Ezekiel 23:1-21 – I can’t help but be surprised by the somewhat graphic language used here. Nothing X rated, more R or PG-13, but certainly language that I would have never heard ‘good respectable Christians’ use.
Some Christians get criticised for using graphic, shocking language to make their point. They’re called sensational and their words are criticised as sinful. Had one of these men written a story like this to illustrate a point, they’d have been taken to the woodshed, so to speak. Yet here is God, deliberately using graphic, shocking terms to make His point. I’m not saying folks should let their words run free, certainly the book of James has something to say about that. I am saying we shouldn’t toss out a man’s words because we think the language chosen is inappropriate. I think many evangelicals would have brushed Ezekiel aside as irrelevant because of the words (from God) he used.

Ezekiel 2:2 – It’s one thing to pass on God’s words of judgement, even to recognize the sin that needs to be judged. It’s another thing to be the judge. I know with my kids, it’s easy to see their sin and to be angry or frustrated by it, but it’s quite another to actually deal with it. To punnish, to instruct.
Ezekiel 22:11-12 – Sounds like our nation, doesn’t it?

Ezekiel 21:10-13 – This passage is a little confusing to me. Is the sentence in parentheses in verse 10 directed toward Ezekiel? That doesn’t seem to make sense, but if not, then who? And what of verse 12, “Strike therefore upon your thigh.” Is He calling Ezekiel to cut himself?
Ezekiel 21:19-23 – If I understand this right, God is directing Ezekiel to help direct the King of Babylon to Jerusalem, to help him come to attack. Interesting here is that the King of Babylon will be using all sorts of magic to try to get answers (what does it mean to ‘look at the liver’ I wonder?) and God is playing into it, influencing those results for His purposes. The King is not consulting of God, yet Gos is still answering him through the divinations and other pagan practices. Of course, this is not God validating their use, rather He’s using the Kings sinful way to advance God’s righteous purpose in judgement.
I tend to think that God isn’t at work in the world, but here is God working, influencing the course of history through, not in spite of, one man’s ungodly actions. In what ways, I wonder, is He doing the same today? If I watched carefully, with eyes fro God’s working, what would I be able to see?

You shall be fuel for the fire. Your blood shall be in the midst of the land. You shall be no more remembered, for I the Lord have spoken.”

Ezekiel 21:32

There are several statements like this in this chapter, many actually through Ezekiel. Reading through it (especially if I have gaps in my reading like the last one), it’s easy to forget that this is a book of God’s anger about sin, his intense fury. What I mean is that each on is still shocking. The depth and intensity of his anger over their sin does not fail to surprise me. I want to think of God as happy, positive, merciful, but he is also holy, righteous and just. God is patient, but only to a point. Sometimes I am slow in repentance, returning to His ways over my own. How long will He wait? How far do I want to push Him? Better question – How shallow is my love and respect for His holiness that I would want to wait?

Ezekiel 20:1 – Hmm, Ezekiel 1:1 says “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, …” but here in chapter 20 is starts “In the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, … “. The chapter is titled “Israel’s Continuing Rebellion” so I’m confused, is this before chapters 1-19 or after? Guess I ought to get that commentary you folks told me was ‘indispensable’. 😛
Ezekiel 20:5-8 – You can hear the anguish in God’s tone here. He chose them, searched out the best land for them and set them in it. Don’t look back, is all he said. I’ve picked you out from all other and provided the best there is for you, leave that inferior stuff behind. Instead they started looking around at what was out there, desiring something new and different. Perhaps there was something better than what God was offering …
How are we any different? God’s poured out his best for us and we give him scraps all too often. We’re distracted by the good that this world offers us, not remembering how inferior it is to the best that God has. We think we can keep one hand on God and wander around with the other stretched out for whatever else might be out there.
Do we hear God crying out in anguish as we search for happiness elsewhere, “But I even gave you my Son …”?
Ezekiel 20:11 – God gave the law, not to control but to educate. Act according to this and you will live. It was a gift, not a burden. After all, God created us and the world we live in, an instruction manual on how best to get along here is a wonderful thing.
Ezekiel 20:9-26 – God sums up Israel’s history here. God gives, Israel rejects, god longs to wipe them out, God relents and then the cycle repeats. I like the picture, repeated in verses 13-14 and 21-22, where God says he will destroy them, but relents for the sake of His name. It’s a picture of God wanting to let His emotions loose, but taking His own thoughts captive and submitting to what is better rather than what would feel good. He is like us (rather, we are like Him) in that His emotions and drive Him to hasty action, but, unlike us too many times, His reason prevails. He does not simply let His emotions rule.
He shows in this just how much different He is than we are. He feels emotion as, strong emotions, just as we do. But where we are often carried away by them and later, ashamed, wonder what we’ve done, God does not. His emotions are a part of Him and influence Him, but he controls them rather than the other way around. Perhaps I humanize God too much, but we are created in His image. He clearly is portrayed with emotions in the Bible – jealousy, anger, love, passion, sadness. He handles them perfectly and we can learn from watching Him.

