Turn with me to Ezekiel chapter 34. We’re going to be looking at verses 1 through 10 this afternoon. Ezekiel 34, verses 1 through 10.
I like to read those verses quickly, and then we’re going to be looking at them.
Ezekiel 34:1-10
And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 2 Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? 3 Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. 4 The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them. 5 And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered. 6 My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them.
7 Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord; 8 As I live, saith the Lord God, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock; 9 therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord; 10 Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Lord, I pray that you just help us to understand these words, and help us to see how even though this was going on in Israel at the time of Ezekiel, it’s happening in the church even today.
And Father, I pray that you would just open our understanding to the truth and the foundation of what you are telling the shepherds of Israel through Ezekiel, and what message you have for us. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As I mentioned, Ezekiel was taken into captivity in Babylon, and he was of the priestly line. Who are the shepherds of Israel? Well, the shepherds of Israel would have been the priests and the Levites. They would have been the prophets and those that would have been called to lead the people in understanding of God’s word, to lead them in worship, to lead them and direct them, and bring them closer to the Lord.
And it was critical, especially in this time, that the shepherds did this, because what had happened, if you remember those of you who were with us when we went through the kings of Israel, Josiah had been king, and under the leadership of Josiah, God had greatly convicted Josiah when the word of God was read to him as a young man, and he began as a young boy to see the importance of getting the nation of Israel back to the word of God. Josiah, as king, was a type of leader or shepherd of Israel, but he was not the real spiritual shepherd. He was really the political leader, but also needed to set the spiritual tone for the nation.
And he did that. He brought the people back to worship. He had the temple cleaned and rededicated and sanctified.
He had the priests sanctified. He had the Levites sanctified. And then he sent the Levites out amongst the people to teach them.
And he had the temple worship reestablished, the sacrifices reestablished properly, and they were done proper. There was no synthesizing them with paganism. They were done according to the word of God, as God had called the priests to do.
And then also what he did is he had the Feast of Israel celebrated, and he had the Passover celebrated for the first time since the time of Solomon, where it was actually done correctly. And he had invited even those that were remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel, who had really been, even though they were the brethren of the southern kingdom, they had been adversaries of the southern kingdom, and yet he told them to come and celebrate the Passover. That was Josiah.
And Josiah was the last godly king of the southern kingdom of Judah. It wasn’t more than the time that Josiah died that already his sons and his grandson, three of his sons and one of his grandsons, became kings after him. And they all were ungodly kings who introduced various degrees of wickedness into the nation, and they became those that were really a prey upon the people.
And at the time they were doing this, those that should have been the real shepherds, spiritual shepherds of the people, they were the priests. They desecrated the temple. They desecrated the sacrificial services that were offered, where the sacrifices weren’t being offered properly anymore.
And they began to allow sacrifices to be offered at various parts of the nation of Judah, as well as the city of Jerusalem, to false gods. And they did nothing about it. These were the shepherds.
And this is what was happening during the time of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a priest who was a godly priest who loved the Lord, and had been taken into captivity, and God had given him these visions. Now he’s showing them this vision of what was the cause of the problem of not only Judah, but really Israel, the northern kingdom as well.
Well, it’s interesting that he talks about shepherds. The Lord Jesus Christ compared himself to the good shepherd. Wednesday night we’ll be looking at the good shepherd.
But the thing is, he said that the flock, or the sheep, are the people. And Jesus said that he had come to be the good shepherd to lead the people. And the importance of leading the people is, all the things that these men did not do is what they were supposed to do.
If you look at the life of a shepherd, and go to the Middle East today, you can go and you can watch Bedouin shepherds, and they tend their sheep very much the same way that would have been done during the time of Ezekiel, during the time of Jesus, during the time in the past. They have their flocks, they take their flocks out, they know their sheep by name, they can call their sheep out by name, their sheep will come, the sheep know their voice, and then they have their staff and rod, and the staff and rod are used for correction and help and guidance. And then what they do is, they take the sheep and at night they bring them into a fold, and a fold would be, at the time of Jesus, a fold would be a little walled area, where the sheep would be brought in, and there would be one entrance into the fold.
There would be only one way you could get into the fold. And then at night, the shepherd would lay down across the entrance. That way no animal could get in there and attack them, no thief could get in there and attack them without the shepherd being awakened and defending his flock or his sheep.
