One Hour. One Book: Ezekiel

Ezekiel is actually an incredible Prophet whose naming is strengthened by God. "Hazak" is to become strong, like "Ezekiel" means "God is my strength," or "God strengthens me," or "God has added strength to me."

The book itself can be very difficult in terms of its own contents. My experience is whenever anybody wants to start weird theology, they say it comes from Ezekiel because nobody actually knows what's in there. Ezekiel had a very unique message. I want to do four things in this sort of introductory lecture.

One of them is just a quick overview of the Captivity and its prophets. The second thing is a quick overview of Ezekiel and his message. The third one is a note about how a priest became a prophet because Ezekiel was a priest, and God moved him from being a priest to being a prophet. Those are two very different skill sets and very different approaches to God, and so it's going to be important that you understand that.

And then the last one is I want to look at the opening of the book and the profound vision of God's glory, which I think the book begins with, and it is an incredible book in that respect. I'm going to use this—I'm going to use essentially, whether you call it three or four, it doesn't make any difference to me. But I'm going to call this essentially chapters 1 to 3, that have to do with the call of Ezekiel. And inside that call, there's going to be a very important vision.

There are four visions in the book, and we're going to see those four visions. Each of them are turning points in his life, and they're incredible visions of God. The most specific vision of God in the Bible is in Ezekiel 1 through 3. And there's a reason he's going to get one of the worst jobs in the Bible. You have to know God deeply to serve him with the grit he's going to have to serve him with, because his call—am I allowed to say his call's really crummy? It's a really crummy call.

He's going to get called to do stuff that nobody would volunteer for. I mean, you know, he's going to be lying around on one side, then lying around on the other side, then he's supposed to cook his meal on poop. And I mean, he's got the—the stuff he's called to do is pretty profound, pretty gritty. He's not your normal guy. And the weird part is, partway through this, his wife's got to be saying, "Are you sure God told you?" I mean, it's really bad. So I want you to see how deep the call of the Prophet goes.

Now, in 4-32, there's a kind of, you know, usually we have the condemnation section, and then usually after the condemnation, what do we have? We have a consolation. And you can do that with this book, but there's actually something more specific. And by the way, this would be 4 to 32, and this would be 33 to 48.

Now, inside the condemnation section, though, there are two different things that go on. In 4 to 24, he's dealing specifically with God's people, specifically with the Jews and the internal Jewish workings inside Babylon during the Exile. And that is from chapters 4 to 24, and that really takes place over a five-year period. Then after that, in 25-32, he's dealing outside of that frame, more into the nations. And when he's dealing with the nations, he's dealing in a two-year period. So this is all together seven years of prophecies that are condemnation prophecies.

Now, when I call them condemnation prophecies, don't mean it doesn't mean everything he says is in a bad mood. It does mean that that's the general frame of it. So let's—that's the general look at it. But of course, the most important line here, notice that 24 has a line right there. 24 will be that incredible moment in his life, that prediction of the prophet's loss, and that's the prediction of his death, of his wife's death, and that's in chapter 24. It's actually in chapter 24:15 to 17. So I'll put that in there. But this is the turning point of the book.

So here's what I want you to see about this book. Yes, it's a prophet's book. Yes, it's prophetic snippets of a prophet and various prophecies. But it's more than that. It's also biographical. It's how I got called, what God did in my marriage, and then how that played out. It's actually his story interwoven with the prophecies of God to a people. So in a way, it's kind of like life lessons that he got through it. I want you to see it both in prophecy and biography.

You know, I want you to be able to see that there was clarity in Ezekiel amid some real static. One of the points that Ezekiel makes in terms of his call and his writing and the uniqueness of it is that it's aimed at people when other prophets were saying false things about God. So what I want you to see is he is—probably about, oh, in the early '90s, there was a movie that came out called Minority Report. The idea was that one guy came out with a report that was different than everybody else's. It had to do with the future in technology. But Ezekiel was giving a minority report.

What does that mean? Means four out of five prophets surveyed said the opposite of what Ezekiel said. They were all saying one thing, Ezekiel was called to say the opposite. Why? Because most of them were wrong. Most of them weren't walking with God. They were telling people what they wanted to hear. So Ezekiel, at a very dark time, is a minority report prophet.

