Sin Bearer

Ezekiel 4:1-5:17
 

Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day!  This week we turn a major corner in the book of Ezekiel.  The first 3 chapters of Ezekiel were focused on God’s calling and commissioning of Ezekiel the exiled priest turned prophet, while Chapters 4-21 focus on Israel’s sin and God’s coming judgment.
 
Since it has been several weeks since Carl’s introduction to Ezekiel, we need to review the historical context of Ezekiel, especially before we get into these next 21 chapters.  It will help us understand why God is about to judge Israel so harshly.  I also think that some context will help to take a little bit of the edge off of what we are about to study.  If we just dove into this and did not understand the context, we would not understand the meager rations of bread and water that Ezekiel is about to be restricted to, or the odd fuel he will be required to use to cook his food, or the awful conditions that we are about to see the people of Jerusalem be subjected to. I am going to give dates.  I am a history nerd, and I honestly think you need some dates to truly understand the timing of Ezekiel.  So please do not fall asleep on me.  Dates are also important to Ezekiel; he gives approximately 12 dates in his book.  The only other books to give that many dates are Kings and Chronicles.

I am going to put this chart up, hopefully to help you understand the timeline.  I know BC dates can get a little confusing, so hopefully this will help.  As you will recall, Israel split into two kingdoms after Solomon. They were aptly named the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, or Israel and Judah respectively.   Israel had only evil kings that led the people into wicked grotesque idolatry.  Judah had a few kings who sought the one true God and purged the tiny kingdom of all the idolatrous high places. 
 
In 722 BC, the Assyrians overthrew the Northern Kingdom of Israel and dragged most of the survivors off into exile.  They stayed in exile until the Jews were allowed to return under the reign of Darius after the Medes and Persians had overthrown the Babylonian empire, around 532 BC.
 
In 605 BC, Babylon had become a powerful force in the east.  Several battles had been fought and the Assyrian Empire had fallen to Babylon.  Egypt had allied itself with Assyria in hopes to fend off this new kingdom, but it was defeated by Babylon as well.  Caught in the middle was the tiny little Southern Kingdom.  In an effort to keep them under tabs, Nebuchadnezzar raided Judah and took some of the leadership and some of the younger men who were next in line back to Babylon.  Amongst those taken were four well-known teenagers, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  
 
A few years later, in 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar returned to punish Judah for refusing to pay tribute.  Listening to false prophets of the day, the Jewish leadership had decided that Egypt was going to rise again and overthrow Babylon.  So they stopped paying tribute to Babylon, and started paying Egypt.  And Nebuchadnezzar attacked Judah again.  He did not overthrow the entire city of Jerusalem, but he did take several more captives with him.  This was known as the second deportation, and Ezekiel was among those who were taken. 
 
Ezekiel’s ministry began around 593 BC, when he turned 30 – the year a priest normally enters the priesthood.  The first half of the book, minus his commissioning, is focused on the impending fall of Jerusalem.  That ultimately took place in 586 BC.
 
Carl used the dedication of the temple during Solomon’s reign to set up the book for us initially, but I want to go back farther, to Genesis of all places, to understand the wrath of God as it will be displayed in the coming weeks of our study.
 
In Genesis 12, God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans and sent him to a strange land. We aren’t told why God chose Abram, but God made an unconditional covenant with Abram to make him the father of a great nation. 
 
Fast forward a few hundred years, and God miraculously brings Abraham’s descendants out of Egyptian slavery.  At Mt. Sinai, He entered into a covenant with them to make them into a nation with people, land, and a government.  In Exodus 19:5-6, speaking through Moses to the Israelites, God told the Israelites.
 
Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. – Exodus 19:5-6
 
God was not calling everyone to be a Levitical priest to serve in the temple.  He was calling them to be a kingdom of priests.  What is a priest?  What were the Israelites called to do? At the risk of over simplification, a priest has two functions.  First, he is a representative of God to the people; second, he is to bring people to God.  The nation of Israel was to be God’s representative to the world and to bring the world to God.  They were to be a holy nation; a nation separated by God to do His will.  To not be a holy nation was to falsely represent God.  It would show the world a picture of what God is not while calling it God.  1 Peter 2 calls Christians to the same thing.  “[We] are a chosen generation, a royal priest hood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that [we] may declare the praises of Him who called [us] out of darkness and into His wonderful light.”
 
In Leviticus 26, God promised rich blessings if Israel followed Him and obeyed His commandments.
 
If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high. – Leviticus 26:3-13
 
Deuteronomy 28 and 29 list out even more, but I will not take the time to read them here.  But in that same chapter in Leviticus, God also promises calamity and terror for disobedience.  This is a long passage, but bear with me.  God said.
 
