Lessons About Prophecy From Ezekiel

I’m really thankful that I don’t live under the Mosaic covenant (the “Old Covenant”).

That messed-up covenant was about a priesthood between people and God and about obeying the rules (and getting punished if you didn’t obey them). It wasn’t the covenant that God wanted, but it was the only covenant that the people would accept, but that’s another story.

But even if we’re not part of that covenant, we can learn a lot from the stories that come from those days. We can learn a lot about the weakness of human intentions, I suppose, but the part that I find interesting is when God’s heart is revealed, even through that inferior covenant.

For example, this prophetic word about prophetic words,

“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! ... You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD. Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the LORD has not sent them, they say, "The LORD declares," and expect him to fulfill their words.” [Ezekiel 13:3, 5-6]

This rather talks about both the weakness of human intention and the tender goodness of the heart of God. I came across this passage, and I realized that there are lessons from this Old Covenant encounter that apply even to us who live in the New Covenant. Here are some lessons that stood out to me.

• One of the legitimate roles of the prophet is to strengthen the people of God for days of difficulty and opposition. (He uses vocabulary of repairing breaches [holes] in the defensive walls of the city, a pretty common metaphor.)

In New Covenant vocabulary, the prophetic gifts are for “edification and exhortation and comfort;” this is not news to us.

• In those days, there were “foolish prophets” who speak for God, even when God has not given them a message. He says they prophesy from their own spirits, and haven’t actually seen a vision from God.

I have great empathy for itinerant prophets these days. There’s real pressure on them to always have something to say, always have a fresh revelation, always be in the social media headlines, so that they’ll always have an invitation to minister, and therefore receive a paycheck. The desire to feed your family and pay the rent is pretty powerful, and it probably ought to be.

This is one of the reasons I believe that discernment is absolutely critical these days. God calls out this prophesying from their own spirit pretty regularly in the Old Testament; I believe it happens in our days as well. Which means we need to discern the prophetic words that are actually from God from the prophetic words that come from the prophet’s own spirit. (One tool from this passage to help judge a word: does it “repair the breaches in the walls”?)

• It’s probably worth pointing out that even if a prophetic word comes from the prophet’s own spirit instead of the Spirit of God, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s evil or demonic. If they have a good spirit, then words from their spirit won’t be bad. They may even comfort and encourage, but they won’t carry the power of God; they’re just words, empty words, even if they’re good words.

There were in those days – and there are in our days – declarations made that were not from God, but people expect God to fulfill the empty words. Both the prophet and the hearer are deceived into thinking that God is going to accomplish what was essentially wishful thinking or good intentions behind the “thus says the Lord” declarations. But he is not obligated by promises that come from anyone other than himself.

• I confess that I find it a little uncomfortable that prophets can prophesy from their spirit well enough that they can’t recognize when God is speaking and when it’s just their own good intentions. But I see it happen all over the place.

And if the hearer has not done the work of discerning the prophetic word properly, they may attach their heart to words that were merely spoken from wishful thinking or good intentions, and as a result, be disappointed, even devastated when that which was promised in the flesh does not come to pass. I’ve known people who have walked away from God because of this stumbling block.

This is where Jesus’ warning seems to apply so clearly: “Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” [Luke 17:1-2] That sounds like Jesus is pretty serious about this.

And this is the point in this article where I sometimes feel the need to come up with a snappy conclusion to what I’m writing, something about guarding our hearts, something about hearing Father’s voice for ourselves, something about purity of motives. But I’m cautious about my own good intentions here.

Instead, I’m going suggest a re-reading of the passage that started this whole thing, and taking a moment to open your heart and visit with God about it:

“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! ... You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD. Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the LORD has not sent them, they say, "The LORD declares," and expect him to fulfill their words.” [Ezekiel 13]

Who’s Minding the Store?

I had an interesting afternoon. I was out for a walk in the rare spring sunshine, and I came on an area that was a mess. It was actually a parking lot for a large government office building.

There was some old vandalism, the detritus of where someone had cleaned out a stolen purse, a few bits of drug paraphernalia and a whole lot of litter. A lot of this mess looked like it had been there for a while. 

