Ezekiel 4-7: The Dramas of Ezekiel — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

Transcript

Father, we thank you now that we have these minutes to look into your word and see yourself and see in the reflection ourselves.

And grow in our appreciation for you, and grow in our trust, and grow in our faith, and grow in our love. And we pray that you would help us by your Holy Spirit so that this part of your word which he inspired, would come to us today with freshness and force, and usefulness, effectiveness, and comfort. We ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

Someone sent me a story this week of a minister who was heading out to a burial with only a rough idea of where he was going.

Eventually, he saw an open field and some men standing around what looked like an open grave, and he got out and gathered them around the hole in the ground and led them in prayers, and then preached his heart out for about 15 to 20 minutes. And as he turned back to his car, he heard one of the men say, I have never seen anything like it in my life. I’ve been putting in septics for 20 years.

That I suggest to you is what is called the bonus sermon, the sermon that you get when you’re not expecting it and you’re not deserving it, and you’re not even wanting it.

And what we saw as we are looking at Ezekiel last week is that God put a man among his people who are not deserving and not willing, and not even wanting some kind of message. And he does it of course because he’s a gracious communicator.

We give up on people, don’t we? We say oh forget them.

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God is very patient and very kind. The Bible says he’s light.

Loves to reveal himself. Now if you’ll turn in your Bibles, I want to look with you at Ezekiel 4 to 7 this morning.

We are toward the end of the Old Testament story, and we saw that God, last week we saw God had led his people out of the promised land.

10,000 of them taken out to Babylon.

The reason that he’s done this is described pretty well in chapter 2, verse 3, which says that they are a rebellious nation, they and their fathers have been in revolt against me to this very day. But although God took this 10,000 out to Babylon of the promised land, and although he was planning to eventually finish off Jerusalem.

He put in Babylon amongst his people this man Ezekiel, and he gave Ezekiel a vision of his glory, and he gave him his words, but we don’t know what the word was, according to Ezekiel chapters 1 to 3. And now we come to chapter 4, and we begin to hear what the message that God has for his people is. But the message is going to be given in drama before it’s given in words.

There’s going to be some mini stage plays, and then Ezekiel is going to interpret them. Now friends, I just wonder what you would do this morning. If I decided that for the 1st 20 minutes of the sermon, I was gonna lie on my side on the carpet.

And then get up and explain.

It’s a real shock to the system, isn’t it? Have to ask the question, why does Ezekiel do these one-man dramas? Why doesn’t he just talk normally?

And you’ll find a large part of the answer in chapter 3, verse 7.

Which says very simply, the house of Israel is not willing to listen.

See, why does a crowd march the streets?

Why does a child threaten to run away from home?

Why does a person chain themselves to a tree?

It’s called taking action, isn’t it?

There comes a time where the person that you’re trying to communicate with who’s not listening needs to be shown what you’re talking about. And so you take action.

Well, I want to look with you this morning at two things, the confronting and the costly action, which Ezekiel takes in chapter 4, and then the words which he speaks to explain in chapters 5 to 7. 1st, confronting and costly action.

I’m assuming that what Ezekiel did was very public. I’m assuming that he wasn’t doing some kind of little plays in his garage or in his bedroom with nobody noticing.

When I was 7 years old and we lived in Tasmania, I ran away on one occasion. Life had been deeply unfair once again, and I remember going out the back and waiting round the back street for a very long time. I think it was approximately half an hour. And I went in expecting my family to be grieving and deeply repentant.

And none of them had even noticed that I’d gone, nobody, nobody knew, nobody cared. It was a complete waste of my time.

Now if Ezekiel is going to do some drama, it’s got to reach the people.

And uh it’s got to be in their face, and I’m assuming that he either had a house which was central and allowed him to communicate through the front garden or something like it, or else he had a place in the market square, but he was making the people of Israel in Babylon notice. And there are 4 parts to his drama. The first chapter 4, verse 1, he was to draw a picture of Jerusalem on a clay tablet. We don’t know whether the clay tablet was little, like a book, or whether it was huge.

