The Staging Ground for Judgment Text: Ezekiel 9:1-2
Introduction: When Mercy Has Done Its Work
We live in a sentimental age. It is an age that has tried to domesticate the Lion of Judah and turn Him into a housecat. We want a God who is endlessly affirming, perpetually tolerant, and who would never, ever bring a shattering, violent, and holy judgment upon those He created. Our culture has fashioned for itself a god of pure, undiluted affirmation, a god who is all mercy and no majesty, all grace and no government. But this god is an idol, a figment of our rebellious imagination. The God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a God of terrifying holiness and meticulous justice. And He is a God who judges.
We must understand that judgment is not the opposite of grace; it is the necessary consequence of spurned grace. Judgment is what happens when mercy has done its perfect work and has been utterly rejected. When a people, blessed with the covenant, the temple, the sacrifices, and the very presence of God, turn their backs on Him to worship crawling things and engage in every kind of abomination, there comes a point when the divine patience is exhausted. There comes a point when the ground is so saturated with sin that the only thing left to do is burn it clean. This is what was happening in Jerusalem in the days of Ezekiel. The city had become a spiritual cesspool, and the temple itself, the very house of God, was the epicenter of the filth. God had shown Ezekiel the secret abominations in the previous chapter, and now, the bill is coming due.
The vision in our text this morning is a terrifying one. It is a vision of holy warfare, of divine retribution. It is a scene that should cause every one of us to tremble, because it reveals the utter seriousness of sin and the inflexible nature of divine justice. But it is also a vision that contains a thin, bright line of hope. For in the midst of the executioners, there is another figure, one equipped not for destruction, but for preservation. This passage teaches us that God never judges indiscriminately. His wrath is always aimed with perfect precision, and before the sword falls, His grace first marks His own. God knows how to separate the precious from the vile. This is the foundational grammar of divine action, seen here in the shadow of the Old Covenant, and brought into blazing light in the New.
The Text
Then He cried out in my hearing with a loud voice saying, "Draw near, O executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand." And behold, six men were coming from the direction of the upper gate which faces north, each with his shattering weapon in his hand; and among them was a certain man clothed in linen with a scribe’s case at his loins. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar.
(Ezekiel 9:1-2 LSB)
The Summoning of Wrath (v. 1)
We begin with the divine summons, a cry that shakes the foundations.
"Then He cried out in my hearing with a loud voice saying, 'Draw near, O executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.'" (Ezekiel 9:1)
Notice first that this is a loud cry. This is not a whispered suggestion. This is a bellowing command from the throne of the universe. The patience of God, which is long, is not infinite. When the time for judgment arrives, it comes with decisive, sovereign force. God is not wringing His hands over Jerusalem's rebellion; He is commanding its consequences. The word for "executioners" here can also be translated as "overseers" or "those in charge of punishment." These are not random agents of chaos. They are the divinely appointed instruments of God's judicial sentence. God is the judge, and these are His bailiffs, His celestial enforcers.
Who are they? Given the context of Ezekiel's visions and the rest of Scripture, these are best understood as angelic beings. God frequently uses His angels as ministers of His judgment. They brought destruction on Sodom, they struck down the firstborn of Egypt, and an angel struck down Herod for his blasphemy. God has a heavenly host, an army, and they are not all occupied with strumming harps. Part of their holy duty is to execute the just sentences of their King. This vision pulls back the curtain of history and shows us the spiritual reality behind the geopolitical events. Yes, the Babylonian army is mustering on the horizon, but they are merely the secondary cause, the physical weapon. The primary cause, the ones truly wielding the power, are these celestial executioners, responding to the direct command of God.
Each one has his "destroying weapon" in his hand. They are armed and ready. This is not a drill. The judgment is not abstract or theoretical; it is about to become brutally, physically real. The weapons are for shattering, for breaking down the walls and the people who have defied their God. This is a declaration that the covenant lawsuit has been decided. The prosecution has rested, the defense had nothing to say, and the Judge has pronounced the sentence. Now, the officers of the court are being dispatched.
The Staging Ground for Judgment (v. 2)
Verse two gives us the details of the arrival of these agents, and the details are everything.
"And behold, six men were coming from the direction of the upper gate which faces north, each with his shattering weapon in his hand; and among them was a certain man clothed in linen with a scribe’s case at his loins. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar." (Ezekiel 9:2 LSB)
First, their point of entry: "from the direction of the upper gate which faces north." In Scripture, the north is frequently the direction from which judgment and invasion come upon Israel. The great threatening powers, Assyria and Babylon, always descended from the north. This is not just a matter of geography; it is theology. The north becomes symbolic of the place of threat, the origin of divine retribution against an unfaithful people. They are entering the temple complex, the very heart of the nation, from the direction of the threat that God Himself is sending.
