A word from the administration team today: I am going to ask your permission to keep my coat on. When it gets warmer, I will take it off.
There is a large section of this book with which we shall not be able to deal in detail. Therefore, we must find some comprehensive way of dealing with it simply.
I think that way will be by looking at the three different titles by which Ezekiel was called. Perhaps you have noticed that, in these prophecies, Ezekiel has three different titles. These three titles gather into themselves this large section of the book.
The first of the three is Son of Man. Look at Ezekiel 2:
And He said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak with thee.
And in Ezekiel 2:3:
And He said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel.
Then in Ezekiel 3:1:
And He said unto me, Son of man, eat that which thou findest.
And again in Ezekiel 3:4:
And He said unto me, Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel.
And so it goes on right through the book. That is one of the main titles of the prophet. Perhaps you would like to go right through and note how many times it occurs.
We know, then, that at the beginning this title was peculiar to the prophet Ezekiel. No other prophet is called by this name in quite the same way. It marks out Ezekiel in a special way.
Now, we know that the Lord Jesus chose as His favourite title for Himself, “the Son of Man,” but we must not think of Ezekiel in the same way. In this title, “Son of Man,” Ezekiel was unique among the prophets; Jesus, as the Son of Man, was unique among all men.
So let us be careful not to confuse the two uses of the title “Son of Man.” If there is any relationship or similarity, it is in the function and not in the person. That is the matter that we shall now consider.
We have seen that on the throne above there was the likeness as of a man, and we have seen that the predominant feature of the cherubim was the man. Therefore, we take note of this place of man in this book. It is a special idea.
We also know that man means representation and expression for God. Man is not only a person; he is a divine idea. There is a man upon the throne.
While that man is a person, He is not only a person; He is a divine idea. The idea in God’s mind in creating man was that he should represent God.
Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.
Man is God’s fullest thought and God’s final thought. In the creation, God ended with man, saying, as it were, that He had headed all things up into man. When God had reached such a man, He pronounced His verdict and took His rest. When He had the man according to His intention, then He said about everything, “It is very good.”
Then God takes His rest when He has His man according to His mind. But that is not the end of everything. At that point, God looks for reproduction.
He says to that man:
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
The law of creation was that everything should reproduce after its own kind. Things were never intended to change in that respect. Everything was given a definite and distinct form. It was a kind of creation, and everything was to reproduce after its kind.
A jellyfish was not to reproduce a monkey, and a man was not to reproduce anything other than man. Everything was to reproduce after its own kind.
Now, you see, God had made man, and before man had fallen, God said, “Be fruitful, and multiply.” God’s idea was that that unfallen man should multiply, and that unfallen man should fill the earth.
But we know that that man failed, and the earth was filled with a kind of man that God never intended. God put a limit to his life. He fixed the number of his years, that man should not go on indefinitely.
I think you see from this that God’s idea is a man according to His own mind. In a full way, the Lord Jesus was that. Therefore, He is the Son of Man. In a sense, we can say that He was the only Son of Man.
The principle of manhood is taken up for the people of God, and that is where Ezekiel comes in. It is not the person, but the function. It is the principle.
“Son of Man” speaks of two things. It means bringing into view God’s original thought and pattern. That was a principle which the Lord wanted to have realized in Israel.
Israel is a man in God’s eyes. But in this book, Israel is not the man that God intended. Israel is a man who has been marred, and God is now moving along the principle of manhood to recover that idea in Israel.
Later we shall find that He was unable to do it in Israel as a whole. He therefore sought to realize it in the remnant. But the Old Testament closes with this idea as a complete failure in Israel.
When we move into the New Testament, we find ourselves in the presence of the one new man—that is, the corporate man, which is the church. But we are not going on to that this morning. We are just with the principle.
“Son of Man,” in principle, is speaking in relation to an original thought and pattern of God. You have got to recognize that as the key to the whole of these prophecies.
What is it all about? What does this whole book mean in all its parts? Well, this title, “Son of Man,” is scattered right over the book, and it means that the governing thought of God is this conception of man according to God’s mind.
If God sends this collective man into captivity, it means that that man cannot stand before Him any longer. God must have another kind of man.
The great illustration of that, of course, is the valley of dry bones: bringing up out of the grave of Babylon a new man with a new heart and a new spirit.
Well, I think there is enough to indicate the meaning of this title. God is moving for the recovery of His original thought. That thought has been lost.
This is what Paul means in speaking to Timothy as “the man of God.” His appeal to Timothy was, “O man of God”—that is, God’s man.
Now we must take this up as to our ministry. What are we here for? What is the meaning of our ministry and our work? It is that God may have this corporate man according to His own mind.
That is the meaning of Ephesians 4:
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a fullgrown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
God is working toward this corporate man. We must remember that God’s idea is man. I would emphasize that because so many people seem to think that God’s idea is some organization, some institution, something that is called the church, a way of doing things, certain teaching, or a whole system.
God is not after that. God is not after the church merely as the church. The object of the church in God’s mind is that it should be an expression of Christ.
The church is the body of Christ. It is not a system of teaching. It is not a special form of practice. It is a man—it is Christ in corporate expression.
