Scripture: Ezekiel 28: 11-19
Sermon: The Broad Love and Deep Hurt of God
Topics: nations, nationalism, love, communion
Preached: October 4, 2020
Rev. Mike Abma
Preamble:
I think every Ezekiel sermon we preach needs a little preamble to the Bible reading, because Ezekiel is such a long and complicated book.
So this morning we are jumping ahead to the middle of Ezekiel.
In the middle, there are 7 chapters, chapters 25-32,
that are not written about Israel, or Judah, or Jerusalem.
These are all chapters written about other nations,
two nations in particular, Phoenicia to the north and Egypt to the south.
In the 3 chapters about the Phoenicians,
the word Tyre is used, because Tyre was their main city.
Tyre, a wealthy, island port city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea –
in many ways the Jewel of the Mediterranean economy.
Just as Babylon was threatening Jerusalem
Babylon was also threatening the Egyptians and the Phoenicians.
What we are about to read is a Lamentation,
or a weeping over the city of Tyre and its rulers.
Ezekiel 28:11-19 11
Moreover the word of the Lord came to me: 12 Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God:
You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald; and worked in gold were your settings and your engravings.
On the day that you were created they were prepared.
14 With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you;
you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created,
until iniquity was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire.
17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty;
you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor.
I cast you to the ground;
I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.
18 By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries. So I brought out fire from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you.
19 All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever.
read by the minister and concluded with
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
THE QUANTITY OF WORDS TO OTHER NATIONS
It may come as a surprise to realize how many chapters in Ezekiel are about other nations – 7 whole chapters.
That means that 1 in every 7 words in Ezekiel is about nations other than Israel.
But here is perhaps an even more surprising thing.
Ezekiel is not unique in this.
In all of the major prophets – in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, and in Ezekiel –
1 in 7 words are about nations other than Israel.
I mention this because we often live with the assumption that in the Old Testament, God is only concerned about Israel,
only about Judah,
only about Jerusalem.
But this is clearly not true.
The sheer quantity of words addressed to other nations
shows that God has his eye on the whole world.
From the beginning, God has had his eye on the whole world.
THE QUALITY OF THE WORDS REGARDING TYRE
Now I would like to comment on the “quality” of God’s attention to Tyre
in the passage we just read.
The first quality you notice is the depth of God’s love for Tyre.
Did you notice the very high praise God heaps on Tyre?
God calls Tyre, “the signet of perfection.”
He says that Tyre is “Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.”
He describes Tyre as someone
bejeweled in garments
of precious stones and priceless gems.
In a word, Tyre is beautiful,
the beginning of our passage is a love song, pure and simple.
As a love song, it is very similar to the love song
God sings to Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16.
But now we see that love directed at Tyre
and the Phoenician people.
This passage makes clear that God’s love
has never been limited to one nation, one people, or one place.
The second quality you notice in this passage
is how many references there are to the Garden of Eden.
God says of Tyre, “You were in Eden, the Garden of God.”
He says that Tyre was created by God.
That they walked with God.
And even that they were blameless before God.
Clearly God sees the Adam and Eve story
as also Tyre’s story.
Just as Eden falls into sin, so too Tyre falls into sin.
The beautiful Tyre becomes proud of her beauty.
The blessed Tyre becomes haughty in her blessings.
The learned Tyre becomes corrupt in her wisdom.
Tyre turns her back on God, the Giver of all her good gifts.
And so God casts her out,
actually drives her out with his guardian cherub.
Again, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden
by the angel with the flaming sword.
What do we see in this passage?
We see God’s broad love for Tyre, for All nations, for All Creation.
But then we also see God’s deep hurt when Tyre,
when the nations, when Creation,
turns away from their Creator.
What we have in this passage
is the story of the Creation and the Fall,
the story of Joy and of Sorrow.
It is Eden’s story.
It is Jerusalem’s story.
It is Tyre’s story.
Ezekiel here, is reminding us that this is Everyone’s Story.
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM
Last weekend thousands of Christians gathered in Washington DC for a religious revival. It was called “The Return.”
The main speaker for the event was a person known as “The Prophet.”
I listened to the address of The Prophet on youtube this week.
