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the God of Israel had gone up
from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house
and he called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing
case at his waist then I looked and behold on the expanse that
was over the heads of the cherubim there appeared above them something
like a sapphire in appearance like a throne and he said to
the man clothed in linen going among the whirling wheels underneath
the cherubim fill your hands with burning coals from between
the cherubim and scatter them over the city. And he went in
before my eyes. Now the cherubim were standing
on the south side of the house when the man went in, and a cloud
filled the inner court. And the glory of the Lord went
up from the cherub to the threshold of the house, and the house was
filled with the cloud. And the court was filled with
the brightness of the glory of the Lord. Then the glory of the
Lord went out from the threshold of the house and stood over the
cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up
from the earth before my eyes as they went out with the wheels
beside them. And they stood at the entrance
of the east gate of the house of the Lord. And the glory of
the God of Israel was over them. Then the Spirit lifted me up
and brought me to the east gate of the house of the Lord, which
faces east. And behold, at the entrance of the gateway there
were twenty-five men, and I saw among them Jazaniah, the son
of Azur, and Pelletiah, the son of Benaiah, princes of the people.
And he said to me, These are the men who devise iniquity.
and who give wicked counsel in the city, they say, the time
is not near to build houses. The city is a cauldron and we
are the meat. Therefore, prophesy against them,
prophesy, O son of man. And the spirit of the Lord fell
upon me and he said to me, say, thus says the Lord. So you think,
O house of Israel, for I know the things that have come into
your mind. You have multiplied your slain in the city and have
filled its streets with the slain. Therefore, thus says the Lord
God, your slain whom you have laid in the midst of it They
are the meat, and this city is the cauldron, but you shall be
brought out of the midst of it. You have feared the sword, and
I will bring the sword upon you, declares the Lord, and I will
bring you out of the midst of it and give you into the hands
of foreigners and execute judgments upon you. You shall fall by the
sword. I will judge you at the border
of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord. This city
shall not be your cauldron, nor shall you be the meat in the
midst of it. I will judge you at the border of Israel, and
you shall know that I am the Lord. For you have not walked
in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules, but have acted according
to the rules of the nations around you. And it came to pass while
I was prophesying that Pelletiah the son of Benaiah died. Then
I fell down on my face and cried out with a loud voice and said,
Oh, Lord God, will you make a full into the remnant of Israel? Then
the cherubim lifted up their wings with the wheels beside
them and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. And
the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and
stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city.
We're called to examine ourselves when we hear all of them are
those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, Go far
from the Lord. To us, this land is given for
a possession. Therefore say, thus says the
Lord God, though I removed them far off among the nations, and
though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been
a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have
gone. Therefore say, thus says the Lord God, I will gather you
from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where
you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
And when they come here, they will remove from all its detestable
things and all the abominations. And I will give them one heart
and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart
of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that
they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.
And they shall be my people and I will be their God. Let's pray
together. Lord, you gave I just want to
get right into it. I have a lot to do today, because
last week I did, what, nine verses? And today, it's like 50. So,
lots to talk about, and it's an absolutely fascinating, important
passage. This is one of those that if
somebody's going to preach from Ezekiel 1 sermon, it might very
well be on these two chapters. So, it's the first day of the
first month. It's roughly March, April. For us, it corresponds
to January 1st. And God commanded Moses to dedicate
the tabernacle that the people had just finished designing.
This is in Exodus 40. With all of its amazing architectural
features and the anointing of the priest, Moses does exactly
what the Lord commands. And then we read this. The cloud
covered the tent of meeting. And the glory of the Lord filled
the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter
the tent of meeting because the clouds settled on it. And the
glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their
journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle,
the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not
taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was
taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by
day, and fire was in it by night in the sight of all the house
of Israel throughout all their journeys." And that's how Exodus
ends. Earlier in that book, God had
told Moses, you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the
ark of the covenant. and in the ark you shall put
the testimony that I shall give you, that's the Ten Commandments,
and there I will meet with you from above the mercy seat, from
between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony,
and I will speak with you about all of what I have commanded
for the people of Israel. And so from this, we learn that
the glory that filled the tabernacle was particularly localized inside
the most holy place, just above the Ark of the Covenant, which
was designed to be a king's throne. In other words, God has now come
to sit on his throne. That's the imagery of the glory
coming down in the cloud, filling the tabernacle. Now I want you
to fast forward many years. to the days of Samuel after all
the other judges of Israel had come and gone. And we're in the
days of Eli who served as the priest of God. It was this Eli
who Samuel went to again and again when he heard that voice
calling his name when he was near the ark when he was a lad.