“As I live, declares the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face.”

Ezekiel 20:33-35 (ESV)

This is under the heading of “The Lord Will Restore Israel”. Imagine, restoration “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out”. After that would you want to meet God face to face? He finishes in Ezekiel 20:38 “Then you will know that I am the Lord.” Uh-huh.
But then …

“For on my holy mountain, the mountain height of Israel, declares the Lord God, there all the house of Israel, all of them, shall serve me in the land. There I will accept them, and there I will require your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your sacred offerings. As a pleasing aroma I will accept you, when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered. And I will manifest my holiness among you in the sight of the nations. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I bring you into the land of Israel, the country that I swore to give to your fathers. And there you shall remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you shall loathe yourselves for all the evils that you have committed. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I deal with you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel, declares the Lord God.”

Ezekiel 20:40-44 (ESV)

What an amazing God we serve! In this chapter we see an anguished god, angry, ready to destroy, facing yet another generation in a long string of unfaithful Israelites. Yet here He is promising once again to lift them up, to restore them. Why? Because of what He is, not because (thankfully) of what they’ve done.
We see this in Jesus, the grace and forgiveness, but this s the God of the Old Testament. He is the same God, continually forgiving and continually calling His people back to Him – for His name sake.

Ezekiel 19
Uh oh, poetry (sorry Paul :-P). I find Biblical poetry like this more challenging to read. I wonder what is it supposed to mean? What am I supposed to get from it? The same s true here. I get to the end of the chapter, and I’m left wondering. Sigh.
It seems to be the Lord comparing the princes of Israel to first lion cubs gone astray and then comparing their mother to a vine. Who is He referring to, their mother? In the first, destruction comes on the princes, in the second destruction comes on the mother. I’m not sure what that means. Nonetheless, it’s sad for the Lord to see this destruction, even if it is deserved.
I wonder how much of creation, perhaps all of it, exists simply to give God illustrations of His ways? Certainly that’s not the only reason, I believe it was given for our pleasure as well. In Romans 1 we see that God’s nature is made known through creation and over and over God uses illustrations from His creation to make a point about our hearts and our actions throughout the Bible.
I see God’s nature in so much of His world. Over and over, I learn things about creation and I’m reminded of who God. The passing of the seasons speak to His grace and forgiveness, for example. If we put the Bible together with creation, I think what God is becomes very plain. Looking, however, at nature with out the Bible or at the Bible without nature, I believe that we can get an incomplete view of our God. He reveals Himself to us through both.

Ezekiel 18:1-4 – The passage to follow is a familiar one to me. It’s the main passage used to refute the doctrine of original sin, that we are born guilty. It’s always important to consider context, however, when plucking a passage out to use in support of or against our pet doctrine. In this case, the context seems to be that Israel was using their father’s sins as a scapegoat for their current situation. “Dad screwed up, that’s why we’re in this mess.”
That’s not exactly the same situation as those who believe in original sin. They believe it, mostly, as a simple fact, we are born with sin, rather than a scapegoat for their own failings. That doesn’t mean, however, that God, in the process of teaching Israel, didn’t reveal to us a broader truth, that God does not hold us to account for the sins of our fathers, we are not born with guilt.
Knowing the difference between how Israel was thinking, and why God brought them this message, and why people believe in original sin today can help us use this passage properly. (Of course, we need to determine if God was speaking a truth for all times and peoples, or only about how he would deal with Israel in Ezekiel’s time.) We need not deliver it with the force that God did, to convict them that they are responsible, not their fathers. Rather, it becomes one of gentle instruction about how God looks at us and our sin. Ultimately, theirs little reason that we cannot disagree on the doctrine of original sin and still consider each other brothers.
Ezekiel 18:19 – Another reason they believed this way – their sinful hearts wanted to extend the punishment of an evil man to his righteous son. Guilt by association. God was not so much teaching them a truth (although the wording seems to be more universal than specific to me), he was teaching them how to treat each other.
Ezekiel 18:21-29 – Praise God that he allows us to change! More importantly, he honors our changed hearts and discards our past evil ways. Of course, he will do the same of we change course from righteousness to evil, but there is hope in God’s willingness to forget our past sins if we turn and pursue righteousness.

