The Weight of Glory | Ezekiel 1:1- 2:4 | Pastor Dave Hentschel

Join me in your copy of God's Word.

In the middle, there's a section called The Prophets where Ezekiel will be.

I encourage you to follow along as we begin today.

Let me ask you a question.

What is the most important thing in your life?

What is the most important thing in your life?

Maybe for some of you you'd say my family, or others of you might say my marriage, others of you might say my children, others of you might say my health or my career or my ministry or my happiness.

And those things all are very important.

But let me ask that question a little bit differently.

Imagine you woke up at two in the morning and you discovered your house was on fire and you only had a few moments to get out, and you can't take everything.

You can't take your furniture, you can't save the television, you can't save the clothes that are hanging up in your closet.

You have to decide, what am I gonna grab?

Maybe for you it's the wedding album, or maybe for you it's the family Bible that belonged to your grandparents.

Or maybe there's something sitting in your house that isn't worth much money at all, but you would risk almost anything to save it because of what it means to you.

Isn't that interesting?

Because when everything else is stripped away, what we value becomes visible.

What we say is important and what we actually treat as important aren't always the same thing.

I wonder if that's true spiritually as well.

We can say God is the most important thing in my life.

We can sing about how God is worthy.

We can come to church and talk about God.

But what if someone looked at the way I spent my time and the way I spent my money and the way I worry about things, and they looked at the things that I pursue, and they looked at the things that I sacrifice for, and they looked at the things that sometimes I'm willing to compromise to protect.

What would they conclude is really most important to me?

Friends, the Bible tells us that there's something infinitely more important than our families, our careers, our health, our ministry, even our happiness, and that is the glory of God.

The Hebrew word for glory is the word kavod, and it means weight or weightiness or heaviness.

It means that God alone has the weight and the worth.

And the weight and the worth of God are unrivaled in the Bible and unrivaled in the whole world.

Now that might sound really obvious if you've been a Christian for a while.

Yes, Dave, of course, amen.

God is glorious.

Yes, yes, we get it.

But I wonder if we actually live as though that is true.

Because we live in a world that's constantly telling us another story.

We live in a world where the message is constantly, it's all about you.

It's about your happiness, it's about your dreams, it's about your identity, it's about your fulfillment, it's about your preferences.

And if we're honest, that message can make its way into our hearts, and that message can even make its way into the church as well.

In church, it's like, well, I really like that sermon.

That was good for me.

I really like that worship song, that was good for me.

Even the lyrics to some of our worship songs, which are supposed to be about praising God, sometimes can center around us.

And somehow we get this idea that the church exists for me instead of what's true, which is that the church exists for the glory of God.

Now I know worship is good for us.

Coming to church actually is good for us, but the main thing we need to be concerned about is God.

And ironically, what's ultimately really good for us is to recenter our lives not around us, but around Him.

See, we believe in God, but sometimes we subtly make God like the supporting character in our story.

God provides for me.

God is the one who protects me, God guides me, God saves me.

And don't get me wrong, like all those things are true.

But the Bible gives you a much bigger vision.

God is not the supporting character in your story.

You are the supporting character in his story.

If we're not careful though, we forget that.

And we start to think, well, God is on call for us rather than I'm on call for him.

That, more than anything else, is what Ezekiel is about.

Everything that exists exists for him and exists through him and exists for him and comes from him.

And the Bible's greatest subject is not human happiness, it is the glory of God, and that is where Ezekiel begins.

Not even with Ezekiel, not with Israel, not with me, or not with you.

It begins with a vision of God.

Ezekiel sees something that's almost impossible to put into words, though he will try.

The first verse reads like this.

The book of Ezekiel begins where the Christian life begins with the glory of God.

It begins when we stop putting ourselves at the center and start putting God back where he belongs.

At the center, above us, like before us, like over us.

So the subject of my message today is the weight of glory.

We'll be in 1-1 to 2-4.

And we're going to see three things.

We'll see Ezekiel's life situation, we'll see Ezekiel's vision, and then we'll see Ezekiel's calling.

And underneath of all three of these things is like a big idea, and it's that when we see the glory of God, we stop making ourselves the center of the story.

And we surrender ourselves to his purposes.

For many of you, this will be new territory.

How many of you have ever sat in a sermon series through the book of Ezekiel before?

Just a quick show of hands.

Look around.

Let the record show there are a few of us here.

My hand should be down, because I've never done a sermon series through the book of Ezekiel.

I've been too scared.

It was the Puritan William Greenhill who characterized the book of Ezekiel as full of majesty, obscurity, and difficulty.

In terms of genre, the prophecy of Ezekiel is characterized by more types of literature than any other book in the Bible, but like by far, every type of genre you will find in the book of Ezekiel.

There's gonna be prophecies with predictions about the future.

We expect that.

There's also a great deal of poetry and prose.

