Notes on Ezekiel 5-7

God has Ezekiel perform another sign-act, where he cuts off his hair, burns one third, cuts one third with a sword, and then scatters one third to the wind. As Block, argues, these are not just the means by which God will discipline Israel, but “the cumulative effect of these three actions is to emphasize the totality of the impending judgment.”[1]

 

Ezekiel here represents Israel and his hairs represent the individual people. Most are destroyed by these three actions of fire, representing plague and famine, sword, representing death in war or by execution, and scattering to the wind, representing their being driven out from the land. These actions then communicate, not that Israel will just endure a trial and remain God’s people, but that “they will be lost forever to the history of the people of God.”[2] However, a few hairs are wrapped up or put into Ezekiel’s pocket or folds of his garment which communicates that God will save a remnant of His people so that they will not be completely wiped away.

In 5:7, God argues that they did not follow His decrees nor did they even follow the decrees of the surrounding nations. The surrounding nations had laws that paralleled the Mosaic law code in many ways, although they were inferior in that they did not include any worship of the true God, and their justice wasn’t always what it should have been. God argues that Israel had become worse than even the pagan nations in that they were not even righteous in accordance with the wicked world’s standards.

Christians can be worse than the world when they have a false view of grace and forgiveness that leads to their dismissiveness toward the consequences of sin. Yet, Ezekiel shows us that the consequences remain and can be even worse for the covenant community than for the unbeliever.

Therefore, in vv. 8-9. God steps forward as a challenge to fight Israel. Block notes that the challenger and opponent are identified as YHWH and Jerusalem. The duel formula is verified by the language used.[3]

 

God now says that He will judge them in front of the nations as an example to them in a way that He has never done before nor will ever do again. Israel was to be an example of God’s holiness to the nations by reflecting that holiness, but now they will be an example as a display of His wrath upon that which is not holy. Hence, His holiness will still be displayed but it will spell destruction rather than life for Israel.

5:13, 6:12, and 7:5 discuss how God will not be holding back. He will unleash His full wrath upon the people. There will be no mercy for those who fall under it. 7:3-4 relate the same idea.

God’s jealousy will be brought up throughout the book as it is here in v. 13. It is not envy or a coveting of something that does not belong to God but a zeal to take hold of what rightfully belongs to God and is being claimed by someone else. In this regard, God’s people are being claimed by the demonic through false religion and immoral practices, and so God acts to remove agents of chaos among His people, that end up being the majority centered in Jerusalem, in order to preserve the minority who remain His people. Jealously should not be understood in emotional terms, therefore, but in God’s resolve to destroy the wicked in order to save the righteous remnant who belong to Him.

Likewise, His wrath should not be taken as some irrational emotion, but as God’s, as the Creator, rational disfavor upon chaos, and decision to act against it in order to bring order to disorder among His people. Hence, Block notes:

For the modern reader, who perceives God only from one side, the image presented here is difficult to comprehend, if not entirely objectionable. One is tempted to intpret this furious outpouring of wrath as arbitrary and impulsive, or as a sign of emotional instability. That it is none of these is made clear by the purpose statement: they will know that I am Yahweh. This recognition formula transforms the oracle from a mere announcement of an event into an announcement of Yahweh’s historical self-manifestation. Like Yahweh’s mighty acts of deliverance centuries earlier, his acts of judgment on a rebellious people are intentionally designed to bring them to an acknowledgment of his presence, character, and claims on their lives.[4]

6:10 relates the idea that God’s threats are not empty. He is not playing a game with the people or bluffing. He was patient, but no more. He carries out this judgment upon the people and it is a horror that displays His anger toward idolatry and chaotic practices.

In 6:13, By referring to every high hill…all the mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; 2 Chr 28:4).

The high places are the compromise of Israel, where they often kept the temple pure from false religion (although they had often defiled that as well throughout their history and even as Ezekiel speaks), they remained idolaters because they did not abandon their secret practices, their secret idolatries, the idolatry of their everyday living. It would be much like not practicing idolatry at church, but then going back to your neighborhood where everyone worshiped an idol there. Or to put it in more modern terms, it may be like worshiping God at church and then worshiping the devil the rest of the week by what one believes and/or does in his daily life.

Chapter 7 is made up of three alarming announcements of Israel’s end, and the chapter brilliantly communicates them through the mess that is the Hebrew text in 7. It is chaos and so therefore is the way it is communicated in “redundancies, confusion of gender, omitted articles, missing verbs, obscure allusions, incomplete and garbled statements (v. 11), as well as words, forms, and constructions unheard of elsewhere.”[5] The most alarming element, however, is the constant disturbing repetition of disaster. The Chapter is meant to evoke an emotional response in the reader of horror.

