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CHAPTER NINE

EZEKIEL and HIS CULMINATIONS

OF BOTH THE LOVE AND THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

STEP ONE

in the Escalation

Ezekiel 18

Ezekiel 18 gives blunt indications, as one might to a somewhat  spiritually deaf person, of the need to be real, in earnest, sincere, not exploiting ideas, but being subject to reality. If you sin, YOU do it. It is YOUR fault. It is not that of your father or child. It is yours ... Y O U R S. That is the first impact. If however you turn from it to the Lord, then it is repented of, and you return to your spiritual base; and He is not the one to reject you as a returnee, or despise your new perception and relationship, no longer that of an alien, but of a participant. You forgiven, back with Him: THAT is what mattes. His mode of forgiveness was long before in painful detail expressed by Isaiah and the Psalms: what He would do to secure it in terms acceptable to Himself and His purity and heart and disposition of loveliness.

This is not fair ? you think so ? the Lord asks (18:25). Iniquity, turned to and died in, He says, this is what he will have to cart with him. Iniquity dumped ? did not the man consider his ways and turn ? So he lives in what he has turned to, towards mere continuance in his own will and way , or even to the Lord.

What then ? Let's be practical. REPENT, repent now from your evil ways. Yes,

"Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed,
and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit..."

Here we reach new depths. Not only does the behaviour change, not only does the heart wither to evil and turn with sincerity to good, but it ACTUALLY CHANGES. It becomes a 'new heart'  and one's very spirit, that which is distinctive of man in the very image of God, as a creature, this too becomes new.

Think of that! A new spirit inhabits the bosom, activates the motivations, corrals one's thoughts, inspires one's feelings: how glorious. Why ? It is because it obviously is one not merely acceptable to the Lord, but of His actual making, what in the New Testament in Paul at II Corinthians 5:17ff., is called "a new creation", so that all things become new. It is not tiresome, but true, not an inhabitant of the land of vagrancy, but at peace with God! How glorious a thing is this, that He who created the universe in 6 days, now creates a new heart and a new spirit in one of the components of His then creation, in a current new creation, into that it is comparable to the very act of the first creation: that of man as a being!

This is clearly the way, the thing: for since God is willing to do this, not only to provide PARDON for sin (as in Isaiah 55, and inferentially here in Ezekiel 18), but to enable a new relationship of peace and power with Himself, so that one's very equipment is restored to the balmy presence of His power and gentleness, as a child of God: this is too real to be released and realised. It must be FOUND, gained, accessed, taken up at once.

This however is not all. God actually urges such a step, action, restoration, access. He is not a reluctant millionaire, if you will, with a shrug and a moue, handing out that cheque for several hundred thousand, to help you along, being momentarily stirred by some pity for you. He is an exuberant giver, for "the Lord loves a cheerful giver" and He is most willing, in fact, as in Micah 7:19ff., "He delights in mercy." To Him, to show mercy is like winning a lottery for the brash, a race for the strong, and to GIVE is like gaining a fortune for the rapacious.

He LOVES to do it and as to Him, He is LIKE THAT! The liberality of divine love is as vast as the insistence on divinely wrought cleansing.

He continues to be most practical. Cast those sins away and get yourself a new spirit, He declares, invites, urges, but then He gives an overpowering reason. "For why should you die, O house of Israel ?" It is not just that He remonstrates that dying is not to the point, not desirable, not a desideratum; and indeed, what other than judgment does sin have but death, or what to commend it, but excision. Yet the Lord gives this as a REASON for turning.

He empathises to the point of vast depth, as in a spiritual bathysphere, into the depths of the heart. Turn to Me, He urges, FOR why should you die ? It is not just that it is His merciful and gracious desire that you should so turn, but He shows you His deepest concern at your option of death. It is no mere symptomatic summation or opportunity for operation. It is terse, filled with the tension of truth upon waywardness, an enlistment of the armies of the heart for their deliverance from defeat, and presentation in triumph, with the very power and privileges of the knowledge of God, at a personal and not merely a principial level, though all things being given, nothing is then lacking.

He activates the conscience, stays the fibrillation of the thoughts with clarity.

FOR WHY do this ? He asks. Why die ?It is such a loving urging, with such a gracious urgency. Nor however is this all.

He proceeds: "For I have no pleasure in the death of the one who dies." You see that eminently in Hosea 13:14, where this lack of pleasure, indeed, is seen as a complete alienation of heart from such a result for man, for what otherwise becomes tantamount to his last post! Such a result, in effect, He proclaims,  is repugnant to His mercifulness. Whatever lies within Him, this will not have it. Whatever lies in man, this is solicited, and way by an act greater in significance than the creation, is made open. It is not a command merely, by which He does this, as in the six days of the creation. It is by coming.

He says this: "I will ransom them from the grave, I will redeem them from death."

Such is the intention and warrant. Then we learn from Hosea's inspired word, HOW He will do this. He proceeds:

"O Death, I will be your plagues."

Fancy that, Himself becoming a plague, as He pursues this dynamic negativity, death, to its own devastation. How glorious! Nor is even this all:

"O Grave, I will be your destruction!"

Even hell itself will not have octopus-like suckers to drain out the blood of life and devastatingly persist in this life to the sinner's demise. THAT HE, the Lord, will prevent, by BEING the destruction of this destroyer. THAT, it is deliverance, salvation indeed. In Isaiah 53, we learn that for each of those who has thus turned to Him, been healed thereby, it is HE WHO ACTUALLY BEARS the sin (vv. 4-6). It is penal servitude, wrought by God, done by Himself, and the service is to die with it, to take it away. For that clearly He would become man that for man He might bore through the rock of guilt and justice, to bring mercy and peace.

