epcblog

Devotional thoughts (Monday through Thursday mornings) from the pastor of Exeter Presbyterian Church in Exeter, NH // Sunday Worship 10:30am // 73 Winter Street

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Ezekiel 24

Do we think that our faith is a sure way to bring to us the good life of this world during our days in this age? This certainly was not the way for the Lord’s prophets during the Old Testament. Perhaps the misery of men like Jeremiah and Ezekiel are for the old time of the Law? The lives of the Lord and His New Testament apostles seem to follow the same pattern of suffering leading to glory. Paul writes to the young minister Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:12 that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Christ Himself tells us that the way of the cross is not optional for us.

The prophets were given great visions of things to come in a future age of glory, but they also announced the destruction of God’s holy city as Ezekiel does again in Chapter 24. The siege of Jerusalem would take place even as this message was given. The coming of Christ and the day of resurrection blessings were still many years away. Not only do prophets carry the burden of announcing God’s just anger with His people, they also live through the miseries of this life as participants in a fallen world under the curse of God. There is something of a compatibility between these two things. They both have to do with the holiness of God and the pains of the present age. They both cause mourning that could make a normal person despair of life. There is some right but sad connection in this chapter between the fall of Jerusalem, the city of the Lord’s delight, and the death of Ezekiel’s wife, the delight of the prophet’s eyes.

The day that this prophecy was given to the Jews in Babylon, the final siege against Jerusalem had just begun far away in the city that they loved. The hope of many was that this day would not come. False prophets had spoken of relief that never materialized. True prophets had hoped against hope for real repentance and some change in the plain intention of the Lord. Now the Babylonian troops had begun their horrible work of destruction.

The picture that displays the city of Jerusalem under the siege is a pot full of meat and bones set upon a strong fire. The pot is rusty. The pieces of meat and bones come out randomly and are placed on the ground for all to see, like the body parts of the slaughtered in Jerusalem. Even after all the meat has been removed from the water, the fire is kept very hot for the destruction of the corruption in the pot. Despite these efforts at purification, nothing can remove the filth from the pot, and nothing can cleanse the city of Jerusalem. The pot must be destroyed in the fire, and the city must be completely overcome because of her lewdness and her unwillingness to be cleansed from all that is unclean in her. This is the judgment of God against the holy city. To be left in Babylon and to hear of the beginning of this siege, to anticipate the coming destruction of the place of your hope would have been a brutal trial for anyone to face.

Ezekiel has a matching trial of a personal nature when he is informed by God of the impending death us wife. This is one of the most difficult things that a person can face. When two people are married they become one in some way. They are further knit together in the trials that they share over their years together. Ezekiel is far from completing the troubles ahead of him. Now his companion in life will be taken from Him. That evening she died.

The prophet was not allowed by God to engage in the normal acts of mourning. Somehow this was a sign to them of their own strange reaction to the events that would take place in the holy city. One would think that they would have mourned deeply, but they would not. Their souls would be eaten away by their own iniquities and they would groan to one another. Why would this be? Would they not care about Jerusalem? That is hard to imagine. More likely, they would feel as if they had nothing left within them, far away from their home, trying to make their way in a land of captivity. When deep grief finds no echo in a vital hope, all energy for life seems to be gone, and even sadness finds very little voice or motion. Only a groan reminds us that we are still alive. Soon enough the report confirming the destruction of the city would come, and after so long, Ezekiel would again find a voice, and those who heard him would know that the Lord had done great and awful things.

What must it have been like so many years later when Jerusalem was in an uproar with the thought that the Messiah King had come who might deliver them from their enemies, and save their nation? Instead He met His end upon a Roman cross with a title above it indicating that this one was the King of the Jews. What a mockery it must have seemed like! The voices of the leaders and the crowds had insisted upon His death. What a misery we see there as He entrusts His mother to the beloved disciple John! What a groan there is when He breathes His last, and His body is placed in a borrowed grave! What a hopeless moment, and what a perfect monument to our fallen condition!

But this was not the final message of the cross. After three days there was an empty tomb. There were resurrection appearances. The minds of disciples were being filled with the truth of Christ in the Word of the Scriptures. Soon their hearts would be empowered by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and they would be witnesses for Him to the ends of the earth.

Beloved wives still die, and brothers and sisters in the faith are persecuted and even killed by brutal men. The world is still the world. But our hope in the Jerusalem above is sure and secure because of the death and resurrection of the last King of Judah. God has given us a hope that cannot be extinguished by the misery of the fall. From the ashes of the curse one can begin to hear the sound of a whispered Hallelujah, which will surely ring loudly throughout heaven and earth one day.

posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM

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