The Scribe (Ez. 8-11)

If he had remained in Jerusalem, Ezekiel would have begun serving as a priest at age 30; instead, he finds himself a prophet at God’s command while in exile in Babylon. Ezekiel’s visions in chapters 8-12 of the book bearing his name are heartrending, especially the ones related to the departure of God from the temple. With the Spirit’s assistance (8.2-3), Ezekiel is snatched out of exile in his house near Babylon and taken to Jerusalem to the place where he beholds “the glory and brilliance of the God of Israel [who had loved and chosen them]” to reside among them and place His name (8.4, AMP). The extraordinary nature of the visions given Ezekiel seem fantastic, but our God is fantastically full of awesomeness we cannot comprehend.

Come Dig and See the Horrors

When Ezekiel gets to the courtyard entrance of the temple, he is shown a hole in the wall that he is commanded to dig into and gain entrance. When he breaks through and looks inside, he sees not only all the repugnant creeping things God’s children have created and chosen to worship over Him (to worship alongside Him even) but also the elders and their scribe all engaged in burning repulsive incense to these images in God's house. They do these things in darkness, thinking themselves secreted away from God’s sight, thinking He has already left the land He is disciplining because of rebellion (8.12). Equally bad, God shows Ezekiel the women worshipping Tammuz (8.14) and 25 men (probably representing 24 elders and the governor) between the porch and the altar with their backs to the temple bowing down in worship of the sun itself (8.16). 

God leaves His people when they refuse to acknowledge His presence among them; they actively and relentlessly drive Him away. His exit is not speedy but long in coming, His mercy great in the slowness of His departure, in the opportunities offered to repent through the words of prophets warning over many years. But they do not heed the cries of the prophets sent to them; instead, they kill them, belittle them, mock them, call them liars.

Wrath and Mediation

Once Ezekiel has been shown the horror of the worship occurring in the temple meant to host God alone, he hears God cry out in a thunderous voice calling for the six executioners of the city. They come immediately from the north and with them comes the man in linen, God’s scribe who marks those who grieve over the sin of Jerusalem (9.1-4). The great comfort of those who grieve sin and what comes with it "is that, in the midst of the destroyers and the destructions that are abroad, there is a Mediator, a great high priest, who has an interest in heaven, and whom saints on earth have an interest in” (Matthew Henry). The mark of God on those who believe Him, those who mourn the lack of belief in their city, results in their salvation from the destroyers set among the rest of the city to brutally destroy all others as compensation for their sin (9.5-6). God is salvation for those who truly believe. What can hurt those who have been sealed for His special purpose? Not the flood of Babylonian invaders from the north with swords in hands soon coming to destroy Jerusalem or fire or famine or pestilence coming as repayment to hearts that “long for and follow after their detestable things [associated with idolatry],” as repayment for choosing sin over being God’s peculiar people walking in the way He says to walk (Ez. 11:20-21). 

Where It Begins

In Ezekiel’s vision the destruction begins in God’s own house, in the courtyards His priests and scribes and worshipers have already defiled. As 1 Peter 4:17 notes and Matthew Henry comments upon: “When judgments are abroad, they commonly begin at the house of God.” As believers we are not only to detest the sin that is around us but actively mourn for it, the unbelief, and pray for God to change hearts through His word. We are to be active in our grief, pouring out our lamentations before God for the welfare of those around us, for our own deliverance from the seduction of the sin that so easily besets.

The man in linen then fills His hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim at God’s command (10.2-7). The glory and the brilliance of the LORD rises above the cherubim and fills the temple, and then it leaves. On its way out, the glory pauses east of the city on the Mount of Olives, the same mount Jesus would soon stand on and command His followers to tell the world of, giving the Great Commission to go make disciples of all nations, reminding them that instead of dwelling in a temple made by hands, He would dwell in temples made of flesh with hearts no longer stone-cold and corrupted but soft, tender flesh receptive to the Spirit (Matt. 28:19-20; Ez. 11:19). 

Read It and Weep

Reading this passage makes me want to weep as I consider not only my own sin that I often pet and pamper instead of confessing and receiving forgiveness for, but also the sins of the city of Jerusalem over many years and Jesus standing there looking at it with longing and sorrow:

• In Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who murders the prophets and stones [to death] those [messengers] who are sent to her [by God]! How often I wanted to gather your children together [around Me], as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.”
• In Luke 13:34: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones [to death] those [messengers] who are sent to her [by God]! How often I have wanted to gather your children together [around Me], just as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were not willing!”
• In Luke 19: 41-44: “As He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it [and the spiritual ignorance of its people], saying, “If [only] you had known on this day [of salvation], even you, the things which make for peace [and on which peace depends]! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For a time [of siege] is coming when your enemies will put up a barricade [with pointed stakes] against you, and surround you [with armies] and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground, you [Jerusalem] and your children within you. They will not leave in you one stone on another, all because you did not [come progressively to] recognize [from observation and personal experience] the time of your visitation [when God was gracious toward you and offered you salvation].”

In Ezekiel's vision, Jesus acts as scribe (as the Mediator preserving the ones who believe, marking them for salvation) before removing His presence from the temple where God had chosen to dwell among men. 

No Remedy but Jesus

Some 483 years later, Jesus, a 30-year-old Jewish carpenter/rabbi begins His ministry among men and over a three year period makes His way back to the temple standing where the last had fallen, where the presence had departed, leaving them to cry "Ichabod!" The very real presence of God, the Shekinah glory hidden in Christ, looks on the temple and mourns that they do not and will not recognize Him still, that their hards are hardened yet, stones inside them, and that He will be the stone of offense, the rock upon which they will stumble  even after God took on flesh and came to earth to dwell among them visibly (1 Pet. 2:8). Jesus knows that He will yet act as a scribe preserving men who believe, who grieve their sin, from the enemy’s sure and coming destruction. Revelation 7:3 speaks of this sealing: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”

Revelation 4 gives John’s vision with Ezekiel’s cherubim in God’s presence along with 24 elders who recognize God’s worth and worship Him alone, casting their crowns down before Him. Revelation 5 recognizes the worthiness of Jesus, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world to open the scroll and see inside. He takes the scroll in His hand and all the elders fall down before Him singing a new song of His work on earth as the Lamb who was slain. And as seals are opened and destruction is unleashed on that generation of men who worship everything but God (like all the generations before them), the rest of mankind not killed by the plagues will “not repent even then of the works of their hands, so as to cease worshiping and paying homage to the demons and the idols of gold and of silver and of bronze and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries (drugs, intoxications) nor of their [sexual] immorality nor of their thefts” (Rev. 9:20-21).

So much sorrow caused by stubborn hearts clinging to sin. There is no remedy except Jesus, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn. 1:29). Do you know Him? Do you believe what He says in the word left behind for us is true? Have you chosen to worship Him alone, understanding the commission He has given, that His followers, His disciples are sent to a lost and dying world, that we are dedicated to Him (set apart exclusively) for sharing the gospel? 

The call is heavy. It is sobering. It is real. God will not share His glory with the world. He will not leave His glory where anyone asks that He share it with anything else. He alone is worthy of worship, and we have a call that requires our focus and demands our obedience to Him alone. He will not delay His coming forever; time is short regardless of how much we think we have.

The encouragement is that He is worthy. He is enough. He alone has borne the sins of the world, has already done the work or purification, will seal those who believe with His Spirit. We just need to rest in Him in His righteousness and focus on telling the world of His work.