Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

Ezekiel 10-11 are the concluding chapters to a prophetic vision that began in chapter 8.

In this episode we discover how these chapters provide more Godhead talk from the Old Testament and the departure of the glory of God from the temple.

This is important material for evangelism and apologetics.

Once Holy Blood, Holy Grail came out in the early 1980’s and Dan Brown’s work showed up, and with the influence of Islamic online witnessing — many people think that the trinity is a late post-scripture invention .. it is a late word but the word is only a descriptor.

Introduction

All right, so today we're doing Ezekiel 10 and 11–two chapters again.

Some listeners will probably already know that Ezekiel 10 is, in many respects, repetitious with chapter 1.

When we went through chapter 1, I mentioned that we brought some content from chapter 10 into the episode on Ezekiel 1. but having said that, there are some things we need to look at here.

We're not going to repeat the stuff from chapter 1, but there's enough in here that we do need to mention because it will be important before we go on into chapter 11.

So with regard to chapter 10, the first question that would sort of be asked is, "Well, why does it repeat so much?

Why do we get another description of the cherubim and the wheels and all this kind of stuff–moving here and there?

Why do we get that when we had it in chapter 1?" Well, some of that is going to help set up certain parts, certain things said in chapter 11 and also be relevant with some things we've talked about up to this point.

So we don't want to skip it entirely.

It does have a purpose.

We're not going to rabbit-trail into the scholarly, literary purposes for it and all that.

If you want to know that, just get a good commentary on Ezekiel and read that.

We're not doing literary analysis here.

As is our custom, we're looking into the text to see, "Hey, what's interesting here?"

With respect to chapter 10, the first thing we need to take note of is that it divides into two parts pretty conveniently.

We have verses 1-8, verses 9-17, and they both begin with the same statement so they're pretty neatly divided.

It says, "I looked, and behold..." So it's very easy to divide the two.

The second part is the one that's really repetitious with Ezekiel chapter 1.

So verse 9-17, again, is largely the same as chapter 1.

But the first 8 verses, therefore, are not.

Verses 1 to 8 deal with Jerusalem's destruction.

Now we've had this as a theme for the last few chapters, really beginning with chapter 4. Jerusalem is about to bite the dust.

Ezekiel has told us why.

He's done a bunch of sign acts.

He's had visions and what-not about the destruction of Jerusalem, so this one here in chapter 10 is actually a continuation.

It's still part of a vision that he had that began in chapter 8.

That was sort of chapter 8 through 11.

So these next two chapters are still– we're still sort of in the same vision sequence, and it's really still about the same thing: Jerusalem's impending destruction.

Now in those 8 verses, the impending destruction really sort of has two facets to it.

One is, you're going to have the first few verses talk about the earthly judgment of the city.

It's going to be symbolized by the activities, not of Ezekiel this time, but of the man dressed in linen, this divine figure that we saw in our last episode.

He's still in the picture and he's going to be doing something here that symbolizes the destruction of Jerusalem.

Secondly, we're also going to get sort of a heavenly judgment theme.

So in verses 1-8 we've got earthly judgment of the city symbolized by what the man dressed in linen is going to do, and that's familiar territory.

But we're also going to

get this idea of heavenly or theological or divine judgment.

And that has to do with the departure of the glory.

And this is one of those things in the book of Ezekiel that people sort of know about because if preachers ever venture into Ezekiel they usually pick up on this passage–this theme about the glory departing from Jerusalem, because you can make good sermons out of that... the glory departing from the people of God and what-not.

So chapter 10 is where we're going to see that, but the departure of the glory is really only going to be finalized when we get into chapter 11, so both of the chapters are important.

So let's jump in here with chapter 10, and we'll just start in verse 1.

We read:

Again, that's very similar to language from Ezekiel chapter 1.

So right away, the reader is signaled to the fact that, "Oh–here in this vision of Ezekiel, he's also seeing that thing that he saw back in chapter 1."

So in verse 1, Ezekiel sees this expanse over the heads of the cherubim and there’s a throne, and then verse 2 says:

Again, Ezekiel finishes his narration that way–what he sees.

Now, an obvious question right up front: Who is speaking to the man clothed in linen?

