Introduction to Ezekiel

Pastor Chris introduces the book of Ezekiel. For many Christians, the prophetic books of the Old Testament transport them to a strange world filled with bizarre visions and obscure historical details. Because of the complexity of many of these books, many Christians avoid them or completely misread them. And the book of Ezekiel is no exception. In this bonus episode, Pastor Chris provides some important historical background to help listeners orient themselves in the book. He also provides a breakdown of some of the key features of Hebrew prophecy and how we can read it well. 

Transcript

INTRO TO EZEKIEL

For many Christians, the prophetic books of the Old Testament transport them to a strange world filled with bizarre visions and obscure historical details. Because of the complexity of many of these books, many Christians avoid them or completely misread them. And the book of Ezekiel is no exception. 

Who was Ezekiel?

The book of Ezekiel is named after its main character. Ezekiel was a priest-in-training in Jerusalem. But when he turned 30, the year he would have become a full-blown priest, Jerusalem was attacked by the Babylonians. The Babylonians raided Jerusalem and carried off many of the people into slavery. Ezekiel was one of the people who was exiled. 

While he was in Ezekiel, the Lord Himself calls Ezekiel into a new line of work, the work of being a prophet. His calling should raise an important question question for us, though: what exactly is a prophet?

What is a prophet?

It’s easy to think of prophets as those who predict the future. I think many times we can misunderstand the OT prophets and believe they are like the Oracle of Delphi from Greek mythology where heroes travel to seek the Oracle and the Oracle dispenses some vague prediction about their future. 

But that’s not really what the OT prophets are about. The prophets in the OT had three main jobs:

• Covenant enforcer: They called the people back to their first love, the Lord. They were enforcing the terms of the covenant that God made with the people of Israel back at Sinai in Exodus 20. In other words, they were preachers of repentance. The people needs to turn away from sin and turn back to God. 
• Announced coming judgement: Yet many times, the people were too far God to turn back to God. And so the prophets announced coming judgment. Sometimes the judgment was very close and very specific: the Babylonians are coming! That was the message of the prophet Jeremiah. Sometimes, the judgment was pushed off into the future, awaiting the people’s repentance. 
• Promised future hope: Despite how bad things got for the people—with God, the end is never the end. So even though God would judgment the people terribly, the prophet also announced the coming of a future hope. Specifically, there would come a day when a new King David who makes a new covenant with a new Israel, and rebuilds a new temple in a new creation. Sound familiar? Well, all of that language is applied to Jesus and the church in the New Testament. The prophet were announcing the coming of the Messiah of Israel and as Christians, we know that the Messiah is Jesus. 

The calling of the prophet was to enforce the covenant, announce judgment and hold out hope. But the prophets weren’t college professors lecturing their students. They were historians, recounting the past. They proclaimed their prophetic message a certain way. So we need to pay attention to not only what the prophets said, but how they said it. 

How the prophets spoke? Or How to understand their writings. 

The prophets did not write their books like we in America write our books. I think there are five distinct characteristics of prophet writing:

• Poetry - First, most of the prophetic writing is Hebrew poetry. A few weeks ago, I did a deep dive on Hebrew poetry in my Introduction to Proverbs. So if you’re interested in learning more on the topic, you can reference back to that episode. But one thing about poetry is that it is meant to be highly metaphorical. It is not meant to be read in an overly literal manner. For example, the prophet regularly criticize the people for being “stiff-necked.” Obviously, the prophets aren’t saying the people have arthritis in their necks and can’t turn their head! What they mean is that the people are stubborn. And so, when we read the prophets, we need to work hard to understand the metaphors of the poetry. 
• Resumptive Technique - Another way the prophets work is through what is called “resumptive technique.” That’s just a fancy word for repetition. The prophets will often describe the same event or the same work of God multiple ways, from different angles. Prophecy, then, is usually not chronological. Typically the prophets will address a topic. Then pause. And then pick up the same topic, this time usually slightly different language. So be aware that the prophets are often describing the same thing multiple times. 
• Language of the past - The prophets are also saturated in Scripture. And they often speak of the future in the language of the past. For example, the prophets often use the language of the Exodus to describe a coming new Exodus in the future. Here’s a classic example from Isaiah. Isaiah 40:3: “A voice cries: In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” There are echoes of the Exodus echoes: a wilderness journey, God leading his people, a clear path for deliverance. Isaiah takes this language and puts it into the future. God is about to deliver his people again. This time it’s not out of Egypt, but out of exile. The prophets (and later the Gospels) treat this as a second, greater Exodus. The prophets regularly use the images and language of the past to describe future salvation. 
• Apocalyptic - One of the most misunderstood parts of Hebrew prophesy is the use of apocalyptic language. Apocalyptic? Sounds scary, right? And in a way, it is. Apocalyptic language is the language of extreme exaggeration to describe cataclysmic events. It is used to describe God’s decisive intervention in history. The Hebrew prophets often use apocalyptic language to describe the end of one world, or an empire, and the beginning of another. For example, in Isaiah 13, Isaiah describes the fall of Babylon this way: “For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light” (Isa. 13:10)...later on, it says of Babylon, “Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations” (13:19-20). Clearly, this is an exaggeration. Isaiah is not literally saying that no one will live in modern-day Iraq again. People are living there. It is communicating the fall of the Babylonian empire and that their retribution is coming. They’ve made lands desolate, and that will happen to them! 
• Symbolic Visions - Finally, the prophets often communicate with symbolic visions.At key moments, the prophets don’t just speak in poems or sermons; they are given symbolic visions. And if we’re going to read the prophets responsibly, we need to learn how to interpret those visions on their own terms, rather than forcing them into our modern expectations. And since symbolic visions play such an important role in the prophets, I want to spend some extended time helping us learn how to interpret them.

How to interpret Symbolic visions

A very common, but I believe, misguided way, to interpret symbolic visions is to believe that the prophets were given something like a movie of the future. That they saw future history, but they didn’t know what things were like tanks or helicopters and tried to interpret it in the language of their day…It kind of looks like this. This view argues that they saw literal history but cloaked it in symbolic language because they didn’t understand it. Especially relevant is the vision that Ezekiel receives about the temple in chapters 40-48 of his book. Some Christians think that Ezekiel is seeing a future historical rebuilding of the temple in Jersualem. I don’t think that’s quite right away of interpreting the text. 

Because Ezekiel is not seeing literal, future history unfolding. He is seeing a symbolic vision. The text says in Ezekiel 40:2, “in visions of God…” So I think a better way of reading the text is to see that Ezekiel is seeing a vision, and then we have to figure out what the symbols are pointing to. Symbols mean something; they point to something, but we don’t always know what the referent is. That’s why we need to interpret. And so in chapters 40-48, Ezekiel sees a vision of a temple being rebuilt. But what does it refer to?

I would argue that it is symbolic of Jews and Gentiles being saved by Jesus and being “built” into the new temple. That seems to be how the New Testament authors seem to interpret it, describing the church as the temple of the living God quite often. The apostle Peter speaks of coming to Jesus this way, “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame” (1 Pet. 2:5-6). Stone-by-stone, brick-by-brick, person-by-person, the temple is being rebuilt. The Church of Jesus Christ is the reference of the symbolic vision. 

Conclusion

I know that we covered a lot of ground in this episode. And the prophets can feel strange, confusing, and even intimidating at first. But they were never meant to be inaccessible. They weren’t trying to speak in code, and conceal God’s plan. In fact, they wrote their books to reveal who God was and what He calls us to be. They spoke God’s word to real people, often in moments of real crisis. And they can speak to us as well, especially when we’re going through different times. When we learn how to read them well, understanding poetry and symbolic visions, we can gain more clarity and encouragement from their words. 

That’s especially true when we turn to Ezekiel. This book can seem strange at times. Ezekiel doesn’t just preach God’s word, he also enacts it through his actions. In everything Ezekiel says and does, he is trying to warn the people of their sin and present them hope in a coming Savior. And as Christians today, we can learn much from their words and we can rest in the Savior that Ezekiel could only prophesy about.