And he was to set up around the clay tablet picture of Jerusalem, a mini siege of the city. This would of course be a bit of a shock to the people of Israel in Babylon because they expected their city back in Jerusalem to be safe, protected by God, secure, and just waiting for them to return any minute. And Ezekiel says, look at this. Here’s your city, and it’s being besieged.

And then he takes an iron pan, which is of course a, a heavy, solid, powerful piece of uh metal, and he puts it outside this seed city.

As if to demonstrate that God himself is besieging God the powerful, God the strong, God the immovable is besieging their city. God is besieging their city.

Second drama in chapter 4 verse 4, he lies down on his left side.

For long sessions every day. You see in chapter 4 verse 9, he was up cooking for some of the day, so we guessed that he wasn’t lying down all day, and he did this for 390 days in a row.

With something representing the sin of Israel on him. Some symbol for sin on him. So there he is, he’s lying on his side. He’s got a symbol for sin on top of him. 390 days one after the other. And this was to represent the 390 years from Solomon until now that Israel had been disobedient.

Our friends, we’re in grief in a way to think of somebody lying on their side for most of the day, 390 days of the year, of what is that 14 months, it’s a huge ask.

But just remember that it represents God being patient with the disobedient people for 390 years. You know, if you wanna know whether God is patient.

Just look at this and see a God who’ll wait 390 years of speaking.

Before he takes up his siege. And then Ezekiel is to move to his right side for 40 days, and this 40 days is probably to symbolise a generation, you know, in the Old Testament that 40 days or 40 years was roughly a biblical generation, and this is because a biblical generation is gonna live in exile.

And the sin is lying on Ezekiel because the people are bearing the sin, they’re not being freed, they’re not being forgiven, they’re not being delivered, they are bearing the sin.

Third drama, chapter 4 verse 9, Tiny rations of food.

He is to take such tiny rations of food every day as to represent famine condition food.

And that is the sort of experience which Jerusalem would face. They would be facing siege, therefore famine, therefore rations, which were so tiny that they would physically waste away in exactly the same way that Ezekiel, taking these tiny rations of food and drink, would be wasting away in front of the people. Day after day they’d see him get thinner, gaunter, more emaciated, more devastated.

And it was cooked, it was to be cooked uncleanly on cow manure. As a reminder that this was a Babylonian invasion.

Drama 4 chapter 5 verse 1, he was to take a sword and use it as a razor. You know God used nations as a razor. Every now and again when he wanted to do business with somebody, he would use a nation as a razor. He would shave the enemy. He would shave his people, sort of mow them down. And Ezekiel was to take a sword and use it as a razor, and he was to humiliate himself, shave off his hair and shave off his beard, and then dividing all the hair into three parts, quite bizarre, yes, quite bizarre. He was to take a third of the hair and throw it in the fire, a third of it he was to hack, and a third of it, he was to scatter to the winds because God’s people were going to be destroyed and attacked and scattered.

Now there are 4 dramas. 4 dramas taking place over a very long time.

The siege, the lying down, the rations, and being shaved.

What effect did this have, do you think on the people? Well, we’re not actually told. We can only guess that they were bewildered, and they were confused, and perhaps they laughed because they needed to have the information interpreted.

What effect did this have on Ezekiel and his wife? Well, incredibly costly effect.

Talk about lying around all day. He must have been the most difficult husband to put up with. No to her cooking, I’ll do my own little weedy cooking. And there he is getting more and more emaciated and humiliated and unattractive, and he’s becoming more and more of a joke among the people. Why did he go through with it?

Well, the answer to the reason why he went through with it is because he was sent. But why did he go when he was sent?

I want to suggest to you that a huge part of the reason why Ezekiel did all this is in chapter 1 verse 28. At the end of chapter 1 verse 28, we read that Ezekiel saw the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God.

Now this word glory, when you see the glory of God, you see, essentially, the weight of God. I don’t know if you know this, but the word glory contains the idea of weight. In other words, you’re seeing someone who has substance, gravitas, heaviness, significance.