The context for this story is that I’ve been reflecting for a while on the value of beauty for its own sake. Beauty is good because it’s good. Beauty is good because it’s a characteristic of who God is and how he does things. Beauty is good because it communicates that there’s good in the world, and it’s within reach. 

Back to the messy parking lot. I’ve been trying to clean it up some, just because it feels better when it’s cleaned up. It crossed my mind that with all the personnel cutbacks and all the drama (there sure has been a lot of drama in our society in the last couple of years), that there was nobody responsible for cleaning the place up. I confess, I grumbled a bit.  

“That’s right, Son. Nobody is taking ownership for this.” And suddenly some lights came on, and I was in a very strange place. Suddenly I think I knew some things that I am absolutely certain I didn’t know before. 

I’m still in the place of testing these new things, but when the lights came on, when those thoughts showed up, they showed up with scripture used in an unfamiliar way to support them. 

I’m asking you to think these things through with me, test them with me. Don’t bother telling me “But that’s not traditional!” I already know that.  

Hold on. This might get bumpy. A bunch of thoughts showed up all together. I’ll try to sort out some of the key thoughts.

• Yes, beauty represents God better than a mess. That in itself is enough reason to clean up the mess as I can.

• I already knew that wherever hell has its way, there’s a mess: pain, confusion, squalor, deception. The physical mess here reminded me of hell’s work. 

• One thought that caught me off guard is that cleaning up the parking lot is a good way to make hell less comfortable, and to make the place inviting to the things of God. (Seriously? What?)

• And the big one: when a place has no ownership, it invites hell, it invites the demonic. 

And as that thought dropped into my mind, this verse came with it: 

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” [Luke 11:24-26] 

We (correctly) use this passage to teach a number of good things. But one thing I think it teaches, or at least it was teaching me this afternoon, was that this person got into trouble the second time because they weren’t taking ownership for their soul. 

Yes, God had set them free and cleaned them up. But there was no real opposition to the return of the impure spirit and its seven “more wicked” spirits, so they just moved in. There was nobody taking responsibility for the clean and tidy soul. Nobody was minding the store.

And I wonder if something like that has happened with this government office building? It was all clean and tidy when they finished the mess of construction and took down the fences. It was swept clean and put in order. But nobody took ownership of it; nobody made it their responsibility to keep the place looking nice, to keep the bad things out. Nobody was minding the store.

So normal things happened, and bad things happened. People began parking in the parking lot, teaching their kids to drive in it (it’s a big parking lot), folks took shortcuts through the lot, and kids began hanging out next to the dumpsters after (or during) school, vagrants set up camp back inside the landscaping and used for their latrine. It was like a handful of demons were settling into the territory. 

To repeat: the principle that I’m working on sussing out here is this: when nobody takes ownership for a thing (a place, a soul, fill in the blank), then hell likes to waltz in and make themselves at home. Or so I suspect. 

As I write this, I am feeling a nudge that this might have broader implications than a parking lot. In fact, it doesn’t seem insignificant that this is a parking lot for a government office building. 

For a long time, it was religiously incorrect for believers to soil themselves by working for the government, or for big business. And so there was a lot less “minding the store,” as it were, by believers in the midst of the federal Government, in state and county government; there was a lot less “minding the store” in big business (like Signature Bank or Disney or Anheuser-Busch) new tech startups (like Google or Facebook or OpenAI or whatever). 

Sure, there were bureaucrats on duty, business executives paying attention to business, but there was nobody taking any real measure of responsibility for the spirits working in these organizations. 

So hell was comfortable waltzing in and making itself at home. And look where we are now. 

So where do we go from here? 

Sure, prayer is the easier part. Don’t get upset, I didn’t say it was easy; just easier than the alternative.

Part of the alternative is for believers to work – to work in positions of responsibility – in government or in business and on behalf of both the Kingdom and our employer to make decisions that are responsible. 

The rest of that alternative is to roll up our sleeves and get involved, to take responsibility for places and organizations and regions and such. To clean up the parking lot, to report the shoplifting, to set policy in the place. 

And when hell rolls up ready to get comfy, we get to say, “This is my turf; you’re trespassing. Out you go!”