Eli was old and blind and fat in those days. And there was
a war between Israel and the Philistines. And the Philistines
defeated Israel, prompting them to ask, why has the Lord defeated
us today? And so they said, let's bring
the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it
may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies. They were not using God as a
deity that they believed in by faith. They were using the Ark,
and they were using it as a talisman. So the people went and they fetched
it, as it says, the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of Hosts,
who is enthroned on the cherubim that is over the actual Ark because
it's his seat. Now when the Ark was seen in
the camp, the Israelites let up a great shout so that all
the earth shook and the Philistines then learned of what happened
and they were afraid. And they said a God has come
into the camp. And they knew it was the gods
who struck down the Egyptians and they were very afraid. But
they roused their courage and they fought and Israel was defeated. 30,000 foot soldiers were killed. And it says the Philistines took
the Ark of God and they captured the two sons of Eli, killing
them. Now a man of Benjamin ran from
the battle, and he came to Shiloh, where he met Eli, sitting on
his seat by the side of the road, watching and trembling for the
return of the ark. But the man came and delivered
devastating news. He said, Israel has fled before
the Philistines, and there also has been a great defeat among
the people. Your two sons are dead. and the Ark of God has
been captured. And as soon as Eli heard the
news, he fell over backward on his chair and he died. Now his
daughter-in-law, the wife of his now dead son Phineas, she
was pregnant and she was about to give birth. And when she heard
the news that the Ark of God was captured and that her husband
and father-in-law were dead, she bowed and gave birth immediately
and she said, As she was about to die, Ichabod, and she pointed
at the boy, saying, the glory has departed from Israel because
the ark of God had been captured and her family was dead. Now,
providentially through a series of unfortunate events for the
Philistines, but rather funny things for the Jews, the ark
was returned just a couple of chapters later and the glory
was back. Now the returning of the glory
of Israel is later cemented in the event that mirrors the glory
coming in the tabernacle. So now we move to the days of
Solomon. And so we read right after Solomon, like Moses, finished
all the preparations for his temple, which was now the permanent
depiction of the tabernacle that Solomon assembled the elders
of Israel and, quote, brought up the Ark of the Covenant of
the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion. Everyone assembled
in the seventh month and brought up the Ark. They took all the
instruments and they assembled them. And then with a great sacrifice,
they brought the Ark to its place in the inner sanctuary of the
house in the most holy place underneath the wings of the cherubim.
And it says, when the celebration was over, When the priest came
out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord
so that the priest could not stand to minister because of
the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled
the house of the Lord. Now today, Ezekiel 10 through
11, we are going to see a most unsettling thing. The glory which
descended upon the tabernacle and then the temple will in a
very calculated and visual movement leave. This would have been devastating
and terrifying for the Jews to come to grips with. But before
we get into that story and its implications, I want to talk
to you about the glory of the Lord. What is the glory of God? Well, to put it most directly
as I can, the glory of God is God. Maybe a little more precisely,
though, the glory of God is God's covenantal presence, visibly
manifesting his holy majesty and merciful commitment to dwell
with and judge his people. It is a triune glory. Paul calls
the Father in Ephesians 1, the Father of glory. Stephen calls
Jesus in Acts 7, the glory of God, that is Jesus. And Peter
calls the Spirit, the Spirit of glory and of God. And hence
we sing in the Gloria Patri, every week, glory be to the Father
and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, because the glory is triune. Glory in the Hebrew is the word
kavod, It derives from a root word that means weighty or heavy. The Greek equivalent is doxa. It's where we get our word doxology
from. So when you sing about the doxology
at the end of the service, you're singing about God's glory as
well as when you do it in the Gloria Patri. Now in classical
Greek, doxa means reputation. God's glory, that is his reputation
or his weightiness, is perceived in his works. And that's exactly
what we sang in hymn number two in Psalm 145 this morning. The
creation of the world is God's works, the creation of human
beings or of historical events, which include the restoration
and judgment of things. This is God's glory. Who else can do these things?
It's also perceived in His persons, especially in the Son and the
Spirit, who manifest and they mediate the glory of the Father
to the creation. See, the Father is the source
of all glory, enthroned in transcendence with His majesty revealed through
the Spirit's presence. And the Spirit is often visible
through phenomenon like a radiant cloud or a fire or a storm or
even a bird hovering. And it's mediated or embodied
by the form of one like a man, whether he's an angel man in
the Old Testament or a human Jesus in the New Testament. It's almost always in a covenantal
context where God is coming to his people to engage in a relationship
with them through a covenant. Now the idea of the glory first
appears even in the second verse of the Bible, when it says the
earth was without form and void and the spirit of God was hovering
over the face of the waters. Like some kind of a radiant glory
cloud or a glory bird, the Targum is translated as a wind or a
spirit of mercy. Now this directly parallels a
passage in Moses where he uses two of these words found here,
the word tohu, you've heard of tohu and bohu without form and
void, and the word rahab for hovering. He only uses these
words in two places in all of his writing in the first five
books, and the other time is found in Deuteronomy 32. It says
he found Israel in a desert land in a
howling waste in the Tohu of the wilderness. He encircled
him. He cared for him like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and flutters over its young. The Lord alone guided him. And
this in turn directly evokes the pillar of cloud and fire
in Exodus. For example, Exodus 13, 21 and
22, it says, the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud
to lead them along the way and by night in a pillar of fire
to give them light that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day, the
pillar of fire by night did not depart from them. That's how
the Lord led them. Now like the bird image, the
pillars hover over the people with God's covenant glory presence,
just like we see in Genesis 1-2. So where's the glory there? Well,
you see, Exodus 16-10 says, behold, the glory of the Lord appeared
in the cloud. The meaning is that the Father's
glory appeared both as the Spirit's presence as a cloud and fire
and as the angel who is in the cloud. As it says, then the angel
of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went
behind them. And the pillar of the cloud moved
from before them and stood behind them, coming between the camp
of Egypt and the camp of Israel. Or it says in another place,
the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead
them along the way. And so Isaiah looks at all this
and he says, in all their affliction he was afflicted and the angel
of his presence saved them. and the Spirit of the Lord gave
them rest. You see, the Spirit and the Son
are always working together to manifest the glory of the Father
to God's people. Now, I brought up the Targums
a moment ago because they add a word found in the Aramaic that
you've probably heard of. The word is not found in our
Bible, it's found in the Targums, and the word is shekinah. Have
you all heard of that? comes from a verb shekan, which
is a Hebrew word, and that word means to settle, okay? So shekanah is the settling.
