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Ezekiel 14-16

Do you know what I thought when I finished reading today’s passages?  I thought “Boy is God mad!  He is really, really mad!”  Now we have been reading of God’s condemnation of Judah for a while but in today’s verses He used some pretty strong examples to get the point across.  The first verses that really stopped me in my tracks was this:

Ezekiel 14:13-14

“Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord God.”

The reason these verses got my attention is that Ezekiel and Daniel were contemporaries.  Ezekiel was using Noah and Job as examples of righteous men and I understood that.  These were examples from the earliest of recorded history.  People had millennia to read of them and learn to revere their righteousness.  Daniel could very well have been alive at the time of the writing of these verses.  This meant that his renown as a righteous man had spread fairly quickly.

God’s point in mentioning these men was to help the wayward people of Judah to understand that not only did they lack righteousness to save themselves from punishment, but that, even if these three righteous men themselves were among them, even their righteousness would not be enough to save them.  You see Noah’s righteousness saved his sons and their wives and even the future of all mankind.  Job’s righteousness had allowed him to survive his trials and saw children and wealth restored to him.  Daniel was the current “rock star” of righteousness.  His fame as a righteous man, and the protection God had afforded him, was obviously known far and wide.   Ezekiel was simply using the most widely recognized person of righteousness known to the people of the day as another example of righteousness that could not save the condemned.

The people of Judah considered themselves righteous and they were horribly mistaken.  God was trying to get that point across to them.  I recently spoke with an individual who was as lost as lost can be.  He was rather nasty in his attitude toward Christians.  He was one of the most arrogant men I have ever met.  He viewed himself as a purveyor of peace and justice and love – all while cussing up a blue streak at me for the crime of being stupid.  He has it all figured out you see.  The rest of us are just too stupid to understand his brilliant truth.  He is his own idol.  He has no intention of repenting and turning away from all his abominations.  He is dead meat.  It breaks my heart.

The reason God said that even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were among them they would only deliver themselves, is because these lost folks would not listen to even these righteous men.  That man I spoke with?  I wonder if he would repent even if Jesus Christ himself appeared before him.  That is how hard his heart seemed to me.  That is how hard the heart of the people of Judah’s time had been.

Moving on, all of chapter 16 is a vivid example of how horribly Judah had behaved toward God.  God gave an analogy of infidelity as a way to communicate the severity of Judah’s transgressions.  I pictured a Hollywood movie as I read that chapter.  I’m sure I’ve seen some version of this on the silver screen.  The man that finds a down and out, helplessly wretched woman in a gutter and saves her, and pours his love and riches on her only to later discover her cheating on him and giving away his extravagant gifts to her many lovers who simply use her and cast her aside.  How would you feel if your wife did something similar to you?  Would you be angry?

Finally, this next verse made me wonder about the church in America.

Ezekiel 16:47

“Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways.”

Judah had become more corrupt than the nations that surrounded them.  What was God’s purpose in establishing Israel as His people; His nation?  He established them to show His power and grace to the rest of the world.  What did His chosen people choose to do?  They chose to cast Him aside and chase after foreign gods.  They became even more debauched than the rest of the nations around them.  In today’s reading God mentioned Sodom in comparison to Judah.

I remember hearing a quote attributed to Billy Graham “If God doesn’t punish America He will owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology”.   America has certainly become a rather toxic culture.  Many in our country today think the Muslim world hates us because of our politics.  I’m sure our support of Israel doesn’t go down easy for some Muslims but many of their Imams seem to harp on our poisonous culture.  If you think sex and violence is a corrosive influence in society then you must think the American culture is pure acid.

So if our American culture is so foul, why do the statistics show little difference between Americans that call themselves Christians and those that don’t?  The divorce rate is almost identical.  We hear of sexual perversion and violence committed by alleged Christians almost every day.  I don’t believe we are there yet, but is there a day when the church in America is more corrupt than the non-believers?  I find it hard to believe that such a thing could ever occur, but why is that we so closely mirror the society around us?  Aren’t we supposed to be different?

Let me ask you; are you different than your lost neighbor?  How?  How does this difference make itself known?  Would your neighbor view you as different – in a good way?  Christians in America today are not the people of Judah back in the day; not even close.  The people of Judah had surpassed the evil of their neighbors; we have not done that, nor do I think we ever will, but our behavior is getting too close to that of our lost neighbors and boy is it time for us to start pushing the needle the other way.  It is time for us to stand up and show the difference.  Will you be different?  I hope so!

May your neighbor see the light of Christ in you!

Your brother and servant in Christ,

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!