If there is bad news, it is better to know it than to be in the dark. Some of you work in the medical profession, and there are a number of thankless tasks that fall to you as doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals. You don't need me to tell you that, at times, your job is tough. One of the tasks that must be the most difficult is bringing the news to somebody that an illness they thought was mild is actually far more serious than they first thought. But you know that you need to find a way to share that news with them. You can't go, "They're not ready to hear this. I can't tell them," and send them away thinking that they're fine. You do have to tell them.
And some of you, I know, have been in the position of having medical appointments where you've come away on the receiving end of that experience—hopefully from good, caring and compassionate doctors—but just then, in a spin, having to process the confusion, the worry, the uncertainty, the anxiety, the "I do not know what to do with this because what I heard has just completely changed my life." But when you come down from having all that confusion swirling in your head, I would be surprised if there is not a bit of you that is actually grateful that you have been told what you've been told. Because bad though it is, if you know what's going on, you can plan, you can make adjustments, you can prepare—and you're not in the dark.
For most Christians, there are bits of the character of God that we love to hear about. Who does not like to hear about the love, grace, mercy and kindness of God? But there are also bits of the Bible that we find harder to hear. God is not only a God of kindness and grace; he's also a God who judges rebellion and wickedness and sin. Some Christians don't like those bits to the degree where they will literally put their fingers in their ears if they discover that someone's proposing to have a Bible reading in church or a passage that addresses those kinds of topics. They would find a different church to go to. They do not want to hear a message of judgement.
But if there is bad news from God to this world, it is better that we know than that we are in the dark.
The Book of Ezekiel is written—was written—to a group of people who had their heads in the sand. They did not want to know the bad news. They wanted not to be told and to believe that a better story would play out than that. Let me remind you of the historical background of where we are. Lee explained this to us a couple of weeks ago, so if you weren't here, that sermon is on our website. Do have a listen and get a longer refresher.
The year is 597 BC. The Babylonian army had attacked the city of Jerusalem and had taken several thousands of the elite and the upper classes into exile to the city of Babylon. Eleven years later, the Babylonians would attack again, and the whole city of Jerusalem would be flattened to the ground. And in that intervening 11 years, we find the prophet Ezekiel, who was a priest, is one of those who was taken to Babylon. So Ezekiel is in Babylon. Ezekiel 4–6 is about the year 592 BC. Ezekiel's in Babylon, talking to the exiles around him in Babylon about the fate and destiny of Jerusalem.
The exiles gathered around Ezekiel would love to believe that Jerusalem will survive and they'll all get to go home. And Ezekiel's job is to convince them that that is not what will happen. So we're going to look this morning in these chapters at what is due to happen to the city of Jerusalem. From our point of view, it's already happened a long time ago. But at their moment in time—what was about to happen five or six years later. But we also need to ask why it matters. Why does it matter to us what happened in a siege of a city a couple of thousand miles away, 2,600 years ago? What is the relevance of that? You might enjoy it as a film, but apart from that, what's the relevance of this ancient siege to us?
And the answer is: it mattered to them. So Ezekiel was ministering in Babylon, not in Jerusalem. The people in Jerusalem never heard these words. Ezekiel is talking about the fate of Jerusalem to people who were somewhere else because they needed to hear about what would happen to Jerusalem. And actually, the book of Ezekiel didn't get put together as a book until about 20 years after this—15 years after Jerusalem had finally fallen, at least. So when Ezekiel put his book together, he felt that for his readers, who already knew that Jerusalem had gone—could have been gone for 15 years—"I know they know this in history, but I must take them back. I need to take them back to the year 592 and describe to them what it was like for me trying to convince people before the city fell that it would happen. Because there are lessons for people in later years to learn about what it was like just before the city fell—and nobody wanted to believe me."
And if he wanted to take them back to 592 BC because there's stuff for them—well then, there's stuff for us too. We need to go back with Ezekiel to the year 592 BC. And so go on, as if you're teachers: why is it you think that the lessons from this ancient piece of history are so relevant? They mattered to them; it mattered to us.
As you heard that reading read, it might have reminded you of our all-age teaching slots that we do here in church. Maybe I should talk to Nicola, our children's minister—maybe there's material here for an all-age teaching series. So in our all-age teaching blocks, we tend to do something kind of visual and attention-grabbing, and then we hook from that into a teaching point. And Ezekiel does some pretty visual stuff, and then he hooks into a teaching.