Texts like this are smelling-salts that cause us to awaken from our dazed slumber that our sin and idolatry have placed us in. The true horror of brutal death and destruction, however, is only a shadow and a picture of the horror of losing our positive relationship with God who is the source of all life and well-being, for all eternity. The real horror then is not that God judges so violently and absolutely, but that He does so of His own people who are called by His name.

---

[1] Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel Chapters 1-24, 194.

[2] Ibid.

[3]Ibid., 201-202

[4] Ibid., 211.

[5] Block, Ezekiel, 241.

True God, True Image. False God, False Image: Sexual Activity as the Primary Symptom of True or False Religion

In Romans 1:18-28, Paul relates the idea that God gives people over " in the lusts of their hearts" toward "uncleanness to dishonor their bodies among themselves" (v. 24), which he also describes as "dishonorable passions" (v. 26).

The terms "uncleanness" and "dishonor" likely refers to sexual activity that is not sanctioned by God and is not in accord with a noble use (cf. 9:21, where honor and dishonor likely refer to bowls that both serve food and those that hold refuse). Hence, the phrase "to dishonor their bodies among themselves" likely refers to using their bodies in a way that was not sanctioned by God and against the noble use for which they were made.

Paul continues to describe this ignoble use by stating that their "females exchanged the natural function for that which is against nature." He uses the word θῆλυς "female" here instead of the regular word for "woman" as he also uses the word ἄρσεν "male" in the text rather than the regular word for man. Paul does this because he is appealing to the creation account and drawing from it the idea that worshiping the right God causes right worship in one's sexual activity. He then argues from that implicit premise that worshiping the wrong god causes, by divine judgment, wrong worship in one's sexual activity. 

It is clear here that Paul means to suggest, from both his allusions to the creation account and his explicit statements that there are natural and unnatural "uses" of the body in sexual activity, that the primary purpose of the sexual act is procreation. This is the natural use of the body in sexual activity, i.e., that which is in accordance with φύσις "nature," the pattern God has set in place from creation (Moo, Romans 115). One might even translate the terms here "divinely ordered" versus "disordered," given Paul's worldview that nature is not a materialistic phenomenon but that which is purposed for specific functions by God in creation.

As I have argued before, "their" in the phrase "their females" is masculine and could refer to a generic description of pagans or a more specific description of the males having illicit sexual relations with their wives. Either way, however, it refers to women who are not engaging in sexual activity for the purpose of procreation, and therefore, covers any sexual activity, homosexual or heterosexual, in marriage or outside of it, that does not carry with it this possible outcome. 

Hence, the females engage in non-procreative sexual activity, either with their husbands or in other ways (traditionally thought to be lesbianism from the phrase ὁμοίως τε καὶ in v. 27), and the males engage in non-procreative sexual activity either both with women and men or at least with other men here. This is why it is described as males abandoning the "natural function of the females."

In order to understand what Paul is arguing one must go back to Genesis 1, where God's work in creation is all about undoing the state of chaos described in v. 2. The world is not a place that can be inhabited by human beings and therefore there are no human beings. God orders the world into a place that will support human life and then begins to reverse chaos by placing human beings who are in covenant with Him upon it. But He both purposes and commands them to join Him in His work of filling up the earth with other human beings in covenant with Him. In this way, they function like an image in a temple, joining with God in their activity so that chaos is removed from the realm in which their activity is accomplished. The creation mandate, therefore, is tied to who they are as God's images and whether or not they join with God in the creative activity of undoing chaos, specifically the state of a disordered and humanless world.

Their job is to partake in the right order of their sexual activity and therefore join with God as He works through their ordered sexual activity to fill up the earth with His covenant human beings. This is the basis of human worship toward God in Genesis 1 and throughout the rest of the Bible.

Hence, the disordered use of sexual activity is a rebellion toward God and all humanity. Since life-giving in one's sexual activity is the foundational act of worship for human beings partaking in the sexual act, it most often functions as a synecdoche for all morality. Likewise, its opposite, sexual immorality, non-procreative sexual activity, functions as a synecdoche for all immoral activity.

What Paul is saying in Romans 1, therefore, is that the loss of worshiping the true God is evident in the loss of the role of the image, which has to do with the creation mandate, i.e., the proper function of the female as created by God for the man so that he might join with Him as His image and be fruitful and multiply and fill up the earth.

