Despite Wickedness

 

Friday, May 6, 2022

“As for you, O people of Israel, this is what the Sovereign Lord says:  Go right ahead and worship your idols, but sooner or later you will obey me and will stop bringing shame on my holy name by worshiping idols.  For on my holy mountain, the great mountain of Israel, says the Sovereign Lord, the people of Israel will someday worship me, and I will accept them.  There I will require that you bring me all your offerings and choice gifts and sacrifices.  When I bring you home from exile, you will be like a pleasing sacrifice to me.  And I will display my holiness through you as all the nations watch.  Then when I have brought you home to the land I promised with a solemn oath to give to your ancestors, you will know that I am the Lord.  You will look back on all the ways you defiled yourselves and will hate yourselves because of the evil you have done.  You will know that I am the Lord, O people of Israel, when I have honored my name by treating you mercifully in spite of your wickedness.  I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!”  Ezekiel 20:39-44

The Sovereign Lord is the Creator of the universe.  Despite the wickedness of His chosen people, Israel, God was not only willing to forgive, He promised it as a matter of prophetic certainty.  In all prophetic utterance, by prophets, apostles, and metaphorical stories[1], there is typically a current application, AND a future expectation.  We often miss that, because we cannot see the future, even 5 minutes ahead.  It’s like two mountains, the closer one (our current day) larger than the one behind it (the future prediction).  We are at ground-level, so to speak.  Our sight is limited.  Prophetic utterance is God, the Creator of time and space, and is therefore not governed by either time, or space.  God is above time and space (as a helicopter hovering above the two mountains), and He can see what we cannot.[2]  When the God above speaks, we who ARE governed by time, space, and the expectations of their Creator, should pay attention.

God reminded Israel of their wickedness, worshipping idols out of a fear of not fitting-in with the surrounding cultures, and dishonoring their calling to be God’s special chosen ones to proclaim God’s love to the world.  But the warning threat of accountability also came with a prophecy that they would get past the regret of despising their own sins, to be forgiven and restored to right relationship with God.

In our 21^st century culture there is enough identifying with ungodly culture going on (even in the church) to be like a second-mountain behind the first (of Ezekiel’s time).  The church of the third millennium is no different than the first two-thousand years…we leave our first-love of Jesus in the dust like the church at Ephesus which apostle John wrote about in Revelation 2:1-5.  There was also a prophetic warning in that message.

For You Today

Prophecy isn’t about sensationalism, or all about God getting even with us for our wickedness.  Prophecy is God’s despite of our wickedness to proclaim the love and providence of our Lord for lost and wayward sheep.  It’s an open invitation to come back to the purpose for which we were created…an intensely intimate relationship with a God who loves us supremely.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Some consider, for instance, Adam and Eve, Jonah, and other accounts of miracles and historical events to be “fictional stories” told to make God’s point.  I leave that to the reader’s conscience.  Prophecy is not a metaphor, however; all of God’s word is His promise (and warning).

[2] His thoughts and ways are immeasurably higher – see Isaiah 55:9