This afternoon, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Ezekiel’s chapter 24. We’ll look at verses 12 to the end of the chapter. Ezekiel is asked to do something that is very difficult.
As I mentioned, the prophecies and the examples that Ezekiel’s been called to give in chapter 24, the one we studied on Wednesday night, was the parable of the boiling pot. Ezekiel gave this prophecy at the very time that the city of Jerusalem in the nation of Judea was going to be invaded by Nebuchadnezzar for the last time, and it would literally become a boiling pot. And the example of a pot was to really show what was going to happen to Jerusalem and the people within it.
Ezekiel was also called by the Lord to do something that was going to be very hard for him to do, but he was called to do it, and he does it. His wife is going to die, and the thing is, she’s going to die on the same day that Nebuchadnezzar is invading Jerusalem. Judah, in the northern tribe of Israel, the people of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were said to be the wife of Israel, the wife of God.
Israel was referred to as the wife of God in the Old Testament. But he said she was a wife that wasn’t faithful. And as we’ve been looking, we’ve been reading through the whole book of Ezekiel, and he’s constantly called to remind Israel of the fact of their unfaithfulness to their Lord, the fact that God has given them all these opportunities, yet they continually turn their back on Him.
And now he comes to the point where Ezekiel is called to give an extremely difficult example to the nation of Israel. And let’s just read the verses 15 through 27 of chapter 24.
12 She hath wearied herself with lies, and her great scum went not forth out of her: her scum shall be in the fire. 13 In thy filthiness is lewdness: because I have purged thee, and thou wast not purged, thou shalt not be purged from thy filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon thee. 14 I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent; according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, shall they judge thee, saith the Lord God.
15 Also the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 16 Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. 17 Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. 18 So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.
19 And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so? 20 Then I answered them, The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 21 Speak unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the excellency of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and that which your soul pitieth; and your sons and your daughters whom ye have left shall fall by the sword. 22 And ye shall do as I have done: ye shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men. 23 And your tires shall be upon your heads, and your shoes upon your feet: ye shall not mourn nor weep; but ye shall pine away for your iniquities, and mourn one toward another. 24 Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign: according to all that he hath done shall ye do: and when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the Lord God.
25 Also, thou son of man, shall it not be in the day when I take from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that whereupon they set their minds, their sons and their daughters, 26 that he that escapeth in that day shall come unto thee, to cause thee to hear it with thine ears? 27 In that day shall thy mouth be opened to him which is escaped, and thou shalt speak, and be no more dumb: and thou shalt be a sign unto them; and they shall know that I am the Lord.
Let’s just go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, I pray that you just help us understand this. Help us to really realize this difficult message through the life that he was living in a trial in his life that he had to bear. And yet it was to be an example of what they were going to experience.
Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand what Ezekiel’s message was and how the nation of Israel needed to hear it on what they were giving up. Lord, I pray that you would just speak to us through your word. We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen. Ezekiel was told in the morning that his wife was going to die that night. That day is when Nebuchadnezzar entered into Jerusalem and attacked it for the last time and was going to begin to burn the city.
He was going to tear down the walls. He was going to tear down the temple. He was going to take away what remained of the temple instruments back to Babylon.
And all the things that they thought were so precious were going to be gone. And the Lord is telling them not to pine. And Ezekiel is to give them the example.
Now Ezekiel is told that his wife is going to die and he’s not to show any signs of mourning. He’s not to take the tire off his head. Now what does that mean? Well, it was a wrap that the members of the tribe of Levi would wear if they were priests.
Ezekiel was a priest. And when they would mourn, they would take this off their head because it was a sign of their mourning. The Lord tells them, leave it on.
Don’t take it off. No one is to see you mourning and He’s going to tell them why. He also tells them, leave your shoes on.
Eat the food of men like you normally would do. Go about your day like you normally would go about your day. Even though that which was the most precious thing you had to look upon your wife is not going to be with you any longer.
And it’s to be a sign unto the people. Now, what is God trying to show these people? Well, what have they kept saying was the most precious and beautiful thing that they had? What was the thing that was going to keep them from ever being taken away into captivity? What was God going to never turn His back on? That would be the city of Jerusalem, specifically Mount Zion and the temple. And remember in earlier messages that Ezekiel and also Jeremiah had brought to the people.
