Ezekiel Chapters 15-18
I type this from a wingback chair in a hotel in Topeka. Wingback may be the wrong name for this kind of chair, but the folder in my brain that holds chair names is very thin and has other furniture names thrown in there like “ottoman” and whatever neurotransmitter is responsible for furniture nomenclature has already clocked out for the night. We are here in Topeka (a name which apparently means “a good place to dig potatoes”) for a final visit before our daughter decides if she wants to attend college at Washburn. Your random fact for today: the mascot of Washburn University is the Ichabods. If you don’t just love everything about that, I’m not sure we can be friends. Google it. It’s wonderful.
It still amazes me that we can just get in a car and drive from the middle of our state to the top corner of another state in just a few hours. Humans spent a really long time never moving faster than a horse could run and now I can drive faster than a cheetah. And if cheetahs could drive, they would drive Formula 1 racecars. Or maybe Miatas. Anyway, in right around four hours I can go from making quesadillas for our 13-year-old to finding myself sitting in a chair patterned like a throw rug at Big Lots, 293 miles from home. My wife and daughter sleep. Normally I would also be asleep because it is past 11 and my eyes are burning but I drank coffee too late in the afternoon and here I am, as many parents often are, exhausted and wide awake.
I’ll be honest here and just confess that the reading from Ezekiel this week is rough. On top of that, our Life Group made the unenviable decision to study Judges and last night we read chapter 19 which is one of my least favorite chapters in the Bible. It’s brutal. In every way. It’s so brutal that after we read chapter 19 we read chapter 20 just hoping things would get better. It didn’t. There is a civil war where God’s chosen people slaughtered each other. Ezekiel witnessed a lot of slaughter. And unlike me, he couldn’t get in a car and drive faster than a cheetah to escape. He suffered in slow motion. He watched people starve and die and then he was carted off east to Babylon and became a prophet in exile.
Ezekiel was not the kind of prophet you see on TV with a spray tan and veneers sparkling like freshly fallen snow. He had terrible visions. Visions of sin and slaughter. Visions of beautiful terrible glory. He had to dig holes in walls and speak woes over his peers. He had to write oracles and allegories as the Lord used every imaginable means to try and call His rebellious beloveds back to trusting Him – the Only Good God. He describes Israel as a grapevine which stopped producing fruit. And everyone apparently knows that a fruitless vine is hardly even good for firewood. Grapevines exist to make grapes. And as so much of this book echoes into the words of Jesus or the Revelation of Jesus given to John, we hear the parable of the Vinedresser who prunes off that which bears no fruit and throws it into the fire. We named our church after that Parable. It’s beautiful and painful and makes us long to abide in Jesus.
But then in chapter 16 Ezekiel gives both the longest oracle in the Old Testament and the longest allegory in the whole Bible. An oracle written like a legal prosecution. An allegory of a child, a baby girl, unwanted and discarded in the desert, left to perish in blood and sand. God sees this baby girl and does not weep helpless over her tragedy but speaks the very words of life to her: “Live! Live!” He takes her and washes off the blood and the filth and nourishes her until she grows into a beautiful woman. He then clothes her with the finest silks and linens and fancy shoes and lavishes her in necklaces and bracelets and rings for her ears and rings for her nose and adorns every single part of her with the artistry of jewels and crowns her His queen, resplendent beyond comprehension, gloriously regal, breathtakingly beautiful. What girl does not dream of this: Adored by all, fragrant in elegant perfection, intoxicating the whole world with her beauty. The Lord says, “Your beauty was perfect in my splendor, which I had given you.” God took a throw away baby and gave her His own star bright splendor. This was Israel: The Redeemed Bride of the Almighty. It’s glorious.
But the story turns hard and descends like a meteor past the depths of depravity. This Queen of Splendor rebels against the love that saved her, dives straight past hell, and does things so awful I cannot write them here. She takes all that God had provided, all the beauty and the jewels and the gold and the precious oils which made her skin glow firelight bright and uses them not merely to sin but to make the pagans gasp in shock.
God told Ezekiel a story to teach us how terrible sin is and we can read it in disbelief, or we can see it for what it really is: A mirror straight into our very hearts.“For such were some of you…” Paul says to the Corinthians, many of whom were former prostitutes. “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.” We read this story in Ezekiel 16 and we think, “I’m so glad I was never that broken”, and it’s true, most of us never committed such unspeakable acts. But the sin in this story is what we all need saving from. Sin that forgets the goodness of our God who picked us up when we were helpless and dead and clothed us with His glory. Sin that perverts what is good and lays snares to entrap other people.
I can snap at my kids and distort the whole emotional fabric of our home. I can stop at a light and check my phone so I don’t have to look the homeless guy in the face as he stands 27 inches from a child of God and asks me for a dollar. I can stand in the checkout line at the grocery store and judge the mom in front of me for feeding junk to her kids while they space out on a screen. And I can do all off that before noon on Tuesday.
But the story doesn’t end there. Because even though Isreal forgot, even though I forget, God does not. Every failure, even the ones we won’t mention out loud, especially those, create a void of sin that God fills with grace.
I will remember My covenant. I will make atonement for you, and you will know that I am the Lord. (16:60)
Have you ever done something or thought something so awful you were certain God could never forgive you? Something terrible enough to make a prostitute blush? That’s the kind of person God loves to love. The kind of person who thinks grace is amazing because they see just a faint shadow of how dark sin is and then feel the cool relief of the love that casts out all fear. God sees our sin. He judges us guilty. And then He took our sin upon Himself. Sin so great only He could defeat it.
God tells this story to His children while they are in Babylon, exiled by God because of their sin. When we sin, the devil would love nothing more than for the us to stay in exile – separated, shamed, and scared. God calls us back. Back to Him. Back to love. Back to hope. Back to life.
To we who would get in our cars and drive cheetah fast from God, He gives this message: Repent and live. Stop. Turn to Him. He is loving you every step of the way.
The moment you realize you are sinning, when you scream at your kid or judge that poor mom or brew bitterness at your sibling, stop. For the love of God, stop. Turn to God and let Him live through you. Let Him turn your angry words into tender mercies. Let Him redeem what you broke. Let Him restore what you damaged. Then, in the light of His glory and grace, you will truly know the Lord.
