This evening if you have your Bibles and will turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 10. Ezekiel is having still having these visions sent by God dealing with the nation of Israel. Specifically with the city of Jerusalem. In chapter 10 we’re going to be seeing the glory of God coming before Ezekiel. He sees the very thing that he saw in chapter 1 and that is the God coming down before him and the glory of God in his presence as the throne as the cherubs come with the wheels. Let’s just take a look at and read chapter 10. We’ll look at it.
Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. 2 And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubims, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight. 3 Now the cherubims stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court. 4 Then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord’s glory. 5 And the sound of the cherubims’ wings was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh. 6 And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubims; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels. 7 And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubims unto the fire that was between the cherubims, and took thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed with linen: who took it, and went out.
8 And there appeared in the cherubims the form of a man’s hand under their wings.
9 And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubims, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone. 10 And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel. 11 When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went. 12 And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. 13 As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel. 14 And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. 15 And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar. 16 And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. 17 When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them.
18 Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims. 19 And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
20 This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims. 21 Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings. 22 And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: they went every one straight forward.
Let’s just bow in prayer Lord, I pray that you just speak to us through your word and Lord help us to understand what’s going on and what Ezekiel was seeing Lord I pray that you would help us to look and see the glory that you expressed to him as you come on your throne carried by the cherubim’s Into his presence and father, I pray that you’d help us also to see that you came with judgment upon Jerusalem Lord speak to us now through your word this we ask in Jesus name. Amen
This is the same throne and picture of the throne and platform and wheels and cherubim that Ezekiel saw in chapter 1. Try and picture what it. It is if the the wheels were on the in each corner of the platform. The platform held the throne. The throne held the Lord and the cherubim stood by the wheels and moved the wheels,
As you’re looking at this this man in linen appears again. Last in chapter 9 we saw this man of linen he came as one of six men that was called by the Lord to go to Israel. Specifically to the city of Jerusalem five of them came with swords and the man in linen came with a quill pen. As he came he wrote upon the foreheads of those that had cried over the abominations that were being expressed by the those that were rebelling against God in the temple and in the city of Jerusalem. That writing on their foreheads preserved their lives and showed that they were worthy of protection by the Lord and that’s what this man of linen did in chapter 9.
In chapter 10 the same man of women comes and he has an another purpose and another thing that God calls him to do. The cherubim when they come you see that they come with fire. It says it fires between them is between their legs and it’s By the wheels and he comes and he takes fire from them. What’s this fire for? This fire represents judgment and the same man that came to offer protection to those who had been faithful to the Lord and followed him and desired to uphold his righteousness and truth.
The same one who had protected them by writing the the names and This letter on their foreheads and we said last week that some Bible scholars believe it’s the last letter of the Hebrew Alphabet which has the appearance of a cross As he wrote that on their foreheads their salvation was made sure. Now he comes to make sure judgment is coming. This is very much like Jesus who came the first time to redeem mankind. Offer salvation to those that would seek him and honor and glorify his name and come to him. Seeking salvation and desiring to receive the gift that he offered. But the second time that he comes he’s coming with judgment. Much like the man in linen the second time he appears he appears to bring judgment upon Jerusalem and upon those who have sought to defile the character of God. Sin openly against him and desire to worship other gods instead of the true and the living God it’s interesting to look at the characteristics of the cherubim again as they are used by the Lord to uplift his platform in his throne.
The cherubims have four faces and as we talked before These four faces as we see in verse 14 It says the first face was the face of a cherub. The second face was the face of a man. The third face was a face of a lion The fourth face was the face of an eagle. It shows as we said before that the fact that the the lion shall rule and symbol of God’s ruling the eagle the symbol of God’s swiftness and all-knowing and yes the symbol of the cherub is a symbol of Angelic hosts in the in the perfect obedience to his will. The symbol of man Is the fact that man was the highest created of God’s being and created? With wisdom in the image of God The cherub possessed these five faces because they represented the character of God and They upheld the character of God in perfect obedience Throughout the whole chapter 10 one of the things you see is they always move straight forward Wherever God tells them to go they go.
It’s the same thing. We saw in chapter 1. They don’t deviate They don’t go to the left. They don’t go to the right, but as the Lord directs them they move And they move straight ahead to the place that God wants them to go in perfect obedience. It’s an example that should be in the hearts and lives of each one of us as believers That we should reflect the very character that these cherubs show in their Obedience to the Lord as they walk in obedience to God the second thing I want you to observe about them is not only the perfect obedience to the will of the Lord in his direction but the fact that they seek to uplift and reveal the glory of God Even in the midst of the wickedness of the city of Jerusalem and even though he’s come to bring judgment upon it His glory is revealed in at this time and when he goes into the the temple It’s interesting because as he enters in his glory fills the temple even though it had been done. Filled with abominations by men glory the glory of God is presence wherever he goes and The thing is man may try to stop his glory from being seen and man may reject The fact that his glory represents his character of perfect love and perfect truth But God is God and he will be revealed in spite of what men has attempted to do And so when God gone comes into Jerusalem with all this wickedness That’s been there yet.
