Ezekiel 11:1-25

Leaders are an important part of any nation.  They set the direction of the nation and create an atmosphere in which people can either thrive or struggle to survive.  Most of the problems Israel has experienced have been the result of terrible leadership.  We have already seen the impact of the unfaithfulness of the spiritual leaders.  This chapter turns its attention to the impact of the unfaithfulness of the political leaders.  There are two kinds of hope seen in this text, one generated by the princes of the land and the other generated by the Word of God.  These two kinds of hope continue to be evident in the lives of people today.  We must be careful to base our hope on the promises of God and not the fantasies of men.

FALSE HOPE: The political leaders of Israel had been taken into captivity and were a big part of the reason the nation fell in the first place.  A message of gloom and doom is not very popular and political leaders tend to care more about popularity than truth.  God calls Ezekiel in his vision to look over the twenty-five men who represent the political leaders in Israel and God calls them all false counselors.  They are generators of false hope.  They are telling the people in Babylon that they don’t need to build houses there because the captivity will be short and that Jerusalem is like a cauldron that will keep all evil away from its inhabitants.  This is in direct opposition to what Ezekiel and the other prophets have been teaching.  God has promised that the captivity will be long and that those who are left in Jerusalem are not safe but will die of pestilence, famine and swords.  Jerusalem is a cauldron that will store the dead bodies of the remnant.  We need to be very careful about what we believe.  There are messages that are easy to believe but they are untrue and only generate false hope in the people. 

TRUE HOPE: Ezekiel has been given a hard job of delivering a hard message and in the midst of this message one of the princes dies.  Ezekiel laments that it appears that all of the remnant of Israel will suffer the same fate of death and the entire nation will become extinct.  However God gives him a message of true hope.  True hope is always based on the promises of God and is according to the Word of God.  God promises that those who have been scattered from Israel in captivity will, one day, be gathered back together and brought back into their land.  However, the true source of hope is not all about getting some land back, it is all about a transformation of the heart.  God promises that when the exiles are finally brought back, they will remove the detestable things from the land and that God will remove the hearts of stone from the people and replace it with a heart of flesh that will delight in pleasing God.  This is the true hope of the Gospel of Christ.  God has promised to transform the hearts of all who trust Him and that is true hope.  We can find true hope when we believe the promises of God and not just believe in the wishful thinking of men.