For example, in Exodus 40, Moses was not able to enter the Tent
of Meeting because the cloud had settled on it. And the Targum says, Moses could
not enter the Tent of Meeting because he had made the glory
of the shekanah of the Lord rest on it. And the glory of the Shekinah
of the Lord filled the tabernacle. So the Shekinah is literally
the settling or the dwelling of God in glory in a very particular
place. The Isaiah Targum says in a famous
text, I saw the glory of the Lord resting upon the throne.
And the temple was filled by the brilliance of his glory.
And in his mouth there was a speech which he took before him whose
Shekinah is upon the throne of glory. This Shekinah is really
important to understand. It's a two powers word that was
used to describe the presence of God's word, his Memra. For
example, in Chronicles, at the dedication of the temple, it
has Solomon say, the Lord has chosen to cause his Shekinah
to dwell in the city of Jerusalem in the sanctuary house which
I built for the name of his memra, his word, his logos. And of course,
John picks this up in the gospel on many occasions. For example,
he says that Isaiah saw Christ's glory and spoke of him. And of
course, at the very beginning of the Gospel of John, it says,
we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father,
full of grace and truth, because the word became flesh and dwelt
among us. What is Shekinah? It's the dwelling,
the settling. And so that's the exact idea
that we find going on throughout the Old Testament, except now
Jesus is with us in the flesh. And I know that's a lot of background,
But I think it's vital if you wanna really try and understand
the force of this incredible sight in Ezekiel that I wanna
bring out in these two chapters. Because something happens in
these chapters that began way back in Ezekiel 9, 3. Let me
recall the verse for you. Now the glory of the God of Israel
had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold
of the house. So let's take a very brief tour
of where we have seen the glory in Ezekiel so far. In chapter
one, the glory is found by the Kibar Canal in Babylon. Here
the prophet sees that amazing vision of the wheels. Remember
the four living creatures, one like a son of man whose appearance
is so dazzling and brilliant and terrifying. He calls that
appearance the likeness of the glory of the Lord. So here is
the glory of God in Babylon. Again, in chapter three, the
spirit lifts the prophet up and says, blessed be the glory of
the Lord from this place. Again, the setting is the Kibar
Canal by Babylon. And this becomes explicit in
the third mention in verse 23 of chapter three. Now in Ezekiel
eight, the setting changes. Suddenly the prophet's thrown
into this vision where he sees the glory of the God of Israel
in Jerusalem now, in the temple, in the inner court, near the
altar of the burnt offering. This is the same place that we
see the blurring of the sun and the spirit, which makes sense
because both are the glory of God. And the glory in Jerusalem
is where the glory of God should be, kind of. See, the glory isn't
supposed to be in Babylon, but that will actually become good
news at the end of the sermon. And yet it's vital to see that
the glory in Exodus and Kings rested above the Ark of the Covenant
on the seat inside the most holy place in the temple. But here,
the glory now in chapter nine is not in the temple. The glory
is outside in the courtyard, directly in front of the entrance
to the holy place, near the altar of burnt offering. God has moved
outside of his house because he sees what's been going on
in the gross defilement of his temple. And now he's outside
and he is watching. This is explained in chapter
nine where it says, now the glory of the God of Israel had gone
up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the
house. It's a perfect tense verb. It means that it conveys a completed
action. The action was discussed in the
chapter eight. But it's mentioned here because
we have chapters 8 through 11 that are all one cycle or series
of moves where he's remember Ezekiel goes into the temple
closer and closer to the center. And now the glory is going to
leave the center and he's going to leave the entire place. And
in my opinion, that is what drives Ezekiel 8 through 11 more than
anything else. Now, Having seen that the glory
of God has moved out of the most holy place into the courtyard,
right at the threshold of the entrance of the holy place, and
that he has now seen the abominations Israel has committed, and he's
called for those executioners to begin their judgments on the
temple in the city. We also remember that they were
not allowed to touch those who were given the mark by this man
clothed in linen. And so now we're set for where
we start this morning in chapter 10 verse 1. Then I looked and
behold on the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim,
there appeared above them something like a sapphire in appearance
like a throne. Now we're going to see almost
everything in chapter 10 we've seen before back in chapter 1.
It describes God's heavenly chariot throne, that so-called Merkabah,
which means a chariot. But now instead of that chariot
being in Babylon, it is also here in the temple in Jerusalem. So we continue in verse two,
he said to the man clothed in linen, go in among the whirling
wheels underneath the cherubim, fill your hands with burning
coals from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city.
