“Now You Ask!” - FBC Morning Light (11/7/2023)

Ezekiel’s Rebuke of Israel’s Repeated Rebellion

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Hope your week got off to a good start yesterday and today that you're able to get into God's Word. If you're following our Bible reading plan, we're reading today in Ezekiel 19 and 20 in James chapter 5.

I want to focus on James chapter 20, and Ezekiel gives some of the elders of Israel a little bit of a history lesson, and it's not a real pleasant thing to hear, because what Ezekiel is doing is recounting the pretty brazen failures of Israel throughout their history.

It's actually the Lord who is speaking to Ezekiel and telling Ezekiel, this is what you're to tell these elders who've come before you. And so he recounts several occasions throughout Israel's history where they have received God's grace and they've received divine directives, what to do as recipients of that grace, and then how they ignored those directives, even rebelled against the Lord.

Then he brought punishment upon them, and then showed them mercy and grace and more directives which were met with rebellion. So notice in verses 5 and following, he talks about bringing Israel out of Egypt when they were in Egypt.

He said when he's going to bring them out, he says to them, throw away the abominations, get rid of the idols that you've had in Egypt. But verse 8, they rebelled against me and would not obey me. Well, the Lord brings them out of Egypt anyway, brings them into the wilderness, and he gave them the Sabbath days, he gave them certain directives and so forth in the wilderness.

Verse 13 says, yet the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They did not walk in my statutes. He says the same thing in verse 21, notwithstanding all that I've done for them, the directives, the grace that they've received, the mercy that they've been shown, the directives or guidelines or commandments that they've been given, he says notwithstanding, the children rebelled against me.

And then that brings them up to the current situation in the history of Israel. And so the Lord says in verse 27, speak to the house of Israel and say to them, thus says the Lord God, in this too your fathers have blasphemed me by being unfaithful to me when I brought them into the land concerning which I raised my hand and so forth and so.

On.

And he says in verse 30, therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, are you now, currently, are you defiling yourselves in the manner of your fathers and committing harlotry according to their abominations, and the Lord's speaking here of spiritual harlotry, spiritual adultery, where they are, you know, worshiping idols and false gods.

He says, for when you offer your gifts and make your sons pass through the fire, even engaging in child sacrifice, he says you defile yourselves with all your idols, even to this.

Day.

So, I mean, this is pretty in-your-face stuff that Ezekiel is confronting the elders of Israel with. What prompts this? Why did God tell Ezekiel to rehearse all of this before these elders? Well, because of how the passage begins in chapter 20, verse 1, it says, it came to pass in the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month.

So there's already been a partial captivity of Judah. He says, certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the Lord, and they sat before.

Me.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel and say to them. They came to inquire of the Lord. They're experiencing God's chastening. They've been taken away from the land.

They have lost much. The land has been decimated, and now they come before the Lord to inquire of the Lord. The Lord says, have you come to inquire of me? As I live, says the Lord, I will not be inquired of you.

Why not? Well, let me give you your history. He goes through this whole history, and then you come down to verse 31, where he talks about how they have defiled themselves with all their idols even to this day.

He says, so shall I be inquired of you, O house of Israel? As I live, says the Lord, I will not be inquired of by you. What you have in your mind shall never be when you say, we will be like the Gentiles, like the families in the other countries, serving wood and stone.

The Warning Against Rebellion and False Worship

I am not going to be inquired of you. Here's the thing. Those who don't want to listen to what the Lord has to say, they don't want to obey him, they don't want to follow his commands, they don't want to live according to God's word, they don't want to submit themselves to the lordship of Christ, they just want to live their lives the way they want to live and do what they want to do, then when difficulty comes, and hardship, and misery, and woe, then such ones should not expect to hear words of great comfort and promise of deliverance from the mouth of the Lord.

No. If this is the way you've lived in the past, maybe you've experienced this, that you have snubbed your nose at the Lord, you've walked away from him, and then you experienced his chastening, and then you're crying out, and you're not hearing anything.

You're not experiencing the joy of his promises and the delight of his presence. Why not? This is a pretty sobering warning. We're not to live for ourselves, we're not to rebel against the Lord and go after other gods of our own heart and our own making, and still claim to be his people.

We cannot expect to hear from him if we do. So it's a good challenge. Our Father and our God, I pray that there would be no idols in our hearts that are then set up in our lives, leading us to rebel against you.

Deliver us from such folly, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well listen, I hope you have a good rest of your Tuesday, may the Lord bless you, and a good day.