What is the New Covenant? The Concept of the Covenant of Peace in Ezekiel 34

Disoriented, distressed, and perhaps even depressed. Exiled to Babylon, Ezekiel and his countrymen would have been wondering: How did this happen to us? What’s gone wrong? Why have we lost our land? Why have we been exiled?

When things go wrong, when tragedy strikes, it’s natural to ask the question why. But often when we ask that question, sadly there isn’t a clear or satisfactory answer. Like when a child is born with some kind of defect, or when people lose their lives in accidents. The scientists or the police can often explain how, but the question of why still remains. Why? Sometimes we don’t know why. But for Israel, the situation was different. For them, the why of their situation was very clear … because God wanted it to be clear. God sent prophets to the people to clearly point out why. And the answer that the Old Testament prophets gave was crystal clear. Israel was in exile because Israel hadn’t been living in accordance with her obligations under the covenant.

Ezekiel 34 explores an important aspect of this covenant failure. Israel is pictured in this chapter as a flock of sheep. Her leaders are pictured as shepherds. Shepherds are supposed to look after the sheep, but that is not how the majority of the leaders of Israel had acted. Instead of taking care of the sheep, the leaders of Israel had been using the sheep for their own benefit. Instead of feeding the sheep, they had been feeding off them.

In Ezek 34:3–5 God indicts the shepherds of Israel:

You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they becme food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.

That is, except for God. The kings of Israel might have led the people astray; but if an important part of the failure of Israel could be linked to ungodly shepherds, then the solution was for God himself to be Israel’s shepherd. This solution is found in Ezek 34:11–15 where God says:

I, I myself will search for my sheep, and I will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered … And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel … I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.

Here we have God promising that he personally would come to take over the role of leadership in Israel. And this is connected in Ezek 34:23 with God establishing over Israel “one shepherd, [his] servant David,” who would feed the sheep, and be their shepherd.

In the light of Ezek 34:23 it is clear that when Jesus came proclaiming himself as the Good Shepherd, he wasn’t just picturing himself as a shepherd because he liked sheep, or because he thought that it was a good metaphor. Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd” because he wanted his opponents and the Jewish people to understand that he was the fulfillment of Ezek 34. He was the shepherd king, of the line of King David, who has come to bring God’s people back.

And it is significant that this time of God himself coming to seek and to save his lost sheep is connected in Ezek 34:25 with the idea of “a covenant of peace.”

Covenant is a concept that is very important for an understanding of our relationship with God, and for understanding the overall message of the Bible; but sadly the idea of covenant isn’t heard very often in churches today. In fact, the word covenant isn’t used much at all in the whole of the English language these days, except perhaps in the fields of law and theology. But when we read the Bible and want to understand God’s plan for the world, we have to deal with the term covenant. The word occurs some 301 times in the ESV translation. The Hebrew word for covenant (ברית) occurs 286 times in the Old Testament. So if you’re reading the Bible, you’re bound to encounter the idea of covenant.

But what is a covenant? The history of this word in English goes back to the Old French word convenant which means coming together. In biblical usage, a covenant is basically an arrangement between two parties wherein one or both of the parties solemnly bind themselves to act in a certain way within a relationship. The word translated as covenant in our Bibles can also be translated as treaty, alliance, pact, or compact. In the ancient world covenants were often legally-binding, written agreements that spelled out the privileges and obligations of each party in the relationship. And usually, as part of such an agreement, the parties committed themselves to faithfully keep their obligations to each other by placing themselves under the threat of a penalty, in the form of an oath or curse, and this would often be symbolized by the slaughter and cutting up of a sacrificial animal.

And this is exactly the kind of relationship that Israel had with God. God and Israel had entered into an agreement with each other about the nature of their relationship at Mount Sinai, after God had rescued Israel out of slavery in Egypt. God and Israel entered into a covenant with each other. The ceremony that took place at that time is recorded in Exod 24. This covenant was renewed on the plains of Moab before Israel entered the promised land after the forty years wandering in the wilderness. This renewal and expansion of the covenant on the plains of Moab is recorded in the book of Deuteronomy.

This covenant, which the New Testament calls the old covenant (2 Cor 3:14), was a legally-binding written agreement between God and Israel in which God promised to bless Israel on condition of Israel’s obedience and to punish her on condition of disobedience. Moses makes this clear in the book of Deuteronomy. At the conclusion of the final sermon that he ever preached, Moses called out to the people:

Look, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of Yahweh your God that I am commanding you today, by loving Yahweh your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish (Deut 30:15–18).

The book of Deuteronomy testifies that obedience would lead to life and blessing, but disobedience would lead to the fulfilment of the curses of exile and death. If Israel kept God’s commandments, that is, if they were committed to following God’s word in their life, then they would experience the blessing of being God’s people living in the Holy Land.

Now some Christians think that it was impossible for Israel to keep this covenant with God, but this is to forget how God provided a means for the forgiveness of sin as part of the covenant itself. The different animal sacrifices that could be offered at the temple (the burnt offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering) all had atonement or reconciliation as a significant part of their function. The old covenant made provision for the forgiveness of sin. It was a covenant of grace. But despite this, the old covenant still proved to be a catastrophic failure on a national level. Because of Israel’s lack of commitment to God and his way, being led astray (as we see in Ezek 34) by ungodly leaders, the curses of the covenant came down upon Israel, the climax of which was exile to a foreign land. Because Israel was not holy as God is holy, they lost the privilege of living in the Holy Land.

The consequences were tragic. Famine, death, destruction, exile. Yet, in the midst of this awful tragedy, God never gave up on his people. In a quite wonderful way, at the lowest ebb of Israel’s relationship with God, God continued to send prophets to his people to announce a period in the future when Israel would be restored to life in a perfect and permanent relationship of obedience to God. God would not abandon his people to the punishment they deserved. He would come to bring them back. This time of restoration of the old covenant relationship between God and Israel is what the Old Testament calls the new covenant.

The phrase new covenant only occurs once in the Old Testament, in Jer 31:31; but both Ezekiel and Isaiah speak of the new covenant three times as a covenant of peace (Isa 54:10; Ezek 34:25; 37:26). Even more popular than covenant of peace is the phrase everlasting covenant, which occurs six times altogether as a reference to the new covenant (see Isa 55:3; 61:8; Jer 32:40; 50:5; Ezek 16:60; 37:26).

It is difficult to understand God’s purposes for the world without understanding the concept of covenant, and perhaps the best illustration for us today about what a covenant is all about is the concept of marriage.

Marriage is a covenant, and God’s relationship with Israel is like a marriage. The wedding ceremony took place at Mount Sinai. There both parties promised to love each other exclusively. Sadly, however, from when the honeymoon was not yet even finished and for over 600 years onwards, the marriage between God and Israel was on the rocks. Like many bad marriages, it ended up in separation, when the northern kingdom of Israel was exiled by the Assyrians, and then over 100 years later when the southern kingdom of Judah was defeated by the Babylonians. But in the midst of this period of separation, God kept sending letters to his sweetheart, Israel, saying that he wanted her back. Indeed, he promised that he would arrange things so that Israel would come back. The problem that led to the breakdown of the marriage was Israel’s unwillingness to obey God, but God promised that he would act to make Israel willing to obey him, so that in the end Israel would experience wonderful blessing in a restored relationship with God.

This new stage in the marriage, this time of blessing and peace within the relationship, is what the Bible calls the new covenant. And this is why the New Testament is called the New Testament, where testament is just an alternate word for covenant. The New Testament is simply the collection of books and letters that proclaims and explains the arrival of the new covenant. The New Testament is the historical record of the beginning of this wonderful, new stage in God’s marriage not just with Israel, but with all the nations of the world.

The new covenant is the fulfillment of God’s positive purposes for his creation. This is indicated in Ezek 34:25–31, where various positive consequences of the new covenant are delineated. The result of the covenant of peace is security, prosperity, blessing, and intimacy with God:

I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land. And they shall know that I am Yahweh, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them. They shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid. And I will provide for them renowned plantations so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land, and no longer suffer the reproach of the nations. And they shall know that I am Yahweh their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares Lord Yahweh. And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares Lord Yahweh.

When you think about it, the Bible, with this movement from the old covenant to the new covenant, is telling us that the history of the world is basically one big, fantastic love story! It’s a story that moves from love rejected to love rekindled. And the exciting thing for Christians is that we, like Israel, are in this covenant relationship with God. We are part of this love story!

The New Testament teaches that Christians are in a covenant relationship with God; but we relate to God no longer on the basis of the old covenant, but on the basis of the new covenant. There has been a change from the old relationship characterized by unfaithfulness and disobedience on the part of Israel to a new relationship where the church has the power of Christ’s new life working in us to lead us back to God and to love him. Jesus is the one who has made the difference. He’s the one who’s saved the marriage, so that God’s original promise of blessing might be fulfilled. The overarching purpose of what God is doing in the world is breathtaking in its scope. It is something for which we ought always to thank God.

But, at the same time, understanding the concept of covenant can also help us better understand, not only the place of Jesus in God’s plan, but also the nature of our relationship with God, and what God desires to see in us. Think about it. If the church is like the wife in the divine marriage covenant, then what is our role in this relationship? What is required of us, and how are we to live? Well, like a wife loves her husband (or at least is supposed to), the job of each individual Christian is to love God, to be faithful to him, and (like women used to pledge as part of their marriage vows in earlier times) to be obedient.

Jesus picks up this idea in John 15 when he said to his disciples: “as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love ... These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:9–11).

At the heart of the new covenant for the believer is the constant discipline of striving to love Jesus and to live in obedience to him. As we love God, we experience more of his love for us, and we have joy in our hearts. But the key on our part, as always, is faithfully following the Lord Jesus and his way of life in the context of the grace of the cross.

This is a key part of what the new covenant is all about: God’s people loving and obeying God as he has revealed himself to the world in the person of Jesus, and the resultant benefit of experiencing great blessing in intimate relationship with God. Jesus is the one who has saved the marriage. He died on the cross to atone for our rebellion, and through his resurrection he has brought new life into this relationship. But to benefit from this, we need to be participating in the new covenant in a positive way. If you’re not a follower of Jesus yet, you need to become one. And if you’re a follower already, you need to keep on following. Christians need to be committed to the covenant with God, and to find joy in being faith-full rather than faith-less, in being covenant keepers rather than covenant breakers. This is our responsibility and privilege within the new covenant of peace and blessing that Jesus died to achieve. Christians, honor Jesus’ death on your behalf by honoring him as your Shepherd King. This is what Jesus has come to achieve.

