YOU VERSION

MISSION: HELPING PEOPLE DISCOVER + EXPERIENCE THE LIFE-CHANGING LOVE OF CHRIST

Key Texts:

Ezekiel 1, 8-11, 5:6-8

2nd Chronicles 7:11-22

Romans 6-8

Summary:

Ezekiel is a book about a prophet who would have been a priest except for his exile with the first wave of the Babylonian invasion five years earlier. Ezekiel’s mission in the book is to proclaim the destruction coming up Judah and Jerusalem because of their rampant idolatry and violence. But this message comes to Ezekiel often in the form of visions in which God’s glory and presence shows up to Ezekiel in Babylon, away from the temple where God’s presence should have been.

The visions in the first section of Ezekiel (chapters 1-11) explore why God is in Babylon instead of the temple, but it is the very fact that God is in exile with his people in Babylon that there is immense hope in this book. 

God goes into exile with his people. God is not immune to his own judgements against his wayward people, and God cares for his people even as he judges them. This, and many other examples of God’s judgement and hope mingled in the Old Testament are foreshadowings of the ultimate example of this, Jesus, where God is both judge and judged.

In Jesus, God has issued his ultimate judgement of our sin, and he has also carried the burden of that judgement for us.

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