Let me set this up, maybe with a story that will help. A girl said, "My mother and I returned to my parents' house late one evening to find my father and my college-age brother and my 10-year-old sister fast asleep. My mother had forgotten her house keys, so we knocked loudly at the front door, and then the side doors, and then went around and tapped on the windows. I picked up a little pebble and was clicking at the window, and I couldn't get anybody to wake up. So we went outside. We hit the horn on the car, but the neighbors' light went on, and we knew we were bothering the neighborhood, and nobody was getting up. So after a while, we decided to go down to the local supermarket. And out inside the supermarket, there was a phone. So we went over to the phone and we called my brother's extension of his phone in the house. He woke up. We said, 'Look, we've been trying to get in the house, nobody's awake. Can you open the front door?' My brother went down, opened the front door, so we got in the house. And we tiptoed up into the house. I went to bed. My mom said she went quietly into a room, and there she saw her husband in front of the TV, sound asleep in his easy chair. She walked over very quietly, she clicked off the TV, and what did he say? 'I was watching that! Don't turn that off! I'm watching it!'"

The crazy part about that is Dad was sound asleep as the world was rushing on. In a very real way, Ezekiel makes the argument that trouble is coming, even though most people are asleep and don't see it, that things are about to happen. And I believe there's a biblical case for me to conclude that there's a lot of that in the church right now, that a lot of people are saying, "It's going to be fine, it's going to be fine," when real trouble is coming, if you're actually paying attention to the erosion not only of morality but also of a biblical conscience.

This week, you may have seen one of the companies in Norway and in Sweden are now embedding chips in the arms of their employees so that they can walk through security with a chip that's underneath their skin. And of course, those people who have some kind of biblical conscience get worried. So I got a bunch of emails saying, "Is this the mark of the beast?" And what I said was, "Everything's going to be reasonable when it comes. It's all going to be tried and tested technology." No, I don't think that company just started the mark of the beast. I think what happened is everybody just in a cult that is quickly distancing itself from the specifics of the Bible and the precise nature of prophecy. Alongside of that, as they diss the Bible and forget about it, fewer people will even care. Then they're going to do whatever technology makes sense, and everybody's going to agree.

When people started using plastic cards, Christians were upset. You have no idea. We have a kiosk out there where you can give online through your credit card. But that is a step, a leap forward. You have no idea what the Brethren did when credit cards came out. They were of the devil. Now, are they probably? But so is everything else in the world. I mean, come on. The fact of the matter is, they're going to quickly take us into a place where buying and selling is done without cash. For those of you who don't know, cash is the stuff that the government used to print before we all had plastic cards. Then next, it'll be, you know, we can just kind of walk up to our thing and go like that with our phone, and it will automatically move numbers from your account to their account. There is no money that actually exists for most of this.

All that to say this: that things are changing. And it's not that I think, "Panic! You're not going to stop it. You're not going to turn back the—" you know, "the Antichrist will be thwarted today because Abby will stand up and say no to her chip." Okay? Now, if you were to ask me, "Should you get one put in your skin?" I'd say no. Why? Because it just gives me the willies. Why go even toward that stuff? But the fact of the matter is, it's going to be perfectly, perfectly acceptable when the time comes, and it's going to make sense, and everybody's going to walk around going, "Oh, I get it." And nobody's going to think the Bible because those guys are going to be seen as intolerant bigots who are caught up in superstition of some ancient set of moldy books that don't matter. That's what's going to happen.

Now, I want you to see that the world is screaming for help, and many believers are snoring. And like the dad, they seem to be thinking they're paying attention, but they're really not. I want you to see that Ezekiel's call and writing uniqueness was that he was dropped into a place where he had to say something that was different than everyone else who supposedly represented God. Why? Because Luke might be in that situation in a year or two, stuck in a Bible study where everybody's basically talking about something, but it's not the Bible, or sitting on a university campus where people are purporting to know Jesus and if Jesus were here, he'd be tolerant of whatever we want because that's the Jesus of America. And you'll be sitting there going, "Did you ever actually read anything about Jesus? I mean, do you actually know anything from Jesus?"

I want you to go back for a moment to the Captivity period. I want you to see what that period looked like. Now, remember that the Captivity period has three starts and three ends: 606, 597, 586. This will be Daniel. This will be Ezekiel. This will be everybody but the blind, crippled, and crazy. And not everybody got taken, but there were people that were left in Judea. But after Zedekiah's sons were killed and they were carried off to Babylon, this will be the beginning. The end also has three waves. So counting 70 from this, the first wave going back will be about when—536. Now, 539 and you're going to see the—some people will make it 539, 536. 539 is when Cyrus decreed that they go back, but they didn't go back until 536, which would be 70 years after that. But that's not the only wave that goes back.

This is the wave that goes back with Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel, and they go back, and that'll be Ezra 1-6. After they get back, they get started, they're working on the temple, and then they discover something about their homeland. What did they discover? They discover that great-grandma's farm is right up the road, and that technically is their farm. So what do they do? They go in and they—open up the place, and it's been vacant, and the animals are scattered, and the farm is all overgrown, and the vines are all untended. Then they go in and they start sweeping out the place, and they start dreaming a little bit, and they start doing, you know, they start, you know, they call up the Property Brothers and they bring them in, and then they do a renovation, and then it's something nice and new.

Okay, what happens is by 520, you have a time when God is saying, "Wait a minute. You are living in panel houses in great-grandma's house, all redone, nice renovation, by the way, love the dishwasher and love the granite countertops. But I'm living in a shack," says the Lord. And a prophet by the name of Haggai will call out and say, "You need to get back on the stick here. You're not really following me." You're not.

Now, right in the middle of that period, we know in the Captivity that you have basically two places: you have Jerusalem, you have Babylon, and you have placements of prophets that are in specific places. So who's the Jerusalem prophet for the duration of the—good portion of the Captivity? Jeremiah. And his job is to see the people leaving and explain to them how to live outside the land. He's also in Jeremiah 29:10, the one who writes down how long the Captivity will be. Who's reading him and discovers when they should be going back? Daniel. Which means Jeremiah is much older than Daniel.

Now, Jeremiah is actually dying off, and by the time of Ezekiel, Ezekiel's taken into captivity when he's very young, and he knows about the prophecies of Jeremiah. He also knows about the hot hits that were sung by the rhythm and blues section in Jerusalem called what? Lamentations. The laments of Jerusalem. And those are five songs or poems that became—they were one of them is even acrostic. Done. They're done in ways that are catchy and you can remember them.

Meanwhile, that first group that went to Babylon included Daniel. And Daniel is an older statesman who becomes essentially like a prime minister. So that by the time Ezekiel is taken, Daniel's reputation and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are all known people to the Jews coming in. So the conditions for Ezekiel are not bad. He's not parked in the middle of a terrible place. He's taken to a university, much like Daniel and his three friends were, but he's taken to universities spread out all over the 60-mile circumference of Babylon. He's on a place called along the Chebar canal or Chebar River, and it's a place that you will now know because it's—there's a city called Tel Aviv. And Ezekiel 3 gives the name Tel Aviv, which is now the largest city or second largest city. Used to be the largest city, Jerusalem's now outstripped Tel Aviv. But Tel Aviv, a very large city in the Mediterranean in Israel. When you land the first night, you go to a hotel in Tel Aviv. It's not the one from Ezekiel because that's over in Babylon. But the name comes from an ancient name. "Tel" is the word for archaeological mound or ruin. "Aviv" is the word for spring. So it's "old ruined springtime." It's old and new mixed together. And so it's kind of a nice poetic idea. Probably Tel Aviv was the name that the Jews gave it.

So in the Captivity, expect Daniel and Ezekiel to be over here. The important thing for us is this period of time. You're going to learn more about the return and the waves of return. I've only begun that story, just to sort of cap off the end of this. But you're going to learn more about that with Ben and with David while I'm gone.

Here's what's important to me as we look at Ezekiel's career. Ezekiel is a priest. What's the operative year of his life that should make a difference in his life? How old does he need to be for things to really change for him? 30 years of age. So watch when he turns 30 in the book because that's when he should engage as a priest. And that will be important for Jesus because he's about 30 years of age. That means he engages. It's the age of an engaged priest, which he wouldn't have been a priest except for in Hebrews, you know that he was.

So all that to say this: the Captivity period is a unique period in the Bible. It's a unique period because there are some songs that are reflective of it. Can anybody think of a Psalm that reflects the Captivity period?