The Theme of Judgment in Ezekiel 7 Read in the Light of Hebrews 10:26–31

In the world today there are many people who don’t understand that the Creator of this world exists, and that he has created our world for a reason. Key among those reasons, according to the Bible, is God’s desire to express himself. God created the world in the first place because he wanted to share the knowledge of who he is, and what he is like, with creatures made in his image with the express purpose that they might be able to know and appreciate this. To this end, God has directed the history of the world in such a way that, despite the presence of evil, this world, in the wisdom of God, is the perfect world for achieving his purposes of self-revelation.

In other words, God has made this world with the express desire of revealing his character to us human beings. The book of Ezekiel, for example, teaches us that God is glorious and majestic. It tells us that God desires to live with his people. Christians obviously find these positive characteristics of God attractive, and it is amazing to consider that God has achieved his plan of being present among us through Jesus, our temple, the visible image of invisible God among us. And speaking more generally of the character of God as it is revealed in the Bible, all Christians are aware, and many non-Christians too, that God is a God of love. In fact some people think that God is so much a God of love that he never raises his voice!

God can be warm and fuzzy, but is that all there is to God? What about the scarier aspects of his character, like his holiness and justice? The Bible doesn’t just encourage; it also warns. And Ezek 7 is one of those passages from the Bible that hits hard. Ezekiel 7 is one of those passages of the Bible that screams out “Warning!”

Most people don’t like being warned. How many soccer players do you see chasing after the referee, asking to be given a yellow card? And how many soccer players are happy when the referee gives them a yellow card even if the referee was justified in giving it? As children growing up, I’m sure there would have been times when you didn’t listen to the words of warning and discipline from your parents. The Bible frequently warns, but it does so for our benefit.

Ezekiel 7 warns us because it speaks about judgment. The theme of judgment is a prominent theme in Ezekiel, and in fact a prominent idea in all of the prophetic books of the Old Testament. The scary thing about judgment that is communicated in the Old Testament is that God is clearly revealed as being a God who judges and punishes. And if that were not scary enough, it is even scarier to realize that God is a God who judges his people! Didn’t the Apostle Peter say that judgment begins with the household of God (1 Pet 4:17)? There are many privileges in being God’s people; but being close to such an awesome, holy, and powerful God is also a dangerous place to be.

That God is a God who judges his people is very clear in Ezek 7. In fact every verse of this chapter speaks of judgment. In v. 3 God says: “the end is upon you ... I will let loose my anger upon you and ... judge you according to your ways, and I will punish you for all your abominations.” Verse 5 announces “disaster after disaster”! Verse 7: “your doom has come upon you!” Verses 8–9: “Now I will soon pour out my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you, and judge you according to your ways ... my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity.” And vv. 15–16 continue the theme: “The sword is without; pestilence and famine are within. He who is in the field dies by the sword, and him who is in the city famine and pestilence devour. And if any survivors escape, they will be on the mountains, like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, each one over his iniquity.”

Judah was going to be punished by way of military defeat, and this was fulfilled just six years after the proclamation of this prophecy when the Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem, and took many of the Jewish people away into exile. Clearly God is a God who judges his people. But why?

In asking why God judges his people, Amos 3:2 provides an interesting starting point. Here God says to the people of Israel: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.” You can just imagine Israel saying: “Thanks, God. You’re going to punish us, because we’re special. Thanks!” But it makes sense: parents discipline their own children, not the children of others.

The fact that God judges his people is explained by the special nature of their relationship. Because the nation of Israel was in a special relationship with God, they would be judged by God in accordance with the agreement that they had entered into with God at Mount Sinai. The covenant established then clearly spelled out the consequences of sin and rebellion. For example, from Lev 26: “if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you,” followed by 24 verses of bad things.

The covenant made between God and Israel at Sinai, and confirmed in the plains of Moab before Israel entered the promised land, clearly spelled out that the experience of the blessings of life in intimate relationship with God could only be experienced on the condition that God’s people were committed to obeying him. Their relationship was like a marriage. Unfaithfulness, especially unfaithfulness to God in the form of the worship of other gods, would seriously jeopardize the happiness of the relationship. As the covenant agreement delineated, God would judge Israel on the basis of whether or not they remained committed to their relationship with him.

Keep the covenant, and be blessed; break the covenant, and be punished. Punishment in this covenant relationship was always a possibility, but it is interesting to note that in the vast majority of instances God’s punishment was not meted out straight away. In dealing with rebellious Israel, the Old Testament shows us that God in his mercy and forbearance was prepared to put up with sin for a time, in order that the human race might continue, that Israel might continue, and that people might come to repentance. The fact that it was 800 years from the time of the sin of the golden calf until God had finally had enough of Israel’s continual rebelliousness, and expelled them from his presence in the land, speaks volumes about God’s long-suffering patience.

God is clearly a God of justice and judgment, but at the same he defines himself as one who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger ... forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exod 34:6–7). God always gives people a chance to repent and receive forgiveness.

This is implied in Ezek 7:9, where God says: “I will punish you according to your ways, while your abominations are in your midst.” This leaves open the option for the people to remove their ungodly abominations, in order to escape punishment. God is always prepared to forgive, but forgiveness is given on the condition of repentance.

The Old Testament clearly teaches that God is a God who judges his people. That’s a historical fact, but the question for us is: Is God still like that? Christians are part of God’s people too, so is God a God who judges us Christians?

What do you reckon? Has God changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament? There are some Christians who think that back in the Old Testament God was a God of judgment, but today it’s different. After all, doesn’t the Apostle Paul say that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1)? There are people who, on the basis of that verse, like to think that as long as they believe in Jesus it doesn’t matter how they live.

So what do you reckon? Has God changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament? Can God still punish his people today?

The message of the New Testament in this regard is clear. God has not changed in the crossover from the Old to the New. If anything, God’s judgment of his people now is potentially even more severe than back then.

But maybe you’re thinking: Mmm, how can this be? Isn’t God a God who dearly loves me? Yes, it’s true to say that God dearly loves his people, but we need to understand that we Christians are also in a covenant relationship with God.

One of the most helpful New Testament books to explain this is the book of Hebrews. God teaches us through the book of Hebrews that Christians are also in a covenant relationship with God. Sure, we no longer relate to God on the basis of the old Mosaic covenant, but on the basis of the new covenant in Christ. But the new covenant is the fulfillment of the old covenant, and operates with the same relational dynamics. Under the old covenant, entrance into God’s presence was restricted. It is only under the new covenant that humanity can actually be seated before the presence of God in heaven. In Christ we regain, and even heighten, the degree of glory that Adam once experienced but lost back in the garden of Eden. But with this greater degree of access into and privilege before the presence of God comes greater responsibility.

That is why the author to the Hebrews says in Heb 10:26–30:

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”

Hebrews 10:26–30 clearly presupposes that it is possible for Christians to break covenant with God. Breaking covenant with God means profaning the blood of the covenant, which is the blood of none other than Jesus himself (Heb 10:29). God views the blood of his son as precious! It was not split on the cross lightly, and God will avenge himself upon those of his people who break covenant with him, who treat the blood of the Son of God without respect.

Christians we have received knowledge of the truth, therefore we must not continue deliberately in sin (Heb 10:26). We need to persevere in faith and repentance. Ezekiel 7 and Heb 10 stand, therefore, as warnings to all Christians. Make sure that you’re not living a lie, saying you’re a Christian while not living as one. To say that we belong to God when we aren’t concerned about striving after a holy life is hypocrisy. God loves us dearly, but both the Old and New Testaments teach that God’s saving love can be withdrawn from those who spurn his grace and mercy through stubborn disobedience.

This may sound shocking to some, and I hope it does to many. The truth is that, just like Israel of old, Christians who break covenant with God will be judged and dealt with. That’s a scary thought, but at the same time we need to be confident in the grace and mercy of God, and also in the truth of the perseverance of the elect. The key in all of this is perseverance in faith and repentance. That means every day being concerned to walk in God’s way, and being disciplined in repenting of sin. The Apostle Paul who said “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” also said: “Note then the kindness and severity of God: severity towards those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise, you too will be cut off” (Rom 11:22). We should never take God’s grace for granted, even though grace is (by definition) something that God grants to the undeserving.

So be warned! The Old Testament prophetic warnings also apply to Christians. It is wrong to presume that they don’t. “These things … were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:11–12). Or as Paul said to the Galatians, after talking about the works of the flesh, such as fornication, idolatry, hatred, jealousy, drunkenness: “I warn you, as I warned you before ... those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God … whatever a person sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal 5:21; 6:7–8).

Christians need to remember that judgment begins with the household of God. Each one of us one day will have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and give an account. On that day God will be looking for a genuine covenant-keeping faith in his people: not merely an intellectual faith, but a faith based in the heart flowing to all areas of our life; not just a cultural faith, but a faith that is real and genuine, that makes a difference to how we live. If you are in rebellion against God, and are not concerned to repent of your sins, you have no right to presume that God’s saving love and mercy is yours. Remember that Jesus said: “if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (John 15:10); that if we do not abide in him and bear fruit, we will be cut off from the vine, thrown into the fire, and burnt up (John 15:6); that whoever hears his word but does not do accordingly is like the foolish man who built his house on sand instead of rock (Matt 7:26).

So in the light of Ezek 7 (and the rest of Scripture) … how have you been living lately? Have you been endeavoring to keep covenant with God? Have you been endeavoring to live the life of faith? Have you been depending on the grace of God so as to walk in obedience, confessing your sins to God on a regular basis? Then you have nothing to fear concerning God’s judgment. Your sins have been forgiven through the blood of Christ. But if your faith has not been genuine, if other things are more important to you than keeping the commandments of Christ, then tonight God is warning you: turn away from your ungodly way of life, and return to him, and start walking again in the newness of life.

