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Sermons

A New Heart – Ezekiel Pt. 4 (Dry Bones)

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We’re getting close to the end of our Ezekiel series with just one Sunday left after today. I don’t know about you, but I’ve really enjoyed it. The book of Ezekiel was so unfamiliar to me, but God has been showing me some really cool stuff, and I hope you’re getting some of that too. Today, we’re going to be reading the most well-known section of Ezekiel together, and I’m excited to get into it with you.

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Ez. 37:1-14

1 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

Once again Ezekiel tells the story of a vision he has received from God. And this time, there’s no creatures. There’s no wheels. There’s no wall to go through. Instead, God takes Ezekiel to the valley of dry bones. Sort of spooky right? You may be thinking you missed an awesome way you could decorate your front yard for trick-or-treaters, but there’s always next year. God takes Ezekiel to the valley of dry bones and takes him back and forth among the bones on the ground.

It’s kind of a hopeless, lifeless, post-apocalyptic picture. God tells Ezekiel that these bones represent the people of Israel. Not ones who are physically dead though. These bones represent people who are physically alive, but they are dead in a sense. They’re in exile. Cut off from the one relationship that gives them true life because of their disobedience, their pride, their violence, their idolatry.

You see, this is a story about God’s Covenant.

God’s covenant relationship with Israel is unlike any other. God has taken this small group of people and has cast blessing upon them. In chapter 16 of Ezekiel, God talks about how when Israel met God, they were completely lost. They were dirty, they weren’t cared for, and God came along and cleaned them up. God took care of them and God protected them, and God dressed them in fine clothes and jewelry.

And we know this to be true. God came to Abram, this old childless guy with an old childless wife, and entered into this covenant relationship with him, promising to make him into a great nation, with more descendants than he could count. And God made good on that promise, despite the ways that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob got impatient and went their own way.

God brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and led them to the promised land. God’s message to the people was simple, keep my commands and this promised land will be like Eden for you. It’s flowing with milk and honey. God brought them into a great situation and protected them from outside nations and powers, but a covenant goes both ways. The people of Israel broke that covenant again and again and again. And so eventually, God lets the people of Israel bring themselves to ruin, their divided kingdom crumbles and superpowers come in and destroy Israel.

Israel faces this destruction because breaking from God’s covenant results in death.

Remember Adam & Eve in the Garden? They have everything they could ever need, want, or even imagine at their disposal. They can eat the fruit from the Tree of life all they want, but there’s just one simple thing that God requires from them, don’t eat from that tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Everything is on the table, except that. God tells Adam on the day that you eat from that tree, you will surely die.

And we know the story, Eve is deceived by the serpent and then Adam joins her. Now do they die when they eat the fruit from that tree? Well, no right? They realize their nakedness and they’re ashamed. They get exiled from the Garden never to return. So they didn’t physically die, but there was a death there. The death of a kind of life Adam & Eve never got back. The death of this beautiful life and beautiful relationship that they had with God. Walking around in the Garden in full communion with God.

This covenant between Adam & Eve and God was broken, and because of that, part of their life ceased to exist, that good life they were able to enjoy as partners with God. Similarly, the Israelites broke their covenant with God, and because of that, they’re now facing the consequences as their cities were destroyed and they were scattered across the known world. Like Adam & Eve, this breaking of covenant didn’t result in instant physical death, but it did result in a different kind of death. They’ve been broken off from their communion with God and the land God promised their ancestors. And so they’re still physically alive, but they’re represented by these dry bones. They’re in need of new life.

When we’re talking about Israel and their relationship with God and how we can maybe apply some of this to our lives, it’s important to translate that appropriately. And so the connection when we think of Israel, we shouldn’t think of the United States. We’re not talking about Israel the political entity, we’re talking about Israel, the people of God. And so in today’s terms, knowing what we know now, we the church identify as the people of God. In our baptism, we are joined into this expanded covenant between God and the people of God. We’ve been grafted into this through Christ.

And so as Christians, as the Church, are we keeping that covenant pure? Are we walking in step with God’s will and God’s desires for humanity? Because if we’re not, we too are just dry bones, incapable of the true communion with God we’ve been created for. As humans, we’re prone to some of these same sins that Israel perpetrates. Like Josh mentioned last week, pride is a big one. We start to think that we are doing the heavy lifting, that we are impressive and worthy of glory. And sometimes we get envious, thinking that others are getting the blessing that’s rightfully ours. If we just had this thing or that job, then we’d be where we need to be. And we have so much stuff and that stuff starts to take hold in our hearts. We go way too far seeking pleasure and security. And as we’ve talked about a lot over the last few weeks, we are prone to giving other people, and things, and ideas the top spot where only Christ belongs in our life.