Now, back in Jerusalem, Jeremiah's adding to the whole knowledge of the prophecies. Ezekiel's a younger contemporary to Jeremiah, and he'd been preaching—actually, by the time Ezekiel is born, Jeremiah's already been preaching five years. So he's the next generation. He's the young kid who's growing up. Ezekiel's born, probably, I'd put it on the front page of Ezekiel, he's born probably in about 622 BC. If in Ezekiel 1:1, he turned 30 in 597, I'm going backwards and doing 597 plus 30, and that's how I'm getting this. I'm thinking around 622 is he is born. And Jeremiah's prophecies are recorded over a 46-year period, while Ezekiel's prophecies cover a 22-year period. And so let's put it this way: 593 to 571 is probably the period of time that Ezekiel is actually covering in his prophecies. So this will be Prophecies of Ezekiel, or Prophecies of Zeke, and they will be from between 593 and 571, essentially. If Jeremiah, and by 581, Jeremiah, his last prophecies are about 581, you'll find that Ezekiel's are 571. In other words, they're contemporaries for the last part of this will be Jeremiah's life, and this will be Zeke. Okay? So Ezekiel actually overlaps him, but only the last part. Jeremiah is already an old guy by the time Ezekiel starts his work, and Jeremiah hangs on forever. He's kind of whiny, but he doesn't go away. It's kind of like country music.

Okay, now Ezekiel will offer this minority report. He will hold reverence as a higher value than acceptance. And that's one of the things I think you should write on the cover of the book: he holds reverence higher than acceptance. Ezekiel is a prophet seized with a vision of the glory of God, and because he reveres God, he doesn't care if other people accept him. Reverence above acceptance. That's a theme. He will use the term "Sovereign Lord," the term "Sovereign Lord" 400 times. 400 times. Now, that's if you translate in the New International Version, but essentially, he uses the term "Sovereign Lord" all the time for God. In a way, it's reflective of the earlier ministry of Daniel. How does this reflect something that also would be akin to what Daniel did? What was Daniel's title for God? The Most High God, El Elyon. This one is the Sovereign God, the reigning God. Sovereign just means reigning. It means king. God. And so you see that Daniel laid the footprint, and Ezekiel picked up the whole idea.

Now let's talk about who Ezekiel is. If you look in the beginning of the book, you'll find he is part of the family of Zadok. The Zadokite family. And in the period of the Kings, Zadok is a priest. He comes from the time of David. But Zadok eventually declines. I want you to see that his—the word in the New Testament for the family or the line of thinking of Zadok is Sadducee. It actually comes from the same root, Zedek. So he is, in fact, the son of a fellow by the name of Buzi. Buzi. Rabbi tradition identifies Buzi as Jeremiah, but we're not really at all sure that that's what it means. We do know that Buzi means "my contempt," and it seems like it's a nickname, not a name, because who would call their child "my contempt"? I mean, you know, contemptuous one. I—so it looks like it's a nickname. Is he related to Jeremiah? Some writers think so, many do not. You could write the paper, submit it to the Society of Biblical Literature, and make yourself famous. I have no idea.

What I know is that he is carried off to Babylon 11 years before the ruin of the temple. So when is the temple destroyed? Temple destroyed in 586. 11 years before that, he is taken off, taken away. So in 597, he is carried away. That means when he gets to Babylon, when he left, there was still an operating temple in Jerusalem. It's true, the Babylonians were pretty much running everything, and the Jerusalemites were paying tribute to Babylon, but there was still an operating temple. Jeremiah was prophesying, telling them that the temple was going to be destroyed. Most people were walking around going, "Jeremiah is an old fuddy-duddy. He doesn't know what he's talking about. The temple's not going to be destroyed. We're going to go off to Babylon, we're going to train the Babylonians in how to know God. The world is going to be swept with a vision of God. We're going to come back, and there's going to be a great Messianic Kingdom." That was the prophecy line of a lot of people.

Ezekiel comes out having remembered the operation of the temple. If you're born a priest, then your whole life is scheduled around, "I want to become trained to do the sacrifices, trained to be part of a priestly work, and then when I'm 30, I'm going to start my job." But his life is interrupted, and so he's carted off into Babylon. It's interesting because Ezekiel was like prophets in some ways. Ezekiel evidently knew Daniel. Now, I would make a few notes in the beginning of Ezekiel because you are not going to be back in this book for much of your Christian life. There's hardly anybody who opens this book, so you're not going to remember it 20 years from now when you dust off Ezekiel again and get back here. By the way, it's a fabulous book. It's a great book with a great message. But like Leviticus, you got to get into it to understand what it is.

