So, the properties obviously… On the hike, yes, that kind of easy, yes.
I am going to ask you to do something which I think will help me, and I think it will really help you.
When I come to the actual message, I am going to ask you not to write it down, but just to listen to what I am saying. Afterwards, I will go over the points, and if you want to put them down, you can.
I really think that method will help you.
But to begin with, I am just going to give you a very broad outline of this book. This you can put down.
But let me say here that I have no intention of studying the whole of this book. I am just going to take out some of the great features. There is a large middle section that we shall hardly consider at all.
This is one of the most difficult books in the Bible to understand. I expect you have discovered that in reading it. So I will just give you this very broad outline of the whole book.
You want to know, first of all, what the whole book is about. Can we put on the first page anything that sums up the meaning of the whole book? I think we can.
This is the book of the persistent purpose of God: the divine energies in relation to divine purpose.
If you want a New Testament fragment that will explain that, you have it in Ephesians 1:11:
According to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.
Ephesians 1:11 is the key to the book of Ezekiel. That word in Ephesians 1:11, “worketh,” is a strong word.
The Greek word is energeo, which means energy. So that God is energizing all things after the counsel of His own will.
In a special way, that is what we have in this book of Ezekiel. You must read the whole book in the light of Ephesians 1:11. I think we shall see that as we go on.
Now for the broad outline of the book. We begin with the prophet himself and his preparation for his ministry. That covers the first three chapters.
The prophet himself: the prophet’s vision and the prophet’s commission.
The next section is from chapter 4 to chapter 24. That has to do with the nation of Israel.
There are three things in that section about the nation:
Then the next section is from chapter 25 to chapter 32. This section has to do with the nations.
There are, first of all, four nations dealt with, and then there are Tyre and Sidon. There is a very brief interval referring to the restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 28:25-26. Then the judgment of the nations proceeds.
Then we come to section four. This brings us back to Israel, the nation. This section is from chapter 33 to chapter 39.
This section deals with the watchman, the shepherds, the new order, the vision of dry bones, and the last enemy.
Then we come to the fifth and final section. That is the restoration, from chapter 40 to chapter 48.
In that, we have the temple, the land, the people in their inheritance, and the city.
Now, as I said, we are not going to study all that. That is only given to help you get a grasp of the whole of the book.
We come back to our part of the study, and we are still going to spend some time in the first section.
I think it is most important that we should spend much time with this section. I expect that from time to time you will be saying, “Well, I wish he would get on with the book.”
But I am in no hurry to cover a great deal of ground. I want to make sure that we really do get hold of these fundamental lessons.
So we come back to the first three chapters: the prophet’s preparation for his ministry. This is a matter which concerns us very much.
The prophet was prepared for his ministry. For what was true of Ezekiel is true concerning us spiritually.
Yesterday morning, we saw the time factor in his ministry, the situation to which he was called to minister, and the express word of the Lord to him personally.
Now this morning, we come to the vision. You notice what he says:
I was among the captives by the river Chebar;
the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
And I want to say: while the form of these visions will not be repeated in the case of the Lord’s servants, the spiritual principles and meaning must be true of all.
Our purpose is to get behind what is objective to the meaning of things. We shall all the time be trying to get at the spiritual meaning.
You see, the objective side is only the temporary method. It is just the means that God employed for the time being. The spiritual meaning is the permanent and the real.
So we come to the visions: “I saw visions of God.”
That means that the visions came from God. They were visions which God gave him. It meant that they were visions of the goings of God. God was on the move. God was taking a certain course.
And the prophet was given to see the ways that God was taking. That is the meaning of visions of God.
But before he saw visions of God, it says, “The heavens were opened.” I am going to speak mostly about that this morning.
But before I come to that, there are one or two things to say. The visions that were given to Ezekiel varied in time, in nature, and in method.
They varied in time. They did not all come to the prophet at the same time. The Lord gave something to the prophet, and the effect was to bring the prophet down on his face before the Lord. That is what it says at the end of chapter one. Then the Lord put him on his feet.
And this kind of thing happened from time to time. My point is that there were intervals in the prophet’s life, and in those intervals the prophet had to think about what had been shown to him and to adjust himself to what the Lord had shown him.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to put a line underneath that. We must have such intervals in our ministry.