"In many Jewish polemical works, the gross sexual immorality that the Jews found rampant among the Gentiles was traced directly to idolatry . . . The verb "exchange." which has been used twice to depict the fall into idolatry (vv, 23, 25), is now used to characterize this tragic reversal in sexual practice" (Moo, Romans, 113-14).

The section is filled with wording and allusion to the creation account, but the most striking, perhaps, is the fact that the glory of God is "exchanged" for ὁμοιώματι εἰκόνος "a likeness of an image" of corruptible man and other creatures. The use of the words "likeness and image" recall the fact that man was made to be like a likeness and as an image of God (Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 213-14). Instead, man has made God in his and the creatures under him likenesses and images. Thus, having distorted who God is, God gives him over to be distorted and no longer function as His image.

Hence, to lose the right God is to lose the right role one takes on in his or her sexual activity. Therefore, those without God are first and foremost portrayed as engaging in sexual immorality (Rom 1:18-28; Eph 4:17-19), false teachers are characterized by it (2 Pet 2; Jude; Rev 2:14, 20), the works of the fallen flesh (Gal 5:19; Col 3:5), and sanctification is described as its opposite (Acts 15:20; 21:25; 1 Cor 6:13; 7:2; Eph 5:3-5; 1 Thes 4:3; Heb 12:16; 13:4).

This should seem obvious even when pagans have children it is not to make them worshipers of the true God in covenant with Him, but rather they make those who will partake in false religion, and therefore, even their procreational sexual practices have an element of anticreational and immoral activity essential to them, as they are not meant to make covenant children but either children of the devil or no children at all.

The role of the image is linked to the worship of the right God, and humanity has fallen in its sin precisely because it has turned from their Creator and worshiped the creation instead. All such worship begets chaos, as creation is not the source of life, and so their sexual practices produce more chaos rather than life and order.

This provides a foundation for what Paul will later argue concerning man falling short of the "glory of God" and a seeking after this glory once again in his redemption through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

What Does "Like Our Likeness" Mean in Genesis 1:26

It often goes ignored, but the Bible never says that God makes man His image and likeness. Many people throughout history to this very day assume that this means that man is like God in some way and so attempt to explore in what ways man is like God.

Indeed, out of the 22 times it is used, the term דמות can occasionally refer to something that looks like something (2 Kings 16:10; 2 Chron 4:3; Ps 58:4; Dan 10:16). However, this does not seem to be the most common use of the term even by itself.

However, a problem with applying this idea to the Genesis account is that it was man's attempt to be כאלהים "like God" that was actually the sin of the fall in 3:5. Furthermore, the term is not just דמות "likeness" but כדמות "like a likeness."

Instead of interpreting likeness as similarity, Genesis 1:26 states that God decided to make man בצלמנו "as an image of Us" and כדמותנו "like a likeness of Us." The ב preposition is considered in many commentaries as a beth essentiae, but the כ on the word דמות is often not considered.

Perhaps one of the nearest Hebrew texts in terms of timeframe to the authorship of the Genesis account is that of Ezekiel. In the Book of Ezekiel, a vision is given of God and His glory, but Ezekiel wants to make it clear that these are symbols in the vision, and not literal descriptions of God, angels, and His glory.

In fact, he continually uses terminology that indicates that he is only seeing something that represents something else. At the end of the vision, he says of the brilliant lights הוא מראה דמות כבוד יהוה "it is the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God" (1:28). In other words, all of these lights and colors look like, they are not literally, the likeness of God's glory. They are like the likeness, i.e., represent symbolically, God's glory.

The four creatures at the in v. 5 are said only to be the "likeness of four living creatures/animals," and  וזה מראיהן דמות אדם להנה "this is their appearance, a likeness of man for them." I would argue that angels do not have four faces and look like animals and men with wings, but rather that these things are symbols within the vision that represent the presence and glory of God. In other words, מראה דמות or even דמות by itself here refers to something that symbolically represents something else, not something that is like something else in its attributes.

The word describes their four faces in v. 10, what looks like burning coals of fire in v. 13, the appearance of the wheels in v. 16. the glittering crystal platform in v. 22, and the sapphire throne and man sitting on it in v. 26.

