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