I'm going to read the gospel this morning. This will be our passage. Think about what we just read for the law in Kings. The various parts there about cherubim and wheels. And consider God's holy word in Ezekiel. 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. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot, and they sparkled like burnished bronze. Under their wings, on their four sides, they had human hands, and the four had their faces and their wings thus. Their wings touched one another. Each of them went straight forward without turning as they went. As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face, The four had the face of a lion on the right side, and the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces, and their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another while the two covered their bodies, and they went straight forward. Wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went. As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning, and the living creatures darted to and fro like the appearance of a flash of lightning. 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 a barrel. And the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction as it were a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of the four directions without turning as they went. As their rims were tall and awesome, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. When the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them. And when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them. For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When those went, these went. When those stood, these stood. And when those rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them. For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. Over the heads of the living creatures there was a likeness of an expanse shining like awe-inspiring crystal spread out above their heads. And under the expanse their wings were stretched out one toward another, and each creature had two wings covering its body. And when they went, I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of many waters, like the sound of the Almighty, the sound of tumult, like the sound of an army. When they stood still, they let down their wings, 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's in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking." Father, as we hear your Word today, in the Old Testament it's hard to get something that shows us more about Christ than this. And yet there's a veil over our eyes unless your spirit takes it off of us so that we might see the glories of Jesus, who is the glory of God. I pray for every person here that you might do this for us today, that we might better learn to know who you are and to serve you and worship you as we have come together here this morning in your name. We ask in Christ's name, amen. Home, my hard day's work, you sit down and you turn on the TV and you start flipping through the channels. It's the middle of the program and you're caught by the narrator who says the following. Northeast Syria, the Kibar River. According to the Hebrew Bible, it was here in the 6th century BC that divine beings descended from heaven and made contact with a 30-year-old Hebrew priest named Ezekiel. That's what the narrator says in the relevant segment in Season 5, Episode 9 of Ancient Aliens. The massively popular cultural phenomenon watched by over 36 million total viewers across 268 episodes and now in its 21st season on the History Channel. Make no mistake, friends, this show has had a massive cultural impact. All you have to do is look at the meme of the dude with the hair, right? Ezekiel was by the river Kibar and he said a great whirlwind came to him, interjects Patrick Cook, author of The Bible UFO Connection. Suddenly he adds, he described it as a fire enfolding itself and out of the fire was a color of amber, which is the Hebrew word which means polished spectrum metal, which implies that it's metallic and that it's spinning and that it lands in front of him and suddenly out of the whirlwind comes four creatures. The narrator continues. In the Bible, the prophet Ezekiel calls these spiritual beings cherubims and describes them as having four faces, four wings, and skin that shone like polished bronze. But what in fact was the mysterious object that touched down in front of Ezekiel and lifted him up in the sky? And who were the strange beings that emerged and shared a vision of the future with the prophet? He's described as the likeness of a man, but they seem to have different faces on them of different animals that some people have interpreted as perhaps even like a space suit, you know? Imagine the helmet, oxygen mask, that kind of thing. Could he have been actually seeing something that was a face but didn't look like a face normally looks, asks Nick Redfern. He's got the best description of a UFO that's anywhere in the Bible because he basically says that the thing looked like a wheel within a wheel, a kind of classic flying saucer description. Asbury Downing, who's pastor emeritus of North Minster Presbyterian Church PCUSA and who in his 1968 book, The Bible and Flying Saucers, stated that Jesus was an extraterrestrial sent to earth to rid the world of sin and wickedness who left us in his quote ascension in a flying saucer to another planet or perhaps another spatial dimension. It's basically the account of a guy who's been abducted and who's been told