How Is Lord Appointed Ezekiel

In old testament days, God would call on men to portray and deliver His message to the people of Israel and Judah. Entitled as prophets, these men served the Lord by delivering messages of blessings and curses, enforcing the covenant, and modeling in their speech and conduct God’s plans for both Israel and Judah. Frequently using poetic language, they spoke in oracles such as woe oracles, which announce the imminent destruction of the people, and promise oracles, which often mention the future and the promise of blessing. Yet, God would occasionally call on the prophets to be more than just verbal deliverers of His message, but to be living and physical examples of the coming judgment and future restoration that He had in mind for his people.
An excellent example of a prophet that God chose to actively model his message would be Hosea. God called Hosea to take Gomer, a woman of harlotry, and enter into a covenant bound marriage with her (Hos. 1:2-3). This was to be an illustration of God’s relationship with his people, the Israelites. Just as Gomer, even as she was bound through a covenant to Hosea, ran off and made herself an adulteress (Hos. 3:1), the Israelites turned from their covenant with Yahweh and prostituted themselves to all kinds of idolatry and debauchery. Israel purposefully chose to break their covenant with God and turn instead to their selfish and sinful desires, which the Holy God could not allow amidst his people. This immorality and unfaithfulness amongst the people would eventually incur God’s wrath and judgment upon them (Hos. 4:4-6). Still, God told Hosea to go and buy Gomer back as his wife (Hos. 3:1-3). Doing as the Lord commanded, Hosea told her that she couldn’t continue in her sinful ways and that she must remain faithful to him and their marriage and then promised her, “so will I also be to you” (Hos. 3:3). This was to be an illustration of God’s faithfulness to his people and an image of the restoration that God had in store for the nation of Israel (Hos. 3:4-5 & 14:4-7). Also within his life, God used Hosea’s children as a model for the message to the Israelites and Judeans. The Lord commanded Hosea to name his first child Jezreel as a picture of the blood that would be spilled in the Valley of Jezreel and the imminent destruction of the Israelite kingdom (Hos. 1:4-5). Hosea was to name his second child Lo-ruhama, which stands for “no mercy”, symbolizing for the house of Israel that God would no longer have mercy on Israel, but instead would give them over to the Assyrians (Hos. 1:6). Hosea’s third child, Lo-ammi, stood for “not my people”, which was an illustrative picture of the rejection of the kingdom of Israel by the Lord and the withdrawal of Divine favor upon His people (Hos. 1:9). Further along in the prophetic book of Hosea, we see the tone of judgement change over to an expression of future restoration where God will “have mercy on No Mercy and will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people.’” (Hos. 2:23) Throughout all of Hosea’s prophetic ministry, we see a striking illustration of God’s love for Israel, the compassion he would eventually show Israel, and the never-ending faithfulness that God supplies to his people (Hos. 2:19-20).
Another prophet that God called upon to model His message was Jeremiah. Appointing him as a prophet to warn the Israelites of the coming consequences for breaking the covenant that they had made with Yahweh, Jeremiah was to deliver a message of judgment and hope for Israel and all the nations (Jer. 1:10). Jeremiah modeled God’s message of justice and grace in several ways. First, God told Jeremiah to wear a cloth around his waist, not dipping it into water, and then to go hide it near the Euphrates river. Several days later, God told him to retrieve the cloth, but when Jeremiah went, he found it ruined. Designing this illustration as a picture of the pride of Judah, God showed that their pride would soon be put to ruin (Jer. 13:1-9). Second, Jeremiah was to make himself a yoke and wear it around his neck as an illustration to the Israelites to be submissive to the King of the Babylonian Empire, Nebuchadnezzar (Jer. 27). Yet, the people continued to listen to false prophets and did not heed the warnings that Jeremiah spoke. Since Jeremiah continued to speak against these false prophets, the Judean king, Zedekiah, had him imprisoned (Jer. 32:2-3). While Jeremiah was in prison, the Lord sent Hanamel, Jeremiah’s cousin, with a somewhat strange request: “Buy my field at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours.” (Jer. 32:8) Jeremiah, knowing that it was the Lord’s will, was obedient and bought the field, still, he questioned God as to why this was necessary. In response, God told Jeremiah that He had already given the kingdom of Judah over to the Babylonians due to the people’s sins (Jer. 32:16-35). Nevertheless, God already had a plan of restoration for his people. Buying the land from his cousin, God had Jeremiah portray a message of hope to the people that one day they would return to the land and once again be prosperous (Jer. 32:36-44). Through the life of Jeremiah, we, yet again, watch God’s judgment acted out upon His people while also finding a message of his unending and unwavering faithfulness.
A third prophet that God ordained was the “Son of Man”, Ezekiel (Ezk.
2:1-3). The Lord appointed Ezekiel as a prophet to the Judeans in their time before and during the exile under the Babylonian kingdom. For one of the first illustrations that God called Ezekiel to perform, he had to retrieve a brick, inscribe the word ‘Jerusalem’ on it, and then place weapons of war and siege walls around this brick as a model of the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (Ezk. 4:1-3). Second, he was to lie on his left side for 390 days to represent a number of years that God would punish the Israelites for their idolatry and sins (Ezk. 4:1-5). When he had completed that task, he was to lie on his right side for 40 days, this time representing a number of years the kingdom of Judah would endure God’s punishment (Ezk. 4:6). Furthermore, God also told Ezekiel to cook for himself defiled food, which was to symbolize the sins that had contaminated God’s people (Ezk. 4:9-13). On top of all of this, God informed Ezekiel that He would take his wife, “the delight of [his] eyes and the yearning of [his] soul”, from him, yet he could not show any signs of mourning (Ezk. 24:15-18). This was a foreshadowing to the people, who would soon lose the temple, “the delight of their eyes and their soul’s desire”, to the Babylonians (Ezk. 24:21-27). In all of this, Ezekiel proved a faithful prophet to the
Lord.
To summarize, God called many men, such as Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to be both audible and visual deliverers of His message. They faithfully did what God told them, even if the people would not listen. This can and should be a model for our own lives. Though we aren’t necessarily called to enact some of the extreme things God called some of these prophets to do, God does call us to be living examples of the grace that God has lavished upon us. Meaning, we should be careful with both our words and our actions since we are always living examples of the gospel to a lost and dying world.