Message: Ezekiel: The God who is Present
Series: Walk Through the Bible 2012
Preached by Mike Pickard @ North Point Church on 6-3-12
Our walk through the Bible brings us this morning to the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a younger
contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah but unlike Jeremiah who remained in Jerusalem after it was
conquered, Ezekiel left with the first group of Israelites exiled to Babylonia.
After 5 years in Babylonia, Ezekiel and the others received terrible news. King Nebuchadnezzar had
laid siege to the city of Jerusalem and utterly destroyed it, and a second large group of exiles were
coming to join them.
Apparently the exiles had been in denial about the severity of God’s judgment upon their national sins.
They seemed to think that after a brief stay in Babylonia—a slap on the wrist if you will—God would
certainly free them to go back to Jerusalem.
So, this was a crushing blow.
I’ve described the destruction of Jerusalem in previous weeks but it would be helpful now to learn some
more details so that we can better understand the trauma of this unthinkable event and consequently
the challenges Ezekiel faced in trying to minister to the exiles.
Old Testament historian, Christopher Wright, explains that Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, was
initially somewhat merciful to the Israelites when he conquered Jerusalem. But repeated foolish
attempts at rebellion ended his patience.
He took his army and laid siege to the city for 18 long months of famine and disease. Finally, when the
people had no strength to resist, the Babylonian armies attacked and breached the walls of the city.
Israel’s army fled but was slaughtered. The temple, the palace and much of the city were burnt down.
Judah’s corrupt king Zedekiah was forced to watch the execution of his sons before having his eyes
gouged out and being carried off in chains to Babylon.
Most of the surviving Jews were deported in humiliation and disgrace, the beginning of the most
traumatic event in Israel’s whole biblical history.
So we see what the prophet Ezekiel was dealing with. He ministered to people suffering all the terrible
effects of war and catastrophic dislocation, and he faced every conceivable human reaction to it. Some
were angry and rejected the faith of Israel altogether. Some blamed the sins of previous generations for
this judgment and minimized their own. Some managed to keep a brave front. But others—perhaps the
majority—simply fell into utter despair. They said,
“Our sins are heavy upon us; we are wasting away! How can we survive?”…We have become
old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.” Ezekiel 33:10;37:11 (NLT)
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So Ezekiel’s pastoral challenge was to bring traumatized people to a right understanding of their
situation and to a right response to God in the midst of it.
And Ezekiel was the right man for the task; he was both a prophet and a priest. As prophet, he spoke
the truth about Israel’s willful and habitual sin, but as priest he brought a message of comfort and hope
to people who feared that all was lost.
I want to focus this morning on Ezekiel’s message of comfort and hope. Ezekiel reminds us of the
greatness of God: He is unknowable, yet makes himself known. He is all-powerful, yet binds himself to
a relationship with us by his unshakable promises; He judges sin yet forgives sinners. He is a God of
love and mercy who calls us to share an amazing future with him when he makes all things new.
Such an awesome God can help us in our time of need.
Every one of has experienced, or will experience, some kind of trauma and loss in life and while it may
not be as catastrophic as what Israel faced, it nevertheless leaves us shaken—feeling alone and lost,
even broken. Often anger rises and grows until it becomes a full flown personal crisis.
Our first instinct is to protest: Why this, and why me, and this isn’t fair. Then perhaps we blame others
in our life: It’s your fault; why did you do this to me; why won’t you help me.
Finally, we blame God: “Why God did you allow this to happen to me. So a personal crisis becomes a
larger spiritual crisis about the goodness and purposes of God. And this crisis becomes a decisive
moment in our spiritual lives.
How will we resolve the tension? Will we feel defeated and hopeless and become emotionally and
spiritually paralyzed? Will we get angry at God, and others, and drop out of Christian Community? Will
we renounce our faith in God altogether?
Or will we instead place our trust in the Lord so that we may find comfort and live with hope even
though it is not always clear what God is doing at any given moment in my life or in this world?
Those who rebel against the Lord, Ezekiel writes, think they will find comfort and hope in the idols of
this world, but this is a delusion. The Lord says to Israel,
“You say, ‘We want to be like the nations all around us, who serve idols of wood and stone.’ But
what you have in mind will never happen…says the sovereign Lord.” Ezekiel 20:32 (NLT)
What will happen is a diminished life—life misdirected, misshapen and enslaved by the idols of this
world. But those who trust in the Lord will be forgiven, renewed and welcomed back home to the
amazing future God has planned for us.
Ezekiel shares this comfort and hope through a series of visions from the Lord: Notably, a vision of a
heart transplant; a vision of dry bones coming to life; and a vision a new Temple and a new Jerusalem
at the end of time.
The vision of a heart transplant comes from Ezekiel 36. The Lord says,
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“Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. Your filth will be washed away,
and you will no longer worship idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in
you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will
put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.
And you will live long in Israel, the land I gave your ancestors long ago. You will be my people,
and I will be your God.” Ezekiel 36:25-28 (NLT)
In Hebrew, the concept of “heart” is not emotion but rather thought and volition. So having a new heart
means that we become new people; our thinking and behavior will be transformed so that we are
responsive to God. It is what Paul meant in Romans 12:2,
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person
by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and
pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:2 (NLT)
With a new heart we can comprehend both the foolishness of idolatry and the wisdom of God so that
we can thoughtfully choose to remain faithful to God and do his will.