Let me tell you what he does. He makes a model Jerusalem out of clay. He gets his Lego out and makes some siege equipment. He then allows himself to be tied up on stage. He's then fed some food that's been cooked—especially made out of a weird combination of ingredients—for visual effect, before having his hair entirely shaved off in live action and then doing different things with his hair around the auditorium where he's having his gathering.
I mean, this would be excellent, would it not, for a series of visual gimmicks to launch an all-age teaching series? Certainly vivid. The trouble is, the teaching points that are attached to these visual signs—well, 20 years ago, the British Board of Film Classification would have refused to issue a certificate. Today, standards have slipped, and it would probably get away with an 18. But you would not be allowed to watch this in the cinema if you were under the age of 18. Because the message that is here is far from something devised for the young to hear. And yet, hear it they must.
So what we're going to do this morning—I'm going to tell you what Ezekiel says will happen to Jerusalem. Let me warn you: this is bleak. So I'm going to take you through nine properties of God's judgement. But then we're going to look: why is it that we need to hear this? Why did the exiles that Ezekiel saw need to hear it? Why do we? What does this teach us about God? And where is the hope—where is the good news in all this? Because there is. But we have to start with the bad news.
So let me take you through nine lessons on God's judgement.
1. God's judgement is fair
And this comes from the clay model.
Verse 1: "Son of man, take a block of clay, draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Lay siege to it, erect siege ramps, build a ramp, set up camps, put battering rams..."
And so on. Archaeologists have discovered and dug up city maps made by being etched into a block of clay, a known mapping device from the ancient world. But Ezekiel does it so he can then model the city under siege. And when he's done that, he's to lie on his side—390 days lying on his left. Just think of the bedsores. And then, finally, he's allowed to turn over onto his right-hand side for 40 days.
Now, what is this here to teach us? Well, we are told that the 390 days that he lies on his left correspond to the 390 years of Israel's sin. This will be Israel—the northern and southern kingdoms combined, the whole house of the people of God. 390 years before this took place, King Solomon laid the first stones of the temple. So the whole era that the temple stood in Jerusalem was 390 years—and that's been one long era of rebellion and sin. So, for exactly the same number of days, Ezekiel will model this siege.
40 years: 40 years of the punishment of the people of Judah. Their exile was actually about 37, but round it to the nearest whole number—one generation. They will be in exile until that whole generation has passed. So, exactly 40 days on your other side.
The point is this: it is not that God is arbitrarily picking on these people. They have sinned for 390 years, and so the punishment would exactly correspond. It's fair.
2. The judgement of God is starving
And this is the illustration of the multi-grain loaf.
Verse 9: "Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt. Put them in a storage jar; use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side."
And then the next bit, I think, is separate—because it’d be a huge storage jar otherwise.
"Weight out 20 shekels of food to eat each day; eat it at set times. Also a sixth of a hin of water; drink it at set times."
So he is to make this kind of weird loaf out of these six things. Four of them are cereals—wheat, barley, millet and spelt. The other two are vegetables—beans and lentils. Now, this is not the BBC Good Food website—some weird niche, some sort of hippie Babylonian recipe where they put beans into their bread. What this is about is: when you're under siege and there isn't enough, your flour jar is empty. You think, "Is there anything else in the house I can tip into this loaf to bulk it out a bit?" And that's why the kidney beans go into the bread.
And then his actual diet to sustain him—well, 20 shekels a day is about four slices of bread. So for a year and a quarter, his daily allowance of food is four slices of bread and a miniature bottle of water. And that's it.
We watched a film a while ago about which it featured some sailors who were shipwrecked and had to basically say, “What rations do we have? How do we divide them up and make them last?” So you could literally work it out: you will eat this tiny thing once a day — it's all you can have, otherwise you will run out of food. And that's what it would be like to be in Jerusalem. It's pretty bleak — starving to death. But actually, terrible things start to happen.
Chapter 4:16–17 says that their food will be rationed, and then chapter 6 moves to the next stage. Chapter 6 speaks of parents eating their children and children eating their parents. Now, that did happen during the siege of Jerusalem, when Assyria laid siege to it in a previous generation — the episode we thought about when we looked at Isaiah just around Christmas time. So it's happened before, and it would happen again. This is terror. What an awful way to go. But that kind of starvation, emptiness, gnawing hunger is the judgement of God.
