When The Glory Of God Departs Series

- It’s worth noting as I get started this evening that this is a wild chapter with a lot of interesting and unusual details. Those parts of the chapter are worth a Bible study unto themselves to unpack those meanings. This sermon, though, is not that Bible study.

- Instead, we will be focusing exclusively on the unquestioned biggest thing that happens in this chapter: the departure of the glory of the Lord from the Temple. It’s a breathtaking development, tragic in its implications.

- Why did it happen? Was it a surprise? And what relevance does this event have (and not have) for our faith today? What does it have to teach us about the way we should be walking forward in our faith?

IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN: God’s glory would never depart His temple, right?

- Ezekiel 10:3-4, 18.

- Deuteronomy 28:1-68.

- This is a stunning moment. The glory of God, which is an aspect of the presence of God, departs the temple. Israel was God’s people and the temple was the centerpiece of that faith. God had long been present there and here we find this unbelievable moment when God “walks away” from His own holy place.

- I am confident many Israelites were certain that this would never happen. “God will never leave us!”

- But when you go back to the original statements by God, you find that God specifically warned of this.

- Turn with me to one of the most famous of these passages: Deuteronomy 28. In that passage, God showers Israel with overflowing promises of what will happen if they obey and keep their part of the covenant. It’s truly an awe-inspiring list.

- But then the second half of the chapter issues a warning. God tells them: here are the punishments that will come your way if you disobey and walk away from My promises. It’s also an awe-inspiring list, but this time for different reasons. It’s a frightening list that should inspire careful attention to God’s instructions, but, of course, it won’t.

The very reason that God shares that list is to warn Israel up front about what will happen. It’s like a professor on the first day of the fall semester who warns his class about the implications of turning in papers late, but every year has students incensed in November that the professor dared to fail them and not give them a chance to turn in the paper three weeks late. He laid it all out at the beginning but he also knows that some will somehow be stunned anyway.

- All of this leads to a simple fact: God’s glory departing the temple should have been an incredible shock to Israel, at least not to the ones who were paying attention to the spiritual condition of the nation.

God has promised serious repercussions for Israel’s disobedience. And that's exactly where they were.

- This particular occasion in Ezekiel 10 is the Babylonian overthrow on Jerusalem in 586 B.C. This is the big one historically.

- This came at the end of a long line of “Israel behaving badly.” They were doing exactly what they’d been warned not to. It comes to a head when God’s glory departs the temple. A horrible moment, but not one that should have been a complete surprise.

- Now, this doesn’t mean (as you know) that God is done forever with Israel. His covenant with them continues. God will work with them even in their foreign captivity. But there are practical implications to their sin that cannot be overlooked.

ONE APPLICATION FOR TODAY: Sometimes individual churches die.

- Revelation 2:4-5.

- Let me talk first about an application that I don’t think we can make to today: the individual Christian’s loss of salvation.

- I believe in eternal security and so it would be theologically wrong to say that one way this truth rolls forward is that if a Christian disobeys long enough then God will remove the Holy Spirit from that person and His glory will depart from them.

- That is not true and would be a horrible situation to have to contemplate if God worked that way.

- Another application we can’t make is saying that God will remove His presence from the church universal. That will not happen - the church will continue to be God’s people and God’s witness throughout the Church Age.

-I do believe, though, there is a parallel here to individual churches.

-We all know that individual churches die from time to time. We prefer not to think about that because we know that we would never want our own church family to go through that. But it’s worth thinking about a little and I want to do that tonight.

- Let’s look at Revelation 2:4-5. This is perhaps the clearest NT statement on this issue. We see a church that is not doing what it’s supposed to be doing and Christ makes a striking threat to them.