We shall come to that later in this book of Ezekiel, but we take out this principle. It is a very important thing for us to recognize.
This man principle speaks of three things. First of all, a presentation: God presents His idea. Then, a representation: something expresses that which is presented. Then, a declaration: a preaching concerning that.
The thing is presented as a divine thought. Then the thing is represented in a body. Then comes the message.
Now, have you got those three things? First, there is presentation. The man is presented. You see the man on the throne. You get God’s idea. God’s idea is manhood—manhood of a certain character.
From that, God has a representation of this: something which embodies the idea. Then, when God has that which embodies the idea, there is a message.
We must not put it in the other order, preaching it first. We must first of all have seen it, and then there must be an expression of it. There must be that to which we can point and say, “This is it.”
The message must come out of something that actually exists according to God’s mind.
That applies in the first place to Christ. You must first of all have seen the Lord, and then that must have produced something in you, so that it is not only objective and abstract. The Lord has done something in you as you have seen.
The same applies to the church. First there must be a revealing of the church, and then there must be a representation of the church. Out of there existing a definite expression of the church, the message goes out.
It is almost impossible to preach the truth unless there is something behind it. It is essential that we are able to say, “This thing works, and I can show you where it works.”
That will become very clear when we come to our next consideration in Ezekiel. But I do hope that you have got hold of this first idea: the principle in this first title, “Son of Man.” There is a very great deal of the mind of God in that title.
Now we go to the second title of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 3:17:
Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel.
Then, in Ezekiel 33:
The word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Son of man, speak unto the children of thy people, and say unto them,
When I bring the sword upon a land,
and the people of the land take a man from among them,
and set him for their watchman;
if, when he seeth the sword come upon the land,
he blow the trumpet, and warn the people—
And then:
So thou, son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel.
So the second title of Ezekiel is watchman.
This idea is not peculiar to Ezekiel. We have the watchman in other prophets—or, shall we say, we have the function of the watchman in other prophets. Habakkuk said:
I will stand upon my watch.
That is the function of the watchman. In Isaiah, we have:
Watchman, what of the night?
Again, we have the function. But no one else was exactly called a watchman as Ezekiel was.
As you have noticed, that title was applied to him at the beginning of his ministry, and later at his recommissioning.
Now, this title and this function need not keep us very long. We just ask ourselves the question: What is the function of the watchman?
First of all, the function of the watchman is to know and to declare the time. The idea of declaring the time has always been associated with the watchman. Right down to modern times, that is true.
I do not know whether it is true in China or in other parts of the world, but until quite recently it was true in Great Britain. In the country places, the watchman went round at certain times of the night, blew his trumpet or rang his bell, and shouted the time.
He would ring his bell and shout, “It is five o’clock in the morning.” That idea is in Isaiah 21. Someone is asking the time:
Watchman, what of the night?
And the watchman answers:
The morning cometh, and also the night.
The first thing about a watchman is that he must know the time. He must know what time it is in the purpose and work of God.
You know, there are a lot of people who are very badly mixed up on this matter. They are trying to do a lot of things out of time. Some people are confused in the dispensations over this.
In this dispensation, God is doing a special thing. There is one particular thing that marks this dispensation in the purpose of God. It is of the greatest importance that you and I know what it is that belongs to this dispensation.
There are all sorts of systems of teaching which have nothing to do with the purpose of this dispensation. They are very interesting. There may be some truth in them, but they are not right in line with God’s specific purpose for this dispensation.
I am not going to take your time this morning to illustrate what I mean, but I could tell you of different systems of truth which have taken people right off the line of God’s specific purpose for now.
It is not always a question of how much error there is in a thing. The real question is: Is that what God is seeking now in this dispensation?
You can usually detect the error by one thing: Has that something to do with this earth now? If it has, then that is not what God is doing in this dispensation.
God is not concerned with doing something on this earth in this dispensation. He is taking out of the nations a people for His name. He is building something in heaven in this dispensation.
Whether it is Israel or anything else, that is not God’s concern in this dispensation. Anything which has only to do with this earth does not belong to this dispensation. That is why the Lord Jesus left this earth and went to heaven.
This dispensation is characterized by a heavenly and not an earthly thing. That is a major test of everything.
Of course, I could spend a lot of time speaking about what God is seeking in this dispensation. That will come later in the book. This morning, we are just underlining this truth: a watchman’s first business is to know the time, and then to give a very clear message as to what the time is.
If his note is not clear and distinct, people will not know what the hour is.
I do ask you brothers in ministry to go and think much about that. The whole matter of how much the Lord is with you will depend upon how much you are with the Lord in the purpose of the hour.
If you are trying to do something that God does not want done at this time, you are wasting your time. You are wasting your strength.
The function of the watchman, then, is to be eyes for the people of God. The second thing is to discern what the situation is and what it will lead to.
All this is contained in this description of the watchman’s work which the Lord gave to Ezekiel. The watchman is looking out. He sees certain things, and he discerns what those things imply.
He sees that certain things mean something evil for the Lord’s people. These are signs that evil is coming. If these things are not guarded against, the result will be death.