In fact, in v. 26, Ezekiel is clear to point out that the throne is only a "likeness of a throne" twice. He states, כמראה אבן ספיר דמות כסא ועל דמות הכסא דמות כמראה אדם עליו "like an appearance of a sapphire stone, a likeness of a throne, and upon the likeness of the throne, a likeness of like an appearance of a man upon it." Notice how many "likes" and "looks likes" and "likenesses" are in this text. Ezekiel is trying to communicate the idea that none of this is literal. This is symbolic, but he communicates that idea often with the word דמות sometimes coupled with מראה "something that appears" and מראה occasionally appears with the כ preposition. The only point here is that דמות is not being used to describe what something looks like or has the literal attributes of, but rather to indicate that something symbolically represents something else. God is not a literal man or like a man on a literal throne or something like a throne surrounded by Mesopotamian guardians of sacred space. These are symbols that represent God and His rule and His glorious presence.

If we now move back to Genesis, one must ask the question why it does not say that God decided to make man His image and His likeness, but rather "as an image of Us" and "like a likeness of Us." If the author of Genesis is trying to distance God from man in terms of what man literally has in common with God by using these prepositions and the word דמות, as Ezekiel is, then what this means is that the text supports the idea that the author is not communicating the idea that man is like God in some of his attributes, but rather that he represents God and His rule over creation symbolically like a likeness and as an image represents its deity, but may look nothing like the deity (think of Baal or YHWH represented by a bull). Indeed, God cannot really be compared to any דמות in terms of similarity (Isa 40:18). He can only be symbolically represented as a man, as Ezekiel does throughout his work.

The term is used again in Genesis 5:1 and 3, but there it is used with the beth essentiae בדמות and כצלמו is used with the kaph preposition ("as a likeness" and "like his image") indicating that the author sees the two prepositions on both the words for image and likeness as parallel. This means that the phrases "as Our image" and "like Our likeness" mean that God made man to represent Him symbolically, not literally in his similarities with God. Man may have seriously diminished similarities with God, but this is not the point of the terminology used here in Genesis.

In 5:3, the text states that Adam begets a son "as his likeness" and "like his image," and many might think that this means similarity. After all, Adam is a man and his son Seth is a man. However, this misses the point that is being made literarily between the two seeds in Genesis 3-5. Cain does not represent the seed of the woman but the seed of the serpent, and his line represents the same in the genealogy in Chapter 4. He is thus not said to be begotten as Adam's image or like his likeness even though Adam and Cain have the same nature and similarities in their ontology. Seth is, however, like Adam's likeness and as his image because he represents the ongoing symbol in covenant humanity as God's representative in and over creation, and so Adam passes this role to him and his line but not to Cain and his line. Hence, Seth is not said to be "as a likeness" or "like an image" because he is like Adam, but because he and his line in covenant with God continue to represent God symbolically as His image over creation.

Hence, Genesis 1:26 is not communicating that man has certain attributes that give to him some similarities with God. It is saying that man represents God, not by being like Him ontologically, but by representing Him symbolically in his activity in creation as he joins God in covenant to fill up the earth and rule over it. Man is to be God's representative over creation who symbolizes His victory over chaos and death, and therefore, having lost this image can only return to it now in Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.

Do Christians Need to Repent After They Have Repented as New Believers the First Time?

I have heard this idea a few times now. Believers just repent once and then do not need to do so anymore. Let's just look at some verses.

First, the disciples ask Jesus how they should pray, and Jesus includes in His prayer the statement "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." I'm not sure why we need to ask for forgiveness as believers since this is what repentance is. Why did the Gospel writers include this prayer by which Christians are instructed?

But if that is not convincing, how about Revelation 3:19, where Jesus is rebuking the church at Laodicea, i.e., Christians, and says, "All those I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent!"

Does Jesus love unbelievers? Does He discipline unbelievers? And why is He rebuking them and disciplining them? So that they repent.

John argues in 1 John 1:6-10 is clearly written to believers. In fact, the entire letter is giving qualities of true believers versus false believers. One of them is that they admit their sin and are cleansed by Christ's death as a result of it.

If we say we have fellowship with him and yet keep on walking in the darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. 

But if one wants to say that this merely refers to the first time a believer repents, what will he do with 2:1-2?

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One, and he himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for the whole world

Who is the "anyone" here? It refers back to those John calls his "little children," i.e., those John has discipled, believers. 

In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul relates that the believers at Corinth had repented of some sins about which he had previously rebuked them.

Now I rejoice, not because you were made sad, but because you were made sad to the point of repentance. For you were made sad as God intended, so that you were not harmed in any way by us.  For sadness as intended by God produces a repentance that leads to salvation, leaving no regret, but worldly sadness brings about death. For see what this very thing, this sadness as God intended, has produced in you: what eagerness, what defense of yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what deep concern, what punishment! In everything you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. So then, even though I wrote to you, it was not on account of the one who did wrong, or on account of the one who was wronged, but to reveal to you your eagerness on our behalf before God. 
 