The Lord shows us something; we must take time to consider it, to face what it means and what it implies.
We go on and on, and do not give those periods for quietness with the Lord over what He is saying. There must be a kind of Sabbath quiet to meditate upon what the Lord is showing.
And then we go and give it out, and we go on and on like that. We do not pause to think about what the Lord is really saying, what this really implies, and to adjust ourselves to it.
I believe that a very great deal of the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul came out of his two years’ silence in the desert. He had the vision of the Lord on the way to Damascus. It was a tremendous vision that brought him down on his face.
It required two years of silence to adjust himself to the meaning of that vision.
I have often tried to imagine what was going on during those two years, what it was that Paul had to adjust himself to.
How he had to read all his Bible over again in the light of that vision. He had to reconstruct his whole theology in the light of that vision. He had to think things all over again in the light of that vision.
And I believe that a great deal that we have from Paul came out of those two years.
Now, I am not suggesting that after this training course you go away for two years. I should get myself into trouble with the elder brothers if I suggested this.
But, you see, here is a principle. Ezekiel could not go on with his ministry until he had spent those seven days thinking about what the Lord had shown to him.
My point is that the Lord does not give us everything at once. He waits until we have really understood what He has said, and He waits until we have adjusted ourselves to it.
So be very jealous about these intervals.
Say to yourself from time to time, “I must get away and think about what the Lord has been saying. I must get away from the ministry. I must get away from the work. I must have at least a few hours to think about it all.”
That is of tremendous value. I can say that as my own experience.
Sometimes, if I only take a journey away from things—I may go away in my car, or I may go away by train—just for a few hours, to get right away from everything, and let the meaning of things come back to me afresh.
Do believe me, that is very important. Our ministry will become just words, and very thin, unless it is like that.
We have got to come back again and again altogether fresh.
There is a very great deal of what the Lord has said that lies in the past and has never been applied. It will only really live as we spend quiet time with it.
I believe that it is one of the enemy’s great methods to try to keep us busy all the time.
I can tell you this also out of experience. I went on for a long, long time like that.
“If I am not doing something for the Lord, then I am all wrong. I must keep going on and on.” And I felt very bad inside if I was not busy for the Lord.
But I came to see that that was wrong. Because I did not give the Lord His rest, He took it.
And He put me aside for some weeks, when I could do nothing. And then I started afresh. But in that time the ministry had become a new thing.
We are touching a very important principle here: this matter of periods between revelations.
So it was with Ezekiel. He had his quiet times, not just an hour in the morning, but from time to time he was silent.
Then the visions varied in their nature, and not only in their time. So you have the various kinds of vision. We are not going to stay with these just now; we only mention them.
First of all, there was the vision of the throne. Then we have the vision of the valley of dry bones, the vision of the Lord’s house, the vision of the people in their inheritance, and finally the vision of the city.
We leave those for the time being because we are going to speak more fully of them later.
But, in the third place, the visions varied in method. And this is something we must stay with for a minute.
The visions came in two different ways. Firstly, they came in an objective way. Things were presented to him in vision. Ezekiel was like John on the Isle of Patmos: he saw things in an objective way.
But the visions were not always in that way. There was a second method by which the visions came to Ezekiel, and that method was by the instruction of the Spirit.
And that was the larger method. Of course, these two methods were not always separate, but they do mark a distinction.
In our dispensation, the first method is very uncommon. Paul did have some visions and revelations in the first way.
In 2 Corinthians 12, he says:
I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
I knew a man in Christ fourteen years ago,
such a one caught up even to the third heaven.
Whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not.
Such a one was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words.
Well, that was the first method for Paul. He had those objective visions. The Apostle John had the same. But these were exceptional, and there are very few of us in this dispensation who have that kind of thing.
They usually belong to the beginning of things. The objective side usually relates to beginnings.
I am tempted to enlarge upon that because it is important. Take the whole matter of those spiritual gifts mentioned by Paul, such as the gift of tongues and the gifts of healing. These are the objective things. They belong to the beginnings.
You know, there was a great Chinese man of God. You may have heard his name. If you have not heard of him, he is well known in the West. His life has been written.
And there was one thing which he said that is very illuminating. This is what he said:
“When we were breaking new ground, the Lord gave us many outward signs. He gave the gift of tongues. He gave the gift of working miracles, the gift of healing bodies. All these things were connected with the beginning of things in any place.
