[posting on: Ezekiel]
Two years ago, I stumbled across a sermon* by Ravi Zacharias on the book of Ezekiel. To this day, it remains my favorite sermon, and also the sermon that hooked me on what is now my favorite book in all Scripture: the oft horrifying, oft hopeful, oft mysterious book of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel is an exilic book, written while Ezekiel was among the exiles from Judah on the River Kebar near Babylon. I see the exile as an apex of the Old Testament. The account of Israel, first under the judges and then under the kings, constitutes a withering train of sins that builds and builds until God's forbearance is exhausted and Jerusalem and its temple are destroyed. No event could have been more earth-shattering to Israel, and for this very reason, Israel in the books after the exile is changed: this is the Israel that experienced revival under Ezra and Nehemiah, the Israel that abandoned her idols, and the Israel that tried so zealously to cling to the Law that she eventually embraced a self-righteousness that crucified her Christ. The exile is a pivotal moment in the Old Testament, circumscribed by the events before and after it.
There are only four books in the Old Testament that are written during this crucible or all crucibles: Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Yet it is Ezekiel I love most. While each of these four books paints a terrifying picture of what it is to fall into the hands of a angry God, Ezekiel's visions of Jerusalem's destruction, Ezekiel's visions of the departure of the Glory from the temple, Ezekiel's visions of Israel receiving the punishment she utterly deserves, are more vivid, more real, and more breathtaking to me than any other passage of wrath in the Bible.
In part, this is because this judgment is not merely a message Ezekiel speaks: he becomes that very message in his own flesh. It is no coincidence that one of Scripture's greatest books of judgment begins with towering visions of God. No longer can Ezekiel speak of hellfire and brimstone indifferently: he trembles before his very message because he has seen the holiness of God.
And his flesh does more than tremble. God commands that Ezekiel lie on his left side for 390 days to put Israel's sins upon himself (Ezek. 4:4-5). Then he is commanded to lie on his right side for 40 days to put Judah's sins upon himself (Ezek. 4:6). He is told to reduce his meals to a few ounces of bread and water as a demonstration of a siege diet when Jerusalem is attacked (Ezek. 4:9-13). He is made to shave, slice, and burn his hair as a picture of Israel's fate (Ezek. 5:1-4). And in what is one of the most stunning moments of the entire book, Ezekiel's is told that his wife will die in order to show Israel how their pride and joy—the temple and the city—will be swept away (Ezek. 24:16-18).
In the spirit of Ezekiel 24:24, Zacharias says the following:
"When Ezekiel walked, when Ezekiel looked into a mirror, when Ezekiel looked at the food he was going to partake, when Ezekiel looked at his home, every sense of his surrounding and inmost being reminded him that the message was not an aspect of his life; it was an intrinsic part of who he was."The message of Ezekiel is no mere herald of sin and judgment. It is a visceral reality that was written on the Prophet's heart and—as a result—on mine. In the same way that Ezekiel's heart was sensitized to the evil treachery of sin, to the adamantine inevitability of punishment, to God's long-suffering love for his people—so in the same way, my heart has been etched with a hatred of sin, a humility before judgment, a fear of Almighty God.
Read Ezekiel 7. Read Ezekiel 9. It is my conviction that if these passages prompt us to indict God for cruelty, we scarcely know God. It is easy to love what God loves. But do we hate what God hates? If I read these chapters and do not "grieve and lament" (Ezek. 9:4) over the wickedness of sin, my heart is far from God's. May my model be Ezekiel, a man brought so close to God that his heart was sensitized to God's own.
And this hardly scratches the surface.
Contained within the middle chapters of Ezekiel are some of Scripture's most stunning prophecies of a day when judgment shall give way to restoration: of a crown returning "to whom it rightfully belongs" (Ezek. 21:27); of a "desolate land" being "cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it" (Ezek. 36:34); of a heart of stone becoming a heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:26); of a valley of bones revived by the very Spirit of God (Ezek. 37:14). Then toward the end, Ezekiel concludes with what is probably one of the most enigmatic passages in the entire Bible, a strange vision of a restored temple that parallels no other temple built in history, a temple too precisely described to seem allegorical but too theologically bizarre to seem literal.
For these reasons and more, Ezekiel is my favorite book of the Bible. Read it! And may our hearts be changed to look like God's.
*If you want to listen to Zacharias's sermon, go to this link, select Zacharias's name at the bottom of the media player, and click on the talk entitled "Preparation of the Heart."