And like Israel, the result of these violations of our covenant relationship is death. Dry bones. We are too often walking around unaware of the death in our lives and how much better life could be. I’m afraid we’ve become numb to just how good life can be and we’ve accepted this dry bones life. We’ve gotten really comfortable with spiritual apathy and unconcern, and I think that’s right where the Enemy wants us to be.

So it’s bad. Israel was a pile of dry bones, and we can be that way too, but there’s good news: God breathes life into the dead.

God has Ezekiel prophecy to the dry bones, and God brings the bones back together and puts all the tendons and ligaments and muscles on them and covers them all with skin. And God has Ezekiel prophecy to them again and God breathes life into these lifeless bodies, just like God did when God created Adam in the Garden. And Ezekiel no longer sees dry bones in front of him. Instead, he sees this army of God. God takes a pile of lifeless, dead pile of bones and creates something powerful and mighty.

Despite Israel’s transgressions, God will do something beautiful. God is going to take these dry bones and redeem all things through them in Jesus. Because when God makes a covenant, God follows through with it. God did this for Israel, and God did this for us. This is from Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.

We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Just as God calls Ezekiel to prophecy to the dry bones, God enlists us as partners in the redemption story.

When we look out at our culture, it’s not hard to see dry bones. The world is full of broken relationships, dead churches, cynicism, and despair. But we know better. God is making all things new. Jesus has brought resurrection life to the world, not just for after we die, but for now. Let’s be people who proclaim hope to the world, not hope because of our competence, but because of God’s omnipotence. God, who is rich in mercy, is going to bring us back. God is going to continue to set things right. And we should be sharing that message!

We proclaim that message in words, but also in works. God has created us to do good works. Look after people who can’t look after themselves, choose justice and mercy, even when it would be easier not to. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus came into this world proclaiming renewal: a new Kingdom. One way better than Israel. And because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can be a part of it. Because of Jesus, we are not just dry bones, we are those proclaiming life to the dry bones, inviting the breath of God into the world around us.

Each week, we go to the Table and remember Jesus as we symbolically eat and drink his body and blood. In this way, we welcome Jesus into our hearts and ask Him to reorient our hearts to His goodness & love.

November 3rd, 2024

Watch here: https://youtu.be/lNoF3sJT_F4?si=LYjEwVHhoPYnhOhf&t=1480

Sermons

A New Heart – Ezekiel Pt. 2

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This week, we are continuing our new series in Ezekiel. We established last week that Ezekiel was a 30-year-old priest in exile hundreds of miles from the Temple. God meets him in a way he never could have expected as he sat by a river. God had a purpose for Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s job was to deliver the message to the Israelites that God’s judgment was on them for hundreds of years of disobedience and that they should repent and change their ways. But God tells Ezekiel that they’re not going to listen.

God gives Ezekiel instructions on just how he is supposed to convey these messages. He’s supposed to lay on his side for over a year eating only this vegetable barley that he cooks over cow dung. He’s supposed to set up this little Jerusalem model and have his back turned to it. And he’s supposed to shave his head and burn it in different parts of the city. So though its clearly very strange, Ezekiel does what the Lord has told him to do.

Last week we talked about the prophet, Ezekiel, and this week we’re talking about the people, the Israelites. ______________________________________________________________

Ezekiel 11:14-20

14 The word of the Lord came to me: 15 “Son of man, the people of Jerusalem have said of your fellow exiles and all the other Israelites, ‘They are far away from the Lord; this land was given to us as our possession.’
16 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.’
17 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’
18 “They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. 19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. 20 Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

As we talked about last week, the Israelites got moved into the promised land after their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and they became a kingdom, with kings. And most of those kings were not great and a good handful of them were terrible. Over 500 years or so the people of Israel got more and more ok with wicked stuff. And God sent prophets like Elijah & Elisha to the people to warn them about God’s displeasure and make them aware of their need to change their ways. And the people didn’t listen. Maybe every once in a while, there would be a change of heart, but it never lasted.

So eventually God had had enough. God stopped shielding them and let them fall to the superpowers of the day. First Assyria came in and took out the northern kingdom of Israel and about 100 years later, Babylon comes in and puts Jerusalem under siege. They take the people of rank out of Jerusalem, which would cause it to destabilize, and they were going to come back later and finish off Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah. So Ezekiel got taken out and away from Jerusalem before it was destroyed. Now he’s in Babylon, and God is telling him what’s going to happen to Jerusalem and why.