3. The judgement of God is defiling
This is the barley bread. “Eat the food as you will — a loaf of barley bread — bake it in the sight of the people using human excrement for fuel.” And the Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.” See, this is where it ceases to be a good idea for an all-day teaching slot, ceases to be available therefore as a youth group activity, and becomes just plain disgusting. It's not just a disgust of the smell — it was defiling. The people of Israel had very strict standards for remaining ritually pure before God. They prized their religion and their boundaries and getting things right, whilst not caring what God said in other categories. And the whole farce of that is about to become clear, because when they are exiled, they can forget being able to uphold any of their standards. They'll just have to make do. The hypocrisy and emptiness of thinking that ritual propriety is what matters while the rest does not will be exposed as the sham it is.
God eventually allows Ezekiel a concession. He says, “I'll let you off — this is too much for you. I will let you off. You can cook on cow dung instead. Aren't I kind?” Methane cooking — that is the proposal that God comes up with for him. It is defiling.
4. The judgement of God is terrifying
So verses 16 and 17 of chapter 4 don't only speak of the rationing. Notice verse 16: the people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair. Every mealtime will be an occasion for utter fear, anxiety, looking over your shoulder. The people will just be a nervous wreck, because they never know where the next disaster is going to come from — utter anxiety and fear.
5. The judgement of God will be humiliating
This is the close shave. Ezekiel is to take a sword — a strange implement for it, and yet appropriate — and to shave his head entirely, so that he is completely bald. And we're told in chapter 5 verse 11, where God says, “Because you've defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will shave you. I will not look on you with pity or spare you.” So Ezekiel's shaving his head is a symbol of what God will do to his people. Being completely shaved is a symbol of humiliation.
This is why in some countries, when people are admitted to prison, the first thing that happens is they are shaved, and they remain shaved throughout their time in prison. It is to rob them of the dignity of their hair. It is the same reason why, in some countries, there are customs to do that with prisoners of war. It is an act of humiliation — to take away their confidence, to take away any thoughts of revolt.
Jerusalem was a very public city. It was God's city, set in the middle of the world — the pinnacle of God's plan for the nations. This is verse 5 of chapter 5: “This is Jerusalem, which I set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around.” And yet her sin, her rebellion, was as public as her prominence. And therefore her humiliation and punishment will be equally public, and her shame will be public. God's judgement is humiliating.
6. God's judgement is exact
God's judgement is exact. Having cut his hair off, he has to do different things with it. So some of it he sets fire to in his little clay model of the city. Then he gets some more, and he gets the sword that he shaved his hair with, and he chops it up in bits around the edge. And then he gets the final bit, and he just starts flinging it around so the wind can catch it and it blows away. That's what he's doing.
You get the symbolism. If you're in the city — it's bleak. The city will burn. Or plague will get you. Or famine will get you. It's bleak in the city. If you're one of the ones that manages to break out, the Babylonian army will chase you down and cut you up. And if you manage to get away from that, your future is just to be scattered and never have an identity as a people ever again. That's the symbolism.
But notice this — it's not divided roughly into three piles. Ezekiel is to get some scales and divide it exactly into three sections. God's judgement is exact. It's not just haphazardly, “Let's do this roughly, shall we?” God is in control and knows exactly what he's doing.
7. God's judgement is inescapable
So in chapter 5, this picture of in the city / outside the city / fleeing — the point is clear. It doesn't matter at what point in the story this catches up with you — it will catch up with you. Don't think that you're the one who will manage to outrun God when the rest of the world won't. God will catch up with you one way or another.
8. God's judgement is angry
As we see the sentence carried out, chapter 5 verse 13: “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I spend my wrath on them, they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my zeal.”
I can think of several films or books where an army has been defeated. You're left with one lone warrior with just his sword, and that's all there is against all these enemies around. And this guy is angry. But he's on his own. And because he's angry, and because he's quite skilled and experienced, he's able to just deal with one after another until finally the army has been dealt with. The battlefield goes quiet, and he goes, “Ah. I've dealt with it.” It's a picture of God here. God is angry. But there will come a point when finally the punishment has been concluded. His anger has been spent. It has been spent, because the exacting of punishment in itself is not just God dispassionately yawning and reading out a sentence before the court. He feels deeply the things that have been done wrong, and in his anger is making sure that justice is done. He cares.
Now, this is good. When you read the news, when you see stuff on the web — atrocities people have done — you can feel angry. Sometimes you burn. People are allowed to get away with things. And it's good to know that God cares — until you're the one that he's angry with. And God comes to deal with you. And it's personal. It's not just justice.
