takes place over about 20 years, from about 593 to 571 BC. So on top of this chronology, you've got 20 years, the book really is formatted in three sequences of visions, three visions. And that's kind of how we'll walk through Ezekiel, is going through these visions. The first sequence occurs in chapters one to three, where Ezekiel, who is, again, he's in Babylon, sees God coming to him in a vision as a theophany display of glory. There's a second vision in chapters 8-11, and it's really a flashback into God showing Ezekiel how his presence departed from Jerusalem because of the idolatrous worship being practiced in the temple. And the book then concludes with a glorious vision, chapters 40-48, where God is returning to his people in a rebuilt temple, and you have the river flowing out of the temple. It harkens back to Eden. We'll get to that next week. But really, if we just think about these three visions, it kind of encapsulates the whole overview and story of the book of Ezekiel. So really, one of the main themes of Ezekiel is the presence and absence of God, most notably portrayed in his presence and lack of presence in the temple, which is aptly represented in these three visions. So Kostenberger wrote this book on biblical theology. He said, in a sentence, the prophecy of Ezekiel is the story of the departure of the glory of God from the temple in judgment and its return, the glory of God's return in restoration. So this again kind of highlights that tension that we talked about in the class that I did a couple weeks ago in Kings, which as I was thinking, this really is just the whole tension of the Old Testament. How can God remain faithful to his promises for judgment and disobedience? There's blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, and those are conditional promises, yet In the midst of that, he has unconditional promises to Abraham, to the lineage of David, to a coming Messiah. How can he remain faithful to these conditional promises for disobedience of curses, yet also have an unconditional promise that he's given that has nothing to do with what we do? How can both of those align? How do we deal with that tension? How do those two things hold you? What are y'all's thoughts on that? Yes, God is sovereign. What is the typical Sunday school answer? Jesus. Jesus, that really is the answer to this tension. It's true. God is, I mean, if we think about the atonement, God is giving His justice. His justice is being satisfied through the death of Christ on the cross. Yet, who is Jesus? I mean, He's all kinds of things. Sorry, go for it, guy. Please. I was just thinking to myself, like, when God gives Israel as a nation the choice Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's right. It's unconditional. God, He did the thing. He did it. Yeah, exactly. Jesus, he's the answer. So thinking back again to Deuteronomy 28, and think especially of where we are in Ezekiel right now with the exile, Deuteronomy 28. So this is hundreds of years before this time. The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, and you shall become a whore, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away." That sounds a lot like Babylon. So the promise for exile in Deuteronomy, God is being faithful to his promise to send the people into exile if they disobey. And it's in this reality that Ezekiel is fulfilling his ministry. But, as we've seen in the other prophets, even in Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, these prophets are also holding forth a hope. And that's where that tension is aligned. So yes, God is being faithful to His judgment that He said He would give if you're disobedient, yet He's always holding forth a hope, pointing to this unconditional satisfaction for the sins, even, that they committed against Him in the disobedience. So the Old Testament is full of disobedience of Israel and God fulfilling his promise of judgment, yet there's always promises of hope in the midst, and that hope is Jesus Christ. What does Jesus say to his disciples at the very end of Luke after he'd risen from the dead? Does anybody remember? I'll read it. Luke 24, 40 forward. These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. So even here in Ezekiel, there are things, this is one of the prophets, Ezekiel. Jesus sped it explicitly, there are things that must be fulfilled concerning Christ. So really it's imperative as we read any book of the Bible, but Jesus himself says the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms, we read it Christocentrically. Christ is in the midst, Christ is being put forth, that hope is always, it may not say the words Jesus Christ in your Old Testament, but that is the hope that we get in these Old Testament prophets and all throughout the Old Testament. So that's Ezekiel in a nutshell. What we're gonna do is follow those today and next week. We'll go through those three sequences of visions that the Lord gave to Ezekiel and that's kind of how we'll go through it. Today we'll really be in the first one only. So we'll spend a lot of time in Ezekiel chapter one and won't get much further than that. But you can summarize these three visions as a vision of God the King, that's Ezekiel chapter one, and we're gonna read a bunch of it, but this is just a massive display of God's