Sermon Tone Analysis

In his wonderful book, “The Living God”, Peter Lewis has one of those revealing quotes from that great 20th century philosopher Woody Allen; one of those moments where he holds up a mirror to humanity and reveals us for what we are

READ LEWIS P 15

 “If  God  would only speak to me – just once.

If  he  would only cough.

If I could  just see a miracle.

If I could see a  burning bush or the seas part.

Or my Uncle Sasha pick up the bill.”

And so, says Lewis, there you have the mixture of timeless longing and trendy cynicism which characterizes much of the Western mind-set and personality today;

Allen  wants  God  on his own terms – and God won’t play.

Or, as Honeywill and Blyth point out in their book /“NEO Power  How the New Economic Order is changing the way we live, work and play”,/:        God is back – but no-one’s kneeling.

Ezekiel – above all else, a book about GOD – the true and living God, the God who is personal, and  calls for a personal, relational response; the God  who does make  himself  known, who  does show himself.

And knowing this God, the only God, is not a matter of doing this or that course.

It is not just acquisitive.

It is responsive.

To know the God who has shown himself is to respond in personhood, penitence and devotion.

It’s a heart response, not just a thought out grappling with the revealed truths

Throughout  the  book  (over 50 times) “/then they~/you will know that I AM THE LORD”/.

EZEKIEL

Historical setting : need to remember

                922 BC division

                722 BC   Assyrians (Chaldeans) conquer Israel

                597 BC  Babylonians conquer Judah         2 waves : leading citizens, then

                587 BC   Jerusalem is destroyed, and the rest are driven off into Exile

 

V 1: 5 years after that: the reality has sunk in: think of the despair, trying hard to remember what it was like, and not just hard to remember what Jerusalem was like.

You know how many groups of immigrants – and it began with the British in 1788, come to this country and live in a time warp.

They create a little London, a little Italy, a little Athens, a little Hong Kong.

Unintentionally, but because they long for what used to be, the smells, the institutions, the food, the structures of family and community, they don’t allow for change back there.

However, for the Jews in Babylon, although they sat down by the river and wept when they remembered Zion, there was something even more confronting than just the fact they had been deported and their land scorched.

Every day, they were confronted with other gods.

Every day they had it rubbed into their faces that their God had lost.

Babylon was amongst the richest and most developed of nations.

Proud of its aesthetic and artistic achievements.

Delighted to show the world not just its military technology, but the ways that technology had been put to “peaceful  uses”

In a culture of luxury and power, where every street corner spoke of opulence and the marvellous creativity of humans, the root of it all was clear – and it was NOT the Lord God of Israel.

He had lost.

He had been struck dumb.

There was no statue to him on every street corner.

No cherubim and seraphim guarding his presence – instead those half-man, half lion gargoyles and statues symbolisiing the source of  their conquerors’ victory.

There was no word for the people God had taken as his own.

The heavens were silent.

And the despair grew as dark as a starless Babylonian night seen from the bank of the Chebar canal.

And then. . . . .

\\ /1 In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.

\\ 2 On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), \\ 3 the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.

\\ \\ /

Note: v1 I saw God, v 3 the word of the LORD came to me v 3 The hand of the LORD was upon me – all emphasising the truth and importance of what Ezekiel is to do.

He is a prophet of the Lord, who is to speak the words of God to the people of God.

They are the usual phrases and in a sense we ought now to expect he would get on with the job of speaking to the people.

But God, whose aim in speaking was that those who had forgotten and suppressed and rebelled against the true and living God should know that he is the LORD, gives his servant something more:

He shows him himself.

Ezekiel 1:4 (ESV) \\ 4 As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.

\\ \\

And then:  read from 5 -14

Earth, creation, living things

Clearly the rulers of all things

Humans

Winged

Faces – 4 as well as human, wild animals, domesticated animals and birds

Endless movement beyond the speed of light

And they rule – they are monarchs, sovereigns, ceaselessly moving through the earth as they control it

And this movement is significant in what E sees:  read from 15

It is vast, and universal and free–

It is fast and deliberate and all-seeing

 

NB : Not about engineering!

Point is: you can’t see this! Notice the “like” v 4,5,7,13,14,16

Impression of unstoppable omnipotent and universal power over all the earth

But it’s not independent.

Read from v 22

 

These creatures owe allegiance to someone who really is unstoppable, omnipotent omnipresent and omniscient.

Someone who is not just a greater creature, not someone who is part of the creation, but someone who is above it.

Who has made it, who has set the creatures as kind of rulers under his own rulership.

Separated from them by an expanse, if you like a dome.

One whose voice stills their movement when nothing else can; Who speaks and the creation  - all of it ceases its deafening noise and stands rooted to the spot.

And then E sees this being

 

Read v 26 ff

 

“God is back – but no-one is kneeling”

NOT true for Ezekiel

And it’s more than he can either express or handle

More than he can express – NOTICE the “like”??

More than he can handle – for notice v 28

How do you think you’re going to convince your family, your friends and others that God is worth kneeling to?

That they ought to bow the knee to him and not see him as just another resource for getting through the complexities of life?

Not just a crutch for those with a religious DNA?

Well, how much have you and I taken note of Ezekiel 1?

My greatest struggle with this part of God’s word is me!

Because – in my face is the stark reminder that I am ME – and God is God

I am his creature, NOT his equal

I am under him, not the other way round

 

All around Ez. Was a reminder that human beings think it IS the other way round.

A reminder that the human race, though capable of the most amazing arch, literary, aesthetic, technological, scientific achievements, has a desperately wicked heart.

But Ez – “they will know that I am the LORD”

Enough foolishness – it’s time for a reality check

 

1.

God of clearly absolute majesty and glory                                                            you??

2.       God whose nature is that he is all-seeing, all-knowing

3.       God who is universal judge – out of the North, fire

4.       God who is sovereign over all the earth – even in what appeared to be god-forsaken Babylon and the slum that was Tel Arbib

5.       God who is not a topic in a text book, but the true and living God before whom humans are to fall

6.

God whose glory  :

 

Is that he is present everywhere and owns everywhere               Matt 28

 

Judge of all people – John 5, Acts 17

 

Sovereign over all            -              Phil 2

 

Before whom my creatureliness is shown, and my merely acquisitive desire to know God is exposed as the pretence it actually is