As the author to the Hebrews says: “it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31)! Remember: God cannot be mocked! He knows your heart, and the day of judgment is coming. Be reconciled to God before it is too late! Don’t forfeit your heavenly inheritance through stubborn rebellion, but through growth in godliness make your calling and election sure (2 Pet 1:10).

I acknowledge that the theme of judgment isn’t the most palatable idea to many people today. This can be seen in the fact that some people criticize fire and brimstone type sermons as out of date, and possibly even offensive. Maybe, but it’s good for Chrisitans to be warned every so often. It’s good to be shocked out of the complacency that can often envelope our lives.

It’s a bit like the stories you hear about the good old days, how when a young kid was in trouble with the law, the local copper would give him a good kick up the pants, and a stern word or two, before taking him back home in disgrace to the parents. The way people tell it, a good kick up the pants from the local copper straightened out the wild kids real fast. I acknowledge that being warned is not necessarily a pleasant experience, but if God kicks us up the pants once in a while, who are we to complain? It’s actually for our good.

Remember: “it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”! In the light of this fact, therefore, we need to resolve to take our relationship with God seriously. Being in, and staying in, a right relationship with our “awful” yet loving God is a wonderful privilege, but a privilege that should not be taken lightly.

Tsedaqah Righteousness in Deuteronomy

צדקה occurs nine times in the Pentateuch, and six times in the book of Deuteronomy. The other three pentateuchal occurances of צדקה are found in the book of Genesis (see “Tsedaqah Righteousness in Genesis”).

The first use of צדקה in Deuteronomy is found in Deut 6:25. This verse is very significant for understanding how righteousness was defined under the Mosaic covenant. In this verse Moses links stative righteousness with obedience to torah: “And it will be righteousness (צדקה) for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.” Israel’s covenant responsibility before God was to keep the stipulations of the covenant, i.e., to do torah. By walking in the way of torah, Israel would keep covenant with God, and as a consequence enjoy the status of covenant righteousness before God. In a covenantal context, righteousness is a legal status that applies to those who keep their covenant responsibilities. In the context of the Mosaic covenant, righteousness was a legal status bestowed by the Lord of the covenant upon those who (due to torah being written on the heart) were obedient to the stipulations spelled out in the law of the covenant. God’s bestowal of the status of covenant righteousness upon covenant keepers (through judicial proclamation) means that a concept of justification by obedience to torah applied under the Mosaic covenantal arrangement. This came to be known in Jewish parlance as justification by the works of the law. In other words, Deut 6:25 establishes the fact that a doctrine of the justification by the works of the law applied under the terms of the old covenant.

Even though covenant righteousness was demanded of Israel, and actually required in order to possess the promised land (e.g., Deut 6:18; 8:1), the book of Deuteronomy also states that possessing the promised land would not be achieved as a result of Israel’s righteousness. In Deut 9:4–6, the term צדקה occurs three times in three verses. Here Moses warns the people against spiritual pride:

“Do not say in your heart, after Yahweh your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness (צדקה) that Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness (צדקה) or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations Yahweh your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know, therefore, that Yahweh your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness (צדקה), for you are a stubborn people.”

On the one hand, righteousness was required for Israel to enter and possess the land; on the other hand, Israel’s righteousness would not be the cause of such entry and possession. Reconciling these two elements, Israel’s righteousness would be an instrumental cause for entry into and possession of the land, but not the immediate primary cause. The immediate primary cause for Israel’s entry into and possession of the land was God’s desire to punish the wickedness of the original inhabitants of the land, as well as God’s desire to fulfill the promise that he made with the patriarchs. It should be noted that the righteousness in view in these verses is paralleled in v. 5 with uprightness of heart. An upright heart (inscripturated with torah) leads to obedience, which results in an enjoyment of the state of righteousness on the level of the covenant. Covenant righteousness is necessary for salvation; but, given that the obedience underlying such righteousness is a gift of God (see Deut 8:18), it is out of place to boast in one’s righteousness status before God as if it were the ultimate cause of one’s salvation. True righteousness knows humility.

צדקה also occurs in Deut 24:13. The pledge of a poor debtor, which often consisted of an item of clothing, was to be restored before nightfall. Treating the poor with compassion in this way would “be righteousness for you before Yahweh your God.” This can be viewed as a particular application of the principle stated in Deut 6:25: that obedience to torah results in stative righteousness on the level of the covenant.

In Deut 33:21, the phrase צדקת יהוה the righteousness of Yahweh occurs as part of Moses’ final blessing of Israel. This phrase is paralleled with the phrase his judgments: “[Gad] came with the heads of the people; he executed the righteousness of Yahweh, and his judgments for Israel.” In this verse, doing צדקה seems to denote executing justice. Here justice can be viewed as being a form of active righteousness on the part of Yahweh in his function as King and Judge. Functioning judicially, doing right means that the King must punish evildoers and accomplish justice. Gad would play a part in accomplishing God’s justice by fighting with his brothers against the Canaanites.

Tsedaqah Righteousness in Genesis

In the post entitled “Tsedeq Righteousness in the Pentateuch”, we looked at the use of the noun צדק in the Pentateuch. But there is another word based on the צדק root that is also commonly translated into English as righteousness. This is the noun צדקה.‎ צדק is a masculine noun, whereas צדקה is grammatically feminine. In what way do these two terms differ from each other? I will attempt to answer this question over time as we investigate the use of the צדק family of words in the Old Testament. צדקה occurs nine times in the Pentateuch, and three times in the book of Genesis.

The first use of צדקה in Genesis occurs in the famous verse Gen 15:6: “And [Abram] continued to believe Yahweh, and [Yahweh] counted it to him as righteousness (צדקה).” The noun צדקה is best understood here as denoting stative righteousness, i.e., the state of being in the right with God. Abraham’s faith response to the word of God was the right response to God’s revelation. This right response led to Abraham being considered by God to be in the right in terms of his relationship with God. It should be noted that the צדקה attributed to Abraham in this specific instance was not an alien righteousness. There is no sense of the alien righteousness of Christ apparent in the narrative in Gen 15. That is not to say that the alien righteousness of Christ is not present in the wider theological context—it is always presupposed in the background in the wider canonical context of the Scriptures—but it should not be imported into the term צדקה in Gen 15:6, which speaks of the state of personal righteousness that Abraham enjoyed before God on the basis of his faith in the word of God. The Apostle Paul’s treatment of Gen 15:6 in Rom 4 and Gal 3:6 has often been interpreted in terms of the alien righteousness of Christ, but I have problems accepting that Paul would have distorted the original meaning of Gen 15:6 by importing a concept of alien righteousness into the text. That is not the focus of Gen 15:6 in its original context.

The next instance of צדקה in Genesis occurs in Gen 18:19. In Yahweh’s self-deliberation as to whether he should tell Abraham about his intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he says: “For I have known [Abram], that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of Yahweh by doing righteousness (צדקה) and justice, so that Yahweh might bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Yahweh chose to enter into an intimate covenant relationship with Abraham with a view to Abraham commanding his extended family (including future generations) to keep the way of Yahweh. Abraham and his family would keep the way of Yahweh by doing righteousness and justice. The concept of doing righteousness is a key concept in the Old Testament. To do righteousness is to do what is right, to do righteous deeds. In Gen 18:19, צדקה denotes active righteousness, i.e., righteous acts, behavior that is right from God’s perspective. צדקה is paralleled here with justice (משׁפט ), which is behavior that is in accordance with the legal judgments pronounced by God in his role as King. Significantly, Gen 18:19 speaks of doing righteousness as the way by which God would bring about the fulfillment of his promise to bless Abraham, Israel, and the families of the earth (Gen 12:2–3). Obedience or keeping the way of Yahweh has always been necessary on the part of God’s people in order for the promised blessings to be realized (see also Gen 22:16–18).

The third and final instance of צדקה in Genesis occurs in Gen 30:33. In his negotiation with Laban concerning wages to be paid for looking after Laban’s flocks, Jacob proposed that he receive the speckled sheep and goats, and black lambs, as his wages. This would make it easy for Laban to test Jacob’s righteousness. As it is recorded in Gen 30:32–33, Jacob said to Laban: “Let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep, and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats, and they shall be my wages. So my righteousness (צדקה) will answer for me later, when you come to look into my wages with you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the lambs, if found with me, shall be counted stolen.” Here Jacob’s צדקה is his right behavior, in particular, his honesty in only taking the speckled and black sheep or goats as his wages. This is ironic given that Jacob will use underhanded means and selective breeding by which to swindle Laban (see Gen 30:37–42)!

Tsedeq Righteousness in the Pentateuch

The noun צדק, normally translated into English as righteousness, occurs twelve times in the Pentateuch. All but one of these instances of צדק occur in legal material.

The first use of צדק occurs in Lev 19:15: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness (צדק) shall you judge your neighbor.” Here צדק is portrayed as the right standard of legal judgment. Judging with צדק contrasts with doing עול in judgment. עול is wrongdoing or unrighteousness. צדק can denote, therefore, what is legally right or correct. It was the legal standard of justice that God required the judiciary of Israel to uphold in their courts of law.

The idea of צדק as a right standard in legal judgments is also found in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses uses the language of judging righteousness to describe the key task of the judiciary: “And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously (צדק) between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him’” (Deut 1:16). He also uses the language of judging a judgment of righteousness: “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that Yahweh your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment (משׁפט־צדק)” (Deut 16:18). Judging a righteous judgment involves not taking bribes to pervert the course of justice (Deut 16:19). Given that צדק can express a right standard in legal judgments, the word justice can be an adequate translation into English: “Justice (צדק), justice (צדק), you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that Yahweh your God is giving you” (Deut 16:20).

צדק was also to characterize business transactions, and particularly weights and measures: “You shall have just (צדק) balances, just (צדק) weights, a just (צדק) ephah, and a just (צדק) hin” (Lev 19:36). צדק here denotes the quality of that which is right or correct. This idea also occurs in Deuteronomy: “A full and correct (צדק) weight you shall have, a full and correct (צדק) measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you” (Deut 25:15). Like in Deut 16:20, the length of Israel’s inhabitation of the promised land is linked with the presence or absence of צדק in Israel.