We return for more news from Ezekiel 18. Recall: WHY should you die! and indeed, more to the pitiful point, "For why should you die, O house of Israel. For I have no pleasure in the death of the one who dies," He continues. It is then that He completes the exhortation, offer and invitation in this way: "Therefore turn and live." What a magnificent opportunity, and what complete foolishness to reject it!

STEP 2 THE MOVEMENT TO THE HEIGHTS THROUGH THE DEPTHS

We move on now in Ezekiel to see that even this matter, it develops as we proceed, first moving into sustained condemnation, climaxing in Ezekiel 20, which even there, has a place for their early return to the land. How often the Lord delayed, stayed His hand, mercifully laboured to deliver them.

Thus we travel past this most appealing - in both senses of the term - Chapter 18, to the desolatory review of Israel's ACTUAL position FROM which it is appealed to turn, in Ch. 19, to the many times the Lord has wrought for it, acted for it, put away wrath, borne with them, in Ch. 20, to the fearful assault to come, as they continue amiss, from the enemies of Israel, to the review of its sins in 22, the metaphorical presentation of the matter in terms of 2 sisters, Judah and Israel, in 23, the cooking pot analogy in 24 with its deep and grizzly feeling, to judgments on other nations, - for while Israel was special as a sin-waylaid messenger, those to whom it was sent as an exhibit (Isaiah 41:23) were by no means innocent. Great was the calamity to come, from driving, if you will, insistently, persistently and consistently on the wrong side of the moral road.

With such nations we are concerned, Tyre, Egypt and the like, and they are given their come-uppance, in the case of Egypt, that NEVER AGAIN will it be a great power on the earth, but rather will it be as it has been, undergoing subjugation by many, a lowly one (cf. 29:15), as we read till Ezekiel 32. How sensational is the panorama of judgment, and how appealing is the sense of what is so needlessly lost! What a feast for insight and a stimulus for understanding is available, with which one may be spiritually regaled in these chapters! Indeed,  in their very midst is another glorious rendition of divine mercy, found in Ezekiel 34.

God indicates His weariness with fraud, falsity and self-service in the case of prophet and pastor, to such a vast extent in Israel, and announces that HE HIMSELF PERSONALLY is going to come and BE the GOOD SHEPHERD (Ezekiel 34). This is later confirmed in John 10, where Christ so identifying Himself, having already made it most plain that He is God-incarnate (John 8:58, 5:19ff.), sent on mission to save - as foretold in Isaiah 48:16, like 40:10, avoids the negligence and selfishness syndrome, and actually DOES THE WORK of deliverance and care.  Indeed, all this was done with conspicuous thoroughness, zeal, power and love; and it was even to the eminent degree of death for sin and life from the dead.

That, it was more than exemplary, being the forerunner of the path for man, that is,  as many as believed in, received and were regenerated through the power of the Spirit and the truth of His word. This led directly to the premises of rehabilitation, indeed life from the dead first spiritually and then in physical resurrection, for His people as a blessed result (as in Isaiah 26:19).

This comes of course in synthesis of thought with the Lord's  declaration in Hosea 13:14, about His BEING the destruction of death, in, by and through His own Godhead. It was a costly procedure, involving incarnation through a virgin, growth in humility, preaching in vulnerability, power in staggering degree for others, discipline for Himself, envy and fear concerning the results of such a Being with power even over death and for resurrections, consequent arrest, mockery, crucifixion, display as if a sinner, in order to display the sin from others, vicariously borne, death in the flesh and resurrection of the same, and ascension to heaven for the Gospel Age to run its course till His return to rule.

It was costly ...  but love does not pause at its requirements, though they be soul-piercing (as in Luke 22). If some other way will do, well, but if not, then THIS IS TO BE FACED (cf. Luke 9:51).

This Ezekiel 34 reference to God as man, to be the Good Shepherd is linked to three other references in Ezekiel to the Ultimate Solution for Israel, as also for her oppressors when such repent: and that, it is the Messiah. One of these references is found just before our first focus on Ezekiel 18, and its merciful pleas, in the preceding Ch. 17. Here we learn of a young twig, a tender one (as in Isaiah 53:2, a root out of a dry ground), stressing His non-advantageous conditions for growth into manhood, and it is cropped from a high branch, as a  'tender one', and this taken, it is set on a high mountain, yes and a prominent one, not unlikely to be Mt Zion, featuring the central place for the twig when grown, as it is to grow (17:23), into a majestic cedar. In Matthew 13:31ff., Christ, the ‘sprout’, the ‘twig’,  adapted it for the kingdom of heaven; as in Ezekiel, it is He Himself, its King, who is in view, for all the birds will nest in it, and we follow the familiar pattern from the inconspicuous and apparently trivial, to the majestic and all-sheltering Lord, God become man (cf. Isaiah 4:6,  32:1-4, Psalm 72).

Again, in Ezekiel 37, we have the direct observation concerning the final return of Israel to its land, when the Son of David will rule in it (37:24), at the resurrection and millenium, where there converge both that final return of Israel to its land (36:26ff., 37:23ff.),  and His majestic entrance, as in Zechariah 14, Isaiah 11 and Psalm 2, as its Ruler and indeed that of this world (Psalm 72).