certain things and who's then to return to the place of origin. It would be what we today would describe as an abduction account concludes the late Philip Coppins in this interpretation that will become one of the most repeated attempts to use the Bible in the series that has become one of the most popular ideas found among ufologists, because anytime you can get the Bible on your side, you've got Gravitas and God behind your claim. Now, it is important to watch all TV, but especially shows like this, when they start talking about the Bible with an eye on good exegesis. They get the location of the Kibar Canal wrong. It's in Babylon in Iraq, not in Syria. They oversimplify and mislead on the meaning of kashmal, which simply means glowing or radiant, but not necessarily metal. Nothing is actually said to land anywhere in the text. The creatures are not said to disembark from the craft. There is no language at all of being abducted or of a craft lifting Ezekiel into the sky. Rather, this is a vision. It all seems a deliberate imposition of a modern framework of ancient aliens onto an ancient text. Enter Dr. Michael Heiser. Believe it or not, and you know that many of you know that I know a lot about him and I came to know him personally, but the very first thing that I actually saw from him upon researching who he was way back in 2009 when I first discovered him as I was preaching through Exodus was a talk on Ezekiel 1 that he gave at Roswell, New Mexico at a UFO conference. perhaps a half a dozen years before that. Heizer had coined a term called paleobabel. It's a great word. It's something like speculative, unfounded, or nonsensical theories about the ancient world, often involving extraterrestrial or fringe historical claims, that lack rigorous evidence or scholarly support. And he saw the idea that Ezekiel 1 depicted a UFO as precisely that. So today, we will use this paleobabel as a contemporary, relevant, and influential backdrop as we try to understand the bizarre vision that is before us. So, we just started Ezekiel last week. We read the first 11 chapters. Today we're in Ezekiel 1, verses 4 through 28. And they present us with one of the most fantastical, bizarre visions, not only of the Bible, but of the entire ancient world, at least to the modern reader. Keep that in mind, okay? Having been deported from Israel with King Jehoiachin, the grandson of Josiah, in 597 BC, Ezekiel is among the exiles by the Kibar Canal in Babylon. It's five years later and a thousand mile march from Jerusalem, where its temple still stands for another six years or so, and the nation is being ruled by the 20th and final king of Judah, Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, back in Israel. The vision Ezekiel sees in Babylon presents us with the famous Merkabah, This is the Hebrew word used in places like 1 Chronicles 28-18 for the golden chariots of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered the Ark of the Covenant. It's worth noting at the start of this sermon that the Mishnah gives us a warning about reading and discussing this very chapter. It says, one may not expound the topic of forbidden sexual relations before three or more individuals, nor may one expound the act of creation and the secrets of the beginning of the world before two or more individuals, nor may one expound by oneself the design of the divine chariot, a mystical teaching with regard to the ways God conducts the world unless he is wise and understands most matters on his own. Now thankfully, I'm closing in on double Ezekiel's age. I don't know if I should say thankfully. I should maybe put that later. And I think I have a pretty good grasp of what's going on, or at least I have a better grasp than ancient alien theorists. So that said, let's get a little more context of our chapter before we dive in. Chapter one makes up the first chapter of the 11, verse 11, that form the first of a giant chiasm of the book where it unfolds back in on itself. And it begins in, it ends in a restored temple and therefore it begins, and this is very important to seeing and understanding what we're looking at properly, it begins in a temple, And curiously, the very center of Ezekiel, as we saw last week, is the judgment on the fallen cherub in chapter 28. Now second thing, these first 11 chapters are loosely chiastic, or at the very least a kind of ring composition, where we may not see exact matches throughout the pairs, but certainly it does circle back to the beginning with a kind of a latch that hooks it all together. And the very center of these 11 chapters isn't until chapters 8 and 9 with the abominations and judgment. But when you read these 11 chapters, this is why you see the vision of Ezekiel 1 lining up with the very same descriptions in chapters 10 and 11. Something I will mention a couple of times today as we look just for a moment at a couple of places in those later chapters. And besides all the judgment that follows the opening chapter's vision, perhaps the most significant element in the storyline is how God's glory, the glory of the Lord, An image of both the Holy Spirit and the Son of God are at first at the temple's threshold, and then they get up and move to the east gate, and then they move outside the city to the mountain to the east, which shows, as we move through these 11 chapters, that God is abandoning his house temple. And it's only when you come to chapter 43 that you see that the glory of the Lord returns to his temple. Now let's zero in a