Ezekiel part 6 Chapters 8 & 9
A Journey Of Judgement To The House Of God
The 430 days that Ezekiel was lying on his side is almost now finished. Ezekiel didn't lie every hour of every day for those 430 days, he had to get up and prepare the food, and eat. A group of elders gathered into his home to talk to Ezekiel. The Spirit of God falls and he receives another vision from the Lord. A vision of the city of Jerusalem, and specifically to the temple of God.
The first thing that we note is the abomination of the temple worship that Ezekiel witnesses. Chapter 8 unfolds what the word of God calls 'the detestable idols of vile images of Israel'.
Why is God showing Ezekiel this vision? The reason is the context in which He is showing it
The first context in chapter 1 was in relation to the whole of the nation, the whole of the people and the people's sin. But in chapter 10 it is specifically in relation to the sins of the elders, the leaders of Israel.
The prophet is given a tour of the temple of God. God shows him four scenes of increasing abomination and the offence.
The first abomination was the image of jealousy v3-6 The emphasis is not so much on the idol itself, but rather on the pain that it causes the Lord. Verse 3 says that it provoked the Lord to jealousy! As believers, we must realise that God demands of us absolute and exclusive devotion. With all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with everything that we are and have! That is what God demands, and nothing less!
The second thing that Ezekiel sees is even worse - the art of idolatry. he found a secret chamber full of paintings, murals, depicting probably unclean animals to the Jewish law. If you look at 8:11 'And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients', the elders, 'of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up'. Compare this with Exodus 24, you find another seventy elders there – who were allowed to see the glory of God! Seventy elders seeing the glory of God! And in Numbers 11 we find those seventy elders were also endued with the same Spirit that Moses the patriarch was given. So they were able to see the glory of God, they were given the Spirit of God as Moses had been given the Spirit of God, and later again in the Old Testament there were seventy judges whose function was specifically to deal with all the idol worship across the land of Israel.
What was the justification for such idolatrous behaviour? We find it in 8:12 He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, 'The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.'"
Jesus said: 'Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil'. John 3:9. And the whole vision proves the exact opposite: that God does see them, doesn't it? God is sending a vision to Ezekiel of exactly what they are doing! The response that God will give is in chapter 9:9, 'Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not'
Then thirdly - verses 13 to 14 - there's the mourning of Tammuz. Women weeping for Tammuz at the North Gate of the temple itself. Weeping for Tammuz was a Babylonian ritual that marked the death and the resurrection, or better the return, of their god Tammuz.
Then, fourthly, we come to the worshipping of the sun in v15-16. This is the final supreme act of idolatry, they've come into the very temple itself - 25 elders with their backs to the temple of God, facing eastward worshipping the sun. 8:16 'He brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east'.
Eventually in verse 17 of ch 8 God says to them: 'Is this trivial to you? Does this mean nothing to you? That this is the way the leaders of God's people are acting?'. This God is our God, that is why Paul said to the Christians in 1 Corinthians 10: 'Flee from idolatry' - God cannot have idolatry. He told them: 'You're not to partake of pagan sacrifices and profess Christ. You must be all out for Christ, or nothing!'. He said: 'Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.
What it leads to is the administration of divine justice in chapter 9, The first thing He does in verses 1 to 7 of chapter 9 is: He sends some servants. We know these verses off by heart: 'God is patient and long-suffering, not willing that any should perish' chapter 9 is He summons six guards with deadly weapons. It is God's people who are being slaughtered! The awful thing is that the slaughter begins in the temple with the chief idolaters, the 25 elders. In verse 6 of chapter 9 you see that they were told to go straight there to the top, straight to the ones who were bringing the idolatry in.
The Lord's servants came, and then secondly the Lord's glory departed gradually, from the Holy of Holies, right to the threshold of the temple, right on to the Mount of Olives and eventually away totally, the glory of God departed - the Shekinah glory, that cloud of glory, and we'll see that more in chapter 10. But the point is this: it is better to remove the false presence of false gods, than to lose the true presence of the living God.
Then thirdly we see the Lord's mark separating them in verses 8 to 11, and this is amazing - because Ezekiel sees all these people being slain and can't see anyone being saved. He falls at the feet of the Lord and says in fear: 'Lord, have You forsaken the earth? Lord, have You forgotten to save this remnant that You promised?'. This is when this high priestly figure in the white linen garment is told by the Lord to come and to put a mark on the forehead of the remnant of those who are to be saved. the Hebrew word 'mark' is literally the Hebrew letter 'tav'. On ancient manuscripts it was done with a cross - 'tav'. It reminds us of Revelation where the 144,000 out of all the tribes of Israel are sealed on their foreheads with the name of the Father, and the name of the Son. - just before that great tribulation breaks upon the whole earth, the 144,000 are commissioned and chosen as the remnant, marked with the sign of this cross. In the Greek language that 'X', 'tav', a cross, is the first letter of 'Christos' - Christ? Here Ezekiel is marking this remnant, maybe unknown to him, with the first letter of our Lord Jesus Christ's title as Messiah.
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