Ezekiel 33 - Bible Study, Explanation, and Application

Ezekiel 33 Bible Study

TIMELINE:

• Ezekiel 33 is dated to the 12th year, in the 10th month, of the exile of King Jehoiachin, 585 or 584 BC (33:21).

• Below is a list of kings of Judah and dates for their reign:

  • Amon (642-640 BC)

  • Josiah (640-609 BC)

  • Jehoahaz (also known as Shallum, 609 BC)

  • Jehoiakim (initially known as Eliakim, 609-598 BC)

  • Jehoiachin (also known as Jeconiah or Coniah, 598-597 BC)

  • Zedekiah (His reign ended when Babylon conquered Judah, (597-586 BC)

WHAT WE STUDIED PREVIOUSLY

• Ezekiel 1 – Ezekiel had a vision of 4 living creatures, 4 wheels, and God’s throne.

• Ezekiel 2 – God commissioned Ezekiel to be a prophet to his rebellious countrymen.

• Ezekiel 3 – The end of the heavenly vision. Ezekiel ate a scroll of God’s words, and God called him to be a watchman over the people of Judah.

• Ezekiel 4 – Ezekiel prophesies with an object lesson in the street by laying on his side for 430 days, eating rations of bread, and creating a siege scene with a brick that represents Jerusalem.

• Ezekiel 5 – After the 430 days, Ezekiel cut off his hair divided it up into 3 parts and used it as a symbol for what would happen to the people of Jerusalem.

• Ezekiel 6 – Ezekiel prophesies against the idol worshipers in Judah, telling them their bodies will be thrown at the feet of their powerless gods.

• Ezekiel 7 – God spoke to Ezekiel about the day of His judgement. The end was near for the citizens of Jerusalem, and their doom was on the horizon.

• Ezekiel 8 – Ezekiel saw a vision of the Temple in Jerusalem. God guided him through the courts and gates of the Temple and showed him the secret idolatries that filled God’s house.

• Ezekiel 9 – God sends a man with a writing case to mark the foreheads of those who hated the idolatries of Judah. Afterwards, God sends 6 executioners to kill everyone in Jerusalem who didn’t have the mark.

• Ezekiel 10 – God’s glory departed the inner sanctuary of the Temple and ascended to His throne carried by the 4 living creatures.

• Ezekiel 11 – God announced judgement on the wicked rulers of Judah. They thought they were safe in Jerusalem, like meat in a cauldron, but God promised to bring them out for death and captivity. At the end of the chapter, God spoke of a future day, when He would regather a remnant of His people and give them a new heart and new spirit.

• Ezekiel 12 – Ezekiel prophesied about the downfall of King Zedekiah by carrying his possessions out of his house as if he were going into exile. God promised that His judgement was near, and anyone who suggested otherwise would be put to shame.  

• Ezekiel 13 – God confronted the false prophets and sorceresses amongst the people of Judah. The false prophets falsely claimed to speak with the authority of God, and the sorceresses hunted the souls of God’s people through witchcraft and divination.

• Ezekiel 14 – God condemned the elders of Judah who harbored love for idols in their hearts. He told Ezekiel Jerusalem would not be spared even if righteous men like Noah, Daniel, and Job lived there.

• Ezekiel 15 – God compared the citizens of Jerusalem to useless vine wood that was good for nothing except to burn.

• Ezekiel 16 – God compared his people to a young woman who he had raised and cared for. When she grew up, she turned her back on God and prostituted herself with foreign nations and idols.

• Ezekiel 17 – Ezekiel spoke a parable to the people of Judah about two great eagles. The parable indicated that the King of Judah would betray Babylon and be uprooted by them.

• Ezekiel 18 – The people of Judah were accusing God of punishing them for the sins of their ancestors. God clarified that each man was responsible and would be held accountable only for his own sins.

• Ezekiel 19 – God lamented the unfaithfulness of His people through two laments, the lament of the lion cubs and the lament of the vine.

• Ezekiel 20 - The elders of Israel wanted to consult with God, but God refused them based on their continual and cyclical rebellion against His laws. God spoke of His future judgement on Judah and His future grace that would restore the nation.

• Ezekiel 21 – Ezekiel spoke of the sword of the Lord that God had sharpened to punish Judah. The king of Babylon stood at a fork in the road, and God was going to direct him and his army to Jerusalem.

• Ezekiel 22 – God condemned Judah for a litany of sins and their total neglect of any attempt to keep His commands. He told them He would melt them down like metal within the furnace of Jerusalem.

• Ezekiel 23 – God illustrated the unfaithfulness of Israel and Judah with a story about two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah.

• Ezekiel 24 – God compared Jerusalem to a corroded pot that would be emptied and melted down. In the second half of the chapter, Ezekiel’s wife died, and God instructed him not to mourn for her publicly as a sign of the fate of the citizens of Jerusalem and their beloved city.

