A BLOODY SCENE
(12) “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight; everything is uncovered and exposed before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:13, BSB).
Key Text: Ezekiel 8:1-18
Idolatry In The Sanctuary
Ezekiel’s vision is concerned with prophecy. It is God’s Word outlining what is to come to pass, in time. The scenes unfolding reveals God’s displeasure at the offences of idolatry in the Temple in Jerusalem. In Ezekiel 8, he is here whisked away in a visionary experience suspended in the heavens, and is shown the dismal spiritual state of God’s people. With the revelation given he is shown the image of jealousy and provocation set up near the north gate of the Temple. Yet the most disturbing truth was the indulgence of the leaders at all levels giving themselves to the abominations of idolatry. A jealous God reveals His displeasure to the abhorrent spirit of jealousy, an indication of spiritual infidelity. For God is jealous towards His people. This affront of evil reveals the emotions of our Lord as the intensity and exclusivity of His love for Israel, His chosen people reaches breaking point.
Ezekiel’s vision was given in the 6th month of the 6th year of Ezekiel’s exile in Babylon during Jehoiachin’s reign. The number six is generally synonymous with universal sin. On the 5th day, five being a number of grace, we see Jesus in the vision with His loins as fire, gleaming as bright as amber. The word instructs that our God is as a consuming fire. “Therefore, since we are receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us be filled with gratitude, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. (29) “For our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28,29, BSB). This descriptive appearance of our Lord befits the manner in which He would appear to His faithful chosen prophets of old. There would be no doubt concerning the identity of our Lord in their hearts as they behold the awe and glorious brilliance. As faithful witnesses they are entrusted to record and make known the revelations of the Testimony of Jesus.
In the vision, Ezekiel is transported in the spirit by a lock of hair to Jerusalem to witness where the seat of jealous resided. An image was set up at the entrance of the Temple as a provocation, an effigy of defilement to a covenant-faithful God. His people had sunk to an abysmal state in idolatry. “Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see what they are doing—the great abominations that the house of Israel is committing—to drive Me far from My sanctuary? Yet you will see even greater abominations.” (Ezekiel 8:6, BSB). This 6th verse draws out the sinfulness that would cause a repulsed God to remove Himself from His sanctuary where is Name lives, the holy place consecrated and designated unto Him for His glory.
The Hidden Chamber
As the vision unfolds Ezekiel is warned to brace himself for yet worse abominations. As he is taken to the entrance of the courtyard, Ezekiel sees a cavity in the wall. He is invited to dig into the hole where it reveals an entrance. (8) “Go in and see the wicked abominations they are committing here. ”The door leads into a chamber where 70 elders of Israel are seen. (10) “So I went in and looked, and engraved all around the wall was every kind of crawling creature and detestable beast, along with all the idols of the house of Israel. (11) Before them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them.” The inner wall was covered with vile images and creatures thought to be idolatrous symbolisms of pagan gods. Israel took to pagan practices having been in exile under foreign occupation. These seventy leaders would be men of the law, priests or elders held in high esteem with leadership responsibilities over groups and family clans.
It was sometime after leaving Egypt that God instructed Moses to chose leaders to oversee groups of people in order to disseminate leader responsibility and ease the burden of his strategic work. These leaders were anointed for these roles and responsibilities. 16) “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Bring Me seventy of the elders of Israel known to you as leaders and officers of the people. Bring them to the Tent of Meeting and have them stand there with you. (17) And I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put that Spirit on them. They will help you bear the burden of the people, so that you do not have to bear it by yourself.” (Numbers 11:16-17, BSB)
The Spirit revealed the state of Israel’s leaders whom the people looked too for spiritual guidance. Here in Ezekiel’s vision they are practising idolatry, a gross obscenity in the Sanctuary. From a leadership perspective they were setting a spiritual precedence in defiling the tabernacle. Spiritual doors were being opened in places of spiritual leadership authority. Hidden, covert works of darkness in an inner chamber of the Sanctuary reveals the state of affairs of the hearts, overrun with evil. (18) Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.” The Lord requires that His servants be held accountable to ensure that what is written in the Book of the Law is upheld. Unreserved love and fidelity to God is required in the covenant relationship. The fulfilment of the law being love is the principle requirement of His people.