Why would Corinthian believers, who already repented when they believed, have to repent of their sins afterward if Christians don't need to repent anymore?

In Acts 8:13, Simon the magician becomes a believer and follows Philip wherever he goes, but after sinning, i.e., after he became a believer, Peter tells him to repent lest he perish (v. 22). 

Paul rebukes Peter to his face because by his actions he was denying the gospel, and thus "stood condemned" (Gal 2:11). 

When speaking to believers, James writes, "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded" (4:8).

Believers who are ensnared by the devil and oppose the leadership God has set in place should receive patience from the elders in case God should grant to them repentance (2 Tim 2:24-26). If they do not need to do so, since they already believed, why does God need to grant it?

This is not even to mention the countless calls upon God's people in the OT to repent of their sins, and we must not forget that their sins were being covered by the death of Christ just as ours are. 

As my fellow elder likes to say all of the time, We are clean, but we still need our feet washed from the dust of the world that often gets on them. Repentance is a continual practice of the Christian who wants to conform his life to Christ in all things. He is not perfect when he first comes to Christ, nor perfected afterward in this life, but he is cleaned by the blood of Christ toward perfection. Without it, he defies God and remains unclean in his sins. 

Progressive Christianity Is Shallower than Evangelicalism and That's Saying Something

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/progressive-christianity-shallower-evangelical-faith-i-left/

Who Is the Ministry?

This is a rewrite of an earlier post that needed to be emended.

In Ephesians, Paul argues that Christ has ascended into heaven, not as an abandonment of His people, but in order to continue God the Father's work of creation as the Mediator on the throne who reconciles God and man through the work of the Word and Spirit.

Hence, when He ascends on high, He gives to the church various ministers of the Word through whom the Spirit equips the congregation for ministry.

Therefore, Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for the work of ministry, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (4:11-13)

Notice that the gifts to the church, i.e., these various instructors (apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors) are all given to equip the church so that it does its ministry to one another that leads to the maturity of the Body of Christ.

The teaching of the instructors allows the congregation to no longer be deceived (vv. 14), but to "speak the truth in love" toward one another (vv. 15, 25), so that as an end result the church builds itself up and grows together into a unified Body (v. 15-16), as "each one does his part" (v. 16).

What this means is that the congregation is the ministry, not just the instructors alone. The work of the instructors is to guide the thinking and lifestyles of the congregation so that they can speak truth to one another and develop as teachers themselves in their respective priestly contexts. In other words, the work of the instructors is to equip the church with the truth. The job of the congregation is to repeat that truth, rebuke one another with that truth, counsel one another with that truth, sing to one another with that truth, live out their lives before one another in that truth. Discipleship is the job of the entire church, not just the pastors who guide the church by their teaching so that discipleship on the lay level can be effective.

It is not the job of the teachers to be the whole ministry. They are a ministry to the ministry, the special priesthood to the general priesthood, not the entire ministry/priesthood themselves. This is the mistake into which  Roman Catholicism fell. The teachers play one part, a vital role, of a much larger ministry that is to be carried out by God's kingdom of priests, the Body of Christ. Hence, Christ completes His work through His entire Body, and not through the teachers He gives alone.

What this also means is that if there is a lack of growth in the Body, it may have nothing to do with whether the right teaching is being taught, but rather because the church is confused as to who they are and what their responsibilities are. The teaching may be solid and complete in giving the whole counsel of God, but the congregation may believe that they are hearing it merely to be self-edified and not also to disciple their families and fellow Christians around them. They may think that discipleship is solely the job of the pastors and not also of theirs.

Too many people think that their only responsibility is to bring people to their pastors/elders for every work of ministry. If someone needs to be evangelized, they bring them to their pastors. If someone needs to be rebuked, they bring them to their pastors. If someone needs prayer, they bring them to their pastors. If someone needs this or that or the other thing, they bring them to their pastors. Their pastors, however, are not the ministry. They are. So what is really happening is that the pastors who do not make this clear to their congregation end up doing the entire work of the congregation and the congregation, as a result, abdicates its responsibilities and overworks its pastors into an early retirement or into an early grave. The congregation then becomes dead because all they ever do is hear without obedience to the commands to speak to one another in love. They are like the Dead Sea, always receiving the Jordan but never releasing it to the dry land around it.

