Sermon Tone Analysis

Ezekiel is just past the halfway point of your Bible… Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel...

As you find your place, I just want to take a little poll: How many of you have you ever heard someone say about Christianity: “It’s not about religion, it’s about relationship with God.”

Raise your hand if you would affirm that is true...

Absolutely… I would affirm that is true in this sense:

That the Christian life is not about a set of external rituals… it’s not about a certain list of dos and don’ts… it’s not about EARNING our way into God’s favor…

But I wonder if we would all mean the same thing when we described what it meant to have a “relationship with God.”

Because some people think a relationship with God is like a relationship with your Great Uncle on your mother’s side who you’ve never met… but since you heard their name before and looked them up on Facebook and you share some of the same blood, that must mean you have a relationship...

Others think a relationship with God is something really far in the other direction… that it’s like sitting with your bestie over coffee while you tell them everything that you dream about and they just affirm you… and they never say a hard word to you… they always think just like you think... and we kind of bring God DOWN to this level that has no resemblance of who he actually is…

Still others have a relationship with God that looks a lot like religion… they go through a lot of motions… show up at church… they sing songs… they attend their Gospel Community sometimes... read their Bible sometimes… pray before dinner…

But it’s not like God is a personal, active, regular participant in their life.

I’d imagine that a lot of us can relate to that third description especially… at least in certain seasons…

And believe me… I’m not just preaching AT YOU… here… I can relate to all three of those concepts of relating to God at different points in my life...

Like even this week there were times when I felt like I was just going through the motions and I had to come to my senses and remember… the presence of God again… my relationship with God again…

It’s HARD to relate to someone who is invisible to us… I get it...

And yet God’s word would call us to something different than all of these…

God, through his word, would call us to a relationship that recognizes both his TRANSCENDENCE… the BIGNESS of who he is… AND his imminence… or his nearness… his personal care and concern about the details of our lives...

THAT is why we are doing this series… “Encounters with God.”

That we would grow in our understanding of what it means to encounter the Living God together.

That we would see how GREAT he is… and then that we would see how he has promised to MEET WITH US… his people…

We talked about this verse on Good Friday: - For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God... (ESV)

says For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God... (ESV)

Jesus died so that we could draw near to the Holy God of the Universe… and we don’t want to squander that!

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, (ESV)

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(ESV)

says, “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!”

(, ESV)  

says, “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

(ESV)

We are called… we are invited… to pursue and realize the very presence of God…

he will quiet you by his love;

says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And we all, with unveiled face, BEHOLDING THE GLORY OF THE LORD, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

(ESV)

he will exult over you with loud singing.

(ESV)

God wants us… through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ… to behold his glory… to truly and personally encounter HIM.

To know WHO HE IS… and to also know that he is ACTIVE in the affairs of our lives.

And then to be completely changed by him… to turn from sin… and to be transformed into his image...

To know WHO HE IS… and to also know that he is ACTIVE in the affairs of our lives.

So the question we want to ask today is this: WHO is this God we encounter?

Who is the God Jesus died to bring us to?

What is the presence of God that we seek?

What is the glory of God that we behold?

Here’s our Big Idea:

Here’s our Big Idea:

When I truly encounter God, I am brought low before his glory.

We are in Ezekiel chapter 1 today...

This series is a little different than our typical series… we usually go through a book of the Bible at a time…

But in this series, we are going to preach expository sermons… verse by verse explanations… from different parts of the Bible that help us see what it means to encounter God.

We are mostly going to be in passages that describe theophanies… times when people encountered God in some sort of visible form… there will be a couple exceptions throughout the series that will take us through the end of May...

But this will get us into a lot of different parts of God’s word…

And today we are in the Prophets… the Book of Ezekiel...

Ezekiel was a prophet of God during a time when Israel (God’s people) had been taken away into captivity in Babylon…

This was divine punishment because Israel had turned their backs on the Living God… they had broken their covenant… they had gone after false idols...

And so Ezekiel’s job is to proclaim judgment against Israel… and judgment against the nations...

And not only that… God calls him to REENACT some of the judgments… in some REALLY strange ways...

Get low because God's glory is...

Get low because God's glory is...

He has to build a tiny representation of Jerusalem and then stage an attack on it… kind of like us guys did with army men and lincoln logs when we were kids...

He has to lay on his side for a little over a year eating food cooked over human poop as a sign of how bad it would be in Israel’s destruction...

And as if that’s not bad enough... God tells him from the outset that no one is going to listen to him...

Now at the end of the book, Ezekiel also describes HOPE for a remnant of Israel… so it’s not all bad… but it’s certainly not a fun calling...

And so what is going to keep Ezekiel going in all this?

What is going to sustain him?

It’s the vision of the glory of God that he saw that he’s about to share with us... That’s what chapter 1 is all about…

The chapter is going to end with these words: Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking.”

(, ESV)

The chapter is going to end with these words: Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking.”

(, ESV)

… and what follows is God’s call on Ezekiel’s life.

When we truly encounter God, we get low before his glory.

Today we want to see (from this text) three reasons why we need to get low...

Get low because God's glory is...

...present in our situations.

(1:1-3)

Look at ... [read]

In the thirtieth year...

Now there is no point of reference… the thirtieth year of WHAT?!?!

But most commentators agree that this is the thirtieth year of Ezekiel’s life.

That’s the year you would entered into the actual ministry of a priest if you were born in that lineage...

Which would be a big deal… it would have been something Ezekiel looked forward to his whole life...

His dad, Buzi, would have been a priest… his grandfather would have been a priest…

He would have grown up around the temple in all of its magnificent images and symbolism… knowing that the Holy of Holies was just on the other side of that big thick curtain with the scary looking cherubim sewn into it...

And now that he was 30, Ezekiel got to be a priest before the MOST HIGH GOD… this was something he waited for all his life!

The PLACE WHERE THE GLORY OF THE LORD was located in a special way...

King David had said that he would rather be a DOORKEEPER in the house of the Lord (an undesirable job in the temple FURTHEST from the most holy place) than dwell in the tents of wickedness...

So Ezekiel would likely be anticipating the day when he entered into service of God...

EXCEPT that as this year had come in his life, HE has been in exile with God’s people for FIVE YEARS, living THOUSANDS of miles from the Temple… separated by deserts and a couple bodies of water… [show map]

HE is stuck in BABYLON… sitting next to an irrigation canal...

OH… and we’ll find out in verse 4 that it looks like storm clouds are rolling in…

Thirty years old… a captive of a foreign nation… his people are under God’s punishment… feeling rather purposeless…

This isn’t a great day.

This isn’t even a great life.

Where is God in all this?

Has he abandoned?