absurdly pointing fingers at God

"Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?
Ezekiel 18:25

Israel had become skilled at a theological dodge. They thought they had a brilliant intellectual reason for rejecting God. They thought that somehow they reasoned their way to moral high ground above God. Their rationale had to do with divine judgment. They blindly stated that innocent people die in acts that are deemed God's judgment. Therefore God was capricious and unfair in His display of His wrath. The implication was that capricious judgment was immoral because non-guilty people died.

This is an argument that agnostics and atheists like to raise today. So I find it interesting that God has addressed it in His Word so long ago. When we point a finger at God we assume ourselves innocent. That is the first fallacy. God makes it clear in Ezekiel 18 that He knows every human heart (something we are not capable of doing). There was no way that a righteous person would die in judgment for the sins of an unrighteous relative. God even goes so far as to say that He knows when the worst sinner repents and if such a person does what is right as fruit of their repentance, God will spare that person from death (Ezekiel 18:21-24). The opposite also holds true... if a righteous person chooses to abandon the truth and live in a non-repentant life that disobeys God, that person will be judged.

God's point is not that He is somehow inconsistent in the application of justice. It is that we are natural born sinners. Our perspective is warped. We are not just. God is perfectly just. So we cannot even evaluate our own hearts, let alone accuse God of unfairness. Such accusation is proof of our own moral impotency. When agnostics and philosophers committed to anti-supernaturalism accuse God in order to eliminate Theism as a belief system, they are doing what God told Israel was warped by sin. Only God can be righteous and evaluate what is holy and just.

leaning toward our affections

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: As I live, surely it is my oath that he despised, and my covenant that he broke. I will return it upon his head.
Ezekiel 17:19

This is the basis for the sentencing of Judah to exile in Babylon. The Lord confirms that the people know that they have forsaken the covenant with Yahweh. He makes it clear through a parable told in the form of a fable about two eagles, a cedar tree, and a vine. The vine grows away from the eagle that planted it and toward another lesser eagle. And in the explanation of that story it is clear that even though God established Israel, the nation had chosen to turn away from Him. That was why judgment was on the docket immediately for them.

The nation of Israel had been a people with wandering hearts. The people so easily turned to the idolatry of the nations around them. They failed at the keeping of the covenant because they failed at loving and worshiping the God Who gave it. The covenant would not foster a worship that their hearts first did not cultivate. And that was their big issue. It was where they had always historically struggled.

Our hearts will grow towards the things we love. And roots will entangle themselves around what we truly worship. That is what being created to worship means. And when we don't grow towards God or root ourselves in relationship to Him, the inevitable heartache will be a life of frustration and searching. God would intervene with a discipline that ripped Israel up by the roots in order to replant them towards His heart. That ultimately is what the Babylonian Captivity would accomplish. They were appraised, then uprooted, then thinned down to the tap root, then once again replanted to grow again.

the faithless wife

Because you have not remembered the days of your youth, but have enraged me with all these things, therefore, behold, I have returned your deeds upon your head, declares the Lord GOD. Have you not committed lewdness in addition to all your abominations?
Ezekiel 16:43

The language of this chapter is some of the harshest in all of the Old Testament. God speaks an extended metaphor of Israel as a faithless wife. He speaks of His tender love for Israel, how He found the nation as a struggling abandoned infant in the desert. He loved her and helped her to thrive and grow. Later, in the flower of her full womanhood, He compassionately took her as His only bride. He clothed Israel with royal honor, wealth, and prestige.

But Israel dishonored her marriage vows to Yahweh. She despised her husband who had only shown her love and given her everything she was. She became enamored with foreign lovers, hiring them with gifts and giving away the wealth of her husband to all the nations around her. The adulteries committed by the nation come from a willing heart and a purposeful disrespect for God. Eventually she sacrificed her own children in lustful worship of her foreign gods. There was a shameless, brazen disregard for everything that God had given to her in marriage by the covenant. Israel forgot her past in addiction to adultery.

God was left to judge faithless Israel. He hurled all His displeasure and wrath at her adulteries with these vivid descriptions of her lewd behavior. He brought severe judgment on her for her shameless abandonment of Him. He reminded the nation of their orphaned youth and His tender love.

And then God does what only He uniquely can do. He extends grace after judgment. Israel would suffer horrible consequences for her faithlessness and adultery, but God would restore His covenant with beautiful Israel, taking her back as His bride again, upon her repentance (Ezekiel 16:61-63).

the uselessness of faithlessness

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Like the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so have I given up the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Ezekiel 15:6

God compares the people of Jerusalem to dry grape vines. Just as the vine once dry has no real use as a wood, so they were now in a state of uselessness. Vine imagery is crucial to really understanding God's relationship with Israel in the Old Testament. In terms of expressing the meaning of the covenant, it is a common metaphor to describe Israel (see Psalm 80:8-16; Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:1). There are deep implications to what God briefly states through Ezekiel in this context.

