Ezekiel - Lesson 2

Session 2, In the Service of the King of Kings, Ezekiel's Ordination Vision, Ezekiel 1.1 and 1.4 to 28a. Here I must begin with some introductory comments. What do you say to people whose God has abandoned them? Many of us are familiar with Elie Wiesel, probably the most famous Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and the author of the book Night, which is mandatory reading in courses on the Holocaust around the world. According to reviewer Ron Rosenbaum, through this book and other publications and his lectures, quote, Elie Wiesel had become a living icon, a symbol of suffering, of survivorhood, of piety and pressure, who seemed to have come to comfortable terms with the cause of rage. Who has long been a model of deportment? Sad, sad, but quietly sad, not a troublemaker, not one to make the world look in the mirror and see the face of a murderer. How angry should one get? How long, how much should one care? He made it possible, Elie Wiesel, to think we could make peace with such a God, to still say the prayers, to not think too deeply about what that meant. He symbolically saved us the trouble, erased the angst, allowed us to pretend we had forgotten the quarrel, to go back to worshiping the nebbish. End of quotation. On May 1, 2016, the world was shocked to learn that there was another side to Elie Wiesel. The version of Night that has been translated into 35 languages and sold more than 10 million copies gives a sanitized vision of the author, Elie, that differs significantly from an earlier version that portrays Wiesel as angry with everyone, including God. While scouring through 330 boxes of Wiesel's documents archived at Boston University, Professor Yoel Rappel discovered a Hebrew first draft of Night that paints a different picture of the man. In this version, Wiesel writes, quote, We believed in miracles and in God, and not in fate, and we fared very badly not believing in fate. If we had, we could have prevented many catastrophes. There is no longer a God in the heavens, he whispered with every step we put on the ground. There is no longer God in the heaven, and there is no longer man on earth below. The universe is divided into angels of death and the dead. So I stopped praying, Elie Wiesel talking, and didn't speak about God. I was angry at him. I told myself he does not deserve us praying to him. And really, does he hear our prayers? Why sanctify him? For what? For the suffering he rains on our heads for Auschwitz and Birkenau? This time we will not stand as the accused in court before the divine judge. This time we are the judges and he the accused. We are ready. There are a huge number of documents in our indictment file. They are living documents that will shake the foundations of justice. So much the first draft of Night for Elie Wiesel. Really? Is this the real Elie Wiesel? We know this is how many Jewish people felt in the wake of the Holocaust of the Second World War, but not Elie Wiesel, surely. And if you visit Holocaust memorials like Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, you can understand why. Elie Wiesel's words remind me of how the people of Judah felt in the aftermath of the events that Ezekiel addressed in the book we know by his name. In the face of horrendous tragedies and expressions of evil like the Holocaust of the fourth and fifth decades of the 20th century, the Holocaust of AD 70 when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered its Jewish inhabitants, and the Holocaust of 586 BC when the Babylonians ransacked the city. Then as now, the question is, where is God when these atrocities happen? And even more pointedly, where is the God of the Jews whose identity is so tied to him and who had promised to be their patron and protector forever? Where is he when we need him? Why has he abandoned us again and again and again? Well, how do you answer those questions? These are the issues Ezekiel and his people faced in the early decades of the sixth century BC, and these may in fact be the issues that we face in our own personal lives. While as a community we may not be going through hell, that's Wiesel's word, in some parts of the world people are, and individually some of us are going through dark valleys, and we may well be asking, where's God in this picture? Why has he abandoned me? By the time we've worked our way through the book of Ezekiel, we will have learned his answers to these questions. Actually, we will have learned God's answers, for the whole book of Ezekiel is cast as God's speech. These are not Ezekiel's words that we read. They're not the prophet's words. They're God's words. We may not always like what we hear. There will be times when the prophet challenges our facile and trite theological responses. God always does what is right, does he really? But relax, all things work together for good. That's what we are told with our theological cliches. It will turn