"When God talks about Ezekiel as 'thou son of man,' he's a picture of his nation, carried away captive and yet a nation through whom God has a plan and His ultimate purpose for man is there.
"Now, the Messiah is called 'son of man' because He will be the ultimate One through which God accomplishes His purpose in man," explains Richard Jordan.
"If you read Ezekiel 4-7 and see all these weird things Ezekiel has to do, they are all sign pictures for the nation Israel and illustrate what God's doing.
"In chapter 4, Ezekiel has to lay on his right side and then roll over onto his left side for 430 days. That's a long time.
"In chapter 5, he has to shave his beard off. Then he's got to go off and make this bread; what they call Ezekiel Bread. In one place, he's got to go take dung and mix it in and eat it.
"Another place he's got to go out and preach on a street with a little chalkboard. The issue in Ezekiel is God's glory and why it's been removed, why He wrote 'Ichabod, the glory's departed,' and how He's going to restore it.
"The humiliation the prophet suffers is just a sign. Chapter 24:24 is a key verse about that: [24] Thus Ezekiel is unto you a sign: according to all that he hath done shall ye do: and when this cometh, ye shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
"In Ezekiel 24, his wife dies and God says you can't mourn for her. He says, 'Even for your wife,' who, in this case, is a type of Jerusalem:
[16] Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down.
[17] Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men.
"In one place God says, 'Go over and knock a hole in the wall, take all your luggage, throw it out through the hole, then climb out through the hole and walk off into the desert.'
"That was a sign that, 'You guys are going to go into captivity and you're going to be there. Take your bags and head out.'
"That expression, 'ye shall know that I am the Lord God,' occurs something like that 70 times in this Book of Ezekiel. If you wanted a key verse for the book, it would be, 'This is happening so that you know, and so that the nations know, that I am the Lord God.'
"What God tells Ezekiel in the first vision is that, 'All this stuff that's happening to you, I'm really the one behind it. It's because you've disobeyed. I'm working out my purposes.'
"In chapters 25-32, you run through a series of judgments on the nations, the Gentiles, and how God's going to avenge Israel. He's going to destroy their oppressors and deliver them.
"In chapters 33 to the end of the book, you see the restoration of Israel. Ezekiel gets recommissioned in that great verse in chapter 33 where God says, [11] Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
"He talks about the call to repentance for the nation and makes Ezekiel a watchman on the wall: [7] So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.
"In chapter 35, He talks about Mt. Seir, which is Edom, and how He's going to destroy it. Edom represents the descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother. You remember how Malachi said, 'Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.'
"The descendants of Esau were the bitterest enemies Israel had. If you look at verse 5 it says, [5] Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:
"Verse 9: [9] I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
"He's going to take away the bad shepherds, give them a good shepherd. He's going to deliver them from their bitterest enemies and avenge them against them.
"In chapter 36, He's going to put the new heart in them and new spirit. He's going to regenerate them. The prescription for Israel's spiritual cleansing is in Ezekiel 36:
[1] Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the LORD:
[2] Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, even the ancient high places are ours in possession:
[3] Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people:
[4] Therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD; Thus saith the Lord GOD to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes, and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that are round about;
"He literally, down through verse 15, has Ezekiel out talking to the trees and mountains and the land of Israel. The land of Israel had been polluted by an apostate people; they polluted it so badly with the blood of idols, the idol worship, that God had to remove them away.
"In essence, what God says is, 'In order for the land to be cleansed I had to remove them from the land.' That's why He told Israel through Jeremiah, 'You're going to be in captivity until the land enjoys her sabbaths.' That's why they were there 70 years.
"There's a great expression at the end of verse 17: [17] Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and by their doings: their way was before me as the uncleanness of a removed woman.
"If you take an unclean people out and the land is purified, what do you have to do before you put them back in so they don't mess it up again? You need to spiritually cleanse the people before you put them back in and what God tells Ezekiel, 'Don't worry, I'm going to put my Spirit in them.'
"Ezekiel 36: [24] For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.
[25] Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.[26] A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
[27] And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
[28] And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.
"In chapter 37, you see the nation regathered and reunited. In chapters 38 and 39, God removes all the enemies of Israel from her land. By the end of chapter 39, all of Israel's enemies are wiped out, never again to come in the land of Israel.
"In chapters 40-48, is the great picture of the Millennium, where worship of God and Israel in the land is depicted. Literally what you have is the dispensational order of events. It's all done so Israel, and especially the nations of the earth, know and understand, based on God's dealings with Israel, that Jehovah is the true God. That's a terribly important thing because they're going to know that the true God is the God of the Bible, based upon how He fulfills all of His promises to Israel."
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