And anybody who came in would have to come in not the correct way, and would have to come in with the full intent of stealing the sheep, and the shepherd would watch out that they wouldn’t do that. Well, not only was that the responsibility of the shepherd, but the shepherd, when he took his sheep out, he was accountable for every one of the sheep. And Jesus gave the example of the shepherd who went out and he had a hundred sheep.
And he got his sheep back, and getting them ready to put in the fold, and he’s only got 99. He’s got one sheep that’s lost. Well, it would be very easy to say, well, that’s 99 percent good.
So it’s just one percent that’s lost. Why do I want to worry about that? No, it says that the good shepherd went out and he searched for the one that was lost until it was found. Now, what the shepherds would do is they would take care of the sheep and make sure that they got into the fold that night.
And what is reported is that sometimes the shepherds, if they had a sheep that liked to wander all the time, what they would do sometimes is they would cause its leg to be broken, and then they would mend the leg, but the sheep couldn’t walk on the leg. And so the shepherd would carry that sheep on his back, and the sheep would become so accustomed to the shepherd’s smell, the shepherd’s voice, and the shepherd taking care of him, that he would never wander again. And that was the life of a shepherd in the Middle East, still the life of a shepherd today.
And David Hocking was over there and had challenged the shepherd, well, I bet you I can get your sheep to follow me. And the shepherd said, OK, try. And so David, who knows, could say some of the words, and he could say them like he thought of it, saying them just like the shepherd did, would call out the name of the sheep.
He’d tell them to come on, let’s go, and the sheep would just sit there. And they wouldn’t do anything. And then finally the shepherd said, well, I told you they wouldn’t respond to your voice.
They’ll only listen to my voice. And David said, really? And he said, yes. And so at that time the shepherd said, I need to be going.
So he called the sheep, he said, get up. All the sheep got up. He said, come on, we’re leaving.
And the sheep all followed him and left. And he said, see, I told you. They respond to my voice and nobody else’s voice.
Well, that’s what we’re supposed to do, is we’re supposed to know the voice of a true shepherd. Well, what happened is these men of Israel who were entrusted with the position of being the spiritual leaders, the spiritual guides, the spiritual ones that looked out for the well-being of the people, they didn’t do it. They saw no purpose in it.
They were in it for themselves, and they were in it to feed themselves. In other words, they wanted to get position, power, money, and their own things that they wanted at the expense of the sheep. Let’s just take a look quickly at some of these verses.
In verse number 2, about halfway through, Ezekiel is told to say, Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do not feed themselves. Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Do feed themselves, rather. Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? And we see here is a very strong word, woe.
The word woe is a word of condemnation. They are being condemned in the strongest terms. And the first condemnation is brought, they are to feed the flock, they are to make sure the flock is fed.
The 23rd Psalm, it says, as it’s talking about the Psalm of the Shepherd, it talks about that the shepherd takes the sheep and lays them down in green pastures. Why is it a term, green pastures? Green pastures means that they are brought to a place where there is ample food for them to eat. Well, the shepherds should have brought food.
What kind of food would they bring? Well, at this point in time, in the history of Israel, Israel needed physical food too. They had problems. But the problem is, more than physical food, the problem was spiritual food.
They were not brought spiritual food, they totally ignored it. And what happened is, the shepherds were so busy, concerned about their own position, power, and feeding their own lives with what they wanted to be fed with. And at this time, it was political leadership aligning themselves with what they viewed were the proper power authorities and ignoring the people.
And then allowing, as we are going to see in a moment, those that would come to devour them, in to devour them. So they didn’t give them proper food. They didn’t teach them about God.
They didn’t teach them about the Lord. They didn’t take them to places where they could be introduced and have fellowship with God. And instead, they were self-consumed.
Verse 3, Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with wool. Ye kill them that are fed, but ye feed not the flock. Now what does it mean, you kill them that are fed? Well, it’s interesting.
Jesus himself said, as he was talking to the Pharisees, you’re no different than your fathers, for they would kill the prophets. And then you come and you want to build monuments to the prophets. But if you were there at the time of your fathers, you would have joined in it and killed them.
Well, this is what the ones that understood the Word of God, they made sure that they were put out of the way. They did not want the people to know. They didn’t want the people to understand.
Because you can’t control people if they know the truth. And the truth was about the Lord and their relationship to Israel and how he wanted them to live, how they could remain free and strong and walk with God. And they didn’t want them because they couldn’t control them if they knew the truth.
So instead, they wouldn’t feed them. They wouldn’t give them the truth. They wouldn’t give them the Word of God.
They wouldn’t take and do the sacrifices properly. Instead, they made sure that they got their pay. Now, the shepherds’ pay was based on what they did for the sheep.
If you look at what the priests did, when they offered the sacrifice, they received a portion of the sacrifice as their pay. And the Levites, they didn’t have their own land, but they had what they referred to as suburbs outside the cities throughout the nation of Israel. And part of their responsibility was to bring spiritual direction to the people and teach them out of God’s Word.
Well, they were reliant on the people for their salaries or for their pay. Well, they took the pay, but they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. And they made sure they got their pay and they even took more than they should have taken.
And that’s exactly what they were doing at the expense of the sheep. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have you bound up that which was broken, neither have you brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye brought that which was lost, but with force and with cruelty have you ruled them. And so everything that they were supposed to do, they didn’t do.
And the one thing they weren’t to do, they did. They weren’t supposed to rule them with cruelty and they were supposed to look out for their well-being, their spiritual well-being. And ultimately, if you looked out for their spiritual well-being, the Lord would protect the nation of Israel and they’d be looking out for their physical well-being as well.
God would not have used the Assyrians, nor would He have used the Babylonians to be a chastising rod against Israel if they had not revolted against Him and embraced other gods and replaced God with the gods of the Canaanites and gods of the Sidonians and gods of all those pagan nations around them. And God brought His judgment upon them because of that. Well, when the people began to do some of that, instead of warning them, they went along with it.
And then when it came time to rule, they ruled with cruelty. And you can look at that. Way back at the time of Solomon, the kingdom was divided in two and Rehoboam was going to come to power.
Who did he listen to? He didn’t listen to the wise men that were elders and older. And when he sought their counsel, they told him, reduce the taxes. Your father has put too heavy a yoke upon the nation.
And reduce the taxes, reduce this, and be their leader in that direction. He didn’t. Instead he listened to the young people.
He said, well, if your dad put weights upon them, you even increase the weight of the taxes. Give them more. And that’s exactly what Rehoboam did.
He listened to the wrong people. He put great burdens upon them. And it drove them, drove the northern kingdom away from him totally.
And what it did is it drove them into idolatry immediately because Jeroboam, because he wanted to maintain power and he wanted to maintain his position, he wanted to be the king of the northern kingdom, he instituted a false religious system, a false place of worship, a false priest system. And he did it all immediately as soon as they became a nation and violated what God had told him to do. And every king after him only became worse.
And we see in the southern kingdom, much of the same happened, although they did have some kings that turned back to the Lord. But we see here that he tells them when they saw that they had needs, they didn’t meet them. Instead, they just allowed their wounds.
What kind of a shepherd, when he saw a sheep that was sick or that had a broken bone, would not bind up the wound, would not seek to heal the animal, but just leave it and let nature take its course and let it die. That’s what these shepherds did. They saw what they were doing and they did not direct them to turn from their ways.
Verse 5, And they were scattered because there was no shepherd. And they became neat to all the beasts of the field when they were scattered. How did they become scattered? What did he mean they became scattered? Well, not only were they physically removed from the land eventually, but also they became scattered spiritually.
And if you look at what happened, initially when they came and the temple was built by Solomon, the people came and they worshiped at the temple. They fulfilled all the feasts of the Lord. But when these false shepherds began to be their spiritual leaders and began to be the kings of the nation that didn’t want to follow God, what happened is the people sought other places to worship and other gods to worship.
And in that sense, they were spiritually scattered. Not only were they physically scattered, eventually they were spiritually scattered. And they went and they worshiped the gods of the Canaanites.
They did not follow the Word of the Lord because the Word of the Lord wasn’t instructed to them and it wasn’t told to them and it wasn’t read to them. And they disobeyed the Word of the Lord. They married pagan women.
They married pagan men. And their children grew up not understanding the truth. And there was no shepherd there to direct and guide them.
Instead, they just allowed it to happen. My sheep wandered through all the mountains and upon every high hill. Yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth and none did search or seek after them.
It’s interesting, this also, when the Lord scattered the nation of Israel at the time of the Roman Empire to the outermost corners of the earth, initially no one went out to seek and say, come back to Israel. Come back to Israel. They didn’t do that.
