#35. Who Stands In The Breach? Series

So at the beginning of Ezekiel, we find the prophet sitting on the bank of the Chebar canal in Babylon. Ezekiel was a priest, which means he had prepared all his life to serve in the temple in Jerusalem. By the way, does anyone know how old you had to be before you could begin to serve in the temple? 30 years old. So here he in exile, its his 30th birthday, he’s been in exile for five years. So it’s around 592 BC. About six years before the temple is destroyed.

Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry lasts for about twenty-two years. So, he is living in the same era as our friend Jeremiah that we’ve been talking about for the past couple of weeks.

Now of all of the prophetic books Ezekiel has the most logical outline. In fact, Ezekiel may be one of the most chronologically ordered books in the Bible. Throughout the book we’ll see thirteen time markers like we see in verses 1-2. It’s for this reason that Ezekiel is so important to our understanding of the timeline of biblical history. So here’s the basic outline of Ezekiel

Personal (Ez. 1-3): These chapters are about Ezekiel himself—his circumstances, his calling from God, etc.

National: (Ez. 4-24): These chapters are about Judah: how she sinned, why she sinned, what’s going to happen because of her sin. This section culminates with the destruction of the temple.

The third section is international-- chapters 25 through 32. Here you’ll see judgments against the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Philistines, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt.

And the final, fourth section is eventual. But a better description would be eschatological-- dealing with end times, eschatology, the end of days and the glory of God.

Ok, that was a long introduction, but I think it’s really important to set the stage for what we are talking about this morning, and to help you see how what we read about in one prophetic books matches up with what we read in the others. And it’s also super helpful to connect what the prophets are saying to what is recorded in the books of history—Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

Our passage this morning comes toward the end of the national section where Ezekiel is prophesying against Judah. Way back in chapter 4, God told him to act out the siege of Jerusalem. So he lays down in the dirt and builds a little model of Jerusalem. Then he builds little siege ramps going up to it, and military camps all around it, and battering rams—the whole thing. Then God tells him to lay down in front of his little Lego model for over a year to represent how long the siege would last. Its really kind of cool. Did you ever play army men when you were a kid? That’s what Ezekiel is doing. Here's this grown man basically playing army men in the middle of the town square He’s foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem.

And it pretty much happened just like this. Turn to 2 Kings 25 (page 309 in the pew Bible). This is going to help us understand the context of Ezekiel 22—the stand in the gap verse. So read along with me in 2 Kings 25, starting in v 1: