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Ezekiel 24:15-24
Also the word of Yahuwah came to me, saying, 16 “Son of man, behold, I take away from you the desire of your eyes with one stroke; yet you shall neither mourn nor weep, nor shall your tears run down. 17 Sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead; bind your turban on your head, and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover your lips, and do not eat man’s bread of sorrow.” 18 So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died; and the next morning I did as I was commanded. 19 And the people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things signify to us, that you behave so?” 20 Then I answered them, “The word of Yahuwah came to me, saying, 21 ‘Speak to the house of Israel, Thus says Yahuwah: Behold, I will profane My sanctuary, your arrogant boast, the desire of your eyes, the delight of your soul; and your sons and daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword. 22 And you shall do as I have done; you shall not cover your lips nor eat man’s bread of sorrow. 23 Your turbans shall be on your heads and your sandals on your feet; you shall neither mourn nor weep, but you shall pine away in your iniquities and mourn with one another. 24 Thus Ezekiel is a sign to you; according to all that he has done you shall do; and when this comes, you shall know that I am Yahuwah.’”
There are many things we can say about the text but mainly first: it’s pretty odd. This is a strange passage of Scripture. That Yahuwah would come to His beloved servant and tell him that with one stroke He was going to take his wife from him is uncharacteristic of what we think of Yahuwah. It’s hard to imagine that He would take the delight of Ezekiel’s eyes. She didn’t die of a prolonged illness, or accident, all we know is that in a moment of time, Yahuwah took her.
To add to the puzzlement is the command Yahuwah gave His servant Ezekiel not to mourn. For hundreds of years before Ezekiel and hundreds of years after, the Jewish mourning for the loss of loved ones was quite public. At the moment of death, loud wailing and cries would be heard from the family and not just the family. People would hire themselves as professional mourners.
The grieved family members would take dust and sometimes ashes from their fire pits and throw them over their heads. They would cover the lower part of their face and mouth with a veil. They would not put on hats or their turbans, they would douse their heads with dirt, signifying their lowliness and brokenness. Then they would fast until the evening meal when friends and family would come and bring them food called the Bread of Sorrow.
Here Ezekiel is told not to eat the food friends and family brought him, he was not to cover his mouth, he was not to even throw the ceremonial dirt and ashes on his head. He was to go about his business as if nothing had happened. He wasn’t even allowed to let one single tear fall from his eye. If he was to sigh, he was to do it inwardly. If he was to mourn, he would do it quietly in a way no one would recognize.
Would you agree that this is a strange text? Well, Yahuwah is using Ezekiel as an example of what will take place with the people of Israel.
Nine years earlier, Nebuchadnezzar had come and ransacked Jerusalem. He didn’t destroy it but he took thousands of Jerusalem citizens back to Babylon with him, that’s probably when Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were taken. He dethroned Jehoiakim, the king, took him back to Babylon, and put Zedekiah, his uncle, on the throne of Judah.
On the very day that Ezekiel’s wife died, Nebuchadnezzar returned to Jerusalem and besieged the city because Zedekiah, the king, rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. What is a siege? It is simply to surround a city with your army so that no one could come in or come out. Basically, you starved the city. You weakened it to the point the city was willing to surrender.
Thus, Yahuwah made Ezekiel an example of what was about to happen when Jerusalem was sacked. For two years, Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to the city. For two years he patiently waited for the right moment to go into the city and level it. The people of Israel concluded that as long as the temple of Yahuwah remained, Yahuwah’s favor was with the people, even though they had been carted off as exiles to a foreign land. They still could not believe that Yahuwah would turn His back on Judah. Why? Because of the delight of their eyes, the same terminology Yahuwah used for Ezekiel’s wife, the temple was to be destroyed. “Behold, I will profane My sanctuary, your arrogant boast, the desire of your eyes, the delight of your soul.” As long as the temple stood, they maintained hope that Yahuwah was still with them in spite of their idolatry and rebellion. Yahuwah was going to destroy His own temple and show them that He, once and for all, had abandoned and forsaken them because they had first abandoned and forsaken the Lord.
They were not commanded to refrain from grieving as Ezekiel had been, but they would be in such shock that they would not be able to publicly display emotion. Two years after it was prophesied, Jerusalem fell and the temple was leveled. The people were in so much shock and horror about what had happened—which so contradicted what they believed—that they could not grieve.
Have you ever been so devastated by the news that you couldn’t weep, you could hardly feel anything, you were just numb by the horrific tragedy? This is the sign of Ezekiel and his wife. This devastation, this terrible judgment on Jerusalem, so contrary to what they believed, that they would be so in much shock that they couldn’t grieve.
