This afternoon, if you have your Bibles, we’ll turn with me to the book of Ezekiel. And in Ezekiel, we come to chapter 11, Ezekiel chapter 11. Let’s just read this chapter together and then we’ll take a look at it.
Moreover the spirit lifted me up, and brought me unto the east gate of the Lord’s house, which looketh eastward: and behold at the door of the gate five and twenty men; among whom I saw Jaazaniah the son of Azur, and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people. 2 Then said he unto me, Son of man, these are the men that devise mischief, and give wicked counsel in this city: 3 which say, It is not near; let us build houses: this city is the caldron, and we be the flesh. 4 Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, O son of man.
5 And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me, and said unto me, Speak; Thus saith the Lord; Thus have ye said, O house of Israel: for I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them. 6 Ye have multiplied your slain in this city, and ye have filled the streets thereof with the slain. 7 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Your slain whom ye have laid in the midst of it, they are the flesh, and this city is the caldron: but I will bring you forth out of the midst of it. 8 Ye have feared the sword; and I will bring a sword upon you, saith the Lord God. 9 And I will bring you out of the midst thereof, and deliver you into the hands of strangers, and will execute judgments among you. 10 Ye shall fall by the sword; I will judge you in the border of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. 11 This city shall not be your caldron, neither shall ye be the flesh in the midst thereof; but I will judge you in the border of Israel: 12 and ye shall know that I am the Lord: for ye have not walked in my statutes, neither executed my judgments, but have done after the manners of the heathen that are round about you.
13 And it came to pass, when I prophesied, that Pelatiah the son of Benaiah died. Then fell I down upon my face, and cried with a loud voice, and said, Ah Lord God! wilt thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel?
14 Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 15 Son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy kindred, and all the house of Israel wholly, are they unto whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, Get you far from the Lord: unto us is this land given in possession. 16 Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God; Although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come. 17 Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God; I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. 18 And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the detestable things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence. 19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: 20 that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 21 But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord God.
22 Then did the cherubims lift up their wings, and the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above. 23 And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city.
24 Afterwards the spirit took me up, and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to them of the captivity. So the vision that I had seen went up from me. 25 Then I spake unto them of the captivity all the things that the Lord had shewed me.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Lord, I pray that you just help us to see not only the fact that you spoke of judgment coming, but you spoke of deliverance as well. You revealed the fact that you hadn’t forgot Israel, and you’ve shown the promises that were made by you, and we saw some of those being fulfilled in 1948 when the nation of Israel became Israel again, and the people once again inhabited the land. And Lord, I pray that you would just speak to us through your word this afternoon. This we’d ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
It’s interesting as you look at chapter 11, whenever you see in Ezekiel’s writing where the Lord says, son of man, he’s speaking directly to Ezekiel, and that usually after that he’s got something specific that he wants him to say, and he wants him to bring a specific message to the people of the city of Jerusalem, and the Jewish people that are in captivity as well.
At the beginning of this chapter, Ezekiel is seeing where the problem is coming from, and the Lord reveals it to him as far as the city of Jerusalem and why all these abominations are there. And he shows him these 25 men that are sitting as you were at the gate, behold the door of the gate, and that would be the place of leadership or where the decisions are made, and there’s 25 men there. These would be elders of the city, and one of the things that the elders of the city are doing is they’re lying to the people.
They’re continually lying to the people and telling them, they tell them, it’s not that bad. You’ve got a golden opportunity here. Let’s start building houses.
Well, Nebuchadnezzar is surrounding the city. Nebuchadnezzar is bringing about the third wave upon the city. This wave is going to be the one where the city is ultimately destroyed.
The temple is going to be destroyed. The walls are going to be destroyed. The houses are going to be destroyed.
Not much is going to be left by the time he gets done with this particular third campaign. However, the leaders of the city are lying, and they’re telling the people this is a golden opportunity. Begin to build your houses.
Begin to plan for the future. Our end is not at hand. God’s with us, and so let’s move forward.
And a lot of times Satan doesn’t want us to see the reality of our situation lest we turn to God. And so he brings deceivers, and sometimes those deceivers are people that we have placed a trust in. The people have looked to these men as being leaders in their community, as being those that they should trust and follow because they would give them wise counsel.
Well, they were giving them foolish counsel and really being used by Satan to deceive the people. God wants the people to get their hearts ready. He says there’s going to be some things that are going to happen.
And he says that judgment is coming. Death is in the streets. And he said the very people that are telling you, build houses because it’s going to be good.