The Burning of Incense
“Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising. (Ezekiel 8:11, BSB).” Each of the seventy leaders was holding a censer. According to Strong’s (H4289). ‘machtâh’ was a ‘censer’ or ‘bowl’ to carry the fragrant incense. The purpose of the censer in the order of the Tabernacle rituals is recorded in Numbers 16:18 – “And they took every man his censer, and put fire in them, and laid incense thereon, and stood in the door of the tabernacle of the congregation with Moses and Aaron.” The priest would put coals on the altar and proceed to pour sweet fragrance upon the coals.
The burning of incense on the alter was a legal requirement under the law during the time of the First Covenant. (1) “Aaron must burn fragrant incense on the altar every morning when he tends the lamps. (8) He must burn incense again when he lights the lamps at twilight so incense will burn regularly before the LORD for the generations to come. (Exodus 30:1,7-8) It was the responsibility of Aaron the High Priest to tend to lighting the lamps in the tabernacle over the course of the day. The lights burning was a representation of Jesus and his eternal state as light of the world that shines in a dark place. The fragrant incense on the alter would rise as sweet perfume with the scent pervading the atmosphere. From a spiritual perspective, under the New Covenant of grace, the prayers of the saints would rise as a pleasing sacrificial offering in the nostrils of God. When taken off the altar, the incense and the live coals were carried behind the veil by the priest to be placed before the Lord. “and put the incense on the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die.” (Leviticus 16:13, ESV). The smoke was thought to be a covering of protection, a smokescreen. It illustrated a veiled covering of our Lord as it was not yet the time of revealing of the New Covenant that would rent the veil of separation from God. Our Lord would become the veil that would be torn away from shrouding access to the Father. The fragrant incense of smoke would rise covering the Mercy Seat that was upon The Testimony.
The golden altar of incense was an artefact in the Tabernacle. The Priest would humbling enter face down behind the veil. He would carry out the yearly ordinance in awe and fear and exist backwards, face down saying a prayer. No one can look upon the face of God and live hence why access to the Father is through the Son of God. The holy presence of God that filled the Holy of Holies was fearfully awesome. “which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant.” Hebrews 9:4). This golden censer was used by the High Priest on the yearly Day of Atonement. A typology of Jesus the Intercessor of mankind and His perpetual covenant of grace. Under the covering of grace we are recipients of eternal life. The rising of the holy odour of sacrifices by God’s people as they pour out from longing grateful hearts is pleasing and an acceptable offering.
All that was predicated in the law was being desecrated under the guise of worship. The secret chamber of the hearts of the leader had fallen into disrepute and apostasy. It was a departure from truth as they covertly hid behind religion whilst sliding into spiritual oblivion. It was a severing from a covenant-relationship of integrity to the Most High God.
Weeping for Tammuz
There were yet more abominations for Ezekiel to witness. (14) “Then He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the LORD, and I saw women sitting there, weeping for Tammuz.” Tammuz was a mythical being worshipped amongst many of the pagan nations, substituting the name according to their preferred deity. The women of Israel would weep outside the temple for Tammuz during the summer solstice. This was yet another abomination before God. What God required from His people was a repentant heart burdened with the prevalence of sins in the nation. The daughters of Zion had lost the burden to mourn and weep over Israel, rather they were under a bondage weeping for Tammuz, depicting a gross love of false worship. God determined to bring in the slayers but those who would sorrow over sinfulness would be spared from the slaughter to be unleashed for unfaithfulness and rebellion. “…And He called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side. 4“Go throughout the city of Jerusalem,” said the LORD, “and put a mark on the foreheads of the men sighing and groaning over all the abominations committed there.” (Ezekiel 9:3-4, BSB)
Generational Sins
(16) “Before them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah, son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.” (17) “Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger? Look, they are even putting the branch to their nose! “. Clearly, false religion and apostasy are generational iniquities amongst God’s people. These are only some of the seven sins Jesus told John who was marooned on Patmos, to warn the 7 churches of Asia Minor.