And Ezekiel has seen God’s glory. He’s seen the one who outweighs the world. And outweighs all the costs that could be experienced in serving him. And this is the way it always is when people see the glory of God in scripture.

Job sees the glory of God, and you remember what he says?

I despise myself.

All my whinging for my suffering. I despise myself. Isaiah sees the glory of God, do you remember what he says? Woe is me. Peter says in the face of the Lord Jesus, away. And Ezekiel falls face down in the face of the glory of the weight of God.

Now Tim Keller, who’s a Presbyterian minister in New York, makes a very interesting observation.

And he says this, I want you to listen to this because I think it’s one of the most important things you’ll hear. It’s really something to remember and to take away with you. He says you can work out if God is a concept in your life or a reality in your life by whether he outweighs everything or you outweigh him.

See, if God is a lightweight for you. And you outweigh God and your issues outweigh God and your priorities outweigh God and your concerns outweigh God, he’s just a concept.

You’ve not grasped the reality of God at all.

But if you’ve grasped the reality of God, you’ve grasped the weight of God, the heaviness of God, and he outweighs everything. He outweighs your values, he outweighs your priorities, he outweighs your costs, he outweighs your sacrifices. You’ve suddenly seen that he is the weight of the universe.

And Ezekiel, you see, realises the weight of God, the glory of God, and everything else flows. And that’s what enables him to do these very confronting and costly actions, and that raises friends huge questions for the sort of sacrifices that we are prepared to make in the service of the Lord Jesus, because it may well be that if we make no sacrifices, it’s because God is just a concept.

And not yet a reality.

And even if we find ourselves drifting to a lightweight god, we need to go back and face up to the biblical God of weight.

That’s the first of the two points. 2nd this morning.

Clear and comprehensive words.

We’ve just had confronting and costly action, and now chapters 5 to 7, clear and comprehensive words. The first words of Ezekiel come in chapter 5, verse 5.

This is the explanation for all the depressing dramas which he has just been performing. It’s not what Israel wanted to hear, but it’s what they need to hear.

And this is what he says. Let me read 5:5-7.

Suddenly he opens his mouth and he says, this is what the sovereign Lord says, this is Jerusalem. Which I have set in the centre of the nations with countries all around her. Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her.

She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees. Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says, you’ve been more unruly than the nations around you. And have not followed my decrees or kept my laws, you’ve not even conformed to the standards of the nations around you.

Now you see how these dramas need interpretation. Just as Jesus would do miracles and interpret, raise Lazarus, preach a sermon, heal the blind man, preach a sermon, feed the crowd, preach a sermon. Because signs or miracles need interpretation, and we are completely without God’s specific information on some of the things that happen around us.

We don’t have his word on the drought, we don’t have his word on AIDS, we don’t have his word on some of the things that operate and pop up in the news over the headlines. We just don’t have his word on those things. And so we have to go on with the word that we have.

But Ezekiel is in the privileged position of being able to give God’s word for the dramas.

And he begins with the crimes of Israel. He says in those verses I’ve just read that God made Israel central to the nations. Now of course that doesn’t mean geographically central, although of course a certain map would put Israel in the middle, just as a certain map would put Australia in the middle and another map would put America in the middle and another map would put Europe in the middle. There’s a sense in which you could say it was a very central geographically country.

But what God means is that they are central to his purposes, theologically central, missiologically central.

And God had put Israel into the middle of the nations so that they would honour him, live by his word, reflect him in their lifestyle, and their interests, and their priorities, and their graces, and they would therefore bring honour to him, and the nations around would see this lit up nation.

The people of Israel, you see, were to be the street light in the dark street.

And what God’s people did was they said, We don’t care. We want to go where the other people go. And so they unhinged themselves from the light post. And they snuffed themselves out. And they went off to the brothel or wherever that everybody else was going.

And suddenly God was dishonoured by his people.

And the nations around were in the dark about God. Because the people were like the nations. That’s the crime.