But this is still a strange thing to think that Yahuwah would take one of His choice obedient servants, who obeyed Him in the face of significant opposition, and do this to him. Take his wife? That doesn’t sound like Yahuwah. How do we explain it?
Often when we come to passages like this, especially in the Old Testament, we just excuse it as being relegated to the Old Testament. We say this is the way Yahuwah did things then. He acted strange and did odd things. But, of course, now that we’re in the New Covenant age we say Yahuwah doesn’t do that anymore and we simply pass it off as some dispensational thing that was done many years ago.
Dearly beloved, that is not a suitable answer. The Bible tells us that Yahuwah has not changed nor can He. There is no shadow of change, no variableness. The Bible says, “I am Yahuwah thy God, I change not.” He has not changed. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. So how do we explain this?
You have to understand that the Bible is an unfolding revelation of Yahuwah and His redemptive plan. You don’t get it all in the first book. Yahuwah, over the ages, disclosed more and more of who He is and what He’s like, and His ways. So, in the earlier years of this book, we see Yahuwah showing man first of all that He is holy—He is altogether different than us. He is not bound by us. He is not like any of us—so He would say to Moses at the burning bush, “I Am that I Am.”
You cannot point to anyone else and say, “Yahuwah is like him. Yahuwah is like her.” No. He’s altogether different. He cannot be described in His fullness. He is so different from all His creation that He is “holy.” That’s what the word holy means. He’s completely separate from all that He has made. Nothing is like Him.
In His holiness, He is perfect. His moral excellence exceeds the best person you’ve ever met. Yahuwah is much better than the holiest man or woman you’ll ever know. His moral purity exceeds the heavens. He is altogether good. He is altogether loving.
In the earlier portions of Yahuwah’s recorded Word, you don’t see as much of that. You see Yahuwah of unbendable righteousness who is declaring that He is right and all of mankind is wrong. He says all of mankind has rebelled and therefore they have incurred His wrath and His judgment and that that is good. As you move through the sacred testimony of Scripture a few hundred years from the lightning and thundering as Yahuwah came down from Mount Sinai to give the Law on stone tablets to Moses, we come to a man named David.
David broke the law of Yahuwah by committing adultery and murdering the husband of the wife with whom he had an adulterous affair. According to the law, there was no sacrifice for those two sins. There is no prescription for sacrifice in the law of Yahuwah for murder or adultery. The only proper response to those two sins was to take those who committed those sins and stone them and execute them immediately.
Yet, the prophet of Yahuwah comes to David and points his finger into his face, and says, “You have done this. You’re the man. You have sinned against Yahuwah. You have disgraced His name before the nations, but you will not die. You are forgiven.” He says this so that David sees something of Yahuwah that not even Moses saw altogether. This is progressive revelation. This is seeing more of Yahuwah. David would pen his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 and say, “Burnt offerings and sacrifices Thou does not delight in, otherwise I would have offered them, but a broken and a contrite heart Thou will not despise.”
He saw something about the nature of Yahuwah disclosed to him by the Spirit of Yahuwah, the same Spirit that gave Moses those tablets of stone. By the time we move to the New Testament, we see the most total, complete revelation of Yahuwah in the person of Yahushua Christ. Why is that? Because He’s Yahuwah manifested in the flesh. “And we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” In Yahushua Christ bodily dwelt the fullness of the Yahuwah. Yahushua said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.
Love always possesses a curiosity to pursue knowledge of the person you love. That’s what the whole courtship or dating process is all about. You’re falling in love and you want to know more about this person. This is one of the reasons why Yahuwah has given us this beautiful thing called marriage. Marriage is the holy confines or place where spouses, especially husbands, can study and learn about their wives. They can get a degree in knowing and understanding their wives. That’s what Peter said in 1 Peter 3, “Husbands, dwell with your wives in understanding.” It simply means it is a husband's business to study his wife with a holy, loving curiosity. You figure her out. You say, “That’s an impossibility. You might as well try to figure out Yahuwah than to figure out your wife.”
No, my dear friend, she is complex, yes, but you’ve got a lifetime. As long as Yahuwah gives you life, she is to be in the pursuit of your knowledge. You pursue her, know her, love her. Why? Because you love her. You want to know her. She fascinates you. You are delighted with her.
My friend, isn’t that also true of Yahuwah? Are you not in a living, vital relationship with Him? If you are, you want to know Him better. There is a curiosity. You aren’t satisfied with the little that you know of Him. So you continue to pursue Him. Shall we not do that this morning? Or should we chalk up this passage and say, “Well, Yahuwah is beyond understanding. Who can know it?”
