Ezekiel 18
God is the giver of life, but He is also the one who takes life away. There are billions of people that have lived on earth. Not one of them should be thought of as insignificant. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Each person is a responsible moral agent before God. The Lord has revealed various things that He loves and other things that He hates. Some people have been given more of this revelation than others. Each of us is responsible for the revelation that has been given to us. Rather than admit our responsibility before God for our acts of rebellion, we add to our sin by trying to blame our problems on someone else. At the time of Ezekiel, it had become a proverb among the Lord’s people that the fathers had eaten sour grapes and that this had affected the teeth of their children.
The point of the proverb was to shift the blame for the exile from the current generation to some prior generation. This is a useless distraction from the duty of every generation to repent of all known sin and to trust the Lord with our lives. In this chapter an extended example is given to encourage the people of God to repent of their sins even now, and not to waste their time trying to shift the blame for their sin to former generations, or to attempt to blame God for the consequences of their sins.
The providences that God brings into each life are tailor-made for us by our Creator. There is nothing accidental or random about our lives. While we know the source of all things, it does not mean that we understand the meaning of every event that happens to us. Two things we should keep in mind. First, we should never think that we are stuck in a life of sin merely because of the actions of former generations. Second, we should never excuse ourselves from our continual duty to repent of sin. These two things are related. Some people convince themselves that they are utterly trapped in the consequences of the sins of others, and they use this incorrect idea to excuse themselves from the duty that they have to repent and believe.
Ezekiel tells the story of a supposed righteous man. He follows the law of God and he shall live. His son is a violent murderer who ignores God’s commandments. Such a man should not presume to have life for another day. Certainly his father’s righteousness will not count for him. If that wicked man should have a son and that son should turn away from his father’s evil and do good, that young man will live. Nonetheless, his righteousness will not be able to count for his father. The way of the Law is that each many faces the consequences of his own sin.
There is always an opportunity to turn from evil and live, but there is a further duty not to turn away from good in order to pursue evil. The first step of righteousness for any follower of God is to recognize our complete dependence upon the Lord and to rest in Him. From that beginning work of faith good fruits of true repentance will come.
The message of individual responsibility for sin, and the ongoing duty of repentance for all was not received with joy by
God is not rooting for any man in
Our fathers cannot take away the stain of our sin, for they have their own sin problem to deal with. The sun does not set on a day where any man alive is free from sin. There is simply no one who can carry the debt of sin for his child or grandchild. Each man has his own sin to deal with, and each man is guilty. “The soul that sins shall die.” All of
God’s people were ready to blame God for their problems. They considered His ways unfair. The fault was clearly with them. They were the sinners. Though He would have been perfectly just to condemn them all, He came Himself in the person of His Son to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. We could not take anyone’s sin away because we had our own sin to deal with. Christ came into this world without sin and he never sinned. He alone could bear the sin of many. What our fathers and grandfathers could never have accomplished for us, Christ has perfectly achieved. He is the Sin-Bearer. For those who believe, we can now say that the soul that has sinned shall not die, for Christ has swallowed up the curse of the Law for us, and now we are assured that we shall live.
As He lives, so shall we also live. Now the soul that sins, if he yet turns in faith and repentance to Christ, shall live. Not only that, God is just to forgive us our sins, for Christ has freely taken upon Himself the punishment that we deserve. Even though our bodies may die, we know that we shall live.
By the grace that the Lord supplies, and with the great encouragement of the good news, we repent of our sin, and turn away from all our transgressions. He has granted to us a new life in His Son. The Lord has no pleasure in the death of anyone. He has secured eternal life for us in the substitutionary death of His Son, with whom He was well-pleased.
posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM
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