There's gonna be tons of signs and symbols, there's parables, there's also allegories, and there will be something really interesting that he engages in called prophetic street theater, and we'll unpack that when we see that.

But every type of genre you can imagine is found in the book of Ezekiel.

It's hard, but it is worth it.

So let me encourage you to begin reading through this book with us.

When you do, you'll quickly see why.

This is one of the most fascinating books in the whole Bible.

Uh, here's our tentative preaching schedule for the fall at NBC.

You can take out your phone and snap a picture of that to prepare you for each particular Sunday.

I encourage you to read it ahead of time and meditate on this great book.

The sermon series will last to the end of this year.

We won't go through every chapter and verse, but we are looking at 16 key strategically chosen passages that will be like mile markers along this journey to help you understand and grasp what's going on in Ezekiel.

And I encourage you to read the in-between sections on your own.

Pick up an Ezekiel journal to take notes.

You can grab one of those, hopefully, on your way out today, where you can remember what God is teaching you as you study this book together with us.

Even better, join one of our small groups and process the sermons together as a group with other brothers and sisters in Christ.

Those groups are all listed on our website.

You can check that out to get the most out of this series together.

So that's the plan.

And we're gonna have a wonderful fall series together.

Why don't we pray and ask for God's blessing upon it?

Would you stand if you're able?

And let's actually dedicate this to the Lord as a church.

And I want to encourage you to pray something out loud as we begin.

I want you to pray these words.

Lord Jesus, I open my heart to you.

So let's start with that.

Ready?

Lord Jesus.

Amen.

Father, we come before you this morning with grateful hearts.

Open our eyes to see your glory, to remember that you are sovereign and to trust that you are with your people wherever you lead us.

Speak to us now through your word today.

Humble us before you.

Help us to respond with faith and obedience.

For we pray it all in Jesus' name and for the sake of his reputation.

And everyone said, Amen.

You may be seated.

So we're gonna be in the section of your Bible that's called the Prophets.

There are 17 of them.

There's five uh books that we call the major prophets, and then there's 12 that are the minor prophets.

Now it's not like baseball where major is better and minor is like kind of like not that great.

It's just about the length of their writings.

So Ezekiel is a major prophet simply because he writes 48 chapters, and so he's a major prophet.

Now the prophets were largely spokespeople for God, and they ministered in two distinct ways through foretelling, but also through forth telling.

Four telling is what you might think.

It's when a prophet predicts the future, and Ezekiel does that in some fantastic ways.

But there's also his ministry of forth telling, which is proclaiming in their day, a prophet proclaiming in their day what was important to hear from God in terms of both warnings and promises, and we'll see a lot of that as well.

When did all of this happen?

Is a really good question.

To put this thing on a timeline, around the year 2000 BC, there was a guy called out of Ur, and his name was what?

It's on the screen.

Abraham.

About a thousand years after that, a thousand BC, there was a guy with a great name, best name ever.

His name, uh, he was a ruler of Israel.

He had a sling stone and he took a giant down.

What's his name?

David.

David has the united monarchy, the kingdom is going well, but then it splits in two because of civil war.

Uh, the north breaks off from the south.

Everything's going fine until the north actually gets conquered by the Assyrian Empire in the year 722 BC.

We actually were in this time period last fall when we went through the book of Isaiah.

That's around the time of the ministry of Isaiah.

The northern kingdom was uh conquered.

And then the southern kingdom lasts a little bit longer, but because of their sin, they're eventually judged, and they go into exile in the year 586 BC into Babylon.

Babylon, they the Babylonian conquest takes over.

They go into exile for a period of 70 years, where Israel is judged because of their idolatry and sin, but God promises that he will bring them back.

It's a promise in Ezekiel, actually.

And they do come back under the leadership of a man named Ezra and Nehemiah, and they come back in three different waves as the people return to the land just as God had promised them.

And when you get to the end of Nehemiah, you've now gotten to the chronological end of the Old Testament.

So Ezekiel fits right here in the period of exile.

Ezekiel was actually one of the people who got exiled and sent away.

Ezekiel lived in Jerusalem during the final years where Judah was still an independent kingdom.

If you want to know the scripture reference that kind of records the narrative of what's going on during that time, you have to read 2 Kings 24 and 25.

If you don't know that section of the Bible, you'll be pretty lost in terms of what's going on in the book of Ezekiel.

So I would encourage you to read those two chapters to see what's happening around the time of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel lives between the first forced migration and the final destruction of Jerusalem.

He ministers between 593 BC to 571 BC for about a ministry of 22 years.

Which means he was one of the people in 597 that was taken into exile, along with Daniel and his three friends, and about 10,000 other people that were brought over to Jerusalem.

And then he ministers over in Babylon, and right in the middle of his ministry, Jerusalem gets attacked and sacked, and the temple is destroyed, and it's a really big deal right in the middle of Ezekiel when all of that happens.