But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You will plant seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it. I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies; those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even when no one is pursuing you. If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like iron and the ground beneath you like bronze. Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops, nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit. If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve. I will send wild animals against you, and they will rob you of your children, destroy your cattle and make you so few in number that your roads will be deserted. If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake your bread in one oven, and they will dole out the bread by weight. You will eat, but you will not be satisfied. If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it. As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away. But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers-their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies-then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. For the land will be deserted by them and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them. They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord. – Leviticus 26:14-45
 
God was very specific with them.  He made His plans very clear.  But notice that last part - verses 44-45.  God promises that even while punishing them, even while they are in strange lands being judged for their sin, God will still remember His covenant with Abraham.  There were no conditions on the Abrahamic Covenant.  God promised to make him a great nation, and there was nothing Abraham or anyone else had to do.  God would do it all.  Even when God was pouring out His wrath on unrepentant Israel, He would not forget that they were his chosen people.  He would not forget that He promised to make them a great nation.
 
Now, what did Israel do?  Well, right after the brand new glorious temple was dedicated, they ran off and worshipped idols.  God says they went whoring after them like an adulterous spouse.  For almost 400 years, God called them back with prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and Nahum.  Even the first part of Jeremiah’s ministry was spent trying to call Israel and Judah back to God.  Yet God was ever patient, giving them ample time to repent.  To use Jonathan Edward’s analogy from his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” the dam of God’s mercy was holding back His judgment, but the longer that dam held, the more judgment built up.  Until finally, God removed the dam and let the flood waters of His wrath flow forth on Jerusalem where His glory once dwelt.
 
Finally, we come to today’s passage.  Now, if you came to church expecting a nice, calm message for mothers on Mother’s Day; well, I hate to disappoint you, but this is about as far from a gentle mother as you can get.  This is probably the last place I would tell you to go to if you asked me what to preach on for Mother’s Day.  God the Father has had it with His unruly children.  He has tried over and over again to get their attention.  The judgment He promised in Leviticus 26 is coming.  It is too late; nothing they can do will stop the coming judgment. 
 
So we pick up on Ezekiel 4 with God instructing Ezekiel to perform a monodrama, or sign act, foretelling the siege of Jerusalem.
 
"Now, son of man, take a clay tablet, put it in front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on it. Then lay siege to it: Erect siege works against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps against it and put battering rams around it. Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall between you and the city and turn your face toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall besiege it. This will be a sign to the house of Israel. – Ezekiel 4:1-3
 
Some translations say brick, but most likely this would have been some sort of a clay tablet, most likely a formed brick that was not yet baked.  Ezekiel was to etch a map into the soft clay that resembles Jerusalem, and then he was to make miniature siege engines and lay siege against the city.  He was to make little battering rams, and earthen ramps that soldiers would use to get the rams up to the walls.  He was instructed to put little camps around for the soldiers. Finally, he was to put a metal pan between himself and the city to act as an iron wall. 
 
Scholars debate over what the iron wall was for.  It could symbolize the siege wall that was used to keep the people in and allies and supplies out.  It could symbolize God’s hostility toward Israel, or that Israel’s sin had put a barrier between themselves and God.  Either way, there was an impenetrable wall that the people could not escape.  The siege was here to stay until Jerusalem fell.
 
While acting out this sign act of the siege of Jerusalem, God told Ezekiel to do something odd for his food for the next 390 days.
 
"Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the house of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side.  I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the house of Israel. "After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the house of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year. Turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem and with bared arm prophesy against her. I will tie you up with ropes so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have finished the days of your siege. – Ezekiel 4:4-8
 
I am not going to get into the number of days and years beyond what our text does.  Just like the iron pan wall, there are many ideas about what these represent, but suffice it to say that each day represented a year.  Some count those years backwards, some forwards.  I am going to give you the most scholarly answer I have and say, “I do not know.”  But for a total of 430 days, Ezekiel had to lie on his side, and each day represented a year.  Some say that he must have been allowed to get up periodically to cook or do other things as we will see in the next chapter.  Personally, I do not see it that way, but either way, Ezekiel was very uncomfortable lying this way for almost 18 months. 
 
From here to the end of chapter 5, God is going to describe the absolutely horrific nature of the conditions within Jerusalem during this siege.  But He is going to do it all through the sign acts of Ezekiel.  First, He will show them the meagerness of their food.
 
"Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side. Weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day and eat it at set times. Also measure out a sixth of a hin of water and drink it at set times. Eat the food as you would a barley cake; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel." The LORD said, "In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them." Then I said, "Not so, Sovereign LORD ! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No unclean meat has ever entered my mouth." "Very well," he said, "I will let you bake your bread over cow manure instead of human excrement." He then said to me: "Son of man, I will cut off the supply of food in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce. They will be appalled at the sight of each other and will waste away because of their sin. – Ezekiel 4:9-17
 
A shekel was an ancient coin that was not counted like our modern coins.  Instead, they were weighed on commerce scales.   Twenty shekels would equal about 8oz or 227 grams.  This was barely enough bread to keep a person alive for 24 hours.  A hin was equal to about 5.5 quarts or 5 liters, so Ezekiel was allotted about 2 pints of water per day.  And he was to stretch out these meager rations over the course of the day. 
 
