Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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Tone of specific sentences
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But these oracles against the nations did have a positive purpose in assuring the people in their utter desolation that Yahweh was neither blind nor beaten and would yet rise up against their enemies as of old.
Set against the final flames of the destruction of their city, temple and land, that must have been cold comfort, but comfort nevertheless.
Pray
It’s been a while since we last spent time with Ezekiel in his refuge camp in Babylon,
500 mile from his home land,
and he thought from God.
If you’ve been following the series,
then you may remember that right back in Chapter 1,
God himself turned up in Babylon,
right before Ezekiel in that great vision.
The appearance of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord!
But if God is in Babylon,
what’s happening to their home city of Jerusalem where they,
all 10,000 of them were from!
Ezekiel was commissioned to prophesie,
to warn, to be a watchman for God’s people in exile.
But in a terrifying twist,
Ezekiel was to warn them not of enemy attacks or invasions (although that is the reality of what would happen),
but of God’s displeasure and judgement on them.
God’s people had turned their backs on God for too long,
and he could bear it no longer.
In weird charade type plays Ezekeiel has spent chapter after chapter, telling of the iminent destruction that awaits Jerusalmn for the disobeidnce of the people.
And we left the people listening to Ezekiel, in a bad way last time..
eze 24
Write it down, Ezekiel is told.
This is a grave day for the nation of Israel.
The fall of the city Jerusalem has begun.
The great king of the Babylonians, Nebuchanezza,
is finally going to take the capital of the nation, and make it his own.
With the internet still thousands of years away,
it would take 2 weeks for even the fastest news to reach the exiles in Babylon.
Could it be, has it happened,
is our home finally destroyed.
Is the temple being destroyed?
Has God left his place!
It must have been an agonising wait.
But wait they must.
And as if the author of Ezekiel, most likely Ezekiel himself,
knows a thing or 2 about John Grisham style suspense,
we too are left waiting!
Chapters 25 to 32 take a left turn out off the main street and hit the ring road around Israel, through the surrounding nations.
7 Nations are listed in these chapters, 5 briefly,
and then Tyre, at some length, and Egypt extensively.
Here they are on a map/
Ammon - Moab - Edom - Philistia - Tyre - Sidon - Egypt
Those 2 longer accounts are each broken into 7 neat sections in their arrangement.
And the author places the key to the purpose of these chapters right in the middle.
This is the message God relays to his exciled people while they wait agonisingly for news of Jerusalm.
And he emphasises the main purpose even more so through repetition.
Have a look at it
eze
You see these 8 chapters,
that fill the agonising silence between the prophesy of the fall of Jerusalem, and any real news of it,
bring an uncomfortable but real hint of hope.
God was not blind or beaten
While Jerusalem may be falling, there is an uncomfortable but real hint of hope.
The surrounding nations will also pay for their ignorance of God -
the surrounding nations will also pay for their ignorance of God.
and that in itself is to benefit God’s people.
This is not the end says God.
God cannot bring shame to His Glory,
so amidst the great tragedy of judgement,
brought about by the terrible rejection of their loving God,
God reminds them of the promise he has for his people,
made up of exiles from all around who will be restored one day to their promised land.
From a personal perspective -
this is still as I said an uncomfortable hope -
Ezekiel will never return to Jerusalem, he will die in exile.
But - from a God’s Glory at stake perspective -
this is a wonderful reassurance that God is faithful,
and so his Glory is protected,
as are a faithful people whom he loves.
How is God protecting His glory in all this tragedy?
It’s repeated 3 times in those 3 verses...
‘Then they will know that I am the Lord their God.’
All 7 nations will be brought down by another.
All will be invaded, overthrown, destroyed.
Chapter 30 is a funeral lament for the might of Egypt that will now fall -
and never again have a significant world influence.
Chapter 32 is a funeral lament specifically for the mighty Pharaoh.
Why?
Because they have not acknowledge the Lord as God.
Prophesying against Tyre
Nothing worng it seems with great trading skill and wealth - unless it makes you proud before God!
Or Egypt is described in chapter 29 as being like the garden of Eden -
eze 29 29
beautiful, blessed by God - until
It went to their head.
Pharoah believed HE had created the great River Nile that supplied all the beauty they enjoyed.
They had forgotten who was God.
You see God is glorious.
Massive world powers and economic foundations wiped out.
If they were our enemies, then that would bring us hope wouldn’t it, however unlikely it sounded.
I’m not suggesting any of those things are
You see God is glorious.
And no matter how good or bad humanity is, God will bring glory to his name, he will ensure the world bows down to him.
That all people of all time know that He is the Lord their God.
And no matter how good or bad humanity is,
God will bring glory to his name,
he will ensure the world bows down to him.
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