Week 33 Ezekiel 33
The Lord does a lot of assessing / evaluating / judging in Ezekiel. And sooner or later there’ll be consequences – quite a few of them not happy ones.
I guess every reader reacts a bit differently to this type of content. Sometimes Ezekiel’s threatening negativity is pretty mentally & emotionally numbing. And at some point the question crosses my mind: why does the Lord act the way he does?
Why-does-he-do-this? One simple & common answer to the question is that the Lord is just a goon. A heavyweight thug. So it’s helpful when I see this: as surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die? (I check a cross-reference from sixteen chapters back and it says almost the exact same thing).
In terms of the Lord’s preferences he a) does not like seeing bad people die and b) he’d like it better if bad people looked to him for help.
So an interview with the Lord would probably sound something like this:
Q: how do you feel about judging & punishing bad people?
A: I don’t like it at all. I wish I didn’t have to. There’s nothing good about people dying. I really wish they’d turn to me and live.
Today that’s a very good reminder.
Note: quotes from Ezekiel 33:11 18:23 (NLT)