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Home Group Notes – Ezekiel

by | Mon, Dec 30 2013

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Ezekiel

This name is made up of two elements, the last element is ‘El’ which is a common abbreviation of the name of the Lord, ‘Elohim’ while the first element, ‘hazaq’ means to be or become strong or courageous. It’s mostly used to charge soldiers to be strong. So Ezekiel means ‘God Strengthens’, ‘Strengthened by God’ or ‘Strength of God’.

This name is especially appropriate for Ezekiel because his message to his people made him extremely unwanted, unwelcome and unpopular and without God strengthening him for his mission it would have been particularly difficult to endure all he went through.

The story of Ezekiel can be found in all 48 chapters of the book of Ezekiel written by the Ezekiel himself.

Ezekiel lived during the lifetimes of the prophet Daniel during the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah…who also happened to be the last king of Judah and also during the last half of the prophet Jeremiah’s life, and Ezekiel lived during the Babylonian exile. He began his prophetic ministry in the 5th year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity in Babylon, remembering that this king was so terribly wicked God pronounced a blood curse on his family line.

Ezekiel saw the destruction of both Jerusalem and the magnificent Temple built by King Solomon and was part of the first Jewish contingency to be deported to Babylon at the beginning of the 70 year exile that had been prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah.

The Role of a Prophet

The primary task of a prophet was to arouse the people and the government to repentance and observance of God’s laws. This invariably meant that their messages were mostly in the form of a rebuke that not only listed the sins of the people in detail and God’s abhorrence to them, but their messages also included details of how judgement would come to them if they didn’t repent and return to the Lord and His ways.

Many see God in the Old Testament as brutal and harsh and vengeful, but when you consider how many years God took to warn His people and how long He gave them to repent, you actually come away with the understanding that despite the depravity and rebellion of the people, God waited many hundreds of years before He finally brought promised judgement. God in the Old Testament is in fact incredibly gracious and patient and merciful. The culmination of His mercy is ultimately seen at the cross of Calvary. This picture of God’s enormous mercy is very dramatically seen if you read from Genesis right through to the end of the Gospels.

Because prophets had a reputation for always bringing a message of rebuke and judgement they were very often feared by the people because nobody likes to get bad news especially if it means they have to stop living and behaving the way they want to. The message of repentance is still unpopular today.

An example of how the people feared the arrival of a prophet is seen in the lead up to the calling and anointing of David when God instructed Samuel to go to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem and anoint one of his sons to be the next king of Israel.

1 Samuel 16:4-5, ‘So Samuel did what the Lord said, and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the city came trembling to meet him and said, “Do you come in peace?” He said, “In peace; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord….”’.

The leaders of the people of Bethlehem went to meet with Samuel as he arrived in their village to find out if he was coming to them with a fearful message and intention or a peaceful message and intention.

Ezekiel was 25 years old when he was taken captive and he was 30 when he was called into the ministry which is the traditional age for Jewish men to enter ministry service. His ministry began in either 593 or 592 BC and his ministry lasted approximately 22 years and just like Jeremiah and Zechariah, Ezekiel was both and prophet and a priest, in fact he was in the Zadok family line and this meant he was among the aristocracy whom king Nebuchnezzar selected as his first captives…these noble Israelites included the prophet Daniel and his friends.

Ezekiel was a married man as was the case for the priests and he lived among other Jewish exiles near Tel-Abib on the River Chebar and he lived in his own house. He was considered to be wise by the Jewish elders and they often visited him wanting a divine word or oracle because Ezekiel was remember, of good family lineage and in the priestly line. His was a special position.

As a prophet and priest he belonged to a privileged segment of the Jewish community and he lived in a strategic time in history because he was able to refer back to previous prophetic announcements by the prophet Jeremiah who warned the Jews of impending judgement and exile if they didn’t repent of their wickedness and he could also point to the fulfilment of those prophecies because they themselves were actually living in exile after they’d been taken captive just as Jeremiah had said they would.

The Jewish monarchy and government had been annihilated by the Babylonians, the Jewish political and national life was over as far as their independent national identity was concerned, their city and state was ransacked and their Temple was utterly destroyed. This was the situation Ezekiel himself was living in when God called him to be a prophetic voice to his people living in and under Babylonian rule.

