Tag Archive | Ezekiel

2024GOAL – Reading Through The Bible Chronologically, day 241

Aug28

Day 241—We are in the eighth month of Bible reading, with more of Israel’s history and prophecy from Ezekiel.

    Day 241 – Ezekiel 9 – 12 (Ezekiel’s visions and harsh prophecies continue)

Ezekiel 9.  In this chapter, we see (with Ezekiel) God calling the “executioners” to Jerusalem for the inhabitants’ “exceedingly great guilt.” Six “killers” arrive with their weapons, along with a single man clothed in linen with writing instruments. God gives him instructions.

“Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”

To the executioners, God says to follow the man in linen and strike without pity. 

“Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women… BUT touch NO ONE on whom is the mark.  BEGIN AT MY SANCTUARY.”

Ezekiel is shocked and falls to the ground. “Ah, Lord God!  Will you destroy ALL the remnant in Israel in your wrath?”   The LORD reminds him of Israel & Judah’s “exceeding great guilt.” Then, as a reminder of God’s mercy, the man in linen reports that he is finished marking the just ones.

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Ezekiel 10. In this chapter, we see the “Glory of the LORD” on His cherubim-powered, wheeled throne leaving the temple. (It’s described in more detail than in chapter one.)  As it lifts, the man in linen is told to reach underneath it, between the four cherubim, and fill his hands with burning coals that he finds there. He is then to scatter the coals over the city. 

From the inner court to the threshold, a cloud of brightness and smoke engulfed the moving Glory of God.  Then the wings of the cherubim lifted, and the glorious throne rose up from the earth.  It moved to the east gate of the temple and lingered briefly.

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Ezekiel 11.  The Spirit also lifted Ezekiel to the east gate and showed him a view of 25 men giving wicked counsel in the city. The LORD then tells His prophet to prophesy against them, the city, and the people in it.  “The city is a cauldron, and the ones slain are the meat, but these shall be brought out to be judged.”

And again. Ezekiel falls face to the ground, mourning the end of Israel.

Then, God reveals a glorious promise to him.

“I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.  And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations.  And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone… and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” 

Then the cherubim lifted the Glory of the God of Israel over the city. Then it moved eastward to the mountain. And the Spirit lifted Ezekiel, along with the vision of the Glory of God, and brought him again to the exiles in Chaldea/Babylon.

Ezekiel 12. The next illustration Ezekiel was to give to the Jews in Chaldea was the picture of an exiled Jew leaving his house with only a back pack. Every day, he was to pack his bag (in their sight) and every evening, he was to dig through a wall with his pack, put it on his shoulder and carry it until dusk.

When they asked him what he was doing, he was to say, “I am a sign for you; as I have done, so shall it be done to them.” God even tells of the “prince” (King Zedekiah) who shall go out through a hole in the wall but will be captured and taken and also brought to Babylon, although he would not “see” it, and would die there. (Zedekiah escaped Jerusalem but was captured. His eyes were put out before being brought to Babylon in chains.)

God then tells him to remind the Jews that the time is NEAR, not far away, as the false prophets say and as they believe. Near and now.

2024GOAL – Reading Through The Bible Chronologically, day 240

Aug27

Day 240—We are in the eighth month of Bible reading, with more of Israel’s history and prophecy from Ezekiel.

    Day 240 – Ezekiel 5 – 8 (More symbolic acts by Ezekiel, God’s severe judgments, the temple desecrated)

(Remember, this part of Ezekiel is BEFORE the final siege and conquest of Jerusalem by Babylon that we read about in Jeremiah.)

Ezekiel 5. God tells Ezekiel to take a sword and cut off all his hair and beard. Then, divide the hair into three piles. One pile was to be thrown into the fire, symbolizing Jerusalem to be burned after the siege was done.

Another pile of hair was to be taken around and cut in pieces with the sword, symbolizing the people killed by invaders. The last pile was to be scattered to the wind showing how God would scatter the people among the nations, chasing them with His sword. 