His glory is revealed in all of its fullness and man cannot stop it and as he comes into the the City of Jerusalem He comes as we mentioned to bring judgment upon the city and the city is going to be judged as we see here by Fire as well as the destructive hand of Nebuchadnezzar Who will be the tool that God uses to bring the judgment upon the city But we see that the the the judgment is represented by the burning coals and there’s going to be complete and total destruction if you look at the whenever you see the burning coals like this and and and also We earlier last in last chapter when the six Men were coming five with swords and one with the quill the pin quill we see that their legs were a flame with fire and The color was brazen a symbol of God’s judgment If you go to the book of Revelation when you see Jesus and he’s seen and he has fire about him and his eyes are Penetrating with as if they’re on fire. It’s when he is judging and the thing is that you can see that he comes to judge Mankind and That’s in the book of Revelation as well as in these other incidents Prophets we see that this is the characteristic that he possesses One of the other things that I want you to see is that Jesus That the Lord Comes and he departs from the eastern gate of the city If you want to just keep your hand here I want us to go and I want us to see something else that is very similar In Matthew and if you go to Matthew chapter 21 in Matthew chapter 21 Jesus Enters into the We find that the rebellion of the nation against the Lord Jesus, let’s take a look at Matthew chapter 21 beginning at verse 28 But what think he a certain man had two sons and and he gives the example The parable of the man who had two sons Let’s just read that parable because it’s really going to show the rejection of the nation and what God’s Responses to it and then later on we’re going to see what what happens and what Jesus does he says But what think he a certain man had two sons and he came to the first and said son go work Today in my vineyard and he answered and said I will not But afterward he repented and went and he came to the second and said likewise and he answered and said I Go sir and went not Whither of them? Twain did the will of the father They say unto him the first Jesus saith unto him verily. I say unto you that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you and he’s speaking to the Pharisees and John came unto you by way of righteousness and he believed him not and the publicans and the harlots Believed him and ye when ye had seen it Repented not afterwards, but ye might That you might believe here another parable in a certain householder which planted a vineyard and hedged around about and Digged the winepress in it and built a tower and lent it out over the husband and went into it afar country and when he the name I’m saying when the time of the fruit drew near he sent his servants to go to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits of it and when the husbandmen took it to the servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another and again He sent another servant more than the first and they did the same on to them likewise But last of all he sent on to them his son saying they will reverence my son But when the husbandmen saw this son They said among themselves this is the Heir come let us kill him and let us seize on his inheritance But they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard and slew him and when the Lord Therefore of the vineyard cometh he will do on what will he do on to the husbandmen to say on them He will miserably destroy those wicked men and will let out his vineyard on to other husbandmen Which shall render him the fruits of their seasons Jesus said unto them Did you never read in the scriptures the stone which the builders rejected the same has become the head of the corner? This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in their eyes Therefore say I on to you the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof and Whosoever shall fall on his on the stone shall be broken But on whosoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder now he’s speaking this to the Pharisees because they professed to follow God But they did anything but do that they sought to come against Christ they sought to discredit him in the eyes of the people and even though they’d have been entrusted with the Scriptures and all the promises of the Lord yet.
They sought to destroy him and if you come a little bit later in the book in Chapter We come to the point where I’m trying to find the chapter where Jesus he enters into the temple and he drives the money changers out and It’s interesting that the the money changers in the temple Were the Sadducees and the Pharisees were in cahoots with the Sadducees own even though they normally were at odds of one another they were in agreement with the fact they need to silence Christ and get the people to turn against him and Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple and he made when he drove them out of the temple he made the proclamation you’ve turned my father’s house of prayer into a den of thieves and And it is thereafter that Jesus shortly thereafter that Jesus left through the Eastern Gate and If you look at what happened the glory of the Lord appeared unto the people in Jerusalem Jesus went to the temple And they should have known who he was they should have recognized his character and his glory and yet They didn’t Those that should have been the ones that would have known were the ones that rejected him the most The very thing that happened during the time of Ezekiel What we see here in Jesus’s parables is the fact that God sent prophets unto the people he sent prophets unto the people in Israel and Judah and Finally and when Jerusalem was left, they still had Jeremiah that was speaking to them. They had Daniel they had Ezekiel and these men proclaimed Who God was and what these people were doing and how wrong it was yet we saw They killed they took Jeremiah and took him into Egypt. They attempted to kill him while he was still in Jerusalem They didn’t want to listen to Daniel they didn’t want to listen to Ezekiel and we see that the very thing that Jesus Proclaimed about the parable of the vineyard is what they did We also see that what happened in the book of Ezekiel in his vision is That God brought judgment upon Jerusalem because of the people’s unbelief and their abominations they’ve done and then he left through the Eastern Gate and in chapter 11, you see that it was his glory that left and they thought as Ezekiel’s list speaking to this crowd Remember one of the things they thought is because Jerusalem is still standing which it was at that time He was speaking to them, but it wasn’t going to be much longer and as the temple was still there They thought God was still with them, but they had done everything in And to come against his power against his authority and to file his will in his character and just as The parables that Jesus gave to the Pharisees And he gave the question which son honored the Lord the one that said well I’ll go do your will but then doesn’t go and do it or the one that that initially said I won’t do it But then comes and does it and they say well It’s the latter one the one that actually did the will of the Father.