Okay, so a couple of notes. One of them is Ezekiel evidently knew Daniel. He mentions Daniel three times in his book. I'm to give you the three times he mentioned. Okay, in Ezekiel 14, it's actually Ezekiel 14:14 and Ezekiel 14:20. Those are two of them. Twice he mentions them in Ezekiel 14. Ezekiel 14:14, Ezekiel 14:20. And the third time, Ezekiel 28:3. So three times Daniel is mentioned. Obviously, Zeke knows Dan, and Dan is a high-placed official, and Zeke is not. And Dan is an much older, stately man with a great reputation, and Zeke is a young kid being brought in years after him. Daniel was—obviously there since his youth, when he got there about age 15 in 606. And so by the time it's 597, let's do the math a little bit. If Daniel's carried away and he's about age 15, by 597, what is he? He's—so Daniel is 24. Now, you're going to go, "24? That means he's young." No, that means half his life is over. In the biblical economy, he's a middle-aged man. These are people. The reason they started having babies at 13 and 14 is they were dead by 42. Okay? So you have to think in a different lifespan. So he's now, of course, he lives to be in his 80s, but he lives twice as long as most people. He's as old as dirt. The point is that he's 24 by the time Ezekiel is taken into captivity. Ezekiel is a younger contemporary.

Now, Jeremiah is also a contemporary, but he's in that different location. And what is probably the most important part of the book of Jeremiah as it regards Ezekiel? I want you to look for a moment, hold your finger in the front of Ezekiel and go to Jeremiah 29. And I want you to see the flavor of Jeremiah 29, because in Jeremiah 29, you see a little bit of part of the—it's part of a condemnation section, but it's especially a message to the Exiles. And I know that because at the beginning, at the top of Jeremiah 29 in your Bible, it says, "Message to the Exiles." But here's what it is. Okay, take a look at Jeremiah 29.

"Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile, the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." So you understand what this scroll is. You're looking now at—I take you back now to an ancient scroll that as we open it, the first part says, "From Jeremiah to all the Jews in Babylon." So he'll be in Jerusalem, and he's writing to the Exiles who are in Babylon. What's their problem? Their problem is they've gone through the "If you two don't knock it off, I'll spank you" to "I spanked your brother" to "Now you're both spanked." How do we live in a foreign land? Everything we have from the law tells us how to live in the land under our own kings. How do we now live under a foreign king in a pagan environment, in a place we weren't even supposed to be? The entire exile, the way Randy reads it in the white spaces, is life in Plan B. It's when you're growing up in a place you don't belong. It's not natural to you. The whole thing is messed up. All of a sudden, you're looking around, and this is the person who comes in here who gets saved, who says, "I'm on my third marriage, and this child is from my first marriage, and this child's from my second marriage, and Pastor Randy, what's the right thing to do about it?" And I say, "Stop right was three marriages ago. Now we're just trying to do lesser of two evils." Okay? We don't even have right and wrong. This is life in Plan B.

He's writing to people who are living in a place they weren't supposed to be. So what do you do? Well, you have a couple of options as a Christian. One of the things you could do is say, "You're in the wrong place because of your sin. You're rotten thing." Okay? Because that's what some Christians do to people who are down. Anybody know a Christian like that? You've met one. Okay. Now, what would be a better thing to do? A better thing to do would be to express God's—how do you deal with it right now? Oh, by the way, there's other Christians that will go, "Don't worry, it's all going to be okay." You know, Christians like that too, right? You want whatever they've been having for breakfast. The point is that—the point is that mushrooms won't get you through it. You got to know what to do today.

So let's get to verse two. "This was after King Jehoiachin and the queen mother, the court officials, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem." See, I made it into the Bible here. "The smiths had departed from Jerusalem." But I think he had in mind the actual workers and artisans. So this is after Jerusalem got emptied out. This is—you might write next to it, 2 Kings 24. It's the period of 2 Kings 24, and it's after they get emptied out. And you might ask yourself, "Hmm, how did he get the letter to them?" Well, I'm glad you asked.

Verse three: "The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, saying, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.'" So Jeremiah establishes who it's from and who it's to. He says, "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce; take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to your husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there, and do not decrease; seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will have welfare.'"