But what is worse is that the congregation doesn't grow by the Word alone. The Word by itself results in death and judgment for those who are disobedient. The Spirit must move over the chaotic waters of the individual in order to give life through the Word. The means through which God creates His people, then, is not merely through their hearing the Word, but through their hearing and subsequent ministry of the Word to one another. This is because in the ministry of the Word, the Spirit is involved in filling up the Christian for that work. Hence, with Word and Spirit united, transformation takes place in the individual who is being used as an instrument of God, as the image of God, to create and preserve life in others. But the mere hearing of the Word without the Spirit is deadening, as the Word without the Spirit is dead.

There is a reason why people begin to grow as they preach the gospel, keep one another accountable with the Word, rebuke, encourage, counsel, etc. The Spirit begins to move through them as a river of life and they become alive themselves. They are like the Sea of Galilee with the Word flowing through them like the Jordan and are thus filled with life. The restoration and completion of creation begins to take place within them and within the community as a whole. Men teach their families with the instruction given by their pastors and begin to become the fathers they were created to be. Women teach their children with that same instruction and begin to become mothers as they are restored to their intended role. The older teach the younger by using the truth that was taught to them to encourage others to believe and live out these truths in Christ, and thus, they become fathers and mothers to other younger Christians. There is movement, life begins to flourish, Christ works toward His goal of the transforming His people to maturity. And this is the ministry.

Instead, however, when people think that the pastors are the ministry, they see themselves as needing growth and seek more from their pastors, thinking that if something is off it must be that the pastors need to do more than what they are doing. But the idea that the pastors alone are responsible for the ministry may result in a bad habit of wanting to be ministered to but never ministering. It is like the Dead Sea thinking it is dead because it needs more of the Jordan to flow into it when what it really needs is an outlet to get all of the water flowing into it moving. If the congregation sought to meditate upon, speak to one another, and live out in application what was taught in their lessons each week, the important instruction that was taught would not only be remembered, but it may result in actual growth of the congregation as Ephesians 4 suggests.

It would further place the responsibility of ministry on the shoulders of every Christian, rather than on the few who exist to equip it. Imagine an army made up of only drill instructors. It wouldn't last very long in a battle with an army made up of a vast amount of soldiers of every stripe. And that is how Paul describes the Christian and the church made up of them. It is an army made up of soldiers who must put on the whole armor of God (Eph 6:10-17). When a Christian is being taught by his teachers, he is a soldier receiving his orders from his commanding officers who received it from theirs (i.e., Christ), not a spectator at a show.

The idea that a pastor is only doing his job well because he is doing all of counseling, all of the discipleship, hosting all of the fellowship meetings, making sure he does all of the visitation of each and every member of the congregation each week, etc. is rooted in the belief that pastors are the ministry and not simply the teachers who are to guide the ministry by working hard at aligning their teaching and the instruction of the congregation with the teaching of Christ through the apostles.

The truth is that every member of the Body of Christ is vital for growth of the Body. People need to stop looking for more programs and look to the Program that God has already established. 

You Are the Children's Program. Stop Asking If We Have One!

Deprogramming from the cult of Americanity can be a challenging and painful process. One of the things of which many evangelicals have a hard time letting go is that of the concept of separate children's ministries. These programs range in anything from Children's Church, youth group, age-segregated Sunday School, etc. It's a very valuable time when kids can learn how to color and paste their favorite Bible characters onto paper and figure out whether Coke or Sprite tastes better with pizza.

All kidding aside, there is a more sinister side to this practice that goes beyond the superficial nonsense that is often done in the name of educating children about Christ, and that is that it assumes that the pastors are the ministry and the ones who must disciple your children. They must do it themselves, hire special pastors to do it, or get volunteers to do it, but perish the thought that parents actually have the obligation to raise up their own children in the Lord.

The church's role in the life of children, in most people's minds, is to instruct them through these programs where parents aren't even involved. They can, and often do, simply drop off their child or teen at the door and pick up their shiny new kid in an hour when he can tell them about all the crafts he made and girls he flirted with for Jesus.

But I would say this same thing even if these programs were robust centers of catechizing children in the Confessions and Word of God. The church, as God's people, should not have separate children's programs because the church is the children's program.

My point of the previous post entitled, "Who Is the Ministry" was meant to argue that the responsibility of the pastors is to teach the mature of the congregation who are then to take what is taught and do ministry themselves in their family and within the larger body of Christ by teaching one another, reminding one another, counseling and encouraging one another in that teaching. This means that husbands are to wash their wives in the Word (Eph 5:25-28) rather than abdicating their responsibility to the pastors. Fathers (and by extension, mothers) are to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (6:4). The men and older women are instructed by the pastors (Titus 2:1-3) so that they can teach the younger women of the Body (2:4-5) and their families.

