Jackals Among Ruins

One can only imagine Ezekiel, who began his book by declaring that it was “the thirtieth year,” no doubt referring to the year that would have begun service as a priest, feeling the pain of all of this. How much better it would have been if the people were being fed the Word of God, worshiping in the familiar courts of the temple of God. But it was also the “fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin,” who was taken by Nebuchadnezzar’s unstoppable forces in 597 B.C. (2 Kings 24:8-12).

Thus, Ezekiel, instead of serving God in the temple at the time of his ordination, instead of serving God’s proposes in the place where God’s presence was solemnly commemorated, sat with the other prisoners in exile, along an irrigation canal southeast of Babylon called the Chebar, far from the city called holy. But as he would learn he was not far from God. God came to Him in a whirlwind. And God ordained him to be a prophet to the rebellious people of Israel. This holy man of God had a “Word from Another World” as Robert L. Reymond has said. He spoke that Word, not his Word but God’s, not only to the rebellious people-at-large, but specifically to the beastly preachers of Israel. They had forfeited their ministries by preaching what they wanted, what arose from their own spirits, their causes, not God’s.

So, too, St. Paul, in his epistle to Pastor Timothy, who was to carry on the church planting and church revitalization work at Ephesus, warned against the preachers who would “depart from the faith.” In doing so the great apostle warned Timothy to having nothing to do with “irreverent, silly myths.” What were these? They were surely the Judaizing myths of a rabbinic religion that had nothing to do with the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but were man-made impositions on the consciences of human beings, which brought Babylonian-like bondage, not freedom and new life. The killer of truth in Ephesus would not be the public scandals involving the deacon running off with the director of music’s wife, but irreverent rabbis running off with their mouths! The quiet killer of Ephesus would be preachers who were, if we were to take just the opposite of Paul’s warnings, untrained in godliness (verse 8), lazy in the ministry (verse 9), and whose hope was set on things other than the “living God,” the Savior Jesus Christ (verse 10).

The quiet killer of ministry is preaching and teaching the things that are not of God and His Word. The quiet killer of ministry is putting our efforts into causes and movements that do not promote what saves people. When we have neglected the ordinary means of grace,Word, Sacrament and Prayer, then our churches be weakened, the unconverted neglected and the Great Commission ignored. In short, our people will fall into ruin. The leaders of such churches will become like jackals among those ruins.