I must admit that Ezekiel 17 confused me a bit. I couldn’t keep track of the Eagles and kings.
The lesson seems to be that a divided loyalty cannot stand, particularly when we divide our loyalty between God and something else. Trying to please both masters just weakens us. IN God, we are planted by a stream, watered and nourished, yet we often strain ourselves looking after the wealth of the world. Material things, power, ‘happiness’, etc all draw our eyes from Him and as we strain, we weaken our roots.
Israel did it, it seems, with both God and man. They pursued other gods after making a covenant with The Lord and they pursued help from Egypt after making a deal with Babylon.
Ezekiel 17 ends with a prophesy about Jesus, how God will take him from the topmost twig of a lofty cedar (the cream of the crop of mankind, the line of David I assume) and plant him on a high mountain in Israel. He will grow up to be mighty and noble cedar and every kind of bird (people) will come to it. All the trees (people again?) will know that God is The Lord because of the cedar.
Israel is told over and over that they will know that He is The Lord from his judgement. wrath and punishment; we can know that God is The Lord through Jesus and the fruit he bears in the lives that come to Him.

Ezekiel 16:4-14 – A reminder to Israel where they came from and to whom they owe their life. What a picture of God, rescuing the abandoned infant, protecting and sheltering the innocent and vulnerable teenage girl. Not only that, but raising the low to glory and splendor. We would do well to remember how God has done this for us. It is not our doing that we have gone from wallowing in blood and filth to a member of God’s own family.
Ezekiel 16:15-22 – The picture of God as a rescuer and then the husband and lover, raising Israel, his bride, to glorious heights is crushed here with the description of what Israel did with what God provided. Verse 17:

You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore.

All the things that God provided, Israel, His bride, used to seduce other Gods. Imagine, pouring out your life for your wife, rescuing them, giving you all to provide for them, raising them form poverty, no certain death, to wealth beyond their earlier dreams and then them using your provisions, your loving gifts, to seduce another. Treating it, and you, with contempt. Even the least religious, one who knows nothing of got and doesn’t care, would be crushed by this or would decry it if seen in another. Verses 20-22:

And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

Ezekiel 16:30-34 – You can hear God’s anguish and hurt for how Israel has treated him “How sick is your heart …” he says in v. 30., verse 32:

Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband!

God then contrasts Israel’s behaviors with a prostitute. Though she acted like one, having man after man, she did not solicit payment, in fact she paid them with gifts. So she was different, and actually worse. She did not do it for money, but instead she actually desired them in her heart.
It is no wonder that God is angry and understandable that he is judging Israel. He spends the rest of the chapter telling what he will do to Israel as a result of their sins. Not only wrath and judgement, but ultimately restoration. For God’s anger is rooted in love, his discipline is meant to correct and instruct. In verses 62-63 He says:

I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.”

Isn’t that the truth. After all that Israel has done, after all that we have done, it’s confounding that God would establish a covenant with us & restore us, “atoning for all that we have done“.

A very short chapter. He compares Israel to the wood of a vine. Even when whole, that wood is not good for anything. No one makes anything from vine wood. How much more worthless is it after being consumed by fire?
It seems a harsh assessment of Israel, you’re worthless now, even more so after the wrath of God comes. But we know that God has loved Israel, calling them His treasured possession. He’s given them the law to guide them and to reveal himself to them as well as prophets and leaders. So, even though worthless, he has loved them dearly. Because of His love, they are made valuable and strong. Israel would have been nothing in history, unremembered today, if it weren’t for God being with them.
Isn’t it the same today? Very few who God has called were worth anything to the world before hand. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (ESV):

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Who am I that I should do anything of importance? I’d like to think I can, but in reality nothing I’ve done will make much difference to anyone. Except through Jesus. Through Him I can change a person’s destiny, through Him I can become important, even if it’s only in His eyes.

Ezekiel 14
Ezekiel 14:3 – “these men have taken their idols into their hearts” Not only paying lip service to an idol, but taking it into their hearts.
Ezekiel 14:4-5 – If you come to God, through his prophet, with idols in you heart, He will answer as if you brought them all with you. “Oh, I see you’ve brought your job, a TV, your family and your bank account along to speak to Me … ”
Ezekiel 14:9 – Huh? If the prophet is deceived and speaks, it’s because God deceived him? Yet, he’s still to be destroyed by God? I’m confused.
Ezekiel 14:22-23 – God answers Ezekiel’s earlier question. Some will survive the wrath and judgement to come. Ezekiel will see them come out and be consoled as he sees their deeds and ways.
I wonder if those who survived were able to read Ezekiel’s words? Did they look back and see that God compares them here, indirectly, to Noah, Daniel and Job?