And then Ezekiel continues to minister even after the destruction for some years after that.

In terms of location, spatially, Ezekiel was in Babylon, which is over here.

They were all in Babylon.

Why were they in Babylon?

The answer was that God himself had given his people a land flowing with milk and honey.

He had given them everything, but God had also said, if you turn from me and turn instead toward worthless idols, then I will take everything away from you.

And that is exactly what happened.

So they are sent away into exile.

You say, okay, Pastor Dave, that's an interesting map, interesting piece of history, but who cares?

What does that have to do with me?

Well, everything.

The Israelite exile is a picture of our exile.

Just as the Israelites, because of their rebellion, were sent into exile, so also all of humanity is in exile away from the presence of God.

There was not supposed to be sin and suffering and sickness and death, but we are all, in a sense, in a place of exile.

Don't you realize that?

Don't you sense that?

Don't you sense that something is wrong, that this whole human race is in exile?

We are.

We are exiled from our true home.

We are exiled from our true selves.

We are exiled from our destiny.

We were never meant to live the way that we're living.

We are in exile.

To the degree that you understand that and acknowledge that reality, you'll understand life better, you'll understand yourself better, you'll understand this world better, and you'll definitely understand the book of Ezekiel better.

As far as structure, here's Pastor Dave's famous chart.

Ezekiel divides easily into three major sections.

Chapters 1 through 12 is part one, and it is all about Yahweh, the Lord, leaving the temple of Jerusalem and going with his people into exile.

Right here.

This was the biggest aha moment for me as I re-study this book starting in June till today.

Think about what I just said.

The question I want you to ask and answer as we're looking at chapter one later today, in just a few moments, is this here's a vision of the glory of God.

What's the glory of God doing in Babylon?

Strange, isn't it?

Ezekiel, you'll learn, is a priest.

He's trained as a priest.

He spent his entire life preparing to serve God in Jerusalem.

And if you were to ask Ezekiel and all his priestly friends, where are we going to encounter the glory of God?

What's he going to say?

Where?

At the temple.

That's where God's presence was.

Thank you.

That's where God dwelled.

But now he's in Babylon.

He's been taken away from the temple.

He's been taken away from his homeland.

He's been taken away from the place where he thought God was.

And then the heavens open.

And Ezekiel sees the glory of the Lord in Babylon.

Do you see what's happening?

God has gone with his people into exile.

Yes, we have a God who goes with us into exile.

Israel sinned against God, they rebelled against him, their exile was not unjust, they deserved God's judgment, and yet when God sends them into exile, our God does not abandon his people there.

He goes with them.

And so the glory of the Lord is not confined, we learn, to Jerusalem or to the temple.

God is not saying to Ezekiel and his friends, hey, you sinned, you blew it, now you're on your own.

No, even in judgment, we have a God who pursues his people.

Even in exile, God is with his people.

Even when they have wandered far, far from him, he has not wandered from them.

He is still chasing after them.

And that is the kind of God they have.

And brothers and sisters, that's the kind of God you have.

Part two.

Part two is about Yahweh warning Israel and the nations.

Here we have the most graphic, vile description of sin and rebellion in the whole Bible.

Little Jewish boys were not even supposed to read this book until they were 30.

Some of that language is so, so severe that they could not handle it.

Ezekiel's vocabulary and his characterization of sin is very vivid.

Some of the verses, I don't know if I'm putting on the screen during this series.

Sin to Ezekiel is abominable.

Sin is grotesque.

It is detestable.

It is gruesome.

It is disgusting.

It perverts, it pollutes, it offends God.

Actually, God's anger shows up more in the book of Ezekiel than any other book in the Bible.

And the issue here for God is his name.

The reason God is concerned is with his own reputation.

Israel has tarnished the reputation of the God that they were supposed to reflect, and they are not imitating him properly.

And so the most repeated phrase in the whole book of Ezekiel is God going after his name.

And you'll hear it every week almost.

Then you will know my name is the Lord.

Then you will know my name is the Lord.

62 times that phrase is repeated in the book of Ezekiel.

Why?

Because God is committed to restoring his name.

Part three.

Part three is unbelievable.

Part three is Yahweh promising to restore his people Israel in this kingdom, this messianic kingdom.

Here, brothers and sisters, we have a wonderful hope.

Promises are there for you of a new shepherd, a new covenant, a new heart, a restored land, a restored temple, dry bones bringing themselves to life because of God's Spirit.

And when all that happens, go ahead and turn in your Bible to the last verse of Ezekiel.

Just flip there, chapter 48, the last verse.

When everything happens and everything is restored, I want you to see the end.

When God rebuilds his people and his temple and his city, it says in the very last verse of the book of Ezekiel that on that day the name of the city will be the Lord is there.

That's our hope.

That's where we're going.

That is the hope not just of Ezekiel and the people of Israel, but that is the hope of all the people of God in all ages.

This is the city that we're looking for.