Ezekiel had the unenviable task of communicating to his countrymen that they didn’t need to despair, God wasn’t through with them…unfortunately, to his countrymen it appeared that God was indeed through with them. Ezekiel had to try to communicate that God and His sovereignty had lead them to Babylon because of their sin and disobedience but that through His sovereignty God would restore them once again but this would occur through the repentance of the people themselves. Once again, this was a call for personal and individual repentance before God and submission to His laws and ways.

What makes Ezekiel so very different to other prophets is that he strived to reach his countrymen in very personal and individual ways, he desperately wanted to win them back to the Lord and he felt personally responsible for each one of them. His focus was never on establishing the nation with political goals and aspirations, rather Ezekiel’s hope was for his people to become a congregation under the pure dominion of God one heart at a time.

Another unique aspect of Ezekiel’s ministry was through various physical signs that he endured, experienced or acted out in order to communicate his message from God to the people. These signs included…

He was bound up, made housebound, mute (3:23-27)

He used a brick and an iron plate as preaching illustrations (4:1-3)

He laid on his left side for 390 days and on his right side for 40 days (4:4-8)

He had to eat food in an unclean manner (4:9-17)

He had to shave his head and beard (5:1-4)

He had to pack his bags and dig through the wall of Jerusalem (12:1-14)

He had to eat bread with trembling and drink water with quivering (12:17-20)

He had to brandish a sharp sword and strike his hands together (21:8-17)

He portrayed Israel in the smelting furnace (22:17-22)

He had to cook a pot of stew (24:1-14)

He was not allowed to mourn the death of his wife (24:15-24)

He had to be mute for a season (24:25-27)

He had to put two sticks together that became one (37:15-28)

Above all, the central theme in all that Ezekiel says and does is the ‘Glory of the Lord’; this is seen very graphically in chapters 1:28, 3:12 & 23, 10:4 & 18, 11:23, 43:4 & 5, 44:4. Ezekiel includes graphic descriptions of the disobedience of both Israel and Judah despite God’s kindness, patience and long-suffering warnings which He gave again and again and again.

Ezekiel gives many illustrations of spiritual principles, a few of them are…

Ezekiel was told to eat the scroll:- even though the writing on the scroll was full of lamentations, mourning and woe it was sweet in the prophet’s mouth because it was the Word of God Himself which is a light and always produces life. (Ezek 2&3)

The four creatures representing the 12 Tribes of Israel which is again repeated in the book of Revelation. (Ezek 1:4-21; Rev 4:5-11)

The ‘barbershop’ scene where the prophet shaves his head and beard to demonstrate the humiliation his people will face because of their rebellion. (Ezek 5:1-4)

The graffiti on the Temple walls demonstrating that God wants holiness and purity in His house on filthiness and depravity. (Ezek 8:10-12)

Another primary theme throughout the book is God’s holiness and sovereignty, something the Israelites had completely forgotten in their efforts to live as they pleased. Ezekiel communicated this truth to the people by contrasting God’s holiness and purity as bright glory against the despicable depravity of Judah’s sins.

Like all the prophets of Israel, Ezekiel not only delivered God’s messages of anger, frustration and judgement on His people because of their rebellion, idolatry and stubbornness, but Ezekiel also delivered God’s promise of forgiveness, restoration and fulfilment of their calling and covenants especially with relation to the land and heritage He’d promised them unconditionally through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and later on through David. God never left His people without hope of their promised future.

One of the final major themes found in Ezekiel is in chapters 40-48 and these all pertain to the future Temple in Jerusalem. The dimensions and elements of this final temple are markedly different from the original Temple built by Solomon and the second Temple built by Zerubbabel but which was later expanded and finished by Herod the Great. This final Temple will be built and will be functional from which Messiah will reign when He returns to establish righteousness upon the earth.

