To Believe is to Follow

Have you ever wondered why things just never seem to get better, even after giving your heart to Christ? Have you ever heard the conflicting stories of a God that is filled with love, and a God that kills people and wondered which one was the truth? Have you ever wondered if you would ever know the truth about anything? Do the stories of the old testament clear up or profoundly intensify these questions? I want to share a story about a prophet and my take on how it answers these questions.

The Israelites were a very disobedient people. Many ask, if God is such a good God, why did he kill so many people, why was he so violent? First, in defense of his chosen people. We cannot ever forget that with the fall of Adam and Eve, sin and death entered into the world, at the choice of man. That’s when our free will to do bad things was introduced. When our children do bad things, we discipline them. Death may be hard to see as a punishment, but take a violent sick criminal. He has broken into your home to kill you, but first he wants to torture and kill the children, then the adults. Is death too great a consequence for this chosen action? As we will see, God has very clear rules. Many want God to be this soft, loving and tender God. But the truth stings because it can be hard. And God is the most perfect truth there is. In this story, we see captivity being used as a form of punishment for His people who worshipped other Gods and other idols. They were grossly disobedient. However, even in this punishment, it was important to God that His people understand the reasoning. Is that not true for a parent who reasonably disciplines their child? Isn’t it important for our children to know why they are being punished? Of course it is. Otherwise, you are just punishing out of anger and that is nothing but the beginning of problems. So God anointed Ezekiel to be a prophet who would reveal to the Israelites why God was doing what he was doing, and the deeper lessons behind the actions. God also wanted Ezekiel to give them hope of the end goal which was for the nation to get right with God, so at that point he could free them.

We don’t have prophets today.  All that we can learn is right there in the closed cannon of scripture. There is nothing new.  However, there is the Holy Spirit, one-third of the triune God Head. He is imputed to us when we receive Christ as our savior. Through the convictions of the Holy Spirit we hear the correction, we feel the chastisement. That is why the same scripture can feel new time and time again. The people in this story had anointed prophets who relayed to them what was going on. Today, we have to practice our faith so we can clearly hear both the shouts and the whispers of the spirit.

If we study the book of Ezekiel, we will find many similarities in God’s love, and God’s correction that we have today. First, we see the sin. The Israelites were living in Sin. If we are not living in sin, then there is no need for Christ. This is an imperative part of us understanding salvation. God did not send his son to earth to die a horrible death to save us from love. Out of love, God sent his son to save us from death caused by sin. But as I stated earlier, sin and death have been in the world since the fall of man. We are born into sin. Sin is all over us from the very beginning. Many only want to talk about particular sins, but we are covered in it. Lies, lust, jealousy, envy, and so on. There are many actions that are sinful, but most boil down to some of these most basic sins. This is why it doesn’t matter if we talk about drunkenness, or stealing, or lying, or any sexually immoral sin. It is all sin and so it is all the same to God. We, as individuals, are no different than Israel in that they are covered in their sin and need to be redeemed by God. We cannot save ourselves, and we cannot save each other. Only the blood of Jesus can cleanse us of our sin.  In the Old Testament, it was through the blood of a perfect animal sacrifice. Today, it is by professing your faith in Christ and accepting Jesus as your savior, your perfect sacrifice.

God allowed Israel to be held captive because of their sin, in fact He put them there. So the question is really not why did He do that. The answer is clear, they were disobedient. The real question is why do you think God is going to treat the present day unsaved sinner any different. He has promised a place called hell, and He has promised to cast out those who do not endure unto the end, who do not follow his son Jesus the Christ. We have not yet received our punishment for our disobedience, but the bible and Jesus promise it is coming. Again, the one man in all of the bible who spoke about hell the most was not a mortal man, but the God-man, Jesus.