This story of Israel’s demise is largely about idolatry. In chapter 8, God comes to Ezekiel in a vision and transports him to Jerusalem. There he sees the extreme idolatry of the elders of Israel, even in the Temple. They worship snakes and worship other gods that they have created. Like we talked about last week, the Temple was supposed to be where the presence of God communed with the people of Israel, just like how God dwelt with Adam & Eve in the Garden, God was supposed to dwell in the Temple. But now, the Temple had become this anti-Eden. The Temple was supposed to reflect God’s glory, but it had become a place where – instead of the clear and proper hierarchy between God, humans, and animals – people were now elevating creations over their Creator.

This idol worship is a direct violation of commandments 1 & 2: You shall have no other gods before me & you shall not make idols. Idolatry is a key theme throughout the Bible as humans choose whether they will accept their role as God’s image or give allegiance to images of their own making. Are we willing to accept a right relationship with God? Are we willing to be satisfied with what God provides? Or do we fall into the trap of believing that God is holding out on us?

In chapter 16 of Ezekiel, God has harsh words for His covenant people the Israelites. God basically says: When I found you and made you my people, you were nothing. Unimportant, unwanted. And I made you my covenant people, we got married. And I gave you all of these nice things, I protected you, I took care of you, but you Israel have taken our covenant relationship that was between you and me and defiled it with your idolatry. You have welcomed all of these other things into our covenant. God describes it like a marriage, calling Israel an adulterous wife, saying that the people of Israel have prostituted themselves and broken their covenant with God. God’s not happy with these idols.

When we talk about stuff like idolatry in Scripture, I think it’s easy for us to lose touch with the point a little bit. Of course, I would assume if I went over to your house, you wouldn’t have idols on display that you worship. If I swung by your workplace, I wouldn’t catch you bowing down to the sun. But as my old youth minister would say, this stuff didn’t just happen, it happens.

In our baptism, we enter into a covenant relationship with God. An extension of God’s covenant with Israel. And even though we have proclaimed that Jesus is the Lord of our life, there are going to be other things vying for that spot. Though we have claimed that Jesus is Lord, there will still be things vying for our time, attention, and worship. This looks different for different people, but we’ve all got stuff in our life that wants to take that top spot. Money, sex, authority, platforms, politics, etc. This morning, I think a question we should ask ourselves when reading through Ezekiel is what are we giving first priority to, what are we trusting in, and what are we worshipping besides God? Because God takes this seriously.

There’s a pastor, Kyle Idleman, who wrote a book called Gods at War, and the premise of the book is this: sin is anything that separates us from God, and all sin is based in some sort of idolatry. That’s why it’s the first two of the ten Commandments deal with idolatry: you shall not have any other gods before Me. And do not make idols. Idleman argues that all sin comes out of putting something ahead of our relationship to God. Maybe that thing we’re worshipping in the moment is hurry, or status, or our social calendar, and those aren’t necessarily bad things, but they can become idols for us when we choose to hold onto those things instead of what God has for us.

So if we’re not careful, we too can end up like Israel, slowly moving closer and closer to our destruction because of the lack of priority and attention we are willing to give to our covenant relationship with God. There’s story after story of Christians ruining themselves because they were proclaiming to follow Christ, but their lives were not aligned with Christ. They got too entangled in something else, and then they had to cover it up, and eventually it came to light. This is what’s happening to Israel. After centuries of wickedness, their bill is finally coming due. 

God’s justice demands judgment for Israel’s violence and unfaithfulness, but in God’s covenant God promises that blessing will come through Israel. Do you feel that tension? Actions have consequences, and at the same time, you are my chosen people. This is a hard line to walk for God. To do this, God must lead his chosen people through death to bring them to resurrection and hope on the other side.

So in the midst of all of God’s frustrations with the people of Israel, and while God is fully committed to Jerusalem being destroyed for their misdeeds, God has these moments in Ezekiel like this from chapter 11:

Ez 11:16-20
16 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.’
17 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’
18 “They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. 19 I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. 20 Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

God is a sanctuary to the exiles in Babylon, but he has departed the sanctuary in Jerusalem. God is still finding ways to reach the people and provide refuge for them even though they don’t deserve it. This scattered chosen people of Israel still has hope because of God’s faithfulness, not because of anything that they’ve done. We too have hope because of God’s faithfulness. Not because we deserve it, but because God loves us.