But then we come to the first of many of the harsh realities this week.  God told Ezekiel to use human dung as the fuel to cook his meals.  This just shows how desperate the people will be during the siege.  They will have used all their fuel and eaten any animals they could have.  To this day, people in other parts of the world still use cow dung for fuel; but in Jerusalem, all those animals will be dead.  They only heat source they will have will be their own excrement. 
 
Secondly, God commands Ezekiel to shave his head and beard.  This was an act of utter humiliation for a priest.  But God commanded it of Ezekiel for yet another sign.
 
"Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber's razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales and divide up the hair. When the days of your siege come to an end, burn a third of the hair with fire inside the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third to the wind. For I will pursue them with drawn sword. But take a few strands of hair and tuck them away in the folds of your garment. Again, take a few of these and throw them into the fire and burn them up. A fire will spread from there to the whole house of Israel. – Ezekiel 5:1-4
 
So after the siege ended, Ezekiel was to shave his head.  He was to weigh out his hair into equal thirds.  Weighing in the Old Testament is almost always a sign of judgment.  In Daniel 5 at Belshazzar’s festival, the hand wrote on the wall that he had “been weighed on the scales and found wanting.”  One third of the hair was to be burned, another third was to be chopped up with the sword, and the final third was to be scattered to the winds.  But then God told Ezekiel to do something interesting.  He commanded Ezekiel to take a small portion and hide them in the hen of his garment. 
 
Ezekiel’s hair symbolized the people and their fate.  One-third would be killed in the fire, famine, and disease within the city.  Another third would be killed by the invaders once the city fell.  The final third would be taken away into captivity where many would perish.  But God would keep a remnant.  Remember, He made an unconditional promise to Abraham.  He has not forgotten it.  God always keeps His word.  In fact, one of the themes of the entire book of Ezekiel is that God always keeps His word.  Through Ezekiel, He was telling the people that He had made them a promise, and now was the time to keep that promise. 
 
God pauses here to make sure that it is abundantly clear the reason for His judgement.  Think back on promise of calamity in Leviticus 26 while we read this.
 
"This is what the Sovereign LORD says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees.  "Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: You have been more unruly than the nations around you and have not followed my decrees or kept my laws. You have not even conformed to the standards of the nations around you. – Ezekiel 5:5-7
 
Israel was placed in the middle of the nations.  She was in a major crossroads of the ancient near east.  If anyone wanted to go anywhere, they passed through Israel.  But she rebelled against God’s laws more than the other nations around here.  How so?  She had the written laws of God.  She had written revelation from the Almighty himself, but she refused to obey.  So God brought judgment.  Israel had sown wild oats and was praying for crop failure.
 
God’s judgment is not merely penal in nature.  It is a manifestation of His love and grace.  Yes, He disciplines His children.  But what is the point of discipline?  Children will tell you pain and judgment.  But a good parent will tell you that it is to restore a broken relationship between the offending child and the parent.  God brought judgment to restore a remnant to Himself.  It was an act of love to restore Israel to a proper standing. 
 
Moving on, let us look more at the nature of judgment as laid out in the rest of Ezekiel 5.
 
"Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst fathers will eat their children, and children will eat their fathers. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds. Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD , because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will withdraw my favor; I will not look on you with pity or spare you. A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword. "Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath upon them, they will know that I the LORD have spoken in my zeal. "I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by. You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the LORD have spoken. When I shoot at you with my deadly and destructive arrows of famine, I will shoot to destroy you. I will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food. I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I the LORD have spoken." – Ezekiel 5:8-17
 
God’s judgment was awful.  The river of His wrath was raging.  He had had it with Israel.  In verses 8-9, He announced that He would execute the judgments promised in the Mosaic covenant given at Mt. Sinai.  It was going to be so bad, God promised, that judgment like what was to come had never been seen before or since the judgment He brought on Jerusalem.  Again, He promised that one-third will die by disease and famine, another third will be killed by the invading army, and the rest will be scattered to the ends of the earth.  The nations will laugh at Israel for her calamity, but at the same time will fear God for His great wrath.
 
As a side note here, ancient peoples often thought that when a nation fell or rose in power, that it was a reflection of that nation’s deity.  So when Israel and Judah fell, it brought reproach on their God.  The other peoples would think that their God was not that strong or that great.  But God is willing to humiliate Himself for the sake of His people, and nowhere else is that more evident that on the cross where Jesus, battered and beaten, hung naked for my sin and yours.  He was willing to be humiliated, to restore a remnant to Himself.  Too often, we get caught up in the wrath of the Old Testament God, and we do not see the similarities between the OT God and the NT God.  He is the same God yesterday, today, and forever; and He CANNOT tolerate sin of any kind.
 
