Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome back to Missions on Point, this is episode 236.

As John Piper so famously put it, the worship of God is the ultimate motivator of missions. He said, “Missions exists, because worship does not.” Our motivation is to see the worship of God’s glorious grace where it is not currently happening. And our work must aim to see new people in new places worshiping in Spirit and in truth. We turn to the book of Ezekiel today which has this same aim: a temple in which God dwells and makes his name known to the nations. Jesus Christ has destroyed the old temple, and in three days he raised a new one in its place, his body, the church, now spreading out to the entire world, declaring God’s glory.

Ezekiel, like Jeremiah was a priest. He has lived in Jerusalem until the Babylonians invaded the city. He was carried off to Babylon during one of the deportations, and he primarily addressed Jewish exiles there. God used Ezekiel to show his suffering people why they were suffering, and he used Ezekiel to show the future of glory and blessing that God would bring to pass for them. Key phrases in this book are: “And you shall know that I am the Lord.” and “I am the Lord; I have spoken.” Thus, most central to Ezekiel’s message is that we are to know God and know him through his word.  Ezekiel 37:27–28 summarizes these themes well, saying, “My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.” If you have been following along in this series, I’m sure that by now you are conditioned to recognize the call in those verses for all nations to know the Lord. If you’re preaching through Ezekiel, I am sure you will be regularly drawing attention to these themes and the global purposes of God. I of course am indebted, as I am sure you are, to G.K. Beale’s biblical theology, The Temple and the Church’s Mission. If you haven’t checked out that book, be sure to do so.

Ezekiel certainly has some strange and fantastic teaching in the book, so we must be careful to read it appropriately. We don’t want to downplay the imagery, because part of the point is that we are to be astonished in wonder, filled in our imagination with these amazing descriptions. On the other hand, it’s easy to get lost in speculation about the meaning of various images, especially in the large forest of 48 chapters in this book. To keep us grounded in our reading and preaching, we must always come back to what it teaches us about God and how it fits the larger message of the book.

For the message of the whole book, we first look at the structure. Ezekiel can easily be broken down into five main sections. First, there is an inaugural vision, which includes Ezekiel’s call. Second is a pronouncement of judgment on Jerusalem and Judah for 21 chapters. Then third, eight chapters of oracles against foreign nations. Fourth, the climactic section of this book in chapters 33-39 talk about hope after the fall of Jerusalem. And then fifth, the last 9 chapters talk about a vision of restoration in a new temple and a new creation. So, visions cap off the beginning and end of this book, and the middle is judgment against God’s chosen nation and then all nations of the world followed by a unique and fascinating hope for God’s people. I will make five observations from this book, but I want us to keep in mind the focus that is in that fourth section.

First, the inaugural vision in chapters 1-3. Ezekiel doesn’t fully understand what he sees, so he makes analogies as close as he can imagine. There’s a great cloud with flashing lightning and four living creatures with two sets of wings, with wheels beneath them as they dart to the four corners of the earth. There’s a vision of heaven and a bright human figure in the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. He falls on his face in worship, and God calls him as a prophet by giving him a bittersweet scroll to eat. And in response, he sits for seven days, overwhelmed at what he has seen. I think I would be in shock too, if I saw what he saw. And then, as the inaugural vision is reprised, Ezekiel is called to be a watchman over God’s word. His job is to speak and then watch God work as his word is fulfilled. The missionary’s call is not identical to the prophet’s call, but there are important similarities. The ministry is primarily to declare the glory of God through the word of God. God is highly exalted, and the glory of his likeness in a man is on his throne. God’s word may be sweet and his glory all satisfying, yet it will overwhelm us and can be a burden we bear. Our job though is to simply speak. And if we don’t speak, we will be held accountable. God will watch over his word. We must watch for him to perform it.