So with that said, let's begin where Ezekiel begins.

Chapter 1 again, verse 1.

His life situation.

See if you can look at the superscription with me and see what God is saying.

Verse 1 says this again in the 30th year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I, he's speaking in the first person here, was among the exiles by the Kebar Canal.

The heavens were open, and I saw visions of God.

Now we switch to the third person.

There appears to be a narrator here.

On the fifth day of the month, it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachim, the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, the priest, the son of Buzai, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Kebar Canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.

So here we meet Ezekiel, and his name means God strengthens.

God strengthens.

And we'll talk about what that means in the series.

Notice, as I mentioned, he is a priest.

So the priest would work at the temple.

That was his training.

The only problem, as he said, is Ezekiel is nowhere near the temple.

He is now in the land of the Chaldeans, which is a synonym for the land of the Babylonians.

Here's the other thing that you may not notice.

In verse 1, it says that this book starts in the 30th year.

That means Ezekiel is 30 years old.

30 is the year that a priest would be fully trained and commissioned to be able to serve in the temple.

In the margin of your Bible, just jot down Numbers, chapter 4, verse 3.

Numbers 4:3

When a person was fully trained at age 30, they were finished and they were allowed to serve as a priest.

So think about that.

I don't know if anybody's 30 in here.

But just imagine you're 30.

Ezekiel's 30.

It's his 30th birthday.

He's trained so far his entire adult life.

He's been looking forward to this for 30 years to serve in this special sacred capacity at the Jerusalem temple.

And that dream is over.

Here now he is sitting by this irrigation canal, far from home, far from the temple, far from all he was hoping would work out in his life.

He goes through exile, which means forced migration and incredible trauma that that would have uh entailed for him.

This is his birthday.

He's 30.

This is a sad birthday.

Like, what's your worst birthday ever?

Worst birthday ever, right here.

That's Ezekiel.

I want you to imagine for a moment that almost everything you thought was secure was taken away.

Your home is gone.

Your country has been conquered.

Your city has been destroyed.

Your future is uncertain.

And the things that you thought God had given you, your temple, your land, your nation, your security seem to have disappeared.

That's where Ezekiel is.

He's sitting beside this canal in Babylon, hundreds of miles from home, in exile, and there's something particularly painful about the way in which this book begins.

He's supposed to be beginning his ministry.

Instead, he's sitting as a refugee.

All his hopes are gone, all his dreams are gone.

They're dashed forever.

And then something amazing happens to him that changes absolutely everything as we see Ezekiel's vision.

Now, in the next section, we are coming to the one of the most wild, unbelievable, weird, can I use that word, bizarre, crazy visions in the whole Bible.

Look with me at verse 4.

As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually.

And in the midst of fire, as it were, gleaming metal.

All of a sudden, we got a storm, not an uncommon image for a theophany in the Bible when God shows up.

There's fire, there's lightning, there's glowing metal.

It's the same Hebrew word that we use today for electricity.

If you lived in Israel, everything is like, you know, tectonic.

And here, Ezekiel gets an incredible vision.

Now I'm gonna warn you this vision is overwhelming.

This vision is exhausting.

This vision will be very difficult for you to grasp if this is your first time reading it.

So I just want you to try your best to hear some of the pictures and get some of the imagery as I read the scripture today of this vision.

The first part is the part about the living creatures, and that starts in verse 5.

Ezekiel says, And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures, and this was their appearance.

They had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings, their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot, and they sparkled like burnished bronze.

Under their wings on the four four sides, they had human hands, and the four had their faces and their wings thus, their wings touched one another.

Each one of them went straight forward without turning as they went.

Okay, how are you doing?

Yeah.

We have four like animals, sort of, and they're in the shape of a square.

The number four is significant, usually significant in the Bible.

Usually it's the compass, like from all four corners of the earth.

There's something about that here.

There's four of them.

But they're composite, right?

We're mixing together the realm of land animals with humans and then sky fliers and birds.

And somehow I want you to see that it's like all of creation, all of life, created life, is part of the bottom of this vision somehow.

Like it encompasses all of God's creation.

Next, he's going to describe these living creatures a little further, and it's going to get even weirder.

Okay, look at verse 10.

As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face, the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.

Such were their faces, and their wings were spread out above.

Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies.

And each went straight forward.

Wherever the spirit would go, they went without turning as they went.

As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures.

And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning, and the living creatures darted to and fro like the appearance of a flash of lightning.

So pause there.

How we don't.

So we got four creatures, and they got four faces, and there's a lion, there's an ox, and there's an eagle, and there's a human.

Now, over the years, a lot of artists have tried their best to create renderings of these creatures throughout church history.

Here's an example.

Sometimes we think of angels in the Bible like little guardian cherubs, little baby cherub, like Cupid with an arrow.

No.

The cherub in the Bible are more like this.

They are very strong.

