Ezekiel - Searching For God's Glory (Prydden Family Devotional) Study One

Ezekiel 1:1

 

Ezekiel was born around 622/3 BC in the nation of Judah. What was happening with Judah at this time is particularly important and key in helping us understand the prophecies of Ezekiel, as they are prophetic messages from God given to a certain people at a certain time, regarding a certain situation.

 

The certain people are Judah. The certain time is during the Babylonian Exile. The certain situations are best identified and explained within each of the respective prophecies that are given to Judah through Ezekiel.

 

The world at the time of Ezekiel was extremely unsettled. The former world military powerhouse, Assyria, were seeing its once dominant powers beginning to wane. Egypt remained strong, as it had been for centuries. Babylon, although relative newcomers at the top table of world military powerhouses, would come to surpass both for a brief but extremely significant time.

 

Israel, as its own kingdom, had been decimated a century or so previous. Judah was feeling itself too weak to stand alone, and so had aligned itself with the might of Egypt. This would prove to be their first mistake of many – as they ignored the guidance of their God time and time again. Babylon now rapidly established itself as the mightiest nation of its time and in 605 BC would come a-knocking on Judah’s door. Judah’s king, Jehoiakim, on this occasion sensibly took the decision to realign Judah with Babylon, albeit at the cost of many of Judah’s finest, wisest, and strongest citizens. These were led away to Babylon as captives.

 

King Jehoiakim followed up the sensible move with a disastrous one, and an act of total defiance against the warnings of God through the prophet Jeremiah. Sensing a moment of Babylonian weakness, Jehoiakim aligned himself once more with Egypt, revolting against their Babylonian captors. This revolt was quickly crushed, and King Jehoiakim was put to death for his foolish and mutinous actions.

 

Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim, was installed as the new king of Judah, and his first action as king was to face the furious Babylonian reprisals against his father’s indiscretions. For Jehoiachin, this meant being arrested and immediately deposed as king; for Judah, this meant the second deportation of captives from Judah to Babylon. This second deportation was much larger than the first and contained the prophet Ezekiel and the captives mentioned in Ezekiel 1:1, being found by the River Chebar.

 

There would also be a third deportation of Judean captives, the result of another foolhardy revolt that commenced around eight years after the second deportation. The result of yet another act of rebellion, this would conclude in the annihilation of Jerusalem and would be Judah’s final act of defiance against her Babylonian oppressor.

 

·       What do you think the people of Judah would attribute their Babylonian punishment to? Foolish leaders; ignoring God’s warnings; their idolatry; God failing to protect them?

 

·       How do you think you respond to these Babylonian punishments, with regard to your own personal relationship with God? (It could be easy to assume you would commence a great effort in ensuring your relationship with God was good, with a renewed dedication to prayer, obeying His Word, fasting, repenting of your sins and so forth, but are you able to see that in the midst of the complexities of life such a comprehensive and wholehearted response could be easier said than done?)

 

Ezekiel was a priest (v.3), who then became a prophet by the commission of the Lord God. The time of his first vision (v.1) during Judah’s second deportation journey was approximately thirty years after Josiah’s famous reformation (2 Kings 22-23). The Babylonian defeats were a punishment sent by God against an idolatrous and rebellious people. This raises the question of how could Judah fall so far so quickly into wickedness after a most incredible revival in true religion that touched the entire nation?

 

·       Think about how times of revival are seen as so needful for the restoration of a struggling church at a spiritually low ebb. While this most certainly is true, much consideration ought to be given as to how a church might continue on after a time of revival, to try and ensure that the strong spiritual health lasts into future generations. What could a revived church teach its younger members, that could help them be better prepared for the time that follows such great outpourings of the Holy Spirit? Would the first signs of a lifeless sermon or a diminishing prayer meeting following that time of supernatural resurgence raise the necessary alarm bells in the hearts of true Christians, and if so, how ought they to respond?

 

Josiah’s reformation is often used as an example of revival of which we are so desperate of in our own time. There is no doubt that this is true (revival is one of my greatest passions). However, the rapidity and magnitude of Judah’s subsequent spiritual fall is a stark reminder that a revival alone is not what the church needs. A revival’s impact is often great but also often brief. During the time in which a spiritual revival has made the church most willing to listen to the Word of God, the great promises of God are to be a central, but not sole, focus of the church’s preaching and teaching. As bishop J.C. Ryle once exhorted, “It would have been well for the church of Christ, if the warnings of the gospel had been studied as much as its promises.”[1]

 

This advice would have served Ezekiel’s Judah well. So will it serve the church of our day equally well, should its advice be attentively heeded.

 

·       Do you think that your own church is in a place where it is able to receive preaching and teaching on the warnings that are found in the gospel (regarding sin, Hell, a failure to repent, etc), as well as its wonderful promises?

[1] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on The Gospels: Matthew, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011) p.191.