The job of the pastors is to teach truth to the community in line with what the apostles have taught so that they equip the people of God to do their ministries (Eph 4:11-15) to their families and to the rest of the church by speaking the truth in love to one another (vv. 15, 25; 5:8-16).

What this means is that you are the youth group. You are the children's program that God has set in place.

What this does is not only cause husbands and parents, but every member to be involved in the raising of our covenant children. It also then causes children to have a deeper relationship with their parents and with fellow Christians in the community, not just their separate church or class. This not only binds the hearts of fathers and mothers to their children but children to their parents and the extended family of the community that is lost when this is assigned to one person in the church.

It also might be the answer to the problem of children leaving the church when they get to that magical age of 18 and realize that their church is over because they associated church with their program and not the larger Body of Christ.

When families worship together the children hear and see their parents and other adults worship and thus learn worship by being immersed in it. They learn how they are to worship with their families one day when they are grown up. Most of all, they learn that the church is not only made up of every race, color, language, and nation but of every age as well, coming together as one and serving one another in the truth. That's just not something you can learn from a coloring book.

Notes on Ezekiel 3:16-4:17

3:16-7:27 form the first message given to Ezekiel for the people, the ending of which is marked by the date given to the new prophecy in 8:1. 

I will further divide this unit up into two sections: 3:16-4:17 and 5:1-7:27, and deal with each separately even though they are a single composition. 

Ezekiel waits for seven days before receiving a further message. At the end of the seven days, God begins to speak to him again. The number seven is a significant timeframe that denotes a time of completion or purification. Allen merely sees this as a week of refreshment after the powerful vision God gives to him.[1] However, God gives him this vision again immediately after in v. 23. If the vision was so powerful that he needed to have rest after seeing it, it is odd to give it to him again and then offer him no rest afterward. It may instead symbolize the idea that Ezekiel needed to purify himself before delivering the message of the Lord in the same way that God both previously instructed and will instruct him following this seven day period not to become corrupt himself in the process of both receiving God’s rebuke and rebuking the others with it.

God now speaks to Ezekiel and warns him of the peril of his ministry. He is a watchman, and as a watchman he is to warn the people of danger. In this case, the danger is their own sin for which God will take their lives. God now tells Ezekiel that if he fails to do his job, God will go ahead with His judgment anyway, but he will require the blood of the one killed from his hand (3:18-19; cf. 2 Sam 4:11-12). This phrase references the idea of murder. If Ezekiel fails to warn the person in sin to repent, God will consider Ezekiel’s passive sin as an active murder of the individual, and thus, will be executed himself under the judgment of God.

He moves to the valley where God tells him that the people will respond by imprisoning him (3:25), and a paradox is presented where God will make him mute so that he cannot correct them, but God will then open his mouth to rebuke them. The unteachable will not listen, but those who are obedient will (vv. 26-27).

This activity may be the first of the sign acts, as “Had his isolation been self-inflicted, he could have ended it when he chose; had it been by others, he could perhaps have escaped. But since it is placed on him by himself, by others, and by God, there is no escape.”[2] In this way, Ezekiel’s isolation mimics the exile of the Israelites. They have been placed there by themselves because of their actions, by God as a judgment upon their actions, and by others (i.e., the Babylonians). Hence, there is no escape from the judgment.

He cannot converse with them and seek to reason with them in his own personal rebuke, nor can he intercede for them, but he must only speak what God says, i.e., the scroll of God’s words he has eaten, which is judgment.

Ezekiel is told to go out and perform four or five sign acts (depending on what scholar argues for them[3]) that demonstrate God’s coming judgment upon Jerusalem. Both the acts and the interpretation are presented and is, perhaps, an early form of apocalyptic speech in development (as Ezekiel is a transitional book that moves in many ways from the genre of prophetic to apocalyptic). These sign acts consist of:

1.       Ezekiel’s being exiled to his house by God, himself, and others.

2.       Building a fort and playing with toy soldiers where he has the soldiers besiege the city. He is to set a hot iron pan between himself and the model city, representing God’s refusal to help them in their destruction.

3.       He is to lie on his left side for 390 days representing the sin of the house of Israel (i.e., the northern kingdom) and lie on his right side for 40 days, representing the sin of Judah. He is to be bound with rope and eat a small amount of food from a jar and a small amount of water, representing the lack of abundance they will have in the exile. He is to cook his food over human excrement to also convey the idea of the impoverishment.