little bit more. That was the first 11 chapters. The first three chapters technically form the first literary unit of the book. And it's also chiastic, probably more so than any other section we're looking at. And it actually centers on Isaiah eating the scroll or internalizing the word of God that he's going to have to then give to the people, which as we saw last week is terrifying. And then fourth, I think incredibly, this chapter itself is also loosely chiastic, but delving into this one gets extremely complex for my brain. It's probably better to call it also a ring composition because it doesn't strictly follow a perfect chiasm, nevertheless, to have so many of these structures woven, one inside the other, like Russian nesting dolls, is rather startling, and I have no idea how someone could go about doing that. The center of our passage today is the wheels that are guided by the Spirit. Now, as we move into the text and we try to figure out exactly what is going on in this fantastical vision, I'm going to give you a simple outline that will help you think about what Ezekiel sees. It's five parts. It begins with an approaching storm, then he sees four living creatures. Then he sees wheels beside the creatures, and then he sees a firmament above with sound, and then finally he sees a throne with a divine figure like a man sitting on it. So let's go through these five. First is the approaching storm, it's only verse four. 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. That's how the story begins. On October 5th, 2017, during a photo op with senior military leaders and their spouses in the state dining room, President Trump told reporters the now infamous words, maybe this is the calm before the storm. What storm, Mr. President? He said, you'll find out. Have we found out? Trump likely had in mind a political storm but what kind of a storm is Ezekiel seeing on the horizon? So notice the storm comes from the north. This is the direction of evil in the Bible. Everything evil comes from the north. The rebellion of Jeroboam, the north. The abominations of the tribe of Dan, the north. Mount Hermon and the Watchers, the north. Baal's mountain outside of Israel, the word actually means north, comes from the north. Nearly all invading armies come from the north. So you think, well, maybe this will be a political storm. And yet, as soon as you compare this language of a storm and a great cloud of fire forth flashing to that of the other passages in the Bible that sound the same, it's completely obvious what he's about to see. For example, God came to Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 in a stormy wind of fire and cloud. God came to Job out of the whirlwind of storm with clouds and lightning implied. The psalmist in Psalm 18 depicts God's descending with dark clouds, thunder, lightning, and fire. You get the point? Anyone who knows their Old Testaments knows that this storm language is the language of an appearance of God. But suddenly it says, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal, Now, this is the first place that ancient alien theorists run to for their UFO. See, he saw a gleaming metal, a UFO. Well, no, he didn't actually. It says, as it were. That's a compound word from the preposition ki and ayin means to look. Ki means like or as. In other words, it looked like metal. One popular lexicon says about this word for metal, the exact etymology is dubious, but it's something like amber, and supposed by most to be a brilliant amalgam of gold and silver. Now, do you know what amber is? It's not metal. It's a tree resin. It's describing its appearance, not its substance. This isn't a metal ship at all. We move quickly to the second thing Ezekiel sees. Verses five through nine. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. See, the ancient alien theorist says, aliens, E.T., space invaders. The ship has landed and out they come like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Well, maybe we should keep reading. That's always a good idea. This was their appearance. They had a human likeness, but each had four faces and each of them had four wings. Now it's interesting that I've never heard any alien sightings in the UFO world describe any of the creatures they see as having four faces. There's lots of gray faces or bug-eyed faces or even reptilian faces, but they never see four faces. Notice they had a human likeness, so they were like humans, but they weren't humans, but they had four faces. But it wasn't like they had four faces, they had four faces. Verse seven, their legs were straight and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot, and they sparkled like burnished bronze. The description is not of a shoe, but of the sole of a foot. It wasn't a human foot with an arch in the bottom. It was like the hard, flat, concave underside of a bovine's foot. Keep the idea of calf's feet in mind. We will return to this a little later. Verse eight and nine, under their wings on the four sides they had human hands and the four had their faces in their wings thus, their wings touched one another. Now this is a vague and yet kind of bizarre description to me. Does it mean that they had human hands on all four sides or just one under the set of wings? When you go and look at iconography from ancient Babylon, they actually depict what we're seeing and it's very doubtful that they ever show one creature with more than one set of hands. So that's what it seems to be. Next it says, each of them went