Bible Fiber Shelley Neese

This week we are studying Ezekiel 13. At the end of Chapter 12, last week, we discovered Ezekiel had resisters among his peers in Tel Abib. They rejected him as a doomsayer and doubted if his prophecies would materialize (12:28). In the next two chapters, we discover Ezekiel was not only up against cynics dismissive of his prophecies. He also faced counterfeit prophets who actively contradicted him with oracles of their own (12:11-14:11). While Ezekiel pronounced the coming judgment, they spoke of the coming deliverance. He preached repentance, and they encouraged patience. 
To all those guilty of propagating falsehoods, God had a strongly worded dispatch: “Alas for the senseless prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing” (13:3). 

In last week’s episode, Ezekiel offered encouragement and comfort to the exiles, who worried that they were excluded from God’s plans for the nation of Israel. Surprisingly, Ezekiel identified them as the prophesied remnant. To help them chart a fresh course, God promised to gift them a new heart made of flesh (11:19). Instead of rejoicing over the good news, Chapter 12 reveals that a contingent of exiles rejected Ezekiel as a divine messenger. His oracles and sign-acts, no matter how forceful and dramatic, were unsuccessful in getting through. Despite Ezekiel’s best efforts, they remained stonyhearted. God warned Ezekiel, “Mortal, you are living in the midst of a rebellious house who have eyes to see but do not see, who have ears to hear but do not hear” (12:2). 
Other prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, used this same terminology to describe the epidemic of spiritual indifference in their time (Isa. 26:11; Jer. 5:21). Jesus, six hundred years later, also described how his teaching failed to affect those with deadened senses. Jesus used parables to reveal the purpose of his mission, recognizing that only those with perceptive eyes and attentive ears would understand his teachings (Matt. 13:13-15). For those listeners who were spiritually awake, the parables revealed “the secrets of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:10). Like Jesus, Ezekiel hoped his message broke through to the seeing and hearing remnant, even if the spiritually blind and deaf rejected it.

This week we are studying Ezekiel 11, the concluding sequence in Ezekiel’s multi-part vision, and his last message before the glory of the Lord departed Jerusalem. So far, the prophet has taken a tour of the temple’s abominations, observed a squad of executioners on a killing spree, and watched the man in linen drop fiery coals on Jerusalem. The last episode ended with the Lord mounting his throne chariot to depart the temple complex, but his glory paused over the east gate. Chapter 11 opens with the divine spirit depositing Ezekiel at the east gate where the throne chariot still hovered (11:1). 

In Ezekiel’s vision of the departing presence, the glory of the Lord was represented by a cloud. God’s glory coming in the form of a cloud would have been familiar to Ezekiel and his audience. In the early days of Israel’s wilderness wandering, the Israelites were comforted by the divine cloud as it settled atop the tabernacle and filled the tent with the divine glory (Ex. 40:34). Throughout those forty years, the cloud was a constant reassurance that Yahweh abided in their midst. When the cloud lifted, it was time for the people to decamp and move to the next site. As they moved sites, the cloud moved as well, demonstrating that Yahweh remained with his itinerant people. The most terrifying aspect to Ezekiel’s vision was that Yahweh’s cloud of glory was moving out of Jerusalem without the covenant people. Acting with his own free and divine agency, God did not invite the Jerusalemites to follow him. The glory of God made a solo exit.

This week we were going to go over Ezekiel 10, the next chapter in our Ezekiel study. Ezekiel 10 is one of the lowest lows in the entire book because it records when God’s glory exited the Jerusalem temple. But that did not seem like the right message two days before Resurrection Sunday. I still regret doing a podcast on the Philistines five days before Christmas. So, we are going to pause Ezekiel this week and instead focus on a prophetic passage that Jesus himself used to introduce his ministry on earth. We are looking at Isaiah 61 and its connection to Luke 4. 
Isaiah 61 begins: 
 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn. (Isa. 61:1-2).
This passage in Isaiah is one of the most remarkable prophecies in the book. It throbs with messianic hope. On one particular Sabbath service in Nazareth, sometime around 27 AD, Jesus was the special congregant called up to the pulpit to read Isaiah 61. 

Ezekiel watched as God summoned six executioners forward to take their places in the temple courtyard. The executioners each wielded a weapon for slaughter (9:2). Initially, Ezekiel referred to them as “guards,” but their task was not to protect the temple city. Although he also referred to them as “men,” they behaved more like angelic assistants than regular mortals. They only purposed to do God’s bidding.
In addition to the six executioners, God summoned one scribe, a man dressed in linen with a writing kit strapped to his side. The scribe also has angelic like qualities. The word Ezekiel used for writing kit was an Egyptian loanword to describe a professional scribe’s carrying pouch. Scribal kits usually contained a writing palette, a pen, and two colors of ink.