Then, on the other side, he sees the way of life. He is able to say, “Now, that is the way of death, and that is the way of life.” The watchman has to be familiar with what is in the way of life and what is in the way of death.
He has to discern the situation and recognize the way in which things are going. It is a very big responsibility.
We are all called to be watchmen, and we must have an unmistakable message. We must understand the things that mean death for the church, because so very much of these prophecies is gathered into this.
All these things that Ezekiel was commanded to do are gathered into that title. Look at Ezekiel 4. You see the strange things that the Lord commanded Ezekiel to do.
He commanded him to take a tile and draw on it a picture of Jerusalem—a picture of Jerusalem under siege. Then he was told to lie on his left side for three hundred and ninety days, and then to lie on his right side for forty days.
He was to uncover his arm before all the people. Then the Lord said that He would put bands upon him so that he could not move. He would make his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth so that he could not speak.
Then he was told that he must become a baker, and he must make enough bread to last three hundred and ninety days. Then he was told to take a sharp razor, shave his head and beard, and weigh the hair in balances.
These are all strange things. He was to do all these things in the sight of all the people.
Then, when you get well on in the book, you come to that very sad thing. In Ezekiel 24, Ezekiel’s wife died, and he was not allowed to mourn for her. He was to go on as though nothing had happened.
Everybody would look at him and say, “This is a scandalous thing. The fellow does not care, although his wife has died. He goes on just as though nothing had happened.” What is all the meaning of this?
It is all gathered into this: “I am your sign.”
It means that the message of Ezekiel was first of all wrought into his own experience. He was taken through the message before he gave it. The things that he was to say were already wrought in his own life.
I do not know how far we are to take this literally, but I will make a suggestion to you: try to lie on your left side for three hundred and ninety days without moving. That is experience. That is painful experience.
The thing has been brought into you by experience. This is not a theory. This is not just an idea. This is something that I have felt in my own being.
You do any of these things, and you see that it is a matter of the thing being personal. It is something that happens to you. That is the whole point.
The messenger must be a personal embodiment of his message. It must not just be things that we say. They must be things that have been brought into our own life.
Ezekiel did not just give a message. Ezekiel was the message. When the people looked at him, they saw the message.
You can see what a big principle that introduces. John put it in this way:
That which was from the beginning,
that which we have heard,
that which we have seen with our eyes,
that which we beheld,
and our hands handled.
There must not be any gap between the teacher and his message. The teacher and the message must be one thing. Our position must not be one of just doctrine or theory. Our teaching must be ourselves. The message must be seen in our history.
This will, of course, explain a lot as to the Lord’s dealings with us. If the Lord really gets hold of us, He will not let us just give out theories. The message will be born out of deep experience.
We take three illustrations. Peter’s commission was to shepherd the flock. In his letters, as you know, he speaks much about this. He speaks to the elders and says:
Tend the flock of God which is among you.
What is the chief feature of a true shepherd? If we take the Lord as the example, the chief feature of a true shepherd is that he lays down his own soul for the sheep.
Notice that I have chosen the word soul. That is the word that the Lord Jesus used. He spoke about the disciples laying down their souls.
Now, Peter had a very strong and big soul. You know how thorough Peter was, and Peter had a big soul. Peter’s great life lesson was how to lay down his own soul.
If the soul is the mind, the feelings, and the will—Peter had a lot of will. We can see what a big one Peter had. He had a mind of his own, and he was always pushing his own ideas to the front.
Peter’s life was in the hard school of having to learn how to lay down his soul. You know the whole life of Peter as we have it in the New Testament shows you how true that was.
Peter was not a professional shepherd. He had had the principle of the shepherd wrought right into his very being.
Paul’s great ministry was concerning the church as the body of Christ. The principles of the body of Christ are relatedness, dependence, heavenliness, and spirituality.
Did not Paul have to have those things wrought into him? When you remember all that Paul was before his conversion, you have the very embodiment of independence, personal action, earthliness, and unspirituality. Saul of Tarsus had no sense of dependence.
See how the Lord took him in hand. Right from the point on the Damascus road, all the way through, he was having to learn these lessons.
Paul was a sign for the dispensation. Think about that. We know the purpose of this dispensation:
It is the church which is His body.
That is not just an idea or a teaching. That is a practical reality. That revelation came to the dispensation through the apostle Paul, and therefore it had to be wrought right into the very constitution of Paul.
All independence had to be destroyed. All unrelatedness had to be removed. All earthly expectations had to be taken away. Paul had to have his whole life constituted on the basis of the message that was given to him.
He was a sign to the dispensation. That is why we make so much of Paul.
Now what about John? What was John’s particular message? The ministry of John particularly related to life. That is the big word of John through all his writings.
John became the embodiment of that principle of life triumphant over death. All the apostles had long gone to the Lord; John was still going on.
He outlived all the others, not because he had an easier time than the others. John suffered with the others. At last, John died as others had died.
But here is a testimony to divine life in spirit, mind, and body. John really personally represented the message that he gave.
Peter, Paul, and John could say, “I am your sign.” Brothers and sisters, you and I have got to be able to say the same.