9. God's judgement is widespread
This is the mountains of chapter 6. In chapter 6, the geography gets bigger. So, so far, it's just been the city of Jerusalem. Now it's the whole land of Israel, symbolised by the mountains and hilltops dotted around that part of the world. And every hilltop was a place where they worshipped idols — as they built altars to various foreign gods. They traditionally did it on the hilltops. And every hilltop was a place where this took place.
And so God says, “Then I will do three things on every hill — smash, stack, scatter. I will smash the idols and the altars and the chapels and the shrines. I will stack up their bodies. And then I will scatter the bones.”
Nine things of God's judgement.
Why
The question is: why?
Why did the exiles in Babylon need to know this?
Why did the exiles, twenty years later when the book was put together, need to know this?
Why do we need to? It's about us.
Have a look at chapter 6 and verse 9. God says this:
“Then in the nations where they have been carried, those who escape will remember me — how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices.”
Those who have escaped will remember how they turned away. They’ll hate themselves, and they’ll hate their past behaviour.
So what happened? It's not because the inhabitants of Jerusalem were wicked and those who made the Babylonian exile were somehow better. No — they were just as bad. God just happened to allow them to escape.
How easily we forget that we are sinful. How easily we forget that God takes our sins seriously.
The reason why we are here worshipping God, singing his praises in church, is not because we are somehow better and those out there are particularly bad. This sin describes us as well. These are our sins that are being described here. To fall into the hands of an angry God is a terrible, terrible thing — and we forget it at our peril.
The Church of England has been in the news this week — not for good reasons. The Church of England has chosen publicly to decide new policies that see it turn away from the clear teaching of the Lord Jesus and the Bible in connection with gender and marriage. Now, there's lots that one could say about that, but I cannot help but think that those who are making those decisions have completely forgotten that this is their God. They have forgotten that there is a God who takes sin deeply personally — and to get on the wrong side of him is a very serious thing indeed.
They are playing with fire. And they've forgotten it.
We must not forget it. We need to have this aspect of God's character deeply emblazoned into our hearts. We remember that this is our God, and we need to, therefore, like them, hate our sin. So we hate our sin from before we were Christians. When you look back on your past—God, I'm ashamed—but I was like that. And at times, maybe you're tempted to reminisce about things that you did, habits that you had before you were a Christian. Hate that. Whenever you're tempted to go, "I wish I could live like that again," no.
And always in life, you see sin bubbling up, like lava coming up out of a volcanic crater. You know—where did that come from? Where'd that anger come back? Where did that thought just come from—that greed and everything? You see that sin bubbling up in your life again. We need to learn to hate it. Say, "No, I don't want that in me. God help me."
If you're here this morning, you're not yet a Christian, you're still looking into the claims of Jesus—let me say how welcome you are. You're here on a slightly bleak topic, to be fair. But let me just say this to you: don't think that whether you're a Christian or not doesn't matter. You too need to learn to hate your sin. Sin is not just the scandalous things done by a few people who then get into the tabloid newspapers. Sin is setting ourselves against the God who made us, and you need to reach the point where you hate that about yourself, because you cannot keep running away from God forever. One day he will catch up with you, and when he does, it is awful. So please make your peace with him before he catches up.
Just to say as well, it's not just an Old Testament thing. This is our God too, who hates sin in this way.
Now, the Book of Revelation is one that I need to do a lot more study on. Okay, there's a lot I have more questions than answers about. The Book of Revelation—and bits of it deal with the whole period between Jesus' first and second coming, and bits of it deal with the Romans' attack and siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and bits of it deal with the final coming of Jesus. And I've got to work out which bits are which and all of that. But all of the Book of Revelation is New Testament. So either way, it's New Testament. It's about Jesus.
Okay, Revelation 6 verse 6 speaks of a siege diet, reminiscent of Ezekiel chapter 4. Revelation 8 verses 9 to 12 speaks of a series of judgements where everything happens to a third—a third, a third, a third. Where did Revelation get that idea from, huh? I wonder.
So, the Book of Ezekiel—and chapters 4 to 6 in particular—are the pattern we are given for the judgement of the Lord Jesus in the present era. This is not just about them. It's about us. But it's also about our God.
So look back again at chapter 6 verse 9: "Then in the nations where they've been carried captive, those who escape will remember me." They'll remember me.
Now, in the Bible, forgetting and remembering—it's not just about recall. Okay, it isn't the "where did I put my glasses?" thing. God understands that, but it's not what remembrance is about here. Remembering here is about failing to live in the light of something that you know is true. It's about going, "I know I have an exam to do next month, but I'm going to forget about that for today and tomorrow and next week, and I'll come to it in March." That's what forgetting means in the Bible.