What disturbed me about the address
was how glibly this speaker drew direct parallels
between Israel of the Old Testament
and America of today.
Without any real nuance or qualification
he described Israel as the covenant people
founded and formed by God back then,
and America as the covenant people
founded and formed by God now.
He described how
God had made Israel the most blessed, most powerful, most prosperous
nation back then,
and God has made America the most blessed, most powerful, most
prosperous nation now.
He lamented how Israel drifted from God back then
and he lamented how America is drifting from God now.
Here is why this disturbed me so –
the speaker confined God’s story
to Israel back then and America now.
We call this kind of restriction or limitation of God’s story
a form of Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalism is not simply love of country.
It is natural and right to love the country we live in, to be patriotic.
But Christian nationalism is deeper and darker.
Christian nationalism is a form of pride.
It is pride that
assumes God loves us and our nation above all other nations.
And it is a pride
that blinds us to God’s deep love
for all other nations
for all other peoples
for all other tribes
for all other tongues
and for all other races.
WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS
Christian nationalists say they believe in the Bible,
But this way of thinking goes directly against both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
As Bible-believing Christians,
we see God’s choice of Abraham and Israel as being
for ONE great purpose – and that is to be a blessing to ALL nations.
God doesn’t just care for the descendants of Abraham.
He cares for every single descendant of Adam and Eve.
God’s great purpose throughout the Bible
is to bless every single descendant of Adam and Eve.
Once we lose sight of that ONE great purpose,
we lose track of how to read the Bible.
For God so loved the world – is the great theme of the Old Testament.
For God so loved the world – is the great theme of the New Testament.
Out of that great love, Jesus came.
Jesus came as a “true signet of perfection.”
Jesus came as truly blameless yet willing to take our blame.
He came as truly humble, yet willing to take the punishment for our pride.
Jesus came as the New Adam (Romans 5).
Even as sin came into the world through the first Adam,
even so, grace and righteousness has come to us in the New Adam.
The grace and righteousness of Christ
has come to everyone everywhere.
THE TWO PICTURES IN REVELATION
Two weeks ago I said that when we read Ezekiel
it is helpful to have Ezekiel in one hand
and John’s Revelation in the other hand.
Revelation gives us 2 pictures that we,
as Christ-followers, must always keep in mind.
The first picture is in Revelation 7.
We are given a glimpse of the great multitude of the redeemed,
a multitude beyond number
from every tribe, every tongue, every nation.
This redeemed community
is multi-national.
It is multi-ethnic.
It is multi-racial.
It is multi-lingual.
You know this.
You have heard it before.
But isn’t it true that in the privacy of our own minds
and in the temptations of our own imaginations
we still set our hopes in one particular country;
we still imagine ourselves in the redeemed future
as being surrounded by people who
look like us
sound like us
and think like us.
This is NOT the vision God gives us.
And so, let me point to another picture given to us in Revelation,
this time Revelation 19.
Again it is a picture of this huge
company of the redeemed
from every corner of the world
all made clean by the blood of the Lamb.
But now, in this picture,
they are all being invited to a Wedding Feast.
They are invited to the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.
Jesus Christ is the groom and the bride of Christ
is in fact the church of Christ.
The church, in the gleaming splendor of her diversity,
comes together to the Table.
CONCLUSION
The Lord’s Supper before us is meant to be a foretaste of that great Wedding Supper of the Lamb.
That may be difficult to imagine today,
given that we are separated,
and many of us are alone at home or with only a few others.
So I ask you to do this —
simply call to mind a time you had communion
in an unfamiliar setting:
perhaps in another culture;
perhaps in another country;
perhaps even in another language.
Remember and recall the thrill of sensing
that even though you may not have understood everything in that culture,
and even though you may not have understood everything in that language,
nevertheless,
in that one cup, and in that one loaf,
you felt bound to everyone else
as One Body
with One Lord.
Amen
PRAYER
O Lord,
As we see the bread and the cup on your Table
We pray that as this grain has been gathered from many fields into one loaf,
And as these grapes have been gathered from many hills into one cup,
So too, you may gather your people from the ends of the earth
Into one body at the wedding feast of the Lamb.
Amen
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