They are very powerful beings.

I know it's a lot.

But that is the vision of the four living creatures.

The second part of the vision that you're about to read about is the wheels.

So next, Ezekiel is going to turn his attention to wheels.

Look at verse 15 now.

Now, as I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them.

As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction, their appearance was like the gleaming of barrel, and the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel.

When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went.

And their rims were tall and awesome, and the rims of all four were full of eyes all around.

And when the creatures went, the wheels went beside them.

And when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose.

Wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

Alright, how are we doing?

So we have wheels.

And there's wheels within wheels, and it's kind of like a like a kaleidoscope type of thing.

And wheels communicate movement.

This is not a static, steady state kind of vision.

This thing's dynamic, this thing's mobile, this thing's on the go.

The important textual emphasis here is that there's a relationship between the spirit of God and the wheels.

And the spirit operating inside the wheels is in union with these wheels and the living creatures.

Here's some artist renderings of the wheels.

As this vision unfolds, we start to see these pictures.

And Ezekiel, really, what he's doing is he's scanning things from the bottom to the top.

He's working his way up the vision.

So we've got these wheels, and the next part of the vision, we're gonna go a little bit farther up to the platform and the throne.

So look at verse 22.

Over the heads of the living creatures, there was the likeness of an expanse shining like awe-inspiring crystal spread out above their heads.

And under the expanse, their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another.

And each creature had two wings covering its body.

And when they went, I heard, now we got sound for the first time.

I heard the sound of their wings.

And what's the sound like?

It's like the sound of many waters, or maybe it's more like the sound of the Almighty, or maybe it's like the sound of a tumult, or like maybe the sound of an army.

When they stood still, they let down their wings, and there came a voice.

Now for the first time we have a voice from above the expanse over their heads.

When they stood still, they let down their wings.

Alright, how are we doing?

So look at this word, expanse.

I'm gonna come back to that.

It's very important.

But back in Ezekiel's day, really it was a platform, and it looks like some kind of crystal.

But these platforms were very common for kings to be transported on.

We don't think of it this way.

We think of like Air Force One or the President's motorcade, or we have like a different idea of how you have a dignitary get somewhere.

This would be what they thought.

Anybody in Ezekiel's time would immediately recognize this is a chariot, this is a divine chariot.

We have someone who's very important, and they're being transported here, and that's what we're looking at.

So if you go on Google and somebody says this is like aliens or like a spaceship, they don't know anything about ancient Near Eastern culture.

This was a very common image that was used to like carry a ruler or a king or even a deity sometimes.

Here's some carvings and images that we possess that would show something similar to a chariot, although this is a divine throne chariot.

Now, the the chariot has a roof, and the dignitary goes above the roof, and we're about to look above the roof, which is which is terrifying.

So look at verse 26.

And above the expanse, over their heads, there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire, and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance, and upward from what had the appearance of his waist, I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around, and downward from what had the appearance of his waist, I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire, and there was brightness all around him.

How are we doing?

The point of this vision is that someone very, very, very, very important is being transported who is sitting above the platform.

Or Ezekiel's choice of word is the word expanse, and it's the same word used in Genesis chapter 1 to describe the expanse above the earth.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

So the person who's seated above this platform happens to be the person who's seated above the entire universe.

And so what Ezekiel is seeing is a throne, and someone sitting on this throne above the expanse.

And artists have tried to depict this as a rendering.

Here's one example, although this really doesn't do it justice.

Because as he looks up there, there is sounds, and it is a fearful sight with thunderous types of noises, and to look at it from below is absolutely terrifying.

But there is one on the throne, and this one is majestic, and he is glorious.

And then as Ezekiel brings his vision to a close, he wraps it up with one more verse, verse 28.

Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of brightness all around.

Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.

Finally, in verse 28, now we know what we're looking at.

Now we finally realize oh, this is a vision of the glory of Yahweh.

And this is the wildest and most detailed vision of the glory of the Lord in the entire Old Testament.

We have some information about it in Isaiah 6.

We learn a little bit about it, like in Exodus 33 with Moses.

But this vision here in chapter 1 is like way beyond all of those.

It's even hard to imagine what he is describing here, isn't it?

We try with artwork, but this is confusing and that's deliberate.

Notice Ezekiel uses the words like appearance.

It was like this.

It was such and such.

That's because what we're looking at is the glory of God, which is really not just one attribute of God, but it is the sum total of all of the attributes of God put together.

That's why it's so hard to describe.

Because there is no one like him.

We can talk about one attribute, like his justice or his power or his holiness or his truthfulness, but this isn't just one attribute.

It's everything all put together.

The eyes on the wheels.

He's trying to convey that God sees all, that he knows all, that there's nothing that he does not see, that he's omniscient.

The wheels themselves and the mobility of the wheels, he's trying to say that God's not limited in spatial terms, that God can go anywhere, and that he's omnipresent, and that he has no limitation spatially.

