A God Who Disrupts!

How do we know that our plans are God’s plans?

The book of Ezekiel presents us with some very uncomfortable pictures of the LORD, and of His dealings with His people. In our comfortable western church the LORD is relatively easy to live with. He does not rock my boat too much and He loves me anyway, so need I bother with the picture of the LORD that Ezekiel presents to me?

The vision that Ezekiel had at the beginning of the book is a truly awesome one. It left Ezekiel stunned for seven days (3:15). And he did not even see the LORD Himself! He describes what he saw as “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (1:28). When he tries to describe what he saw he is obviously stuck for the words that would be needed to properly describe what he saw, but unfortunately, such words are not in our human vocabulary.

When Christians sometimes speak of their concept of heaven I have heard phrases like, ‘I will see my uncle Joe there’, or ‘I will question Paul on his theology’. Is that what we really think? We have records in the Scriptures of Isaiah, Ezekiel and John seeing visions of the LORD. And at the sight of what they saw they were either deeply aware of their sin, completely overwhelmed by the sight, or they fell to the ground before Him as though dead. So, what will it be like for the believer to finally see the LORD when he enters the glory?

He will see the LORD like he never saw Him before! There will be no place for our childish concepts, for the scales will finally be removed from our eyes. We will be completely overwhelmed at the sight that awaits us! And it is not the sight of heaven itself that will overwhelm us, but it will be the sight of the LORD Himself! We read in 1 Cor 13:12 that, “now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known”. Do we really think that we will ask some passing angel for the address of the mansion that uncle Joe lives in? As I ponder the thought of that first clear sight of the LORD in His glory, I just cannot imagine what that day will be like. I doubt that I will be looking at the streets of gold and being impressed by the gold. I think that seeing the LORD “face to face” will completely overwhelm the child of God, and perhaps, like John, we will fall at Jesus’ feet as though dead (Rev 1:17).

Ezekiel had his life planned out before the LORD intervened and turned his world upside down. As a priest (1:3) when he finally turned thirty years of age he would start to serve in the Jerusalem Temple. This is what he had been preparing for over the years up to this point. But, instead of entering the Temple service, as he planned, he found himself a captive in Babylonia through no fault of his own. He hadn’t asked to be taken to Babylon; he hadn’t involved himself in the ungodly events that had taken place in Jerusalem under the kings who ruled after the death of Josiah. He only wanted to serve the LORD in His Temple: He did not want to be a prophet. He knew what prophets were like for he would have seen some of the treatment and rejection that Jeremiah suffered, and of course he would have read about what the LORD had asked of prophets like Hosea. No one would want to be a prophet like Hosea. I cannot imagine what shame Hosea must have known as he did what the LORD told him to do. He would probably have been mocked behind his back, as well as to his face, by many in his community. Who, in their right mind, would want that ministry! But Ezekiel was not planning for that sort of future. He had his orderly and well-regulated future all mapped out before him. What could possibly go wrong?

Is God safe?

The two things that strike me in these early chapters of Ezekiel are that, first, to truly see the LORD is something that will completely overwhelm us and blow away any childish concepts of Him that we may hold. We are in danger of constructing a God that we can ‘handle’, a God who is a bit like us, who will turn a blind eye to the same things that we turn a blind eye to. Ezekiel was never the same after his encounter with the LORD in the vision. How could he be the same?

And, secondly, it is obvious that the LORD is not tied to our plans and schemes, no matter how godly they are, as in Ezekiel’s case. The LORD has His plans and purposes, and these will upset us in order for the LORD to achieve His ends. Instead of Ezekiel becoming just another priest serving in the Temple, the LORD chose him to be His prophet to the rebellious exiles in Babylonia. What he would never have wanted to be, the LORD called him to be!

The truly terrifying thing that I have grappled with in Ezekiel is the fact that the LORD judges His people as He does. When Ezekiel speaks of the LORD’s judgments it is not judgment against the Babylonians that He is referring to, but it is judgment against the LORD’s people, both in Babylonia and in Jerusalem! This goes against the grain for Christians in the comfortable and affluent West. We may quote 1 Peter 4:17, “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” I have heard this text referred to and quoted over the years, but do we really believe that this text could apply to us in our day? In Rev 2:5 Jesus said to the church in Ephesus, “I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place – unless you repent”, and where is that church in Ephesus now? In the early centuries after Christ the church spread and flourished throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but it was wiped out by the Muslim invasions. I do not want to pretend that I know why this happened, but the fact is that the church was more or less wiped out! This could not happen unless the LORD’s hand was in it. Was the LORD’s judgment to be seen in this?

Is the Church safe?

The LORD’s judgment of the church is not a popular subject and may upset many, but it is a factor we must face up to as Christians. In Ezekiel 9:4, when the LORD is about to send out His agents to kill those who deserve to die in Jerusalem, the LORD commands that a mark be put, “on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within Jerusalem”. These men, with the mark on their foreheads, will not perish with the others in Jerusalem. When the so-called church in our nation today condones what the Scriptures do not condone how can it escape the LORD’s judgment? The two obvious issues that come to mind here are abortion, to which the church in general and not just the so-called church, has turned a blind eye to, and the issue of homosexuality. We may not be able to change the nation’s law on these issues, but like the marked men in Jerusalem we can “sigh and cry” over them. Is the church, as we know it in the West, ripe for judgment?

Perhaps in our day the LORD wants to open our spiritual eyes to see Him more as He truly is. Perhaps in our day the LORD wants to upset our schemes and plans in order to establish His plans. Perhaps in our day we should attempt to come to terms with the uncomfortable fact that the LORD is a God who judges His own people.