This is a huge, earth-shattering change in scripture. Katie, take lives from their people? No. The interesting thing is when you start reading it right away, you go, "What do you mean, marry Babylonians?" None of them would have ever thought that. What they were saying is, "Do we stop marrying among our people? You have hundreds of thousands of Jews there. Should we marry? Should we continue? What do we do? We just go and starve? We just stand there and say, 'We refuse to eat, we refuse to drink. If it's not our homeland, we will just die. Do we bear our necks and say, 'Slaughter us all'?'" And Jeremiah says, "Thus says the Lord, have a wedding. Get your kids married. Continue to have children. Continue to be a people in a foreign land." They have never heard this in the Bible. This is new to the Bible. As far as they knew, they walked out in chains and assumed that they were heading to their death. As far as they were concerned, there was no place for a Jew but Judah. And the whole game just changed right here.

But here's what I find interesting. It's verse seven: "Seek the welfare of the king who took you into captivity, of the city where you're now living. Pray for them. I want you to turn what has always been about you outward. I'm now putting you in the world in Plan B, and I want you to pray for the people who put you there. Why? Because I use them to put you there. I want you to do that for—"

Verse 8: "For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams which they dream, for they prophesy falsely to you in my name; I have not sent them, declares the Lord."

Now, here's the part that Daniel's reading much later: "For thus says the Lord: When 70 years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill my good promise to you to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope."

How many of you have heard verse 11? It's one of the only verses in Jeremiah people read. But it's not, by the way, "I have a wonderful plan for Andrea's life." God does have a wonderful plan for Andrea's life, but it's not in verse 11 of Jeremiah 29. Because in Jeremiah 29:11, what that's about is, "I have a plan for the future of the Jewish people." That's what it says. "But Randy, I love that verse. It means so much to me." That's fine. If you want to do that, play Ouija board with the Bible and make it say whatever you want. I'm just telling you, that's not what it says.

Now, is there application for the principle that God has a plan for your life? Yes. See Ephesians 1. There are plenty of places we can get that. But don't take it from places that don't say it. Why? Because when you get sloppy about how you interpret the Bible, what you're telling the next generation of disciples is that it's okay to make up the script. Don't make up the script. Does God have a plan for your life? Yes. Is it for your destruction? No. All things work together for His good, and that's your best good. Okay? Don't walk around with these verses and stick them on your wall like, "Everything that is nice in the Bible, I'll just apply to my life." You're being unfair to the text. Don't change the text. Leave the text be the text. I don't want to take away God's plan for your life, and I hope you understand I'm not doing that. I'm simply saying that people hijack whatever verse sounds good to them. It's kind of the butterfly approach. "Oh, I like that one. Oh, that one's sweet. Oh, I love that verse." And they're just kind of dancing through the Bible, taking what they want.

If verse 11 means God has a plan for your life, then verses 8 and 9 mean, "Don't go to church because they're all lying to you." Okay? That you can't do it that way, or you're going to end up in real trouble, or at least I'm going to end up with an empty church.

The interesting thing is verse 12: "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart." Tell me, verse 13, tell me who did that. Who did that? Daniel. He fell in front of God, and he searched with him for all his heart and didn't eat. Why? Because that's what God told him to do. At the end of the 70 years, and the 70 years was coming up, and that's why Daniel said, "I can't do this. I've got God, whatever it is. Oh God, I won't eat, I won't bathe, I won't do anything. I'm just waiting for you guys." Why? Because that's all your heart. When he said "all your heart," he meant all your heart.

So this is a wonderful link. Here's what I want you to see. Why is Jeremiah included in the text of scripture when most of the prophecies died with the people? Because a few of them linked Jeremiah to Ezekiel, to Daniel, to Nehemiah, which pushes the story and tells you that what God said here, this guy understood. What God said there, that guy understood. What God said there, that guy understood. And that's how the program moved. Does that make sense? God's word fits together beautifully.

I took you to Jeremiah 29 because I wanted you to see that Jeremiah kept a ministry to the broken people of Jerusalem, while Ezekiel, on the other hand, contended with the false prophets that Jeremiah wrote about. And it's interesting to me that Ezekiel's job—I'm not sure who had the worst job, Jeremiah or Ezekiel. I can just tell you that I wouldn't sign up for either. I don't want to watch my country fall apart and sit and write Lamentations and rhythm and blues songs. I really don't want to do that. By the way, there are some preachers that I think are actually really good at that. "Oh, I feel bad. We all should feel bad. It's all getting worse. Gone to hell in a handbasket. There goes America." That's just not the guy I want to be.