Of course all the messages that Ezekiel was commissioned to speak to his countrymen came at great personal cost to the prophet because the people were unwilling to hear him and many times God forewarned Ezekiel that upon delivering his message the people would tie him up with ropes, imprison him, hate him, reject him…and this of course broke the heart of the prophet who desperately loved his own people, he loved God supremely and his greatest desire was to see his people reconciled to their God.

Possibly one of the saddest and hardest things Ezekiel had to endure was the death of his beloved wife. Hard enough for any man (or woman) to lose their best friend and life partner, but in Ezekiel’s case, God instructed him that he wasn’t to grieve for her. He could grieve and groan inwardly, but he wasn’t to show any outward signs of grief or mourning. This is a very, very big ask by God of a man who loved Him supremely. What was the purpose of God asking such a thing? God was illustrating through Ezekiel’s personal tragedy that His people were not to grieve over the loss of their holy city and their holy Temple because they had become exceedingly corrupted and God was going to do away with them…for a time. God would eventually restore these things to them, but what had become filthy and polluted had to be destroyed and the people themselves were responsible.

It’s not possible to talk about the prophet Ezekiel without mentioning three incredibly important chapters.

The first of these being chapter 37: The Valley of Dry Bones.

This chapter is a graphic description of the destruction of the Jewish people; the valley God showed to Ezekiel was full of dead bodies all reduced to very, very dry scattered bones. This was a people dead and without hope and yet God determined that they would live once more. He told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and when he did, he heard a noise, a rattling noise and all the bones came together and then sinews formed on the bones followed by new flesh and skin but they were still laying dead in the valley. They were reformed, but dead! Then Ezekiel continued to prophesy and the breath of God filled them, they stood upright and came to life and they became an exceedingly great army. (37:1-10)

Ezekiel 37:11-12, ‘Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up our of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.”’

What’s interesting is that after the Babylonian exile, the Jews were not utterly destroyed and without hope and when they did return, they never ruled themselves as an independent sovereign nation, they were always under the rule of another nation or empire, and they were never an exceedingly great army. Not until after the catastrophe of the Nazi Holocaust when the Jewish people returned to their ancient homeland after being destroyed and left for dead and once the State of Israel was established in 1948, they developed an army that has been undefeatable despite the many invasions and attacks by their COMBINED enemies. This is a stunning fulfilled prophesy from Ezekiel.

The other two chapters which are probably the most famous chapters in Ezekiel are chapters 38 & 39.

These chapters are yet future and they describe what has become known as the Battle of Gog and Magog. They describe a time yet future when Israel will be living in a relatively peaceful state, specifically when the will be without walls or unwalled villages. It also describes the land as being wealthy and bountiful and God Himself draws Israel’s ancient enemies out against her; these enemy nations think they’re going to invade and take Israel and her wealth as plunder for themselves but God has determined to personally fight against Israel’s enemies to destroy them once and for all as a judgement against them for all their hatred and mistreatment of Israel throughout their history.

These chapters are graphic in how the battles unfold and it names the nation’s who come against Israel, and its during this battle that Israel realises that she can’t defend herself with her own army, she realises that she must call upon God for her deliverance or she won’t survive.

There are many who believe that this famed battle of Gog and Magog is very close at hand. Time will tell.

Being a prophet was a high calling but equally a lonely calling and always a dangerous calling.

There is little known about Ezekiel’s death, in fact there are no details of how he died but we do know that his grave is in Al Kifl in Iraq, south of Bagdad near the Euphrates River…Iraq of course is the modern name of Ancient Babylon. Ezekiel was buried in the land to which he was exiled during the siege and fall of Jerusalem when Judah was invaded and subjugated by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

Many of Ezekiel’s prophecies have come to pass, those that haven’t are yet future but what we know for certain is that all of God’s words of warning, judgement, promise and restoration will come to pass because God’s word cannot fail…ever!

Ezekiel 39:25-29, ‘Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name. They will forget their disgrace and all their treachery which they perpetrated against Me, when they live securely on their own land with no one to make them afraid. When I bring them back from the peoples and gather them from the lands of their enemies, then I shall be sanctified through them in the sight of the many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord their God because I made them go into exile among the nations and then gathered them again to their own land; and I will leave none of them there any longer. I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,” declares the Lord God.’

Shalom

Mandy