glory in a vision. Then later on you get a vision of God's departure, where it's a vision of God leaving the temple in judgment for Israel's disobedience. And then at the very end of the book you have a promise of paradise, where we see God's glory returning to the temple, but really pointing forward to a more ultimate temple. So, the first vision. A vision of God the King. So it's kind of a crude example. Not crude, it's not the right word, but trite, I guess. But one way you can think about this exile is Israel receiving a timeout. So sometimes your kid disobeys and you put them in the corner for a time out so that they can go kind of think about what they've done in a way. So the Babylonian exile is kind of like a big time out for God's people. That's very trite, don't take that too seriously. He gave them a time out from the land. He took them away from the land, from the throne, from the temple, all of these things which they are misunderstanding the proper use of. They're using them wrongly. They just don't get what they're actually for. So one of the reasons God takes them out is, yes, because He promised to do it if they're disobedient, but also so that they kind of go think about what they've done. and be ripped from all these gifts that God has given them. God has been so faithful and kind in the midst of all this disobedience that it doesn't seem like they, I mean what is, we're just reading through Exodus, I mean they get to the wilderness and they're kind of just rescued from the Egyptians and they're immediately, you know, forget the glorious thing that God has already done for them. It's kind of, that's been a theme throughout the whole Old Testament. So God took them away by calling his people out to Babylon, and he set them aside for 70 years, which was actually prophesied, or Jeremiah said that it would last for 70 years, so that they could refocus on the nature of God, who he is, and what they're gonna do. So let's think about this setting a bit. Put yourself in one of those Israelites' shoes, off in Babylon, a separate kingdom. What do you think that those Israelites are thinking as they sat there in exile? what would go through your mind? Exactly. That's what I wrote down too. Yeah. Has God left us? He gave us this promise of the Davidic King, the coming Messiah, that Israel would rule the nations. But now we're off in Babylon, sitting under Nebuchadnezzar. is probably a felt absence of the Lord, I would assume. Yeah, exactly. Anything else? Yeah, perhaps not. Sure. true. Very true. Yeah, that's a good point. I didn't think about that one. That's good. So the amazing truth of Ezekiel is that Yes, they're ripped from the temple, they're ripped from Jerusalem, but God is still with them. He didn't leave. And that's how we start off in the book of Ezekiel, with God coming to His people. Again, remember, apart from the temple, apart from the line of David, apart from even the land of Israel that He had given them. He had been with them in the book of Joshua, going to drive out the Canaanites. Well, they're not there anymore, they're in Babylon. So He's just ripping away their gifts. And this is one of the themes of Ezekiel that helped correct warped thinking of some of the Jews in that time. Oh, this could get to your point. Later in the book, Ezekiel will pronounce judgment on not only Israel for their rebellion, but also the surrounding nations and Babylon. This is important as it showed the Israelites that Yahweh's power and rule was not limited by the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. God did not cease to be God when they weren't in the temple, when they weren't in Jerusalem, when they weren't in their land that He had given. God was still God. That's another theme that Ezekiel brings out. So God appears to Ezekiel in an extraordinary opening vision, which begins with the words, in the 30th year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chabar Canal, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. So the vision itself begins with a mighty wind. So I'm in Ezekiel right now, chapter one, four through six. As I looked, behold, A stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures, and this was their appearance. They had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings." It's bizarre. As the vision continues, we see some bizarre creatures surrounding God's throne. So now I'm in still chapter 1, verses 15 through 19. Now as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them. As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction, their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl. And the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction being, as it were, a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went. And the rims were tall and awesome. And the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them. And when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. Continuing on, now I'm in verse 25 through 28, where we hear a voice sounding out overhead. And there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads. When they stood still, they let down their wings. And above the expanse over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire. And seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his waist, I saw, as it were, gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist, I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him, like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around." That's extraordinary. So what we're gonna do is pull out five observations about God that we can get from this vision. Before we do that, it's important to remember that this was a vision of God. Ezekiel had a vision of the God. Theologians call this a theophany. Vern Poythress is a Reformed theologian. He defines a theophany as an appearance of God, an intense manifestation of the presence of God that is accompanied by an extraordinary visual display. So Ezekiel 1 is one of the kind of clearest theophanies in the Bible, but there are lots of theophanies in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Well, actually, specifically think of the Old Testament here. What are some other theophanies that you might think of in your Old Testament? Sorry. His appearance to Abraham, the burning bush. Isaiah 6. Isaiah 6-1. Yep, I wrote that one down. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. What's some others? The Mount Sinai. The appearance of God at Mount Sinai in cloud, thunder, lightning, What about the angel of the Lord that we have a couple times? Yeah. So, voin porthris again. To some extent, we can classify theophanies into different kinds. There are thunderstorm theophanies, such as Mount Sinai. There are court theophanies, in which God appears on his throne in the midst of angelic servants, like in Daniel chapter seven. There are man theophanies, where God appears in human form. For example, to Manoah and his wife in Judges chapter 13. There are warrior theophanies where God is described as resembling a human warrior, like Exodus 15, Isaiah 49. There are chariot theophanies where God is described as riding on a chariot, like Psalm 18. Ezekiel 1 could almost be one of those with the mention of the wheels. There are glory in cloud theophanies where God appears in a bright glory cloud, or sometimes in a dark cloud. God reflects his glory in the created world so that we can see analogy between creation and theophany. Jesus Christ, as the climactic theophany, is the fulfillment of all the symbolic communications in theophanic forms. My main point on this aside of theophanies is that when we see this vision of God in Ezekiel chapter one, we can learn something about God himself. So when we consider that Ezekiel himself saw a vision, he saw that vision describing the real God. So you can easily go overboard with some of this stuff. It's obviously symbolic. So, you know, you can't think that the wheels mean your mother-in-law's car's tire is going to go flat or something. But the wheels do mean something, like they're there for a reason. God placed them in the Bible so that he would tell us something about himself. So we don't want to fall into the ditch of thinking we can't draw any inferences about God from stuff that are symbolic. The first one, God is not like us. This is my one I want to spend the most time on, the biggest one. So many people have tried to actually illustrate this vision, but that would be extremely difficult to do because it's just so strange and bizarre and it's almost impossible and that's kind of the point. What Ezekiel could see in this vision is namely that God is not like us. He is different than we are. Now you can take that too far. God condescends. He dwells with us. He's not over there while we're over here. God comes to us. That's, you know, we're in the middle of Advent season. That's the glory of the Advent, the glory of the incarnation, I mean. But God in his essence and in his being is wholly different and other than we are. I was thinking when I was dwelling on this, if I imagined if Ezekiel had a vision of Jake, What would it look like? It would look wholly different than this. It would probably look weak, sinful, somebody begging, needing mercy. Well, that is the exact and polar opposite of the vision we have of Ezekiel, where it displays power and glory and radiance and might. Because God is not like us, he is wholly different. Even for us to even be is completely dependent on him who is. Think about the name that he gives in Exodus. I am who I am. He himself is existence that we draw our existence from. Theologians call this the creator-creature distinction, meaning he is the creator, we are the created. In that sense, we are wholly different. Ezekiel did not hesitate to describe everything he did see, but look at the way that he describes his vision. He uses words like appearance, and as it were, it was the likeness of a throne. It was in appearance like sapphire. And below the apparent figure's waist, it looked as it were the appearance of fire. I think that's purposeful. He didn't say it was a throne with sapphire. It gave off this kind of hard to pin, and even using terms like as it were, I don't know, I'm not a, I don't know Hebrew or anything, but when we use as it were in English, it's kind of a way to say I'm not being very precise in this description. So it kind of lacks precision. That's the way that Ezekiel is talking here in describing this vision. This encourages us to look at the whole vision. He's describing something big and you look at it all together. So the Bible calls God holy and