straight forward without turning as they went. See, it's spinning as it flies, says the experts on the TV show. Well, now wait a minute. You can't say that they landed and out came the aliens and then called the aliens themselves a spaceship. That doesn't work. But more than that, nothing is even spinning here, is it? Since the creatures are connected at the wings, and as we will see, they each have a different direction, they move together as one without having to turn to the front. There is no front. It's like a Borg cube fighting the Enterprise. The Enterprise has to turn around and flee, but the cube, since it has no front, just goes any direction it wants to without turning. Think of four cars all welded together so that each one faces out at a 90 degree angle from the next. There is no front, so they can move forward together in any direction. And then next comes the all important description in verse 10. As for the likeness of the faces, each had a human face, and the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle, such were their faces. Well, that's clearly talking about spaceship helmet with four-sided representations on it, we are told earlier. Now, Nick Redfern, I've read some of his books. He usually is a lot more careful about his words than this. This is just plain bizarre. In an obvious case of reading a modern idea into an ancient text, it's never a good idea, as this is making it say what you want it to mean, not what it actually means or meant to the original audience. So why these four faces, a human, lion, ox, and eagle? We're gonna spend a little bit of time on this, but I won't get into everything that we could get into. Maybe we'll have some fun in Sunday school, we'll see. It's gonna take some unpacking though. Here's one of those places where we should go to chapter 10, which describes the exact same scene, but with slightly different language. 10.14 says, and every one had four faces. The first was the face of the cherub, the second the face was human, the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. So there's three of them that are the same, but the ox is replaced by the cherub. A cherub is a guardian angel. Not a personal guardian, but like those who guarded, for example, the Gate of Eden. They're usually depicted as guarding a throne in the same way that the winged Uri or flying cobras and lions on the arm of King Tut's throne guarded the pharaoh in the iconography of that throne. So why does it change? Well, in Babylon, where Ezekiel is, they had a creature called a Lamassu. Now you've probably seen them in the news as in 2014 ISIS terrorists destroyed many of them in the ancient city of Nimrud. These are heavenly guardian beings and they made huge stone carvings. of them to protect their temples and their throne rooms. These Lamassu had the faces of men, wings of eagles, and the bodies of either lions or bulls. And guess what? That's the same four creatures that we see here. This is no coincidence. Why? Well, to understand that, you need to know that the greatest astronomers in the ancient world were, guess who? The Babylonians. In fact, Daniel, the contemporary of Ezekiel, became their chief for a time. In their astronomy and their astrology, they called what we today call Leo, they called it the lion. They called Taurus the heavenly bull. They called Aquarius either the great one or the fish man. And they called Scorpio the scorpion. And yes, that comes to us from Babylon, not Greece. These four are what they call the fixed constellations because they arise in the middle of all four seasons offering a kind of guardianship over time and space in the way that God designed them to be for signs and seasons. So there's a parallel between the visible heavens with the constellations and the invisible supernatural realm. This is a deliberate creation of God to give us object lessons that we can see that will teach us about invisible realities that we can't see. But here the obvious question about the eagle versus the scorpion arises. If it's really that close of an analog, why the difference? Well, there's a couple of possible answers which take us to the next verse, verse 11. And their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another while the two covered their bodies. Okay, so you have four wings, one set's connected to the next creature on either side while they cover their bodies with the other set. Now, what are wings associated with? With birds, but also with heavenly counterparts, right? Flying angelic creatures such as seraphim or cherubim. Now while Scorpio was always a scorpion, Babylon did associate some of the stars in Scorpio's claws with birds and the very nearby constellation Aquila is in fact an eagle. So it's likely then that both the Babylonians and Ezekiel depicted the eagle because it better suits the iconography of a heavenly supernatural flying guardian. In fact, in Ezekiel 10, he simply calls these living creatures cherubim, which are throne guardians with wings. So a scorpion is associated with earth and death, not to mention the goddess Ishara, which a priest of Yahweh would never want to associate with. So it just isn't suitable for that, but an eagle is. So let me sum up this. We somehow have a connection here between the living creatures that Ezekiel sees and the fixed heavenly constellations in the night sky. I think that relationship is one of a mirror. God made the visible heavens to be an observable mirror of what things are like in the invisible