out right in the end, or sometimes, worst of all, we say, praise the Lord anyhow, in spite of. Well, I pray that there will also be times when, as we work through this book, we will hear echoes of the very last words in the book, Yahweh shema, Yahweh is there. This is a book about the God who leaves and then comes back. In biblical times, you did not need to be an Orthodox Israelite to agree with a psalmist. The person who says in his heart, there is no God, is a fool. In Ezekiel's time, everyone believed in God, or a God, or the gods. The problem the prophet faced was not atheism, but loss of confidence in Yahweh, the God of Israel. Where is Yahweh when we need him? The people's cynicism and skepticism concerning the presence of Yahweh is illustrated dramatically in the prophet's first temple vision in chapters 8 to 11, but especially in chapter 8. Although the prophet was in Babylon, in this visionary tour of the temple in Jerusalem, he observed a series of abominations being perpetrated by his own people, those who call themselves the people of Yahweh. At the north entrance of the outer gate, we saw that the people have enthroned an idol of passion that provokes passion. That's chapter 8, verses 3 to 6. Second, in one of the rooms that made up the wall of the inner court in the darkness, he saw 70 elders holding censers before 70 pagan images with the intent of soothing the deities with the smell of the incense. And the prophet quoted their rationale, Yahweh doesn't see, Yahweh has abandoned the land, verse 12. Then at the entrance of the gate of the inner court, number 3, the third scene, he observed women weeping the Tammuz. This dirge was named after the deity Tammuz, who in Babylon mythology died every summer at the end of the growing season and would descend to the netherworld. There he would stay until spring when he would be resurrected. This event was commemorated in the Babylonian temples by groups of women lamenting the death Tammuz. Apparently, back in Jerusalem, the people had applied that Babylonian lament to Yahweh. He had not only abandoned the land, but like Tammuz, he had died. God is dead, which made it necessary for the people to turn to other gods. Yahweh obviously could not help them. And then there's a fourth scene. Once inside the inner court in front of the altar at the entrance of the temple building, he saw 25 men prostrating themselves before the rising sun, which meant that they were actually mooning Yahweh in the holy of holies inside the temple. Despicable actions these were. These scenes give us an idea of the challenges that faced Ezekiel. Where's God when you need him? What do you say to people whose God represented their security, but who apparently did not see your desperate need? And what do you say to a people whose God has died, who in your hour of greatest need doesn't show up? These questions set the agenda for our study of Ezekiel. So, let's begin. We're in for an awesome and hopefully transformative ride. I must begin with a few additional introductory comments to help us understand both the book and the prophet after whom it's named. For many, if not most Christians, the prophet Ezekiel is too strange. His book is too complex. It's too bizarre to get much serious attention. In fact, when I was working on my commentary almost 40 years ago, hard to believe, people learned that I was living with Ezekiel. People, and if when they learned that I was living with Ezekiel, they would say, really? Why do you do that? My own sister said, why do you study Ezekiel? So, the prophet remains a mystery. My own encounter with this man and his work was a protracted 15-year wrestling match, trying to wrest from him, this book, some sort of sense of his prophecies. As I wrestled with the prophet, I was driven by three or four questions. One, Ezekiel, what are you saying? What are the words he uses? These are text-critical questions. Two, Ezekiel, why do you say it like that? Now, those are cultural and literary questions, and sometimes you don't understand the answer. You don't understand Ezekiel because you haven't answered this question. That's chapter one that we're going to look at in a moment. Third question, Ezekiel, what do you mean? That's the hermeneutical and theological question. And then four, Ezekiel, why is your message important to me? This is the question of relevance. As we launch this series of lectures on this book, my prayer is that its message will grip us the way it obviously gripped the prophet, and that it will transform our thinking about our relationship with God and what it means to be called to be his agents of grace and blessing in a lost and dying world where God has disappeared. If people know anything about Ezekiel at all, they know him for his visions. This book records four visions which, when viewed together, provide an outline for his professional career. Vision number one, chapter one, verses 1 to 28, it