Readings for today: Ezekiel 17-20
One of the hardest things for us to get our minds around when we read the Scriptures is the absolute authority and sovereignty of God as king. We don’t like kings. We fought a rebellion to get rid of kings. We pride ourselves on living in a democracy where everyone gets to have a say through their vote. We believe fundamentally that our leaders are elected to represent the “will of the people” which makes it challenging when we start to read the Scriptures and realize the Kingdom of heaven doesn’t work that way.
God is king. His authority is absolute. His sovereignty is unchallenged. His glory cannot be compared with anything in earth, over the earth, or under the earth. He is not the same as us. He is not the best version of us. He is not a projection of us. He certainly doesn’t work for us or represent us. He rules over us. He reigns over all He has made. He sits on a throne in heaven even now and, as such, He has every right to judge the earth. Every right to judge those who live on the earth. Every right to call us to account for all we have done. We may not think it fair but then God begins to recount all our misdeeds. Every sinful thought. Every careless word. Every selfish action. And we realize we are without excuse. God’s judgment is just. His sentence of death is righteous. And we are without hope.
The only thing that keeps us from death and destruction is God Himself. From eternity, God made a decision. He decided He would have a people to call His very own. He freely bound Himself to a particular people in a covenant of grace. And by doing so, He puts His reputation on the line. This is why He relents over and over again from putting an end to Israel. How many times do we come across these words in today’s reading…“But I acted for the sake of my name, so that it would not be profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.” (Ezekiel 20:14 CSB) God refuses to let His people go because to do so would betray the very covenant He made. And to betray that covenant would be to profane His own name among the nations. They would assume God is unfaithful to His own promises. Powerless to overcome sin and evil. Impotent when it comes to ruling His own people. And God simply will not allow this to happen. So He remains faithful despite the unfaithfulness of His people. He judges them in righteousness and disciplines them in His wrath. He brings them to their knees in repentance and then He restores them to the Promised Land. God does all these things to make His name known on the earth and make His name great among the nations.
But it doesn’t end there. In the ultimate act of love and faithfulness, God sends His only, eternally begotten Son to become one of us. He sends Him into the world to live among us and serve us and suffer for us and die in our place. He then raises Him to new life in a glorious resurrection to give the world a foretaste of what will one day come when He comes to make all things new. Make no mistake, Jesus was sent to make God’s name known and make God’s name great among the nations. It’s why Jesus’ last command is that we would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Readings for tomorrow: Ezekiel 21-24