Second, the oracles against Jerusalem and its mountains and the entire land of Israel is focused on the destruction of the temple. Ezekiel has a vision of the glory of the Lord progressively leaving the temple. There are promises of hope sprinkled throughout indicating God will gather his people back after 70 years. But this hope is coupled with a striking promise about the manner in which God will make his presence among his people again. He promised in chapter 11 to put a new spirit into his people.  He promised to remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh so that they would walk in his statutes and obey his rules. In the middle of these visions of God leaving his people, the promised return of God’s presence is through the indwelling Holy Spirit which changes our hearts to love obeying God. We should not downplay the lament for the destruction of the temple here. It’s a symbolic judgment on everything that the nation of Israel and the Old Covenant stands for. The destruction of the old is the opportunity for hope in the new. God’s glory would not be made known through his presence in a temple of wood and stone, but through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit in believers. God’s glory was never meant to only be located in one place on the earth, but through local churches declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ, and people from every nation recognizing that God is really present in the gathered worship of the church.

Third, God is clearly concerned with making sure that every nation on earth recognizes his glory and is called to worship him through the judgment of their sin. Judgment against wicked nations is never meant to be cold and simply judicial. The evidence for this is that laments are given for many of these nations and their kings. God has compassion on them, like he did for Nineveh when Jonah preached a pathetically short message of impending judgment. God wants all nations to know that the Lord is God. As long as a nation exists, any pronouncement of judgment is also a call to repentance. God wants nothing more from sinners than a contrite and repentant heart. So too, this is the basic posture of world missions. We go into wicked nations to call them to repentance. Yet, we are not coldly judgmental in our preaching. We go with a sincere desire that all might know the steadfast love of the Lord. We go with compassionate hearts that desire sinners to repent and worship God. God loves the nations, that’s why he writes to them in the book of Ezekiel.

Fourth, we return to hope. Chapter 33 reassures us that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The wicked here refers to all that Ezekiel has called out in judgment, both Judah and the nations. God’s true people are the ones who repent. The climax of hope is found in chapter 36 verse 26, where God promises to cleanse his people of their idols and give them a new heart and a new spirit. And the reason that God does this is for his own name’s sake and so that the nations would know that Yahweh is the Lord. Immediately following this promise of a new heart and a new spirit is the famous vision of the valley of dry bones. The bones rattle, put on flesh, and become a massive standing army after Ezekiel breathes the word of the Lord on them. This breath or spirit caused them to live. After this vision of a resurrected army, this fourth section in the book ends with a prophecy of a future battle against wicked nations where God vindicates his holiness, again so that all nations would know that God is the Lord. God’s judgment of the nation comes as he uses his Spirit and his word to raise an army from the dead. All those who are repentant, from every nation, who hear God’s word and are filled with God’s spirit become God’s people and are themselves a judgment against the nations.

The fifth and final section of this book is a vision of a new temple and a new creation. As God’s spirit had filled the dry bones, now his spirit is entering and filling this new temple. God once again dwells in the midst of his people. A river flows from the temple and God is worshipped. The land is once again allotted to the tribes of Israel and land along with the city are given idealized portions. Only a new creation could be so perfect. Revelation 22:1-5 picks up on this imagery and gives hope to the small struggling local churches of Asia Minor. So too our churches need this vision of hope today. The new creation that Jesus has inaugurated will one day be finally consummated as the New Jerusalem descends from the sky. God’s perfect presence with man will be complete and filling the earth. For now, he has made himself known in outposts of his kingdom, through local churches spread throughout the earth. Local churches today resist the powers of this world, defy their idolatry, and war against spiritual darkness. And they do so through Ezekiel’s weapons, the Word of God and His Spirit. That river of life is flowing from God’s temple now, bringing the resurrection power of Jesus to all from every nation who enter his new creation.

The book of Ezekiel can be hard to grasp at times, but do not fear it. The images and visions are meant to edify the church, and bring hope for its current mission to go into all the world and preach the gospel. 

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.