You'd have to say "God," and really the antecedent of that, with God being the speaker, goes back to chapter 8, verse 1, where Ezekiel said, "The hand of the Lord God was upon me."

And then in verse 2, he unravels that by saying:

In other words, in chapter 8, Ezekiel says, "the hand of the Lord God was upon me," and he sees this anthropomorphized God–God as man–and it gets described in the same way that we saw in chapter 1 for the being on the throne above the expanse.

So God is the speaker here, and that divine man–that God-as-man character in chapter 8–was the one that, if you recall, put out the form of a hand.

It says in chapter 8, verse 3, that he picks Ezekiel up by the lock of his head, and then the text said the Spirit "lifted me up between heaven and earth."

And we talk about, well, who's lifting Ezekiel?

Is it God as a man?

Is it the Spirit?

Should we even care about a distinction, because the writer doesn't really make it clear?And then Ezekiel is taken, if you recall, to Jerusalem... he's transported to Jerusalem, either in his head or as some sort of travel/voyage, whether it's literal or spiritual–again, we talked about that when we were in chapter 8.

But when they get to Jerusalem, then they see the glory of the God of Israel there.

How can God be, like, with Ezekiel as a man picking him up by the lock of the hair, but yet he's there in Jerusalem?

And both figures are associated with the glory of God in chapter 8 and in chapter 1.

So we talked about (if you recall in chapter 8) this language that's used to sort of blur the distinctions between these Yahweh characters, and we talked about the Two Powers issue and where we get this sense of a godhead from the Old Testament.

We're going to have this same discussion here in chapter 10 because this guy is back and he's talking to Ezekiel.

In chapter 2 he's talking to the man clothed in linen and Ezekiel's listening.

We're looking at the same guy again, but in this case it's going to be in conjunction with–catch this–comments about the glory that are over the cherubim and then the departure of the glory.

So right away that raises the question, "If that's the glory of God over there and I'm looking here and listening and seeing this divine man speaking to the man clothed in linen, how can God be in two places at once?

Is it the same but yet different, or what's going on there?"

And again, the answer is: Yeah!

Or who cares?

There's no effort to parse the characters here in Ezekiel.

You're going to get another look here at this divine plurality thing that you see in the Old Testament, where God can be more than one person in more than one place, but yet be the same, like we had elsewhere in Ezekiel.

So we're going to get into, again, Two Powers fodder here.

So let's just pick up the scene here.

Ezekiel looks.

He's looking at the expanse of the heavens over the cherubim.

There was a throne there (verse 1, chapter 10).

In verse 2, "he said to the man clothed in linen."

So there's somebody sitting on the throne, again, we know who that is because we know chapter 1.

Okay, that's the scene.

"He went in before my eyes."

Ezekiel saw him (this man clothed in linen) go in and take the burning coals.

We're not told…did he scatter them over the city or not?

So unlike earlier instances of the vision where you have the executioners and the man clothed in linen doing things or being commanded to do things, and then the text said they went and did them… Or they reported back and said, "Yeah, we did that."

We don't have that here.

I think we can safely assume that he's going to obey God because he did before, but again we're confronted with, well, who's who in the scene?

So we have the anthropomorphized deity taking Ezekiel to Jerusalem.

They see the glory of God in Jerusalem back in chapter 8, probably atop the cherubim because in this chapter that's where the glory is going to be, and then it's going to leave.

So we have, again, this Two Powers feeling already.

So let's pick up with verse 3:

[ remember the man in linen is told to go underneath the cherubim and get some coals out, so Ezekiel tells us the cherubim were standing on the south side of the house—or the temple; that could be translated, as well] when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court [ again, this is temple terminology here].

So the man goes in, he's commanded by God (the God in human form guy that's in the vision) to go over underneath the cherubim, scoop out some of these things, and of course, when he gets there the cherub helps him grab some and gives them to him.

And so the man clothed in linen–another supernatural figure– does what he's told.

But look how it's referred to…the glory of the Lord is with the cherubim there.

How can the glory of the Lord be with the cherubim when– shouldn't the glory of the Lord be with this guy who is Yahweh in human form?

Because it's his glory!

How does that work?

It's never explained how that works.

They're the same but yet they're different.