DAY 322

GOD’S GLORY—IN OUR CHURCHES

Ezekiel 8, 9 & 10 and Hebrews 13

Well time to roll up my sleeves and dig back into Ezekiel. I do need to make sure I get us back to the scene. Two days ago I pointed out that we immersed in a dramatic play. I spent most of my time getting us to think about the image of God coming to Ezekiel. He first thought it was a storm and then realized that it was God. Then we read about Ezekiel lying on the ground, playing in the dirt with a brick, and cooking his food with dung…I want to circle back to this scene.

The dramatic play is contained in chapters 4 and 5—and then reinforced by chapters 6 and 7.

At the end of chapter 3, after his encounter with God in the valley, Ezekiel is told to go back to his home, where they will bind him with cords and he is not to speak—unless God explicitly tells him. So Ezekiel performs a “mime.” He performs this mime as a short play. I imagine him in his house, with a small group of people gathered around, watching him, not for just one day, but for hundreds of days, bound, laying on his side, with his model of Jerusalem under siege and starving…all the time defiling himself…poor Ezekiel’s wife. It seems that all through chapter 4 Ezekiel has not spoken.

The drama continues in chapter 5. No doubt his home has become a tourist attraction—we might have called it a freak show. I imagine some people would see it that way. Isaiah had prophesized a vision about Assyria destroying Judah as a razor. Replace Assyria with Babylon and Jeremiah had his final mime: he shaves his head and scatters his hair (except a little bit that he sews in his hem—the remnant.)

By now 14 months have passed, and in 5:5 Ezekiel opens his mouth—and the words to the people are not good…I will vent my fury…I will spend my anger… Chapters 6 and 7 reinforce this message. Chapter 6 speaks of the “mountains of Israel” and chapter 7 speaks of the “land of Israel.” This is not just metaphor, but it speaks directly to how the people defiled themselves with idolatry on the hills and in land…after Ezekiel’s long silence he is now driving the point home.

Chapter 8 begins with a very specific date…17 September 593 BC. Recording dates wasn’t just for his memoir, if was to demonstrate that when Jerusalem fell, it would take place as God had said it would happen. And so Ezekiel, apparently still in his house (8:1), but this time with the elders sitting around him, has another vision. You, and Ezekiel would recognize who is in this vision…it is the image we saw in chapter 1…it is God speaking. And while Ezekiel is still in his home, in his spirit he is transported to the Temple. God speaks to Ezekiel, taking him through the Temple and the city. In graphic vision God shows Ezekiel in chapter 8 all the abominations, and then in chapter 9 we see God’s glory “defended” as the executioners kill all those who have not been marked to be save. We must remind ourselves that his is still a vision, but it is so graphic that the effect on Ezekiel—the obedient one who laid on his sides for 14 months in silence—this obedient one cries out. But it gets worse, for in chapter 10 we read how Ezekiel sees the glory of the Lord leave the Temple—it is now merely a big empty museum—life without God can be hell.

I wonder what the elders might have thought. Maybe they thought Ezekiel was deranged, but maybe not for they were in his house. And yet we know how they react, all Ezekiel’s visions will not change their hearts.

What does it look like when God’s Holy Spirit leaves us, our or churches? Does it? Can it? I am not sure, but God will not be mocked. I have been in some churches that the moment you walk in you have a sense of the holiness of the place...I have been in others that have literally be de-consecrated and turned into museums…and I have been in some that are still churches and yet the sense I get when I walk in is that of emptiness. Pray for your church and your church’s leaders so that all of them may be filled with the presence, indeed the glory, of God.