realm. This will have more importance as we continue before we finally move to understanding the fullness of what Ezekiel is seeing. So let's go to verse 12. And each went straight forward wherever the spirit would go, they went without turning as they went. Okay, so this verse tells you that they are moving. Notice it's the creatures that are moving, not a spaceship, but living creatures. The only living creature spaceship that I know about is the one that went into the black hole in Event Horizon and came back as a sentient evil living ship that killed its crew. And that's a horror movie. It isn't real. Even more important, they're not being propelled around by an engine in a steering wheel, or by some kind of flammable fuel that lights up. They follow the spirit. Wherever it or he goes, they follow. The spirit here seems to be an external source that they follow. And they move any direction they need, without spinning, of their own will, without any effort whatsoever. You complete the description of these creatures in verses 13 and 14. As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning, and the living creatures darted to and fro like the appearance of a flash of lightning. So again, notice, it's the creatures that are like coals of fire, not a spaceship. It must have been a terrifying experience to see this, one that I think had to equal the terrifying message that Ezekiel is about to be given in the coming chapters. Let's move to the third thing, which is the wheels beside the creatures, verses 15 to 21. This is where the ancient alien crowd really starts seeing things that aren't there. 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. So you have four living creatures, each with four heads, now appear next to four wheels. Now that's strange. If you were an ancient alien theorist, you would likely say that these four wheels are four UFOs and that the living creatures each had their own spaceship to come down and talk to or abduct Ezekiel. But let's keep reading. As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction, the appearance was like the gleaming of Beryl. Now again, beryl is a mineral. It's not a metal. In its pure form, it's colorless, but it can be blue, green, or just about anything, depending on the trace minerals that are in it. The point is that it was gleaming and brilliant and looking like maybe an LED-lit crystal. Now maybe I shouldn't have said that because an ancient alien person might misquote this, describing the windows or the lights of the spacecraft. Let's keep reading, and the four have the same likeness, their appearance and construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel. Bizarre imagery. What in the world might it have looked like? Is it talking about high alien tech that Ezekiel was seeing from another planet? Or is there something else going on here? Now, some art depicts this much like a gyroscope with a spinning device. It's a spinning device with nested rotating rings inside of it that maintain the stability and allow for multidirectional movement. That's possible, I suppose, but because we've been discussing the stars, there's a curious thing that if you point a camera at the North Pole and then expose the image all night, you end up with the wheels going around in a circle. Wheels within wheels within wheels. And I think that that's more likely what's being depicted. Verse 17, as before, when they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went. And notice here that the wheels are all moving together just like the living creatures, which remember are all attached to one another at the wings, not in four different places. And their rims were all tall and awesome. The rims of all four were full of eyes all around. Eric Von Daniken, who's kind of the pioneer of this, and Giorgio Tsoukalos, who's the dude with the hair, their crowd argued that this is a seemingly inexplicable technology that held Ezekiel spellbound. But John the Apostle gives us a better clue. When speaking about the lamb that was standing as though it had been slain in Revelation, what does he say? He said it had seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent into all the earth. And so that means that eyes are akin to spirits. Now as we learn in Hebrews and Psalms, God makes his angels spirits. And yet angels are also likened to stars in the Bible. In fact, in this very chapter, one Hebrew word is being translated in two different ways. The word for eyes is the word ayin. That's one of the easy ones to remember, because it sounds like an eye. However, this is the same word that's translated in verses four and 16 as sparkling or gleaming. And what do stars do? Remember your nursery rhyme, twinkle, twinkle, little star. And thus, the visible heavens, these eyes, are represented by the rest of the stars that make up the wheels as it spins. In the invisible realm, it mirrors the God who sees all things. Imagine looking up into the night sky in a kind of a vision where time has collapsed and you're able to see the wheel in the sky turning all at once. Tall and awesome rims are a perfect way to represent the majestic sweep of the night sky. How much more whatever these wheels are and are holding in the invisible realm. And just what might that be? Well, we're almost ready to see it. Let's finish verses 19 through 21 quickly. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them. And when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. So we've seen that language before. It's familiar. They moved together. Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went. And the wheels rose along with them. And for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. Somehow the spirit or the will of the living creatures drove the wheels. When those went, these went. When those stood, these stood. When those rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them. For the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. And this scene of wheels within wheels represented by the ever-revolving night sky and the always-at-guard fixed constellations is moving around Ezekiel on the ground and in the air. It's almost too fantastical to imagine what he's seeing, which is probably why ancient aliens people say what they say. See, they're trying to make sense of what is to us inexplicable. Let's move to the fourth thing, the firmament and sound above. This is verses 22 to 25. We begin to get at how the ancients would have understood exactly what's being described in these verses, even though to us, they might be completely unfamiliar, especially if we don't know those more boring parts of the Old Testament. So what do I mean? Well, let's keep reading. The fourth of the five points Begins this way, over the heads of the living creatures, there was the likeness of an expanse, shining like awe-inspiring crystal, spread out above their heads. So as Ezekiel's gaze moves upward, he sees this incredible sight. To the ancient aliens crowd, this sounds like the gleaming hull of a spaceship, high-tech canopy of extraterrestrial pilots. But let's look closer. The Hebrew word for expanse is the word rakia. It's the same word as the firmament in Genesis 1, the dome of the sky where God sets the stars. Picture the night sky over Babylon, twinkling like crystal, with stars hammered into place like jewels in a vault, as Job in the same text that talks about angels as stars says they are hard as molten mirror. Now, when you think of that, he's not speaking literally. It's a metaphor that's actually teaching you something theological. The expanse isn't about aliens landing in Babylon, it's a vision of God's cosmic order, the canvas of God's omnipresent glory. It's a hint that his presence is bigger than any temple reaching the exiles by the Kibar Canal. This is a tremendously important thought and one that we will come back to at the end. Ezekiel's vision is inviting you to lift your eyes to the God whose glory shines through all the heavens. The next two verses, under the expanse, their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another, and each creature had two wings covering its body. And when they went, I heard the sound of the wings, like the sound of many waters, like the sound of the Almighty, a sound of tumult, like the sound of an army. When they stood still, they let down their wings. Now to me, this is a goosebump, hair-raising, spine-tingling moment in the vision. It marks a very sudden shift. Unexpectedly, as they begin to move, the displaced air created by their massive wings begins to sound like a colossal waterfall. It was likely so loud that Ezekiel couldn't have heard himself talk. But then the metaphor changes abruptly. It isn't just waters. It's like the sound of the Almighty himself. Somehow God's voice is in the air, and it is louder than the loudest concert, bolder than a parent's rebuke of a child, and authoritative like that of a general commanding an army. For it was indeed like the sound of an army. Friend, this is not a UFO come to abduct poor unsuspecting Ezekiel. This is the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the heavenly armies coming with his legions to the prophet Ezekiel. Suddenly they stop. All is still. There's a kind of hush all over the world. The sound of silence. At that moment, there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads. And for dramatic effect, the prophet repeats what he said, when they stood still, they let down their wings. It reminds me of something like the armies of Mao, so disciplined, so perfectly aligned in marching order, as they're paraded before the people and suddenly they stop. scenes of 10,000 stormtroopers in Star Wars, or the hosts of our orcs at Isengard when Grima Wormtongue exasperatingly exclaims to Saruman, my lord, there is no such force, only to suddenly gaze over the edge of the tower to the sounds of blasting horns and perfectly aligned fields of armies of orcs below, awaiting the command of the wizard, and Wormtongue begins to cry. And then the vision reaches its climax. And above the expanse, over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne in appearance like sapphire. And seated above the likeness of the throne was a likeness with a human appearance. I want you to imagine Ezekiel gazing into that vault of heaven at night. In the far north, in the constellations where the storm came from, he would see Cephas. This is the constellation of a king on a throne with the stars circling around the pole like wheels within wheels. Below, the four fixed constellations, Leo the lion, Taurus the bull, Aquarius the man, and the eagle near Scorpio, sound like sentinels guarding the throne of Cephas, which they perfectly encircle. These starry guardians mirror the four living creatures with their faces of a lion, ox, human, and eagle, moving as one under the expanse. The Babylonians saw these as cosmic protectors, but Ezekiel sees more. He sees a visible mirror of the invisible realm, where God's cherubim uphold his throne. The idea