Ezekiel: A Severe Mercy and Promise of the Spirit
This series of blogs is following our curriculum God’s Unfolding Story, Venture In, which attempts to tell the Old Testament story in 13 lessons, and to tell it in light of the entire Bible’s storyline continued in the New Testament. It may surprise you that Ezekiel is one of the books chosen among these top 13. Let’s be honest, if you have ever tried to read through the whole Bible, and you persevered through Leviticus, through the dialogues in the Book of Job, all 150 Psalms, the 66 chapters of Isaiah, the 52 chapters of Jeremiah, you may have stumbled and fallen once you got to Ezekiel. After all, the bizarre visions, the prophet’s strange behavior, and historical references that may elude you, all these combine to make it a tough book. Not to mention that the first two-thirds of the book is largely a book of judgment – not a feel good book. So why this prophet? Why this book?
There are at least two reasons that Ezekiel has been chosen as part of this study. First, we are attempting to tell this story in a chronological way, and Ezekiel is writing both during the exile and from exile in Babylon. He becomes a great bridge between the late pre-exilic prophets like Jeremiah who prophesied about the coming exile and the post-exilic prophets who wrote after many returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls and the temple. Babylon captured and destroyed Jerusalem around 586 BC and many exiles returned about 70 years later once Persia, the new regional leader, allowed this. Second, Ezekiel is a key prophetic book about the promised outpouring of God’s Spirit. While Jeremiah wrote about a new covenant that God would establish with His people (see Jeremiah 31:31-34), Ezekiel is clear that the outpouring of God’s Spirit would be an important part of what God was going to do.
Ezekiel 14:1-5 is a good summary of God’s fatherly discipline of sending His people into exile. Here, we see that the exile is a result of the people’s heart idolatry. We commit heart idolatry when we place our ultimate allegiance, affection, attention, and value on something other than God. Our pursuit of money, sex, power, prestige, success – these all become idols when we make these things ultimate. This passage in Ezekiel reminds us that these false gods always fail us ultimately. Jeremiah had lamented that the people had forsaken God and, “Followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves” (Jeremiah 2:5). G K Beale believes that “what you revere you resemble, either for ruin or for restoration.”[1] So why does God exercise a severe mercy by disciplining His children and sending them into exile? Because He wants to capture their hearts and allow them to find true life. In what areas are you prone to make ultimate something other than God? How does our anger, our fears, our discouragements reveal about where we seek affirmation, security, success, and life?
Ezekiel is the primary OT prophet who speaks of the day God will pour out His Spirit on His people. “Spirit” with a capital “S” shows up about 15 times in Ezekiel, and references God putting His Spirit in His people in chapters 11, 36, 37, and 39. Here is an excerpt from Ezekiel 36 (vv. 25-7):
I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place My Spirit within you and cause you to follow My statutes and carefully observe My ordinances.
How does the New Testament see the fulfillment of this promise? What about Jesus’ words of the coming Spirit, the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the role of the Spirit in passages like Romans 8 and Galatians 5? All God’s children have the Holy Spirit (see Romans 8:15-17). Do you have that Spirit? Are you living in the power of the Holy Spirit? How is the Spirit evident in your life?