What is the significance of the holy incense and leadership? It represents a gross defilement and a departure from the holy order set for worship. This verse clearly highlights the generational passing of idolatry, an iniquitous sin. Ezekiel’s vision reveals Shaphan’s son, Jaazaniah as one of the leaders in the hidden chamber of the temple. Shaphan was secretary to King Josiah.
During King Josiah’s reign the Book of the Law was discovered amongst the ruins of the second temple in Jerusalem. It was Hilkiah, the Priest instructed to oversee the repairing of the temple who came upon the Book of the Law, buried in the rubble. Shaphan the secretary took it to King Josiah. When the King read what the Law required of the people, knowing their fallen state, King Josiah rented his royal robe (mantle) and repented. He set about reforming worship throughout the land. Repentance was here being led from a strategic state level. Josiah’s purging of idolatry in the land would go some way to eliciting the favour of God for an apostate nation.
Now here in verse 16 we see Shaphan’s son Jaazaniah as an active participant, indulging in idolatry. The number seventy is a perfect and complete order of God’s law and divine judgement. A precedence was being set by the leaders to bring the people into a complete and perfect departure from God’s law. It is a serious act of leadership folly incurring the wrath of God that would bring divine judgement. Ezekiel sees generations of the same leaders under King Josiah’s reign in the temple committing the sins the people partook of. Again, we see seventy elders, priests of the Temple indulging in pagan practices.
Marked For Protection
The time comes when God rouses Himself from His holy place. “Then the glory of the God of Israel rose from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple.” (Ezekiel 9:4, BSB). The people had cast off restraint believing that God did not see their evil works. But the omniscient eyes of the Spirit sees, discerns and searches out all things. In this current season, everything that is hidden will be revealed and made known. The sins of our enemies will be placed on the rooftop of the houses. It is time to repent of the hidden works and make right before a holy faithful God.
The destroyers, six angels were despatched from heaven to slay those who would not weep over the fallen state of the erring people. The only covering of protection from the sword was the mark on the foreheads of those to be spared. It would be Jesus, seen in Ezekiel’s vision who carries the ink kit at His side. He who knows the hearts of men, the hidden recesses in a chamber of the visceral self, knows them that are His. God would not relent from bringing judgement. (18) “Therefore I will respond with wrath. I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. Although they shout loudly in My ears, I will not listen to them.”
The blood splatter of the slain, enemies of our Lord will be a bloody scene to behold. In Isaiah 63, the prophet gets a glimpse in the spirit of our Lord as victor returning from the bloody battle at Bozrah. Jesus is seen as an ominous lone figure returning from the slaughter of His foes. His blood stained garment, dripping in the blood of His enemies. Figuratively, He is depicted as one who had laboured intensively to tread the grapes of wrath as in a winepress. The scriptures revealed that Jesus kept vengeance in His heart. He was seen coming back from Bozrah vindicated and justified. The triumphant display of His wrath was memorable and satisfyingly poured out on the enemies of God, as they are destroyed with the sword of His vindication. “The Word of God is the Testimony of Jesus, bearing witness as the Son of God. “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and obey what is written in it, because the time is near.” (Revelation 1:3, BSB)
“May the high praises of God be in their mouths, and a double-edged sword in their hands, (7) to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, (8) to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with shackles of iron, (9 )to execute the judgment written against them. This honour is for all His saints.” (Psalms 149:6-9, BSB)
GWENDOLYN SMITH. #NEWPENTECOST. 8th May 2021