Now, the other side of it is Ezekiel, on the other hand, is getting up while everybody's saying, "Just send me your $2 and I'll turn it into $500 because the Lord has told me if you send me $2, I can send you back $500 and a hanky and a blessed marker. You can get this mark. Just send today. But wait, if you act now, send you even the eraser to go along with it." And Ezekiel's got to get up and go, "Hogwash! They're ripping you off." That's his message.

Okay, I want you to feel it. By the way, when you get down to it, the first half of Ezekiel's collection was given to tear down false hope. The first half of this is, "I need to tear down false hope." Why? Because there was in the background a false hope that was being put upon the people of Israel in Exile, that the Exile was about to be alleviated, that they were about to be returned home. And always look on the bright side of life. It's all going to be wonderful tomorrow. Just wake up and tomorrow it will all be better. And there was this hope and change kind of thing that was being pushed everywhere.

The interesting thing is that the second half of the book is identifying the truth and showing them from false hope what real hope looked like. So the second half of the book is going to deal with real hope. And you know where the turning point was? The death of his wife. It's as though God used Ezekiel to illustrate graphically, in his own pain, what God wanted to say.

Now, here's the question that we ask at the beginning of every prophetic work: Does God have the right to use my life if that means taking from me those things which are most important to me? Does he have the right? This would be an interactive moment. Yes. Do most believers really believe he has the right? No. In fact, we write theologies that say he wouldn't do that. But he clearly does, because in person after person after person of the Bible, he does that.

Now let's talk about what the book contains, and then we'll go to a break after we get just a little bit, a few notes in the front of the book that'll help you. First of all, there are four visions in the book, and you should know these four visions. They will be the most important part.

Vision number one is 1 to 3, and that will be also the call. It is his call vision, and it's a very important vision that will help you to understand exactly where God is going with the book. But it's not the only vision we're going to talk about in the book. There's also another one. If you go to, for instance, chapter 8 through 11, there's a second vision, and it's in the middle of this, 8 through 11. And this is a vision that all relates to the glory of God, Jerusalem, the temple, and the Jewish people. All of his visions are glory of God, Jerusalem, Temple, and his people. And so we're going to take a look at that vision very closely.

There's another vision that comes from this section. In fact, the last two visions both come from this section. The other one is a very incredibly important one, and this one will become—from Ezekiel 37. Ezekiel 37:1-4. And the last one will be Ezekiel 40-48, chapters 40 to 48, and this will be about the restored Temple. We're going to look at each of these in detail. But these are the four visions. You got number one, number two, number three, number four. There are four visions in the book.

But that's not all the book contains. It also contains four events in the book. The four events of the book include the call in 1:1-3. So we keep running into this: Event One, Call, 1 to 3. But that's not the only event. The second event, you already know about it. It's the prediction of the prophet's loss. This is Event Two. That's the prediction of the loss of his wife in chapter 24:15-17. Then after he gets through a mourning period, Event Number Three actually takes place with sort of the renewal of his call. A renewed call. This is in 33:1-20, and I just call it Call Two, the sequel. This is his second call. So he's called 1 to 3, there's a prediction of his loss, he goes through that loss, and he's recalled by God because he needs to be recalled.

And by the way, you saw that in Revelation. Ezekiel has the same pattern as Revelation in the sense that do you remember in Revelation 10, halfway through the book, John basically got sick, and the angel said, "Eat the book. You're not done yet. You got to keep going." That's the Ezekiel 33 moment in Revelation 10. It's the same story told in a very real way to reignite his passion. I think it's important that we remember that even people that are dedicated to God and God is using can run out of steam. You can get to the point where you're just plain sick of doing it, and God has to re—reignite you.