It is then that the New Covenant applies, as forecast in Jeremiah 31:31ff., and Ezekiel 16:60ff.. Finally, in Ezekiel 44, in symbolic form, there appears the Temple which has a place in its 'gate' for the Prince, who is to eat bread there, belonging in the religious as well as in the princely realm, as in Zechariah 6:12ff.. He is indeed One who acts both in the domain of priest and prince, a thing forbidden except where the Messiah is present, as the all encompassing Son of God (cf. II Chronicles 26:16ff., Psalm 2, 72). Here was forecast the One who was not only a religious office bearer, but offered Himself as sacrifice in the Temple of His flesh, as in Isaiah 53, to grant a free salvation, (as in 12 and 55).

Indeed, in passing one might note the glory of the Lord in this also, that this visionary temple, seen in Ezekiel 40ff., is one where the Messiah acts as if set in a transitional figuring,  as an active participant in Temple work, indeed with precedence. In this Temple, we find that there is the gate through which the Lord has entered, the East gate (44:2), that through which Christ in fact entered when the incarnation occurred. The Palm Sunday episode was indeed His coming, that of God, at last on earth in human form, past all possible pretence, without pretension, no pretender, but Prince indeed.

Since the LORD has entered this gate, and did so at that time, when present in the flesh, it is to be shut and remain closed. Such was the prophecy of Ezekiel 44. That gate, in the reconstructed Temple, was indeed shut by the Muslim ruler in 1535, and has remained shut for centuries, not even being opened when it might have helped Israel in the 1967 war, as noted by J. H. Hunting in his book, Israel, My Son.

Thus through many visions, to awaken the imagination, and stir the heart, and symbolic presentations, to fix the realities in the mind, as through many direct statements as in Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 42, 49, 52-55, 65, Micah 5, Psalm 2, 16, 22, 110, Zechariah 9, 11, 12-13, God has prepared the world, as also Israel, for its greatest moments, which alas, were not its finest except for the Christ who was central and glorious in vivid and lively contrast. The greatness lay in this, that when GOD appeared in human history DIRECT, and as predicted and promised, no greater monument to His glory is possible: moreover it was more than a monument, being a massif, a majesty and HIS MAJESTY who is king over all, the Lord of glory. The smallness for man lay in his treatment of this privilege, opportunity and access. The wonder is in those who found Him, and all since, through His record, Spirit and proclamation;  and that this has been in the very terms foretold by the prophets and in particular Isaiah.

It was Israel who provided the dark contrast, at the face to face and national level, as have Gentile nations in droves, since that time. As to these,  sometimes they have begun to awaken to the Lord, but then have come fallings, failings, flappings, yappings, turnings, yearnings, burnings in various moods and modes, but all with one accord, as now, almost without exception, are becoming flaccid in faith, or furious in disposition, heartless or heady, as the case varies, some lurking in indifference while the case rots. The nations of this world are not at all keen on the Lord and His Christ (cf. Psalm 2); but this merely makes the cost of their folly to be the more ruinous for them, when the time, as it always does, duly comes.

Their testimony, alas, appears to be rotting. But Christ did not rot; and all this is as clear an indication of His return, with the key feature of Israel's return to its land (crucial feature as prelude as it is, as seen in Luke 21:24 cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5), as were the features noted for His first coming.

As for Christ, Indeed, not only was He rejected then, though the most famous and gloriously pure, powerful and majestic Being ever to inhabit this earth, with a testimony nothing can dim, but He both accepted and was accepted by all the predictions concerning Him, involving things to do, which only God could perform, not least arising bodily from the dead ON TIME, after three days, since God's own power uniquely was required for their fulfilment. Such was the case,  whether in healing or in dating His death, or in the pre-characterisation of the Gospel, later in history to pulse through the earth for two millenia after He came, precisely as forecast by Isaiah 700 or so years before He so much as arrived.

Amid these environs in Ezekiel, which have themselves, then, a broader environment of terms in other prophets, and in history as it fulfilled what was spoken, we have an introduction to Ezekiel 33, just as it in turn is prelude to Ezekiel 34, which focusses this same Messiah at considerable length, making it abundantly clear that it is the LORD indeed, who in this field would Himself be planted in flesh.

In Ezekiel 33, as we shall shortly see, there is the climax of divine warning, yearning, invitation, as in 34, the representation of the time when all this past, these same principles of love will reach into this world, through this same Lord as Prince of peace and ruler (cf. Isaiah 9:6-7).

STEP 3 WHERE PASSION SUMMITS

PART II  

STEP 3: WHERE PASSION SUMMITS

JEW AND GENTILE: A COMMON TARGET

Thus after the climax of passion we are about to view in Ezekiel 33, there comes that glorious soaring in a lively, loving passion for salvation for the people whom He has made, which of course is not limited to Israel. That nation is the national messenger first sent, which was to fail in its spiritual task, though it DID provide the Old Testament via the prophets,  then the virgin through whom the Christ came! (cf. Romans 9). It is in fact the Gentiles  - as in Psalm 67, 73, Jeremiah 16:19-21, Isaiah 42:6, 49:6, implied in Ezekiel 39:21-24 with 17:22-24 - to whom appalling failure comes, no less than it came for the Jews. Yet whether with Jew or Gentile, God reaps His remnant, the godly, gracious, those intent on the Lord, found according to His will, saved by sacrifice, centring at last in Christ Himself AS that very sacrifice, finding the end in the same, AS that very King who alone has peace because His is both mercy and truth.

Jew and Gentile are alike to be found, in prophecy and in history. Great is the desire of deity for His creation, to redeem it from its sin. Satisfaction and implementation of this vast yearning and desire, which He has for Israel, it is  too restricted by any such limitation to that one nation.

