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Ezekiel 11
! I. Introduction
It interested me, when I was younger, that my father was born in Moscow, Russia (bring birth certificate).
That was not their home, but his parents were in Moscow trying to get out of Russia just at the time when he was born.
They did not succeed in getting out, but were sent back to their home in the Crimea and so my father grew up in Russia.
When they returned to where they had lived, other people had taken their house because they thought they were not coming back and so for the next 10-12 years, they lived in a different house.
Then in the early 1940’s, they were sent away from their home again.
The Russians tried to send them to Siberia, but the German army came into the land and they, being considered Germans, were saved from that fate.
For a number of years, they lived as refugees – no home, no land, dependent on others.
Because the Germans were helping them they were cared for to a degree.
The same thing happened to my mother and her family.
At one point, they were given a home to live in that had belonged to someone else.
The other family was still in the area and my grandmother said that it was very uncomfortable to be put in someone else’s house, especially because they knew what it was like to have their own house taken from them.
These stories of loss of place, of being refugees are a part of my history.
I have heard them from when I was young and have gained somewhat of an appreciation for the difficulties which refugees face and what it feels like to be displaced.
Some of you are living in the house your grandparents lived in.
I, on the other hand, have no sense of a place which I can call an ancestral home.
My parents grew up in Russia and came to Canada.
There is no one of the family living in the place where I grew up.
Since we were married we have moved about 9 times.
We do not live in the place where our children grew up.
Perhaps that is why part of the discussion which takes place in Ezekiel 11 makes sense to me.
As you may recall, Nebuchadnezzar had come to Jerusalem and captured it and had sent a large number of the people to Babylon.
I can identify with those exiles.
Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar had given governance of Jerusalem to those who were left behind and they promptly took over the properties of those who had been taken away.
In chapter 11, Ezekiel has a vision about the people who have been left in Jerusalem.
He explains this vision to the exiles in Babylon.
In the vision, God reveals that the people in Jerusalem are not following Him, but “are plotting evil and giving wicked advice.”
In verse 2, he quotes one of their sayings.
Their motto was, “Is it time to build houses?
This city is a cooking pot, and we are the meat.”
What was going on?
There are several things which this saying reveals about their attitudes and about what was happening.
The phrase, “we are the meat” means that just as the meat is the choicest part of a pot of stew, they thought that they were the favoured ones and those who had gone into exile were the rejected ones.
They considered the exiles as rejected by God.
Later in verse 15, they say, “They are far away from the Lord; this land was given to us as our possession.”
They had acted on this belief by taking over the houses of the people who had gone into exile.
The question, “Is it time to build houses?”
therefore expects the answer, “no.”
They did not need to build houses.
In fact, what they did have to spend their energy on was defending themselves against the Babylonians who were coming again.
They knew this and the advice of the leaders was, “it is time to prepare for war.”
They wanted to revolt against Babylon.
But, they were over-confident.
The phrase “Jerusalem is the pot” was their way of saying that we, the choice people, will be protected by the fact that we are in the chosen city of Jerusalem.
We are safe from attack and everything is going to be OK.
But as Ezekiel prophecies, he prophecies that things are going to be very different.
He first of all warns the people who are still in Jerusalem.
He rewords their saying and says, “The bodies you have thrown there are the meat and this city is the pot.”
In other words, it is not the residents of Jerusalem who are the choice pieces of meat, that is, the chosen people of God.
Those who have died are better off than those still living in Jerusalem.
This is a completely different way of thinking than those living there expected.
Then he goes on, still referring to their saying that Jerusalem was the pot, but warning that the pot was not a place of safety.
He warns that they would be taken out of the pot – that is out of Jerusalem and we read in verse 10, “You will fall by the sword, and I will execute judgement on you at the borders of Israel.”
According to II Kings 25:18-21 many of the people who were now still in Jerusalem were killed at Riblah near Israel’s northern border.
Remember that Ezekiel is prophesying this to the exiles in Babylon.
The prophecy sounds like bad news all around.
It is bad news to hear that the people in Jerusalem think that the exiles are unworthy and rejected of God.
But it is also bad news that God is going to destroy Jerusalem.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to hear these things as a person in exile in Babylon?
Your house has been taken by someone else.
You are considered as rubbish because you are no longer in the promised land.
You can’t go back home because it is going to be destroyed.
This would, of course, have made a terrible situation for the people in exile.
They would have asked, “Where is God?
Are we accepted by God?
What is God going to do with his people?”
It was a terrible time, a terrible feeling.
They were abandoned by the people and they were not sure if God was with them.
All their life they had learned that God was in Jerusalem.
Now they were not in Jerusalem and God was going to destroy Jerusalem.
What hope was there?
The news gets worse at the end of the chapter Ezekiel sees a picture of the glory of God leaving the temple and the city of Jerusalem.
In other words, God has abandoned the city.
As they heard this, they must have wondered, “Has God abandoned His people?”
Are there times when you wonder where God is? Are there times in your life when you think that perhaps God has forgotten you?
Are there times when you admire the work God is doing in other places in the world, but you don’t see God at work in your own world?
Are there times when you recognize the sin in your own life and wonder if you will ever change?
Are there times when difficulties, trials or hardships make you question what God is doing or if he even cares?
That is how the people of Israel who were in exile in Babylon were feeling.
They were abandoned by their people and abandoned by God.
What hope was there?
God answers this devastating message with a word of hope in Ezekiel 11:16-20.
Let us read these verses.
In these verses, God promises three wonderful things.
He promises first of all in verse 16 that He has not abandoned them, but that rather than being with them in Jerusalem, he will be with them in the lands to which they have been scattered.
This was good news to the exiles.
God was with them!
The second promise is found in verse 17.
There he promises that he will bring them back to the land and give them the promised land once again.
This promise began to be fulfilled about 70 years later when Ezra and Nehemiah brought some of these people and their descendants back to the land and built the temple and the city once again.
It will be completely fulfilled when all of God’s people will be in the New Jerusalem when Christ returns.
The third promise is that God would renew them spiritually.
Israel was in this position because of sin.
But God promised that he would renew them so that they would not live in sin, but have the power to live in a new way.
This is the story of Ezekiel 11, and this morning, I would like to focus on two of the encouraging phrases that appear in Ezekiel 11:16-20.
I would like to encourage us with hope because in this chapter we see something about how God works and what He is going to do in us.
!
II.
God Says, “I Will!”
Please look in your Bibles at verses 16-20.
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