BEMA 61: Ezekiel — Strength
Transcription Status
4 Jan 23 — Initial public release
26 Sep 22 — Transcript approved for release
Ezekiel — Strength
Brent Billings: This is The BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we examine the apocalyptic visions of Ezekiel and his message of encouragement to a people trapped in exile.
Marty Solomon: Yes. We have been walking through the prophets. We did pre-Assyrian prophets, Assyrian prophets, Babylonian prophets. Now we transition into what we’re calling exilic (eggs-ILL-ick) or exilic (eggs-EYE-lick). We can’t figure out which one it is.
Brent: I think exilic (eggs-EYE-lick) because of exile.
Marty: How about you say exilic (eggs-EYE-lick) and I’ll say exilic (eggs-ILL-ick), just cover all of our bases?
Brent: Okay.
Marty: I love that. We enter a whole new section, a whole new column on our diagram. Now the people of God are sitting off in exile, maybe not literally, but in a really real sense. They’re sitting away in the kingdom of—the Empire of—Babylon. Now the conquest is over and you end up losing hope. They’re sitting there. Some of the references, “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept,” to the old Psalm. You’ll hear people reference the rivers of Babylon. They sit there and they’re dealing with this new reality that their temple no longer stands. Their homes have been gutted and destroyed. The way that they wanted to live has been done away with. Now I’m assuming, as we sit in exile, I’m assuming we’d have a bunch of new questions. What do you think if you’re sitting in exile, Brent, you’re going to be asking?
Brent: Are we going to be here forever? Is this just what life is like now?
Marty: Right. I have questions like, “What did we do to deserve this? I realize we lost the plot of the story and we made some mistakes and we struggled with some disobedience, but is this really justified?” I think I would wonder, if I was in exile long enough, “Has God forsaken us? Not only will we be here forever, but is God even with us anymore?” I think in our world, we’d even question if God is even real. You’re sitting in exile and you have all of these new questions. This kind of brutal reality-check ushers in for them a whole different kind of prophetic voice. The exilic prophets are going to be different than the Babylonian prophets. It’s going to be different than the voice of woe. We don’t really talk about this much in our podcast, Brent, but we’ve talked about what the prophet says. What three words can you remember?
Brent: Warning, woe, and I want to do that other W-word, but that’s not the one that we actually use and I can’t remember.
Marty: We always talk about a sprinkling from the prophets.
Brent: Hope.
Marty: Hope. Warning, woe, and hope. As you get into the exilic period, the voice really changes from woe to a voice of hope. Ezekiel ushers us into a whole new prophetic day if you will. The voices of the prophets in exile begin to take on a different tone than the prophets of the past. It’s too late for warnings and the time for preventive repentance is long gone. There’s no need for the pronouncement of woes because that story has passed. If the Jewish people are ever going to come back to the path that God has called them to come back to in the story, they’re going to need to be able to overcome their current circumstances.
They’re going to need to push through and be empowered and choose the right in the middle of the wrong. They are going to need strength—and strength is going to be the right word for Ezekiel. It’s actually going to be our word for Ezekiel. As Ezekiel—I named my son after, maybe not after this prophet, but kind of did—but his name is Ezekiel. My son’s name is Ezekiel James and the Hebrew [name] would be Ezekiel Jacob. Ezekiel means “God strengthens you.” If you can remember, we talked about Pharaoh and his heart. Remember the two words for harden?
Brent: It’s like chazak and chavod or something.
Marty: Yes, kavod, it was “to heavy” or “to strengthen.” That word chazak that you mentioned was the word to strengthen. It showed up again in Joshua when we talked about chazak va’chamatz. Chazak va’chamatz is to be strong and courageous. The word for strength or to be strong or to strengthen is the word chazak. If you look at the word in Ezekiel, you see it in there. Chazak-iel. It has chazak at the end. It is Chazak-iel. His name means “God strengthens” or “strengthened by God.”
It has this dual meaning even as I listen to it because on one hand, Ezekiel is going to need strength to make it through his calling as a prophet. He’s not going to have an easy calling. It’s not going to quite be Jeremiah, but it’s not going to be easy by any stretch. A different kind of difficulty. His message is also a message of strength. Ezekiel has been sent to strengthen God’s people who sit in exile, who are tempted to succumb to despair, who are potentially losing hope and Ezekiel is sent to strengthen them. I have some notes written down here. Ezekiel is going to introduce us to a new kind of prophecy called apocalyptic literature. We’re familiar with apocalyptic literature, right?
Brent: Sure.
Marty: What books do we think of immediately?
Brent: Well, Revelation.