Its role must be expanded to the other nations. It is

"TOO SMALL that You should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and to restore the preserved ones of Israel:
I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles,
that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth,' " (Isaiah 49:6),

so that to the whole earth it goes (as fulfilled in Matthew 28:19-20 in commission, and in two thousand forthcoming years to the present, in history). This is in terms of the New Covenant noted in Ezekiel 37:26-28, with ONE King, the One promised through the seed of David, seen as Redeemer for all the earth, available to one as to all, in Psalm 72:8-19. HIS due it is (Ezekiel 21:27), and HIS it is to be, who paid for peace by taking upon Himself the war on life that is sin, and breaking it with His purity and power, for neither could death hold Him, nor could justice fold Him: but He arose, He who lives, who was dead and now is alive for ever (Revelation 1:18).

This is the outcome; but let us revert to the income, to the glory of the goodness of God, the God of all grace and comfort, in His protestation, invitation and sustained call, not to arms, but to divine alms, to the reception of His restorative kindness, not merely to this or that land - and Israel indeed has a specific in this (Galloping Events Ch. 4 cf. Genesis 17). Yet it is to each and every heart which receives the lively offer and vital dynamic of the God who saves, for there is no other who is Saviour (Isaiah 43:10-11), and He who came, it is none other than God.

If then the attitude toward God through Jew and Gentile in the drama around Pilate, with priest and misled people putting their ideas into practice to kill the Christ: if this betokens the way of this earth, is it so surprising that there is no resolution to malice, malignancy, thrusting and pretension, furore and fighting, no end to the hatred, no beginning to the peace and beauty of holiness, amid the nations! for as soon as one begins to turn, there is a fall. It is not in a nation but in the kingdom of heaven that peace comes, in and through the grace of God (cf. Matthew 13).

It is there, in Christ, that it comes, and  not in this earth's mockery of Christianity, as in the almost endless ancient and modern sects and false prophets, from Muhammad and the papacy (cf. More Marvels... Ch 4. and SMR pp. 911ff., 1032-1088H), on the one hand, and on the other, in innovative, seductive schemes and movements (cf. News 121, 122, Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host Ch. 10 B) that have followed, mulled by those misled, who mulct their victims, so that all confused, in vehemence or terror, chatter or champing, can find the ache that is non truth, and the fake that it is the lie (II Thessalonians 2:10).

FAITH AND FIASCO

Vast though the modes of deception may be, for those who mislead and those who are felled by them, and ignorant of what they do, as some may in some measure be, the results are the same; for when the heart is taken, the more when it moves from some taste of heavenly things, the more is the danger of no return (cf. Hebrews 6 and 10). What EATS and DRINKS as in John 6:47ff., receiving by faith the saving power of Christ, and not an image or idol, but the life for life transaction, the binding to the  Word made flesh who binds to His word written and to no other docrrine, as basis for belief, this does not fail as John 6 abundantly shows, for God will raise it up; but what tastes and touches and wonders and wanders and scamps, with whatever device, philosophical or theological or carnal or of semantic trickery, this is like one who dangles from a rope from an aircraft, as it wanders through icy mounts, weaving between the shafts that sharply protrude.

As in all these things, the grandeur of the truth, not the folly of fooling with it, following wisps and caprice, rather than  solid and unassailable evidence over the several millenia, what is founded from the first, rightly stirs the heart to seek the Lord, at any cost: to find and to be received (cf. Jeremiah 29:13, Proverbs 8:32-36). Either temporising or tampering can become a death warrant; for we are not made of stone or metal, but with hearts susceptible, readily bruised, contused with their own type of injuries, wound upon wound, sin within sin. The grace and mercy of God, however,  continues to work, while this world wallows, now in pride, now in distemper, now in passions of folly, now in self-regard and then in foolish and weak-minded schemes, plans and resolutions which merely pour into a concrete setting, the dreams of the restless heart of unsaved man. These too are to reach an evil climax in the 'man of sin' (II Thessalonians 2), who is to parade himself as if God, in due course.

Through this, the Good Shepherd, on the one side, and the evil shepherd on the other (II Thessalonians 2), the very culmination of blessing and of cursing, the end comes (cf. Mark 13:14ff.). It does so as this earth's inhabitants are filtered this way and that, like purified cream and poisoned milk from a separator, through the different shutes to the repositories. That comes to the final confrontation, no more a matter of milk or cream; for God being God, this shows itself in a matter of flames for the inflammatory, and purging for the impure (Revelation 19, II Thessalonians 1), reception for the redeemed and cover for the company who are His. Persecution by lie is now replaced by determination by truth. Judgment then roars like flames in oxygen (cf. Revelation 19).

Back of all this, however is the passion for salvation, deliverance, not detente; for cleansing, not improvement; for categorical new creation (II Corinthians 5:17ff.)  for man, not upgrading of folly to a better name. And that ? It is found in its moving beauty, in Ezekiel 33, to which we now return.

EZEKIEL 33

In this Chapter, Ezekiel 33 then,  comes the revisitation to the appeal of Ezekiel 18, as specifically directed to Israel. This message starts with the concept of the watchman. It is not MERELY a concept indeed, and it is a blessed function to warn, whether of the need not to have too much shrubbery near the house, in the hills area of a city, lest bush fires, where a threat, may make short and swift work of desolation, to bring death or devastation all but unthinkable in times of peace and green beauty;  or to some other objective.

The watchmen are to warn the city of approaching doom, and if they do not, then they are responsible (rather like a lookout on a ship, or one looking for submarines, who engages in drunken sleep instead, so that the ship is sunk). If however they cry out, shrill and quick, and the people IGNORE the warning, then of course, they have no responsibility for that; but the people who did not HEED, theirs is the responsibility.

