HCC Weekly - August 25th, 2025

Ezekiel

Pastor David

We serve a patient and merciful God. Looking in the Old Testament we see the history of Israel and their hundreds of years of disobeying God. In those hundreds of years God made sure to send out signs to Israel to communicate to them that he wanted a right relationship with them. Those signs were his prophets sent to both Judah and Israel.

Ezekiel was one of those prophets.

Ezekiel 4:1-8-“Now, son of man, take a block of clay, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it.  2  Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it.  3  Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the people of Israel. 4  “Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the people of Israel upon yourself. [a]  You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side.  5  I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the people of Israel.

6  “After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the people of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year.  7  Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem and with bared arm prophesy against her.  8  I will tie you up with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have finished the days of your siege.

In this passage Ezekiel is called to do a thing that would make him very uncomfortable so that the message from the Lord could go forth. First, he was to take a brick and (as I imagine it in my mind) play toy soldiers with it by showing a miniature army attacking the brick as if it were a city. This was to represent Jerusalem being attacked by the Babylonians, which would happen around 7 years later around 589-586 BC.

Next comes the physically uncomfortable part. Ezekiel was then called to lay on his left side for 390 days; each day representing a year that Israel had been in sin. After that, he was called to lay on his left side for 40 days with each day representing a year that Judah had been in sin.

Ezekiel was called to do an uncomfortable thing to try and get the attention of Israel and Judah who were living in rebellion to God. God wanted to restore his people back to him, but they were choosing to walk away from him instead of running towards him. They ignored the signs; they killed the prophets sent to call them to repentance. And because they did this, God eventually carried out the consequence of their sin and they were spit out of the land like the people before them were.

Living under the New Covenant, we have those that prophecy, but we no longer have prophets. Now, our signs to turn back to the Lord come from the Holy Spirit who has been sent out to convict the world of its sins (John 16:8). Nevertheless, we should learn the lesson from Israel who did not listen and see the consequence they faced for ignoring those signs. Let’s strive to make it so God doesn’t need to send us any signs because we are following his will for our lives so well. But also, if we do get a sign from God, let’s strive to make it the only sign we need.