Our response to a holy God

This week God, through Ezekiel, discussed a common theme: Israel’s rebellion and unfaithful living toward Him. God said the people blasphemed Him by forsaking Him. They defied His Lordship in their lives by verbally abusing God and abandoning Him. Strong actions on their part—no wonder the Lord judged them!

Read Ezekiel 20:1-3.

• The elders of Israel inquired of God through Ezekiel.
• God’s response: Israel may not inquire of Him.
• Instead, the Lord asked Ezekiel to confront the elders with the detestable practices of their fathers.
• Since each person bears responsibility for his own sin, the implication is that the elders were also guilty of such detestable practices.

“… ‘Why does the son not share the guilt of his father?’ Since the son has done what is just and right and has been careful to keep all my decrees, he will surely live. The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them” (Ezekiel 18:19-20).

• What they learned from their fathers, they also practiced.

*Why do you think the elders sought an audience with the Lord?

*How and why might we be blind to our own sin and practices that don’t honor God?

 Read Ezekiel 20:4-7.

The Lord’s defense for why they should practice faithfulness:

• He chose Israel.
• He made Himself known to them through revelation and personal experience.
• He declared, “I AM the Lord your God.”
• He promised to bring them out of slavery into the place He selected especially for them, “the most beautiful of all lands.”
• In return, God instructed them to destroy their detestable images.
• He told them not to defile themselves with idols—plural.

*Which of these resonate with you and draw you toward a more faithful walk with God?

*How can we destroy our idols? 

Read Ezekiel 20:8-12.

These verses describe a pattern: rebellion, idol worship, God’s wrath, God’s holy nature.

• The Lord continued His rationale for refusing to listen to Israel.
• They rebelled and would not listen to, hear, or obey God.
• They did not destroy their vile images.
• They did not forsake or abandon their idols to turn back to God.
• God said He would pour out His fury on them. The use of “wrath” and “anger” in the same sentence intensify the meaning.

But God stayed true to His Holy nature.

• He chose not to violate or defile His sacred name before all the nations, because He had revealed Himself when He delivered Israel from Egypt.
• The phrase “brought out” in verse 9 means “captivity,” the same word Ezekiel used to refer to Israel going out into¹
• “Israel’s God was to be called on to act according to His revealed name.”²
• A holy God cannot make Himself impure and unclean.
• The Lord gave Israel His statutes and decrees with the promise that all who obey will live.
• He made known His law, in a way they could learn and experience it in their lives.
• He instituted the Sabbath as a day set apart and blessed by Israel was to keep it holy, set apart to the Lord.

*Why did the Lord refuse to listen to Israel?

*How would you describe God’s holy nature?

*How did God stay true to His holiness? 

Read Ezekiel 20:13-17.

Again God described Israel’s behavior pattern, and added another step. His response to His beloved people: rebellion, God’s wrath, God’s holy nature, His compassion.

• Israel rebelled.
• They rejected God’s law and did not follow His decrees.
• They desecrated the Sabbath.
• God said He would pour out His wrath and destroy Israel.

But God stayed true to His holy nature.

• He acted with intent to keep His name holy in the sight of the nations who witnessed Israel’s deliverance.
• On oath the Lord declared He would not bring that sinful generation into the land He promised them because “their hearts were devoted to their idols.”
• Interesting, that a possessive pronoun precedes the word idols. As far as God was concerned, they chose to own those idols.
• The Lord had compassion³ on them.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love … he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities (Psalm 103:8, 10).

• He did not destroy all Israel in the desert.

*What is added in this description of Israel’s rebellion?

*How did God describe His holy nature here?  

Read Ezekiel 20:18-20.

Before the next repeat of the pattern, an additional description of God’s holiness is inserted.

God stayed true to His holy nature.

• He preserved a remnant.
• God encouraged the fathers’ children to choose not to follow man-made laws and not to defile themselves with idols.
• God reminded them, “I AM the Lord your God”—the Lord who created everything and is sovereign over all.
• He instructed the children to follow His decrees, obey His laws, and keep His Sabbath holy.
• Through walking with God in this way, they would know that I am the Lord your God.”

*Why did God include additional statements declaring how He stays true to His holy nature?

*How do we see God’s remnant principle at work in these verses? Why is it significant?

*What is the significance of Ezekiel’s theme phrase here? 

Read Ezekiel 20:21.

For the third time, God set forth the pattern: rebellion, accountability, God’s wrath, God’s holy nature.

• The next generation rebelled against the Lord.
• They were held accountable for their own actions.
• They did not keep God’s laws and decrees, and they desecrated the Sabbath.
• God said He would pour out His fury and anger on them in the desert. Again, God used two words to convey the intensity of His wrath.

*Why do you think the next generation chose not to follow God?

*What might the repetition in these verses signify?

 Read Ezekiel 20:22-26.

But God stayed true to His holy nature.

• He withheld His hand of judgment.
• For the sake of His holy name, He kept His name from being profaned in the sight of the nations who witnessed Israel’s deliverance. God’s Name will remain Holy forever. (link to song for those who enjoy praising God through music)

• The Lord proclaimed on oath He would scatter the Israelites among the nations because they had done all these things and lusted after their fathers’ idols.
• He allowed them to live by statues that weren’t good and to follow laws they could not live by.
• Following God’s law leads to fruitful prosperity.
• Israel chose the opposite path, which leads to death.
• He allowed them to twist His provision for redeeming their firstborn into a horrible sacrifice.
• In the Old Testament sacrificial system ordained by God, the Israelites were to redeem their firstborn sons to remember when the Lord passed over Israel’s firstborn in the plague of death that led to their deliverance from Egypt.

“… Redeem every firstborn among your sons. In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed the firstborn of both people and animals in Egypt. This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons’ (Exodus 13:13-15).

For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods … They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind (Jeremiah 19:4, 5).

• Only the Lord could offer a gift of redemption in an evil world, so they would know that I am the Lord.

*What new insight(s) into God’s holy nature do these verses provide?

*How would you explain God’s gift to Israel in provision for redemption of their firstborn sons?

 Read Ezekiel 20:27-29

This last repeat of the pattern included one final, grievous sin against the Lord. Then it skipped right to God’s holy nature.

• The elders’ fathers blasphemed God by forsaking the Lord.
• Their speech included “conscious verbal abuse of God,” and the punishment was “death or being cut off from God’s people.”⁴

The letter to Hebrew Christians described such behavior:

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:26-29).

Read Ezekiel 20:28-29.

God stayed true to His holy nature.

• He kept His promise and brought them into the place He chose for them.
• But whenever Israel saw any high place, they sacrificed to idols.
• Their offerings to idols angered the Sovereign Lord.
• God held them accountable for their idolatry: “What is this high place you go to?”
• They could keep no secrets from God (see previous notes on Ezekiel 8:12).

*What is the place in our lives where we offer sacrifices to an idol?

*What things do we willingly give up to satisfy something we hold more important than the holy Lord?

*What do we learn about God’s character in this passage?

This chapter began with God’s defense for faithfulness and continued with several descriptions of rebellion contrasted with God’s holiness. Peter’s words summarize our best takeaway: seek to live a faithful, holy life because God is faithful.

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16; Leviticus 11:44-45, 19:2).

 

1. Warren Baker, D.R.E., Eugene Carpenter, Ph.D. The Complete WordStudy Dictionary: Old Testament. (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2003) 462
2. Ibid., 1157
3. Bible Hub. Hebrew Interlinear Old Testament. https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2347.htm
4. Baker, 189