Obvious, you say! One would like to think so, but when it comes to spiritual living, to what one's life is all about, its motivations and sought summits, its nature as desired and its mode of being, then it is perfectly astonishing, that people will frequently, sometimes almost universally, shrug or shrink or both, when faced with reality. Whether in this way or some other way or ways, they simply will NOT HEED. They may say, Yes I believe these things! but yet not act. They may discern the justice, but somehow cannot or will not move. They are worse than Lot's wife, who was drawn back when on the way out: for such people, they do not even MOVE at all!

What then is not so obvious is how hard is the task of the watchman, when as now in the Gentile world, and then in earlier times in the site of Israel, the words fall on ears subverted already, meet hearts hardened into formalism or even express rebellion, and sound out their message into a culture of defamation of God (as in Malachi 2:10-17 for example). It is then that a whole nation can become most vulnerable to the sedition from long spiritual snoozing, like Russia prone to Communist horror and lies, in 1917, when instead of a heaven, they found tens of millions of murdered people, some slowly having life extracted as they toiled, to reduce food intake and get a maximum productive result, together with pain, from a minimum input of State finances. Has hell more debasement than this! Marvellous! the devil himself could do little more grievous than that, and doubtless had a hand in it.

It is, then, in the day of Ezekiel, to a nation most advanced towards ruin, after some centuries of divine exhortation, occasional revival and challenge, that Ezekiel gives this second element of the theme of divine mercy and appeal. It is now as relevant as then, and far greater is the responsibility of this generation, who have had two millenia of background, and to whose very eyes the prophecies of the things preceding the coming of Christ are exposed, like X-rays to the eye of a doctor, concerning the things that lie within man. That, it is given in detail in Answers to Questions Ch. 5, and SMR 8  -   9.

What happened in Ezekiel 33, then, that is so notable ?

We find Ezekiel is now divinely appointed as a WATCHMAN (33:7). "Therefore," the Lord declares, "you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them for me." If then Ezekiel were to be told to instruct a man of his coming death for sin, and the prophet should forbear, then that man will STILL die in his sin, but "his blood I will require at your hand." If on the other hand, Ezekiel gives the warning, then "you have delivered your soul."

The Lord next instructs Ezekiel to speak to them, and here is the message for them.

"Thus you say, 'If our transgression and our sins lie upon us,
and we pine away in them,
how can we then live ?' "

You can readily see both sides here. Israel is estranged from the living God, yet it still has some forms, and assuredly approaches various gods, it is useless to hide it, but then what hope is there for it ? It becomes more and more, to its jaded spirit, like a man with blackened teeth, writhing with tooth-ache, with discoloured and worn-out shoes and hair anointed with some tarry mixture, misplaced thoughts and disordered understanding, seeking employment from an interview with a potential boss!

HOW then, they ask, shall we live ?

You can almost see the shrug of the shoulders, and perhaps a moue in a dissatisfied countenance topped with dulled eyes, and perhaps an averted glance: If this is what we are, sin-infested as if with fungus in the fingers, if this is our description, diagnosis, and we are inclined to accept it: if this is so,  then look with us, behold our gloom. It is not just doom, it is our present state and its marked capacity to continue itself. We are corrupt ? so be it, but we are also CAUGHT, and so in this diseased, pre-decease state, we PINE AWAY ? What can life do with that!

Now the case is very clear, and intensely pitiful; and indeed to the Lord our Maker, it is so pitiful that, despite the centuries of folly, interspersed with revivals and sounder living at time, He makes most clear His heart to the people what is in His offer. It is not evanescent. It is not that it does not exist. It can be disowned, maligned, but IT IS THERE. As then, so it is now. It is after all time, when you are facing and faced by the God of all power, and not this only, all wisdom, who moreover created you with the universe in the first place, if not before, to realise that the Lord’s attitude is crucial and determinative, in His own terms, of the result. If one rejects them, then one seizes all responsibility in one action. But they are THERE, these blessed terms of surrender to His spiritual surgeon's hands; and it is HE who backs them, so there is no trouble AT ALL for those who heed, none whatsoever (Romans 8:29ff.).

Sufferings, yes, but subversion, no; confrontation there is,  but yet content (Philippians 4:10-14).

What then IS this divine attitude ? It is this as found in Ezekiel 33:11, which is an extension of what is found in Ezekiel 18, at which beauty and gem we have already looked in delighted appraisal.

God now gives to Ezekiel a message-in-reply to the doleful protestation of Israel, as just cited. He tells the prophet what to say to them, so repining.

"Say to them, 'As I live, says the Lord GOD,

'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
Turn, turn form your evil ways!
For why should you die, O house of Israel ?"

 

The very next thing recorded is the FALL OF JERUSALEM.

Let us look then towards this passionately pure message.

 

Passion with purity, what an ensemble, the output of the Lord! The message, it was still there to the end, just before Jerusalem fell; just as it was still there, just before the crucifixion of Christ the Lord, recorded in Matthew 23:37, in Luke 19:42ff.. Then, as  they were ignoring it, time moved on, and in a little, one generation, Jerusalem, moved out! It was gone. What! was it quite gone ? "Did you say all ...all ?" as Macduff exclaims of his slain children and wife. Yes, quite gone. In A.D. 70, the city was eliminated, and Israel, which had dispersed the body of Christ, was dispersed.  It was exiled.

The Prince of peace gone (Isaiah 9:6-7), what could you POSSIBLY expect but war; and the engineer of the soul stricken, what lies ahead, but the devastations with need unmet! Jerusalem then, as with this world now, was set for and awaiting judgment. While mercy had been ready to pour down, like solace in drought, and mercy rushed to the condemnation chamber on death row,  yet they would not receive Him whose it is.