introduces the prophet to the true spiritual realities and prepares him for the mission to follow. Two, the first temple vision, that's chapter eight, provides theological justification for the destruction of Jerusalem, chapter 8 to 11. Three, the vision of the dry bones in chapter 37, it announces to Ezekiel and his countrymen the hope of renewal. And then four, the final great temple vision, a fabulous vision, chapters 40 to 48, in which he describes in detail the nature of the renewed covenant people and their relationship to Yahweh, expressed in full ethical obedience and true worship. The occasions of three of these four visions was so significant personally and historically that each one has preserved a date notice. You have it in 1, 1 to 3, 8, 1, and 40, verse 1. The only one that doesn't have a date notice is chapter 37. So let's begin with the context of Ezekiel's inaugural vision. Ezekiel's first vision obviously had a profound rhetorical intention, but it was not intended for Ezekiel's audience. It's important when we read this chapter to realize here God is talking to Ezekiel. This is a private vision in which Yahweh is the rhetor, the speaker, and Ezekiel is the audience. Its purpose was to change Ezekiel's thinking about historical and theological realities, particularly the spiritual condition of his people, and to bring Ezekiel to the point of accepting the divine call to prophetic service. We don't know if Ezekiel ever shared this vision with his countrymen, but here we have it. It opens up the book. Ezekiel's opening vision was cast as part of a broader narrative that functioned as a long and complex what we call call narrative. In the first testament, we find numerous accounts of God calling people to serve him in some way. He called Abraham to be an agent of universal blessing at the fountainhead of Israel's history, Genesis 12. He called Moses to go and get the Israelites out of Egypt, Exodus 3-4. He called Barak to go and lead the way against the Canaanites, Judges 4. He called Gideon, and he calls the prophets. We have the call of Isaiah in chapter 6 and Jeremiah in chapter 1. And in the New Testament, he called Paul as he was on the way to Damascus. In Acts chapter 9, he called him to be his agent of grace and mercy to the Gentiles. Well, we may divide these call narratives into two types. There are protested calls in which the person being called doesn't want to go – that's Moses, that's Jeremiah, that's Gideon. And then we have overwhelming calls in which the Lord shows up and reveals something about himself that makes people just fall down on the ground. This is Isaiah, this is Ezekiel, and this is Paul, as we will see later. This account, though, falls somewhere between these two categories. It began with a vision of God more overwhelming than any other, but it raises plenty of nagging questions about Ezekiel, suggesting that he, like his contemporary Jeremiah, was resistant to this call. But we'll leave that for the next session. Now, when we look at chapter 1, most people view this as Ezekiel's call to prophetic ministry. As I suggested in the opening introductory session, this was actually part of Ezekiel's ordination to priestly ministry. For this reason, I prefer to speak of him as the prophetic priest, where priest is his official office, and prophet is the modifier, rather than the priestly prophet. This explains the reference to his 30th year in verse 1, that is, the age in which he would have been inducted to priestly service had he remained in Jerusalem. And I sometimes think that as this vision comes to him, Ezekiel is by the river Kabar sulking because he should be at home being ordained to ministry. And guess what? God shows up and says, I'm going to ordain you here and now, and that's what happens here. It also explains the stamp of a priestly heritage that is recognizable throughout the book, especially the access to the temple. There will be two occasions in which Ezekiel takes a tour of the holy place, and if he is not an ordained priest, he's not authorized to go into those buildings. So, an ordination is necessary in order for those later visions to work. But in exile, away from the temple and away from the altar, he obviously couldn't do those regular things, those cultic duties that we normally associate with priests, sacrifices, overseeing religious festivals, taking care of the temple. So, in this book, we see the other pastoral side of priestly ministry alluded to in Deuteronomy 33.10, Moses' blessing for the Levites, and summarized in Malachi 2.5-9, that is, teaching and calling people to live according to the Torah. This is what Ezekiel would spend his life doing. His fellow Judeans would treat him as a spinner of parables and an entertainer, but this would not stop him from relentlessly calling his people to account, charging them with persistent rebellion against Yahweh and warning of their doom. From this book, it appears