And he went in before my eyes. So that's the same man who had
just marked all those whose spirits groaned over the evils that were
being committed in the temple. So what's he doing here? You
need to realize it comes in the middle of a judgment scene. So
this is not for purification like we see in Isaiah 6 when
he takes the coals and touches his mouth. These are the coals
of fiery justice pouring down from heaven like the fire and
brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah. It says the cherubim were standing
on the south side of the house when the man went in and a cloud
filled the inner court. So the picture is that of a divine
chariot with its heavenly cherubim guarding the throne, and it now
appears on the south part of the temple courtyard. So it's
gone from the very center to the front of the door, and now
it's moved to the south of the courtyard. It's exactly opposite
that idol of jealousy that was on the north side, remember that?
The cloud filled the inner court is very important to notice,
and it's why we need to understand the relationship of the glory
and the cloud earlier. Because what is happening is
that the glory of God has left the building. It continues, and
it gets more specific in verse four. The glory of the Lord went
up from the cherub to the threshold of the house, and the house was
filled with the cloud, and the court was filled with the brightness
of the glory of the Lord. Now God's presence is very much
here in the temple, but here's the thing, it's no longer hidden
behind the walls or the curtains of the holy place. Rather, it's
right out there in the open. It fills the doorway and the
house with the cloud and the whole court is being brightened
like the sun coming out from behind an eclipse. This happens
to be the very center of a structure in the first seven verses with
the glory moving. And so it's obviously important
And suddenly in verse five, the cloud, the sound of the wings
of the cherubim is heard as far as the outer court, like the
voice of God almighty when he speaks. I think about this as
wings, wings, terrifying, awe-inspiring, the just movement of wings of
these guardian throne cherubim sound like the voice of the almighty
and they're fluttering together all at once. And just then, when
he commanded the man clothed in linen, take the fire from
between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim, and
he went and stood beside the wheel. So, who's commanding this
man in linen? Well, it goes all the way back
to chapter eight, where we saw that it is the Lord. But now,
rather than coals, he's to take fire. And the cherub stretched
out his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was
between the cherubim. And he took some of it, put it
into his hand of the man clothed in linen, who took it and went
out. And then the man and the cherub are working together to
get the fire out and into the city. Now just here it explains
the cherubim appeared to have the form of human hand under
their wings. And that takes us back to verse
8 of chapter 1, and those four living creatures. There's a slight
difference though here, which is that cherubim did not appear
in chapter 1, and now they are mentioned here by name. And a
cherubim is a throne guardian. It's another way of viewing the
living creatures other than the cardinal directions that we saw
before that we see in the zodiac. It's a complementary idea. It's
likely that it changes to a cherubim here because it's associated
with the Ark of the Covenant, which the glory has now left.
Though the Ark is still inside, in the most holy place, the spiritual
throne upon which God sits is now moving. We get more descriptions
from chapter one that start to just fill over and over these
verses. I looked and behold, there were four wheels beside
the cherubim, one beside each cherub, and the appearance of
the wheels was like sparkling beryl. Saw all that back in chapter
one. Verse 10, as for their appearance,
the four had the same likeness. as if a wheel were within a wheel.
Again, it matches chapter one. When they went, they went in
any of the four directions without turning as they went, but in
whatever direction the front wheel faced, the others followed
without turning as they went. Again, chapter one, the parallels
continue. Their whole body, their rims,
their spokes, their wings, the wheels were full of eyes all
around, the wheels that had four of them. This again matches chapter
one. And then you come to verse 13.
It adds one feature that we don't see in chapter one. It says,
as for the wheels, they were called in my hearing the whirring
wheels. In other words, these wheels
are moving because God is mobile. He's not static. He's not confined
to a place like the gods of the nations are with their idols.
The repetition continues in verse 14. Everyone had four faces.
The first face was like the face of a cherub, the second like
a human, the third like a lion, the fourth like an eagle. Now,
this one repeats chapter one, verse 10, except that the cherub
has replaced the ox. That's the only difference. And
somebody might say, well, why? And again, I think it's likely
because in chapter 10, we're in a temple context. with these
cherubim guardians of the Ark of the Covenant, and ox don't
guard the Ark of the Covenant. Back in Babylon, the ox was more
a symbol of power and so it was a more appropriate idea, but
we're still seeing the four living creatures. Now, Ezekiel 10, 15
through 17 also parallel things in chapter one, except that again,
we're in the temple. We're not in Babylon, we're in
Jerusalem. I can't stress how important
that is enough. Ezekiel says as much. The cherubim
mounted up And these were the four living creatures that I
saw by the Kibar Canal. And when the cherubim went up,
the wheels went beside them. And when the cherubim lifted
their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels did not
turn from beside them. And they stood still. And when
they stood still, these stood still. When they mounted up,
these mounted up with them, for the spirit of the living creatures
was in them. So with all this repetition from chapter one,
it might be important to ask, well, why? I think there's several
reasons. The first is that it brings consistency
to the visions. These visions are over a year
apart, and yet it's the exact same thing that Ezekiel sees.