SOME DID HEED! It is to the glory of the blessed Lord, that He so urges, surges, appeals, offers, invites, that some are healed, saved, restored to grace, given everlasting redemption, become children of the living God, kept for ever (I Peter 1:5-8, John 5:24, I John 5:11-12, Hebrews 9:12, 10:10-14, Romans 8:29ff., II Timothy 1:8ff.)!  Praise His name, His fame is just, His favour surpassing.

First now,  let us focus the fact that this message of Ezekiel 33:11, is a specific reply to the moaning mournfulness cited for some within Israel, dispirited, guilty, skipping in the tempests created by their own sin, still not met, though ready deliverance is at hand!

Before marvelling too much at their slowness, consider both the nations now, and many of the churches, merely misnamed hulks of anti-biblical concoctions and pretence. That happened then ? how could it!  Yes, but this happens now. Judgment ended it then; world-wide judgment is to come. But the message of deliverance, now as then, continues to stream its beauty to the wind, to be seen increasingly, by all the earth, as had to be done before the end (Matthew 24:12). The end has to come, but a lot had to be done first; and it is being done at express speed to this day.

Secondly, observe of Ezekiel 33:11, this key verse, that it comes with absoluteness of certainty, as sure as is the life of God. Nothing is equal in certainty to that. It is not a possibility, question, open door to the unknown. It is from the all-knowing God to the distressed heart.

As I LIVE, He indicated stoutly, this is the truth. Then the fact noted in Ezekiel 18, He has no pleasure in the death of the soul that lives, becomes more pointed. NOW we read more intimately (emphasis added): "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked!" We therefore move from the end to life, God’s not desiring the death of the soul that lives, to the end of the wicked, that is, of those who in themselves both have and show the ground of the death that awaits them, in this case eternal, without light and thus without life. It is this in which God has no pleasure.

That He would take pleasure in such an outcome ? The case is far otherwise as He has done all to the contrary, to achieve it (John 3:15-19).

How ludicrous such a concept! as if He WOULD have pleasure in such a failure of heart, pollution of potential, desecration of creation. It is not as if He gloats, saying 'Ah! here is a wicked one. I'll squash and squelch him!' like a malicious child. He NEEDS from us, NOTHING, having made us comprehensively;  and having no limits, He sets the place of our time itself, as a mere creation for man and such as He sends into it.

He takes no pleasure in blind and sick wickedness and its assured and interminable end, an eternal exclusion. He would vastly prefer repentance, and though it is most clear in the Bible that HE runs the universe (Ephesians 1:11), it is no less clear that the WAY He has it for man is this, that if in His sight, who knows all, from before time (Ephesians 1:4) was and sin entered, apart from all works,  this is found to be the preference of man, so is the destiny. Indeed in His foreknowledge, beyond terrestrial events (Romans 9), if man prefers darkness, it is THIS and not some internal preference of another kind within Him, which leads to condemnation.

Not only is it is SO STATED, in the very context of His love being of such a kind that He sent His Son into this world NOT to judge it, but that the world might be saved; but any such concept is in utter contradiction of His stated motivation! Saving the world is the objective, sending the Son is the method, love is the motivation, NOT-judgment is the exclusion in the motivation concerned, salvation as objective being thus both positively and negatively indicated, in how it is, and how it is not to be conceived  in this enterprise. Saving the world, without judgment (John 3:16-17), this is the mission of the Son who has come with faith the instrument; and it is not part of the world alone to which He so directs, though part of it indeed will be what love in its pristine purity achieves.

Note the negation: God did NOT send His Son into the WORLD to condemn the world.

He DID send His Son into the WORLD, that the WORLD might be saved. As in Colossians 1:19ff., it is clear that we are to conceive of God as the One in entire focus as to motivation and action; it is this world which as an entity is clear beyond question in relation to the God who so created all things as in John 1:1-3, that is involved. There is the exclusion of a possible construction of His motivation in John 3:17 and an inclusion of the true construction in John 3:16. In John 3:19 there is an inclusion of the correct interpretation of the lot of the lost and its ground and basis IN THE SIGHT OF GOD, who after all, is He who speaks. It is better to listen than to tell God when He so discloses His heart. It is ALWAYS better to listen, but here eminently so!

His own are the outcome (II Timothy 2:19), and as to those who prefer darkness when the gift of eternal life is HIS OWN preference for this same world: what then ? As He LIVES, in these with this preference and its result,  and in this apportionment of such a result, He has entirely no pleasure. What then of the limited attainment ? This is satisfactory to love which was never a brute! He not only, of course, foreknew what was fitting and sound, but this being so (the next step as in Romans 8:29ff.), He so ordained it by predestination, the receptacle of this foreknowledge, and NOT its genesis!

Pleasure, then, in the death of the wicked ? Do not be ludicrous. AS I LIVE, the Lord indicates, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but in something utterly divergent from this.

The intoxicated seeming virtual or almost malediction on God to imagine it otherwise is in eloquent defiance of His word (cf. Colossians 1:19). Far from Him is any preference for or pleasure in the death of the wicked.  

In what then does He have pleasure or with what IS He pleased ? If that is the negative, what then is the positive ? It is that the wicked should turn from his evil way and live. Life, the soul that lives, thus turn from its blight to its right. It is not to its ‘rights’, this foolish song of the go-getters; it is to its right, that necessary way that is at one with God Himself. It is to come to a singular and simple point: TURN. Do not view, speculate, contemplate, consider, but TURN. If you are in a WRONG WAY, GO BACK, channel on a highway, then you could discuss the rights to put in such a notice, its clarity, its form of diction and so forth. However, WHILE you do this, without turning, you are STILL on the wrong way, and your waywardness is under immediate scrutiny, is foolishness and involves approach to catastrophe. You would do well to TURN NOW.