Marty: Of course—Revelation. Sometimes we don’t even remember that they’re apocalyptic—Revelation is not the first apocalyptic book that we deal with. We deal with apocalyptic literature and four different books in the Old Testament, one of them is Ezekiel. We’re not going to spend a lot of time here, we’re going to do some other things in Ezekiel. I want to just give some opening comments to apocalyptic literature. It’s going to come back in Daniel. We’re going to actually deal with a topic in Zechariah. When we get to Zechariah, we’ll deal with apocalyptic literature more in-depth.
Apocalyptic literature is a form of prophetic writing that uses—and I will read this because I’ve chosen these words very carefully—apocalyptic literature uses images and symbols to convey hope to their present day. Apocalyptic literature uses images and symbols to convey hope to their present day. It’s not this big thing about the future. It’s not a big crystal ball about what’s going to happen in the end times. In fact, the word apocalyptic means “to uncover” or “to reveal.” It has a very present implication, not so much a future implication; I think people always think, “Where you’re going to uncover the future.”
Not necessarily, not at all. It’s going to be an uncovering. We’re going to peel back the curtain so that you can see what’s actually happening there. We have done so much damage to our understanding of prophecy and eschatology—which means the study of the end times—because of a rampant misunderstanding of how apocalyptic literature functions in the ancient Eastern world. The description is so central to the study that we do in our classes that I’m going to repeat it again: apocalyptic literature utilizes symbols and images to convey hope to their present day.
Ezekiel—another thought here—Ezekiel’s not trying to prophesy about future events and how they will go down. He’s most certainly not laying down a blueprint for how things are going to happen in Babylon, or what their return is necessarily going to look like. It’s not a step-by-step blueprint at all. Ezekiel is trying to talk to the Jewish people about their current world and their current situation. He’s going to use symbols and images to try to communicate this message of strength. Ezekiel is also one of my favorite prophets because he gets—I think I’ve spoken before about some of the prophets engaging in what we might call guerrilla theater, a little street theater, planned or unplanned, but impromptu.
Ezekiel 4 for any of our listeners that want to pull and read that story, it’s a pretty interesting story. Ezekiel’s not maybe an author like we might think of some prophets writing their book, Ezekiel is a thespian if we will. He takes his apocalyptic imagery and uses it to perform what I heard one teacher called guerrilla theater. Ezekiel is going to run into a busy part of town, enact a prophetic message from the Lord, and then jet out of there on a dead sprint, and leave the audience to discuss the prophetic word with their mouths gaping.
In Ezekiel 4, we hear the story of Ezekiel being told by God to build a model of Jerusalem. My son loves Legos. I can imagine Ezekiel building a big Lego model of Jerusalem. Then he takes his hair and a sword. He cuts some of his hair off and then he puts it in a model and he lights it on fire. Then he takes a sword and he chops up the model because Jerusalem’s going to be destroyed. He’ll be commanded to cook his food over human excrement. Then after bargaining with the Lord—he doesn’t like that idea so much; I don’t know if you would like that. He’s got some complaints about that.
Brent: It sounds… different.
Marty: [laughs] He’s like, “God, I understand. I’m a prophet and I understand you want me to do some provocative things. Can I at least cook it over animal feces?’’ To which God says, “ Alright, I’ll let you cook it over animal feces.” This is Ezekiel’s call. This is not necessarily a fun calling. Being a prophet is very rarely fun work. One of my last ideas I want to talk about with Ezekiel is this idea that Ezekiel is trying to communicate hope to God’s people. How does he do that?
If you’ve ever read Ezekiel you’re going, “How do you even get anything out of Ezekiel?” In fact, I think you have Ezekiel 1. I want us to take a look at Ezekiel 1 because you’ll have a deeper appreciation for just how crazy different parts of Ezekiel are—and how do you even begin to make sense out of it? It’s one of the hardest books, even from a Jewish perspective in a Jewish conversation it’s one of the most difficult prophecies to unpack in all of its detail and nuance. Go ahead and read us Ezekiel 1 if you’ve got it, Brent, and we’ll go from there.
Brent: I looked and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north, an immense cloud with flashing lightning surrounded by a brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance, their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings, their legs were straight. Their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides, they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings and the wings of one touched the wings of another.
Each one went straight ahead, they did not turn as they moved. Their faces looked like this. Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion and on the left of the face of an ox, each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces, they each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side, and each had two other wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches.
Fire moved back and forth among the creatures. It was bright and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning. As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels. They sparkled like topaz and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they move, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced. The wheels did not change direction as the creatures went, their rims were high and awesome and all four rooms were full of eyes all around.
Marty: I still think of that passage in today’s culture. “Their rims were high and awesome.” [chuckles] I remember a younger version of myself really getting into that verse.