There was no fit use for a dried up grapevine. No one made furniture or household items out of it. It was fit for one use... fuel for the fire. And so it was for Jerusalem. They had dried up. The limits of what God could do in His vineyard had been reached. The vine was dead and now only fit to fuel the fire.

The reason behind this bleak conclusion was that Israel had broken faith with God (Ezekiel 15:8). They no longer lived nor did they believe that God was uniquely to be worshiped. They abandoned the Law and practiced every evil. And God had lovingly confronted them repeatedly, only to be disregarded. Their faithlessness had dried them up. Their lives were dry. They could only be consumed by their faithlessness.

This principle is one reason why I choose to reject what "enlightenment" philosophy and today's hip skepticism teach. I don't live my life by the dictates of the Science Channel. I find it has nothing but a soul-drying lifelessness to it that ultimately proves fruitless. How much more invigorating and exciting it is to grow in Jesus and live in the True Vine (John 15), finding life, growth, and fruit dripping with the sweet wine of God's grace!

sinful feelings

Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them?
Ezekiel 14:3

The elders of Israel had come to Ezekiel, recognizing him as a prophet. It is implied that they want to hear what he has to say. But there is a huge problem. They have not repented of their idolatry. They wanted to hear God's prophet. Yet they had no intention of letting go of their idols and truly worshiping God.

The way in which their condition is described twice in this context makes it clear that they were not serious with God. God is also not interested in speaking to them while they were in this condition. They have tied their hearts, their affections, their emotions and feelings, to idolatry. And they will not remove their idols from their hearts. God says it is as if an idol is strapped to their faces... that's how close their sins were to them. And they will not cease. Their inquiry is not repentant. And for that reason God would not answer them with anything other than an analysis of their sinful idolatrous heart conditions.

Humans were built for worship. We search for our own significance. We assign significance to people, places, events, and things around us. We were created to worship God. Sin inevitably warps us into the worship of what is not God. And when we do so, those false gods will be drawn into our hearts. We become emotionally committed to what we worship. It is a deep personal bond. We take idols into our hearts.

God is right to insist that we break those attachments and renounce sinful feelings before we truly can return to Him. We tend to want to see emotions as morally neutral and symptomatic... not part of the problem itself. But God is clear that they are not neutral. That alone is clear reason to reject our feelings as sinful when they contradict God or His Word. We need to change the way we choose to feel about our false worship.

the power of a false vision

Because you have disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved him, and you have encouraged the wicked, that he should not turn from his evil way to save his life, therefore you shall no more see false visions nor practice divination. I will deliver my people out of your hand. And you shall know that I am the LORD.
Ezekiel 13:22-23

God pronounces an indictment against false prophets who manipulate His people. He likens these evil characters to jackals that scavenge among the ruins of the city. There are several defining characteristics of these false prophets. This is just a sampling from Ezekiel 13:

1) They are false and liars. (13:6)
2) They claim authority by saying their messages are the Word of God. (13:6)
3) They believe their own lies will be honored by God and proven true. (13:6)
4) They are misleading people. (13:10)
5) The have a false optimism, proclaiming peace when there is none. (13:10)
6) They encourage personal actions that rebel against God. (13:10)
7) They add to rebellion against God by whitewashing it in religious jargon. (13:10)
8) They propagate a magical view of spirituality. (13:18)
9) They destroy souls with their false religion. (13:18)
10) They profane God for personal gain. (13:19)
11) They work against God's plan. (13:22)
12) They discourage righteous people. (13:22)
13) They encourage wicked people. (13:22)
14) They hinder repentance and hasten God's judgment. (13:22)

urgency

For I am the LORD; I will speak the word that I will speak, and it will be performed. It will no longer be delayed, but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and perform it, declares the Lord GOD.
Ezekiel 12:25

The prophet Ezekiel was given the task of sharing the visions God gave him concerning the imminent destruction of Jerusalem. The problem was that the people had heard this so much that they dismissed it as a distant warning not to be heeded. But this message was meant to dispel their casual disregard.

Everything that Ezekiel delivered as a message from God was short and had a sense of urgency. This was because the judgment was coming in a matter of days, not years. These people would live to see this judgment. Many of them would die in the siege of Jerusalem. The survivors would be led away as ruined, penniless war captives.

The warning of the coming exile and horrible devastating destruction and death that would proceed it had one purpose: to show Israel that God was true. It was all meant to draw them to the reality of the covenant and the power of God to act on it. It showed them the God that they had rejected. And in that moment He would have their attention, and their hearts, again.