In other words, he really saw it. Second, it reinforces the
triune God in his amazing glory, including the glory, the spirit,
the man, the whole thing. Third, it emphasizes the literary
cohesion of chapters 1 through 11. And fourth, and finally,
it shows that God is mobile and active and on the move, and he's
able to go anywhere that he pleases. Now, this is what now appears
in verse 18. You have to imagine with your
mind this incredible multi-wheeled, four-living creature, cherubim
platform throne thing. that Ezekiel is seeing and it's
now moving. It says, the glory of the Lord
went out from the threshold of the house and stood over the
cherubim. If you just try and imagine,
this is just completely wild language. The glory is standing. It's personified, almost like
it's a divine man figure. In fact, that's what chapter
one told us that it is. This is Christ enshrouded by
the glory cloud mounting his chariot throne. He now has moved
from the threshold away from the entrance of the holy place.
Now to the south where his fantastical chariot awaits him. Says the
cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth
before my eyes as they went out with the wheels beside them and
they stood at the entrance of the east gate at a house of the
Lord and the glory of God was over them. So now the whole throne
moves at the instigation of the cherubim to the entrance of the
east gate. So now it's even farther away
from the central. This is the place that you walk
into the temple. The glory isn't going in, though.
The glory is going out. To tie the whole chapter back
then to chapter one, creating an inclusio, we have the last
three verses of the chapter. These were the living creatures
that I saw underneath the God of Israel by the Kibar Canal. And I knew that they were cherubim.
Each had four faces, each four wings underneath their wings
like the likeness of human hands. And as for the likeness of their
faces, they were the same faces whose appearance I had seen by
the Kibar Canal. Each of them went straight forward.
This thing is now called the God of Israel, the glory man. Now, we've moved very quickly
through chapter 10 because we've seen much of it before. But I
wanted to preach it with chapter 11. So we're only halfway done
with our text today. So moving faster was necessary.
We'll slow down a little bit here. Chapter 11 is gonna take
us to the main reason why God is leaving the temple. He's coming
to send judgment upon it. Daniel Block argues that the
first half of this chapter is written in a genre called prophetic
disputation speech. It's a component, in some ways,
of a covenant lawsuit. This is a genre where the prophet
quotes a particular opinion or a saying, and then he exposes
its falsehood, and then he refutes it with divine truth. The aim
is to correct false beliefs and behaviors with God's truth. So
it begins with the summons and a setting in a kind of a preamble
in verse 1. The Spirit lifted me up, brought
me to the east gate, to the house of the Lord, which faces east.
And behold, at the entrance of the gate there were twenty-five
men, and I saw among them Jazaniah, son of Azur, and Pelletiah, the
son of Benaiah, princes of the people. Okay, so Ezekiel's just
inside the temple complex. He's facing the east gate. He's
very clearly right beside the glory chariot throne. He looks
at the gate and he sees 25 men at the entrance, among whom are
Jazaniah, son of Azura, and Pelletiah, son of Benaiah. They're called
the princes of Israel. Their presence is similar to
summoning the accused in a lawsuit, except that they aren't being
summoned, but they still represent the covenant community's rebellion.
Now, we saw the name Jazaniah back in chapter 8, but he was
the son of Shaphan. He seems to have been a ringleader
of the 70 elders that were desecrating the temple in this mad return
to worship the gods of the nations as he emulated Baal. But this
guy's called a prince, he's not called an elder, and his father's
Azur, not Shaphan. So it's likely two different
men. But nevertheless, let's remember that his name means
the Lord will be heard, or whom Jehovah hears, or Jehovah does
hearken. And again, it becomes very ironic
in a way that mirrors the rebellion of the 70 elders back in the
previous chapter. His father's name is Azur. His
name means help or helper. and it likely contrasts with
his son's harmful counsel in the next verse. Further, if the
former Jazaniah emulates Baal, Azur could remind us of the Assyrian
god, Ashur, a fitting idea given that Ezekiel is in Babylon while
this godly guy is in the temple worshiping the gods. Now, Pelitiah
comes from pelot, means to escape or deliver. His is the best name
of all because While his name means the Lord delivers, he's
going to die in verse 13. And finally, benaiah comes from
a word that means to build, so Yahweh builds. So it has some
interesting play with what's gonna come up with these houses
in a minute. Verse two, he said to me, son of man, these are
the men of the city who devise iniquity and give wicked counsel
in the city. So given that they devise iniquity
and there's 25 of them by the East Gate, the same as the 25
in Chapter 8 who are worshiping the sun at the East Gate, that's
not a coincidence. It's very likely the same people.
And we recall that when we saw that, that this was the worst
of the four abominations in the chapters. These men are very
sinful and so God is going back to them to highlight what's happening
in the temple. And next comes their false opinion.
They say something very strange. They say, the time is not near
to build houses. Remember Benaiah, his name means
to build. The city is the cauldron and
we are the meat. I don't know about you, but I
go, what in the world does that even mean? Heizer helpfully explains
that if you boil meat in a cauldron, you boil the good meat, not the
bad meat, not the grizzle, not the bones. So it's a metaphor. You put the good meat in the
cauldron. Jerusalem is the cauldron and they are the meat. In other
words, we're the good part of the city. We're the ones in the
city that are worth saving. The grizzle and the bones have
already been thrown out in the earlier deportations. So you
get the impression that they think that God is going to spare
them because of who they are. So who are they exactly, besides
guys worshiping the sun in God's temple? Well, they're either
homegrown nobility or they could be Jews in governing positions
left behind by the Babylonians to rule the city in their place
after they took Israel's nobility into exile. In other words, this
is the puppet government of the city. In making deals with Babylon,
they felt utterly secure and untouchable, not unlike so many
in our own political elites who do unspeakable things, believing
that they will never be caught or punished. The building houses
part is also difficult to understand, especially because how to translate
it isn't quite clear. It could mean what the King James
says. It's not near let us build houses. In other words, they don't think
anything's gonna happen to the city, so let's just build away.