his preaching had virtually no impact on his audience during his lifetime. But the example of Ezekiel continues to inspire many who are called to divine service to proclaim the Word of God with all the rhetorical force possible and to remain faithful to the calling even when there is no fruit for their labors. We'll have more to say on that later. So, let's look at the nature of the account of Ezekiel's Inaugural Vision 1.4-28. No call narrative in the first testament is as complex and involved as Ezekiel's. It'll take us three sessions to get through it. It covers full three chapters at the beginning of the book and divides into six discrete parts, each of which plays a different but important role in Ezekiel's induction, installation into divine service. Of course, we saw already 1.1-3, that's the superscription. 2.1.4-28, Ezekiel's Inaugural Vision. 3. The commissioning of Ezekiel, 1.28b-3.11. 4. The preparation of Ezekiel for his ministry, 3.12-15. 5. Yahweh's induction speech for Ezekiel, this is quite an ordination sermon. 4. Case studies, 3.16-21. And then 6. The initiation of the prophet, 3.22-27. So, that's the context. When we study this opening vision, we are hit immediately by a text so difficult that many stop reading the book. We slam it shut and say, I don't get it. The renowned Puritan scholar William Greenhill characterized this chapter as full of majesty, obscurity, and difficulty. What's going on here? Well, trust me, the difficulties are much greater in the Hebrew than in our English translations. The point of translation is usually to make the text clear, but in this case, in making it clear, we've actually clouded it because the text is not clear in the Hebrew. We try to smooth out everything and sanitize everything, which is a barrier to present readers. The problems in the book are in six categories. 1. Morphology. The way he spells words is really odd at times. He gets the wrong spelling. 2. Grammar. He confuses gender and number, things that should be rendered as gendered feminine forms are masculine, things that should be singular are plural, and vice versa. 3. Style. There are awkward constructions, repetitions, choppy staccato sentences, abrupt insertions. If my students wrote a term paper like this, I would send it back to them. It's a nice first draft, but now make it legible and readable. 4. Substance. The images that he introduces in this vision the Lord introduces are puzzling. 5. Structure. The text jumps back and forth from topic to topic without seeming structure. And 6. The dominance of what we call analogical language, climaxing in verse 22 to 23. I wish we had time to read the whole thing aloud in its awkward construction, a literal translation. But here, 22 to 28. Now over the heads of the creatures was a form, a platform, which sparkled like awesome crystals spread out over their masculine heads. Underneath the platform, their wings spread straight out to their feminine, respective companions. I'm just mentioning the gender issue here. Each one also had two wings that covered their bodies. I also heard the sound of their wings, like the sound of many waters, like the voice of Shaddai. When they moved, the sound of commotion, like an army camp. Whenever they moved, they stopped. Whenever they stopped, they would drop their wings. A sound came from above the platform, which was over their head. Whenever they stopped, they would drop their wings. I thought he said that already. And above the platform, which was over their head, was a form of a throne, which had the appearance like sapphire stone. And above the form of the throne was a form like the appearance of a man over it. Then I saw that it sparkled like amber. From what looked to be his loins and upward, it seemed to be enveloped completely by fire. And from his loins downward, I saw something resembling fire. And brilliance surrounded him like the sight of a rainbow appearing in a cloud on a rainy day. That's what the appearance of the brilliance all around resembled. It was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Yahweh. When I saw it, I fell down on my face. It's too much. It's interesting. I mean, did you hear all the language of analogy? It had the form of, it resembled whatever. It's all over this place. When this visionary object returns 15 months later, and it will in chapter 10, all of these difficulties are smoothed out. This suggests that the text that we have in Ezekiel chapter 1 reflects Ezekiel's emotional response. He was simply left speechless. He had difficulty finding words to describe what he saw, which also suggests that he must have written it down fairly quickly, because 15 months later, when he's writing about this, it's all smoothed out. Here's a man who I think has been totally shocked by what showed up in him, and he doesn't know how to describe what he sees. But what did he see? What did Ezekiel see? Over the years, all kinds of