They had talked about the fact that the people had made the statement, Well, as long as we’ve got the temple, God won’t destroy Jerusalem nor will He take us into captivity. Both were false. And they looked upon Jerusalem and they looked upon the temple and they said, This is the Lord and His beauty.
Even though they didn’t worship the Lord, even though they didn’t go through the proper sacrifices at the temple, even though they had desecrated the temple, even though they had worshipped false gods. And as we saw earlier in the chapter, they were called unfaithful wife. They’d gone whoring after other gods.
They had forsaken the Lord. They had given their tithes and their time to other gods instead of the Lord. Yet they were constantly saying, But we love the Lord and the Lord, isn’t it beautiful? And really, it’s interesting.
At the time of Jesus, the nation of Israel had a very similar attitude as the people of Jerusalem and Judah had at this particular time. The people of Judah, during the time that Jesus walked on the earth, you remember that the disciples were enamored with the temple. And the temple had been rebuilt by Ezra and then it had been added on to and made more beautiful under the tutelage of Herod the Great who had covered many of the things in gold and had enhanced it tremendously.
And they looked upon that and they viewed that God had to be with them because of the temple. And the disciples, if you remember, sat on the Mount of Olives before Jesus was going to go to the cross and pointed out the temple and said, Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it wonderful? And Jesus said that it was going to be destroyed. But he said, Tear down this temple and I’ll raise it up in three days.
And then that became something that was misunderstood by the Pharisees and proclaimed as being something that Jesus said that could not possibly be done. And he was speaking of his body when he made that last statement, not the physical temple that the disciples were pointing out to, but he was saying it was going to be destroyed. And it was destroyed in 70 A.D. And we also see that the people, as they came to the temple, they found confidence in a physical object even though they didn’t find confidence in the Lord.
They didn’t call upon His name or seek Him. Well, Ezekiel is to show them what their real heart attitude is. Ezekiel loved his wife.
We know that because he says, Behold, I will take from thee the desire of thine eyes. She was that which he desired. She was his wife.
And we know that he was a man who followed after God’s own heart and did what God said. And so when he married his wife, the two became one. And we know this from the life of Ezekiel.
Yet the Lord said, I’m going to take her away. How was she going to die? She was going to die of a stroke. God was going to cause her to have a stroke in the evening and she would be dead right away.
And why does he tell Ezekiel to do this? Verse 19, And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us that thou doest so? Why are you acting the way you’re acting? It’s not like your character, Ezekiel. Your wife, we know she meant much to you. But yet you don’t mourn her death.
And yet you don’t do any of the things that would typically be done of one who had lost their spouse and the one that is, as it says, the desire of his eyes. Well, he says, Then I answered them. The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Speak unto the house of Israel.
Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will profane thy sanctuary. Now what had happened with death? When death comes to someone, their body is not what it once was. If you go to a funeral, even though the undertaker may try to make the body look beautiful and they do the hair and they put makeup to try and make the body look like it did during life, it never does because the life has gone out of it.
And when the life has gone out of something, it’s been profaned. That is the power of death. It brings that, it destroys that which God holds as very precious, which is life.
And sin causes death. The reason that we will all die is because of sin. And the Bible tells us that Jesus came to pay the penalty for our sins, that we could have eternal life, but it still doesn’t mean that we don’t have physical death.
Well, as Ezekiel is looking at his wife, one of the things that you do is you mourn because that person is no longer with you. And what Ezekiel is saying here when he’s giving the explanation of why he’s doing what they’re doing, or what he’s doing rather for them, and why the Lord is having him do it, he says, Behold, I will profane my sanctuary. The Lord’s telling him, I’m going to bring death to my sanctuary.
Just as death came to Ezekiel’s wife, I’m going to bring death to my sanctuary. It’s going to be destroyed. It’s not going to be what it once was.
Solomon’s temple will no longer be. It’s going to be gone. And he goes on and he says, The excellency of your strength, the desire of your eyes, and that which your soul pitieth, and your sons and your daughters whom ye have left shall fall by the sword.
He says, Everything that you love and cherish is going to be destroyed. Just as everything this wife of Ezekiel had whom he loved, it was destroyed. And I’m telling him, Don’t weep because death has come.
