There are principles which are the key to this book in a special way. We begin by stating one of those principles in another form:
God’s end is always implicit in all His beginnings.
Thus, we have Genesis in the Book of the Revelation, and the Book of the Revelation in Genesis. Try to remember this as we proceed with these studies: God’s end is always present in His beginnings.
Perhaps you would like an illustration of this. We have it in Exodus 15.
Thou in Thy lovingkindness hast led the people that Thou hast redeemed:
Thou hast guided them in Thy strength to Thy holy habitation.
Thou wilt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of Thine inheritance,
The place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in,
The sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established.
Now, do you recognize what that has said? They are just over the Red Sea. This is the song of Moses and all Israel, as they have escaped from Egypt. They have only just begun their journey to Canaan, the land of promise.
“Thou hast guided them in Thy strength to Thy holy habitation.” God is already speaking of the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in—the sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established.
You see, that takes us right on to the end of their history. Hundreds of years would have to pass before the temple was built and the holy mountain was secured. They had to go a long way, for a long time, before they came there.
But here at the beginning, it is spoken of as though it were already accomplished.
Now, I am going to pause for a moment. I do not know whether you will be able to do two things—write and look at me at the same time—but you see from this instance what I mean by God’s end always being right there at the beginning.
Heavenly things always govern all visible things. Spiritual things govern all temporal things. Universal things govern all local things.
That is something you must always remember when you are reading the Bible, and it must be kept in mind as we approach this book of Ezekiel.
Human history is not just human history; it is God’s history. This book of Ezekiel seems to have much earthly history in it, but the truth is that it is all governed by a divine end and purpose.
Now, the big question which we meet right at the beginning of this book is this: Does this book have a message for the church in this dispensation?
Does it merely relate to a period in the past history of the people of Israel? Does it relate to a future dispensation in the matter of prophecy? Or is its main message for the church in this dispensation?
We shall have to face those questions as we move into this book, especially in those parts which we are going particularly to consider.
The answer is found not in the earthly, but in the heavenly; not in the temporal, but in the spiritual.
So we come to the setting and reason for this book. We must recognize when the book was written and why.
What is in this book happened at a time when a whole system had broken down and failed. The cause of that breakdown and failure was that the system became something in itself. It lost its spiritual meaning.
We must recognize that this is something that constantly recurs in the history of the things of God. It happened in Israel. It has happened in Christianity generally. It has happened in many movements and works of God.
A work may begin with a great testimony, but then the whole thing breaks down and completely fails because it loses its spiritual meaning and becomes something in itself.
Yes, Christianity had a wonderful beginning. But, speaking generally, Christianity has broken down and failed. It has become an earthly system, something in itself, and has lost its heavenly meaning.
Now we return to this book of Ezekiel, and we find God moving away from Jerusalem. God is found outside and not inside.
The thing in which God once was has now become an empty shell. That which was once vital and effective, and greatly used of the Lord, has become an empty thing with God on the outside.
That is the setting and the occasion of this book.
Now let us look at the prophet himself. You know that Ezekiel did not begin by being a prophet. He was a trained priest, not a prophet.
At the beginning it refers to the thirtieth year: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year.” The thirtieth year was most probably Ezekiel’s thirtieth birthday.
It was at the age of thirty that priests finished their training and entered upon their ministry. You remember that it was when the Lord Jesus was thirty years of age that He entered upon His ministry. His preparation was finished, and His ministry began.
So, at the age of thirty, Ezekiel ought to have commenced his priestly ministry. But instead of fulfilling his ministry as a priest, he was called to be a prophet.
A prophet is one who represents the full mind of God when that mind has been lost.
It is impressive to note that Ezekiel had to take up something altogether different from that for which he was trained. We shall come back to that again later.
When God moves in relation to His full mind, which has been lost among His people, there are always things essential in the instrument of His movement. If this is going to be done, it is only God Who can do it.
You know, the course of men is quite different from that. The way of men is to take men, train them, and make them able to do the work.
So that when they come out of college or the Bible Institute, they feel that they are equipped for the work. Now, of course, they can do it; they have been trained for it.
I am going to tell you something that you need not put down in your notebook, by way of illustrating what I have just said. This is a very important type.
I know of a certain great Bible institution. In the city where that Bible institute was located, they had every year a great carnival. Everybody in the city was supposed to have some representation in the carnival.
They hired great carts and built upon the carts some representation of their business. It was all done very wonderfully. And so the Bible Institute joined in.