Ezekiel was to save a small bit of hair and put it in his pocket, symbolizing the remnant God would save.

You can feel God’s heart breaking as he tells how He set Jerusalem in the center of the nations and how she rebelled, disobeyed, and rejected Him.  Now He tells her, “Behold, I, even I, am against you.”  “And because of all your abominations, I will do to you what I have never yet done, and the like of which I will never do again.”  And you will KNOW that I am the LORD.

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Ezekiel 6. Next, God tells Ezekiel to prophesy against the mountains of Israel because it was on these “high places” where the people set up alters and idols and worshiped false gods.  God promises to destroy these high places and the people who worshiped there, spreading their dead bodies before the idols and their bones on the altars….so that they “will KNOW that I am the LORD.”

And yet, God will leave some of them alive to be scattered through the countries, and those who escape will “remember me among the nations where they are carried captive.” They will remember how His heart was broken over their idolatry. And they will see themselves as “loathsome” for all the evil they committed. And they will “know that I am the LORD.”

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Ezekiel 7. God then puts these terrible words in Ezekiel’s mouth that he is to say to Israel, “An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end is upon you, and I will send my anger upon you: I will judge you according to your ways, and I will punish you for all your abominations.” “An end has come; the end has come; it has awakened against you. Behold, it comes. Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land. The time has come; the day is near, a day of tumult and not of joyful shouting on the mountains. Now I will soon pour out my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you, and judge you according to your ways, and I will punish you for all your abominations. ” “Then you will KNOW that I am the LORD, who strikes.”

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Ezekiel 8. Six months later, while Ezekiel sat among the elders in his house in Babylon, the “hand of the LORD GOD fell upon me.” He saw again that blazing, shining figure who appeared “like a man.” This appearance of a man took Ezekiel by the hair (some must have grown out by now!) and lifted him up. The Spirit lifted him between heaven and earth and brought him “in visions of God” to Jerusalem to the inner court gate of the Temple.

There, Ezekiel “saw” with his own eyes all the vile abominations that Israel was committing in God’s sanctuary: carved images of every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts; idols in the sanctuary with 70 “priests” burning incense to them; other elders doing evil in the dark, each in his room of pictures; women in the court worshiping a fertility god; men in the outer court worshiping the sun. (No wonder God’s glorious, flaming Presence left the Temple and went to Babylon!!)

2024GOAL – Reading Through The Bible Chronologically, days 238 and 239

Aug26

    Day 238 & 239—We are in the eighth month of Bible reading, with more of Lamentations about the destruction of their land.  And the beginning of the book of Ezekiel.

NOTE: Sundays and Mondays are posted together.

    Day 238 – Lamentations 3 – 5 (more acrostics in chapters 3 & 4 of sorrow and hope, a prayer)

Lamentations 3 is also an acrostic of the 22-character Hebrew alphabet but with 3 verses per letter. In the middle of his wailing about affliction and horror (of himself and Judah)…Jeremiah turns to God’s faithfulness.

“I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.”  “He has broken my bones.”   He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead;”  “He has made my chains heavy;”   “He has made me desolate;”   ” Though I call and cry for help, He shuts out my prayer;”   ” He has made my paths crooked.”   He has filled me with bitterness;”   “my soul is bereft of peace;”   “I have forgotten what happiness us;”  

3:21-24
"But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope;
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.
The LORD is my portion, says my soul,
therefore I will hope in him.
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
to the soul who seeks Him.

3:31-33
For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
but though He causes grief, He will
have compassion
according to the abundance of His 
steadfast love;
for He does not willingly afflict
or grieve the children of men.

“Let us test and examine our ways and return to the LORD!  Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven; We have transgressed and rebelled….”

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Lamentations 4.  (another acrostic) Again, the lamentation turns to the destruction of Jerusalem and her People.

“The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street. The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how they are regarded as earthen pots…”     “Those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those brought up in purple embrace ash heaps.”    “Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger…”

“The LORD gave full vent to His wrath; he poured out His hot anger, and He kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations.”

