Sermon Tone Analysis

It doesn’t take long in reading Ezekiel before noticing that this is not going to be an easy book to understand.

The opening vision of chapter 1 is filled with images it’s hard to visualize, and even more challenging to interpret.

If you feel lost already, or are having trouble being as excited about studying Ezekiel as you were about studying Romans, take heart.

We’ve got some tools at our disposal to make some real progress.

I don’t imagine that many of us are going to be able to spend hours upon hours digging deep into Ezekiel’s enigmas.

I, of course, have that privilege and honor, and I invite you to go as deep with me as you can.

There are plenty of good resources and commentaries available to us—again I say it is a blessing to be this far into Christian history (2000 plus years!) and be able to build on the studies of others.

At the same time, there needs to be a caution stated here.

The enigmatic nature of a book like Ezekiel is a breeding ground for even more bizarre interpretations.

We’re going to have to be careful with settling on firm convictions on what an image means without good support for that view.

This is good practice for Christians because interpreting Ezekiel is much like interpreting Revelation, a New Testament book which has spawned all sorts of wild ideas and theologies, some of which have dominated the minds of Christians for generations, making it seem heretical to suggest a different—even if more historical interpretation.

Many have just assumed there is some secret rapture of Christians away from the earth before a great tribulation comes and have therefore found some way to find this rapture in Revelation.

Surprise: it’s not there.

And we really shouldn’t be convinced that the mysterious locusts in Revelation 9 are Apache helicopters, either.[1]

In the same way, let’s not entertain the idea that Ezekiel’s experience in this first chapter was him seeing some alien spaceship.[2]

We can do better than that.

And we need to do better, because the imagery in Revelation depends quite a bit on the experience of Ezekiel.

John’s vision of the heavenly throne in Revelation 4 uses no less than a dozen descriptions taken from Ezekiel 1.[3]

This suggests that the dawning of the Christian era did not leave Ezekiel locked up in the dusty archives but saw it as the foundation for understanding Jesus and his achievement and the worldview that his followers must now hold and out of which they should operate.

So, we had best pay attention and try to understand Ezekiel, and we begin with his inaugural vision in chapter 1. Let’s see what happened to him, what he saw, and how he responded.

What Happened to Ezekiel

First, what was this life-changing experience that Ezekiel had?

He tells us that “in the thirtieth year [of his life], in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as [he] was among the exiles by the Chebar canal”—a resettlement site in Babylonia for some of the Jewish exiles—“the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” Thanks to Ezekiel’s precision, we can be pretty sure of the exact date: July 31, 593 B.C.[4]But what was this experience he had on that day?

The Heavens Were Opened

Ezekiel says that “the heavens were opened.”

The only other place in the Old Testament where we find this expression is in the narrative of Noah’s Flood where it basically means it began to rain (Gen 7:11).

But, of course, that was not just any kind of rain; it was rain that signaled the beginning of God’s judgment on the world.

In the New Testament, we find the expression a few times.

After Jesus was baptized, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him" (Matt 3:16).

Just before he died, Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saw “the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).

The meaning of the phrase is clear.

The opening of the heavens means that one is enabled to see “behind the scenes,” getting a glimpse of what is happening in the spiritual realm.

But this is not just some esoteric experience disconnected from the realities of life on earth.

Ezekiel is not having a psychedelic experience.

He was not smoking weed here.

When the king of Syria surround Elisha with a massive army, Elisha’s servant cried out, “What are we going to do?” Elisha asked the Lord to “open his eyes that he may see.”

And God did, and the servant saw “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

It wasn’t an hallucination, because the army of Syria was subsequently defeated (2 Kings 6:14-23).

Ezekiel’s experience here was one in which he was enabled to see something real, something meaningful for real life as an exile in Babylon.

Visions of God

Ezekiel tells us that when “the heavens were opened,” he saw visions of God.

The phrase alone is ambiguous.

It could mean Ezekiel saw God, but that’s not how Ezekiel uses the expression elsewhere (Ezek 8:3; 40:2).

He uses this phrase to mean that he saw something which mortals could normally not see.[5]

Now, at the end of the chapter, Ezekiel does tell us that his experience was an encounter with God, or, at least, a very close encounter with God.

The word translated visions is not the typical word used for a prophetic experience.

Where we find this word, it seems to communicate a more direct experience.

In fact, the only other person in the Old Testament who makes the claim that Ezekiel makes here is Moses.