So the people of Israel were going to experience death. The northern kingdom of Israel was already gone, Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah were on their way out. But on the other side of this time in exile, Israel was going to experience life. God was going to gather them back together better than before.

Similarly, Jesus faced death, although He didn’t deserve it like Israel did. And on the other side of those days in the tomb, Jesus got new life. And not only Jesus got that new life, we did too. Not because we were good. We learn that in Romans chapter 5 verse 8: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

In Ezekiel, God’s plan is to move the people of Israel through death so that they can have life. And this is God’s plan for us too. As we talked about a ton recently in our series from the gospel of Mark, if you want to find life, you have to lose the one you have. We have to die to ourselves to live the life that Jesus is calling us into. We have to remove the idols from our lives that are taking up more and more of our time, energy, and desire. In doing this, we can have life.

Each week we go to the Table together as a way of celebrating this new life we’ve found in Jesus. And all are welcome to join in. We symbolically take in Jesus’ body and blood and remember that God loves us so much that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It’s not because of what we’ve done or who we are, it’s because of who God is and what Christ has done for us.

October 20th, 2024

Watch here: https://youtu.be/i2QnwiS-QGQ?si=7yhVwPuKc6JXtwNn&t=1829

Sermons

A New Heart – Ezekiel Pt. 1

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There’s a lot I’m looking forward to coming up over the next 6 weeks or so, retreats, fun church things, opportunities to serve, and in the midst of all that we’re starting a new series that will carry us through Thanksgiving. During this series, which we’re calling A New Heart, we’re going to be talking through the book of Ezekiel each week. Now if you’re like me, you can’t remember a single sermon you’ve ever heard about Ezekiel or you don’t know what the book of Ezekiel is about at all. Maybe you didn’t even know there was a book in our Bibles called Ezekiel, and that’s totally fine!

I’m preaching several times in this series and to be honest I was feeling a little scared of it. Feeling intimidated, like what if I don’t understand it. But now I’m excited about it because I think God’s going to meet us in this unfamiliar text and have something for us. Today we’ll be talking about how God met Ezekiel where he wouldn’t have expected.

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Ez 1:1-3
1 In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.
2 On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin— 3 the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord was on him.

Right here at the beginning of this book, we are getting the setting of this story – where and when this happened. And that’s really important! We have to understand setting to make sense of everything that’s happening here.

Ezekiel is this 30-year-old priest, and he’s sitting next to a river in exile when he has this vision. So to understand this a little more, we need to backtrack a little in the Biblical story. Let’s go back to when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God sends the ten plagues on Egypt until Pharoah agrees to let them go, and we know that Pharoah still changed his mind after that and God parted the Red Sea to let the Israelites walk through while drowning the pursuing Egyptian army. And then God gives Moses the 10 Commandments, but the people didn’t trust God and didn’t obey so they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. After this wandering in the desert, God brings the Israelites into the promised land, and there they are ruled by judges. And they set up the tabernacle and that’s where the people go to offer sacrifices and where the priests act symbolically as mediators between God and the people. And the Israelites start to look around at all of the other people groups around and decide that they need a king. God has Samuel the prophet warn them against this, but they are unfazed. So God gives them a king named Saul.

Then they had many more kings some good some bad, and during that time they built the Temple in Jerusalem. And this Temple was to them the place that the presence of God dwelt. The people would go and offer sacrifices. The priests would dedicate their lives to handling all the rules and regulations at the Temple. But things got worse. The people obeyed God less and less. The kings became more and more evil. And Israel divided itself into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Well this didn’t help. The people continued to disobey God and disregard God’s prophets who were telling them to change their ways. And eventually God had enough. God allowed the Assyrians to come in and take out the northern kingdom of Israel. And over 100 years after that, God allowed the Babylonians to come in and take over the southern kingdom of Judah. The Babylonians coming in and taking over Judah was sort of in two waves 10 years apart.

This is where Ezekiel comes in. Ezekiel was a priest that got removed from Jerusalem in the first wave when they took a lot of higher-ranking people out of Judah and left them in modern day Iraq. So Ezekiel was this refugee who was forced out of Jerusalem. And to top it all off, he’s just turned 30 years old, which is the year he would’ve been able to actually start performing his priestly duties as a priest. This thing that he had trained for his whole life, wasn’t going to happen. He was a priest with no Temple to manage, no sacrifices to offer on behalf of the people. Because of this exile out of Jerusalem, he’s just a random 30-year-old refugee sitting by a river in Babylon.