4.       Ezekiel is then to cut off his hair and beard and strike a third of them with the sword, representing the people of Judah being killed with the sword, throw another third into the wind, which represents their running and being driven out by the sword, a few tucked away into the folds of his garment, and a few thrown into the fire, which represents those who die by famine and plague.

5.       Ezekiel is to take a backpack and dig a hole in the wall as he continually goes out from it to represent both that the people will go out to exile and the prince will try to go out a hole but be captured and die in exile instead (Chapter 12)

The sign-act itself is a type of mockery. The people reject the warnings of God as empty and false, and so God displays what are horrors in theatrical form almost to ignore their refusal to listen and to mock them in their destruction.

Each one seems somewhat explanatory except for a few oddities within the third. For instance, does “Israel” refer to the northern kingdom or what is left of Israel in the land as a whole? Are the numbers 390 and 40 literal or symbolic? What does it mean for the prophet to bear their guilt?

The mixture of different kinds of grains seem to indicate scarcity in that there is not enough of one grain to make a loaf of bread so they must be combined with others.[4]

As for the numbers, the number 40 is often a symbolic number that refers to a time of testing/trial period or judgment. The rain persists for 40 days and 40 nights in the deluge (Gen 7:4, 12; 8:6), the Israelites are tested at the foot of Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights while Moses is on the mountain (Exod 24:18; 34:28). It is the time period the Israelites have to wait in anticipation of the spies return (Num 13:25), and the amount of years Israel must wander in the wilderness (14:33-35; 32:13; Deut 2:7). Deuteronomy 8:2 describes it as a time of testing. Nineveh is given 40 days until its destruction in Jonah 3:4. There are quite a few other examples in the OT, as well as the famous example of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days.[5]

 

The Old Greek has 190 years instead of 390, perhaps, because it takes “Israel” to mean the northern kingdom and seeks to add the time from which the north was judged to the end of the southern exile in order to come to a closer number of 190 years. However, as Duguid argues, Ezekiel does not usually use “house of Israel” to refer to the northern kingdom, but to whole of the covenant people of God, and the phrase “house of Judah” seems to refer to the community of the exiles throughout the book.[6] However, the 390 years seems to stretch back to the dedication of either the first temple,[7] as Duguid notes, but if this is a judgment for 390 years, it would refer to abandonment, and therefore, perhaps from the split of Israel or the setting up of foreign shrines to the end of the exile. It makes sense that it refers to the dedication of the temple when the Lord filled the temple with His glory: "for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 8:10–11; 2 Chronicles 5:13, 14). Now, as a judgment, the glory departs from the temple in the same way that the glory of God departed from the northern kingdom when they shunned Jerusalem and set up their shrines instead of having access to the glory of God through the temple. The split took place around 920 B.C., again, depending upon one’s chronology. It is probably therefore a reference to all of Israel being judged in two stages, so that Ezekiel’s use of the terms remains in tact as referencing the whole of God’s covenant people, but then referring to the two stage judgment of His people. If the glory departed from northern Israel around 920 B.C. (the numbers should be somewhat flexible and not exact) that leads to a literal time period where God’s glory has departed from some or all of Israel for around 390 years (from 920 B.C. to 600 B.C. plus the 70 year exile—it may be that the chronology is to be altered within the range of a few years here and there, since our numbers are not exact).

Of course, this means that one number is literal and the other figurative and some may have an issue with that, but it seems to be common to include both figurative and literal numbers together when describing periods of judgment (cf. the flood account[8]). It is possible that this number is taken from the 430 year time period Israel spent in Egypt.[9]

The phrase “bear their sin” is clearly a reference to Ezekiel depicting their punishment and not the prophet’s atonement for their sin, since they all had to endure the punishment and it was not removed by anything that Ezekiel had done. The phrase can refer to the atonement but also to undergoing judgment which is the clear reference here (cf. Num 14:33).

Ezekiel’s protest to God may display the idea that although He sees Israel as defiled like those who eat food cooked over human refuse, He will allow a remnant to remain pure.

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[1] Ezekiel 1-19, 60.

[2] Duguid, 80.

[3] Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, 61.

[4] Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1-20, 106.

[5] B. C. Hodge, Revisiting the Days of Genesis, 150-52.

[6] Ezekiel, 90.

[7] The chronologies are disputed, but it ranges from anywhere between 1000-516 when the second temple was built. The 390 years could range from the building of the first temple to the exile, the end of the exile, or the rebuilding of the temple in 516, depending upon when one places the date of the first temple.

[8] Hodge, Revisiting the Days, 135-56.

[9][9] Duguid, Ezekiel, 91.