They’re responsible for all those that lie dead in the streets of Jerusalem that have been killed by Nebuchadnezzar or that have died by famine or that have died by pestilence when my judgment is brought upon them because they will not call and tell you to turn to me. But instead they said, trust us, trust us. And one of the things that you see, oftentimes it happens even in our nation.
Our leaders will tell us, trust us, but they never call us to turn to the Lord. And the thing we need to do, even in America, is turn to the Lord in the midst of our trials and tribulations and don’t trust us. And so we see also that he comes in verse five.
It says, And the spirit of the Lord fell upon me and said unto me, thus saith the Lord, thus have you said, O house of Israel, for I know the things that come unto your mind and every one of them. God reminds us that we can’t deceive him and we can deceive other people. We can deceive ourselves.
But God knows what’s in our hearts and what’s in our minds. And he knows the reality of what is to come. And the people there had thought that they could deceive God.
The Lord had spoken to them through the prophet Jeremiah, and he told them all the things that that Ezekiel is reaffirming were going to happen. And yet they constantly didn’t listen to Jeremiah. They were constantly turning away from what Jeremiah said and oftentimes to do the exact opposite of what Jeremiah said.
And the Lord is telling them, don’t think that you can deceive me simply because you can deceive yourself, because I know what’s in your heart. I know what’s motivating you. These elders, they really wanted the people to follow them instead of follow God.
And that was really part of the whole problem. And so he’s saying, don’t listen to them. I know what’s in their heart.
They can’t deceive me. You have multiplied. You’re slain in the city.
You have filled the streets thereof with slain. And it’s their wickedness and their wicked advice and their abominations that have resulted in the judgment of God coming on Israel and the pestilence, the sword and the the disease to come on Israel and all these people dying. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, verse seven, your slain whom you have laid in the midst of it, they are the flesh and the city is the cauldron.
But I will bring you forth out of the midst of it. So he’s saying, this is what the real picture is. The city is the cauldron and the dead are the flesh.
They are the ones that are being caused to to be judged in the midst of this cauldron, if you would. When you think of a cauldron and flesh, you think of a pot that’s boiling and you put flesh in it and the flesh is is scalded or the meat is scalded. And that’s exactly what he’s saying is happening with Israel in Jerusalem.
He’s saying that Jerusalem has become the cauldron and you’re stuck in it and you are the flesh that’s being consumed and in the midst of this cauldron that is surrounding you. He goes on and he says in verse eight, you have feared the sword and I will bring the sword upon you, saith the Lord God. Well, they feared the sword of Nebuchadnezzar and they sought.
We know from the book of Jeremiah that probably some of these same leaders had consulted with Jeremiah and said, go to the Lord and find out if we’re supposed to go down to Egypt and seek Egypt’s help against Nebuchadnezzar. Why did they want Egypt’s help? Because they thought that Egypt would give them enough power to come against the sword of Nebuchadnezzar and prevent him from slaughtering them with the sword as he came into the city. Jeremiah told them, no, that’s not going to be true.
If you go down there, you will be judged and the result will be that you will be killed by the sword. They feared the sword, but God would bring the sword upon them if they didn’t turn to him and listen to his counsel. The Lord had told them to remain in Judah.
They didn’t do that. They went to Egypt. And so we see that he’s saying here and reaffirming through the prophecy of Ezekiel the very things that Jeremiah had told them earlier.
He’s saying, listen to me and not to your own counsel and wisdom. I will bring you out of the midst of them and deliver you into the hands of strangers and will execute judgments among you. So he’s saying that you’re going to live, but you’re going to be brought into captivity.
And that’s where the people that are with Ezekiel and with Daniel found themselves is in captivity among strangers, the Babylonians. Now, God has not forgot about Israel and he’s going to give them a tremendous promise here. And he’s going to reveal to them something that he’s going to do, which seems impossible at the moment.
And he goes on and you go down, down to verse 13. And it came to pass when I prophesied that Peltiah, the son of Benaniah died. And so this man, one of the elders, just drops over dead.
And then I fell down on my face and I cried with a loud voice and said, ah, Lord God, wilt thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel? So as he sees this man who is one of the leaders die, are all the people going to die? Are they’re all going to die by the sword? Are they all going to be taken into captivity and die? Will there be no remnant of Israel left? And this is Ezekiel’s fear, because he looks at the promises of God. He knows the scriptures. He’s a priest.
He understands God had promised Abraham the whole world would be blessed through him. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the descendants would be blessed. The land was to be theirs.
The temple mount was where God would meet them. They’ve been given all of that. Would it all be taken away and would they all be destroyed? And that’s as he sees this leader die.