The only other mention of צדק in the Pentateuch occurs in the expression sacrifices of righteousness (זבחי צדק) in Deut 33:19. In his final blessing of the people, Moses blesses Zebulun and Issachar, and says: “They shall call peoples to the mountain; there they will offer sacrifices of righteousness; for they will suck the abundance of the seas, and the hidden treasures of the sand.” If this is a reference to the calling of the Gentiles, then perhaps what is in mind is that the Gentiles would come to offer right sacrifices to God (as opposed to illegitimate ones offered to false gods). The phrase זבחי צדק also occurs in Ps 4:6; 51:21, where the expression seems to incorporate not only the idea that the sacrifices are rightly offered (i.e., offered in accordance with the law of the one true God), but possibly also the broader idea that they function to restore people to a right standing before God in terms of the covenant.

The Vision of the New Temple in Ezekiel 40–48

I sometimes wonder if life would be easier to endure just by switching off whenever the news is being broadcast. How many instances of sadness, suffering, and death bombard us each day through the avenue of the daily news, whether it be on tele, on the radio, or in the newspapers? Yet even if we were able to cut ourselves off from the suffering of others, we can’t cut ourselves off from ourselves, and our own experience of suffering. Even though we believe in God, the world situation and our own personal problems, whether it be problems in the family, financial difficulties or bad health, these things can easily drag us down.

Back in the sixth century B.C., there were many Jews who were having a hard time. A large number of the Jewish people had been captured by enemy forces, and taken over 1,000 km away from their homeland to live in a foreign land. They had become exiles. Furthermore, they knew that Jerusalem, the capital city of their country, had been burnt to the ground; and this included the temple, their most sacred site. I’m sure, if we were to put ourselves in their shoes, we’d feel absolutely terrible; and perhaps even on the verge of depression.

And for people of faith, the suffering (if anything) is intensified, because God’s character and purposes are called into question. Hadn’t God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would bless their descendants, the people of Israel? But now the terrible reality in which Israel found herself—defeated and destroyed—it was the complete opposite of blessing. Instead of blessing, they felt like they’d been cursed. Had God changed his mind about Israel? Is it that God had had enough to the point that he’d turned his back on his people and his promises towards them? Or maybe God was still for them, but just didn’t have the power to bless his people as he had promised. Was God too weak to keep his promise of blessing?

Ezekiel too would have been deeply concerned about such issues. He was destined to be a priest by occupation; but now the temple had been destroyed. He was out of a job, and had lost his homeland. But even more important than any personal hardship was the question of God’s faithfulness to his people.

The book of Ezekiel, like most of the Old Testament prophetic books is concerned to answer such questions. Through the prophetic books, we are assured that the problem of the suffering of God’s people does not exist because of a problem in God. It’s not that God is not faithful, or that he is not powerful enough. God is not the problem.

But if God is not the problem, who or what is? The answer is clear. The problem actually lies with us and our attitude to God. The problem is humanity in rebellion against God. The Bible teaches that all human suffering ultimately stems from the fact of human disobedience. The ultimate cause of suffering is sin. And when sin gets hold of God’s people, as it did Israel of old, then disaster is on its way. When sin gets hold of God’s people, there will be judgment. We see an example of this principle with the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 586 B.C. What happened to Israel at this stage was a replay of what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, but on a much larger scale. We’re no longer talking about just two people, but a whole nation which was removed from God’s presence, and who suffered greatly in the process!

Even if you’ve never suffered from depression, all of us have had our moments of being sad and sorrowful. Apparently there’s a Chinese proverb that says: “a day of sorrow is longer than a month of joy.” How true that is! How time seems to drag on when things are going wrong. Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse, went through a stage in her life when she was deeply depressed. Four years before she went to a city in present-day Turkey during the Crimean War as a nurse to look after wounded soldiers, she wrote: “O weary days, O evenings that never end! For how many long years I have watched the drawing-room clock and thought it would never reach the ten! ... In my thirty-first year I see nothing desirable but death.”

When things are going wrong, we’re often tempted to despair of life. We start to doubt God’s goodness, or to doubt his power, or even at times to doubt his very existence!

But thanks be to God that in the middle of the sadness and depression of life, God is ever ready to give us a vision of a better future. In 573 B.C., 24 years after Ezekiel had been taken off in exile to Babylon, and fourteen years after the complete destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, Ezekiel was given a grand vision of the nation of Israel restored to life in the holy land. This wonderful vision is recorded in Ezek 40–48.

In these chapters we read that Ezekiel was taken in the Spirit to the land of Israel, and placed on “a very high mountain,” and on this mountain was a city. This is seen in Ezek 40:2. We have here, like in the early chapters of Genesis, a holy land, a mountain sanctuary. We should note that the mountain sanctuary in Ezekiel’s vision has a number of things in common with the garden of Eden. Like Eden, Ezekiel’s mountain has streams of water flowing from it (Ezek 47:1–12). Significantly, however, the underdeveloped garden has now developed into a city (Ezek 40:1–2); and best of all, the name of the city is Yahweh-shamah, which means the Lord is there (Ezek 48:35—the very last verse of the book). This permanent presence of the Lord contrasts with the garden of Eden, where God used to come to visit only once a day. But at the end of history, as Ezekiel sees it, the garden of Eden will have developed into a city; and this city will be the center of the world as God always intended things to be when he originally created the world. God created this world with the intention that it would be his temple palace, where in the end, after the ups and downs in this love story between God and humanity, God would come to dwell permanently to have eternal fellowship together with the special creature made in his image, us human beings.

So wonderful is the prospect of God coming to live again with his people that the description of this temple palace is savoured in quite some detail in Ezekiel. Next in the vision, recorded in Ezek 40:3, we see an angel, who looks like a surveyor with measuring instruments (a cord and a rod) taking Ezekiel on a tour of the city. Ezekiel was taken on this tour in order that he might tell “the house of Israel” what he saw (Ezek 40:4).

Now the content of what Ezekiel saw is recorded in the next seven and a half chapters (from Ezek 40 to the middle of Ezek 47). The first stage of the tour involved Ezekiel following the angel surveyor as he measured the dimensions of this new temple. The general impression is one of grandeur, although the dimensions of the sanctuary of Ezekiel’s temple importantly were identical to the dimensions of the sanctuary in Solomon’s temple, the one that had recently been destroyed. The meaning of all of this is clear. The temple had been destroyed, but God promised Israel that it would be rebuilt!

After the measurements were completed, Ezekiel was brought back to the east gate, from where he saw “the glory of the God of Israel” coming from the east, from over the Mount of Olives where God’s glory had temporarily withdrawn while Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians (Ezek 43:2). According to this verse, the “sound of [the Lord’s] coming was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory.” According to Ezekiel in Ezek 43:3, this new vision of God’s glory was identical to the vision of the likeness of God’s glory that Ezekiel previously saw leaving the temple, back in Ezek 1–10.

Once again we see that this vision is a prophecy given by God to assure his people that there would be a new temple as the focal point of a new land, to which God’s people would return to dwell in security and peace, and to which God himself would also return to dwell forever more among his people. God would return to his people! This is the significance of Ezek 43. God’s glory entered into the temple, and the temple was filled with God’s glory (Ezek 43:4). Ezekiel then heard God himself speaking from inside the temple. As recorded in Ezek 43:7, God identified this new temple as being his eternal dwelling place among his people Israel. This is, as God put it, “the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel for ever.”

God had allowed the first temple to be destroyed as part of his judgment upon rebellious Israel; but in the end, there would be another temple. This is the significance of this vision. God’s plan to dwell in the midst of his people forever would not be annulled by the sinfulness of his people. In the end, God’s glory and presence will be present among his people.

Now maybe you’re thinking: well, this is an interesting vision, and I can see its significance, but when is this new temple going to be built? Well, it’s true that there are some Christians who think that this vision of Ezekiel’s is a prophecy that is going to be fulfilled literally when the so-called third temple is built. The first temple, built by Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The second temple, built by Ezra and friends, and renovated by King Herod, was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 A.D. From the year 70 on, the Jews haven’t had a temple. Some believe that the third temple is on its way. The only problem is that there’s currently a Muslim shrine right on top of the place where any third temple would have to be built. It couldn’t be built without first destroying the Muslim Dome of the Rock, but doing that would possibly cause World War III.

Today there are people around who are promoting the building of the third temple. One of these groups calls itself the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement. On October 16th 2000, this movement planned to anoint and lay the cornerstone for the Third Temple; but due to the tricky political situation at the time, the Israeli authorities decided that the ceremony couldn’t be performed. Instead, the crowd could only congregate in the Western Wall Plaza to march together and demonstrate. As they did so, they swore faithfulness to the God of Israel, to his word, to the Temple Mount, to Jerusalem, and the land of Israel. They promised to never give up their “godly historical task to rebuild the House of God on Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem.” They think that this temple must be rebuilt before the Messiah comes. This movement isn’t a big group in Israel; but they receive significant support from some evangelical Christians that have similar views.

Is this vision of the new temple in Ezek 40–48 the architectural design for a third temple that will be built in Jerusalem? Well, a third temple might be built in Jerusalem—we’ll have to wait and see, but 2 Thess 2:4 possibly suggests that there will be—yet a careful reading of Ezek 40–48 shows that, in giving Ezekiel this vision, God has used language familiar to Ezekiel and his fellow Jews in exile to speak about how God would return to dwell among Israel, but in a greater and more permanent way than before. By way of contrast with the old temple, where the most holy place was confined to the inner sanctum of the temple, the whole of the new temple, and even the land surrounding it, would be considered to be “most holy” (Ezek 43:12). Also, the geographical location of the tribes is “rearranged” so that you have six of the twelve tribes of Israel situated to the north, and six tribes to the south, putting the sanctuary right in the centre of Israel. This is an idealized picture of Israel, different from the old historical arrangement where there were two tribes located to the south, and ten tribes to the north. There would also be a river of life emanating from this temple that would bring life to the fish in its waters and to the fruit trees along its banks, and the fruit of these trees would be used as food, and its leaves for healing (Ezek 47:1–12). Furthermore, the city would have twelve gates, each bearing the name of one of the tribes, and the name of the city would no longer be Jerusalem but Yahweh-shamah. These differences suggest that more is involved here than just a physical third temple.