Now that probably isn't a great translation. So some think that
it might refer to a prophecy in Jeremiah 29 5, where God commands
the exiles in Babylon to build houses. And if so, then these
men would be saying, eh, that day's a long way from now. Don't
worry about Babylon. After all, we're in tight with
them. They won't come and harm us anymore.
And then there's another interpretation, which is that the houses are
actually advocating for preparing for war. with confidence that
Jerusalem's defenses and wall will protect them like a cauldron
protects meat from a fire. Whatever the case is, in every
one of them, it's clearly a false opinion of reality. And that's
where the prophet turns. It says, prophesy against them,
O son of man. It's never a good sign when God
commands a prophet to prophesy against you. It says, the Spirit
of the Lord fell upon me and he said to me, say, thus says
the Lord. So you think, O house of Israel,
for I know the things that come into your mind. You have multiplied
your slain in the city and filled the streets with the slain. So
this becomes God's refutation of their foolishness. They're
trusting in a place and in human structures rather than in a person.
It's as if God is saying, you think that after all the evil
you've committed in your very own streets against my people,
all the death, the slain, that you're not going to be punished?
You got another thing coming. And verses 7 through 12 then
become the judgment. And it's given in a covenantal
context. It's given in the context of
the divine glory presence making his judicial pronouncement right
there at the east gate. where the 25 stand. It says,
therefore, thus says the Lord God, you're slaying whom you
have laid in the midst of it. They are the meat, and this city
is the cauldron, but you shall be brought out of the midst of
it. You have feared the sword. I will bring the sword upon you,
declares the Lord. I will bring you out of the midst
of it and give you into the hands of foreigners and execute judgments
upon you. In other words, you think you're
the good meat? No, I tell you, those you have
slain are the meat and Jerusalem is not a place of safety, it's
a place of death. And you're gonna be dragged out
of the city and you're going to be judged. Verses 10 through
12, you shall fall by the sword, I will judge you at the border
of Israel, you shall know that I am the Lord. This city will
not be your cauldron, nor shall you be the meat in the middle
of it. I will judge you at the border of Israel and you will
know that I am the Lord. For you have not walked in my
statutes nor obeyed my rules, you have acted according to the
rules of the nations that are around you. Essentially, those
who do not die by the sword are gonna be taken into captivity
like the earlier waves. You wanted to act so much like
the nations around you, according to their rules and laws, their
worship and abominations, then that's precisely where you're
going to live from now on. Now, I think that this is a sharp
warning to the church today in these last words. And the reason
is because this behavior was the behavior of the people of
God in the Old Testament. While the people of God in the
New Testament is not America, it's his church. Whenever the
church decides that it will look around at the world and emulate
its immoral behavior or philosophies, corrupting God's law through
sexual perversion or clear disobedience to the commandments, or tolerating
public sin in its midst, even calling it good, then they are
acting like the nations around them. And we see here that this
is precisely why God is judging them. Verse 13 completes the prophetic
disputation by bringing it full circle. In it we see that what
will eventually happen a handful of years from now is going to
have like this foreshadowing that takes place the moment Ezekiel
predicts it. It says, and it came to pass
while I was prophesying that Petaliah the son of Benaiah died.
He's right there in the middle of the 25 and he falls over dead.
He didn't escape, as his name means he died. The son of Benaiah
didn't build, he was buried. It happened at the moment as
he prophesied. That very moment proving that he was God's mouthpiece
and that what God said is going to happen is going to happen. And so all this causes the prophet
to lament in horror in verse 13. When I fell down on my face,
I cried with a loud voice and said, oh Lord God, will you make
a full end of the remnant of Israel? Now I want you to remember,
we saw this last week. He said almost the exact same
thing and I told you to look forward to it this week. It said
that back in 9-8, I fell on my face and cried, oh Lord God,
will you destroy all the remnant of Israel and the outpouring
of your wrath on Jerusalem? And last week I noted how God
really didn't answer the prophet's question. In fact, God simply
doubled down on the judgment and he said that these people
are wicked and they deserve it. The best we got was a hint that
God would remember because the man in linen had gone out and
marked those who were faithful to the Lord because God knows
his people. But the end of verse 13 in our
chapter now recalls the same thing and now it begs for an
answer. And in fact, in the middle of
all this judgment, this is exactly what the prophet will finally
get. And what is remarkable here is
that it's a series of verses that are going to change the
subject finally after 11 chapters of judgment. Come to verses 14
through 25. It's a series of two chiastic
structures that mirror each other. The word of the Lord came to
me. Now, I'll stop here because I
always want you to remember that when it says the word of the
Lord came to me, this refers to Christ coming to Ezekiel.