He says, is that the fate of everyone? And then what does God tell him? He says, son of man, thy brethren, even thy brethren, the men of thy kindred and the house of Israel, holy are they unto whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, get thee far from the Lord unto us. This land is given in possession. Therefore say, thus saith the Lord God.
Now they’ve told them, get away. This isn’t your land. It’s our land.
And then what is what is verse 16 say? Therefore, thus saith the Lord God. Although I have cast them off far among the heathen and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them a little sanctuary to the countries where they shall come. Now, the first promise he gives them is, yes, I’m going to scatter them, but I’m going to scatter them to not just Babylon, but they’ll often be scattered amongst the nations, throughout the nations.
But there’s going to be something unique in this scattering. If you’ve ever seen anywhere else in the world of people that have been scattered because they’ve been either conquered or destroyed and they’ve been taken away and there you don’t see them return to their land. You don’t see them become a group, identifiable group of people again.
And they just kind of go off and are absorbed by the other cultures that capture them. God says something’s going to be unique here. I’m going to make a little sanctuary of you in every nation you go into.
And the amazing thing about the Jewish people, they were scattered amongst the nations, but every nation they went into, they remained as identifiable Jews. They remained identifiable as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They still had the remnants of the law, the Torah that they would keep with them and they would teach their children.
And you see that even in Fargo, we had a Jewish community and at one time we had two synagogues in town. And we’re basically the background of Fargo as far as from an ethnic place where people came from, it was northern Europe. It would be the Scandinavians, Germans, some English, but that was the history of Fargo-Moorhead.
Yet you found in the midst of that these two Jewish synagogues and you found some Jewish people and they would identify themselves as Jewish and they would go to the synagogues. The one synagogue was an Orthodox synagogue and that one shut down before the other synagogue because they ended up where they have to have 10 men in order to meet as a synagogue and they failed to have 10 men because the Jewish community grew smaller. But the other synagogues they’d open much longer.
That was a more modern synagogue. But the thing is you had identifiable Jewish people here and there was a little, as he says here, there would be identified as a small group that would meet and be identifiable no matter where they went. And he says, therefore saith the Lord, thus the Lord God, although I have cast them off among the heathen and although they be scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them a little sanctuary in those countries where they shall be and so shall come.
And so God would cause them to remain and he would be the one that would cause them to remain identifiable. He also had told them when they left Egypt, they were to celebrate the Passover continually forever. It was something they were always to celebrate.
And that was something that was to be celebrated in Jews no matter what country they went into, no matter where they went to. Even if they didn’t have a synagogue, even if they weren’t practicing as religious Jews, they would still do the Passover and they’d hold the Passover. Why? God was making them a little sanctuary even amongst the nations to show the reality of him to fulfill his promise, even when their hearts weren’t turned completely to him.
Yet he was able to do that and preserve them. And so he tells Ezekiel, don’t worry, you’re not going to be wiped out. There’s always going to be Jewish people.
I will always have a remnant. I’ll always have even when I scatter them. But then he says something amazing.
He says, he goes on, he says, therefore say, thus saith the Lord God, I will even gather you from the people and assemble you out of the countries where you’ve been scattered and I will give you the land of Israel. They’ve been given the land of Israel. Abraham had been promised.
Isaac had been promised. Jacob had been promised. The descendants of Jacob had been promised.
The people had been living in the land under the various kings and now the kings had become so corrupt and so wicked and the people become so wicked that first Israel was taken into captivity, the northern kingdom. Now Judah was ready to be taken into captivity. God’s saying, it appears that your land has been taken from you and you’ll never have it again.
But I’m telling you, I’ll keep you as a sanctuary. You’re going to be an identifiable group of people amongst all these nations. And one day I’m going to bring you all back to this land and it’s going to be Israel.
And that’s exactly what happened in 1948. Prior to that, there had been some Jewish people that began to come back already prior to 1948. But in 1948, they were declared a nation and they were declared the nation of Israel and they became the land that had been given to them by God much of it was given back to them and there’s coming a day where they should receive it all plus everything that had been promised to Abraham will be theirs one day.
But we’re seeing even that occur more today. Today we’re seeing because of world events and anti-Semitism throughout the world, we’re seeing Jewish people going back to Israel in greater numbers. The head rabbi of Jerusalem called on all the Jews in France, you need to come back to Israel.
There was just another call for Jews to leave Australia and go back to Israel after this last shooting at the beach where these Muslim men went out and shot these Jewish people that were out celebrating Hanukkah on the beach. And the call was come back to Israel where you’ll be safe. There are American Jews, especially now that you have a Muslim mayor in New York City, and that’s where our largest population of Jewish people is.