• Ezekiel 25 – God prophesied against Ammon, Edom, Seir, Moab, and the Philistines.

• Ezekiel 26 - God prophesied against the city of Tyre. God was going to judge them by bringing the nations against them and destroying them. Babylon would attack first, followed by the Greeks under the command of Alexander the Great (332 BC). 

• Ezekiel 27 – God described the downfall of the city of Tyre. His judgement on them was going to take them from the mountain of wealth, power, and influence, down to obscurity in the depth of the sea, never to rise again.

• Ezekiel 28 - God rebuked the king of Tyre, because in his pride, he elevated himself to the status of a God. Some believe the language is comparing the downfall of Tyre’s king to the fall of Satan. God promised to restore Judah, but Tyre would never be restored.

• Ezekiel 29 - A prophecy against Egypt and the pride of Pharaoh. Pharaoh was like a dragon in the Nile, but God would draw him out with a hook and cast him into the desert. God would humble Egypt to a lowly nation and give them over to the Babylonians.

• Ezekiel 30 - A prophecy against Egypt. The day of the Lord’s judgement would be a day of doom for Egypt. God would bring the nations against Egypt to crush their pride, throw down their idols, take their wealth, and diminish their nation. God said He had broken pharaoh’s arm so he could not take up a sword to defend his nation. 

• Ezekiel 31 - God warned Egypt by reminding them of the fate of the Assyrian Empire. Assyria was like a mighty ceder, tall and formidable. But when they grew proud, God chopped them down. God told Pharaoh He would do the same to Egypt.

• Ezekiel 32 - Pharaoh, like a dragon in the sea, would be caught in God’s net and thrown into the desert to die. The inhabitants of Egypt would be sent down to Sheol with the Assyrians and all the evil nations who went before her.

OUTLINE:

• EZEKIEL, THE WATCHMAN OF ISRAEL (33:1-9):

  • Ezekiel’s commission as a watchman from chapter 3 is restated.

  • Like a watchman on the wall of a city, he was tasked with warning the people about danger, specifically imminent danger from the wrath of God instigated by their sins.

  • Ezekiel would fulfill his commission faithfully if he warned the people whether they chose to listen or not.

• “WHY WILL YOU DIE, O HOUSE OF ISRAEL” (33:10-20):

  • This second section is very reminiscent of Ezekiel 18.

  • God made it clear to the people of Israel and Judah that they would be held accountable for their personal choices, their choices to do righteousness and their choices to sin.

  • God judged them on their present choices. Their past or their family’s past did not factor into how God assessed them.

  • Many of God’s people were accusing Him of judging unjustly. They said, “The way of the Lord is not just” (33:17).

  • But Ezekiel told them they were the ones with a warped sense of justice. It was their ways that were corrupt.

• A FUGITIVE FROM JERUSALEM (33:21-23):

  • Just as God had told Ezekiel back in chapter 24, a fugitive from Jerusalem came to him in Babylon to report that the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed and burned.

  • The fugitive stated, “The city has been struck down.”

  • The evening before, as God had promised (24:27), God loosed Ezekiel’s mouth so that he was no longer mute (see 3:26-27).

• TWO CONDEMNATIONS (33:24-33):

  • God condemned two groups of people in the final section of this chapter.

  • First, He rejected the hopes of the stragglers who remained in the Promised Land after the Babylonians destroyed it. These stragglers were hopeful they could retake possession of the land. But God called them out for being sinners, idolaters, and people of violence like their dead and captive countrymen. God told them they would never achieve what they hoped.

  • Second, God rebuked the Jews who lived near Ezekiel in Babylon. They didn’t mind listening to the messages of God’s prophets, but repentance never followed their listening. God said, “They come to you as people come, and they sit before you as My people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it” (33:31).

APPLICATION:

• One delusion that we can fall prey to is the delusion of feeling spiritual, like we’ve done our Christian duty, because we’ve listened to the words of God.

• We can do our daily Bible study and feel like we’ve done all God asked us to do.

• Sometimes we can even discuss application from the text, but our application ends after the discussion.

• We have to make sure that our lives, actions, attitudes, and thoughts are changing with our study.

• After a year of Bible study, we should be different people!

• If you find that you’re checking the Bible study box every day, but you aren’t meaningfully closer to the character of Christ, it’s possible you’ve fallen into this delusion.

• God didn’t give us His word so that we could simply acknowledge its wisdom and listen to it preached on Sundays, He gave it to us to change us.

• Bible study doesn’t end when you close your Bible, it’s supposed to end when you take what you’ve read on the pages and practice it in your real life.

• We need to be putting together some kind of executable plan for how to practice what we’ve read.

• This is also a common failure point for congregations, they preach about many things, but they rarely help congregants put things into practice. They fill heads with knowledge, maybe even conviction, but they don’t offer much guidance or accountability after the sermons end.