No. Yahuwah has given us the New Testament. The New Testament is the lens by which we go back to the Old and interpret. It is the framework by which we understand and interpret Yahuwah's ways and will in the Old Testament.
Therefore, what I would like to do for the remainder of our time is to suggest three New Testament passages to use like a magnifying glass and put over this text and thereby understand what’s happening.
I. The Absolute Freedom of a Sovereign Yahuwah
This first text is to help us have a proper attitude in approaching Ezekiel 24. We can’t just be curious about what Yahuwah is doing and why He is doing this to His beloved servant Ezekiel, we also have to approach it with the right frame of mind and a reverent heart. This passage will help us to do so.
“For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.’ 18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. 19 You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?’” (Romans 9:17-21)
The whole argument of the Apostle Paul is that Yahuwah is sovereign and, therefore He has absolute freedom to do whatever He wants within the framework of His nature. Yahuwah cannot act outside of His nature. No one can, including Yahuwah. There are certain things Yahuwah cannot do. He cannot lie, He says. He cannot repent as a man repents. It’s not in His nature to lie or change His mind whimsically and arbitrarily as a man does. Not at all. Yahuwah is bound by His nature. However, within the perimeters of His own nature, He has absolute freedom to choose and do whatever He wants to do. You don’t have that freedom, nor do I.
We have certain freedoms to choose from. You can, of your freedom, choose according to your nature but within Yahuwah’s perimeters. Yes, you have the freedom to choose, but you don’t have absolute freedom to choose.
Paul is arguing the absolute freedom of a sovereign Yahuwah, and He uses some examples. He presupposes an objection from the Jewish audience to the book of Romans. He knows they will say to him, “Wait a minute. Yahuwah made certain covenants with the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham; why aren’t they coming to pass?” Most of the children of Israel have rejected the Messiah. They did not believe, and very few Jews were saved. Paul is addressing that question. He goes back to the beginning of the ninth chapter and says, “Not all children of Israel are descendants of Abraham. Yahuwah, in His wisdom, has selected, chosen, certain ones out of the human race whom He will love and show His divine favor.”
This is a teaching and a doctrine that finds very few people accepting it. In fact, I say every person born chafes in disgust at this truth that Yahuwah has absolute freedom to choose whom He wills to be saved and that whomever He does not choose, He does not have to save. This is the whole point. Here, Paul is using Pharaoh as an example. Yahuwah says of Pharaoh, “I have lifted him for the distinct purpose to show My power, so that My name may be declared upon the whole earth. Therefore, I will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will not let the people of Israel go, and I will have to display my judgment and power upon his kingdom.” That’s precisely what Yahuwah did.
Then Paul makes this astounding statement in verse 18, “Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.” It’s obvious. The text is not to be debated. There is no room for vacillation or discussion. Paul says it distinctly and clearly: Yahuwah chooses to save some, and He chooses some not to save.
How do you understand that? How do we explain this? It sounds so “unfair.”
Before I answer that, I want you to examine the objection. Paul states an objection in verse 19. This is what the reader is going to argue in rebuttal. Notice what the argument or objection assumes. It assumes that Paul’s statement is true. The objection doesn’t argue, “No, no, no, Yahuwah cannot choose whom He wants to. It’s left up to man! It’s his choice. This isn’t about sovereign grace that selects and elects someone before the foundation of the world.” No, the objection isn’t that. The objector assumes that predestination is true.
He poses his question in verse 19.
“You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?’”
In other words, “Paul, we grant that you’re right. But in light of that statement that He will have mercy on whom He wills and harden whom He wills, how does Yahuwah find fault in us? We’re simply doing what He created us to do. How can He judge anyone? How can He take Pharaoh and judge him and condemn him? He did what Yahuwah made him do.”
How do we answer this? Paul answers. It’s not an in-depth explanation of the doctrine of election, the answer is Yahuwah is absolutely free to do what He wants.
Let’s look at the question. Who has resisted His will? Who hasn’t done what Yahuwah has made him do? The question is about the fairness of Yahuwah. That’s where this is all aimed, that Yahuwah is not fair. The question challenges the fairness of Yahuwah. Beloved, every challenge of Satan goes back to this point: Yahuwah is not good. If Yahuwah has absolute freedom to choose whom He will save and whom He will not save, then somehow, this shows us that Yahuwah is not good and cannot be trusted to do good. That’s the same line of attack the devil gave Eve in the Garden. “Yea, hath Yahuwah said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? . . . For Yahuwah doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Yahuwahs, knowing good and evil.”