And this is the consequence of death. There’s a separation. You are going to be separated from the sanctuary.
But not only that, I’m going to separate you from your sons and your daughters. You view them as very precious to you as well. But they’re going to be taken away or killed by the sword.
And they will be no more. Just as Ezekiel’s wife is no more, these things will be no more to you. And ye shall do as I have done.
Ye shall not cover your lips, nor eat of the bread of men. You’re not going to go through the normal steps of mourning. Now why is different than why Ezekiel didn’t have to do it.
Ezekiel didn’t bring about his wife’s death. His wife’s death ultimately came because it was pointed out to man wants to die. And she died.
And God said this is an object lesson I’m going to give to the nation of Israel. But he’s saying here that the things that are going to be destroyed, I shall do as I have done. Ye shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.
You’re not going to mourn over these things. And your tires shall be upon your heads, and your shoes upon your feet. And ye shall not mourn nor weep.
You are not going to show the signs of weeping, even though I’m going to take you from the land of Israel, from Mount Zion, from the temple. I’m going to take you into a land of strange gods, of strange languages, of strange customs. And I’m going to give you what you sought.
And really if you look at what he’s saying is why would mourning come if you’ve been seeking these very things that I’m doing now? They killed their sons and their daughters as they sacrificed them to false gods. They didn’t worship God in the temple. They didn’t see the significance of Jerusalem.
They didn’t understand what their relationship with the Lord was supposed to be. Instead, they became those who pursued false gods, who went a whoring after the false gods that were all around them, and would rather pursue them than the true God. And now that God is going to bring these things upon Jerusalem in the temple, he’s saying, why would you weep? They’re really not the desires of your eyes.
And Ezekiel is showing you what I expect from you, even though he desired his wife tremendously. And he says, Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign. According to all that he hath done shall ye do.
You’re going to do that because what it’s going to do is, it’s going to show you your true heart towards me. Ezekiel is giving you an example of the death of his wife and what your heart is to the death of your spouse, which is the Lord. Israel is a wife unto the Lord.
And God has literally disappeared before their eyes. He’s no longer going to be there for them like he once was. And he says, Why would I have you show sorrow and despair when you really don’t care? That’s an amazing thing.
An amazing thing that Ezekiel is doing and called to do. Also thou son of man, shall it not be in that day when I take from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and that whereupon they set their minds, their sons and their daughters. And he’s saying, They don’t realize that these are the things that I have given to them and I’m going to take them all away.
Because they’re really not what they are, not what they claim they are. You know, it’s interesting. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a number of years ago, wrote a book and it was talking about what happened in Russia.
Why? What happened? How could Russia turn into a communist nation? A nation where they would take away the children from their parents and place them in state schools, wouldn’t allow the parents to teach the children the Bible, talk to them about God. And he said, The reason that it happened was we forgot God. We as a people forgot God.
God used to be a part of our discussions at the tables, from parents to children. And people loved the Lord. But all of a sudden, He became secondary.
Everything else was more important. And as we forgot God, God removed Himself from our presence and we no longer had this relationship with Him. And it was replaced with that which was men’s thoughts and ideas and government.
It was a very powerful book. When Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote the book, he was booed off the stage at Harvard University when he talked about it. And if you stop and think the significance of that, being Harvard was started by John Harvard, who started Harvard University to train missionaries and pastors to proclaim the gospel.
And yet, when Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke about these things at Harvard, they booed him off the stage. That’s what Israel, they could not see their own blindness. They could not see the own impact of their decisions that they’d made.
The things they were doing. And now all of a sudden it’s being taken from them and they’re going, why is God doing this? Why would God do this to us? And Ezekiel’s got to bring the message, why should you mourn for that you didn’t really love? Thus Ezekiel is unto a sign, according to all that he hath done, shall ye do. And when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the Lord God.
When what cometh? When these things cometh, when the temple is destroyed, when the walls of Jerusalem are destroyed, when their sons and daughters are killed by Nebuchadnezzar’s armies or by the pestilence or by the plague, then they’ll know. And it’ll be brought to their minds. Also thou son of man, shall it not be in the day when I take from them their strength? What is their strength? Their strength was the Lord.