God’s judgment on Israel was to be public – verse 14 “I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations around you, in the sight of all who pass by.”  Verse 9 shows that it was justified and it would be severe – “Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.”  In Verse 10, it would be an absolutely horrific judgment – “Therefore in your midst fathers will eat their children, and children will eat their fathers. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds”. Lamentations 4:7-11 speak of the people turning to cannibalism to survive.
 
God’s judgement would be irreversible, verse 11 – “Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD , because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your vile images and detestable practices, I myself will withdraw my favor; I will not look on you with pity or spare you.”  The eternal God was swearing on His own life that this judgment was coming.  False prophets were running around Jerusalem telling the people that they were fine.  They were the good people and those already taken in the first and second deportations were that bad people.  Ezekiel was with the exiles in Babylon telling them that some of the people of Jerusalem were about to come join them, but the vast majority would be killed.  The judgment as we’ve seen would be fatal – verse 12 “A third of your people will die of the plague or perish by famine inside you; a third will fall by the sword outside your walls; and a third I will scatter to the winds and pursue with drawn sword.”  It would be satisfying to God – verse 13 “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath upon them, they will know that I the LORD have spoken in my zeal.”  God promised that His judgment would be debasing, humiliating, reviling, and finally a warning to unbelievers – verse 15 “You will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of horror to the nations around you when I inflict punishment on you in anger and in wrath and with stinging rebuke. I the LORD have spoken.”
 
I warned you this was a harsh passage.  This was a hard one to study.    But there is hope at the end of a horrific text like this. Contrast the wording in Ezekiel with that of Hosea.  Hosea was a prophet almost 200 years before Ezekiel, and chapter 14 in the book that bears his name starts out like this,
 
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: "Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war-horses. We will never again say 'Our gods' to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion." – Hosea 14:1-3
 
Israel had ample time to repent. Hosea was calling them to repentance before either kingdom fell. There is still time to repent.  The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6:2.
 
For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation. – 2 Corinthians 6:2
 
You might be tempted to think that since God promised Jerusalem that He would never again send judgment like this, He does send judgment in Revelation on the world.  And it is just as horrific.  It says that it will be so bad, that people will hide in caves and beg the mountain to fall in on them.  And then there is hell itself.  Jesus spoke more about it than He did heaven.  Why?  Because it is a real place of eternal torment and judgment filled with fire, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.  How do we avoid such judgment?  Sinner, run to the cross.  Believer, run to the cross.  Run hard and do not stop until you get there.  Then cling to it.  For in the cross of Jesus, we find forgiveness and rest.  Forgiveness for the unbeliever that satisfies the wrath of God.  For the believer, there is forgiveness before He brings harsh discipline to bring us home.  A pastor in Georgia wrote this poem entitled “I Run to Christ.”
 
I run to Christ when chased by fear
And find a refuge sure.
“Believe in me,” His voice I hear;
His words and wounds secure.
I run to Christ when torn by grief
And find abundant peace.
“I too had tears,” He gently speaks;
Thus joy and sorrow meet.
I run to Christ when worn by life
And find my soul refreshed.
“Come unto Me,” He calls through strife;
Fatigue gives way to rest.
I run to Christ when vexed by hell
And find a mighty arm.
“The Devil flees,” the Scriptures tell;
He roars, but cannot harm.
I run to Christ when stalked by sin
And find a sure escape.
“Deliver me,” I cry to Him;
Temptation yields to grace.
I run to Christ when plagued by shame
And find my one defense.
“I bore God’s wrath,” He pleads my case—
My Advocate and Friend.
            - “I Run to Christ” Chris Anderson
            © 2010 Church Works Media. All rights reserved.
 
We also need to remember that actions have consequences.  Our culture has forgotten the third law of thermodynamics: for each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Sin is rampant and laughed at.  Sin is flaunted everywhere.  And we should never laugh at the thing that crucified our Lord.  We laugh at it because we do not understand how vile our sin is to our holy God.  I challenge us this week to study more about God’s character and to begin to better understand how wretched our sin is.  If we could ever grasp that truth, if we could ever understand this concept, we would live daily in His presence begging for His help. 
 
God mush judge sing.  His justice demands it.  But for the believer, there is no condemnation.  He poured out His wrath on Jesus at the cross for those who are in Christ Jesus.  There is discipline for a believer’s sin to gently correct, but not judgment.
 
 Finally, we see from this how serious it is to depart from the word of God.  God means what He says, and we have His revelation to us in the form of our Bibles.  We should be studying it daily.  Not merely reading it.  I mean studying it.  Spending time with it to pick it apart and learn from it.