That’s the one that should be honored Well, they didn’t do the majority of the people in Jerusalem didn’t do the will of the Father. We saw that in chapter 9 when the man in linen came he wrote on just a few of the people’s head the mark that preserved their lives from the attack of Nebuchadnezzar and we see here that that the same thing is true in the parables of Jesus that the the very people that proclaim that they are there to honor the Lord are there those that come against him So if you go back to the book of Ezekiel, I want you to see that things don’t change We see that that just as it happened at the time of Nebuchadnezzar Where you had the people that said that that should have known the truth that should have walked in obedience to God that should have Called out on him to deliver them at the time that Nebuchadnezzar was attacking Instead turned to false gods and were abominations in his eyes. That’s the same thing that happened when Jesus came and As Jesus came and judgment ended up coming upon The city of Jerusalem during the time of Ezekiel judgment is going to come again as we saw at the time of 70 AD when Titus came as we looked at Daniel and judgment came upon Jerusalem again because of their rejection of Jesus and ultimately Jesus will come and bring judgment upon the world and Also, he will come as the one who is the deliverer of those who will look upon him and when Jesus comes to establish his kingdom at the end of the tribulation One of the amazing things that you see is it says a third of the nation of Israel be saved but two-thirds won’t And it’s very similar to what happened again with the man of linen The marks weren’t upon the majority the marks were upon the few and the few were those that were faithful and turned to God And likewise when Jesus comes again to judge the nations for coming against the nation of Israel The majority of the Jewish people two-thirds of them won’t look to Jesus as their Messiah But a third will and they’ll look upon him they pierced and it will acknowledge him as their redeemer and their Messiah and Savior The thing I want you to specifically get out of tonight’s lesson is that God number one Is both the one who redeems us but also he’s the one that comes to judge and In his redemption and in his judgment his glory is seen The glory of the Lord was seen as he came to bring judgment upon the city of Jerusalem That his throne was brought by the cherubim and the wheels that the cherubim brought to to move the throne of God the platform which permits a throne sat and Just as it was when Ezekiel first saw it as it came down from heaven in chapter 1 It comes down again and God’s glory comes to Jerusalem But again, the majority of the people even at that time don’t recognize it Don’t accept it and rather receive the judgment that God brings upon them and then just as Jesus left because the majority of Those that should have known Rejected him.
There was a minority. There was Nicodemus There were others of the Pharisees that accepted Jesus as Messiah but the majority of the people that were in leadership in Jerusalem rejected him and He left them and the glory of the Lord left that place and Just like that the glory of the Lord left Jerusalem during the time of Ezekiel And it’s interesting it left through the Eastern Gate just as Jesus left through the Eastern Gate to go to Jerusalem today The Lord says that he will return through the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem In Jerusalem today. The Eastern Gate is blocked up Also what the Moslems did is they put when they were in control they made a great big cemetery out in front of the Eastern Gate of the old city wall of Jerusalem because They knew the scriptures said that the Jewish Messiah would come through the Eastern Gate.
They also knew that the the Jewish people Viewed dead bodies is unclean and so they put all these dead bodies out there in graves because then the Messiah wouldn’t be able to come because it would be unclean and then they bought they Blocked up the Eastern Gate if you go to Jerusalem today You will see what is the Eastern Gate in the old wall and it’s all blocked up. You can’t go through the Eastern Gate But there’s coming a day where that gate will be open It doesn’t matter how many dead bodies are there because the Lord says that he’s going to go through that gate when he returns And that’s how he’s going to enter and his glory is going to go back into Jerusalem He left through the Eastern Gate. He’s going to return through the Eastern Gate and His glory will once again come into the city of Jerusalem Let’s just close in prayer father.
I pray that you just help us to understand The fact that your glory is seen no matter whether it’s in judgment or in redemption For you are the same God and father your judgment comes Because justice must be served and truth must be upheld But your redemption comes because of the depth of your love and grace and mercy That is expressed upon those who cry out Upon your name and seek your redemption Lord, I pray that you would just help us to call on your name today and Lord that we would seek to Uphold your glory because of what you have done for us Through the redemption that is found in your son Jesus Christ this we’d ask in Jesus name. Amen In Closing if you will turn with me to hymn number 637
Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. 2 And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubims, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight. 3 Now the cherubims stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court. 4 Then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord’s glory. 5 And the sound of the cherubims’ wings was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh. 6 And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubims; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels. 7 And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubims unto the fire that was between the cherubims, and took thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed with linen: who took it, and went out.
8 And there appeared in the cherubims the form of a man’s hand under their wings.
9 And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubims, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone. 10 And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel. 11 When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went. 12 And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. 13 As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel. 14 And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. 15 And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar. 16 And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. 17 When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them.
18 Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims. 19 And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
20 This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims. 21 Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings. 22 And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: they went every one straight forward.