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4 ways to misunderstand God
PRAY 1
Chapter 33 is a major turning point in the book of Ezekiel.
After that great vision of the glory of God
1 - 1-9 and 12-22 - Denial
that Ezekiel experienced back in chapter 1,
he was commissioned as a watchman for God people.
He was told he would not be able to speak his own words,
He was told he would not be able to speak his own words, only the words God specifically gave him to say.
only the words God specifically gave him to say.
And so it has been for 10 years.
10 years is a long time not to speak - for some of us more than others!
During that time God has given him
many hard prophesies to share
with the exiles who are with him in Babylon.
And becasue he could only speak God’s words,
he wouldn’t be able to pursued and plead with his listeners.
And it’s fair to say, his listeners were not keen to believe what he was saying.
The most traumatic prophesy was that their home city of Jerusalem would one day fall.
It seems reasonable to conclude that God
didn’t want him to be able to speak his own words
as a demonstration of how deaf the people would be to God’s message.
As if to say, you will not be able to plead with them to listen, beg them, pray for them.
They will simply have to hear the messages of judgemnt and chooses either to listen or not.
Leave it at that.
In fact he was told right back in chapter 3v7-8
What a mission he had!
All those weird and slightly crazed charade type demonstrations
,that Ezekiel did, must have alienated him even further.
To almost mock them for their refusal to listen.
So why is chapter 33 such a turning point?
Well,
becasue today,
Today - Ezekiel is to be proved absolutely spot on in his prophesies!
the first ‘survivor’ from Jerusalem will arrive in Babylon.
More than 2 years after the fall of Jerusalem was prophesied by Ezekiel
and 5 months since Ezekiel had announced that ‘that was the day’ that the siege had begun back in chapter 24.
I expect some news had reached them earlier about Jerusalem,
but only through Babylonian messangers, the enemy.
They would say it had fallen just to demoralise them.
But today 33v21
On the 10th June 1940 the French government left Paris for the safety of the Alps,
in fear that the Nazi’s may take the city.
But they must have hoped beyond hope that the armies would hold them off.
Can you imagine the dread and terror they must have felt when just 4 days later
those same words must have been relayed to them that we read in Ezekiel.
‘The City has fallen’
And hope had gone with it!
But while the actual news of the fall of Jerusalem was so devastating,
it does mean something very significant has to be realised in chapter 33.
Ezekiel could no longer be dismissed as a crazed lunatic.
What he had prophesied, had come true!
He was a true prophet of God!
Everything he has been saying
now comes with a massive scaling up
of significance and authority.
Now his listeners have to do something about it.
But as we’ll see, simply now knowing about God’s,
eze 33
is not the same as following God.
We’re going to uses this chapter to consider ‘4 ways to misunderstand God’
1 - It justifies the watchman for his words of judgement.
He was right to say what he said.
2 -
The way in which they expressed themselves as a nation to Go
Doen’t mean don’t talk to me when you don’t like it - it does mean you must consider it carefully from the scriptures - not from your emotional responce.
1 - ‘God would never do that!’
v1-9
DOes mean I must not strive to be popular and ‘in’ but simply truthful and with an audiance of 1.
Verse 1-9 we’ve sort of covered already,
it simply spends time justify that Ezekiel is a real prophet, and justifies all his words and actions.
v7-9
eve 33 7-9
If Ezekiel hadn’t been faithful to God and warned the people,
then he himself would have been accountable for their rejection of God.
He’d have been as bad as them.
And their attitude is not dissimilar to that which exists today.
It’s expressed in different ways,
depending on how holy one is trying to be about things,
but it goes anywhere along the lines from:
“I can’t believe in the God of the bible,
becasue he wouldn’t say I’m as bad as you seem to be saying,
or
if he was a good God he wouldn’t allow suffering.”
And it goes all the way up to the holy excuses that says things like:
“God was a God of judgement and wrath in the OT but one of grace and love for all in the new”
or
“ I believe in the gospel, but God wouldn’t actually allow anyone to go to hell, at least not eternally”
God would just never do that!
The exiles with Ezekiel refused to accept the truth of God’s word
given through his prophet
because the God in their head - didn’t fit with the one revealing himself to them.
But the lessons from these first 9 verses are this:
We must not dismiss anything from the bible (God’s word today)
simply becasue it does not fit with what’s in our head.
Simply becasue we don’t think God would want that or do that.
Because what we’ll actually find is
that however uncomfortable it may seem to us,
there is a God of grace and love at work in His Word.
Old and New Testament!
It’s a truth the Israelites were not prepared to hear,
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