The faces of the eagle and the lion and the ox, these are God's divine attributes that are each pictured in some poetic way in this face.

God is all of those things, and the glory of God is all of those things put together.

And the climax of this vision, where the vision is going, where it's taking us, all the action is above the expanse.

All the action is above the platform to the one who's on the throne.

That's what we're seeing here.

We are seeing a picture of the throne of the universe in all of God's glory.

Now, in the Bible, what does it mean that God has glory?

What does God's glory really mean?

Well, it means many things, but it means at least three things.

The first thing that the Bible teaches us about God's glory is that the glory of God refers to his infinite beyondness.

Can we say that?

His infinite beyond it is.

The sum total of this vision is this is not a tame God.

He's beyond anything I could even ever imagine.

The way Ezekiel actually writes this chapter is like when my kids were real little, let's say they were four years old, and they saw something and it was amazing, and they wanted to explain it to dad, but they didn't have the words.

And they're like, Dad, I saw this, and then it did this, and then it was crazy, this other thing, and what they're saying like barely makes sense to me, but they're trying their best to like get it out.

That's Ezekiel.

It's like infinitely beyond.

This is a category-busting picture of this God we have.

The glory of God is his infinite beyondness.

And this is the attribute of God that human beings actually hate the most.

We would rather have a God that fits our understanding.

We would rather have a God that fits inside of our boxes.

But when we insist on fitting God into our minds, it's like pouring the Atlantic Ocean into a thimble.

Charles Spurgeon said this quote, the proper study of the Christian is the Godhead.

The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the doings, and the existence of the great God which he calls his father.

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity.

It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that all our pride is drowned in its infinity.

Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with, in them we feel a kind of self-contentment and go out on our way with the thought, behold, I am wise.

But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with a different thought, such as, I am but of yesterday and I know nothing.

It is his infinite beyondness.

Number two, the glory of God is his supreme importance.

Can we say that?

His supreme.

The Hebrew word again for glory is kavod.

It means weight.

It means God is weighty.

In contrast to the idols that are blowing away like chaff.

We don't usually use the word glory in this way in our culture.

We have other words that we use, like gravity.

That has gravity.

This thing has some gravitas.

That's the idea.

Or sometimes we use the word matter this way.

Matter can refer to something that is solid and substantial, but it can also refer to importance, right?

This matters.

This should matter.

Nothing should matter to me like God matters to me.

If anything matters to me as much as God matters to me, then I'm not giving God the glory that He's due.

Does that make sense?

Nothing should get the kind of glory that God should get in my life, but God.

This is what the Lord of the Rings is about.

So Saron creates this ring.

And it destroys everybody who holds it.

And at the end it gets thrown into the fires of Mount Doom, and Sauron himself explodes when the ring gets destroyed.

So Tolkien writes this whole story, three books, and somebody asked him one time, What's with the ring?

What's the ring?

And Tolkien goes, it's just a story, you know, don't make too much of it.

But then he actually answered it.

He said, Okay, what the ring is, is quote, the ring of Saron is the mythical treatment of the placing of one's life or power into something external, which results in the disaster and destruction of the self, unquote.

See, for God to have glory, that means he has to matter to you the most more than anything else.

And if God doesn't have glory, then other things matter to you more than him, and you're not glorifying him in the way that he should be glorified.

And this shows up in very practical ways.

Like if I glorify money, that means if I owe taxes and I don't want to pay the taxes and I decide I'm gonna cheat on the taxes and disobey the law of God, that means money has more weight in my life than God does.

See what it means to have something have weight in your life?

Or if if I, you know, if I love someone, but then that someone breaks up with me and I like, I now I lose the will to live after they break up with me, that someone has more weight in my life than they should really have.

Only God should be the heavy weight in my life.

And sometimes we we like to play it safe and we put weight in other areas of our life.

But the scripture tells us when you divide your trust like that and glory in other things that will not be safe for you.

The safest thing for you actually is to give the glory to God that he's due.

So, third, the glory of God means at least his infinite beyondness, it means his supreme importance, but thirdly, it means his absolute splendor.

Can we say that?

His absolute splendor.

See, here he is on the throne.

There's strength up there, there's sovereignty up there, but I also want you to notice that there is great beauty up there.

Jonathan Edwards talks about this glory being something that is so powerful that it has the ability to change my affections.

See, friends, it's not enough to obey God because you have to.

We want to obey God because we want to.

Because we see Him as the most beautiful, as the most glorious, as the most weighty.

We long for this kind of beauty.

But we settle.

We surround our lives with beauty, we surround our homes with beauty, we surround ourselves with beautiful landscaping outside of our homes or decorations, or we love to have beautiful choices of music surrounding our lives.

We love to have ourselves surrounded with beauty, and all those sources of beauty are fine.

But if you read C.S.

Lewis's famous essay, The Weight of Glory, what he says there is the problem with those desires is not that they're too strong, they're too weak.