They didn’t realize it. They didn’t acknowledge it. Instead they thought their strength was Egypt.
They were constantly looking to Egypt for deliverance. That’s the world. They were constantly looking to their leaders for deliverance.
That’s the world. Instead of calling on the name of God, repenting of their sin and seeking His power and His might. During the time of Ezekiel, they thought it was because the temple was still standing that Ezekiel and the city of Jerusalem were delivered from the Assyrians’ attack.
No, it was because, if you remember what happened when we went through the kings, when Ezekiel saw that the nation was under siege by the Assyrians and they were ready to be overrun and the whole plan was to destroy Jerusalem and the temple, he went and he was broken before God. He fasted and prayed. He cried out to the Lord in sackcloth and ashes.
He sought for the Lord’s deliverance and God supernaturally delivered them. It wasn’t because there was power in the temple and there was power in the city and there was power in Mount Zion. No, there’s power in God.
And he had called upon the name of the Lord. They didn’t do this now at the time of Nebuchadnezzar. And so consequently, he says that the strength was going to be removed, the joy of their glory.
The joy of their glory was found in God and the Lord and the temple worship and the sacrificial system pointing to the coming Messiah. They had all of that joy and glory yet they turned their back on it. So it was going to be removed.
The desire of their eyes. Now they looked and thought that it was the temple and as we said before, it’s not the temple but it was the God that resided in the temple that was the one that was to be their deliverer and their strength. And he was to be that which was the desire of their eyes yet they had no desire for him.
They desired everything but him. And he’s saying, I’m going to remove the desire of your eyes. I’m going to leave.
And that whereupon they set their minds. And their minds were set upon the future and the future was their children but yet they’d been willing to sacrifice their own children. I want you to understand that a nation that turns its back on God does the very same things that this Israel, or rather Judah did during the time of Ezekiel.
You know, we don’t physically, well we do through abortion and through other despicable acts that we do. But in a lot of ways we sacrifice our children to the gods of this world by giving them over to the gods of sports, the gods of music, the gods of this world instead of bringing them into an understanding of the true and the living God. And that’s what the people were doing.
They were giving their children over to the gods of the world and yet they said, our minds are set on our future and our children, our sons and our daughters that they’ve given them over to the other gods. So they weren’t going to be that which would bring a blessing to them anyway. He goes on and he says, that he that escapeth in that day shall come unto thee to cause thee to hear it with thine ears.
And so he says, there’s going to be some that are going to escape Jerusalem when all this happens. And they’re going to come to Ezekiel and they’re going to tell him what happened. And he’s going to say, God showed me it was going to happen.
And he gave me as an example to you of the consequences of what was going to happen. And then he goes on and he says, in that day shall thy mouth be opened to him which is escaped and thou shalt speak. So Ezekiel is not going to say anything once he’s said this.
And we really don’t see Ezekiel talk about the nation of Judah, the city of Jerusalem, the temple much more until he gets and looks at some of the prophecies given about things and events that occur in the latter days a few chapters down. Now he’s going to be talking about the nations around Israel, how God is going to judge them. That’s what’s going to be the next messages that he brings.
But now for a period of time the messages about Judah, the messages about Jerusalem, the messages about the temple, the messages about the people are going to be silenced. And be no more dumb. And so he’s going to say, when they come and they ask finally, then you can open your mouth.
But until that time from now on you’re to be silent. And thou shalt be a sign unto them and they shall know that I am the Lord. And so they’re going to see that it’s not their will that’s accomplished, but it’s God’s judgment that comes upon them because of their actions and their willful disobedience.
And God’s going to reveal it to them through the actions of Ezekiel. And he’s not going to say any more after he’s said this to them. Very sobering.
Very sobering what Ezekiel had to do and was called to do. But it was a message that the nation of Judah, the city of Jerusalem, the temple priests needed to hear. Let’s just close in prayer.
Lord I pray that you’d help us to understand these things, help us to apply these things to our lives. And Lord I pray that you would just help us to be a people that proclaim the truth and the consequences of rebellion that is found in men’s hearts even though they may claim to be your people. But unless their heart truly is given to you, it doesn’t matter what they say their desires are if they’re not followed through with proper action and love expressions given to you.
Now Lord, go with us now we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen