When did you last read Ezekiel? If it’s been a while, you might not remember how the prophecies of judgment and destruction go on and on and on. Why? Because God is just—sin must be punished. And God is holy, so he reacts with revulsion and righteous anger at the corruption that pours out of the human heart. Still, it’s all quite sobering, this flood of divine wrath against Judah, Ammon, Moab, Egypt, Philistia, to punish peoples who defy or ignore him.
In the midst of it all this refrain occurs over and over: “Then they will know that I am the Lord” (e.g., 24:24; 25:7, 11, 17; 28:24, 26; 29:6, 9, 16, 21; 30:19, 26; 33:29; 35:4, 9, 15). In other words, God will use and even cause calamity in order to jar his enemies (or even his own people) into recognizing their sin and realizing that Someone Else is in charge.
Pride kept many from humbly looking to God (e.g., 28:1, 5, 17; 32:12); sometimes people forgot about God altogether (e.g., 23:35); and then there were the hypnotizing effects of wealth that prevented trust in the Lord (e.g., 27:25-27). Sins of all kinds took hold. The Lord’s response was to use the superpower Babylon to bring rebels to their knees (later he would punish Babylon, too). This, of course, was severe treatment, but it was a severe mercy, a healthy “reality therapy” reminding people who was the Lord and who wasn’t. God takes no delight in the death of the wicked (33:11); his pleasure is in seeing the wicked turn away from sin and live!
Same is true today: God whispers in our pleasure and shouts in our pain. He wants us to know—for our good—that he is on the throne of the universe. So is he the Lord of your life?
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