That God has made us for his glory, and we're far too easily satisfied.

And so in this world, we're looking for other sources of beauty, and God has placed inside of the human heart a desire that cannot be satisfied with the things of this world because we're looking for him.

So Lewis says, quote, it's like the scent of a flower that we have not yet found.

Looking for God, it's like the echo of a tune that we have not yet heard, or news from a country that we've never even visited.

Your hunger, your hunger for beauty and splendor, the hunger in the human soul will ultimately only be satisfied by this, the glory of God.

So the glory of God is at least his infinite beyondness, his supreme importance, and his absolute splendor.

And that's the main thing that Ezekiel's about.

A.W.

Tozier once said, What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

So what comes into your mind when you think about God?

See, for a lot of us, we think about God and we think about God as our friend.

Our buddy.

Now, the Bible says that God in his grace actually, if you trust him, is your friend.

But the Bible does not start there.

It starts here.

Ezekiel starts here with this transcendent, majestic, awesome image of an all powerful, glorious God.

This God was To be your friend.

But we start with this belief that God is awesome and glorious and splendorous.

It's unfathomable.

Yes, he's our friend if we trust him, but that's a very significant friend to have.

Some of us struggle to understand this God.

We don't have the categories.

He's not like other people.

How do we understand him?

How can we understand him better?

Well, maybe we could start where Ezekiel starts.

The very next verse tells us, and when I saw it, I fell on my face.

Ezekiel just falls down.

This is not what I do around my friends.

I'm not comfortable down here.

I'm embarrassed to be down here.

I want to get up right now.

It says in chapter three, Ezekiel was down here for a week.

Being down here is a place of humility.

Being down here is a place of me acknowledging I am I'm subservient.

Being down here is me recognizing my place.

And me recognizing God's place.

We've lost this.

But it's all over the Bible.

When people encounter the glory of God, they fall down.

Like Isaiah saw the glory of God, he fell down.

When John in Revelation sees the glory of God, he falls down.

All kinds of elders in the book of Revelation, when they see the glory of God, they fall down.

This is what we do.

How do you know if you've experienced the glory of God?

You fall down.

So if you haven't fallen down, maybe you haven't experienced the glory of God.

When we fall on our face, it signifies subjection and humility.

Just think about this.

This is God we're talking about.

Can I ask that question again?

What's the most important thing in your life?

To be happy?

Is that the most important thing?

For the Christian life, it is fall down.

The most important thing is not I want to be happy.

The most important thing is what does that sovereign want me to do?

I want to do that.

You know why that's so important?

Because when you encounter difficulties in your life, and you will, you need a much bigger reason for living than your own happiness.

This is what happened to Catherine Wolfe.

She was 26, she was a young wife, she was a new mom, and by all appearances, her life was going well.

She was happy.

And then without warning, she suffered a massive brainstem stroke, and she nearly died.

She survived, but she woke up to a completely different life.

She had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, how to swallow.

And she was left after that incident with significant disabilities, double vision, deafness in one ear, facial paralysis on one side, and limited use of her one hand.

And even after years of rehab, much of that remains her reality to this day.

Now, as she tells her story, and she's written a couple books about this, she said there were moments where she was wondering if God had made a mistake.

But over the years, something changed, not in her circumstances, but inside Catherine, in the way that she understood God.

And she came to realize, she said, quote, God's goodness was not dependent upon my circumstances being good.

She said, I had to learn how to find God in the midst of it.

And that's the difference.

The Christian hope is not that God will always make my life easy or your life easy, it's that God Himself will be enough.

Catherine's story reminds us that you can lose your health and still have God.

That you can lose your abilities that you once took for granted but still have God.

That you can lose the life you thought you were going to have and still discover that you have not lost the most important thing.

You have God.

And when God becomes the center of your life, his greatness becomes greater than your weakness.

His sufficiency becomes greater than your insufficiency.

His glory becomes greater than your circumstances.

Because everything that exists for the gl that exists exists for the glory of God.

You know who knows this more than anybody?

God.

That's why he told us in his word, everything is for my glory, and it's good for you to acknowledge that.

Westminster Confession, what's a chief end of man?

Chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And the flip side of that is also true.

Dave, it's not about you.

And the most loving thing God could do for me and you is to tell you that.

The goal of the Christian life is not my happiness, it is God's glory.

And the remarkable thing is that when God becomes the center, he gives us a joy that circumstances can't take away.

That's what Ezekiel finds out.

So we've seen Ezekiel's situation, we've seen Ezekiel's vision, and now we're ready to see Ezekiel's calling.

After he falls down, the text continues.

Chapter 1, verse 28 says, I fell on my face and I heard the voice of one speaking.

And he said to me, Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak to you.

And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

And he said to me, Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels who have rebelled against me.

The descendants are also impudent and stubborn.

