Ezekiel And The Storm Series

The Aim of This Series

Over the course of this fall sermon series, we are witnessing a series of encounters between ordinary people and extraordinary God. These encounters are called visitations and they are almost always following a crisis of some kind. There’s a crisis, an extraordinary time when people seek God, and there’s a visitation.

A revival is a time when sleepy Christians wake up, when nominal Christians convert to Christ, and when non-Christians come to faith in Christ. This is accompanied by an increase in the conviction of sin, an increase in the consciousness of God’s mercy and our unworthiness. You see, a revival is the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit (I’m not speaking of signs and wonders) when the Spirit convicts of sin, brings assurance of salvation, and makes the sense of Jesus Christ intensely real.

Sermon Preview

If you were asked to describe God, how would you? For many people, God is a mystery. Some people aren’t sure if He exists, or if He does, how you could know. Yet, I want to take us back in time to ancient Iraq where Ezekiel’s tells of a vision of a great God. The ancient rabbis of ancient of Israel did not want anyone under the age of 30 reading Ezekiel’s prophecy. They knew when you read this portion of Ezekiel, you are standing on holy ground. This morning, there should be a “holy silence” over us as we witness one man’s experience of Almighty God.

1. Ezekiel’s Vision

Reading this for the first time, you might think of this as a sci-fi novel. Yet, what’s in front of you is much more than a Hollywood creation. Make no mistake about it, this is the closest description of the appearance of God you’ll hear for Ezekiel tells us: “Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezekiel 1:28b). This vision will haunt the prophet until the day he dies.

Now, this is the wildest and most detailed vision of the glory of God in all the Bible. Nevertheless, it’s not easy to envision exactly what Ezekiel sees. One individual went so far as to suggest that this is a description of some kind of ancient alien helicopter! Ezekiel is given a glimpse of the world beyond our understanding and he attempts to put words to an indescribable experience.

Again, as we have seen throughout this series, this is a theophany. A theophany literally means “God appears.” This is where the very presence of God’s presence is made known.

Ezekiel gives us a picture of a door to heaven opened and we see the heavenly throne room of God: “the heavens were opened” (Ezekiel 1:1b). An invisible barrier has been opened between heaven and earth, allowing us to see what is going before the very presence of God.

The Emotion of Ezekiel’s Vision

The prophet is stunned. He’s excited by what he sees and the words excitedly come tumbling out of his mouth. He was so stunned that he later tells us he sat silent for seven days (Ezekiel 3:15b). It is one massive multimedia experience; no wonder he’s so excited to write this down. He refers throughout this account of his vision to what “looked like” this or that, what had the “appearance” of this, or the “form” of that (verses 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 22, 24). He’s not even sure how to put in all into words.

The Four Elements of the Vision

You’ll note the vision has four elements to the vision: the storm, the living creatures, the wheels, and on top all this is the main attraction: the throne of God. Ezekiel continually zooms closer into the vision – he starts with a wide angle lens to a close up view, if you will. The vision begins with a storm (verse 5) and ends with a throne (verse 26). Let’s look at each element briefly.

The Storm

Several things strike you about this storm. It was both intense and immense. There were successive bursts of lightning darting back forth inside the storm, creating an intense electrical display. The storm was so intense that it illuminated the clouds like flashing fire. Inside the very heart of the storm was lit up like the brightness of molten metal in a smelter. Why would God communicate His presence through a storm? Before nuclear power, the most potent source of sheer power was an electrical storm.

The Four Living Creatures (verses 5-14)

In the middle of the storm are four living creatures.

1) Each of the four living beings had the form of the appearance of a human but they were not human (verse 5). In other words, you can think of them in human form without being human.

2) These four strange creatures had four faces, combining features of humans, beasts, and heavenly beings (verse 5b-6a). The four faces pointed to the four points of the compass (verse 10). Each face represented the highest forms of life. These four faces communicate God’s perfect nature – let me show you.