But now I want you to understand that what we've just seen is
this covenant of curses coming down on the heads of Israel in
all this weighty, glorious power because the covenant has been
broken. And this will become very important
as we go along. They broke the covenant. Something
else is needed, something new. Son of man, your brothers, even
your brothers, your kinsmen, your whole house of Israel, all
of them are those whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, go far
from the Lord. To us, this land has been given
as a possession. So what does that mean? Well,
the idea is that the residents who remained in Jerusalem, whom
the Babylonians didn't take, have been claiming that those
exiles, that is, guys like Ezekiel and the king, they were cast
out from God's presence, implying that those who remain in the
city are the favored, and they're the ones who possess the land.
This reflects their false confidence in their status, which God has
refuted. It's a remarkably blind and pathetic display of how we
humans rarely seem to be able to interpret the world around
us. In fact, we never can when we forget what the Word of God
teaches about it. Come to verse 16. It says, Therefore
say thus as the Lord, though I removed you far off from among
the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet
I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries
where they have gone. Now this verse is actually given
as a great comfort not to the guys in Jerusalem, but to Ezekiel
and to the elders who are sitting by him in Babylon as he tells
him about the vision. And notice the language. God
has been a sanctuary to them. In other words, God has been
their temple in the middle of a foreign evil land. They're
1,000 miles away from the temple where those rebels are, where
God's presence has always resided, and yet God has been their temple
under the old covenant. Do you understand? Suddenly,
the whole point of Ezekiel 1 and this profound vision of the chariot
throne of God himself in Babylon, of all places, comes sharply
into focus. You thought that I was only in
Israel? You think that I'm like the gods of the nations who either
can't go into other territories or need permission first? No,
I'm right here with you, my people. I'm in your midst. I am the living
God, the creator of heaven and earth. And my spirit hovers wherever
I want. My glory presence is right here.
My word, the one with the likeness of a human being who's seated
above the cherubim, I am right here. But that's not right, that's
not possible. The Jews had come to think as
they created God in their own image and likeness. Sproul writes
this, right before the exiles into Babylon, the Old Covenant
community lost sight of the fact that the Lord does not limit
himself to one place. True, he chose to make his presence
felt in a special way in Jerusalem in the temple during the Old
Covenant period. Yet he was by no means imprisoned
here. A belief that God could never
leave his temple, however, was commonly held during the ministries
of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And thus the people paid little
heed to the warnings of the prophets to repent, lest Jerusalem be
destroyed. If the Lord could not leave Jerusalem,
how could it be destroyed? This is the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. They would cry in
order to shout down the threats of divine judgment. So here we
have God telling all the Jews, He's been with them as a temple
in his glory in Babylon. Meanwhile, something else is
happening with his glory in Jerusalem. But before we get to the final
destination of the glory at the end of chapter 11, we need to
keep reading. Therefore say, thus says the
Lord God, I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you
out of the countries where you've been scattered. I will give you
the land of Israel. And remember, he's talking to
the remnant, and then the theology of the remnant in the New Testament
becomes the church. We're going to see more of this
here. It's like somehow, for some reason, some reason the
blessings are coming. Where did this come from? God
is going to gather the people whom he's just promised to scatter
among the countries. He will give them the land of
Israel. Somebody says, I thought they already have the land of
Israel. Wasn't it theirs? What does this mean? We have
to keep reading, when they come there they will remove it from
all the detestable things and abominations. So it's tempting
to think that this fulfillment is found in the return of the
exiles in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra and Nehemiah return,
they partially fulfill this verse by removing idolatry and restoring
worship. It's failed to fully realize
the promises because of persistent sin and incomplete covenant renewal
as we see in many of the later prophets that come after Ezekiel
who continue to lambaste the people of Israel. This cannot
be the final fulfillment. But it's not just this line of
evidence we must keep reading. It says, I will give them one
heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove
the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of
flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and
obey them and they shall be my people and I will be their God.
Now friends, does that sound familiar? Do you recognize that
language? Well, one of the most famous
new covenant prophecies appears later in Ezekiel 36. It says
almost the exact same thing. Moreover, I will give you a new
heart, put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart
of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I
will put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes.