They set up on the cart a representation of the institution. Here was the Bible college. Going in at one end was the farmer with his farm instruments, the engineer with his tools, and all the kinds of trades that you could think of. They were all marching into the Bible Institute.
But then they were coming out at the other end, and you could not recognize them. They had left their old clothes behind. They had left their tools behind. They all had their collars turned round the back way, and they all had black clothes with black hats.
They were now all pastors. They had been through the machine.
That is not what God does. That is a purely mechanical way of making servants of God. Of course, all those men were now qualified for the work.
Ezekiel was not qualified for his work. He was qualified to be a priest, and he was called to be a prophet.
What we find is that all through his life, he never found it easy. You see how difficult his work was. He realized that it was only by the help of God that he could fulfil his ministry.
We all have to begin there if we are really going to minister in heavenly things. We come to realize that we cannot do this work of ourselves; only the Lord can do it.
There was this great sense of disappointment with things as they were—an overpowering sense that things were wrong. The state of things had to become the business of Ezekiel’s life.
You will have to begin there if you are really going to be used of God. You will have to be overwhelmed with the sense that things are all wrong, that things are not as they ought to be.
You have no ability to put them right, but you sense that God has called you to this. Your ability to do anything must come from God Himself.
That is where we begin with Ezekiel. God calls men and women in relation to this situation, and their call changes the whole course of their life.
In the call is the consciousness that they have no ability in themselves to meet the situation, but God Who has called them will be their sufficiency.
I have read the first three chapters of this book into what I have just said. Take one little fragment: it was the commission of Ezekiel.
Son of man, I send thee not to a people of a strange speech and of a hard language, but to the house of Israel.
If I had sent thee to them, they would have hearkened unto thee.
But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee.
Only the Lord could carry a man through that. But then notice what the Lord says as to divine equipment:
Behold, I have made thy face hard against their faces, and thy forehead hard against their foreheads.
In other words, the Lord is going to be the strength of this difficult work.
Then we notice another thing. With this sense of disappointment, this change in the course of life, and this having to take a way for which there was no natural equipment, there goes a second great factor: Ezekiel was given a vision of the Lord.
These two things always go together. If we have disappointment and dissatisfaction without vision, that is negative.
There are plenty of people who are dissatisfied with things as they are. They are the people who can always see what is wrong. They can point their finger at the weaknesses and faults. They are experts in criticizing everything.
With dissatisfaction there must go vision. Vision without travail and suffering of heart is mere mysticism.
These two things must go together. If you or I feel dissatisfied, we ought to be in possession of the knowledge of what the Lord really does want. We ought to have a positive vision of the purpose of God.
Now I want to stop here and say a word to the preachers. Let us read these first verses:
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, the word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was there upon him.
I want to say a word at this point to the preachers. What Ezekiel was about to do had a special date for its beginning. It is very impressive how particular Ezekiel is about dates in his prophecy. If you read through these prophecies, you will see that he is very particular about dates.
That gives us our first point for preachers: ministry, according to God’s mind, must have a message for the time.
It will not do for us to give out things merely in a general way. Our Bible teaching must not be merely of a general character. What God needs more than anything is men who have a message for the present hour.
When we have finished our life and our ministry, it ought to be possible for it to be said of us, “That man had a message for his time.” He was not merely one in the general mass of teachers or preachers, but he had God’s word for that hour in the purpose of God.
Now, you preachers, ask the Lord to make that true of you: that it can be recognized that your ministry relates to the present time—to what God wants to do now.
That is a very important factor in ministry. What does God need at this time? We must pray that we shall be the Lord’s instruments for the present time, and that there shall be a very clearly defined time factor in our ministry.
So the date is a very important thing in ministry. When God really raises up men, He raises them up for a time.
Next, note that Ezekiel was raised up in relation to the special situation at that time.
What we have just read shows that Ezekiel was right there in the situation: “I was among the captives by the river Chebar.”
Ezekiel was not preaching to a situation distant from himself. He was not preaching to a situation that he imagined to exist. He was not preaching to a situation that had merely been reported to him.
He was right in that situation. He was in the closest personal touch with the need. The need was his need. He was put right into the heart of the situation.
His ministry came out of that, and that takes ministry out of the realm of the merely theoretical and puts it into the very practical.
You will notice that this was true of all the prophets. They did not merely speak to the Lord about the Lord’s people: “They are in this situation. They have done these things. They have these needs.”
The prophets spoke to God in this way: “We are in this distress.” Read the prayer of Daniel. They were a part of the situation.
You and I, if we are to be effective ministers, must be there. This ministry has to be very personal.
You notice what it says in verse 3: “The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest.” That means two things.
First, Ezekiel did not get his ministry out of books. He did not fulfil a second-hand ministry. His ministry was not the result merely of study. This came to him personally.
These visions of God were his own. His message was original and not second-hand. It must be like that. Our ministry must be the result of something that God has said to us personally.
Then, “the word of the Lord came expressly.” That meant there was an urgency about it. You know the meaning of that word. You speak about an express train. What do you mean by an express train? One that must get there quickly. It is very urgent.
You remember the word of the apostle: “The Spirit speaketh expressly.” There is urgency about this. The word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel.
There is something very urgent about this. You have got to get there as soon as you can. There is very serious business on hand. All your energies must be concentrated upon this subject.
That is how it has got to be with us. There has got to be a tremendous urgency about our ministry. There are very great issues at stake.
When you deliver your message, you may say to yourself, “I am now going to influence lives, perhaps for all time and all eternity.”
We shall see the great river. We shall see the great house. We shall come to the wonderful city. Then, at the end, we shall come to “The Lord Is There.”
But you cannot come to understand all that until you see the kind of man that God needs for His purpose. This is the kind of man that He needs.
The things that I have just said are the things which make up the kind of man needed. I would like you to go back over them again.
Remember that this is a man whose whole life has been revolutionized by the purpose of God. God’s need has changed the whole course of his life. God’s need has disappointed him so far as his natural life is concerned.
Something of the disappointment and dissatisfaction of the heart of God has entered into this man’s life.
I do try to lay hold of that this morning, because it was on that very thing that God moved all the way through history.
I suppose Abraham was, for most of his life, very satisfied with Ur of the Chaldees. He had all that he wanted there. But then there began to come into his heart a great dissatisfaction with that life, and his heart was reaching out for something that he did not know.
All he could say was, “This is not what I was made for. I am sure that there is something more in life than this. There must be some greater purpose and meaning than this. This does not satisfy me.”
It was on that ground that God moved in his life. It was God working into Abraham His own dissatisfaction. When that dissatisfaction was there, God could give the positive side of what really was His purpose.
That was true of all the great servants of God. I believe it was true of Moses. I am sure it was true of Ezekiel. I believe that we can detect even in Saul something of dissatisfaction.
God prepares His way like that. We must have this in us before God can do anything else. In order to bring His great positive purpose in, He must write the negative in our hearts.
This is the way of our service. On the one side, it is disappointment; on the other side, it is God’s appointment.
Then there is the consciousness of having no natural ability, and of all ability having to come from God Himself. It is a work that no man could do, and certainly no work that any man would take upon himself.
But God had taken hold of this man. Everything that happened to him was because the hand of the Lord was upon him.
This morning I am going to finish there. It is a matter of the hand of the Lord being upon us. If the hand of the Lord is upon us, then we cannot help ourselves.
We just cannot help it. We have got to go on. You remember what Jeremiah, and other prophets, said about this.
Because the people would not listen, and because his ministry meant so much suffering, Jeremiah decided never to speak again. He was going to give up preaching the word of God.
But then he said, “While I kept silent, the word of the Lord was as a fire in my bones.” Then he broke all his resolutions and began to speak again. He just could not do otherwise.
You see how the hand of the Lord moved Ezekiel everywhere. He was a man under the hand of the Lord.
Do pray that you may be like this: that it will not be your choice one way or the other, but that your life will be what it is because the hand of the Lord is upon you.
The Lord needs men and women like that. Pray that you may be like this—not in the thing because you like it, nor because you have any qualification for it, but because the hand of the Lord is upon you.
To take yourself out of this work would be to take yourself out of the hand of the Lord.
If it is like that, you will have a message for the time. You will have a message for the situation. You will feel the urgency of this message. The word will be like a fire in your bones.
The Lord make us all messengers like this.
Now you can see what I meant at the beginning. It is spiritual value that matters: men and women like this. That is spiritual effect.
You ask the Lord to make you like that—a person burdened by the Lord. On the one side, you have seen what is wrong. On the other side, you have seen what God wants. You feel that He has laid His hand on you in relation to that.
The Lord make that true of all of us.