I send you to them, and you shall say to them, Thus says the Lord God.

This is where he's commissioned to become a prophet.

Think of it.

He was trained as a priest, hoping to experience the splendor and the glory of God in the Jerusalem temple.

But yet here he is, and he has now experienced something far more splendorous, far more glorious than the Jerusalem temple could have ever offered him.

And so he's commissioned, not as a priest, but as a prophet.

Think of that turnaround.

Ezekiel's life was shattered.

And yet here he's recommissioned at the very point in time that he thought was the end of his life.

And that's what our God does.

Our God meets us right there.

He meets us right there in the hard places that look like the end.

And then he turns them into a new beginning with a harder and more complicated, but yet very meaningful obedience of serving him.

Here's the big idea, I think, of Ezekiel chapter 1.

Ezekiel 1 · chapter mention

When we see the glory of God, we stop making ourselves the center of the story and surrender ourselves to his purposes.

Ezekiel went into the vision thinking he was living in the ruins of his life, but when he saw the glory of God, he discovered something much bigger.

The world had not fallen out of God's hands after all.

The throne was still occupied.

That's the gift of Ezekiel 1 to you and me this morning.

Ezekiel doesn't receive an explanation for everything that happened.

He receives something far better, a vision of the one who's still sovereign over everything that has happened.

And that's a very different kind of comfort.

I don't have to understand everything.

You don't have to understand everything.

You don't need to know what's happening around the throne if you know who's sitting on the throne.

And maybe that's what some of you need today.

Your circumstances in your life right now may be very chaotic.

Your future might feel very uncertain.

Your family might be in a place where you're hurting.

Your plans, what you thought were your plans, may have collapsed.

But I'm here to tell you from Ezekiel chapter 1, based on the authority of the scriptures, that the throne is still occupied.

Ezekiel 1 · chapter mention

How is that possible?

How is it possible that this man Ezekiel could even see that?

How is it possible he could grasp the glory of God?

He's a sinner.

He's in exile because he deserved exile.

We're sinners too.

How can God come to Ezekiel?

How can God come to us?

And how can we come to him?

The answer is in the first verse.

Look again.

The only other time in the Bible, the phrase, the heavens were opened, is used in the entire Old Testament.

It's found in the flood story of Genesis chapter 7.

Genesis 7 · chapter mention

That's a passage about judgment.

You remember the story?

God judges sin, God judges evil with a flood, and Noah's family is spared, and then the water recedes, and then Noah offers a sacrifice, and then after that, God makes a promise.

And God says, I have set my bow in the clouds, and I will never destroy the earth by water again.

And the bow in the clouds becomes the sign.

Did you notice as you drop down to Ezekiel 1.28, there was a bow in the clouds?

Take a look at that.

Anybody notice the rainbow the first time around?

Now the word for rainbow is actually the word for war bow in the Bible.

And God was saying to Noah, I will offer peace, no more wrath, I will hang up my bow.

That's a sign of God's mercy and grace.

His bow is laid up.

There's only two times in the entire Old Testament where a bow in the clouds is used, right here and back in Genesis.

What does it mean?

Well, the great Charles Spurgeon, when he was preaching on Genesis 9, said, you know, it's very significant the direction that the bow is pointing.

How is it pointing?

Up or down?

Up.

If it was pointed down, that might make you a little nervous, right?

Like I'm not shooting you now, but I'm about to.

But the bow is pointed up.

Spurgeon said, it's almost as if God is hinting, saying, you know, I love you.

And if I have to, rather than bring this judgment upon the earth, I will take that judgment myself.

Isn't that strange?

But yet, centuries later, there was another bow.

And there was another arrow.

But the arrow would fall not on us, but on Jesus Christ.

When the Lord Jesus Christ took the arrows of judgment that we deserved, so that there would be no more flood, no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Think of that.

Jesus, fully God, the one who exists in the fullness of glory.

The kind of glory we just read about in Ezekiel chapter 1.

Ezekiel 1 · chapter mention

The one on the throne above the expanse.

That God, that Jesus, that is who he is.

That glorious God is the one who steps down from glory, veils himself in human flesh, so he can take your judgment for you.

Yes, the glory has departed.

But the glory will return because of the great Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fact that he took your judgment in your place.

That is the good news of the book of Ezekiel.

Let us pray as we close and the worship team comes down.

Father, we bow our heads and we close our eyes in awe of you.

Thank you that you are the God who is with your people.

When life feels uncertain, would you remind us that that throne is still occupied today?

Would you help us to live with our eyes fixed on your glory, centering our lives around what really matters, and trusting you in every circumstance and faithfully following you wherever you lead.

Lord, thank you for the hope of Ezekiel.

Thank you for the hope that we have in Christ who came into our broken world to bring us home to be with you in glory.

We praise you because you are worthy.

And we pray it all in Jesus' matchless name and for the sake of his reputation.

And everyone said, Amen.