God offers hope in the midst of judgment to those who trust in Him. This is a Bible study teaching for “Saves” on Ezekiel from the “Explore the Bible” series from Lifeway.
In this week’s lesson, we will be going over Ezekiel chapter 11 and the theme of the lesson today is “Saves,” which as we begin to read the chapter, it will seem like an odd title.
But I think this chapter is a very appropriate one for the time we are in right now. Before we get into the passage, we’re going to stop and think a little bit about what a few words mean. I want to you to consider the words: hope, and wish. If you have a pen and paper, write down how you would define them, how they are the same and how they differ from each other.
So Ms. Barbara introduced us to Ezekiel last week, so we aren’t going to spend a huge amount of time on Ezekiel’s backstory, but we’re going to do a short recap.
The book of Ezekiel is one of the five major prophets. As we taught our third graders in Sunday school, you can divide the Old Testament into five sections and there are only two numbers you need to remember: 5 and 12. There are 5 books of law, 12 books of history, 5 books of wisdom and poetry, 5 major prophets and 5 minor prophets. The major prophets aren’t more important, they are just longer.
There were many prophets in the Old Testament, but our books of prophecy all focus on the time immediately preceding and during the time of exile for the divided kingdom of Israel. First, the northern kingdom of Israel was taken into captivity in Assyria. Then the southern kingdom of Judah was taken into captivity.
All during this time, God sent his prophets to warn the people. To try to turn them away from their sins. But they kept ignoring him.
Not Learning from the Past
The Israelites had been in captivity before for 400 years in Egypt. God led them out with miracles signs. He had showed them his power and might over all of the other gods that the countries around them believed in. He led them to a good land, gave them victory over peoples they shouldn’t have been able to beat, and he told them that he had chosen them for his own people.
In the Abrahamic covenant, when God sword to Abraham that he would make Abraham a great nation and all the nations of the world would be blessed through him, God swore by his own name. God said he would do it, it was an unconditional promise.
However, the Mosaic covenant was conditional. When Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt, they had a choice whether or not to be God’s covenant people. God gave them the option to choose to obey his laws and be his people or not, and they agreed that they would. We aren’t going to read it all today, but if you go to the book of Deuteronomy and read chapters 28 through 30, you will see that the Israelites were given a very specific list of things they were to do and not to do. If they obeyed God’s decrees, he would bless them in every area of their life (Deuteronomy 28). If they did not, they would experience the curses listed in Deuteronomy 29.
But God knew what would happen, he knew that they would rebel and go their own way. And so he tells them up front what to do when that occurs in Deuteronomy 30:
“In the future, when you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the Lord your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions. 2 If at that time you and your children return to the Lord your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. 4 Even though you are banished to the ends of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you from there and bring you back again. 5 The Lord your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again. Then he will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors!
6 “The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! 7 The Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate and persecute you. 8 Then you will again obey the Lord and keep all his commands that I am giving you today.
9 “The Lord your God will then make you successful in everything you do. He will give you many children and numerous livestock, and he will cause your fields to produce abundant harvests, for the Lord will again delight in being good to you as he was to your ancestors. 10 The Lord your God will delight in you if you obey his voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.
What is God telling them? They will experience his fulfillment of his promises and the blessings he said he would give them, and they would disobey, experience the curses, and come under judgment. But he gives them a promise, that he will change their hearts so that they will repent, and then they will be restored.
They did experience those blessings. Israel seemed to be firmly established with David as king, and under his son Solomon, Israel was at the height of its power and influence. Now there are some scholars who say that Solomon never existed, or if he did that he was just a small tribal chief. However, just in the past few years, researchers have discovered that the copper mines at Timna Valley in Israel with evidence of trade between Edom and Judah.
But at the very beginning of Solomon’s reign, he also received a word from the Lord in the dream, giving him the same promise and warning that Moses gave the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30. I’m not going to read the passage now, but when you have time, read the whole of 2 Chronicles 7. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is always a go-to verse, but the context of the passage is God giving Solomon a choice between a blessing and a curse.