Now I don’t think we can measure how serious this is to disobey. dishonour God and put the nations into darkness.

In fact, God says in verses 6 to 7, by rejecting his will, Israel was worse than the nations, not because they matched the nations for depravity. But because they outmatched the nations in ditching their standards.

See, the nations were pretty well live to their standards, and the people of Sydney pretty well live to their standards, elastic standards, yep, we live to the elastic standards.

But if the people of God ditch the standards of God. In areas of money and sex and drink and family. And then quickly become like the nations. God is dishonoured and the people around are clueless. About what it means to be God’s people.

So the crimes that God describes were very long and very persistent and very dreadful, and then he comes to the penalty, and the penalty is set out in chapters 5 to 7. And the penalty is set out as a sort of a, a long strung out judgement, a series of hammer blows. I don’t know where you are.

In your Bible knowledge, I don’t know where you are in your Bible, trust, I don’t know where you are in your Bible acceptance, but I would just urge you this morning, whatever you do, when you come to difficult passages that have to do with God and judgement and justice, do not mentally distance yourself from those passages because you’ll distance yourself mentally from God.

He reveals himself as spirit and light and love and fire.

Once you pull out a section of scripture and say it doesn’t appeal. None of the other stuff makes sense.

And not only, of course, this is how God is, he’s revealed himself as he is, and he’s commanded us in the second commandment, not to try and reinvent him. You shall not make a graven image of a God who’s friendly and soft and flexible and adaptable.

And this is the great god who opposes evil. I hope you’re not ashamed of the God who opposes evil, we should be deeply, deeply thankful and proud of the God who opposes evil.

There’s no hope for the world without his judgement.

The road to heaven requires a judgement. No one’s going to get to heaven and rejoice without a judgement taking place. And when the judgement is over, you may notice in the scriptures, the universe falls down at the end of the judgement. You know what they do, they don’t complain, they don’t, they’re not embarrassed. They say we praise you for this, we honour you for this, what you have done.

And so I just want you to notice a few things that we’re told in these chapters about God’s justice or his judgement. First of all, in verse 8, it’s personal. He says, I am against you. I’m not just throwing the rulebook at you, says God. I myself am against you. I maintain the standards. I oppose the evil myself. I’ve recorded it in the scriptures, but I am against evil.

Now friends, I don’t need to tell you in our day that a huge part of the moral decay that’s going on in the western world is being carried out by some of the judges and the magistrates who lower the standards to suit the times.

And by lowering the standards to suit the times, basically reinforce and then go lower than the times.

But you see in chapter 5 verse 13 that God is consistent with the standards of holiness. He says his own anger will subside when the penalty has been paid. So he feels the evil, he registers and he portions out the appropriate penalty. He’s the only one who can measure the real crime, he’s the only one who can measure the real penalty, and we need to trust him because we may be shocked sometimes by the penalty, but he’s more shocked by the crime.

And then you see if you look at chapter 6, verse 3, he’s going to reverse everything. Everything that has been set up high against him, he’ll bring it down.

And God who’s been despised will be wonderfully honoured. Can you imagine the day where your neighbours and my neighbours, who seemed to me to be lovely people, but I don’t know how to get through to them.

Can you imagine the day which is coming when your neighbours, all your neighbours, all the people you work with, all the people in the street, suddenly come face to face with Jesus Christ on his throne, and the one that they had been treating as a nobody is everything. What a reversal. And everything that they thought was everything is suddenly gone completely.

I heard a man say recently that he was turned around in his young Christian life by a lady who was his Bible study leader. And she said to him on one occasion and to the whole class, you know, if you measure the distance between the sun and the earth, and you liken it to the to the thickness of a piece of paper,

You got that?

The distance between the earth and the sun is the thickness of a piece of paper, and then you want to work out the width of our galaxy, she said, it is 500 km of stacked paper.

And that’s one galaxy among millions of galaxies which Jesus Christ controls with his hand. And therefore, she said, if you’re going to invite Jesus Christ into your life, you do not ask him to come in as your assistant.