We also need to consider how the New Testament interprets this vision, particularly in the book of Revelation. The vision of the New Jerusalem (as it’s portrayed in Revelation) has much in common with Ezekiel’s new city, and can be viewed as a reinterpretation of Ezekiel’s vision. That the two visions are basically the same can be seen in that they both portray the city as having twelve gates with the names of the tribes of Israel inscribed on them. They both have the river of life, and fruit trees that provide healing. But the two visions differ in one very important aspect. In Rev 21:22, we read John saying: “But I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”

In Ezekiel’s vision, the temple was the focal point; but in John’s vision, the temple is identified totally with God, and in particular with Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was slain but who lives again. In this way we see that the Apostle John understood that the temple in Ezekiel’s vision is not the architectural design of a third temple, but rather a picture of the new creation described in terms of a temple with Christ at its core. The intriguing detail in Ezek 44:1–2 about the permanent closing of the eastern gate proves our point: “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it” (Ezek 44:2), the implication being that God has entered the temple never ever to leave again. It is as if God had said: “Shut the doors; I’m never going anywhere again!”

In other words, the new temple in Ezekiel is a picture of God coming to dwell permanently with his people. It is a vision of the new creation, which Christians believe has been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. Jesus’ resurrection was the commencement of the building of the new temple, and through him we await the full revelation of the new temple, of the new heavens and the new earth, in which righteousness will dwell. In Jesus, the glory of God has returned from his temporary withdrawal over the Mount of Olives to enter permanently into the heavenly temple, which one day, in God’s good timing, will be located on earth.

It is appropriate that this last vision in the book of Ezekiel, the very last vision given by God to Ezekiel (as far as we know) corresponds to the very last vision recorded in the Bible. Both of these visions are a picture of heaven on earth. Here we need to understand that heaven on earth, Emmanuel, is actually God’s end purpose for the world. The final picture we get in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, is the New Jerusalem with God’s throne coming down out of heaven to be established on the new earth. Emmanuel, God with us.

This is what Ezekiel’s vision is about. It’s a picture of the kingdom of God. It’s a picture of God and humanity reconciled. God is there among his people, eternally so, because, as we read in Ezek 43:7, God’s people would never again defile God’s holy name by idolatry. Through the outpouring of God’s Spirit, their hearts will have been changed. And with the transformation of the human heart would come a transformation in the relationship between God and humanity.

Thomas More, Lord Chancellor in England at the time of the Reformation, once said: “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” Is there sorrow in your heart today? Do your days feel weary and your evenings endless? How many times has the thought of the clock ticking over driven you to despair? How many tears? How many instances of death have you had to face? But the heavenly vision tells us of a time when God will comfort his people, when “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). After judgment and exile, there will be a new temple. God will not abandon us forever. The light of his heavenly glory will shine among us, and we and the world will be transformed.

We human beings might try to seek comfort in various places, but heaven is the only place that can heal our earthly sorrow. God gave Ezekiel this vision to assure all of God’s people that God’s plan for the coming of his kingdom, God’s plan for the ultimate unity of heaven and earth, will be achieved. This vision of heaven on earth has been given, not only because it’s good to know where we’re heading, but also because its has the power to cheer the heavy heart. We know that for us in the here and now, the full reality of heaven on earth is still off in the distance. At times it might feel as if God has abandoned us, but this is not true. Think about how God’s glory has returned to us in the person of Jesus, and think about the unveiling of the fullness of his glory at the return of the Lord Jesus, when heaven and earth will finally be one.

The only solution to our tears is the vision of heaven which God promises us through Ezek 40–48 is the eternal destiny of our planet! So in the midst of sorrow, when the walls are tumbling down, meditate! Meditate day and night on the wonderful promises of God! Bring to mind daily the thought of better things to come, the thought of a new temple, who is the Lord himself, dwelling together with us forever and ever and ever more! Always remember that in Jesus, Yahweh-shamah! This vision of heaven on earth can bring true comfort to the sorrowful, as well as motivate us to flee from all forms of idolatry, to trust solely in God, and to worship him as we ought.

The Age of the Spirit per Ezekiel 36:16–32

One of the things that I believe we often lack as Christians is an understanding of the bigger picture. In my experience teaching the Old Testament at the Presbyterian Theological Centre in Sydney for 8½ years (until my employment finished there in 2010), I was often struck by the way in which students would come to college knowing many of the details of various stories of the Old Testament, but not understanding with some degree of clarity the bigger picture of the Old Testament. This is understandable to some extent, given the size of the Old Testament—it’s a big collection of books—but it is in understanding something of this bigger picture that we come to understand the Bible with greater clarity, and to experience the power of the word of God to a greater degree.

Why did God create the world? Why has he structured history in the way that he has? Why spend 2,000 years of human history focusing only on one relatively small nation in an obscure part of the Middle East? What was the purpose of God’s election of Israel, and what is the point of the Old Testament? It’s important that we ask these questions, because doing so will lead us to a greater reflection on, and understanding of, the word of God.

The story of Israel in the Old Testament is a detailed description, written out on the pages of human history, of what happens to human society when God’s word is not in the heart of human individuals and human society. Without the word of God, human society reverts to the default position of Gen 1:2. Back then the earth was formless (chaotic), empty (without life), and full of darkness; yet the Spirit of God was present. Unleashing the power of his word and Spirit, God said, “Let there be light”! Through the word of God, darkness was turned into light, chaos was transformed into order, and emptiness was overcome as God created living creatures to inhabit and fill his world. Always the Teacher, even the way in which God created the world was a lesson designed to teach humanity that the word of God brings light and life and order; and that without the word of God, the world will be plunged into disorder and death and darkness.

This is something that Moses, the founder of Israel, understood. After proclaiming the word of God in his final address to Israel, Moses stood before the assembly of the people of Israel, calling upon them, pleading with them: “See, I have set before you today, life and good, death and evil … Choose life” by following God’s word (Deut 30:15, 19).

Yet what did Israel choose? Did Israel choose the word of God? The Old Testament stands as a historical record of the fact that Israel chose the way of the world around them rather than the word of the Creator of the universe. Created to experience God’s blessing, Israel ended up experiencing the curses of the covenant: darkness, death, and disorder.

The problem of sin, and the effects of this, is reflected in Ezek 36:17–19. Israel through their rebellion (especially the sins of idolatry and bloodshed) defiled the land given to them by God. God’s wrath came upon them, and they were scattered and dispersed among the nations.

Ignoring God, and chasing after idols, Israel deserved this punishment; yet judgment for God’s people was not where God would stop. The very fact that Israel was in exile meant that God’s name was being profaned among the nations. The military defeat and exile of Israel had led to people in the surrounding nations having a negative opinion about the power of the God of Israel: “These are the worshippers of Yahweh. The God of Israel, he must be weak. He couldn’t defended his land or save his people,” (Ezek 36:20).

Now the nations might laugh and sniggle; but God, being God, would not let this situation endure forever. God is concerned about his reputation, and that his name be honored. That may sound a little selfish; but after all, God is God! He has every right in the world as the Creator of this world to expect that his name be respected and honored.

So God would act for the sake of his name. God would act to deal with this unacceptable situation by bringing his people back to the promised land. There would be judgment; but following the judgment, there would be restoration. But how was God going to bring his people back to the land?

The average person may not have thought about this much, but how we can get back into the presence of God is really the big question of human history. The human race lost the right to live in God’s presence when our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, sinned against God, and were expelled from God’s land, the holy land of the garden of Eden. Israel, being saved out of Egypt, were given a chance to come back into the land; but even in the land their access to God was restricted. Access into the Most Holy Place, the inner sanctum of the temple in Jerusalem, was restricted to one person, the high priest, who could go into the Most Holy Place yet only once a year. This temporary access of Israel into God’s presence (corresponding to the limitations of the Old Testament sacrificial system with its use of the blood of bulls and sheep and goats) was later reflected on a physical level when Israel, like Adam, lost the right to live in the presence of God because of rebellion.

This two fall theology of the Old Testament was understood by the Apsotle Paul. Paul’s teaching in Rom 5:20, that the law was added in order to increase the trespass, is a summary of the whole of the Old Testament in one short proposition. The law of Moses was given to Israel to compound the problem of the trespass of Adam. The story of Israel replicates the story of Adam.

So the Old Testament is a story of two falls: the fall of humanity in Adam, and the fall of Israel through Moses. Both Adam and Israel lived in God’s land, but both ... only for a time. Adam for a few days—we aren't told how long, but the impression is that it wasn’t very long—and Israel for 700 years or so. In each instance the problem that led to exile was ... sin. The problem was disobedience to God, and this was the result of not having God’s word written in the heart.

Without the word of God in our hearts, humanity cannot live in the presence of God. But God made us in his image, so that he might live with us. So any expulsion of humanity from his presence must be temporary. If not, then Satan has won.

Therefore, God’s people will be brought back; and that is the overall message of the book of Ezekiel. The exile will be reversed, and Israel will return to live once more in the presence of God. A key motivation in doing this is God’s regard for his own name. God would act to bring his people back to life in the land, thereby “vindicat[ing] the holiness of [his] great name” (Ezek 36:22–24).

This return is associated with God cleansing his people, and giving them a “new heart” and a “new Spirit,” so that they might be able to obey him. Ezekiel 36:25–28 speaks about a heart transplant operation that would be performed by the Holy Spirit. The stony, unresponsive heart with its arteries clogged by the fat of sinfulness would be replaced with a new, responsive, beating heart of flesh. Animated by the power of God’s Spirit, this new heart would be responsive and obedient to the word of God.

The key to the future blessing of God’s people, according to Ezekiel, is a new heart and a new Spirit. If Adam and Israel failed, and (using the words of Isa 63:10) grieved [God’s] Holy Spirit because the word of God wasn’t in their hearts, then God would solve the problem. Ezekiel 36:26–28 is very significant in the bigger biblical-theological picture of the Bible, identifying the solution to the universal human problem.

The solution is that at some time in the future God’s Spirit would poured out in a comprehensive way in order to act upon the hearts of God’s people in a powerful way, so powerful in fact that God’s people would be transformed from being law breakers to become law keepers. How? Through the law of God written in the heart! Just like back in Gen 1. What is the key to life? It is the word of God.

