…for what it's worth

I was a day behind in this book, so I read chapters 8 and 9 together. This actually turned out to be a good thing, as the persistent idolatry in chapter 8 is the ground for the severe judgement in chapter 9.

Chapter 8 begins a new vision, apparently the second of four dramatic visions according to my study Bible. (This one doesn’t end until 11:25, so I’m sure I’ll be adding to this little narrative later.) Ezekiel is apparently hanging out in his house with the elders of Judah for some reason when “the hand of God fell upon [him] there”. He sees someone that looks like a man, but with some really spectacular differences who picks him up by his hair and leads him through several snapshots of the idolatrous abominations of the people of Jerusalem.

He was shown an image (presumably of some foreign god) set up in the entrance to the city, some people (said to be representative of the elders of Jerusalem) worshiping various different pictures of creatures, a group of women engaged in ritual mourning for their god (a practice of a particular cult), and “about twenty-five men” standing in the entrance to the temple worshiping the sun. After each time but the last, the angel (I assume) told him “you will see still greater abominations”. These things are obviously pretty bad, and God, the real God, says, in words and actions, just how bad they are.

In chapter nine the vision continues with a summons by God for “the executioners”. Six guys with weapons come forward, as well as a seventh guy with a writing case. God tells the guy with the writing case to mark all the people who are grieved by all the abominations going on in the city. That is, he’s told to mark the people still faithful to God. God tells the six other guys to kill everyone else. Ezekiel is distressed by this, and cries out to God, lamenting that God is going to “destroy all the remnant of Israel”. God’s reply is that their guilt is great, and they pretend that he can’t see them, so he won’t spare them. “I [God] will bring their deeds upon their heads.” Chapter 9 ends with the guy with the writing case coming back and reporting that he did what he was told.

OK. My take:

1) Our God is a God who will not tolerate sin.
There are passages elsewhere in the Bible that make it abundantly clear that God has a really long fuse, and there are passages like this that show that if anyone tries him all the way to the end of that fuse, he will nuke them. This passages details a vision of Ezekiel’s, so there’s even still time for Jerusalem at this point, but if they don’t repent, God will blast them off the face of the earth.

2) I sin like this all the time
I can’t think that just because I don’t worship the sun or participate in ritual prostitution that I don’t commit idolatry. Paul tells us that covetousness is idolatry, and I want all the time. The very definition of idolatry makes worship of anything other than God idolatry, and make no mistake, everyone is always worshiping something. Our actions reveal what it is. What am I making sacrifices for? What consumes my thoughts?
“What do you talk about most? There’s your god. What do you think about most? There is your god. What do you have your eye set upon? There is your mission, and your god, and your heart, and your treasure.” — Paul Washer

3) God is crazy gracious, crazy merciful, and crazy loving, and we never deserve it.
The only difference between the people that get blasted and the people who don’t is that the people who are spared are repentant. It’s not even clear that they weren’t participating in these freaky religious practices themselves. Even if they weren’t, the definition of idolatry hasn’t changed since the beginning of time, and these people were not innocents (Romans 3:10-18). God spares them, though, because he has promised to leave a remnant to Israel who will be his people forever, and because it is as much God’s character and as much glorifying to him to be loving, gracious and merciful as it is to be righteous, just and wrathful. This is a glorious instance of God’s divine forbearance in the Old Testament as God passes over sins in anticipation of their future justification (Romans 3:25).
Note that the chapter and thought – I checked, since chapters and verses aren’t inspired – ends with the guy with the writing case coming back and saying he’d finished marking the faithful. Just to remind us that some survived, I guess.

All of the characteristics of God displayed here are evident in his very name, which he tells Moses in Exodus 34:5-7:

5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Finally,
I submit to you that we serve an awesome God who does what he pleases and yet out of his incomprehensible love and mercy spares us from the wrath that his righteousness and justice demand. He did this by the only means that would allow him to be both just and merciful to us: by punishing our sin in Jesus. (Romans 3:25-26)