So Solomon built the Temple. He was the most powerful king Israel would ever know until Jesus comes again. But after he died, the kingdom was divided under the rule of his son, and it began for kingdoms, a long slide into apostasy with prophet after prophet trying to warn them to turn around and avert disaster.
You would think that after the northern kingdom of Israel was essentially erased off the map, with them all taken into captivity and dispersed, that that would be a warning to the people in Judah. It wasn’t.
All the prophets God sent, they ignored.
Then Judah was conquered by the Babylonians. From 605 BC to 586 BC, the Jews not only continued to rebel against God, but they resisted rule and authority by the Babylonian Empire. First, the royal family and the aristocracy were taken in 605 BC, which included Daniel. Then after a siege, another wave of citizen were taken into captivity in 597 BC when Ezekiel was taken.
You would think that at this point, the people left in Judah would be doing some self-reflection, that they would be seeking God. Israel’s gone. Judah’s rulers and upper class are gone. It might be time to do something different.
And maybe Ezekiel thought they might be. At this point, he’s been in exile for 5 years. They don’t have facebook or news channels, he has no way of what is actually going on. So God shows him.
Then the Spirit lifted me and brought me to the east gateway of the Lord’s Temple, where I saw twenty-five prominent men of the city. Among them were Jaazaniah son of Azzur and Pelatiah son of Benaiah, who were leaders among the people.
God translated Ezekiel to Jerusalem outside of the temple and showed him what was going on.
Called Out
2 The Spirit said to me, “Son of man, these are the men who are planning evil and giving wicked counsel in this city. 3 They say to the people, ‘Is it not a good time to build houses? This city is like an iron pot. We are safe inside it like meat in a pot.’ 4 Therefore, son of man, prophesy against them loudly and clearly.”
When God puts someone in a position of leadership, it is so they can look out for the welfare of their people. Obviously, no one in Jerusalem was listening to what God was saying. Rather than telling people to repent and turn to God, the leaders were telling people that everything was fine, nothing bad was going to happen, and to continue on, business as usual.
So God had to bring someone in from another country to say what needed to be said and to intercede with God on behalf of the people.
5 Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon me, and he told me to say, “This is what the Lord says to the people of Israel: I know what you are saying, for I know every thought that comes into your minds. 6 You have murdered many in this city and filled its streets with the dead.
7 “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: This city is an iron pot all right, but the pieces of meat are the victims of your injustice. As for you, I will soon drag you from this pot. 8 I will bring on you the sword of war you so greatly fear, says the Sovereign Lord. 9 I will drive you out of Jerusalem and hand you over to foreigners, who will carry out my judgments against you. 10 You will be slaughtered all the way to the borders of Israel. I will execute judgment on you, and you will know that I am the Lord. 11 No, this city will not be an iron pot for you, and you will not be like meat safe inside it. I will judge you even to the borders of Israel, 12 and you will know that I am the Lord. For you have refused to obey my decrees and regulations; instead, you have copied the standards of the nations around you.”
13 While I was still prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah suddenly died. Then I fell face down on the ground and cried out, “O Sovereign Lord, are you going to kill everyone in Israel?”
The people wouldn’t repent. They wouldn’t acknowledge their sin. Just because they were God’s people didn’t exempt them from God’s law. Because they wouldn’t repent, judgment was coming. And the judgment began with the leaders who were leading people astray.
Gathered
14 Then this message came to me from the Lord: 15 “Son of man, the people still left in Jerusalem are talking about you and your relatives and all the people of Israel who are in exile. They are saying, ‘Those people are far away from the Lord, so now he has given their land to us!’
16 “Therefore, tell the exiles, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Although I have scattered you in the countries of the world, I will be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile. 17 I, the Sovereign Lord, will gather you back from the nations where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel once again.’
This is how ruthless and hard hearted the people of Judah were. Their own countrymen were taken off into exile … and they didn’t even care. They didn’t see it as a warning, they saw it as a bonus because they could take the exiles’ property for themselves.
