Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 1 – 27
• This is fascinating because this is recorded for us in 2 Kings 25:1 where it says, “Now it came to pass in the ninth year of his (Zedekiah) reign, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came against Jerusalem and encamped against it; and they built a siege wall against it all around.” This exact day… Jeremiah corroborates this exact day in Jeremiah 39:1 and Jeremiah 52:4. But Jeremiah was in Jerusalem. How could Ezekiel know and write this without knowing that had happened that very day? He didn’t. God wrote this because this is God’s Word. Ezekiel is simply God’s pencil.
Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 3 – 11
• The symbology here is so very clear and at the same time, so extremely tragic. There, in the pot, is goodness. Choice meats, top of the line, the best and what anyone would want (well, I suppose except a vegetarian, HA!). But yet in the same pot, filth. That’s the thing…we won’t tolerate filth on our plate, not even a little bit, but I so often have no problem with filth in my heart of hearts! What is we treated our hearts like we do our plates…? And some of y’all are SUPER picky eaters! HA!
• Here’s the extremely tragic part…God says that the meat must be removed…the good stuff is gonna be gone, for the sake of the scum. And the worst of the tragedy….the fire is fueled by the bones of the people…
• Now one more thing I want you to consider before we move forward. Not all trials are bad. Many times, when the heat is turned up, that’s when the cook is separating the scum from the choice cuts. Trials are a great opportunity to find out who you really are…the trick is to get the scum out though while the pot is still hot…that’s when you make the decision to grow up, and the Lord will strengthen you, and the good stuff is preserved…
Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 12 – 14
• What God says here, “I have cleansed you and you were not cleansed,” does not mean that God failed to do a thorough and complete job. It is that the millisecond that she was clean, she ran right back into the dirt! 2 Peter 1:3 says, “God’s divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Life, in the Greek that is breathing and eating and sleeping kind of life, that’s a different word, this is zoe…life alive. Life with power and purpose and poise…a life that is a prize won day in and day out because of what you’ve built your life into through trusting the Lord, walking in wisdom and love, dumping the scum through discipline of spirit…
• We have everything we need…supplied through the available and dynamically willing Spirit of God to absolutely master our flesh and master this life to the point of earthly and heavenly and inward success (I did not say perfection, for when one ceases to grow they cease to live)…I’m hook-line-and-sinker convinced of this and the only requirement is to walk with Jesus and draw close to Him…trust Him, walk in disciplined faith…and He does the rest. He cleanses…but ditch after ditch is found by good people in this life because they walk away from what the Lord would have them to do and how the Lord would have them to be…
Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 15 – 18
• We find out a few things in these verses about Ezekiel personally. One, he was married. Through all that we’ve read, the weird cooking, the silence, the shaving of his head and beard, the burrowing through his own wall…it’s somewhat surprising that we read that through all of that, we find out that he was married! I mean, by all sensical means, Ezekiel went crazy…but what causes me to wonder, is that she didn’t leave. We don’t even read about problems in his home. How is that? Why? A few ideas….
• First, love. Love is so powerful. It covers all sin, it endures, it compels, it restrains… It could be that even as he lost his ever-loving mind, she loved him and stuck with him. Second idea, it was his calling, not hers. It’s actually very wrong and sometimes quite tragic when a wife or a husband gets involved in the ministry that God has called their spouse to… You say, “one flesh,” I disagree in that application. Are YOU called? If not, please please please stay out of it.
• You know what you’re called to do? Love your spouse. If you follow them into the ministry then you better make sure that God has called you, or you will hurt what God has called your spouse to do… What will never hurt them? Love them and support them.
• Also, we read here that he didn’t think of her as his wife, his bride, his better half, his ball and chain…God says here that she was the desire of his eyes, and I like that. Please fight for that in your marriage. That doesn’t happen because of worldly beauty or even spiritual beauty. It happens because they worked for it… Love compels and it restrains, please be worthy of that title (the desire of his/her eyes) in your marriage…because that will make for a sweet relationship for sure.
• And again, this is a sign to the nation. Because what God is allowing Ezekiel to go through is exactly what God is experiencing with His bride, the nation of Israel. Ezekiel is commanded to sigh in silence and keep working. I think about Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.” And yet I make mistakes…I do things that I wish I hadn’t of done afterwards, or wish I had handled a situation or a person so differently…and I know that my sin grieves the Holy Spirit…but He never stops, God keeps working in my life…He is so good. While I am failing Him, He is working out my next mountain top success…
Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 19
• To the people, his behavior what very bizarre. It’s obvious that his affection for his wife had been well known. They had watched her stand by him even through all of his craziness…and now she had died suddenly…and he doesn’t mourn. Here’s the thing though that drives me up a wall…Ezekiel loses his wife and their comment to him is, “What about us?!” Exactly the heart of the nation towards God and the response we can have so often when we are walking in the fruit of our own flesh.
Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 20 – 21
• This is why they thought themselves to be meat safe in a pot (if you recall from previous chapters). They had the Temple of God. And they took this false security that God would never allow Jerusalem to fall because of His temple. But they did not know that God had departed…not His want or decision…but they put themselves in the place of god over God Himself with this thinking…in control…anytime that happens, you evict God from the throne of your life…
• Here’s the crazy thing about God’s house, the church, today…this happens more often than we want to even think about. Churches become businesses and their product becomes Christianity…that should not be the product of the church! The product of the church should not be to put Christians into the world or community! The product of the church should be to put Christ into the world and community!
• And honestly, many churches see no difference in that at all! And the crazy thing is, a church can grow massive and massively fast when the product is Christianity! But God has departed? Why does it grow? We are growing and so big so God MUST be in it! I don’t agree…in fact, that thinking is just plain wrong. The size of the church is never a measurement of its Godliness…is Christ the product? Or is the Christian machine just pumping?
Ezekiel Chapter 24 Verses 22 – 24
• Ezekiel must have been crushed on the inside. He just said of himself, and rightly so, in this calling of his, he is forsaken. For the sake of them, that is his calling and truly anyone called will accept the same. He says to them, I am not only your prophet, I am also your sign. As Christians, especially in the ministry, we should be both preachers of the Word of God and proof of the Word of God. If not, man…we’re lost in the machine…
Ezekiel 24 Verses 25 – 27
• There’s an element of comfort here given by God to Ezekiel. The loss of his land, the loss of his wife…and yet God says to him that the time will come when God will redeem it all…and through that, they will know that God is Lord. We have to keep that same hope. That the trial today, the condition today, God will use it for good to us who love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).