Similarly, if a shark has his jaws opening in the region of your head, and you consider poking it in the eye, as from time to time one hears has been done by those threatened in this or that case, then the consideration, in view of the rather obvious situation, should not be long. Brevity is the answer and action to recourse: immediate action. There is no excuse for being wrong, and then when ordered, ignoring the order. This simply escalates things unwarrantably and inconceivably, depending on the case, into whatever dimensions apply. Do what it takes. In this case, it is not a pandemonium of action, but reception, realisation and repentance, turning to the living God whose own Spirit draws (John 12:32).

Then comes the exhortation: TURN, TURN and LIVE! It is not a mental conundrum, or an existential consideration, but an invitation to life. It is the sort of turning in a milieu such that to turn is to live. Not to turn is a course of no return. Again the invitation deepens, "TURN, TURN FROM YOUR EVIL WAYS." What you turn from is clear-cut, is unseemly, unsatisfactory, irremediable as a course of action in continuance. This must be renounced: not only DE-nounced but RE-nounced. It must be a thing of the past, put away like a sword in the sitting room, dishonoured, rejected with disgust as a killer. This is repentance into life (Acts 11:18). Then a rush of royal feeling comes from the Lord: HE does not want death, it is a sentence, not a paragraph, and needs to be COVERED. The situation is simple, but the case is dire.

He is making an offer. He is asking you to study the result of failure here. WHY WILL YOU DIE ? Is there some compulsive wish, some brown study or trance which paralyses ? if not, why is it that you continue, since it involves your death, the vitality of brilliance conferred upon you, drained off as to a mouldy swamp, as if the electric power coursing through your nerves were short-circuited into an unfussy earth, or as if the place of thought were sacrificed like a shot bird, your highest dreams and hopes, left like a shattered looking -glass. WHY WILL YOU DIE ? O house of Israel.

 As in Proverbs 1, it applies to one and to all; as in John 3, it ends, this stubborn refusal to re-route and find the Lord, with this: that  "the wrath of God abides" on the renegade, the resistant maverick, the sin-fraught soul, friend of earth, patron of the pit.

STEP 4 THREE REFUSALS ...

THE CONSUMMATION AND THE CONSEQUENCES, THEN AND NOW 

As again in case of Proverbs 1, in the day of Ezekiel, the city does not repent, the end is swift. It is announced in this very same Chapter (33:21ff.).

This self-same city did this same renegade act when Christ came offering the most direct path to God conceivable - God had COME TO them, and they had merely to COME TO HIM! But they would not. As in Matthew 23:37, He WOULD have gathered them as so often, as chicks under His wings; but they were not willing. As in Luke 19:42, they might have realised His coming as the climax and wonder of time, when as predicted, and at the time predicted (cf. Christ the Citadel Ch. 2), He came to show the power and pity, the love and grace of God, incarnate as a person; this was their opportunity (Luke 19:41ff.). Pre-occupied with survival (as in John 11:45ff.), they secured their forthcoming destruction, like a paratrooper refusing to jump, when the time came, while the aeroplane on which he sat, plummeted itself to ruin.

(A) THE FIRST REFUSAL – THE LAND

They might have seen this as the DAY OF DELIVERANCE, just as Israel, as recorded in Numbers 14, MIGHT have simply entered the promised land, now that they were so near to it, some 1400 years before. But they WOULD NOT! They would not then, and in this, the day of peril, they would not. Hence that generation of Israel died, that with Moses, turning from the simple act of entry into their land.  What happened ? they continued on with a species of living for 40 wandering years in the desert on the way to death; and so it was the next generation that entered, under Joshua, himself one of those who wanted to go in, whereas the people would not follow.  Similarly now, many turn from the simple act of entry through Jesus Christ, the door (John 10:9) into the kingdom of heaven (John 10:27-28), so losing permanent residing in the blessed balm and bosom of God.

B) THE SECOND REFUSAL – THE REST

The promised land scenario, as in Numbers 14; the promised rest scenario, as in Ezekiel 33; the salvation gift consummation in Christ, as in Luke 19:42ff.... there were three. The case was in each time, similar; the response likewise, and the result in essence, did not vary. It meant destruction at worst, wandering without the point of life fulfilled, at the best, as when refusing to enter their land, and pointless death.  In the second case, that of Ezekiel 33, they pined away, wondering how to live! Yet they did not turn to Him, the prophet’s words being like a lovely song: alas they did not act (Ezekiel 33:22), restless without repentance, enduring without seizing the right, persevering without heart, destroyed in life before they fell, misled by false prophets (Ezekiel 14), self-sentenced, unsublime.

C) THE THIRD REFUSAL – THE LORD

 But what of the third case! By then, mercy itself uniquely incarnate, they turned instead to sorrows of seeking selfish survival (John 11:18ff.). "If you known," said Jesus Christ, "even you, especially in this your day, the things which belong to your peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes." There had been time for invitation, attestation of His power and Messiah-ship, His healing of vast multitudes and His words, all to register, for questions and answers, for responses and for offers; but that time now was past, IF ONLY they had realised! but now, with the heart hardened, the eyes tightly shut (cf. Matthew 13:15ff.), the door of opportunity shuts. Jerusalem is to be destroyed, and that, it is the second time.