And even though 50% of them voted for this Muslim mayor, I believe you’re going to see greater anti-Semitism in New York City. And you’re probably going to see a great number of those Jewish people make aliyah to Israel because in Israel they can feel safe. They can’t probably feel safe in New York with a Muslim mayor who desires that they be dead.
And the thing is you look at what’s happening in the world events, God is bringing them back just as he told Ezekiel he would do. Now if you stop and think about what Ezekiel is seeing, he’s seeing the total destruction of Jerusalem. He’s seeing the northern kingdom had been dispersed 100 years before this.
The southern kingdom is being dispersed now. It appears what hope is there? How are we ever going to be leaving Babylon? We have no army. We have no ability to leave.
And yet God tells us one day you’re going to bring us back. Well Ezekiel is saying it is going to be the Lord and it’s going to be the Lord showing them his power to do this in spite of a world that doesn’t want it to happen. That’s why you’re seeing so much anti-Israeli talk and anti-Israel talk in the world today.
Satan does not want them back in Israel. He does not want Israel as an identifiable nation. He doesn’t want these people as unidentifiable people.
Why? Because it shows the power of God to deliver on his promise. And he made this promise to Ezekiel. He also made this promise through other prophets to the nation of Israel.
Well let’s go on and just close out this chapter and see exactly what God also has in store for them. Verse 19, And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh.
Now when we get into chapter 11, when we get into chapter 37, it talks about the valley of dry bones. And in there you’re going to see that God brings them back into Israel in unbelief. But then eventually they’re going to be, God’s going to bring them to the point where they have hearts of belief.
He’s telling Ezekiel and giving him a pre-empting of what he’s going to show him in that vision later on. And that is that he’s going to transform the hearts of the Jewish people. Now one of the amazing things is the Jewish people, even though many of them are still in unbelief in the nation of Israel today, they are different.
They are different than the Arabs around them. If you look at the Arabs around them, especially in many, when we went through the, basically a couple weeks ago, we went through some of the nations that are around them that are the remnants of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the other nations that were against Israel. One of the things that you see is those people have a different philosophy.
Right now you have those that are called, quote, Palestinians, which are really the majority of them are Arabs of Arab descent. They would be, if you could trace them back far enough, they’d probably be Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites. Some of them could be even going back to the Canaanite tribes.
But the thing is, if you look at the Arabs, which would be descendants of Abraham through Ishmael, there would be Ishmaelites and his other sons that were by Keturah and the intermarrying of them with the Moabites, which would have been of the descendants of Lot or the Edomites, which would have been the descendants of Esau. They’re all interrelated. But the thing is, they have a different heart.
And I’ve shared with you before when we were in Petra, I asked our guide, why does there seem to be such a difference between you and Israel, between what’s happening there and you’re all related? What’s the difference? And he went like this. And he said, the heart, the heart. And it is the heart.
I don’t know what he meant. I think he meant that they had a better heart than the Israelites. But he doesn’t understand.
Those that are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those that would be referred to as Israelites today, the thing is, they have a different look on life. You have Hamas, and it’s a culture of death. You have the Arab countries, and the majority of them are cultures of death.
You look at all of these different groups, Hezbollah, ISIS, Hamas, they all sprang out of this Arab culture, a culture of death. They all come and they believe in, they made, the majority of them have made their god, the god Allah of the Islamic faith. And if you look at that, it’s really Satan’s religious system.
And it’s exactly opposite of biblical Christianity. And the amazing thing is the Jewish people love life. I mean, there are those that they have people that are, for example, pro-abortion and things that would be of death.
But the problem is the majority of them love life. They look at, they will go and put their people on the line to preserve the life of their enemies. The Arabs will kill their enemies, and they’ll kill their own people.
They’ll kill their own children. The Jewish people are different. If there’s a, if there’s an emergency, where you have, for example, where they’ve had earthquakes, you know, who are the first people with responses to send those that have dogs and things to trains to find people that are trapped? It’s often the Jewish people.
And Israel sends those type of people to those cases. Oftentimes to the, even into places that would normally be considered their enemies, they’ll do that to help them. They have a different heart.
It’s not a completely transformed heart, but they have a different heart because God said, I will give you a different heart. And it’s ultimately going to be a heart that will honor and worship Him, even as Ezekiel was honoring and worshiping the Lord. That’s going to be the heart of all of Israel.
And what a, what a blessing to have the Lord say that, that they may walk in my statutes and