imaginative explanations have been proposed from UFOs, gyroscopes, zodiac signs. Of course, all of these are complete nonsense. We must remember that Ezekiel was neither into astrology, nor was he a Nasa scientist. He was an Israelite living in a pagan world and surrounded by Babylonian images. In the introduction, I already referred to the early tradition that started of associating these four-headed creatures with the four gospels, and you have it already in a sarcophagus, or a memorial church, actually, in Ravenna from the 5th century, and in the Irish Book of Kells, and in our own time when I was teaching at Southern Seminary, they have a small chapel in which the stained glass window at the front of the chapel has these four creatures as the symbols of the gospel of the New Testament. But the creatures are taken right out of Ezekiel chapter 1. Where did they get that? Well, actually, it's a long story, and we could talk about each one of them. But the fact is, Ezekiel would not have understood that at all. Where do these images come from? If we have not been to Babylon, where Ezekiel was, we will not understand them. But if we have been to Babylon, we will find all kinds of images that are compound figures with multiple heads, and heads of oxen, and heads of lions, and heads of eagles. Notice they're always royal. They are very common in that ancient world, and here we have also images that are decked with jewels all over the body of the image. We have those in this case where the backs and the wheels of this chariot, heavenly dune buggy, I call it, the chariot, they're all covered with eyes. We'll talk about that in a moment. This raises several questions. How in the world could the Lord reveal himself to Ezekiel using pagan vocabulary? This is not modern. This is not space. This is not mystical. It's pagan. How could God do that? What was the meaning of this vision for Ezekiel? Why would God do that? Well, it's significant that this vision came to him alone. It didn't come to all the people. It came to Ezekiel. It was a vision for him. Perhaps when we've answered these questions, we will have a better grasp of the book as a whole and a better understanding of Ezekiel's message and his mission. So, in the rest of the time in this lecture, I would like to talk about the theological and ministerial significance of Ezekiel's inaugural vision, and in the course of the discussion, open up some of the other details. What theological lessons do we derive from this strange text? What did Ezekiel see, and why was it significant? I offer several enduring lessons that transcend time and geography. First, in answer to the question, what does this text tell us about God? This vision proclaims the transcendent glory of God. Everything about the apparition, what appeared to him, proclaimed the Lord's glory, the dazzling brilliance of the whole image, the gleam of the creature's bronze legs, the jewels. Translations always have eyes. Actually, the word here is used in Akkadian text, Babylonian text of eye stones. That's the word for jewels. So, I don't think they're full of literal eyes. They're full of gemstones. Why? Why the jewels on the wheels? Why the crystal platform? Why the lapis lazuli throne? Why the amberus, the fiery form of a man, an amber man? Why? Everything about the vision cried, glory. Even the prophets' frustrating search for adequate words to express what he has seen. Unlike the gods of the nations depicted on ancient seals and carvings, the glory of Yahweh defies human definition, verbally or visually. This glory was unlike any images of the heathen required constant attention and polishing and dressing up. Not this one. Glory. If you had lived in Nippur, the land where Enlil, the high god of the Mesopotamian pantheon was supreme, he was the divine prophet, and not far from Babylon, where Marduk was king, you would have recognized the links between the major features of this scene and the images you saw on the carved walls of buildings and statues placed at the entrances of palaces. These features included multi-headed creatures, eagle, bull, lion, human heads dominating, gods carried about on chariots, images covered with eye stones, composite creatures holding up thrones and platforms on which these thrones rested. It's all familiar. God is speaking in language Ezekiel's audience would have understood if he had shared it with them. Second, in addition to the glory, the vision proclaims the transcendent holiness of Yahweh. In Isaiah 6-3, that prophet hears the seraphim calling out, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts. Ezekiel heard no seraphim calling out holy, but in the absolute distinction between Yahweh and all of creation, that absolute distinction is on full display here. Surely, this is why the creatures covered their bodies with their second pair of wings, but this is also one of the functions of the platform at the end, the platform on