You will be careful to observe my ordinances. You will live
in the land that I gave you, your forefathers. So you will
be my people and I will be your God. Now this passage is also
closely related to maybe the most famous of all new covenant
passages, founding Jeremiah, who prophesied just prior to
Ezekiel. Jeremiah said, behold, the days
are coming, declares the Lord. I will make a new covenant with
the house of Israel, with the house of Judah. I will put my
law within them and put on their heart, I will write it and I
will be their God and they will be my people because I will forgive
their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more. Notice
how this is explicitly called the New Covenant. And in fact,
it's quoted in Hebrews 8, precisely so that we will know that its
fulfillment comes only with Jesus and his church. Ezekiel 11, which
hardly anyone even knows is here, is also talking about the New
Covenant. But there's one more thing here,
which is this comment that you will be my people and I will
be your God. Interesting, that actually originates
in Exodus 6. Obviously, the Israelites in
Egypt, but Paul takes that exact language picked up by both Ezekiel
and Jeremiah in their new covenant, and he directly equates the fulfillment
to the church, even talking about how there is no agreement between
the temple of God and idols. He calls Gentiles, my people,
and I will be your God. Therefore, the land that is called
that says Israel will take. to be theirs is the church, as
Paul calls us, the Israel of God. You say, how could people
be called the land? Does that even make sense? Well,
yeah. When you understand where the glory of God goes is into
his people all over the world when they're brought into the
new covenant, then it makes perfect sense. This is why Jerome long
ago said, I linger long in the land of the midday sun in Israel,
for it was there then that the spouse found her bridegroom at
rest, and Joseph drank wine with his brothers once more. I will
return to Jerusalem, where here, according to Ezekiel, the cherubim,
after leaving the temple, founded the church of the Lord. That
foundation is rooted here in the promises of this part of
Ezekiel 11. Friend, We still need to keep
reading, because though this is good news, it doesn't belong
to those who reject God and follow the desires of their own evil
hearts. Read verse 21. But as for those whose heart
has gone after detestable things and their abominations, I will
bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord
God. Contrary to popular opinion of some, the new covenant isn't
for those who walk in evil ways. It is, as Jeremiah said, not
like the old covenant. It isn't about automatic inclusion
in covenant promises, except maybe on a basic level of coming
near the blessings of God that he gives to his people, which
spill over into the world. But then again, as Paul and John
and others argue in many places, it was never really even about
that in the Old Covenant either, because Abraham was justified
by faith in Christ, not by some autonomous, automatic inclusion
because he was born. Not all Israel are Israel. They never were. This is why
it is foolish to trust in temples or churches or who your parents
are. And when going to church or pretending
to worship, the only thing that matters to God is your faith
in his promises that come through his glory and that you believe
that they are given for you. The thing about our story today
is how it all comes to an end immediately after this promise
of the new covenant. In Ezekiel, it says in verse
22, the cherubim lifted up their wings with the wheels beside
them and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. And
thus begins the final movement of the glory of God. And where
does it go? Verse 23, the glory of the Lord went up from the
midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east
side of the city. As the daughter-in-law of Eli said, Ichabod, the glory
has departed. God has left his house entirely.
He now stands over to the east on the Mount of Olives, watching
the destruction that he's now bringing upon the wicked. He's
no longer in Jerusalem. The Spirit lifted me up and brought
me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea to the exiles
and then the visions that I had seen went up from me and I told
the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me. In another
piece on the same subject, Sproul reminds us again, one of the
errors that God's people committed during the Old Covenant period
was to believe that the presence of the tabernacle or temple and
associated furnishings guaranteed that the nation could not be
conquered that Israel would always be victorious. But he continues,
as we consider the idea that God departed from Israel, we
must keep a few things in mind. First, when the Bible speaks
of the Lord departing, it does not mean he's no longer present.
in any sense, in any place where he's left. After all, the Lord
is not a physical being. He's omnipresent everywhere. There's no place in creation
where God is absent. Second, even though the Lord
could be said to have left Israel, this does not mean he's left
everyone in the covenant community of Israel. God always remains
with his remnant. And that answers Ezekiel's question
directly. No, Ezekiel, I will always have my remnant. In fact,
I will not only have a remnant, but out of that remnant, I will
create a seed so vast that it will cover the face of the whole
earth. They will be my temple and I will be in their midst.
Beloved, the good news is that even though the glory departed,
God does not depart from his people. In fact, because of the
New Covenant, the glory of God literally goes with you, the
people, by being in the people. And so what Paul means when he
says, the glory of God is in you, Christ in you, the hope
of glory. You see that the cloud has come
down upon you. You are his people and that's
the glory. This is the great mystery of
the Old Testament now unveiled before you in the pages of the
New. So fret not over your sins and your failings, for when you
confess them, God has already heard and forgiven them for the
sake of his Son, the glory of God. He has sent his Spirit,
the glory of God himself, to dwell inside of you as people.
as his new covenant temple wherever you happen to be in this world.
God has forgiven you and made you holy and clean in his sight
for Christ's sake. Christ's promises remain sure.
He will not leave you. He will not forsake you. But
he is with you always, even to the very end of the age. Lord, I pray that you would help
your people to see what is before them in Ezekiel. We've covered
a lot of ground, but at the heart of it is simply the movement
of your Holy Spirit and your glory and your son away from
this physical location with a promise that he would come to dwell in
a new way that would transform the entire world. The bad news,
the devastation, the covenant breaking of the people representing
by these 25, those judgments came down upon them. But your
new covenant, after they broke the old one, was cut with the
blood of Christ that we will celebrate in a moment in Jesus'
supper that he gives to his people. And it is something that is unfathomable
when we begin to grasp what we have just read. Yes, people trust
in external things, and they trust even in religious things.
But if they don't trust in you, then that hope is a fool's errand. Give us each hope. to know, faith
to believe that when we trust in Christ and you give us this
new heart to believe those things, that you really do dwell in your
glory inside of us and cause that to be a thing that would
cause us to flee sin and to run far from it because we know that
the spirit is in us and we don't want to grieve him. We ask these
things in Jesus name, amen.
Ichabob Has Left the Building Ezekiel 10:1-11:25
Series Ezekiel
| Sermon ID | 83125141621869 |
| Duration | 58:03 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Ezekiel 10-11 |
| Language | English |
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