But God tells Ezekiel that even while they were in exile, he would be there with them. God was not limited to a specific location, he would create for them a sanctuary where they were. He promised that he would bring them back to their land again. That land was to be a place where God could be among his people, a place that was sanctified to him. But even before they were brought back to the land, he would be with them himself. It was not about the land, it was about the heart. They had had the land, but they didn’t have God. Now they were dispossessed, but they would have him.
Sanctified
18 “When the people return to their homeland, they will remove every trace of their vile images and detestable idols. 19 And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, 20 so they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God. 21 But as for those who long for vile images and detestable idols, I will repay them fully for their sins. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”
Ezekiel prophesies that when the exiles return, they will have new hearts. Those stubborn hearts Moses had groaned against would be replaced. It would be as God told Solomon that his people would be given new hearts. But it took the trial of exile before that stubbornness was broken.
The Lord’s Glory Leaves Jerusalem
22 Then the cherubim lifted their wings and rose into the air with their wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them. 23 Then the glory of the Lord went up from the city and stopped above the mountain to the east.
24 Afterward the Spirit of God carried me back again to Babylonia, to the people in exile there. And so ended the vision of my visit to Jerusalem. 25 And I told the exiles everything the Lord had shown me.
Ezekiel’s experience ends and he is back in Babylon … and he told the exiles everything God had shown him. What a story that must have been. They were there in a foreign and hostile country. I’m sure the exiles were hoping that things would be turned around quickly and they could go home, with everything going back to normal.
But that wasn’t the message Ezekiel had for them. Things weren’t getting better, they were going to get worse. Ezekiel had this vision in 592. In less than four years, there would be yet another siege of Jerusalem, and within another two, Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed.
Life would never be back to what was “normal” before the exile again. Even when the exiles were allowed to return after their 70 year exile, it was a very long and hard road to rebuild their city, temple, and society.
But the message Ezekiel is, even in exile. God is with them. He would bring them back again, but he was with them today.
Hope versus a Wish
So back to the beginning of the lesson. The lesson guide suggests to focus on the difference between the word hope and wish.
What are your definitions for those words?
The leaders in Jerusalem were wishing for a certain outcome. They had their own ideas of what should happen and they weren’t even interested in knowing what God’s plans were.
So earlier this year in our lesson on Job 14, we learned that there are seven different words in Hebrew that are translated as “hope” in English.
This is from that lesson on Job
In verse 7, Job says.
7 “Even a tree has more hope!
If it is cut down, it will sprout again
and grow new branches.
This is the word Tikvah.
תִּקְוָה tiqvâh, tik-vaw’; from H6960; (compare H6961) literally a cord (as an attachment); figuratively, expectancy:—expectation(-ted), hope, live, thing that I long for
In verse 14, Job says
14 Can the dead live again?
If so, this would give me hope through all my years of struggle,
and I would eagerly await the release of death.
This is a different word, it is yawchal
יָחַל yâchal, yaw-chal’; a primitive root; to wait; by implication, to be patient, hope:—(cause to, have, make to) hope, be pained, stay, tarry, trust, wait..
The last use of hope in the passage is in verse 19, is again tikvah. This is where Job says
18 “But instead, as mountains fall and crumble
and as rocks fall from a cliff,
19 as water wears away the stones
and floods wash away the soil,
so you destroy people’s hope.
Sounds a little depressing doesn’t it? But let’s look again at what that word means.
tiqvâh, tik-vaw’; from H6960; (compare H6961) literally a cord (as an attachment); figuratively, expectancy:—expectation(-ted), hope, live, thing that I long for
The thing that stands out to me about this definition is that the literal meaning is that of a cord, an attachment. This is the key of this passage. Job is saying that his attachments to the things that happen to him in this life bring him discouragement, but if he knew there was something more, he would have hope.
We have to learn to trust in God, to let go of the attachments and believe in him for his good. End. Sometimes, God does have to remove those “hopes” or attachments for us to be able to do that.
That is from the earlier lesson. What we could say as it relates to this lesson today is that sometimes our “wishes” get in the way of truly being in relationship with God. True hope is grounded in his will for us. God will do what he says he will do.