As I was reading through Ezekiel I was struck by how many times the Lord used this phrase, approximately 65 times. It’s fascinating because there is nothing like it in any other book of the Old Testament, and it’s not even close. It seems the Lord was trying to get across a message that was unique to this specific period of redemptive history. First, a little context. Ezekiel was a prophet is a period of terrible upheaval for Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel. The Lord had previously declared judgment on the wickedness of the 10 northern tribes who were destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BC, and now was the time for judgment against the two southern tribes of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar and the armies of Babylon conquered Jerusalem in the late 500s BC, with the city falling officially in 587 when the temple was destroyed, and most of the population exiled to Babylon, including the prophet Ezekiel. There are plenty of prophecies against Judah and Jerusalem, but also against the nations who were contending with them. Throughout all Ezekiel’s writing about this in practically ever declaration we read, “Then they will know that I am the Lord.”
It is important to understand that God’s judgment is never an end in and of itself. We tend to think that because it often appears so final, but mostly because our timeline is so limited. God, as I never tire of saying, is never in a hurry, and his purposes extend over millennia. We also forget that God’s judgment against sin, his wrath displayed, is not merely to hand out penalty, but to bring about restoration. That’s why I look at this this phrase as revelatory; The Lord is revealing to His people who he is, and to the nations that He is. It’s also important to understand that God here is using Israel’s covenant name, Yahweh, and not the generic name for God. There is something in His judgement against His people by the kingdom of Babylon that reveals His covenantal character, that He is a God who fulfills his promises to His people. This is more than clear from the entire scope of redemptive history from Genesis to Revelation, but it’s especially powerful in condensed form in the Book of Ezekiel.
Reading through the prophets is not for the faint of heart. It is almost all unrelentingly negative, almost. For example, this morning I finished reading the book of Hosea, and I was feeling weighed down by that unrelenting negativity, and in the midst of all the judgment and anger of God against Israel’s sin I read this verse (chapter 13):
14 “I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
Where, O death, are your plagues?
Where, O grave, is your destruction?
The point of God dealing with sin, and sin must be dealt with, is to bring life out of death! This promise is communicated through Ezekiel with metaphorical power
Ezekiel’s ministry to the exiles in Babylon is to be a prophet of hope amid the despair while reminding them of the horrible wages of sin. Those wages are transacted on a societal level as we see throughout Israel’s history; sin is never merely personal. The wages and the restoration God promises through them were also not just for the nation of Israel as we see throughout the Old Testament. God’s covenant promises were always to be for the nations, something Israel seemed to miss. Many, dare I say, most Christians miss this as well because our basic understanding of the Christian faith is that it is primarily a religion that affects us personally here and our souls forever in a new heavens and earth. I’ve referred to this previously as pietism where our focus is almost solely on personal piety, a very good thing, mind you, but not the only thing.
When Jesus gave his Great Commission in Matthew 28 it was to make disciples of all nations (ethnos) not individuals (anthropos). You’ll remember his commission after baptizing them in the name of the Triune God, is “teaching them to obey everything” he commanded them. The Greek word for disciple (mathéteuó- μαθητεύω) means to train and instruct. When I first became a Christian in college, I was involved with a campus ministry that was big time into discipleship, but it was always assumed that discipleship only applied to individuals. Applying it to nations would have been, literally, inconceivable to us. You baptize individuals, silly, not entire nations! Well, maybe their connected? Jesus obviously thought so. Which, believe it or not, brings me back to Ezekiel.
For the first 33 chapters we get unadulterated judgmental gloom and doom, to Israel and the surrounding nations. Then in chapter 34 we start to see a change that in redemptive-theological hindsight is a declaration of the good news, the gospel to come as the Lord compares the current failed shepherds of Israel to the “good shepherd,” God himself, to come. It’s stunning to read the entire chapter and realize that when Jesus said in John 10 he was that shepherd who would lay “down his life for the sheep,” that he was almost surely referring back to this chapter in Ezekiel 34 and proclaiming himself to be Yahweh, Israel’s covenant God come in human flesh. These words from Ezekiel capture the mind-bending mystery of God’s revelation of his Triune nature in the salvation of we His people:
22 I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. 23 I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. 24 I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken.
Throughout the chapter prior to this the Lord refers to himself as Israel’s shepherd repeatedly calling them “my sheep,” and “my flock,” and that He will “tend them in a good pasture,” and “they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel,” and He will tend his “sheep and they will lie down.” Yet here is “His servant David” who will be the “one shepherd” over them, and it is he who “will tend them.” Which is it, David or Yahweh? Or are they one and the same? Also in John 10 Jesus tells us the sheep listen to his voice, he knows them, and they follow him. He in fact gives them “eternal life, and they shall never perish,” and no one can snatch them out of his hand. All of this incomprehensibly amazing theological truth points directly back to Ezekiel 34 after 33 chapters of judgment.
This is even before we get to chapters 36 and 37 where the Lord gives us two more powerful metaphors for the supernatural work in the souls of His people to show us He is the God who brings life out of death. In chapter 36 we read of him turning hearts of stone to flesh, and in 37 He brings a valley of very dry bones to life. Keep in mind what I said above, this is after 30 plus chapters of unrelenting judgment. All of this needs to be seen in light of God’s covenantal nature in redemptive history, a God who legally binds his creatures through promises of curses and blessings, most specifically laid out in Deuteronomy 28. God’s creatures must act in accordance with God’s nature because it cannot be any other way. If it was we would have cosmic chaos, exactly the goal of the accuser of the saints, Satan.
Thankfully, Jesus, as our Good Shepherd, stood in our place, to take both the covenant curses of the law for us, and grant to us the covenant blessings of obedience. As I read and heard Tim Keller say many times, Jesus lived the life we should have lived, and died the death we should have died. In that alone is our hope, that Jesus is our righteousness, holiness and redemption, as Paul says in one of my favorite passages in Scripture, I Corinthians 1:30. In this is the fulfillment of what we read in the challenging book of Ezekiel. Praise the Living God!
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