It’s a great lesson, isn’t it? He’s huge.

And he’s going to reverse everything.

You’ll see in chapter 7, the judgement is final. Verse 12, no good setting up more business. Verse 14, no good calling an army to come and save you. Verse 19, no good calling on your idol to come and help you. Belief in self will not help.

You know, incidentally that belief in self is letting people down every day. Almost everybody who goes on Australian Idol believes in themselves, and 980% of them lose.

Everybody who goes out to play sport believes in themselves today and 50% at least lose.

So believing in self, this idol of self will not help, and the final thing, the end point of the judgement in 726 is that God doesn’t speak. God says nothing. He won’t answer why, he won’t give any more information, it’s judgement, exactly what Jesus experienced when he was on the cross, and he wanted the answer to the question why, and he got no answer.

It’s judgement

7 times in these chapters, God says, but all will know that I am the Lord.

How’s everybody going to know that the Lord is the Lord? Well, either through the rescue which they warmly receive, or through the judgement which they inevitably face, but everybody will know at the end, the Lord is the Lord. There is no third way, it’s either through redemption or through judgement.

Now as I close this morning, this must impact us this story, because God speaks the truth. Can you imagine the people in Ezekiel’s day saying, Ezekiel, we think this is just talk.

It’s all gloomy talk.

Ezekiel says, no, no. As best I can pass this on to you, it comes from God’s word.

And within 5 years, Jerusalem was besieged. And dropped to the ground. And Ezekiel’s credibility rose hugely. In Babylon they listened to him like they’d never listened to him before. We must be greatly comforted that God speaks the truth through his word to us.

What a help it is that he speaks the truth and tells us what’s to come, so that we might prepare, so that we might take hold of the Lord Jesus. He speaks the truth. And if this judgement that took place on Jerusalem is just a shadow of what God will do in the future, we must avoid that domesticated harmless back pocket God which so many live with, so many churches, so many Christians, some god whose job is just basically to make your life tidy and friendly and happy and easy.

We’ve got to get rid of that God, it’s not the biblical God.

And we mustn’t doubt or hide the fact of his justice to come. We must take a leaf out of Ezekiel’s book and Jesus’s book. He speaks the truth. Not only that, of course, he’s generous in salvation. I can’t read these chapters without saying to myself, there’s the people of God and they’re wayward and I’m wayward.

And so I deserve a penalty. What will be the penalty?

And then I discover in the pages of the New Testament that the penalty that I do deserve and the penalty that you do deserve, fell on the Lord Jesus.

And it’s impossible now if we think about this to just walk away and say that’s nice.

That judgement has fallen on Christ, that we might go forward and look forward to the day where we see Him face to face with great joy.

So the fact that Jesus came and bore judgement for us should cause us to be deeply thankful. And then finally this morning, we see that God is gracious, he still communicates. Of course, there are these chapters in Ezekiel which would help us to take God seriously, but most clearly God speaks through the person of the Lord Jesus, the words of Jesus, and the works of Jesus, and they give us everything we need to be a believer and everything we need to be assured.

And therefore we must be deeply thankful that he keeps speaking to us. If he stops speaking to us, it’s the judgement.

And therefore if he stops speaking to you, be afraid. If he continues to speak to you through the scriptures, then take hold of the scriptures, stand on them, absorb them, live by them, do them, practise them, trust them, because here is a God who’s so gracious as to give us what we need.

Because he is a God of gracious communication.

Let’s bow heads, let’s pray.

Our gracious God, we thank you this morning that you are a God of justice and also a God of mercy.

We thank you that you will not allow evil to continue and we thank you that you have found a way whereby sinners can be forgiven.

We thank you that you’ve given your word on your justice and you’ve given your word on your mercy. We thank you that the Lord Jesus bore the justice that we might enjoy the mercy.

And we pray, Heavenly Father, that You would help us to represent you well by the way we think and live. That we might be people who glory in your faithfulness. Who rejoice in your salvation. And who walk in your word.

And we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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