Ezekiel’s experience is comparable only to Moses and his encounter with God at the burning bush.[6]

In other words, we should think of Ezekiel’s experience here not so much as a vision of God in some sort of dream-like state.

This is an actual encounter, happening in time and space.

If we had been with him, we would have seen what he saw, just like if we had been with Moses, we would have seen a bush on fire but, mysteriously, not consumed.

What Ezekiel Saw

So what did Ezekiel see?

In verse 4, he begins to describe it to us.

The Wind and the Cloud

Ezekiel’s encounter begins with “a stormy wind” coming from the north.

He observes “a great cloud” that cannot be missed because it was glowing: there was “brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal.”

Notice the words “as it were.”

One of the difficulties with understanding this encounter is that it seems Ezekiel himself did not understand it much.[7]What he describes throughout the first chapters is largely done by comparison: it looked like this, it was sort of like that.

But the wind and the cloud resembles quite a bit the description of Yahweh in Psalm 18 and elsewhere throughout the Old Testament, where an encounter with Yahweh is often described as an encounter with a thunderstorm.

This imagery is used because, for an agricultural people, the thunderstorm was the best metaphor to describe absolute power which could sustain life or just as easily destroy it.[8]

So, Ezekiel knows right away he is encountering the God of Israel, complete with his absolute power, but he sees more.

The Four Living Creatures

In verses 5-14, Ezekiel describes “the likeness of four living creatures” which came out of the midst of the cloud.

Again, it is hard to imagine the scene.

These creatures had a human likeness, but they also had four faces each—the face of a human as well as the face of a lion, an ox, and an eagle.

They also had four wings each, but human hands.

They were glowing and they also moved rapidly, darting like a flash of lightning.

Imagination, run wild!

There exist several portraits in church history attempting to represent the vision.

Ezekiel himself tells us in chapter 10 that these living creatures were Cherubim; if so, they certainly don’t look like the fat-faced angelic infants in so much western art.

Don’t let your imagination get too far out of hand!

The cherubim are commonly understood as angels, but our category “angels” is far too broad.

We usually use it to define all spirit beings except the one true God.

But “angel” simply describes the lower-level responsibility of a divine messenger.

In the spirit realm, the Bible suggests a more defined hierarchy, with some spirit-beings as messengers but others as having higher-level responsibilities.[9]The

cherubim apparently have the responsibility of bearing the divine throne; they signify the resting place of God’s invisible presence.[10]

This fits, of course, with the appearance of the cherubim here in Ezekiel 1. Their appearance here means Ezekiel has come into the holy of holies, into the very presence of Yahweh.

As a priest-in-training, Ezekiel would have been preparing for such encounters; as an exile to Babylon his hopes for ever having one were diminishing.

But now he was experiencing it.

Right here.

In Babylon!

And since we’ve seen that this was not a mere vision, but a face-to-face encounter, we can, with Ezekiel, begin to understand some implications that come from this encounter.

The presence of God was not confined to the temple in Jerusalem.

The wings of the cherubim suggest that as bearers of God’s throne, his throne is in motion.

Ezekiel notices in verses 9 and 12 that these throne bearers moved to and fro, like a flash of lightning, though always without turning.

As for their four faces, the lion, ox, and eagle are not arbitrary; they were representative in Israel’s own history and in other ancient near-eastern cultures as the epitome of strength (lion), vitality (ox), and mobility (eagle).

The human was understood as the epitome of creaturely wisdom.

The point being communicated is that as bearers of the divine throne, the one who sits above the four living creatures possesses in himself the combination of all prowess.

He possesses an abundance of power.[11]

But as creatures, these four cherubim tell us something else.

They tell us that the spirit realm is not altogether distinct from the natural realm.

In our terms, “heaven” and “earth” are connected, and Yahweh rules them both.[12]When he takes the throne of one, he takes the throne of both, like King Charles who, having become king of England, also becomes the head of the countries that are part of the British commonwealth.

And the number four suggests the four points of the compass, over which God reigns with omnipotence and omnipresence.

God’s power and might are not seen in supernatural or miraculous events, but, more pervasively, in the ordinary occurrences that happen every day and every moment.

The Wheels

The next specific feature of Ezekiel’s encounter with God are the four wheels, one for each of the creatures.

Notice that the wheels were “on the earth” and “beside the living creatures,” again showing us the connection between heaven and earth.

That we are still gazing with Ezekiel at a divine reality is indicated by the “gleaming of beryl.”