The whole suggestion is that you can’t trust Yahuwah because Yahuwah is not good for you. He’s withholding His goodness. Beloved, Yahuwah is free to do what He wants to do, and what He wants to do is always good. This is what the Bible presents us about Yahuwah.
I’m not going to get into the doctrine of election and try to defend it to you because the Apostle Paul doesn’t, as we shall see in the next few moments, but let me give you something to think about. What would you have if you were to have, as most people conceive reality, two beings with absolute freedom to choose, who have different visions? Some religions have this. It’s called dualism. They have two opposing deities with equal ability to choose and freedom to do as they please. The problem is, with that conclusion, you make Satan equal to Yahuwah, which is not so.
Satan is part of the creation of Yahuwah, just as you and I are. There has to be one being of all persons that has the absolute ability to choose as He pleases; otherwise, you talk about chaos—you’ve never known chaos. If Yahuwah is God, which He is, He has to have the ability to work and choose according to His perfect goodness and love. He must be unhindered.
The question that cuts to the heart: Can Yahuwah be God, and can you be happy with that?
There’s the underlying problem. When we see things like Ezekiel being told by Yahuwah that he can’t publicly mourn, it sounds so unfair, so unkind, so unloving, the heart chafes in disgust and rebels against Yahuwah. It reveals a lack of trust in His goodness.
Notice how Paul answers this. He argues from a position of creation.
But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against Yahuwah? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?”
This is the great argument from the most significant theologian that’s ever lived. You don’t have this detailed explanation, you have one argument: Cannot the Creator do with His creation what He wants to do? This is a powerful argument. A logical argument. An irrefutable argument. Who would deny any creator the right to do with his creation as he pleases?
Let’s go to the potter, shall we? Let’s go to the man who makes art out of clay. Isn’t it the potter’s privilege to put the clay on the wheel and form it in his or her vision, according to his or her desire? Since this is the very analogy the Apostle Paul uses, let us suppose that after the potter has formed the clay pot or jar and sets it off to the side to dry, all of a sudden, this clay jar can speak and speak it does. What if it told the potter, “Listen, why didn’t you make me a cup for a king rather than a chamber pot?”
Some of you don’t know what a chamber pot is. They put a pot under the bed to use when they didn’t have indoor plumbing. It’s a disgusting thought, isn’t it? That was the only indoor bathroom there was. They would make pots and stick them under the bed.
Here is this chamber pot just made by the potter, and it takes on the characteristics of a mouth and a voice, and it says, “I object! Why didn’t you make me a beautiful drinking vessel a king would desire to drink from?” What would you think? If that was possible, which we know it isn’t, the potter has the right to make out of it whatever he wants. Wouldn’t you agree?
But clay jars do talk. Do you know what Yahuwah made man out of? The dust of the earth. You’re nothing but a clay pot and cracked at that. You’re a cracked pot, pun intended. There he stood, a statue of clay, made by the ultimate Master Potter, who breathed into Adam His Spirit, and the Bible says man, the clay jar, could talk.
The analogy is appropriate. How can I, nothing but a collection of dust, ever assemble the wisdom and knowledge, and power to out-argue Yahuwah and demand my way? It’s unthinkable. And it’s the height of rebellion. Yahuwah, as your maker, has the right to do with you what He desires. If you say that sounds fatalistic and pessimistic, you don’t like that kind of God. Let me tell you about this Creator Yahuwah—He is good and can do nothing but good. You can trust Him.
That brings me to the second passage we must take from the New Testament and bring it over to Ezekiel 24.
II. I Am Purchased with an Infinite Price
I want to tell you how good your God is. How good is this free Yahuwah who can do what He pleases? Can He be trusted? Paul says He can.
“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from Yahuwah, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify Yahuwah in your body and in your spirit, which are Yahuwah’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
Your body, spirit, and whole person do not belong to you. You’ve been bought. You’ve been purchased. Like anyone who buys any item and has the deed to that item, he has the right to do with the item as he pleases.
Why would Yahuwah purchase you? There’s only one reason because He loves you. How good is this God, who is absolutely free to do as He pleases? He loves you enough, and He’s so good that He would send His Son, to die. You are bought at a price. What is that price? It’s the incorruptible blood of Yahushua Christ. It cannot be corrupted. It is so pure, so holy, and with that holy blood, you’ve been purchased.