The source of this change of thinking and behavior, Ezekiel says, is the Spirit of God. Because our
hearts are “stony and stubborn” God needs to give us a heart transplant and also a heart monitor,
which is the Holy Spirit..
Ezekiel’s vision of a new heart points forward to the Day of Pentecost when God poured out his Spirit
upon all believers. Under the Old Covenant, only a few select men and women (like prophets, priests,
and kings) received God’s Spirit, but under the New Covenant the Spirit is freely given to all. To jump
ahead a couple weeks and quote the prophet Joel, God says:
“I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young
men will see visions, and your men will dream dreams. In those days I will pour out my Spirit
even on my servants—men and women alike—and they will prophesy.” Joel 2:28 (NLT)
As you may know, the apostle Peter quotes this verse in Acts chapter 2 to explain the phenomena of
the Spirit that was occurring on the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
So Ezekiel’s vision of a new heart anticipates the gracious gift of the Spirit for New Testament
believers—the Spirit which transforms our lives from the inside out so radically that, as Jesus told
Nicodemus, it is as if we have been born again.
But this is just the first stage of the amazing future God has for us. Ezekiel’s next vision is of a valley
filled with bones. Ezekiel 37 verse 1 says,
“The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with
bones. He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were
scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out. Then he asked me,
‘Son of man, can these become living people again?’
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‘O Sovereign Lord, I replied, you alone know the answer to that.’ Then he said to me, ‘Speak a
prophetic message to these bones and say, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord! This is
what the sovereign Lord says: Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again! I
will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin.
I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am God.” Ezekiel
37:1-6 (NLT)
In this grisly vision of death—perhaps the unburied remains of a defeated army with bones so old and
dry that there is nothing left to identify the victims—we are confronted with the reality of death and
judgment. The fact that the bones were unburied suggests a final humiliation—a terrible judgment.
The bones of course were representative of the Israelites who felt spiritually dead in their exile from the
Promised Land. In his vision, Ezekiel prophesies to them as God directed, and the bones begin to rattle
and muscles and skin form over the bones. Divine breath fills their lungs and the great army stands on
its feet. Verse 12:
“This is what the sovereign Lord says: O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause
you to rise again. Then I will bring back to the land of Israel.”
Ezekiel 37:12 (NLT)
This vision pictures a resurrection for Israel—a return to life with God in the Promised Land enjoying all
the blessings of life which he gives. In other words, this is not only a prophecy of redemption for the
people of God; it is a picture of future resurrection life in the new creation. And this in turn points
forward to the resurrection of Jesus, who as Israel’s Messiah is the embodiment not only of Israel but of
all humanity.
The resurrection of the dead is God’s final act in our redemption. This was only vaguely understood in
the Old Testament but became clear in the resurrection of Jesus. The apostle Paul sees the
resurrection as a further work of the Spirit of God in us, so that the new life that begins inside us as
people with new hearts continues in the resurrection as people with new bodies. In Romans 8:11 Paul
says,
“The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ
Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.”
Romans 8:11 (NLT)
But people with new hearts and new bodies also need a place to live. And the only place suitable for
the people of God is to be where God is.
For the Jewish exiles, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem meant that God no longer dwelled
among them. This wasn’t exactly true because God’s presence wasn’t limited to a Temple or a city, but
nevertheless the people felt estranged from God.
Ezekiel’s third vision offered hope that God would once again dwell with them. In chapters 40-43
Ezekiel shares a vision of a renewed Temple in a renewed city of Jerusalem.
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Ezekiel is taken to a very high mountain—with a bird’s eye view of what looks like Jerusalem. There he
meets a man with a measuring rod, like an architect. Then he is given what we might describe as a
three-dimensional, computer-generated virtual-reality tour of an idealized Temple.
The importance is not in the details themselves—though they are meticulously laid out. The
architectural plan of the Temple is really a theological statement. It represents the return of God to the
lives of his restored people. Chapter 43:5 says,
“Then the Spirit took me up and brought me into the inner courtyard and the glory of the Lord
filled the Temple. And I heard someone speaking to me from within the Temple, while the man
who had been measuring stood beside me. The Lord said to me, “Son of man, this is the place
of my throne and the place where I will rest my feet. I will live here forever among the people of
Israel.” Ezekiel 43:5 (NLT)
This vision of God’s return to live with his people is the highlight of Ezekiel’s visions of restoration:
Spiritually reborn people with resurrection bodies will dwell forever with God in the New Creation.
These themes are later drawn together in a book by another man of visions—by John in the book of
Revelation. Revelation 21:1 says,
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new hearth, for the old heaven and the old earth had
disappeared…and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven
like bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud shout from the throne saying,
‘Look, God’s home is now among his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe away
every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these
things are gone forever.” Revelation 21:10-4 (NLT)
This then is the basis of our comfort and hope, dear friends. And it is not a pipe dream. When life beats
us up, and we feel broken and alone and lost, and we wonder if God cares, remember Ezekiel’s visions
of God’s great plan for us.
And if you’re tempted to doubt, remember the first vision has already been fulfilled—we have new
hearts through spiritual rebirth and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the second vision has already
begun—Christ has risen from the dead, and he is now busy preparing a place for us so that the third
vision may be fulfilled—that where God is, we may be also.
It the meantime let’s comfort one another with this hope!
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