Sunday, November 1, 2026 • Preached by Kyle Pipes
Summary: Israel believed that the Temple was a guarantee of God’s presence. In Ezekiel and 2 Chronicles we see God’s presence depart the Temple and then the Temple be destroyed. Sometimes we mistakenly attach God’s presence to a place, outcome, tradition, or role and begin to take for granted that God is encountered, not held captive. Here are three truths that can help:
God’s presence is a gift not a possession. The prophet Ezekiel tells us that God’s presence left the Temple about six years before it was destroyed. Israel assumed that as long as they had the Temple they had God’s presence with them–that was not the case. Israel took God for granted and became entitled. When we allow entitlement to creep into our lives in any area, especially with God, we tend to no longer appreciate the gift and instead see things as objects or possessions. What have you attached God to in your life?
We can’t get back on track until we recognize we’re lost. God sent multiple messengers and prophets in order to have Israel course correct. Alas, instead they mocked them, so they were conquered by the Babylonians. If we are lost but don’t know it we can’t make any changes. Seasons of exile, whether imposed on or created by us, are disorienting but they should lead us towards assessment. Assess your attitude, time, finances, hopes, and sense of entitlement. Where might you be a little lost?
Even lost in exile, God’s hope abounds. While Israel is in Babylon, God gives rest to the land and prepares the King of Persia who helps Israel rebuild the Temple after the Babylonians are defeated. God is a God who brings life out of death and so hope is always just around the corner. If you find yourself in a season of exile choose hope. Where might hope be breaking in?
Passages for Reflection:
Then the glory of the Lord went out from the threshold of the house and stopped above the cherubim. 19 The cherubim lifted up their wings and rose up from the earth in my sight as they went out with the wheels beside them. They stopped at the entrance of the east gate of the house of the Lord; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. (Ezekiel 10:18–19, NRSV)
Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. 23 And the glory of the Lord ascended from the middle of the city, and stopped on the mountain east of the city. 24 The spirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by the spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen left me. 25 And I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me. (Ezekiel 11:22–25, NRSV)
The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord against his people became so great that there was no remedy. Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their youths with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or young woman, the aged or the feeble; he gave them all into his hand. All the vessels of the house of God, large and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his officials, all these he brought to Babylon. They burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had made up for its sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. (2 Chronicles 36:15–21)
