I want in this post to write as if we were just sitting around....fellowshiping and conversing. Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah.....quite a bit younger....and was taken off to Babylon with the first wave of captives. The book of Ezekiel in a way is a lot tougher to get a handle on than Jeremiah....although at times it is the very same message that Jeremiah gave.
Ezekiel was given while in Babylon extraordinarily detailed visions....and in the vision that I want to bring up here....in chapter eleven....he is transported back to Jerusalem....to the temple....and he can see twenty-five men sitting at one of the gates. These men may have been government officials of some kind....Ezekiel even named two of them who he recognized....that is the general consensus anyway....they were leaders and not priests....the ones who made many political decisions for the people. Many of their fellow countrymen had been taken away....Ezekiel and Daniel included....but they didn't seem to care about them at all. Nebuchadnezzar was gone....these leaders had lucked out....or so they thought.....for the time being anyway.
They described Jerusalem to the people as a caldron....instilling fear into them. Ezekiel told them in the vision that the meat cooked in the caldron were those slain in the city because of them....and that they themselves were not the meat....for they would be driven out of Jerusalem and then die on the border of Israel....which is just what happened....for when Nebuchadnezzar came back....which Jeremiah told them that he would....and the city walls were finally breached....those leaders tried to escape....but were caught at the border....and killed.
Ezekiel then as instructed....told the exiles with him in Babylon what the LORD had showed him and instructed him to prophesy to them. Folks....we should....in fact we need to be in these Old Testament prophets on a regular basis. These read the Bible in a year programs may have been valuable at one time but no longer. Ezekiel tells the exiles that there will be a time when all the Jews that were dispersed would be returned to Israel. In this case he is giving encouragement to them but also talking about the end-times...."Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stoney heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, 'that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God'."
Much of Old Testament prophecy is like this. Jeremiah could go from prophesying judgments to Jerusalem right then....and a paragraph later be talking about end-times judgments! Jeremiah is not even in chronological order. Here is a key....the Old Testament is just as...."living and active"....as is the New Testament....in that it is....marvelously and incredibly opened up to us....continuously....throughout a believer's life....no matter how old the believer may be! Prophecy is like that also....I can have read something fifty times over the years....and all of a sudden it becomes....clearer. Notice that I said....clearer....and not necessarily....clear.
So back to Ezekiel eleven. What might you think about this eleventh chapter....concerning today? These twenty-five leaders may as well be our leaders....."for you have not walked in My statutes nor executed My judgments but have done according to the customs of the Gentiles which are all around." (verse 12) Fear is being instilled in us every hour of the day.....but it is not the fear of the Lord.
Verse thirteen gives the reader more to think about. Ezekiel tells us that as he was giving this prophecy....one of those twenty-five men....and one of the two that he knew....possibly a kinsman....just dropped dead! It was too much for the prophet and he cried out to God...."Will you make a complete end of the remnant of Israel?"
Here it is folks....God then told Ezekiel that those who are his brethren and his relatives and his kinsman and all of true Israel....are those exiles who were mocked....and told that they were now far from God's city. They possessed Jerusalem....not the exiles! It was as if they themselves were boasting what Jeremiah told them not to boast about...."The temple of the LORD....the temple of the LORD....the temple of the LORD"....thinking that that proclamation alone secured something for them. It was as we might hear it today....USA....USA....USA....as if that alone secured anything if we do not walk with God!