“But we noticed that when these believers began to grow up in the Lord, these things were withdrawn. And they had to trust the Lord, not because of signs, but just because of Himself.”
Maturity in the Christian life involves the withdrawing of these things which the Lord gave to the little children. That is very illuminating.
Paul and the other apostles were laying the foundation for this whole dispensation. Therefore, they had the exceptional, and what we might call the abnormal, side of things.
That is the abnormal. What is the normal way in this dispensation?
Now, I said it is the second method that the Lord employed with Ezekiel which had to do with the development of the purpose of God.
When you come to such a great thing as the house of God and the inheritance, it is the Spirit who is doing it all the time.
You notice it is, “The Spirit led me in. The Spirit set me down.” It is all the movement of the Spirit. That is the normal way for this dispensation.
The Lord Jesus Himself said that that would be the normal:
When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth.
He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you.
And the rest of the New Testament is along that line. The normal way is by that ministry of the Spirit.
The apostle prays in this way:
Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
That is, the knowledge of Christ. And you Greek scholars will know that the word “knowledge” there is full knowledge: a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Christ.
Having the eyes of your heart enlightened.
And then the things that you may know are mentioned.
Here is the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to ministry. In relation to the ministry of the church, the church must have the eyes of its heart enlightened.
The church must have a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Christ.
This ought to be the normal life of the church in this dispensation. That it is not the normal life means that things are all wrong.
The church ought to know what is the hope of its calling. It ought to know what the riches of the glory of His inheritance are. It ought to know the exceeding greatness of His power.
This ought to be the normal knowledge of the church for its ministry. So what ought to be true of the whole church ought certainly to be true of its ministers.
This is the meaning of the open heaven. The spirit of wisdom and revelation has been given. The eyes of the heart have been enlightened.
We know the movement of God. We know the way that God is taking. We know the end that God has in view. And we know that God is working all things after the counsel of His own will.
That is what Ezekiel came to see by the open heaven.
God has an end. God is moving toward that end. All the mighty energies of God are directed toward that end.
All these things in heaven and in earth are being governed in relation to that end. This is what Ezekiel saw.
The book is the book of the persistent energies of God toward His end.
We, brothers and sisters, ought to know that in our own experience. Are you saying, “I do not know anything about this”? Are you saying, “That is not my experience”?
What I want to say to you very strongly is that that can be your experience.
This letter relates to the church in the whole dispensation and afterward. We can be in this position.
I expect you are saying, “Well, how can we be there?” It may be one of the questions that you would raise presently.
I would just answer it this way: go and ask the Lord to do this thing in you at any cost, if you will accept the cost.
It was a tremendously costly way for Ezekiel.
That opens out quite a new line. Read through this book and see what it cost the prophet.
There was a time when this vision cost the prophet his wife. His young wife died as a sign to Israel, and many other things were very painful.
It is a costly thing to have the open heaven. The cost may not come to us in the same way, but it may come in the impossibility of being understood by those who have no open heaven.
That is what it meant. They would not give it up for all the popularity in this world.
It is the most precious thing that any man can have: an open heaven, to have this kind of fellowship with God, where God is going on and on, showing ever new things.
If you are prepared to accept the cost, then ask the Lord to make it real.
Do not be surprised if you have what Ezekiel had very soon after his first vision. He said, “I sat for seven days.”
When anyone died, no one was clean for seven days. They mourned for seven days, and they were as dead for seven days.
The eighth day is always the day of new life in the Bible; you know that. But Ezekiel was like a man dead for seven days.
A tremendous effect of vision. It took him through a very painful time.
Do not be surprised if you begin to have a difficult time. That may be a part of the price of a new ministry.
What I mean is this: when we have undertakings with the Lord like this, the Lord usually begins to take us through deep experiences—very real.
Our flesh does want the vision. Our flesh does want the ministry. Our flesh wants all the glory. But the Lord takes action against our flesh.
And we go through a period in which the flesh is brought to death. Then it is quite safe for the ministry.
This is true to experience, and this lies right there at the heart of the ministry of Ezekiel.
I have gone over my time by ten minutes. I promised you that I would go over this and give you all the points.
Perhaps you will have a try at getting them. See what you can put down afterwards, and then we will go over it again some other time.