A Boomer in the Pew

Ezekiel, the Temple Vision, the Destruction of Jerusalem, and a New Creation

This image depicts the prophet Ezekiel's vision of the heavenly throne room, with Ezekiel receiving a scroll from a hand that emerges from heaven. In the bottom-left corner is Ezekiel’s rendering of the siege of Jerusalem on a brick. At the bottom-right are the executioners that go through Jerusalem killing its inhabitants. To the right an angel shows Ezekiel the abominations that are taking place in the Temple and around Jerusalem. In the top-left corner a vine symbolizing Israel burns, and in the top-right corner are the two great eagles. To the left is a lioness with her cubs and a sentinel on a watchtower sounding the alarm by blowing a trumpet. At the bottom are shepherds and Ezekiel writing next to the altar from his vision.

Bible in a Year Series - Day #240 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Ezekiel 5-8 & Ezekiel 9-12

As I was listening/reading to today's narrative, I couldn't stop at chapter eight as it was just the beginning of Ezekiel's second vision.  Therefore, I kept going into tomorrow's assignment as well.

A few thoughts from this vision:

• God desires to make it clear to Ezekiel (and us) why he is about to destroy Jerusalem.
• As I watched along with Ezekiel, it was greatly disheartening to see the priests worshipping idols in God's house.  This syncretism exists today, and I am certain that God is equally displeased. Likewise, as we shall see in later books, there is another judgment stored up for those who worship idols.
• Two things in particular stabbed me in the heart:
  • "...I [God] have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols..." (Ezekiel 6:9)
  • "Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city." (Ezekiel 11:22-23)

This destruction is very difficult to view unless you can understand things from God's perspective.  To understand God's heart then you simply need to weep over the book of Hosea.

A couple more things caught my attention:

• "And the Lord said to him, “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.” 5 And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. 6 Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.” (Ezekiel 9:4-6)
• And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 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. (Ezekiel 11:19-20)

God preserved those who truly belonged to him. Furthermore, he has great plans for his remnant which we will begin to see unfold later in our chronological study.

In closing, I thought it would be important to meditate on the un-creation that is happening here.  Consider this from the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology:

"There are many points of contact between Ezekiel’s opening vision of the glory of God and the opening chapters of Genesis. Ezekiel sees a mighty windstorm (ru®ahΩ s§}aœra®, 1:4) approaching from the north, the traditional source of Judah’s enemies. This windstorm recalls the activity of God both in creation, where the spirit (ru®ahΩ) of God was hovering over the waters (Gen. 1:2), and in the re-creation of the earth after the flood, when God sent a wind (ru®ahΩ) to dry up the floodwaters (Gen. 8:1). At the centre of this windstorm, Ezekiel sees living creatures (hΩayyo®t; cf. Gen. 1:24, 28), which in a later vision are explicitly identified as cherubim (10:1), those who enforce divine judgment in Genesis 3:24. Over the heads of the cherubim is an awesome ‘expanse’ (raœqˆîa}, 1:25, NIV), like that of Genesis 1:6. The aura of God’s radiance is compared to a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day (v. 28), a description which evokes Genesis 9:13–16, the only other passage in the OT which speaks of God’s setting his bow in the clouds. Together, these references set the tone of the entire book of Ezekiel as an account of uncreation – re-creation.

The re-creation aspect is most evident in the ‘new Adam’ theme which emerges in two places. Ezekiel himself is characteristically addressed in the book as ben-aœdaœm a phrase normally translated ‘son of man’, but which literally means ‘son of Adam’. Just as the first Adam received the breath of life from God (Gen. 2:7), so Ezekiel as ‘son of Adam’ receives an infusion of divine spirit (ru®ahΩ) (see Holy Spirit) which raises him from the prone position to which the vision of God’s fearsome glory reduced him (Ezek. 2:1–2). Like the first Adam, he faces a test of obedience which revolves around the idea of eating, though in his case he is to eat whatever the Lord commands him to eat (2:8), rather than to abstain from eating what the Lord prohibits. In another reversal of the original sin, what Ezekiel is given to eat is anything but ‘good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom’ (Gen. 3:6): it is a scroll covered on both sides with words of lament and mourning and woe (Ezek. 2:10). Yet though its appearance is unattractive, to the obedient eater it tastes as sweet as honey (3:3), and through eating it the ‘new Adam’ becomes equipped to bring life to many (3:16–21). As the ‘new Adam’, Ezekiel is the founder member and firstfruits of the renewed community (see People of God), whose re-creation is the theme of Ezekiel 37:1–11. This re-creation of the community from the valley of dry bones involves first the forming of the raw material into bodies and then their being filled with breath, resulting in life, as at the creation of the first Adam."

How great is God's faithfulness to those that love him!

 

 

 

Ezekiel, Cherubim, Wheels, and the Glory of God

Bible in a Year Series - Day #239 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Ezekiel 1-4.

Today we begin the prophetic book of Ezekiel in our chronological reading of the Bible.