The last one is, and it's kind of interesting, right after this, Event Number Four happens also in the same chapter. It is 33, beginning in verse 21, and it's after he's renewed his call. His 21-33. It is, "All right, now you're called again. Now let me explain what you're going to do for the rest of the prophecies." So this is an explanation. Let me tell the story this way: God called the man with a profound vision of himself, but he called him to do something that was very hard: stand up and preach against false hope. And he led him all the way to the point where he married this woman, he loved his wife, and God predicted, "By the way, your wife is going to die. And when she does, she's going to get sick, she's going to die, and you are not to cry. You are not allowed." And he says, "This is the biggest thing in my life. How can you do this to me?" And God just says quietly, "Do exactly what I tell you to do." But in the pattern of the first 24 chapters, he's been told to do some pretty weird things, so he's already into that. "Okay, God, whatever you're doing." Now, he doesn't do it without holding back tears and sucking it up, but he does it. And a few chapters go by, and God explains to him in his second call what that was about. But it's not until later then he says, "Here's what I want your life to be about." And he turns him outward, and he begins to console the people. That's the way to tell the story in terms of his own relationship.

Okay, so what we've got then are a number of different ways that God opens up and explains himself to people. All right, so let's—let's break it out and say it this way before you go to a break. Just think of it and conceptualize it in three boxes. Okay?

One: Three is a call, and then there's a series of waves of condemnation or promised judgments. The first five years of those are in chapters 4 to 24. And then he gets the prediction that his wife is going to die, and he can't cry. Then another two years, he all he does is collect prophecies concerning the nations around him. And in those prophecies, he shares them. But honestly, in chapters 25 to 32, this guy is absolutely brokenhearted. By the way, right in the middle of that section, there's actually a scroll stuck in there that doesn't go with the rest of it. It was a piece that actually comes from Egypt and was stuck right in the middle of it. It's a prophecy to Egypt that's an addendum. It's not that it's not his, it's that somebody decided that in his papers was this also, this prophecy, so they stuck it in there. It doesn't seem to fit very well. But to somebody's idea, that was important. Is it important to God? Sure, because it's there. So you'll learn it, you'll know it, but you'll go, "Boy, that's kind of weird. Why is that there?" It's almost like right in the middle of his life story, they went back 15 years and just dropped the, "Oh, by the way, he—there was this letter in his papers. Let's put it. Let's include that." It's like that.

Now, the third box, then, the third box will be from 25 to 32 will give you kind of the second part of the condemnation. And the third box will be a consolation. It'll be from the recalling of him to the explanation of what he's supposed to do in 33 all the way through 48. And that consolation will be, "This is what God is going to do for the people." Is that okay? Is that clear enough? I mean, the chart may not be clear, but is the idea or flow clear? Good. I'm trying not to overcomplicate the book.

I want you to see one last thing, and then we'll take our break. Seven times in the book, he uses a phrase. You should put the phrase in the beginning of the book so you know to look for it. Seven times in the book: "The hand of the Lord was upon me." "The hand of the Lord was upon me." Let's put it this way: seven moves of God are in the book. "The hand of the Lord was upon me." Every time the hand of the Lord was upon him, God moved him to do something.

Do you remember seeing the hand of the Lord being upon John in Revelation or Daniel? In Daniel, twice. Once in Revelation 1, and then in our last class in Daniel, they were standing in front of a priest figure. In Revelation 1, it's Jesus. What happened to John when he saw Jesus? What's that? He fell down like one dead. Daniel says the same thing happened to him. How did they get back up? A hand was put upon them. I want you to know that phrase, "The hand of the Lord was upon me," because a move of God or a re-strengthening or recommitment of God is "the hand of the Lord was upon me."

You're going to go through times in your life when you're going to know the hand of the Lord is upon you. Those are moments when God gives you—I'm thinking of one. I probably shared it with you at some point. I was standing in the middle of a question and answer session in which somebody asked me a question, and I promise you, as God is my witness, I had no idea. I did not know the answer to their question. I opened my Bible, it fell open to the answer to their question with the question in my handwriting and the answer and all the verses right there with lines on my page. And I stood there and gave a brilliant oration of something I have no memory of ever writing. The hand of the Lord was upon me in that moment. God wanted to use me to say something, and I knew it. And I knew it because I knew I didn't know it, and I knew it because I knew I didn't prepare it.

Numerous times, I will have—be in the middle of speaking something, and you know me, I'm scripted. I've got in front of me the notes, and I'll go off script. This is always dangerous because when I go off script, this is when I get in trouble. But every now and then, I'll meet somebody at the door with tears in their eyes saying, "That was the thing I was waiting for from God." I was unaware. I didn't know why. It pops in your head, and you have to quickly evaluate: Is this a good thing to say? Does it match what the scripture I'm teaching says? If it does, sometimes you just say it. Why? Because the hand of the Lord is upon you.