of Cephas, the constellation, is an analogy of what he could have seen at first is not far off, but suddenly the seer's gaze beholds the likeness of a different throne, shining like sapphire, brilliant, fiery, and translucent. But wait, a throne? I thought Ezekiel was seeing a UFO. Nobody calls even the main seat on a spaceship a throne. Captain Kirk's seat was a helm, the captain's chair. These seats are pilots' consoles or cons, not thrones. Thrones are what kings sit on, and they sit on them in their palaces and their temples. Remember how I told you to keep the large chiasm of the book in mind, how Ezekiel ends and therefore begins in a temple? Well, now you're ready to finally understand why. At just this point, I want to return to some of the imagery we've been looking at from a biblical perspective. If only ancient alien theorists cared to look at the rest of the Bible. The whole vision is stock language for a royal chariot thrown straight out of the Bible's temple imagery. Heizer, who called UFO talk in this chapter, Paleobabel, shows us how every piece of this vision mirrors Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. Now you see why we read those? stories for the law today. Let's retrace our steps quick and clear to see what Ezekiel is really describing. You have a storm in the fire, right? Ezekiel saw a stormy wind, a great cloud, and fire flashing forth. This isn't rocket exhaust. It isn't a political storm. It's God's storm theophany, like at Sinai, marking that he has come. In the temple, God's presence was marked by a cloud and by fire, filling the holy place when Solomon dedicated it. This is God showing up, not a spacecraft blasting off, and this will become important later because Ezekiel will see the glory cloud departing this very temple in just a few short chapters. Next you have the four living creatures. These cherubim with these human, lion, ox, eagle faces and four wings and bovine feet aren't aliens in spacesuits. They're throne guardians, just like the heavenly analog of the fixed constellations and just like the four cherubim in Solomon's temple. You go, wait, four cherubim in Solomon's temple? Yes. Two giant cherubim stood in the Holy of Holies, their wings touching wall to wall, and two more were on the Ark of the Covenant's lid. They were carved as lions, oxen, and cherubim on decorated temple panels. And amazingly, the Ark of the Covenant isn't just a box. It's actually a divine throne. The throne that God, who sits enthroned above the cherubim, sits on. And who sits there, more specifically, the angel man of Exodus 15, who spoke face to face with Moses. Friends, when you come to realize that there are analogs in the ancient Near East, with things called divine chariots, that depicts four wheels that have calf legs on them. Remember, I said remember those legs and feet that Ezekiel saw? They have winged creatures at the four corners whose wings all touch each other, and that these platforms carried the king. Then you start to get the picture of what's going on when God made poles of acacia wood to carry the ark, and why it was that God was so upset when they were carrying the ark of the covenant on an oxen cart when Uzzah touched it and died. This is the king's throne, and they're treating it like a beat-up pickup truck hauling scrap to the junkyard. Ezekiel saw heavenly cherubim, not E.T. In Ezekiel's vision, the wheels and creatures are attached and moving at once because they are God's chariot throne, made up of creatures who then carry God effectively on their backs. You have wheels within wheels. These things gleaming like beryl with eyes on their rims aren't UFO landing gear. The temple had ten bronze stands for basins. Remember, we read that? Each with four wheels, axles, and panels, carved with cherubim, lions, and oxen. These wheels are like chariot wheels, part of the temple's mobile furnishings. The eyes echo the temple's all-seeing God, like the seven eyes of the Lamb in Revelation 5. Ezekiel's wheels move with the cherubim, powered by the Spirit, not by spaceship fuel. We saw the expanse like crystal. The shining expanse above the cherubim isn't UFO's hole. The expanse mirrors the firmament in Genesis 1, a starry vault where God's glory shines. But the temple reflected this in its cosmic ceiling. Like the sea of cast metal in the temple courtyard, a huge basin on 12 oxen symbolizing the heavens. In the temple, this was the boundary between God's presence and the world below. And then finally, the throne-like sapphire isn't Captain Kirk's helm, it's God's seat, symbolized in the ark's lid with two cherubim. In Solomon's temple, the ark was God's footstool under the cherubim's wings. But the whole setup is called, in 1 Chronicles 28, 18, a golden chariot of the cherubim. That's the Hebrew word Merkabah, the throne chariot. The same word used for thousands of years by Jews to describe Ezekiel's vision. The sapphire echoes Exodus 24 when Moses saw God's throne like sapphire on Mount Sinai. This is a king's mobile throne, not a pilot's console. The temple tabernacle, they were to be carefully created exactly as God directed because they are reflecting the invisible realm. And if they made it wrong, you'd get the wrong idea of what that realm is like. Now every Jew in Babylon would have known this from their scripture, from their temple, and even from Babylonian throne art. Just because we aren't familiar enough with the rest of the Bible, it doesn't give us permission to run with ancient alien UFO theories in Ezekiel 1. If we moderns, it's we who have the problem, not the ancients. This is one of the greatest, most fantastical visions in the Bible of God's glory ruling over all of creation. And this takes us to the last two verses, and they are truly incredible. Remember, we've just seen that the ones seated on the throne have the likeness of a human appearance. And it says now, 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. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord, and when I saw it, I fell on my face and I heard the voice of one speaking." It is the king who is gleaming, not a UFO. And he has the appearance of a man, not a space alien. And his appearance is one of great glory. Who is this king of glory, says the psalm? This is the king of the universe, shining on his throne chariot. But can we be more specific? Yes, praise Jesus. Who is this king of glory? what Ezekiel actually calls, look at verse 28, the glory of the Lord. A human-like form radiating fire and rainbow light, or as Heizer puts it, God in human form. It's the same glory Moses saw on Sinai. Same glory later in the cloud in the tabernacle. The same glory John sees in Revelation 10 with a rainbow around him on a throne. Who is this King of Glory? It is the pre-incarnate Christ. But we on this side of the incarnation know that we have seen the glory of God in the face of the incarnate Christ. What does John say? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. In Revelation 1, verses 13 through 16, John sees Jesus, quote, one like a son of man, with a face like the sun, eyes of fire, and a voice like many waters, all borrowing images straight from Ezekiel's fiery, radiant figure. This is Jesus, the eternal son, ruler from the throne before he ever walked in Galilee. Now what does this matter? The exiles in Babylon felt abandoned, a thousand miles from Jerusalem's temple, thinking God was stuck back in Judah. As Boney M, taking their cue from Psalm 137, lamented, by the rivers of Babylon there we sat down. Yeah, we wept when we remembered Zion. But this vision of Ezekiel screams, God is not tied to a building. and he never has been. What is this house that you would build for me and what is the place of my rest? Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool, Isaiah 66, 1. Suddenly, God's throne chariot rolls into Babylon. Think of it. the center of all politics on earth, the greatest empire in the world, Nebuchadnezzar, king of kings, as he's called in the Bible. But here in this vision, God is showing that he is king over every corner of the earth from Zion to the Kibar Canal. Unlike the Babylonian gods like Marduk, stuck in their temples and in their idols, unable to move around, only Christ, the true God, reigns everywhere, unbound. Heizer nails it. God is still in control, no matter where you are or how bad it gets. For the exiles, this was hope. Their God sees them, knows their pain, and rules over their future. For Christians, we know their God is our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. As I asked at the beginning of last week's sermon, life can feel like exile, loss, fear, and chaos, especially in times like we're living in post-2020, where it doesn't seem to settle down, does it? Many people have suffered. More suffering is on the way. Many doubt and despair and do not know where to turn. But Christ, the radiant King on the throne, is with you, not locked up in a temple or a church or a city or a nation. Look to him through this vision and believe. He is sovereign over every storm, every nation, and every moment. Ancient alien theorists think they have a great story. 26, 36 million people watch it. It's drivel compared to the real story. No UFO could compare to the glory of Jesus who left this throne to come down to us to die for you and rise to reign forever. Lift your eyes to him, the true Lord of hosts, whom Ezekiel saw by the Kibar River in Babylon. Lord, I pray that you would use your word powerfully in the lives of all who hear it today, that they might get a glimpse for the true reality of what you are like. And we need this, especially as we go into Ezekiel as a church together, to get a true glimpse of God. A church is so full of people that have created God in their image. And a mamby-pamby, hippy-dippy Jesus is not what Ezekiel sees. He sees the King of Glory terrifying like the sound of many waters, like the sound of an army speaking to him, terrifying him with these images from the otherworldly realm that we can only barely begin to glimpse by looking up at the night sky and understanding what it depicts for us. I can't even imagine what you showed your prophet. I think he needed it based on what we're going to see that he had to deliver as a message to the people. We need it today as well. We need to know that you are in control and sovereign over all things and that you are everywhere. You control all corners of this earth. You control our own houses and our own thoughts and our own minds. And I would pray that you might sovereignly plant your word like a seed into the hearts and minds of every person who's here who's heard this. And that you might water that seed and cause it to grow up to become a great plant that would be brought into the vine of Christ and that people might come to know how glorious of a Savior this truly is that we've come to worship today. We ask you would be with us for the rest of our time in our worship service until you dismiss us in Christ's name, amen.