Second, their number: "six men." The number six in Scripture is the number of man. Man was created on the sixth day. It consistently represents humanity in its weakness, its incompleteness, and its falling short of the divine standard, which is represented by the number seven. Goliath was six cubits tall. Nebuchadnezzar's statue was sixty cubits high and six cubits wide. The number of the Beast is the number of a man, 666. So here we have six executioners. This is not an arbitrary detail. Their number signifies that the judgment coming upon Jerusalem is a judgment on man's sin, man's failure, man's rebellion. It is the perfect number for the task of judging human imperfection.
But they are not all alike. "And among them was a certain man clothed in linen with a scribe's case at his loins." Here is the bright line of hope I mentioned. Amidst the six agents of destruction, there is a seventh figure. He is distinct. He is not carrying a shattering weapon. He is carrying the instruments of preservation. He is clothed in linen, which is the garment of priests and of holiness. It represents purity and righteousness. This is a figure set apart for a holy task. And at his side is a scribe's case, an inkhorn. His job is not to kill, but to write. To mark. This is the angel of mercy sent to identify the remnant. Before the judgment is unleashed, God always seals His people. We see this pattern again in Revelation, where an angel is sent to seal the servants of God on their foreheads before the winds of destruction are allowed to blow (Rev. 7:2-3). God's grace always gets the first word, and it gets the last word.
And where do they all assemble? This is perhaps the most chilling detail of all. "And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar." The bronze altar was the place of burnt offering. It was the place of atonement, the place where sin was dealt with through substitutionary sacrifice. It was the great symbol of God's mercy, where the blood of bulls and goats was shed to cover the sins of the people. But now, this very spot has become the staging ground for judgment. The agents of wrath and the agent of mercy all muster at the place of sacrifice. The theological meaning is staggering. When the sacrificial system is corrupted, when the mercy offered at the altar is despised and taken for granted, that altar ceases to be a place of refuge and becomes a place of reckoning. The grace offered there, having been trampled underfoot, now gives way to the wrath that was held back. The heart of worship has become the headquarters for destruction.
The Unchanging Pattern
This vision given to Ezekiel is not just a snapshot of ancient history. It reveals the unchangeable character of God and the pattern of His dealings with men. The judgment on Jerusalem in 586 B.C. was a type, a foreshadowing, of an even greater judgment that would fall on another faithless generation of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Jesus Himself, the ultimate prophet, stood in the temple and pronounced woes upon it, just as Ezekiel had. He warned of a coming devastation, a destruction so complete that not one stone would be left upon another.
And in that judgment, the same pattern held. Before the Roman armies, those earthly executioners, were unleashed, there was a marking of God's people. The Christians in Jerusalem, heeding the warnings of Christ, fled the city before its destruction. They were the remnant, marked not with a scribe's ink, but sealed with the Holy Spirit as a down payment of their inheritance. They were preserved while the faithless city, which had rejected its Messiah, was shattered.
Judgment Begins at the House of God
But the pattern does not stop in the first century. The apostle Peter tells us plainly that "judgment must begin at the house of God" (1 Peter 4:17). The church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We gather at the foot of the ultimate altar, the cross of Jesus Christ. And we must take this vision from Ezekiel as a solemn warning. When the church begins to trifle with sin, when we make peace with the world's abominations, when our worship becomes a hollow form and our hearts are filled with idols, we are placing ourselves in profound danger. We are inviting the scrutiny of the one whose eyes are like a flame of fire.
The great apostasy we see in the Western church today, the rampant compromise, the denial of biblical authority, the embrace of sexual perversion, is a stench in the nostrils of a holy God. And we must not think that He will forever forbear. The executioners are always on call. God is a covenant-keeping God, which means He keeps both the blessing side and the curse side of the deal. He is jealous for the honor of His name and the purity of His bride.
But the good news is that the man in linen is also still on duty. That seventh man is a type of our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who marks us, not with ink, but with His own blood. He is the one who intercedes for His own, who seals them by His Spirit, and who preserves them for His eternal kingdom. The call for us, then, is to be found among the marked. The call is to be those who, as the rest of the chapter will show, "sigh and groan over all the abominations" committed in our midst. We are not to be comfortable in Zion. We are to be a people of tender conscience and holy grief over sin, both our own and the sins of our nation and our churches.
When you come to the Lord's Table, you are coming to the bronze altar. For the unrepentant, for those who eat and drink in an unworthy manner, it is a place of judgment. But for those who are marked, for those who have fled to Christ for refuge, for those who are clothed in His righteousness, it remains a place of infinite mercy and grace. Our task is to ensure, by faith, that we are among that number. Flee from the wrath to come, and take refuge under the cross, the only place where justice and mercy have kissed, and where the executioner's weapon has no power.