Ezekiel 20

First thing, recently I was challenged by the most serious spiritual discussion available online.

Ezekiel is a really trippy book to read as a whole. It's not like Ecclesiastes where it's tough because it seems to have a unilateral depressing message. It's tough because there's a lot of bizarre and seemingly contradictory stuff in here, and I think it's important to realize that it's perhaps not so much a delineated doctrinal exposition as a series of communiques from God to His people. Much of the book is written in repetitive verse, almost as if the verses were hymns or psalms, and in Chapter 19, the text explicitly says, "This is a lamentation and has become a lamentation." To me, that's important because it demonstrates the personage of God -- the fact that He has emotions and passions, and isn't the lifeless thing we always forget He isn't.

In Ezekiel 20, the following stood out to me:

The chapter opens with God telling Zeke in verse 4 to "make known to [the elders of Israel] the abominations of their fathers." Which is interesting because a good chunk of the previous book was about how people were going to be judged for their own sin or righteousness, rather than the inheritance of their predecessors. My inference is that God has a good sense of using family history as a close-to-home cautionary device.

Verses 3-4: "Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel, and say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God: "Have you come to inquire of Me? As I live," says the Lord God, "I will not be inquired of by you."'" And then in Verses 36-37: "'And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will plead My case with you face to face. Just as I pleaded My case with your fathers in the land of Egypt, so I will plead My case to you,' says the Lord God."

I think that's crazy. The first description is God basically saying that He's above our questioning, and the second is Him saying that He pleads His case with us, as if to persuade us to come back to Him. Yet both are true: God is far beyond our comprehension, our righteousness, and our judgment, so who are we to say, as Israel's leaders did, "Where is God?" And at the same time, God's mercy pleads with us and humbles itself to come to us to bring us back home. If I wanted to, I could probably make up some statement to make the two thoughts more consistent, but why bother? It's awesome the way it is. I think we try too hard sometimes to make God more "consistent" so He'll make sense to us, but you always lose important details when you force linear models of nonlinear truths. (Thank you, Rice engineering.)

(By the way, in case you weren't completely aware, you got RICKROLLED!)

And here's something God says three times in Ezekiel 20: "Then I said, 'I will pour out my Fury on them and fulfill My anger against them in the wilderness.' But I acted for My name's sake, that it should not be profaned before the Gentiles, in whose sight I brought [the Israelite out of Egypt].

How would the Gentiles have seen God, based on the history of Israel? Certainly, they would've been pretty cued in to His power and strength as Israel was blessed to their miraculous exodus from Egypt and equally miraculous conquest of Canaan. What if God had destroyed Israel for her rebellion? Would some Gentiles have said, "That's what happens to those who disobey the wrath of a terrible and awesome God?" Were those the same Gentiles who might have seen God's mercy and said, "So apparently you can defy God and get away with little or no consequences?" And to the unbiased observer, that might be a reasonable thing to say, except that there were definitely consequences -- Israel was defeated by her enemies, her people led into captivity many times, and God never abandoned her.

But an important point here is that God says he acted for His name's sake. That His name would be glorified. For anyone who agrees with anything John Piper says, that's critical, since the chief end of man is supposed to be the glory of God. One thing I think God had in mind here was the salvation of the Gentiles -- that the nations around Israel would marvel at both God's power and His faithfulness and be inexorably drawn to Him. Sure, God wouldn't be any less powerful if He had said, "Earmuffs!" to the Gentiles and poured out His fury on Israel. He could've redeemed the Gentiles any other way He'd wanted to. But that's not the way He did it. In a sense, He acts for His glory, and in another sense, He acts compassionately for His people. How awesome that "God's glory" and His redemption of the nations go hand in hand!

I still wrestle with what it means to be zealous and passionate for God's glory, and it's an important issue since that's supposed to be the driving focus of our lives. Are we supposed to be like David, who couldn't stomach the Philistines mocking the name of God? How do you react when someone cracks a joke about the Christian faith? They go from obscene ("Why did Jesus get all the ladies? Because He was hung like this!") to the milder variety that pastors tell to start off Sunday sermons, but they all make light of the things of God. I've called people out on that sort of thing before. On the other hand, there's a point of self-righteousness where frowning on other people reflects a prideful, judgmental attitude more than a pure passion for God's glory. Maybe we're supposed to be more patient and loving and smile and forgive until God provides an opening on His timing, rather than hotheads that try to force the magic of the gospel on our own.

There's definitely danger in making it a selfish endeavor. Sometimes in conversation, I've told people not to make light of God, and I think they walk away thinking more about my Christian sensitivity, rather than their own thoughts about an eternal God. But sometimes, I've said nothing and let things go, and I think people sometimes conclude that we don't take our faith seriously if we're not ready to answer for it. Sometimes we can get to the point where we're think we're actually producing God's glory through our glory-filled actions, rather than realizing that everything we do should point to the cross of Jesus Christ.

Appropriately, Ezekiel 20 concludes with the response of Ezekiel: "Then I said, 'Ah, Lord God! They say of me, "Does he not speak in parables?"'"