Ezekiel was a young contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah.  However, at roughly the age of 25, Ezekiel found himself as one of the very first exiles to Babylon under the hand of Nebuchadnezzar and before the fall of Jerusalem.

Ezekiel's call from God occured when he was 30 years old while living in Babylonian captivity, roughly 593 BC, five years after his exile.

Therefore, we are going to go back in time from our position at the fall of Jerusalem in roughly 587 BC.

The book of Ezekiel is divided up into five sections:

1. His ignaugural vision
2. Judgment on Jerusalem and Judah (Jerusalem has yet to fall in Ezekiel's book)
3. Oracles against Foreign Nations
4. After the Fall of Jerusalem
5. Vision of Restoration

Ezekiel 3:15:

"And I sat there overwhelmed among them seven days."

After reading these first four chapters, I am with Ezekiel: mute and overwhelmed.

While certainly there is a great deal in these chapters that is straightforward, albeit unusual (eating the scroll, street drama), can you imagine seeing the glory of God accompanied by these inexplicable creatures?

When God decides to use a person in a great way, he often makes his first contact in such a way that the person is forevermore changed.

We have again witnessed such an event, and I think the proper thing to do when we encounter such an event is to stand back in silent awe.

See you tomorrow.  I'm going to go workout and contemplate this scene.

The Fall of Jerusalem, Lamentations, TISHA B’AV, and Human Suffering

Bible in a Year Series - Day #238 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Lamentations 3:37-5:22.

Imagine a conquering nation attacking the United States, throwing us into poverty, starvation, and ultimately slavery.

Take a few minutes and understand the pain that would come to you, your family, and how your life would never again be the same.

The unfathomable emotion that would befall you is what is written in the book of Lamentations as the writer witnessed the seige, fall, and exile of Jerusalem.

There was starvation, disease, people were eating their children from hunger, corpses lie everywhere in the city, there was no place to dispose of the human waste, and then all of Jerusalem is slain save 4,600 deported to Babylon.

Not a pretty site.

The other significant thing to understand is that the Jews understood that this was done at the hand of God.  If America were to suffer the same fate, I suspect our post-modern thinking would simply think this evil was done at the hand of some despot.

For the Jew, and the understanding student of the Bible, this abhorrent destruction at the hand of God is....well..unthinkable and unbearable.

Unending tears that strike at the very core of your being.  This is the book of Lamentations.

Today, the Jews still remember this horrific day, and the day of destruction to their second temple, in a summer remembrance called TISHA B'AV (9th day of the fifth month).

To the post-modern mind, human suffering is brought by fate.  Even a large number of Christians will cry to God, "why, why did you allow this to happen".

What the Bible and the book of Lamentations teaches us is that God ordains all suffering, and is not merely an impotent bystander who shares our grief.

Only with the understanding of this fact can you begin to understand the grief contained in the book of Lamentations.

Here is a great background piece I found on the book of Lamentations.  I highly recommend that you take 15 minutes to give it a read.

Tomorrow we move to the book of Ezekiel.  See you then.

Lamentations: I am the man who has Seen Affliction Under the rod of his Wrath

Bible in a Year Series - Day #237 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Lamentations 1-3:36.

The author of the book of Lamentations is uncertain.  However, tradition has credited the book to the prophet Jeremiah.

Nonetheless, clearly it was written by a man who witnessed first hand God's destruction of Jerusalem, and is likely one of the exiles in Babylon.

You will never be able to grasp the depth of the lament found in this book unless you have traveled the path we have traveled in the past 237 days, or perhaps come under God's rod of wrath yourself.

This is my second journey to the land of lamentation, and unfortunately I have also felt the stinging end of the rod of Yahweh's correction.

Even today, I find myself in lament feeling as though I have survived the "day of the Lord", am safe, but still exiled in Babylon.

As I read the witness of the man in chapter three, I can relate.  Though certainly not anywhere's near the depth of pain experienced by Judah's exiles, I now understand that God will proclaim judgment on those he loves as well as those who profane his name.  He is Lord of all.

The author of Lamentations rightly proclaimed:

"The Lord is in the right,
for I have rebelled against his word"...(Lamentations 1:18a)

However, in the key passage of the whole book, he sets our eyes on hope:

"Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
20 My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:19-24)

Standing on the other side of God's greatest judgment, and the greatest demonstration of his love, in the slaying of his only begotten Son, we can more fully understand the depth of God's unending mercy.  We can begin to understand the lengths that God will go to bring his wayward children to himself.

Therefore, we too must continually bow our souls before our great God.

Oh my soul, the Lord is our portion, hope only in him.

Abba, I plead with you; give me the faith, open my eyes, give me the wisdom, and create in me a clean heart that lives this fully.

 

The Babylonian Exile of Jerusalem

Bible in a Year Series - Day #236 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Jeremiah 51-52.

We have now turned a significant corner in the Biblical narrative.  God has brought Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon to destroy Jerusalem.  Only 4,600 make it out alive, and here we see them being exiled to Babylon.