This is hard to comprehend. This is harder to comprehend than Yahuwah’s freedom to choose. I have no problem with Yahuwah, as Creator, doing whatever He wants to do with anything He makes. But why would He, for such worthless clay pots, give His Son to die?
You are bought. That means you have agreed that a sovereign God with absolute freedom can do whatever He wants to do with you. You’ve agreed to this. That’s the terms of surrender. That’s the conditions of the new birth and life with Yahuwah—yielding. I’m not my own, I’m bought with a price. My life isn’t up to me to decide. I’m here to be used by Him for purposes I may not understand. That’s okay, I don’t need to understand because I know He loves me.
Listen. I may be deplorable and worthy of hell, but in the eyes of Yahuwah, I’m an object of value. I’m worth something to my God. What am I worth? Quite a bit. More than we could understand. He doesn’t look at you as a basket of deplorable. He looks at you and sees His Son in whom He delights. “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
There are times as Yahuwah’s son when I think, “He can’t say that about me.” But His salvation is so unique that He can.
So we bring this to the passage. We have a God who can do to Ezekiel and his wife whatever he wants to do, but more than that, Ezekiel is part of this blood-bought redeemed. He’s a part of this. He can do with Ezekiel what He wants to do, and what He wants to do is what is best for Ezekiel and incorporates him into His eternal plan.
Let me ask you a question. We all want to live a comfortable, easy, wonderful life. We want the best things, but what is the best? Having the best things or being yielded to Yahuwah, who does everything well? Being a part of the eternal program, He instituted before creation. Do you want your life to count? Nothing could make your life count more than being obedient and united to the Father and His ultimate plan for your life.
One more passage.
III. The Sufficiency of Yahuwah’s Grace
What can I take from this text and use it as a lens with Ezekiel? The sufficiency of Yahuwah’s grace.
“And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with Yahuwah three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
“My grace is sufficient for you.” You cannot read Ezekiel 24 without this text. You must understand and believe that whatever Yahuwah asks, even of those Old Testament saints, even of Ezekiel losing his wife, Yahuwah gives what is needed to endure and glorify Him. Yahuwah’s grace is sufficient for you.
Do you know what Yahuwah’s grace is? Most often, and I think wrongly, we think of Yahuwah’s grace as some influence or power that Yahuwah gives us. But it isn’t. It works as an influence but not an influence, power, or inanimate. What is grace? It is Yahuwah Himself.
It is Yahuwah’s activity in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what you cannot do for yourself. That’s what Yahuwah’s grace is. It’s Yahuwah working in you. As Paul said, “To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily” (Colossians 1:29). That’s what grace is. Grace is Yahuwah going to work in you to create the desire and give you the power to do as He pleases, which you could not do on your own.
When He says, “My grace is sufficient,” He’s saying, “I’m sufficient. I’m the sufficient One, and I can work in you to give you the desire and the power to do even things that seem so difficult. I will be there and there in such a way that I will be working so that you will be hand in hand with Me, and you will be glad for your weakness.”
If we understood this passage, we would be standing up and shouting at the tops of our voices. “Here I am, do whatever You want to do with me. YES! Because Your activity in my life is sufficient.”
Friends, there will be Ezekiel moments in your life, and all of the theological jargon and clichés will not help. “Well, Yahuwah’s sovereign,” and “All things work together for good for those that love Yahuwah and are called according to His purposes” will be like water off a duck’s back. It won’t have an impact when you’re hurting.
But when you take all three of these truths—the absolute freedom of a sovereign Yahuwah; that you were bought with an incorruptible, inestimable price; and that Yahuwah’s grace is sufficient for you—you can weather your Ezekiel moments. When Yahuwah does strange things in your life that don’t seem fair and when He seems to be a million miles away, you can remain rock-solid and consistent. It doesn’t mean you don’t have tremors of the heart. It doesn’t mean your faith doesn’t sometimes take a nosedive. But you go through it believing that Yahuwah has the right to do with you whatever He wants. And doubly so, not just because you’re His creation but because He bought you with the blood of His Son, and He’s promised to avail Himself in you as grace working in you His activity, giving you the desire and the power to do what you could not do by yourself—His good pleasure.
That’s how Ezekiel was able to weather his moment, and that’s how you’ll be able to weather your Ezekiel moments and delight in them. Amen.
This is a non-WLC article by S. Michael Durham.
We have taken out from the original article all pagan names and titles of the Father and Son, and have replaced them with the original given names. Furthermore, we have restored in the Scriptures quoted the names of the Father and Son, as they were originally written by the inspired authors of the Bible. -WLC Team