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Lamentations 5 is a (non-acrostic) prayer to God for restoration.

“Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us…”   “Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities.”     “The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!”

“But you, O LORD, reign forever….. restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old…unless…You have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us. 

(The godly sorrow over sin was the beginning of that restoration.)

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     Ezekiel 1 – 4 (The call & first visions of Ezekiel)

The book of Ezekiel backtracks some from where we finished in Jeremiah. Ezekiel was taken captive in the second siege of Jerusalem when Nebuchadnezzar took 10K Jews captive along with the surrendered King Jehoiachin. (Daniel was taken in the first invasion 7 years earlier).  Ezekiel was 25 when taken, and God called him at 30 to serve as a prophet. (He would have assumed duties as a priest at that age, before captivity.)  It would be about six more years before Nebuchadnezzar’s final siege and Jerusalem fell and was destroyed.

Ezekiel 1. While Ezekiel sat by a canal in Babylon, God showed him the first of his extraordinary visions. It’s a picture of the Glory of the LORD, and while many have tried to illustrate the vision, it stands as something unseeable and unknowable.  A stormy wind out of the north, a great, bright cloud, and fire flashing continuously with what seemed like gleaming metal in the middle of the fire. (Got that picture?)

Then, the “likeness” (he can’t actually describe it) of four living creatures…human in form, but not really. They had 4 faces and 4 wings. Their legs were straight, with hard callouses on the bottom of their feet. And they sparkled. 

Each had four wings; two went down, covering their hands and bodies. The other two wings were outstretched, tips touching the other creatures’ wings facing out at the four corners. The heads of these creatures each had four faces facing in four directions, human, lion, ox, and eagle.  They could travel straight forward in any direction.  They glowed like burning torches, and lightning shot from them. 

And beside each creature, but not touching it, was a gleaming wheel. They actually looked like a wheel within a wheel. The rims were tall and awesome and had eyes all around them.  (like a giant war machine)

Over the heads of the living creatures was a shining, awe-inspiring crystal platform. When it moved, the wings that covered the creatures’ bodies went into action with the sound of rushing water or the tumult of war.  On that shining, crystal platform was a throne, like a sapphire. Seated on the throne was “a likeness with a human appearance.”  And upward and downward from this being the appearance of gleaming, bright metal on fire. And a bright rainbow all around. 

And Ezekiel concluded this was “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.”  And when he saw it, he fell flat on his face.

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Ezekiel 2 & 3.  God speaks to Ezekiel and commissions him as a prophet.  As God spoke to Ezekiel, the Spirit entered him and stood him on his feet.   “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to the nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

“Be not afraid of them nor of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. You shall speak my words to them whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

Then the LORD gives Ezekiel a scroll with the words of lamentation, mourning, and woe written on both sides. Ezekiel is to eat it.  He does, and it tastes like honey.  Then God tells him to speak to the exiles of Israel (not Babylon), but they won’t listen to him.  “Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks.”

Then a voice like an earthquake boomed, “BLESSED BE THE GLORY OF THE LORD FROM ITS PLACE.”  Then the roaring of the angel wings and the wheels and the earthquake. And the Spirit lifted up Ezekiel and took him away to the exiles at the Chebar canal and sat him there – silent for seven days.

Then God told Ezekiel how he would be a WATCHMAN FOR ISRAEL.  He was to warn them. If he doesn’t, THEIR blood will be on HIS hands. 

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Ezekiel 4. In this chapter, Ezekiel is to perform a series of “object lessons.”  He first builds a miniature replica of Jerusalem and places siegeworks around it, pressing in. 

Next, he was to assume the role of a scapegoat, be bound with ropes, and lie on his left side facing North 390 days, symbolizing judgment for the number of years of Israel’s sin. Then he was to do the same on his right side for 40 days, symbolizing Judah’s years of sin. 

(Whew, the life of a prophet was very hard!)