The prophet Ezekiel, therefore, looked forward to a day when God’s Spirit would be so powerfully pervasive that God’s people would be cleansed of their sin, and moved to obedience, the result of which would be the coming of the blessings of the covenant, with God’s people dwelling secure as the obedient people of God. In fact, as Ezek 36:29–30 shows, these blessings would not be only for Israel, but creation itself would be transformed. No more famines, but fertility and fruitfulness. God’s people would repent of their sins (Ezek 36:31–32); there would be rebuilding and replanting (Ezek 36:33–34), so much so (according to Ezek 36:35) that it will like returning to the garden of Eden! Through the work of God’s Spirit, paradise lost will become paradise restored.

This prophecy regarding the future restoration of Israel is very important for understanding that God’s intention is to bring about a perfect world. Imagine what it would be like to be perfect: a perfect husband (no more dirty clothes left hanging around the place), a perfect wife (no more nagging), perfect kids (you would have to raise your voice), a perfect world (no pollution; no more colds; no more floods or fires or earthquakes or tsunamis; no more terrorism; no more war). I reckon it sounds pretty good. John Lennon could only imagine such a world, but Christians believe that a perfect world will one day be reality. For some it may be a pipe dream, but someone once said that baptism in the Holy Spirit “will do for you what a phone booth did for Clark Kent—it will change you into a different human being”!

Thankfully God doesn’t require us to get changed into Superman gear in a phone booth, but he does require his Spirit to be present in order for life to be experienced. The simple fact of the matter is that “the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6); and God gives his Spirit in abundance to those who submit to Christ as Lord, to those who have the word of God at work in their lives. The human race has always been tempted to look for life in all the wrong places, but the Bible says that life is found in the Spirit and word of God.

Jesus taught that the Spirit gives life (John 6:63). Indeed, the message of the New Testament is that the age of the full outpouring of the Spirit that the Old Testament prophets looked forward to … this Age of the Spirit that will accomplish God’s plan for a perfect world … this has come with the coming of the Lord Jesus!

According to John 3:34, God the Father gave the Spirit to Jesus the Son “without measure” in order that he might fully reveal the word of God to the world. Jesus performed miracles like no one else has, because he was filled with the power of God’s Spirit beyond measure. And having himself personally dealt with sin and death through his death on the cross, Jesus, the Spirit-filled Second Adam, has led humanity back into God’s land, back into the presence of God. This was achieved through Jesus’ ascension into heaven. And having gone up into heaven, Jesus received the authority promised by the Father in various Old Testament passages to pour out the Holy Spirit on the church at the day of Pentecost, and since that time the promised Age of the Spirit has begun.

During this time, God’s Spirit has been at work in a much more comprehensive way than previously. God’s Spirit has been increasing his influence throughout the world, empowering the growth of the kingdom of God on earth, as the church, the Community of the Spirit, has grown throughout the world. And Christians, becoming members of Christ’s church through faith and baptism, share in this baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is why in 1 Cor 12:13, the Apostle Paul says: “by one Spirit, we were all baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”

The New Testament proclaims that, with the coming of Jesus, the Age of the Spirit that the Old Testament prophets looked forward to has begun. And present-day Christians have been blessed by God to participate in its unfurling. By the way, unfurling is an important concept to grab hold of here, because the question can be asked: if the Age of the Spirit has begun, then why is there still a struggle with sin in my life? Why do I still see sin in the life of God’s people? Why do I still get sick? Why do I see disease and war and famine and death throughout the world?

The answer to this question is: the Age of the Spirit has begun, but it has not yet reached its climax. The Age of the Spirit has begun in the sense that human hearts throughout the world are now coming under submission to Christ as the gospel is being proclaimed, and as disobedience is slowly being rooted out of the lives of God’s people. But what we see now is only a small picture of what will be on the day when Jesus returns, when the Spirit of God will be unleashed to his maximum capacity so as to fill the universe to overflowing.

Remember Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is really the realm of the special operations of God’s Spirit, the zone where God’s will is being done on earth as it is currently being done in heaven. Remember how Jesus describes the kingdom of God in his parables? God’s kingdom is like a small mustard seed that grows into a tree (Matt 13:31–32). It is like dough that expands to become a loaf (Matt 13:33). Jesus wants us to understand that the kingdom starts out small, but gets comparatively much much bigger as time goes on. This growth, this development of the kingdom of God over time and throughout the world, is how the Age of the Spirit will unfold. The new Spirit-filled world order is currently being unfurled, but the mind-blowing time will come when we will see the climactic totality of God's plan of universal blessing revealed before our eyes.

This fullness of the Spirit will come in God’s good time; but in the meantime, the important thing for Christians to realise is that we need to be participating in the Spirit! How important is it for you to participate in the Spirit? Have you been working at being as filled with God’s Spirit as much as you possibly can? Or are you busy pursuing other things in life? Christians have the privilege of participating in God’s Spirit, but we also need to pursue an ever greater filling of God’s Spirit. If we are not concerned about growing in God’s Spirit, we need to be careful lest we end up grieving God’s Spirit. Here we can take warning from the historical example of King Saul. He began with God’s Spirit, but ended up grieving God’s Spirit through rebellion (1 Sam 15:23, 26; 16:14). And Israel? All who passed through the sea drank the spiritual drink, says Paul, yet God was not pleased with the majority (1 Cor 10:1–5).

As Christians, we share in the Spirit; but through neglect, it may be that our tank is pretty close to empty. Do you feel today as if you’ve been drained of the Spirit, as if you’re almost running on empty? Well, you need to be topped up! But how does this happen? How can I be refilled with the Holy Spirit?

The answer to this question is straightforward, but it requires some co-operation on our part. Being filled with the Spirit is not necessarily a matter of being able to speak in tongues. Being filled with the Spirit actually correlates to how much God’s word is in our hearts. Being filled with the Spirit results in the fruit of the Spirit (Eph 5:18–21). If we have God’s Spirit, then we will be producing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, things such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control (Gal 5:22–23). But the key to all of this is the simple yet profound idea of having the word of God written in our hearts. When you combine Ezek 36:26–28 with Jer 31:31–33, you get Ezekiel’s idea of the new heart, new Spirit, and new obedience matching up with Jeremiah’s idea of the law written on the heart of God’s people as part of the new covenant. This is why filling with the Spirit in the new covenant age corresponds to the extent to which God’s word has been written on the heart.

Ultimately the writing of God’s word in our heart is a work of God’s Spirit. The Spirit is the one who must do the writing, that’s true. But he can’t do the writing if we’re not doing the hearing (Rom 10:17). God’s word will never be written in our hearts (apart from direct revelation) if we never spend time meditating upon the gospel, or if we never spend time reading God’s word and thinking about it. Why do we read and teach the Bible in church? Why do we sing psalms and Bible-based hymns rather than the latest hit pop song (the majority of which these days are fixated with sex)? What Christians do in church is based on the word of God, because we believe that, as we do so, that is the way that God’s word and Spirit come to fill our hearts.

Back at the end of the second century, there was a Greek boy born into a Christian family in present-day Turkey named Irenaeus. As a young man, Irenaeus grew up in the faith, and moved to Lyons in France. He became a clergyman, and eventually became the Bishop of Lyons. He is famous as one of the Early Church Fathers, and he wrote a number of important works defending the church against heresy. In his writings, he wrote concerning the relationship of the Holy Spirit and the church. One quotation that comes to mind is the following: “If you do not join in what the Church is doing, you have no share in [the] Spirit … For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and every kind of grace.”

The simple truth of the matter is that the Spirit gives life. It is important, therefore, that all people pursue the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. That can only happen by submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ. And then, having received the gift of the Holy Spirit from the Son, Christians need to walk in the Spirit, and to pursue an ever greater filling with the Spirit, through joining in what the church is doing, and by meditating regularly on God’s word in prayer and in song. Without the Spirit of God, life does not exist. And without the word of God in our lives, we cannot be filled with the Spirit. How serious have you been lately about surrounding yourself and the lives of your loved ones in the word of God? Just as a car needs petrol, so too we need the Spirit of God.

Therefore, pursue the Spirit! Do so with all of your strength! But you do that by listening to the word of God.

Recall what Moses said to Israel. Look, this might be my last sermon before I die, but I’ve proclaimed the word of God to you today. I’ve set before you life and good, death and evil. Choose life by following the word of God!

Brothers and sisters, pursue the word of God! Pursue participation in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus! The word that gave life to this universe back in the beginning is the word that gives life to us today.

Tense, Aspect, and Mood in Biblical Hebrew Verbs

One of the problems encountered by the beginning student of Biblical Hebrew is the lack of clarity regarding tense, aspect, and modality in the verb system of Biblical Hebrew. Tense denotes the location in time of the event or state expressed by the verb. Aspect has to do with the way in which the event or state expressed by the verb is viewed as progressing within time, while mood or modality denotes the attitude of the speaker to the reality, necessity, possibility, or probability of the event or state expressed by the verb.

The best way of understanding the verb in Biblical Hebrew is to see it in the light of how it developed historically. It is generally held that Proto-Hebrew (on analogy with Ugaritic) had three major conjugations: the perfect yaqtul, the imperfect yaqtulu, and the suffix verb form qatala. The perfect was used for events viewed as a simple whole (i.e., perfective or aoristic aspect). The binary opposite of the perfect was the imperfect. The imperfect was used for events that were viewed as being non-perfective (i.e., as somehow unfolding in time, whether continuous, habitual, iterative, or future). The suffix verb form qatala seems to have been primarily used with stative verbs (without regard to time), but it was also used with dynamic verbs in the apodosis of conditional constructions. There was also a jussive conjugation that was identical to the perfect (yaqtul) in form.

Over time, it seems that the imperfect lost its final vowel. This resulted in the imperfect coming to have the same form as the perfect yaqtul and the jussive (i.e., they all had the form yaqtul). This in turn resulted in a restriction in the use of the perfect yaqtul to clause-initial position with a vav prefix in prose (i.e., wayyiqtol in Biblical Hebrew). The use of the suffix verb form qatala was expanded with it being conscripted to be used in place of the perfect yaqtul in non-clause-initial situations in prose. In this way, the suffix verb form qatala came to be fully perfective (i.e., used for states and events viewed as a simple whole regardless of time). The similarity in form between the imperfect and the jussive also led to the imperfect taking on board the non-indicative modal senses of ability, necessity, and possibility of the jussive, leading to the situation in Biblical Hebrew where the imperfect is used to express non-indicative modality as well as non-perfective aspect. On analogy with the clause-initial use of the wayyiqtol, it seems that the weqatal form developed from the sequential sense of qatala in the apodoses of conditional constructions. The weqatal construction ended up becoming, therefore, the imperfective verb in clause-initial position.