[laughter]
Brent: Yes, it’s easy to spend money on rims.
Marty: 20-inch rims on my Impala—you know what I’m talking about?
Brent: I don’t actually but…
[laughter]
Marty: Alright.
Brent: I understand it has to be a reference.
[music]
Brent: Let’s see, verse 19. When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose—so it’s a lifted vehicle.
Marty: Yes. I like this. You’re taking this places I hadn’t even been…
Brent: Wherever the spirit would go, they would go and the wheels would rise along with him because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved. When the creatures stood still, they also stood still. When the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault sparkling like crystal and awesome. Under the vault, their wings were stretched out one toward the other end each had two wings covering its body.
When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings. Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli. High above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up. He looked like glowing metal as if full of fire, and from there down, he looked like fire, and brilliant light surrounded him.
Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.
Marty: Right. Really easy to pull that apart.
Brent: I’ve got it all figured out.
Marty: Yes, not super complicated at all. Pretty simple [sarcasm]. This is super confusing when you read this. What in the world does this have to do with anything? How do you ever begin to pull this apart? We got angels with wings, and there’s creatures with eyes all over. Then there’s wheels and wheels within wheels and wheels don’t move, but he gets this glimpse of the glory of the Lord. You would expect it to be bigger than our imagination, whatever the glory of the Lord looks like. It’s got to be hard to explain, it’s got to be impossible to put in our bucket, so to speak, of understanding.
He gets this glimpse of the glory of the Lord and while I’m not a scholar in Ezekiel, I’m not going to try to pull apart all the details here, but just looking at this apocalyptic vision with a step back, with these wider eyeballs. Looking at this vision, what are some things that stood out to you as far as the big ideas that Ezekiel seemed to be trying to communicate? Things that would that even we could just step back and glean from a surface level of Ezekiel Chapter One?
Brent: There’s four creatures and they all have four heads. It seems to be a pretty big theme.
Marty: Yes, which have we done that before? Have we talked about four and the numbers before, maybe early on in Session 1? Four always being, in a Jewish sense, the four directions of the compass. The four corners of the earth. Whenever you see four, it’s like the most inclusive, expansive language. They have four faces, meaning that they’re looking in all four directions. They can see everywhere. Okay, what else did you pick up?
Brent: It also seems to be a big deal that they don’t turn as they move. They’re just going straight, whatever that’s all about.
Marty: Covered in eyes. There’s something about the fact that the glory of the Lord, whatever is going off the glory of the Lord. There’s nothing that’s going to go unseen. Everything is covered in eyes, plenty of faces, looking in all four directions. They’re not going to move, everything can be—so you can be seen. Okay. What else do they do?
Brent: Everything moves together. The creatures move together, their wings are touching or whatever. The wheels move with the creatures, everything’s perfectly synchronized,
Marty: Which is one of the things that I pick up out of that you keep saying the word move. One of the big ideas here seems to be wheels. Wheel technology hasn’t radically changed. Wheels are about movement and everything is moving. We don’t find this with other visions of the glory of the Lord. When Isaiah sees the presence of the Lord, when other people find themselves in the throne room of God in their visions. Not that there’s a ton of them, but when you do see them, movement is not something that usually comes up.
Yet in Ezekiel’s vision, he has a whole big paragraph devoted to the movement of the glory of God. That’s going to be important at some point. He opens his vision, he opens his prophecy with these images of God and they’re very expansive. It’s about how much God can see. The answer is he can see everything. Then there’s this concept of movement and as I read it, the insinuation seems to be he can move anywhere, which again, remember this is being spoken to the people of Judah, a people in exile. What did they believe about God as far as where he was located?
Brent: In the tabernacle.
Marty: In the tabernacle or in the temple, right? The temple has been destroyed. This idea of God moving not only is an odd concept to them, but this is going to have huge implications, which is actually where he’s going to go next. A little bit later in his vision, you’re going to get to Ezekiel 10. If you read Ezekiel 10, you’re going to see Ezekiel talk about how the glory of the Lord departs. Which direction do you suppose the glory of the Lord heads, Brent?
Brent: Probably west.
Marty: Go the other direction.
Brent: Okay, east.
Marty: East is where Babylon’s from, right?
Brent: Okay.
Marty: Where did they get carted off to? The Bible usually says north, when you’re talking about Babylon, but Babylon does lie to the northeast if you look at the map. When they get carted off to Babylon, they go east, and the presence of God departs from the temple and goes east. What’s the implication for you as a reader?
Brent: God’s going with you.
Marty: Yes. This is a huge idea. You’re telling me that the temple got destroyed. What did we say some of the questions were that we started this whole podcast with? If I’m sitting in exile, I’m struggling with what, Brent?