that's not It's not just that God has holiness, God himself is holy. Revelation, God is holy, holy, holy. And Ezekiel saw the holy God and what was his response? He fell down on his face. That is the precise, appropriate response. And the way I read that actually, so when I saw it, I fell on my face. It's, I guess there's probably two ways to look at that. He fell on his face because he's like, oh wow, I think I should do this. I tend to think of it as something more of an un, what's the word? Not voluntary, an involuntary fell on his face because he's faced with the glory of the Lord. That's the appropriate response to this holiness. He was awed by this vision of God. And this is a big one for me, this otherness of God. To me, this is the answer to the, at least helps me think about it intellectually, the problem of evil. We can sometimes force God to answer our own ideas about morality or life. But this idea of the otherness of God, this creator-creature distinction to me is, I think, how we deal, or at least for me, how I can conceptualize this problem of evil. And people write tomes. First of all, does everybody know what the problem of evil is? It's a common objection to the idea of God, the Christian God, which would be how can a good God permit evil? How can a loving God allow evil in this world? We will all be faced, first we need to face it ourselves, but we'll all be faced with objections like that to unbelievers. It's a big thing. People write massive tomes on this. This is what helps me the most is really this otherness of God. How can a loving God permit evil? We can't force God to submit to our ideas about what is good or not good because he himself is goodness. So when you even ask that question, how can a good God permit evil? What you're really doing is forcing God to answer to this universal idea of goodness and saying, you need to answer to this goodness. But this otherness of God is, It's not that. God himself is goodness. He defines what good is. So for us to make him answer to something else, yeah, makes him not God. He's all of a sudden not God anymore. So it's really a, or even evil. God is obviously not evil, but we define evil in relation to what? Goodness. If God himself defines what is good because he himself is good, then we can only even define what evil is based upon that goodness. To me, that is the way I rationalize that problem. And I think Ezekiel is giving us that vision of God and allowing us to answer those things. Any thoughts on that? Well, I've heard some preachers say, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? And the answer was there are no good people. Right, right. Yep. God's good. And anything good that any person does is only considered good because they are kind of participating in the goodness that God himself is. There would be no good people apart from God. There'd be no goodness apart from God. Okay. Number two. So another thing that we can learn from God's vision, or Ezekiel's vision of God, is God's all-powerful and he is all-wise. So the first one was God is not like us. The second one, God is all-powerful and all-wise. Does anyone, so just, you've got Ezekiel 1 right in front of you. Is there anything in Ezekiel 1 that could point to God's power and wisdom? Exactly. Right. Exactly, yeah. Right. Exactly, yeah. Right, when you think about it in that otherness of God idea, it kind of makes you sit back and say, who am I to even have this question in the first place? Yeah. Right. Yep. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Yep. Yep. It is. And his patience. I mean, with the children of Israel, they were God's people, chosen people. And he did all these wonders for them. And through it all, with their complaining, complaining, complaining, his patience, I mean, his goodness to them. Even taking them into exile was a goodness to them in the long run. And he intended it. Exactly right. and that they give complete deference to him, to his authority, to his power, to his wisdom. And so just thinking about just how complex this vision is and all the different hosts that are involved in it. And they're all deferring and giving deference to the one who's on the throne. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, that's another great point. I don't have that down. How can we encapsulate God and His glory and majesty and might into language even? We're so limited because there's nothing that we could say that could actually ascribe God to what He's due and who He actually is. So we have the four faces. They look in every direction. His chariot moves in all directions. He's everywhere and knows all. He can be in any place. There's the eyes, kind of gives this idea that there's nothing that can be hidden from God. He can see all things. Is there another prophet that comes to your mind when you think of God seeing all things or not being able to hide from God? It's Jonah, yeah. So Ezekiel could trust this all-powerful and all-wise God. So number three, a third thing. Oh, cutting it short. Gotta speed up here a little bit. The third one, God is not limited by circumstances. One of the most profound points of the vision for Ezekiel was that he was, that Ezekiel was seeing God at all. Remember, he's not in Jerusalem or the temple. We've talked about this a little bit already, but