Just as, once before in the time of the cry of Ezekiel as in 33:11, they rejected offer: so in the day of Christ, as an aftermath soon to come, Jerusalem was destroyed. Imagine Jesus the sacrifice, the very One to be murdered, weeping. Imagine Him weeping AS they rejected their deliverance, and made of Him the very picture in body of their sins of the soul, weeping for those about to kill Him! because in forsaking Him, they invite a very prodigy of suffering; for truth CANNOT be bypassed. He foreseeing their blight intended for Him, before it happens, is deep in weeping for the evils they will in this sultry way, bring upon themselves. Why did He die ? Out of love. Why did He weep ? out of love.

It is almost as if they had practised the part: twice had there been this desultory or defiant NO! and tragedy grew like a mushroom cloud. On the third occasion, it was to last  for some 1900 years, and in part is not even now, over. In the day of Jesus the Christ, the offer had been made, in the most intense language, and they rejected it, not only dying in the vision of their hearts, but actually going so far as to KILL the Christ who made the offer.

To be sure, this death was, in the profundity of the wisdom of God, the METHOD by which ANYONE would and could be saved, for it was as a sacrifice for sin, as predicted, He knowingly and willingly died. Nevertheless, whatever the result, the deed was the same in its moral and implicative character. They had doomed themselves because "in this your day", they did not receive Him, truth was put on notice and then nailed, not into their minds and hearts, but in the incarnate hands and feet, and tossed out, complete with scorn, as with all but insufferably hideous blindness. What was their music ? It was this, sounding in the challenge: If God delights in you, come down from the cross. Then we will believe you! Such was the tenor of their scorn, scoffing, bully-boy bravado!

WOULD they really do so, however ?  Not at all! for,  even if He had done so, come down from the cross fast, without dying, yet the case would justly be made that He who would die for sin, had absconded, He who had sounded free salvation through His own work, had Himself failed, had died in heart instead of doing so in body, had resiled from His royal parade and fallen into the very sin which He had come to meet as Deliverer! What scorn is there; for if one fears scorn, a foolish thing at the hand of those themselves merely sinners, what is the scorn which results from the fear of scorn, when it is not mere mutiny of words against truth that is in view, but TRUTH itself. If you DO fail, then the heart itself is disabled, pending pardon, and folly roams like a ravenous lion. It is never wise to fail at the hands of man, in ANYTHING. Follow truth, buy it and do not sell, as Proverbs declares. Come down from the cross! then, this was the cry.

THE DIVINE REFUSAL THAT SINGS OF LOVE

Jesus Christ did not do this. He who could raise the dead, and whose very raising of the dead had, as attested in John 11, made His death appear, to those foolishly doting on their own survival, to be utterly necessary: He would not act for His own 'deliverance' by abandoning mission! Never: love, quite simply is not like that, and God is love. Thus NOTHING contrary to it is to be found in Him, who gave Himself to deliver, and allows man to deliver himself to death, only after His own bearing and offering of free deliverance, to those who will but come in faith to receive Him back, who made man.

What if Christ HAD come down ? His refusal to do so meant that instead of all going justly to hell, the Saviour emptied that potential horror, by saving some. That is the way with God: He saves some. Some would find it as if it were hell, to be in heaven, so unruly is their heart, so vapid the mind, so fatuous their ambition, or so resistant the spirit: very well, to be it. God did not make us so that this was impossible, but He pleads with us not so to perform. The magnificence of the knowledge of God, the friend over all and the vision splendid in fact, beyond all computation, this requires liberty. You cannot have the one whose very nature is love, by peremptory force or robotic control. That is not even the truth!

God insists on all things being wrought in the light, not in the darkness of theoretical possibilities. This world, facing diverse eternities for its inhabitants, is not left in some dubious state of conceivable tyranny. The truth is open; the choice against Christ is free, and the ground is even. If God is to be yours, He who knows all things secures you, and you agree, because your heart is in it, for God has put it there, who knew you before time was, and before the case where sin made differentials in the souls of men.

You DO want Him ? Yet He would like you to TURN, repent and receive Him and acting, TURN from your evil ways. This includes a change from putting your own life and spirit ahead of its Maker, and insisting on keeping your little corn of wheat, all nice and tidy, your VERY own. The alternative for the 'grain of wheat' which represents the individual man or woman or child ? It must fall into the ground of the love of God, and being ruptured into life, put up the shoots of a new life, which bears abundant results, while it is rooted in the ground of His truth. Just as HE cares for you, then your surrendered life, and then only, declares itself IN the Lord, Christ the foundation (I Corinthians 3:11), and not as some seamy, dreamy or godless substitute, hypocritical alloy or false front.

How great is the glory of the God who gives, does so personally, even INSISTS on coming into human form, leaving none to philosophise, doing it actually and humanly, meeting the worst that man can give in order to provide for man the wonder that God would like to give, and is ready to give. It is this which He does and will give to every one who turns, receives and believes Him,  in His Son whom He has sent: for if you do not believe in Him, the direct and perfect image of God (Heb. 1), that PROVES that you cannot come to God, He is outré to you. So is it seen that you reject Him, whatever the format of your thought and words. It is as simple as that. Nor is there any need to be judging, concerning hypocrites, for God knows them eternally and none will deceive Him (Matthew 7:21ff.).

Here, in Jesus Christ,  is giving with discretion, undeceivable grace, a work to lend to man the values and virtues and victory he needs, so that in subjection to Christ, finding his place, he has a freedom as glorious as that of the bird that soars; for now the very heavens open to His sight, and now the liberty of the Spirit (II Cor. 3:17), not to depart from the word of God, but to rejoice in it proceeds like Spring after the season of Winter . Then, knowing the way, with a vitality of love in the truth, delighting in it, does each child of God find where mercy lives, so that man being moved from the pit, moves to the friendship of God Himself.