Ezekiel 1:1; 4-14. 1 On July 31of my thirtieth year, while I was with the Judean exiles beside the Kebar River in Babylon, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God…. 4As I looked, I saw a great storm coming from the north, driving before it a huge cloud that flashed with lightning and shone with brilliant light. There was fire inside the cloud, and in the middle of the fire glowed something like gleaming amber. 5From the center of the cloud came four living beings that looked human, 6except that each had four faces and four wings. 7Their legs were straight, and their feet had hooves like those of a calf and shone like burnished bronze. 8Under each of their four wings I could see human hands. So each of the four beings had four faces and four wings. 9The wings of each living being touched the wings of the beings beside it. Each one moved straight forward in any direction without turning around. 10Each had a human face in the front, the face of a lion on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle at the back. 11Each had two pairs of outstretched wings—one pair stretched out to touch the wings of the living beings on either side of it, and the other pair covered its body. 12They went in whatever direction the spirit chose, and they moved straight forward in any direction without turning around. 13The living beings looked like bright coals of fire or brilliant torches, and lightning seemed to flash back and forth among them. 14And the living beings darted to and fro like flashes of lightning.
Ezekiel was a prophet like Isaiah. And like Isaiah, Ezekiel had a vision of God surrounded by what we might call angels (later, Ezekiel will call them cherubim, and that is what we will call them). But Ezekiel’s description of these angels is probably not like anything you would imagine an angel to look like. Calf’s hooves? Metal legs? Lightning flashing? And that’s just their bodies. Ezekiel says that each angel had one head with four faces. The face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle. These “living beings” are what stand around God’s throne worshiping him day and night.
The cherubim are mysterious creatures for sure – part angel, part animal, part human. But they also reveal to us the mysteries of the advent of Jesus. To see the cherubim is to see an image of both God and man in one. Like God, the living beings never turn around, they always move straight ahead. Like God they live in the cloud of smoke, fire, and lightning. But the cherubim are also like a man. They have human faces and human hands. Jesus too came as both God and man.
And what about these animal faces? Each one points to the nature of Jesus.
Jesus is the God-man who eternally rules us as our divine lion king.
Jesus is the God-man who eternally works for us as our divine servant ox.
Jesus is the God-man who eternally rescues us as our saving eagle.
This is what Christmas is all about. Strange creatures? No. Jesus as the perfect God-man who rules, serves and saves. And what Jesus is, is also what we are meant to be. We are meant to be the servant-guardian-kings and queens of this world. Lions. Oxen. Eagles. Human. Joining the living creatures in their eternal worship our life giving Savior, Jesus.
Questions: Do you think you could draw a picture of the cherubim as Ezekiel describes them? Talk through how Jesus is like each of the three animals that make up the cherubim: lion, ox, eagle. King, servant, savior. How can you be like a lion? An ox? An eagle?
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