The verb system of Biblical Hebrew, therefore, is best thought of as primarily marking aspect. Tense has to be determined primarily from the context, although it should also be said that, because the imperfective aspect marks verbs as unfolding in time, perfective verbs naturally gravitate to the past while imperfective verbs gravitate to the future.

The end result in Biblical Hebrew can be summarized as follows:

perfective yiqtol: either as wayyiqtol in prose, or yiqtol in poetry;

qatal: perfective, usually non-clause-initial;

imperfective yiqtol: imperfective aspect or non-indicative modality, non-clause-initial;

imperfective weqatal: imperfective aspect or non-indicative modality, clause-initial;

participle (qotel) = continuous or gnomic aspect, or else used in place of a relative clause whose aspect must be picked up from the context.

The Idolatry of Israel in Ezekiel 8

When you go sightseeing, you normally have a general idea of what you want to see. Japanese tourists coming to Australia like to see the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and koalas! If a Japanese tourist came to Australia, and didn’t see the Sydney Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, or a koala, I reckon they’d go back home very disappointed.

Well what about a sightseeing tour of Jerusalem? I reckon you can’t go to Jerusalem without seeing the Temple Mount, the place where the temple of God used to be. I had the opportunity to do that back in 2004, and going up to the Temple Mount was definitely the highlight of my trip, even more so because back then, due to the sensitive political situation, the Temple Mount had been closed to visitors. One day I was visiting the Wailing Wall with my sister and brother-in-law when all of a sudden we saw the Israeli police open up the gates of the ramp way leading up to the Temple Mount. We decided to go for it, and in the space of a few seconds not knowing where I was heading, all of a sudden I found myself virtually alone standing on top of the Temple Mount in brilliant sunshine. It was definitely the highlight on my trip, not only because the Temple Mount is the most famous place in Jerusalem, but because actually getting there was so unexpected.

In the year 592 B.C., Ezekiel was in Babylon, some 1,000 km away from Jerusalem. He had been taken there by the Babylonian army, and had been away from Israel for six years, when all of a sudden God gave him the opportunity in a vision to go back to Jerusalem, and visit the temple. What an opportunity! The chance to go back home, and visit the holiest place on Planet Earth.

Well, after being transported to Jerusalem by “Holy Spirit Airways” (according to Ezek 8:3), Ezekiel finds himself back where he wished he could have been all along … in the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel was of priestly descent, so the temple was the place for him to be. If he hadn’t been taken off into exile, he would have been working there. So you’d think that this opportunity to go back to the temple should’ve been a wonderful journey for him. You could imagine how happy he would have been at the prospect of going back.

He turns up in Jerusalem, and rocks up to the northern gate to the inner court of the temple. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there (Ezek 8:4)! The same vision of the glory of God that Ezekiel had witnessed in ch. 1 was the vision of God that was facing him in temple. How wonderful! Perhaps Ezekiel was feeling a bit like the psalmist who wrote in Ps 63: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.”

How wonderful to see God’s glory again! But wait a minute. Behind Ezekiel was something that shouldn’t be there in the temple. In fact it was God who pointed it out to Ezekiel. There, north of the altar gate, was something grotesque: the image of jealousy. It was called the image of jealousy because it made God jealous. It was probably a statue of Asherah, a Canaanite fertility goddess; but whatever it was, it shouldn’t have been there, and it made God jealous.

English speakers generally grow up with the idea that jealousy is bad, so this idea of God being jealous sometimes sounds a little strange. Was God right to be jealous of this image? Well, the short answer is yes! God was right to be jealous. Here we need to remember what God had done for Israel previously and the nature of their relationship. We need to remember that when God saved Israel out of Egypt, Israel entered into a covenant with God at Mount Sinai, and God appeared to them on the mountain, and said to them: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod 20:2). And then he gave them the Ten Commandments, with numbers one and two as follows:

(1) “you shall not have any other gods before me” (Exod 20:3): in other words, God alone was to be Israel’s God; this was an exclusive relationship with no space possible for any other gods.

And (2) “you shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exod 20:4–6): in other words, no worship of idols was permitted in Israel. No image or any other object was to be worshipped as a god. Israel was to worship the one true God, Yahweh, and him alone.

But here was Israel sticking up a statue of a Canaanite fertility goddess in the temple, the place that was meant to be the exclusive domain of the worship of God. No wonder God was jealous! He had every right to be! Doing what Israel did in the temple is akin to a married person brazenly committing adultery at home in the marriage bed.

But that wasn’t all. In Ezek 8:7–12 we see that at the entrance to the court, after Ezekiel dug through a wall, seventy of the elders of Israel were worshipping idols made in the image of various creepy-crawlies and other kinds of disgusting beasts that had been engraved on the wall. The leaders of Israel were in the dark secretly worshipping animal idols. And they were doing this because they thought that God hadn’t seen their difficulties but had abandoned Israel in the face of the Babylonian armies (Ezek 8:12).

But that wasn’t all! At the entrance of the north gate, Ezekiel saw women were “weeping for Tammuz” (Ezek 8:14). They were weeping as part of the worship of this goddess, their tears representing the rain that they hoped Tammuz, a Babylonian fertility god, would send.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Ezek 8:16–17 goes even further. In the inner court, 25 men had their backs turned to the Lord’s temple. They were facing east, worshipping the sun! They had turned their backs and their backsides on God, literally as well as figuratively!

Israel had become idolatrous, unfaithful, and had filled the land with violence; and because of this God had been provoked to anger (Ezek 8:17). Israel had provoked God’s jealousy and anger so much so that God said to Ezekiel: “I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. Even if they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them” (Ezek 8:18).

With idolatry rampant in the temple, Ezekiel’s sightseeing tour must have been a terrible disappointment. But what is the significance of all of this?

The message of Ezek 8 is clear. God can get angry with his people if they turn their backs on him and engage in rampant idolatry. Chapter 8 is significant in the flow of the book of Ezekiel because it precedes the vision of the glory of God leaving the temple, which is recorded in ch. 10. In other words, we find here in ch. 8 the key reason why God allowed the Babylonian army to capture and destroy Jerusalem. It was because of their idolatry. It was idolatry that led to God’s presence withdrawing from his people. It was because the people of Judah followed the practices of the peoples around them, and worshipped what everyone else worshipped, different gods, each under the form of a particular image, that led God to give effect to the sanctions of the Mosaic covenant. Just as had been agreed upon at the foot of Mount Sinai, if Israel did not want God, then God would leave Israel, leaving her to her own devices. Israel would be easy prey for the next strong army that came along, and this is exactly what happened. In the year 586 B.C., the Babylonian army came and captured Jerusalem; and the temple, the symbol of God’s presence among his people, was destroyed.

The awful picture of a city destroyed speaks powerfully of the consequences of idolatry for God’s people. Idolatry is like a deadly infectious virus against which we must strive to protect ourselves. The sin of idolatry is deadly serious. All sins are bad, but the most serious sin of all is actually the sin of idolatry. The first two commandments of the Ten Commandments come first because they are the most fundamental in terms of our relationship with God. Idolatry is like unfaithfulness in a marriage. There is no faster way than unfaithfulness to destroy a marriage, because the act of unfaithfulness itself is a repudiation of the relationship, which is by definition an exclusive relationship. In a similar way, idolatry strikes at the heart of our relationship with God. If left unchecked and unrepented of, it has the potential to lead to apostasy.

And idolatry was not just a problem for the Old Testament people of God. It is also something that affects Christians today. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Cor 10:1–21: “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12); “these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Cor 10:6); “therefore … flee from idolatry” (1 Cor 10:14). “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor 10:21–22).

Like the Thessalonian Christians, being saved means that Christians have turned away from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thess 1:9). The problem is, however, that idol worship is all around us, and it can easily creep up on us. John Calvin, the famous Reformer, once said: “Every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, a master craftsman of idols.” What idols have we been tempted to craft for ourselves lately?

Westerners have traditionally not been tempted to worship physical idols of gods on a large scale. But if we look around at Western society today, there are many idols being worshipped. We may not see many temples with images of Buddha, Shiva, or other gods very often in the West; but they do exist. Around Cabramatta in Sydney where I normally go to church, and where there are many people of Chinese and Vietnamese background, there are lots of Buddhist temples, for example. But just because most Westerners don't see statues doesn’t mean that our society doesn’t have idols. The well-known American evangelist D. L. Moody has said in an American context: "You don’t have to go to heathen lands today to find false gods. America is full of them. Whatever you love more than God is your idol.”

These words apply just as equally to any Western country, not just America. The famous Reformer, Martin Luther, said: “whatever man loves, that is his god. For he carries it in his heart; he goes about with it night and day; he sleeps and wakes with it, be it what it may: wealth or self, pleasure or renown.” As was his want, there’s a bit of overstatement in the teaching of Luther just quoted, but what he is saying is that whatever one loves more than God, that is one’s god.

Is there anything or anyone you love more than God? Luther mentioned wealth. In Col 3:5, Paul describes greed or covetousness as being idolatry. If you find yourself thinking all day about money, chances are you’ve got a problem with the idol that many Westerners worship today: the idol of wealth. Or perhaps your idol is your self? Or perhaps pleasure? Or renown (otherwise known as fame)? Perhaps even your wife or husband? Or your children’s scholastic achievements? Maybe it’s real estate.

If there’s anything that we love more than God, it’s actually an idol! But the message of Ezek 8 is warning us not to turn our backs on God. It is warning us not to engage in idolatry. Idolatry has the potential to destroy our relationship with God, so we need to be extremely careful here. Whatever idol we are tempted to worship, we need to turn our back on it, and make sure that we stay true to the one true and living God, the God who has revealed himself to humanity in Jesus.

Whatever we are tempted to worship, even if it’s a good thing in itself, God calls upon each one of us today to get rid of it! If the idol is something bad, then we’re to get rid of it from our lives. But if the idol is something good, then what we need to do is to put it back in the place it belongs, somewhere below God on a scale of priority.

Idolatry is deadly serious. In Gal 5, Paul lists as one of the works of the flesh, idolatry. He then warns his Christian audience: “I warn you, as I warned you before … those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21). A similar message emerges in 1 Cor 10. We need to be careful that our lifestyle or what we do is not provoking the Lord to jealousy.

Christians have been saved to worship the Lord! Christians have been saved to have God as our number one! But idolatry has the potential to destroy this relationship. We need to make sure, therefore, that we do not endanger our heavenly inheritance, but to repent of any idolatry that has been in our life recently.

Paul said: “you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons” (1 Cor 10:21). A person cannot worship God and follow demons. May God give each of us the strength and wisdom to ruthlessly root out idolatry from our lives, and to be committed to the pure worship of God instead. We don’t want to provoke the Lord to jealousy, do we?

The Theme of the Glory of God in Ezekiel

One of the major themes of the book of Ezekiel is the glory of God. In the English mind, when we think of glory, we usually think of something that is bright, something that has a radiance to it, something or someone with magnificence and splendor, like a king, for example. This is reflected in Chinese culture as well. In the word rong yao (荣耀), the Chinese word for glory, the longer form of rong has a double fire above a crown. The word yao has guang or light as one of its components, and itself means to shine. The etymology of the Chinese word for glory suggests that glory from a Chinese perspective was originally thought of in terms of brightly shining, majestic light.

The book of Ezekiel reminds us that the God of Israel is a glorious and majestic God. He is the King of glory, who is in and of himself magnificent, majestic, full of glory and splendor. He is the God who, as the Apostle Paul teaches, is the true God, Creator of the universe, “who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, which no person has ever seen, nor can see” (1 Tim 6:16). The true glory of God is something that no mortal person can fully observe.

Yet God is not a God who has hidden himself away, but a God who reveals his glory. Ezekiel’s vision in Ezek 1 is an example of the fact that God is a God who reveals his glory to his people. The revelation of God’s glory is developed in four stages in this chapter.

The first stage is the vision of the cherubim in Ezek 1:4–14. Ezekiel observed a black storm cloud coming from the north. This massive cloud had brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually within it, and in the middle was something like gleaming bronze. From this Ezekiel could make out the shapes of four strange creatures, whom we learn later on were cherubim. These four creatures are described as having four faces: the face of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. The four faces, enabling 360° vision, emphasize the global perception of the cherubim. The faces of the man, lion, ox, and eagle are also all symbols of strength. The human being is the pinnacle of creation, and the lion, ox, and eagle are the rulers of the domains of the wild, domesticated, and winged animals respectively. This global perception and great strength on the part of the cherubim is particularly appropriate given that their job is basically that of being the guardians of God’s holy space. The cherubim function as the bodyguards standing around God’s throne. Not that God needs bodyguards. However, the presence of the cherubim shows that access into God’s holy presence is ordinarily restricted.

The second stage of the vision is recorded in Ezek 1:15–21. These verses describe the wheels upon which God’s throne was transported. This vision of the glory of God is nothing other than a vision of God as a King seated on his throne. The only thing is that God’s throne is able to move around in accordance with the promptings of his Spirit. God’s throne is not fixed in one place (unlike the throne of most kings), but it is pictured in Ezekiel’s vision as being mounted on wheels. Each wheel is described as being composed of two wheels placed at right angles. This symbolizes the omnipresence of God, that God moves easily wherever he wants to go. He does not have to waste time doing a U-turn as it were, but moves straight to wherever he wants to go. The fact that the wheels have rims filled with eyes also symbolizes the all-seeing ability of God. There is nowhere that God cannot go, and nothing that God cannot see.

The third stage of the vision is recorded in Ezek 1:22–25. These verses zoom in to look at what lies above the cherubim and the wheels. The firmament of crystal above the cherubim is nothing other than the floor of heaven. The floor of heaven is often pictured in the Bible as a crystal sea, like in Rev 4:6.

The fourth and final stage of the vision is recorded in Ezek 1:26–28. These verses focus in on what is found in heaven itself. Above the firmament was a likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire, and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness of a human form. Ezekiel could see a human form, but it was just so bright that he could not really see the figure with any great clarity. Apart from God’s waist, all that Ezekiel could see was something like gleaming bronze and burning fire, and around the figure was a brightness like the brightness of a rainbow.

This wonderful vision functions as a prelude to Ezekiel’s call to the office of prophet (recorded in ch. 2). It is definitely a spectacular call to the ministry, but it is necessary at this point to recall that the description of God’s glory in the form of a bright cloud has links back earlier into the Old Testament. The cloud of God’s glory is symbolic in the Old Testament of God’s presence with his people. After God manifested his glory to Moses in the burning bush, God saved his people Israel from slavery, and led them out of Egypt by a fiery cloud. This was the same fiery cloud that came down upon Mount Sinai. The people saw something of God’s glory then, but it was really only Moses who was allowed to see God’s glory up close every time he went up the mountain to meet with God. Then, after the tabernacle was built, God’s glory resided in the tabernacle; and when the tabernacle was replaced by Solomon’s temple, God’s glory filled the temple.

The glory cloud seen by Ezekiel is the same glory cloud that was revealed to Israel in earlier generations. It is significant, however, that, as we read on in chs. 9 and 10 of Ezekiel, it is evident that God’s glory was slowly moving out of the temple. The significance of Ezekiel’s vision in the historical context of his day is that the collective sin of God’s people had become so bad that God was at the point of abandoning his people to their enemies. They wanted to live like the nations around about them? Well, God would deliver them over to the nations. He would even let his temple be destroyed by the Babylonians. In fact at the time of the vision in Ezek 1, sometime around 593 B.C., Ezekiel was in exile in Babylon, some six years before the final fall of the kingdom of Judah. In six years time, the temple, the symbol of God’s presence among his people, would be totally burnt to the ground.

Because of the great idolatry of God’s people, which took place even within the temple precinct itself with the worship of images of animals and foreign fertility gods, God was going to withdraw his presence from his people. God’s glory can only reside among his people provided that they are holy. But because Israel was not holy, and because they had abused God’s grace, God’s glory left the temple; and the Jews were defeated by the Babylonians, and taken off into exile.

This vision of the glory of God in Ezek 1 is basically a wonderful beginning to a sad story! Separation between God and human beings because of sin is always sad. The resultant distance between God and his people meant that Israel would not experience the blessing of life in all its fullness, the blessing of life which stems from living in proximity to God himself. Separated from communion with God, Israel would suffer the full extent of God’s curses rather than his blessings.

Now it would be very sad if all that there were to the theme of God’s glory in the book of Ezekiel was God packing up and leaving his people—God’s glory leaving the temple—never to come back. But in a wonderful way, the book of Ezekiel is sandwiched by two great visions of God. If the first is a vision of God’s glory leaving his people, then the other slice of the sandwich is a quite magnificent vision of a new temple, to which God’s glory cloud returns. Ezekiel 43–44 records how God’s glory came back and “filled the temple” with God’s presence once more, this time eternally. God would never have to leave his people again. According to this final vision, the new temple filled to overflowing with God’s glory would be the centerpiece of the new city of God. This city would no longer be called Jerusalem, but instead it would be called Yahweh-shamah, which means Yahweh is there. The final prophetic vision in the book of Ezekiel, therefore, is a wonderful picture of a relationship restored. God would deal with the sin of his people, and would come back to dwell in their midst again … eternally!

A Christian response to the theme of glory in the book of Ezekiel should note that Jesus is portrayed in the New Testament as being the fulfillment of this prophetic vision about the return of the glory of God to be among his people. As the Apostle John taught: “the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” The Apostle John in penning those words was asserting the idea that God’s glory has returned to his people in the person of the Lord Jesus. Because God has dealt with the sin of his people in the death of Christ, through his resurrection and ascension into heaven the relationship between God and humanity has finally been restored. Seated in the heights of heaven, humanity in Christ is now dwelling in the glorious presence of God.

The magnificent glory of God is also what Christians have been and will be privileged to behold. For all the splendor of Ezekiel’s visions of God’s glory, that, says Ezekiel, was merely “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (Ezek 1:28)! It was not the real thing, but only the likeness of the real thing. Now if that wonderful vision was only the likeness of the glory of the Lord, then imagine how magnificent, how splendorous, how absolutely blindingly bright must be the true vision of God’s glory! This is why the Apostle Paul could describe the light of God’s glory as unapproachable. Even the darkest of sunglasses will not be enough to deal with the brightness of the glory of God.

Yet this is the true glory of God that Christians are privileged to observe and behold on the face of Christ. Although in this world we behold Christ’s glory through the eyes of faith, we do so in the sure hope that one day we will see him face to face. On the day that Christ returns in glory, we shall no longer see from a distance like Israel before Sinai, but face to face! And it will not be like Moses who only got to see God’s glory occasionally every time he went up the mountain or into the tent of meeting; but rather, from that day forth, God’s people will have the privilege of beholding the fullness of God’s glory constantly and forever more.

If this is true, then we need to live our time on earth in the hope that as we have beheld the glory of God in the person of Jesus in the gospel story, then so also there will come a day when we shall be invited into the very presence of God, where we will behold the fullness of his glory, and be changed fully and completely by the experience.

The famous Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, once said: the glory of God “is the business of life.” The glory of God is what life is about. The whole purpose of creation is for God to reveal his glory, and share it with his most special creature, us human beings. In the end, God’s plan for the glorification of humanity will be fully realized.

David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa, once wrote: “Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger ... may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this be only for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us.” Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger … nothing compared to the glory of God.

If anyone could write about “anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger,” it would be David Livingstone. He travelled over six thousand miles in Africa during the nineteenth century. He had to endure debilitating illnesses, and put up with danger from wild animals and hostile tribes. At the end of his life, he was found dead kneeling at his bedside, still in Africa yet still in prayer. It was the vision of God’s glory that kept Livingstone going through all the difficulties of life; and even at the end, it was the vision of God’s glory, and the hope of sharing in this, that inspired him on. I believe that meditating on Ezekiel’s vision of the glory of God can also inspire God’s people today to pursue the true business of life.