And the people of God have been living without God at the centre of their world. And as they hear of the fall of the city of Jerusalem, that news will jaunt God back to the centre of their life. They will remember me. And this description of Jerusalem is meant to do the same to us.
If God's just been drifting slightly further from the centre of your view, and he's beginning to disappear from view—but not quite—this news of what God will do in Jerusalem is meant to make you go, "There's my God. I remember."
Chapter 6 verse 13: "And they will know that I am the Lord when their people lie slain among their idols." Actually, literally. And you will know that I am the Lord when their people lie like so. When the inhabitants of Jerusalem are slain, you—the people in exile around Ezekiel in Babylon—you will know that I'm the Lord when that happens to them.
Now, "Lord" in capital letters—that's God's covenant name, Yahweh. God committed to his people. And they will have a profound experience of God as their God when God does that to Jerusalem. The fall of Jerusalem will be the moment they meet and encounter their God.
Now, lots of us have had experiences of God that are deep and profound and wonderful—when he shows us fresh kindness, mercy, forgiveness, when he orders certain thoughts in our lives so things fall into our life that are good and kind, that we say, "Thank you, God." That's a wonderful experience of God. But he's saying here that if you want a real experience of God, you need to watch God as he moves in judgements. That will show you your God.
It's not just about Jerusalem. It's about us. And it's about our country.
Good News?
But is there, anyhow, some good news for this morning? Or is it all bad?
No, there is good. But to see the good news, we have to keep reading. We have to look later in the scripture. God actually puts the good news on hold in this passage. There are a couple of glimpses, though, here of good news. There's little things, like when he cuts the hair—a third, a third, a third—he's put a few in your pocket. Oh, there's a bit in chapter 6 where somebody will escape or remember me. But it stops short of describing them, and it stops short of God doing another people. So they remember, and they go, "I hated that." Stop.
So you see, there's kind of good news, but it kind of pauses short of anything properly good. And to get the properly good, you have to keep reading Ezekiel.
Because the purpose of these three chapters is to convince the exiles how bad things have got. If God jumps straight to the good news, you know what would happen. When you read these chapters, and when I preach it, you go away and I'll show you the really good news—the diamonds in this passage—and you go away and go, "I've only got the capacity to remember one thing the preacher said, so I'm going to forget about that. I'm going to focus on those really good bits." And somehow the message would have been lost.
And God takes his people—he says, just stop. Remember the old days of VHS video recorders? I'm going to press pause. And the picture's there doing that. I want you to stop and look at the paused video frame for a minute, because you need to stop and look at how bad it is before I let you fast-forward through the bad bit to get to the good bit.
So these chapters are here to show them how bad things are. Old Israel is dead.
But there is—and we get it later in the Book of Ezekiel—the later message of Ezekiel is that God will bring hope. God will make something new. But the new thing he creates to replace what's died will not come from Jerusalem, will not come even from this group of exiles. God will do something genuinely new and exciting and living. And he will make these people live again. The bones will live. But it has to be something brand new, because what is dead is so dead that God has to start again. But that's what he will do.
So if you want good news, the answer is: it is there. So please keep coming. Keep reading Ezekiel, because you have to get the good news in this context. But keep coming.
But also we can read further still, coming into our Bibles. We can read as far as the death of the Lord Jesus. Ezekiel 4-6 tells you that if you want to meet your God, if you want to see him in his glory and his splendour, if you want to encounter him, you go to the seat of judgement. You go to the place where he judges sin.
As Jesus died on the cross, God's judgement fell on his own Son, so that his people need never experience it. So that we do not have to go through what is here. And so we today can kneel in wonder. We can look at judgement being poured out with terrifying intensity, and we can know that this is our God.
Now, those of you still looking into the claims of Jesus—there's hope for you here. Yes, I said earlier, hate your sin. But don't just stop at that. Come to Jesus and have him take it from you.
But there's hope too for those of us who follow the Lord Jesus today, because our sin is gone. As we've sung, our chains are gone. Let us not be led to be complacent—no. We hate our sin all the more whenever we see it again. But it's gone.
And so we can look at God pour out his wrath on the Lord Jesus, his Son, and we can know that now his anger has ceased. His anger has been spent. And we can hear God say to us, with the death of Jesus before our eyes, "Then you will know that I am the Lord, when he lies slain."