he was in exile when he had a vision of God the Almighty. God was not limited to Jerusalem. The vision assured Ezekiel that God would be with his people wherever they were scattered. One of the fears of the Israelites when they were exiled to Babylon was surely, like we talked about, a fear of abandonment. He removed them from the promised land, removed them from the temple. This vision shows that though God instituted the temple to give himself a dwelling place among his people, he's absolutely not limited by such things and can do as he pleases. And in chapter 128, like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so is the appearance of the brightness all around it. This verse harkens back to God's covenant with Noah, reminding us that God has concern, yes, for his people, the Israelites, but also the whole world. And the circumstances of Israel's rebellion does not change that. Four, the fourth thing we can learn about God from this vision is that God takes the initiative. He is the one who came to us. Look at verse one, the heavens were opened. So he's the one that chose to come down. He's the one that chose to reveal himself in this vision. Ezekiel didn't open the heavens and go to him. The word of the Lord, verse three, the word of the Lord came. Verse four, as I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north. In verse 25, there came a voice. Verse 28, I heard the voice of one speaking. So like Bosus in the burning bush, Isaiah in the temple, Paul on the road to Damascus, none of these people were looking for God or initiated anything with Him. This was God taking the initiative. What is the ultimate story of that? John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son God has a plan. He is the one working all things out for His good. In fact, that's a huge theme. I didn't write this down anywhere, but that is a huge theme in the book of Ezekiel. It says, I think, 70 times, so that you may know I am the Lord. God is doing all these things in the book of Ezekiel, giving us these visions, so that you may know He is the Lord. He's doing it for His glory, which, yes, is for our benefit. If God is glorified, we are benefited, but it's His glory that comes first. I'll skip a little bit since we're running behind. Last one, God communicates. The fifth thing, the last thing that we'll do here is God communicates. Did you notice that Ezekiel's vision climaxes in a voice, in words? I'll read the very end of chapter one and a little bit into the first chapter. So when I saw it, I fell on my face and I heard a voice of one speaking. And he said to me, son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak to you. Then the spirit entered me when he spoke to me and set me on my feet. And I heard him who spoke to me." If we were choreographing this vision, we'd probably do it in a different way. Our climax would likely be, the opposite. Probably be somebody talking and then climaxing in a glorious vision. Uh, Ezekiel does it the exact opposite way. And that's just another The way God is telling us that the Word of the Lord is always the climax. God's speaking to us. In the end, the ultimate fulfillment, the Word Himself, Jesus Christ. And that's why, in our church, we have a pulpit where the Word is preached. And the pulpit should take center stage because the Word is central to the church. It's central to God revealing Himself to us. Even in Ezekiel, where he's getting a distinct vision The Word is still taking priority. The Word still is the climax. So God is committed to speaking to His people, to knowing them, and to having them know Him, and so with Ezekiel. And that is all I have. What thoughts do you guys have on... I mean, we spent a lot of time on just one chapter, even though we're doing a whole Old Testament survey. Any thoughts about today? I just think the idea of God condescending to us as he communicates to us, that he communicates to us in ways that our faculties can understand. And that does require the use of analogy. God is like a mountain. You can say something like that. You can derive something true about God by making that statement. God is not a mountain, obviously, but that communicates something about him. And that's, you know, these visions, you know, they're very, Right, no. For we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. There's a glorification where we will be able to see who He is a lot more clearly than even this vision. thoughts. Okay, let me pray and we can get on to the rest of the day. Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for your glorious vision to Ezekiel that we can learn about you. We don't see you as you are because you were too glorious for that, Lord, but we do get something. We see something of you and Lord, we will take the crumbs. Anything that we can have of you, anything that we can see of you and learn of you is glorious and beautiful, and I thank you for that, Lord. I thank you for this word that you've given us to give us those thoughts and knowledge of you. That's what we all want, Lord, to know you more, to know you better. I pray you'd be with us, help that end to be accomplished today as we hear your word preached and we gather with your people and we sing praises unto you. Be with us, Father. It's in the name of Christ we pray, amen.