This scene is very difficult to consider, but we have seen this day coming for weeks now in our reading.  God, over a significant amount of time, and a considerable number of prophets warned Judah to turn from her considerably evil ways.

Interestingly, I recieved a note yesterday from a gentleman who was accusing me of dishing out vinegar, and recommended that I offer my readers the Bible's honey instead.  Perhaps he missed that I am simply doing a chronological journey through the Bible.  Or, perhaps he would prefer that I was reading the Ben Franklin Bible, where Benjamin Franklin simply cut out the parts he didn't like.

No, as I have testified many times, the Bible is a very difficult book to read.  To simply hop, skip, and jump to the fun parts makes for a namby pamby Christian, and brings a completely false understanding of who God is.

God's judgment of sin is a significant part of Biblical theology.  We have seen it in the Garden of Eden. We've seen it in the Flood. We've seen it time and time again throughout the course of the Exodus, the Judges, the Kings, and now here with the complete and utter destruction of Jerusalem.

No, it is completely disengenuous to contemplate knowing God without greatly wrestling with the most difficult parts of the Bible.

Jerusalem's page is now turned.  Tomorrow we begin the book of Lamentations, and begin our journey to understand what this "new covenant" is that God told us about through the prophet Jeremiah.

 

The Cup of the Lord's Wrath

Bible in a Year Series - Day #235 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Jeremiah 49-50.

Today we continue to read of the wrath that will be poured out against all nations.  Remember, God told the nations that as Jerusalem will be punished, so too will you.

As I was reading today's message, I was reminded that God called this carnage his "cup of wrath":

Thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.” (Jeremiah 25:15-16)

“Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword that I am sending among you.’

“And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: You must drink! 29 For behold, I begin to work disaster at the city that is called by my name, and shall you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, declares the Lord of hosts.’ (Jeremiah 27-29)

As I contemplate this horror, I was also reminded that we shall again see God's cup of wrath many centuries later mentioned in the garden of Gethsemane:

"And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. 40 And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. 45 And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (Luke 22:39-46)

John also brings the cup of God's wrath into our view in the book of Revelation:

"And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.” (Revelation 14:9-11)

We have read many chapters of false prophets in Jeremiah's day proclaiming that God would never attack his bride Israel.  Today, the post-modern mind reads these words, and just like the false prophets of old, scoffs at the idea of a final coming judgment of God.

God sent a great many prophets to warn Jerusalem of their coming drink of God's wrath, and God has given us Messiah and many others to foretell of a future drink of God's wrath.

The question is:  what will you do with this information? 

Will you scoff, or fall on your knees?

Have you Ever Considered the Significance of God's Prophetic Oracles Against Foreign Nations?

Bible in a Year Series - Day #234 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Jeremiah 46-48.

Previous to this year's chronological reading of the Bible, my worldview never gave consideration to the idea that God is actually in control of absolutely everything, including foreign nations.

Somehow, in my mind, I put the Creator of all into a box where he was somehow only concerned with Christians, and the missionaries who went out to create more Christians.

The idea that God actually controlled Hitler's actions, for example, is mind boggling.  Nonetheless, a simple reading of the Bible will confirm this fact.

Side note:  As I am typing this, the thought comes to mind that one of Satan's greatest weapons is ignorance.  If everyone would simply read the Bible, and force themselves to wrestle with the words therein, I suspect a great many would have a completely different perspectives.

In today's reading we find that God has proclaimed judgment on Egypt, Philistia, and Moab.  The Bible makes bold claims when we read such things.  Behind these words lies a crystal clear statement of Yahweh:  I alone am God, and I alone decide whether a nation will go to the left or to the right.

Jeremiah prophesied that the Babylonians would come against the mighty alliance of Assyria and Egypt.  In the Battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Assyria once and for all, and sent Egypt's Neco II running back to Egypt with his tail between his legs.

This was prophesied by Jeremiah, recorded in our Bible, and this battle is also recorded in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian Chronicles which are housed in the British Museum.

It is impossible for the thinking person to contemplate the previous sentence without a great internal consternation. 

The Bible has never been disproved in its chronicles and prophesies.  There are still a great number of unsolved puzzles to be solved in future times, but the word of God remains true in spite of what any might think.

As Josh McDowell has proclaimed, the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting the Bible and its claims demands a verdict.  Furthermore, when you consider all of the evidence, your verdict can only be on the side of Yahweh and his claims.

Therefore, I asked myself:   If this is so, which I have always believed, why have you waited fifty years to read this book?

Answer?  I preferred to live in ignorance, and live my life as though I were king, and God was merely there to be my Santa Claus.

I possess great shame to confess the previous statement.  Nonetheless, it was true.

Was true!

Dear reader, can I challenge you?  Have you read the words of the Bible and greatly struggled with it's precepts? 

If not, why not join the remainder of my chronological journey through the Bible?  I would enjoy your company.