Ezekiel 24

INTRO

If you have your Bible’s today you can turn to Ezekiel 24 with me. Believe it or not, we are at a turning point in the book of Ezekiel. What does that mean? Well, it means the judgment messages are is slowly coming to an end. Hurray! There are more hopeful passages ahead, but we do need to look at today’s text that is a judgment text with humility and also wonder. Which, may sound strange especially once you read this with me, but I hope it can encourage you today in many different ways.

If you have been walking through Ezekiel from the beginning there is a simple plot line that keeps coming up and that is this: there is a false hope for the exiles have of Jerusalem. As long as Jerusalem is still standing, they are secure. I mean they are God’s people, that is God’s land, we are okay as long as the temple and the city are still standing. We will get out any day now and go back. But Ezekiel, through God’s Spirit in him keeps saying, no, that is not what is going to happen. He has spoken hard things, he has acted out strange things, to try to get his point across. He even gave an offensive history lesson of Israel that we looked at last week. But today gets to another level. And today’s chapter is really a culmination of everything Ezekiel has been talking about and trying to tear down their victim mindset, their spiritual pride, and help them see that they need to return to the Lord. So let’s read starting in verse 1. There are two stories here today that are intricately connected.

BODY

1 In the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, write down the name of this day, this very day. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day. 3 And utter a parable to the rebellious house and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD:

“Set on the pot, set it on;

pour in water also;

4  put in it the pieces of meat,

all the good pieces, the thigh and the shoulder;

fill it with choice bones.

5  Take the choicest one of the flock;

pile the logs under it;

boil it well;

see the also its bones in it.

6 “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose corrosion is in it, and whose corrosion has not gone out of it! Take out of it piece after piece, without making any choice. 7 For the blood she has shed is in her midst; she put it on the bare rock; she did not pour it out on the ground to cover it with dust. 8 To rouse my wrath, to take vengeance, I have set on the bare rock the blood she has shed, that it may not be covered. 9 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the bloody city! I also will make the pile great. 10 Heap on the logs, kindle the fire, boil the meat well, mix in the spices, and let the bones be burned up. 11 Then set it empty upon the coals, that it may become hot, and its copper may burn, that its uncleanness may be melted in it, its corrosion consumed. 12 She has wearied herself with toil; its abundant corrosion does not go out of it. Into the fire with its corrosion! 13 On account of your unclean lewdness, because I would have cleansed you and you were not cleansed from your uncleanness, you shall not be cleansed anymore till I have satisfied my fury upon you. 14 I am the LORD. I have spoken; it shall come to pass; I will do it. I will not go back; I will not spare; I will not relent; according to your ways and your deeds you will be judged, declares the Lord GOD.”

Okay, there is a lot to unpack here and a lot of of what is being said is actually connected to other things in the law and what has already been said in Ezekiel. So to help us understand this text a little better I want to help you see the background and connections of verses 1-14.

Background and Connections for verses 1-14

The siege of Jerusalem is starting. This goes all the way back to chapter 4 of Ezekiel when he was an actor and playing with a brick and saying that Jerusalem will be sieged. Here we see that Nebucadnezzar is still power hungry and going to go and destroy Jerusalem, even the temple.

A parable about meat, continued… What I mean by this is back in chapter 11 in Ezekiel where the people thought they were not going to be destroyed because the city was a cauldron and they were choice meat. This is their spiritual pride of thinking since we are the chosen people, the people of God, we can do whatever we want. God will still love us, even if we are outright disobedient. Wrong, there will be punishment for their actions.

Levitical laws are being broken Remember that Ezekiel was training to be a priest. And to not bore you too much, the book of Leviticus was very precise about what you should do with the mean that your were smoking, boiling, sacrificing and what not. One of the big things that God said in the levitical laws was to make sure the blood was poured out of the sacrifice otherwise it would not be accepted. So, here in this strange cooking of the people, God is calling his people an impure sacrifice. Why? Because of the bloodshed that they have done in their city, the disobedience they have done towards the Lord.

God is faithful, true, and just to His word. You see the statement in verse 14? I am the Lord. I have spoken. It shall come to pass. I will do it. This is in connection to chapter 18 when the Israelites were flaunting their victim mindset and thinking that God was not just. That God was not going to actually bring punishment on the wicked. God will not be mocked, even by his own people. His desire for the people, as seen in verse 13 was to cleanse them yet they would not have it. They kept turning away. They kept following after their own ways or the nations.