Imagine for a moment how it might feel to be Ezekiel because you might be able to relate in some way. Ezekiel has been training to do something for a long time and now that possibility of fulfilling priestly duties at the Temple has just been ripped away. Beyond that, his whole life has been flipped upside down, he’s been forced to move away from everything he knows. And to top it all off, he would believe that he’s extremely far away from God because God dwells in the Temple, and now he’s hundreds of miles away in a foreign land. When we meet Ezekiel, he’s sitting by a river likely grieving this immense loss. Everything that he had hoped for and worked towards is over. Maybe you’ve felt like that before. Dealing with a loss of close loved one, the end of a relationship, losing a job.

And as he sits by this river in Babylon, this godless place in exile, the unexpected happens. God shows up. The hand of the Lord was on him, and he has this incredible vision. I’ll read some of it so we can get a feel for it.

Ez 1:4-9
4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, 5 and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. 8 Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, 9 and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

And a little bit further on in the description:

Ez 1:22-28
22 Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. 23 Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. 24 When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.
25 Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. 26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

God showed up in a mighty way. God showed up to Ezekiel in this mighty way that he could have never anticipated. In this moment, God is letting Ezekiel know that he’s not confined to the Temple. God is on the move. These creatures that Ezekiel describes contain a lot of icons and symbols that would have been present in the Temple, signaling to Ezekiel that the presence of God can reveal itself in powerful ways away from the Temple.

So these images to us may sound crazy, but they would have carried more meaning to Ezekiel. Here’s a little minimalist illustration that The Bible Project made of what Ezekiel’s vision could have looked like. You see the creatures Ezekiel describes are like legs of the throne that the presence of God is sitting on in this image. Obviously, we have no idea what it could have looked like aside from Ezekiel’s description, which can spark a lot in our imagination. The important takeaway though is this: God is big, God is powerful, and God is on the move.

God shows up where we least expect it. When we’re in those moments in our lives where we feel like everything is wrong – when our dreams have died, when all of our hard work hasn’t provided the results we wanted, when we’re grieving the sudden loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship – God can meet us there. God is not confined to the moments in our lives where everything is good or working out according to plan, and some of y’all in this room may know this from personal experience.

Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

So God shows up in this powerful, overwhelming way to Ezekiel. But God doesn’t just show up to let Ezekiel know He’s there. God has a purpose for Ezekiel. God reveals himself to Ezekiel in a mighty way, and now he is commissioning Ezekiel with a new purpose.

Ez 2:1-8
He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.” 2 As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.
3 He said: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. 4 The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ 5 And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them. 6 And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people. 7 You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. 8 But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you.

God raises Ezekiel up and gives him a purpose. Before this vision, Ezekiel has got to be feeling purposeless. The thing that he thought was going to be his purpose got ripped away from him. When you’re not near the Temple, there’s no need for a priest. But here, we see God meeting Ezekiel in his grief and giving him a new purpose.

In those moments in our life where we feel like we’re floating aimlessly, God wants to meet us there and reorient us to something better. God provides us a purpose. For Ezekiel, this looked like being a watchman for God, warning the people of the peril they would be facing for their evil and unrepentant ways. God tells him straight up, nobody’s going to listen to you. But that’s not your fault. Just be true to your purpose, and the results aren’t on you.

While this is probably a disheartening thing for Ezekiel to hear, I kind of find this message encouraging. We live in a results world. If you’re in business and you’re not making money, you’re not a successful business. If you’re a team that’s not winning games, you’re not a successful team. But God’s metrics aren’t our metrics. When God calls us to do something, we just got to do that thing, and trust that God’s going to work it out from there.

In these first chapters of Ezekiel, we see God show up in a place and in a way that Ezekiel would never expect, and in this way, God gives him a new purpose. While this isn’t an encouraging time to be an Israelite, this story can give us hope. When things look bleak, when we’re at the end of our rope, when things we hold onto are ripped away from us, God meets us there. And God wants to use us to work for redemption.

Each week we go to the Table together and remember Jesus who was God and came to meet us here on earth. Because Jesus fulfilled His purpose in living a perfect life, defeating death at the cross and rising again, we too get to have a purpose for more than what we can see in the here and now. Because of Jesus, like Ezekiel, God has come to us and given us purpose.

October 13th, 2024

Watch here: https://youtu.be/kPvs9RngXNs?si=S1dKszMdrzq0tKre&t=1459