They were just scattered. There was no call for return to the Lord spiritually. But prior to that, when the nations were taken to Assyria and Babylon and they were told there was very few, there were prophets like Jeremiah.
Jeremiah told them what to do, but they didn’t want to listen. Because their hearts had been so hardened by lies that had been presented to them by false prophets. Remember, they went to Jeremiah before they went into Egypt.
They said, consult the Lord and see what He would have us do. Does He want us to go down to Egypt? Does He want us to remain in the land of Judah? And we’ll do what God says. So Jeremiah went to the Lord.
The Lord told him to remain in Judah. At the same time, there were false prophets saying, no, no, go to Egypt, go to Egypt, go to Egypt. And the people listened to the false prophets.
They denied Jeremiah and instead they really kidnapped Jeremiah and took him to Egypt too. And the thing is, that is what the false shepherds did. They undermined, every time God would send a prophet, they would come and undermine the words of the prophet.
And they would come with a message that had the appearance and was more appealing to the people. It did not require sacrifice or so the people thought. Instead, they thought they were going to get great benefit by listening to the false prophets.
They did not. And those were shepherds that led them astray. Verse 7, Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord.
What is the word of the Lord? As I live, saith the Lord, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field. And the beasts of the field would really be demonic spirits. The false religious systems came in and just took over the hearts and the minds of the people.
And because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flocks, but the shepherds fed themselves and fed not my flock. They made sure they were taken care of and they weren’t concerned about the flock. Even during a lot of the political intrigue that was going on with the nations that were invading Israel, there were constantly deals trying to be met with those kings.
And instead of being concerned about the spiritual condition of the nation of Judah and the nation of Israel, they were more concerned about their own welfare and that they wouldn’t be overrun. Then he goes on and he says in verse 9, Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I require my flock at their hand.
So these people were accountable, the flock was accountable for the decisions they made, but a greater accountability would be laid upon the shepherds because they had not overseen the flock, guided the flock, fed the flock, ensured the flock was kept from danger, but instead opened up the flock to be destroyed. And God says there’s accountability here and the accountability is going to be much harder on the shepherds. He says, I will require my flock at their hand and cause them to cease from feeding the flock.
Neither shall the shepherds feed themselves anymore, for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them. And it’s interesting, this was really done in that God caused, when they went into captivity, they had no sacrificial system. There was no way for the shepherds to be paid and He removed it all when they were in captivity.
When they came back, they rebuilt the temple, reestablished the sacrificial system, but again, when the corruption came, even during the time of Jesus, He scattered them again, the temple was destroyed, the sacrifice was destroyed, and the shepherds could no longer take advantage of the sheep. This really came to fruition during the time of Jesus, when you had the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the scribes, that were really taking advantage of the people and they used the people for their own benefit, for political alliances, they would control the people on behalf of Rome, that they could have, experience power with Rome, keep their positions, that they could experience wealth from Rome and could take advantage of the people, which they did. And the people were left to fend for themselves spiritually again.
Well, I just want to close by saying this isn’t so much different than the church today. You have a lot of pastors that are in this because they think it’s a good job. An easy job that I get paid really good, can get paid really good money for.
I can have programs on television, not television now, but it’s blogs and the internet and make a lot of money. And I don’t necessarily have to tell the truth. As a matter of fact, the more lies it seems I can tell, the more ears I can tickle and the more lust I can feed in the people so that they’ll send me more money.
And they have no concern for the spiritual well-being of the people. And we see it happening in the direction that the church is going where the shepherds no longer see the need of feeding the people truth, but instead want to benefit by feeding on the people themselves. And that’s becoming a real problem in the church today.
And it was a problem at the time of Ezekiel with the priests and with those that had the spiritual authority of the false prophets and the pastors of Ezekiel’s day who did not lead this people spiritually, were not concerned about standing in the gap and as we talked on Wednesday being a watchman and seeing the enemy come, but instead were willing to sacrifice the flock so they could preserve their position. Let’s just close in prayer, Lord. I pray that you just help us to understand the truth.
Help us to apply these truths to our life. Help us to be just very concerned as we see things happening in the church today that are very much similar to what was happening in the nation of Israel during the time of Ezekiel. Also again during the time of Jesus.
And Lord, help us to realize that today you have called those that are in spiritual leadership to be concerned for their people, to watch over them, to pray for them and to meet their spiritual needs and not allow them to be consumed by false doctrine and false gods. Lord, go with us, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.