Ezekiel 12-17: The Grief of God — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

Transcript

Our heavenly Father, you’ve given us ears, and we pray now that you would cause the inner ear to hear your word, to hear your voice. And then help us to put into practise what you cause us to hear. We ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

I’ve called our message today the grief of God.

Because in the middle of these chapters that we’re going to look at in Ezekiel in the Old Testament, God bears his heart. And we realise as we read these chapters that his people have broken his heart.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie The Queen, I don’t often mention a movie, but in the Queen, which is a fictional story, it presents the Queen, as you may know, as being unfeeling towards the death of Diana.

And there comes a time in the movie where she’s out on the moors and she breaks down in her Land Rover alone and she sits on a little hill, and from behind, you see her breakdown and cry.

And of course you realise that the queen has the throne, and she has the presentation of the queen, and she also has feelings. Now, when we talk like this about God, it does come as a little bit of a shock to us, a little bit of a surprise because we’re used to saying that God is so great and so powerful that we might think that he is removed from all feelings.

Like little kids who are playing with their dad and punch their dad on the arm, and it doesn’t really hurt their dad. But then of course when the little kids become teenagers and they reject their dad. That really hurts.

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And of all the griefs and of all the losses, and of all the pains which is possible to feel, rejection can be the worst. Because even if you’re bereaved, you lose a loved one. But if you are rejected, then you lose the love as well as the one.

One writer says there is nothing that savages the emotions quite like marital breakup.

I know you’ll understand, says the terse farewell note on the mantelpiece, but in 9 cases out of 10, we don’t understand, and indeed, why should we? It hurts to be deserted.

When we’ve promised ourselves to someone and invested ourselves emotionally in that person, it is desperately painful to feel rejected.

Now we’ve all experienced rejection of some kind in some way, and that’s why the scriptures this morning are so important. I’m hoping that you will see in our 4th look into Ezekiel, the person of God.

I hope you’ll see something of the person of God that he is not just a force who sits above us and is interested in his system as if it were just a cosmos. And he’s not a rule maker who’s more interested in us being cooperative and obedient than actually interested in our welfare, but he is the God of power and he’s the God of truth, and he’s the God of love and all the things that we normally say.

He is also the God who has emotions that belong to a perfect person, and we tend to forget that.

So I hope this will be something of comfort that you’ll be able to take yourself to one who understands grief.

And you’ll also of course be challenged not to grieve him more.

Well, we’ve begun the little series in Ezekiel, we’re trying to walk through the book.

I’m trying not to just take little random sections so that at the end you say, well, I don’t really know how the book works. And we’ve looked so far 3 times, first at the who, who does God give his people, and so he gives them a prophet called Ezekiel in exile with the exiles to be his mouthpiece.

And then we looked at the what, what does he say to them? Well, he says to them that there is a downward road of punishment ahead of you.

And this is going to involve a siege and a scattering, and you remember that Ezekiel communicates this not just by saying it, but by acting it. And then why, why does he say this? Well, because as we saw last week, the people of God have been idolatrous. They’ve shifted their devotion from God over to their idols.

And therefore God is going to leave Jerusalem. And he’s going to start again with humble exiles.

So we’re taking a slab every week, and it’s a challenge to take a slab, it’s a challenge to preach it, and it’s a challenge to listen to it. And this week we’re going to walk through 12 to 17. And we’re going to divide it into two points. First of all, 3 refusals.

And then secondly, 3 stories – 3 refusals, 12,13, 14, and 3 stories, 15,16, 17 – 3 refusals. Now the refusals have to do with the truth, but I want you to know that the truth is still something that affects God’s heart because he’s a God of covenant. He’s a God of truth, he’s a God of love.

And it seems that after all Ezekiel’s communication, and you remember it was very long and costly, he lay on his side for a number of hours every day for months.

It seems that the people are not responding. Look at 12:2.

Ezekiel chapter 12 verse 2. Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.

The first refusal, Ezekiel 12, is a refusal to hear the truth. The Lord tells Ezekiel in verse 3 of chapter 12 that he is to act out a removalist scenario. Look at verse 4. During the day, while they watch, pack your belongings, packed for exile, and then in the evening while they’re watching, go out like those who go into exile. Pack your stuff in the day.

Move out in the night. The point of this little drama is that there is still going to be a deportation that will take place out of Jerusalem. All the people who’ve been left will be deported. Now of course the people in exile are saying, and the people back in Jerusalem are saying, this is a very short problem. We’ll be back in the city in no time. Ezekiel is a nutter. Don’t listen to him.

And they need to know that God is going to cause the last of the Jerusalem people to be removed. And the king, verse 12, who’s called a prince because he was put there by Babylon, not by God, he’s going to be first of all blinded, and that’s why it says in verse 13, he won’t even see the Babylon that they bring him out to.

Well, do you see what God is saying? I’m going to do what I said, and the people have a proverb, verse 22, which says every vision comes to nothing.

In other words, God’s words are a joke, it’s talk, talk, talk, no action from God.

And God says, well, now I’ll do it.

The time has come, and I’m going to end the proverbs, says God, and within a few years it was fulfilled.

And the Babylonians came and besieged the city and took out the last people in 587 BC, just a few years after Ezekiel spoke. I’m reminded of the time that Jesus stood or sat with his disciples on the Mount of Olives and looked out over the city of Jerusalem, and he made two predictions. One, that city is going to be surrounded by the Romans. Two, the world will end.

And of course both of those predictions were around the corner.

And yet 40 years after Jesus spoke, the Romans surrounded the city of Jerusalem and knocked it to the ground. And round the corner further is of course the end of the world, but Jesus is the absolute reliable – a predictor of the truth. So the truth will happen.

Now the second refusal is in chapter 13, and this is a refusal to tell the truth. Ezekiel is told, chapter 13, to confront the false prophets. You see that in verse 2, son of man prophesy against the prophets who are now prophesying. And he’s also to confront the prophetesses. Verse 17, set your face against the daughters of your people. Not an easy thing, is it, to stand up against somebody who’s speaking.

And say, you’re talking rubbish and I’m talking the truth. However, Ezekiel is to speak for God, and he is to say to the false prophets, first of all, the message comes from you, not from God. Second, verse 8, God is against false words. Third, you lead the people astray, and 4th, verse 14, he will bring you down. What is interesting about false prophets in, this Old Testament scenario and also in every decade of every century – is that the false prophets are regularly lining their own pockets.

And you’ll see in chapter 13 verse 4 that the false prophets are like jackals in the ruins, they’ve gone into the city, they’re not mending the walls, they’re just looting.

And verse 10, they produce a message which is like a whitewash. It covers the cracks of the wall, it doesn’t mend the cracks of the wall, it’s just an easy, palatable, friendly, popular whitewash.

The prophetesses, verse 17, they’ve moved into superstition. You’ll see in verse 18, that they’ve profaned my name for a few handfuls of barley and scraps. And is it in verse 17? It says that they sew magic charms on their wrists and make veils of various lengths. So here are the prophets and the prophetesses who are saying exactly what people want to hear, but they’re actually leading the people away.

Now friends, the word of God is not hard to get.

God declares himself to be a God of truth and love, and he expects us to take his word seriously and be devoted to him.

We are not surprised to see unbelievers turn away from that.

Recently I was walking in Bondi Junction, and there are stalls in the mall of Bondi Junction. And you may have seen this, but it was a surprise and a shock to me that there are many, many tables of people who sit there, having paid their money so that somebody will sort of sit behind them with their hands held about a foot away from them.

As they, I suppose, draw out bad energy or put in good energy, or I’m not exactly sure how it works, but here are sensible people in the eastern suburbs forking out money so that somebody will sit behind them with their hands hovered above their backs.

Now, you really do feel like saying, don’t you? To the person who’s sitting there having paid their money, this is a bad deal. You have just handed over your money, it is a joke.

We expect people to fall for that sort of stuff, don’t we, who are not believers. But when the church refuses to take seriously the word of God. It really is sobering, isn’t it?

How is it possible to say I’m devoted to the Lord and I’m walking in a direction contrary to his words?

And you have to ask yourself whether the people who are seeking to bring that kind of message into the church don’t exactly fit the description of Ezekiel 13 being false prophets with a kind of a whitewash for the wall. Now don’t think that God is heartless or ruthless about this because he says in verse 22, there’s a very moving verse. You, he says, false prophets, false prophetesses, dishearten the righteous.

You see God’s grief, he watches the false prophet dishearten his people. How do they dishearten his people? Well, they cause his people to drift from him, to lose heart in him. And that damage brings grief to God.

The 3rd refusal is in chapter 14, and this is a refusal of God to trim the truth, OK? Refusal chapter 12 to hear the truth, refusal chapter 13 to tell the truth, refusal chapter 14 to trim the truth. Chapter 14 verse 3.

Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces, should I let them inquire of me at all. They’re coming to God and they’re saying, with an idol in their heart, Would you please tell us about the future? What’s happening? We’d like to hear from you. We’re not devoted to you, we just want you to speak to us.

And the Lord God says, I’ve only got one message for them, and that is repent, go back. And I’m gonna talk to you about the future. Go back, drop your idol and go back. And he says this verse 5 because he wants to recapture the hearts of the people.

He also says in chapter 14 that he won’t even listen to prayers for the people. Shocking, isn’t it? He won’t listen to prayers for the people, if people are going to pray that God would not discipline them. No, he says, even if Noah came and prayed, and Daniel came and prayed, and Job came and prayed, if the three of them came and prayed that I wouldn’t do the hard thing, I wouldn’t listen.

Because he says I want the good outcome. I want them to return.

So he refuses to trim the truth. 3 refusals, they won’t listen, but the truth will happen. They won’t tell the truth, but God will remove the lies. And the Lord himself won’t trim the truth because there is a job to be done. Now friends, when you go to the GP.

You know that there are a couple of types of documents you can get at the GP.

One is the magazine that sits on the table, which is usually a few weeks old, and you only flip through it because you’re trying to distract yourself. And then there is the doctor or the dentist who comes out and he gives you a letter or a report, and that report is really worth reading and listening.

The Bible is not a magazine.

It is not a disposable magazine that you can just take it or leave it, flip through, turn it upside down. The Bible comes as a medical report from God, and he’s not a doctor like a surgeon who sees you as just a number. Not that doctors necessarily do that, but he’s not a surgeon who sees you as a slab on a board to be operated on.

This is a surgeon God who sees you as his wife to be operated on, as his child to be operated on. And therefore he speaks to you the truth from the heart. There are two reasons why we can really trust God.

He sticks with the truth. And his heart is in what he says.

Those are the refusals. Let’s turn to the stories. My daughter gave me through the week a book of church signs across America. And some of them are clever, and one of them that I liked has a sign outside which says ATM inside. And underneath absolute truth – mercy.

That’s how God communicates, you see.

And I thought that was a better sign than the one which says life stinks but we have a pew for you. But if you like that, we’ll work on it.

Let’s think about three stories, and we’re now in Ezekiel 15,16, 17. And there are allegories here, an allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress is a story based on reality.

The first chapter 15 is very brief and it’s really an illustration, not an allegory, and it’s a message to Ezekiel, and the Lord says, I want you to recognise that my people are a vine producing no fruit, and the tragedy, says the Lord, is that the woods, that’s all there is, there’s just woods. Can’t be used for furniture.

In other words, says God, the people have got to the stage where they’re not producing any fruit. There’s no life and there’s no godliness. And there’s nothing left. Without life and without godliness, there’s only doom written across everything. That’s chapter 15.

Now chapter 16 is the chapter that really deserves lots of reading and care, more than we can give it today. It’s got 63 verses and it is basically the story, the allegory of how God chose his people from being a baby left in a field, still in the, in the blood.

He looked after the baby. Raised it Proposed to it. And then had this bride turn on him. It’s a very moving chapter. He tells them in verses 4 to 5 of chapter 16, he found them like an unwanted baby.

On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born, you were despised. The first decision God made is that his sovereignly and through sheer grace – announced that the people would live.

Instead of death, he chose that they would live. You see that in verse 6, I passed by, I saw you kicking. And I said live. The second decision he made in verse 8 is that he would propose to them.

Later I passed, and when I looked and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and I entered into a covenant with you, declares the sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

He washed her verse 9, and he clothed her. Very pregnant phrases, those aren’t they, washing, clothing, very loaded pictures of salvation, and he made his people his queen, verse 13, you rose to be the queen. And you rose to be the Queen, verse 14, so that the nations would know what God is like.

Now this bride took everything that God had given and used it and abused it to make a success in sleeping around. You see, if you look at verse 15, you trusted in your beauty and you used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favours on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. And Israel became insatiable for every relationship. One commentator says she was – afflicted, infected with unrestrained nymphomaniacal adventures.

The language that Ezekiel uses in this chapter is absolutely shocking, and if you, know a little Hebrew or if you know anybody who can read you the Hebrew, it really is very, very shocking language. I think if I said to you that Ezekiel accuses the people of lying down for anybody. I would be getting about a 10th to how graphically Ezekiel describes this unfaithfulness. And Ezekiel says verse 34, that Israel gets to the point of paying for sex.

Unlike the normal prostitute. This bride went further. And paid for it.

And God’s reaction in verse 37 is that he is going to turn her nakedness, which has been fun up until now into shame, and in verse 44, because Israel has been worse than Sodom in the past or Samaria, who the Lord calls her sisters to shock her.

He’s going to fix the waywardness of them all and bring home his people and restore them all together, verse 53. This was a very humbling and embarrassing thing to say to Israel, because Israel considered herself to be infinitely better than Sodom or Samaria. But God, of course, is going to bring his people from all nations, from all conditions. Jew and Gentile together in Christ.

Now, I don’t know whether we can really feel the power of this allegory, but it tells us something of the hurt that God feels. I don’t know if you can remember what it’s like to be suddenly betrayed. I don’t know whether you can remember what it’s like to have somebody suddenly turn on you or reject you.

But it is quite stunning. It baffles, it saddens, it angers, it drains, it devastates.

And what we discover from this chapter is that when we’re unfaithful, we are not just breaking a law. We are breaking God’s heart. Disobedience hurts him. The fact is that God is totally powerful, but he is also totally personal.

It’s not just illegal, and if you read over Ezekiel 16, you’ll see in the first part how devoted he is to his people. You’ll see in the second part how much the sin affects him. You’ll see in the last bit, the cost of the relationship, and if you think we’re going to bear the cost by being disciplined, or the Israelites were going to bear the cost by being humiliated and exiled, look at the last verse of chapter 16.

When I, says God, make atonement for you. I will make atonement. Verse 62. I will establish my covenant.

Now this is where the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus himself, suffers so much grief from his people, from his bride, but comes into the world and takes the expense and takes the embarrassment and takes the guilt, and in the words of Ephesians 5 says that he loved her. And gave himself up for her. So he took pain from us. And then he endured pain for us.

And parents understand a little of this because parents know what it’s like to be hurt by children. And then sacrifice for children, and sometimes sacrifice for children and be hurt in the sacrificing. That’s what we’re reading here.

Any idea that God is impassive without feeling owes more to fable than it does to Bible. There are tears, there are divine tears of God in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament. And that’s why the last chapter, chapter 17, is so important cos where will you go with your pain? Where will you go with your sin?

And the 3rd allegory has to do with an eagle. Babylon coming in. Carrying people away. Where will God’s people turn when they’ve been raided like this? Well, the answer according to Ezekiel 17, is that they’re going to look to another eagle.

They’re going to look to Egypt. The Lord says this will not work. Look at chapter 17 verse 15. Will he succeed?

Will he who does such things escape? Will he break the treaty and yet escape? No, look at verse 22. This is what the sovereign Lord says, I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it. I’ll break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain.

And on the mountain heights of Israel, I’ll plant it. It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it. They will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the field will know that I, the Lord, bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken.

And I will do it. Now I don’t know if this is what is meant by this, but you don’t find your solution in the flight of a bird.

You don’t find your solution in something that passes you. You’ll find your solution in the one that God has planted in place and has raised up with spreading branches, so to speak, in which every suffering sinner, every sinful sufferer will find shelter. And I think this is behind the illustration that Jesus used in Matthew 13 of the seed.

Which grows into a tree in which the birds find their rest. I think it’s this Ezekiel 17, which is behind that little section.

But the point you see is that God is going to plant the tree in which you will find the solution for sin and suffering. And you’ll notice the type of sprig that God is going to use. He’s going to use a tender sprig.

Because in the end, you see, we don’t need just toughness for our problems, we need tenderness, we need somebody who will sympathise with our suffering and with our sin.

And we have in the Lord Jesus, the one who is able to sympathise as the high priest. Now, Jesus, as you see, comes and actually catches up all the themes of these chapters. He becomes the vine, enabling branches to bear fruit, he becomes the bridegroom, bringing home a bride to be faithful. He becomes the seed planted in the ground, bringing up the tree in which God will place his protected people.

The grief you see which is experienced by being a vine that is cut, and a bridegroom who suffers, and a seed that is buried, is then followed by this tremendous productivity. The branches, the fruit. The bright. The birds of the nations.

Grief is a very painful thing. It’s like the breaking of that jar of ointment. But the spread, the consequences, the outcome, the effects. Are used by God for very great and wonderful things, and the prime example of this. Is the grief of the Lord Jesus.

Well, let’s bow heads, let’s pray.

Our gracious God, we thank you this morning for these chapters. We thank you that in the face of the refusal of many to listen, and many to tell the truth, that you lovingly stay with the truth.

And you rebuild from unworthy, unfaithful, unhelpful people. A people for yourself. New. Forgiven. Loved. Safe and a witness to the world.

We pray that you will continue to gather. And we pray that you will continue to strengthen us, to be the people you’ve called and loved us to be.

We ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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