Have you ever felt like the wheels were coming off?
Maybe your life didn’t turn out the way you expected. The job disappeared. The diagnosis came. The marriage became difficult. The kids struggled. The church went through conflict. The plans you had carefully made suddenly seemed to unravel.
Sometimes life can feel completely out of control.
That’s where we meet Ezekiel.
“In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” — Ezekiel 1:1, ESV
Ezekiel’s name means “God strengthens.” That’s going to become important. But notice where Ezekiel is when we meet. He’s “among the exiles by the Chebar canal.” He’s in Babylon.
And Ezekiel is a priest. That means he had spent his life preparing for ministry at the temple in Jerusalem. According to Numbers 4:3, thirty was the age at which a priest would enter into his full service.
So imagine Ezekiel at thirty.
He has trained his entire life to serve God in the temple. He has a calling. He has a vocation. He has a future he can see.
And then everything falls apart.
Jerusalem has been conquered. His country has been defeated. His city has been destroyed. The temple—the center of Israel’s worship and the place where Ezekiel expected to serve—is hundreds of miles away.
And Ezekiel is sitting beside a canal in Babylon.
He is an exile.
You could say this was the opposite of what he expected his thirtieth year to look like.
His plans are gone.
His home is gone.
His nation is gone.
His future is uncertain.
And perhaps most troubling of all, it may have seemed as though the presence of God had been left behind in Jerusalem. But then something happens.
“The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.”
Suddenly Ezekiel sees something that changes his whole perspective.
And what he sees is one of the strangest and most magnificent visions in the entire Bible.
There’s a storm coming from the north. There’s fire and lightning and brightness. Then Ezekiel sees four living creatures—strange beings with human features, four faces, four wings, and extraordinary strength.
And then he sees wheels.
Wheels within wheels.
The wheels are covered with eyes. They move in every direction. And wherever the Spirit goes, the wheels go.
It’s an overwhelming vision.
Honestly, it’s hard even to picture.
But Ezekiel isn’t giving us a blueprint for some strange heavenly machine. He’s trying to describe something that is beyond ordinary human experience. That’s why he repeatedly uses words like “likeness,” “appearance,” and “like.”
He’s seeing something that words can barely capture.
And as the vision unfolds, Ezekiel’s eyes move upward.
He sees an expanse, shining like crystal.
Above the expanse is a throne.
And above the throne is someone with a human appearance, surrounded by fire and brightness.
And finally, Ezekiel tells us what he is seeing:
“Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.” — Ezekiel 1:28
There it is.
That’s the point of the entire vision.
Ezekiel sees the glory of God.
And notice where God’s glory appears.
Not in Jerusalem.
Not in the temple.
Not in the place Ezekiel expected to find it.
God’s glory appears in Babylon.
That’s the shock of Ezekiel 1.
Ezekiel may have thought his life had come apart, but God had not.
The temple may have been far away, but God was not.
Jerusalem may have fallen, but God’s throne had not.
The nation may have been displaced, but Yahweh was still King.
And that’s what the wheels are communicating.
They are constantly moving. They can go in every direction. They don’t need to turn around. They go wherever the Spirit directs them.
In other words, God is not confined.
The God of Israel is not a local deity whose presence is limited to one building in one city.
He is the King of the entire cosmos.
The wheels may look chaotic to Ezekiel, but they are not moving randomly.
The Spirit is directing them.
And perhaps that’s what you need to hear today.
Because sometimes our lives look like Ezekiel’s.
We look around and think, What happened?
This isn’t what I planned.
This isn’t where I thought I’d be.
How did everything get so complicated?
Where is God in all of this?
Ezekiel 1 doesn’t give us an easy answer to those questions.
It gives us something better.
It gives us a vision of God.
Ezekiel’s circumstances don’t immediately change. Babylon is still Babylon. Israel is still in exile. Jerusalem is still destroyed.
But Ezekiel now knows something he didn’t know before.
God is still on the throne.
The circumstances may be confusing, but God is not confused.
The world may look chaotic, but God is not out of control.
The wheels may seem to be spinning in every direction, but the Spirit is directing them.
And that’s why the chapter begins with the name Ezekiel—“God strengthens.”
Because when everything else is shaken, the strength of God’s people doesn’t ultimately come from having stable circumstances.
It comes from knowing the God who sits above them.
Maybe today you feel like the wheels are coming off.
Maybe they really are.
Ezekiel doesn’t tell you to pretend everything is fine.
Instead, he invites you to look up.
Look beyond the circumstances.
Look beyond the confusion.
Look beyond the things you cannot control.
And see the throne.
God is still there.
And he is still glorious.
And he is still King.
The wheels aren’t coming off the universe.
They’re moving where the Spirit directs them to move. They are moving according to the will of the King who sits on the throne.