which is a throne, and there is this image like a human, but he's enthroned in all his radiance. Only God is above that platform. There are no competitors for the throne. There's only one God enthroned. The others are all agents supporting him. Unlike pagan gods who mixed freely with lesser beings and were often indistinguishable from them, Yahweh sat alone on this throne, separated from all inferior creatures. Divine and created spheres were not to be confused. God alone is the supremely holy one. Third, the vision proclaims the sovereignty of Yahweh. Not only were all of Yahweh's attendants noble creatures, a bull, an eagle, and a lion, and of course the human. These were all earthly creatures, but only Yahweh is enthroned. He was king over all. The universality of his reign is reflected in the prominence of the number four, four creatures, four wheels, four directions, four winds, but then especially in the absolute freedom with which this heavenly chariot moved. He can go forward, backwards, left, right, up, whatever. He moves because the spirit of God is in the wheels, gives him absolute sovereignty and freedom over everything. In this instance, if he comes to Babylon, he comes by his own choice and by his own power, and no Marduk can stop him from invading Babylon. He comes to appear to Ezekiel to remind him that Yahweh is still on the throne, even though it looks like Marduk may have won. To the paganized people. Furthermore, although the prophet did not yet realize it, Yahweh served notice with this vision that regardless of the fate of Jerusalem, he had not died, he had not disappeared, he had not abdicated the throne, he was in full control. The vision hereby set the stage for the events that were on the horizon.Now, in the ancient world, when armies invaded foreign territories and reached the capital cities, their primary target was not the king's palace, but the temple where the god of the land was enthroned. To claim their control over a place and to defy the spiritual powers of a land, invading armies would rush to the temple, seize the image of the god in the holy of holies, and slip the image out, often to their own capital city. It was their way of declaring that their god had defeated the god of this land. But the movement and the mobility of this chariot that bore the enthroned deity demonstrated that no one, not even other divine beings, determined the fate or fortune of Yahweh. He moved where and when he wanted and no one could stop him. In this vision, Yahweh had left the holy of holies in Jerusalem, where everyone thought he belonged, and traveled all the way to Babylon to meet with Ezekiel. I can imagine Ezekiel's response when he saw the chariot there, if he had grasped what it was, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be back there. But Marduk, the god of Babylonians, couldn't stop him, and in the future, Marduk would never stop him, as we will see in chapters 8 to 11. The absolute sovereignty of God, he hasn't abdicated. He sees everything. He is where he wants to be, and he can go there at any time. Fourth, the vision proclaimed Yahweh's interest in his people. We should say, particularly, the exiles, because he shows up in exile. His condescending appearance in human form undoubtedly found its basis in Genesis 1, 26 to 27, which describes humankind as created as the image and the likeness of God. But in this remarkable role reversal, God appeared in the likeness of humankind, not like the bizarre creatures imagined by pagans in Ezekiel's world. Elsewhere, both expressions, demuth and telum, images and likenesses, they were used of idols. But what Ezekiel saw was not an actual representation designed by humans. It was a reflection of deity that he allowed a mortal to see, perhaps like Moses in Exodus 33. While Yahweh had used extra-Israelite motifs to reveal himself to Ezekiel, this strategy did not represent capitulation to pagan thought. On the contrary, the vision challenged pagan conceptions at every turn. On the one hand, the glory could not be reduced to human definition or plastic art. That would be blasphemy of the worst sort, because you can't imagine the unimaginable. God is infinite in every aspect of his character and personality. But everything about the vision was in the superlative mode. On the other hand, God alone was above the platform, removed from all creatures, stunning in his radiance. There was none other beside or besides him. But this didn't prevent him from communicating with mortals in language they understood.What's this great God of heaven and earth and the whole universe, what's he doing down here in Babylon by the river Kibar? He's there to talk to Ezekiel. For rhetorical purposes, to people who have been seduced by pagan notions, he has adopted and adapted the art of Mesopotamia as his method of visual communication. At the same time, we who read this text from this side of the cross, we wonder if this was not at the same time a premonition of the incarnation to come. In his opening soliloquy, the apostle John declared, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. Paul took the notion in quite a different direction than Philippians two, seven. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of human beings and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, to the glory of God the Father. God is imminent despite his transcendence. Fifth, as a corollary, the vision proclaims the presence of Yahweh, especially among the exiles. God was with his people. This is Immanuel. Remarkably, as we will learn in fuller detail in coming chapters, he wasn't boxed in in the temple back in Jerusalem, nor was his presence limited to his land. Contrary to prevailing Jerusalemite opinion, that people in Babylon, far from the native land, were far from Yahweh, no, no, no, no. Had the people back home learned of this, they would have had trouble believing the exclamation that concludes the book. Yahweh is there. In Isaiah 41, 9 to 10, Yahweh has said to a hesitant Israel, Israel, you are my servant, I've chosen you, not cast you off, fear not, I am with you. He's writing to exiles in Babylon a hundred years in advance. Don't be shattered, come unglued, don't be dismayed, I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. But more particularly, God was with Ezekiel. This vision declared the same truth more forcefully than words ever could. To Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, the Lord declared verbally, I will be with you. Here, Ezekiel, the exiled prophet, who was robbed of the opportunity to perform divine service in the temple, he learns that God is with him, away from the sanctuary. While cast in shocking form over time with hindsight, this message might have been particularly satisfying because Ezekiel's audience was not giving him any encouragement, but God is there with Ezekiel. Sixth, the vision hinted at Judah's impending judgment by Yahweh. The account contains no formal announcement of the disasters ahead, and this message is subtle, but several features of the vision have an ominous ring. For the moment, the heavenly chariot served a positive goal, to reassure the prophet of Yahweh's presence, but the prophet couldn't know that in thirteen months this chariot would be back. To transport the glory of Yahweh out of the temple and out of Jerusalem, and with Yahweh's departure, he would remove the last hindrance to Nebuchadnezzar moving in and raising the city. But Ezekiel must have puzzled over the fire motif, particularly to the reference to the burning coals of fire in the midst of the creatures, whose function was not obvious from the context. When the vision returns in chapter 10, the prophet will witness a man in white linen, a priestly figure, taking these coals and spreading them over Jerusalem. While this is often understood as a premonition of the coming burning of the city by Nebuchadnezzar's hordes, as I interpreted when I was writing my commentary in another millennium, there's a nuance of hope here because that word for sprinkle, we'll come back to it when we come to chapter 10, that word for sprinkle is always used in the sense of purification, making something that is absolutely defiled, cleansing it for purposes of divine service, and that's what happens. But it comes after the judgment. Seventh, on a practical and professional note, this vision served. Notice that whoever would enter into divine service must have a clear vision of the one into whose service he is called. The ministry is a vocation like no other. It represents conscription into the service of king of kings and lord of lords, the one who sits on his glorious throne, unrivaled in majesty and power. God's kingdom will be built, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and his servants will go forth on behalf of the kingdom. The call to divine service is the highest calling under the sun. Those who are called into this service must be impressed with the glory of the one who calls them. This is what we need to be aware of. In our dark moments, we need new visions of God, and those of us who are called into ministry as a profession, notice, as a profession. If it's your profession, it's what you claim. We're not called to a profession. We're called to a vocation to represent the Lord in our little corner of the world, to be called children and agents of this Lord of the universe. That's the highest honor on earth, greater by far than serving in the cabinet of the president of this land or any other land, or in the state government, or in the city council, or being a CEO of an international financial institution. No, we serve the king of kings and the Lord of lords. That was the first lesson Ezekiel needed to learn, and for those of us who are so infected with the world's views of life and reality, it's the first lesson we need to learn as well.