Brent: Does God care about us?
Marty: Does God care about us? Is God even real? Where did God go? Ezekiel is suggesting not only does God care about you, but just because the temple is destroyed it doesn’t mean anything to his presence and the fact that he’s for you. In fact, Ezekiel says when the glory of the Lord departed, he departed with you. You went off to exile, the Lord did not leave you. The Lord went with you. One of the things that Ezekiel is doing in order to strengthen God’s people, Ezekiel strength, God strengthens, is Ezekiel going to strengthen God’s people through at least a little bit of an explanation.
Not an exhaustive, not a comprehensive explanation, but just enough of an explanation that when you read the prophecy of Ezekiel, you can go to Ezekiel 16 and 17. It’s going to talk about the unfaithfulness of God’s people. He’s going to say, Listen, you got carted off, God went with you, and here’s why you got punished. Here’s why you’re being disciplined.
He offers just a little bit of a poetic explanation. He also offers a bunch of assurance. By the time you get to the end of Ezekiel’s vision in the closing chapters, you will read about how God’s presence—where do you suppose it… do you think it comes back to Jerusalem, Brent? Do you think God’s presence comes back to Jerusalem at the end of the prophecy as God’s people come back?
Brent: Oh, yes, as the people come back.
Marty: As the people come back, you see God’s presence coming back. In what direction do you suppose it’s coming from?
Brent: From the east.
Marty: From the east; from that place where they were just at. God’s presence goes with them. As they come back to rebuild, God’s presence comes back with them. This is Ezekiel’s message of strength, “God has not deserted you, God has not forsaken you, and God was not stuck in Jerusalem, he was not somehow —” What’s the word I’m looking for? He was not trapped when the temple got destroyed. This God has wheels, this God has rims, high and awesome. It is lifted and he goes where his people go and his glory departed that destroyed temple and it went with you to the east. Now as you come back that day when you-- I don’t think when Ezekiel was writing the event at least as we’re supposed to read it they’ve even come back yet, but there will come a day, Ezekiel says, where you will go back home and you will rebuild.
The closing chapters of Ezekiel are not this literal rebuilding of some future temple. It is this apocalyptic vision just like in Revelation of what this new home, this new Jerusalem, and this new temple is going to look like. When you come back because you will, Ezekiel says, “You will come back from this and you will rebuild. God will come with you.” This ends up being Ezekiel’s message of strength. I’ll read these closing notes I have. Ezekiel gives strength through encouragement and tells people to continue to press forward and to carry on. There are lessons to learn from our mistakes.
There are promises to hold on to and things we have to believe are bigger and better than our current circumstances. There are reasons to press on into tomorrow and believe that we can be a part of putting the world back together. Ezekiel uses the mind of an innovator, the creativity of an artist, and the imagination of a storyteller to communicate hope to the people of God. We too must be creative. We must be industrious. We must be determined and stubborn for God’s ways. The very thing that makes us a stiff-necked people in the desert is the very thing that’s going to get us through these tough times as well, but we must endure, we must overcome, we must be strong. That’s our book of Ezekiel. Lots of stuff for our discussion groups. There’s a lot of weird stuff in Ezekiel and lots of discussions about it.
Brent: I think there’s some parallels here to the Tower of Babel story where the people are moving east and God wants them to come back west.
Marty: So interesting. I’ve never really thought about that.
Brent: This time, obviously, they’re going east against their will, but either way, God’s like, “No, no, no, no. Back here.”
Marty: Yes, a very consistent movement and consistent placement—Tower of Babel, Babylon. There’s a building of a tower, there’s a rebuilding of a temple. Yes, I wonder if there’s any other literary plays in the actual literature itself that ties us back there, but yes, that’s really interesting. Good thought.
Brent: God knows where he wants His people.
Marty: Wherever the people go, He goes with them. Man, it’s good. When I finally saw that not too long ago in the book of Ezekiel, I was like, “Oh, that’s so good.” It was such a weird book for me, wheels within wheels. I couldn’t stop singing Journey in my head… “Wheel in the Sky.”
[music]
This was not a book that I understood. Then when I saw the movement and somebody helped me unpack some of those things, I thought, “Man, what a cool book.” Good stuff.
Brent: Alright. Well, let’s get together and discuss it. As we record this, we just added two new groups to the map today. Once again, get on bemadiscipleship.com, check out the schedule page, check out the map, find a group near you—and if there’s no one there, we’ll help you start one. Otherwise, you can get a hold of Marty on Twitter at @martysolomon and you can find me at @eibcb. Thanks for joining us on The BEMA Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.