So what are we to take away from this first part of the chapter? There is more that we will get to, but I think I want to make this really simple today. Because apparently I went a little long last week and I just need to get to the point :)

God desires for His people to be His people.

What does that mean? God is bringing judgment to his people here because they were disobedient, not listening to Him, not trusting him. If they would have just turned and trusted him, followed his law, lived for his great name instead of being so focused on theirs, this would have been a different story. And I think it goes the same for us today. God wants his people to see the simple obedience, the simple faith, of obeying and trusting him. Trusting in His word. Trusting in the being in communion with him. Trusting Him by being in the fellowship of believers. Just be His. Love Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. God will not be mocked, he is a rewarder of those who seek him. But for those who do not seek him, there is discipline. But don’t worry, this next part of the text is even a harder pill to swallow.

15 The word of the LORD came to me: 16 “Son of man, behold, I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you at a stroke; yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. 17 Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your shoes on your feet; do not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.”

So just pause for a second, even though if you have a header in your Bible, you know what is coming next. But what could be the delight of Ezekiels eyes especially as a priest? The temple, and he just heard that Jerusalem was under siege and now he is going and so he can’t mourn over this temple that was his everything. It was supposed to be Israel’s everything, yet he cannot mourn for it. Why? Because the disobedience shows that they did not care about it. They did not care about God’s presence. But then look what happens.

18 So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.

19 And the people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things mean for us, that you are acting thus?” 20 Then I said to them, “The word of the LORD came to me: 21 ‘Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearning of your soul, and your sons and your daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword. 22 And you shall do as I have done; you shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men. 23 Your turbans shall be on your heads and your shoes on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but you shall rot away in your iniquities and groan to one another. 24 Thus shall Ezekiel be to you a sign; according to all that he has done you shall do. When this comes, then you will know that I am the Lord GOD.’

25 “As for you, son of man, surely on the day when I take from them their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes and their soul’s desire, and also their sons and daughters, 26 on that day a fugitive will come to you to report to you the news. 27 On that day your mouth will be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak and be no longer mute. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD.”

Oh man, that is heavy! I mean, Ezekiel has been through a lot as God’s prophet but this! Losing his wife! And he is like 35 years old around this time, she was probably younger. That is, wrong! Right? Like that feels unjust and wrong. Not that his other actions made sense, like eating bread that was cooked over poop, or laying on his side. But this seems so unjust and unloving that Ezekiel would have to keep his mouth shut as his wife is taken from him so that a people walking in disobedience would learn their lesson and change.

I was not looking forward to this passage for a long time because this is like a greek tragedy. It feels like a hopeless and sad story that leads you to ask more questions that to actually have any understanding.

But here is where things change for us.

Is this not the Gospel? That one person, who was innocent, dies so that a disobedient, rebellion people would see and be transformed?

But what about the no mourning? Who is doing that in the Gospel? It is the father. He was silent while His son in killed on the cross. My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me? And why is he silent? To teach a lesson? Yes, but a different lesson than here where the lesson was to show your disobedience brought destruction. But the silence was to tell those who would believe in the Son that was slain that because God the father was silent during this unjust death, nothing will separate those from him. It is a quiet that Jesus had to experience so that we don’t have to. Because the love of God is not found in our situations, it is not found in the messes that we find ourselves. The love of God is rooted and grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is forever sealed in stone that God will not forsake you in Christ Jesus. Ya but Josh you don’t understand, as we talked about in the victim mindset, I just don’t hear from him. But are you looking at him in His word? Are you seeing God the father loving you so much that despite your disobedience, and rebellion, and animosity towards him, sends his perfect son to die a cruel, brutal and unjust death. And what for? To make us righteous! To make us His. Not to say a prayer to get to heaven, but to actually walk in His presence as His temples, to be filled with His Spirit.

So if you are in a dark season right now. This could be because of your willfull disobedience to keep sinning. Not like you are fighting against it and slip into it, I’m saying you genuinely know that what you are doing is wrong and are not stopping. Or it is a dark place because you do feel like God is just quiet. He feels far off. He feels like he does not care. I want us to take 3 minutes and look at him. How do we do that?