We battle against our flesh daily and that is why we are told to die to ourselves daily. We must give up our propensity to respond to and to satisfy our desires of our flesh. One of Ezekiel’s goals was to make sure that Israel knew that captivity was not going to be brief. They were grossly disobedient, so a great deal of time was going to be needed to change their ways. When we die while living in sin, we need to understand the same principle. Our consequence is for eternity. There is no ‘Get out of Jail Free” card. It is a punishment that will last forever and ever! Ezekiel was also to prophesy a new hope to the nation. Hope that one day God will deliver them. While they lived in captivity, they had to believe. Through the birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, we have been given a promise as to His glorious return. Through the bible, we are briefed about it, and have the opportunity to be reminded of the promise as often as we choose to read about it. This is our hope in a redemption that leads to eternal life, not eternal death. But as the motto of this blog indicates, to believe is to follow. There are many who say, “Yes, I believe in Jesus” but have no reason why other than they do not want to go to hell. They do not practice a disciplined life style of any kind. They do not study the word, nor do they engage in any form of worship toward the one true God who is the only God who can save them from the eternal death. Ezekiel was to connect all this with the realization that Israel needs to have a genuine reliance on God the Father. They need to depend on God for their redemption, and their provisions, and the fulfillment of the promised to bring them out of captivity. The entire life of Christ is about the sins of our life as he was sin-free, our inability to save ourselves as he is God and did raise himself from the dead- meaning Christ did save himself, the need to rely on God and to have hope in the promise of His return. We have hope in eternal life, because we believe in that which we have not seen.

Ezekiel means “God is strong”, or, “God makes strong”. In the beginning of their captivity, Israel was weak, and far away from their ordained relationship with the Father. So are we. It is a false strength when we believe that we can go through life without God. It is an offense of idolatry very similar to the idol worshiping that Israel engaged in. Only we are worshiping ourselves. Through this ordeal, and with the leadership, obedience, and God ordained strength of Ezekiel, God strengthened Israel. As we study, and pray, and fellowship with other believers, and learn to be obedient to the convictions of the spirit we too are strengthened unto the end. This is how we endure to the end, this is how we finish well, and this is how we win the race. Only by grace, mercy, and God’s sovereignty are we strengthened.

Ezekiel’s first vision is his calling. Studying the scriptures to be a priest or teacher is one thing, to be a prophet is another. Nothing in Ezekiel’s training could prepare him for this journey. Sometimes we think our sin is too great, sometimes we think we are too broken to be called, to be used, to be redeemed. Sometimes we struggle with this idea because we look at it from the idea that we are in charge of morals. We are violators of our own moral ideas, and therefore not redeemable. A murderer for example, may think that he is unredeemable because he is so morally corrupt. Even more common, drunkards, addicts, liars, cheaters, and ordinary people who just see every flaw in their make-up believe that they are morally bankrupt. And sometimes as a society we help them with that by thinking that they are so morally wrong that we need to cast them out of society all together. But the truth here is that God is the only PERFECT MORAL AUTHORITY! We argue that God is to harsh when he consequences. Again, as a matter of Idolatry, we believe that our wrath is more intelligent, more loving, more righteous than God’s. In other words, I don’t want to worship a God who sends people to hell because that is not loving enough for me, and I am right and God is wrong. This is boiled down to us thinking that we have the right to exact wrath. Forgiveness is not about forgive and forget, it is not absolution. It is me saying that I give up my right to revenge in this matter. I am hurt and I may choose to stay away from you, but I turn over my desire to have wrath to God. Forgiveness is for you and the offender. God is the creator of morality. If we can remember that, if we can see that God is so morally perfect and all powerful we will understand how He can say, your bankruptcy is forgiven, you have no more debt. My son has paid it for you. And if we understand that God is the true judge, then we can understand that He means what he says when He teaches us the foretold consequence for living in sin.

The final thought on this is a sobering one. Ezekiel was a captive too!! He worked with what God gave him, where God gave it to him, how God gave it to him, and when God gave it to Ezekiel. If anyone thinks they need to wait for a perfect leader to come and talk about sin, to take your hand and walk you back into the light, if you think that God does not put leaders right in the middle of despair, broken themselves, then you will be waiting forever, because that is not how it works. God revealed himself to Ezekiel in a vision and prepared him for this journey. Similarly, Christ came in the form of man and revealed God to mankind. Jesus prepared us to hear the message of salvation, just as God did for Ezekiel.  Open you ears and hear the word, hear the gospel. Receive the hope that is in Jesus the Christ.

If you stand in the mirror what will the reflection tell you about yourself, and what are you going to do about it? May the peace of God be abundantly heaped upon you and your house, straight from the cross to the Christian!