KNOWING GOD IN HIS GLORY
The Struggle With Sin
Ezekiel 20
Jerry A Collins
6/24/01
SCC
P What are
the consequences of rebelling against God?
P What
should we do with our rebellion against God?
P How do
we overcome our struggle with this rebellion?
Many of us know how to pretend to submit when in
fact we are only agreeing. Few of us know how to cooperate in a spirit of
submission. Many know how to rebel. So we can easily yield to an
authority in an act of submission without being willing to cooperate. When told
you must do this or that, you may obey in a perfunctory manner with no heart
attitude to make it work properly like the child who was told to sit down in
the back seat and buckle up and while buckling his seatbelt said I am sitting
down on the outside but on the inside I am still standing up! Agreement and
submission are frequently confused in those relationships in life where one is
under the authority of another. This is especially true in our relationship
with God. Only you and God know your heart and He will judge you, in part, by
the heart attitude you carry into the execution of His requests of you. His
people had only agreed with God for generations but refused to submit to him.
Eventually the heart attitude revealed itself in outward acts of rebellion.
Ezekiel is again visited by the Elders of Israel to see if God had any new word
for the nation vs 1. Though their question is not recorded God responds to
these Elders thru the prophet by reviewing their past history of rebellion. So
God opens His court and presents His evidence to them. Ezekiel was to act as
the prosecuting attorney presenting this evidence to the accused people vs 4.
1. GOD REMINDS THEM OF PAST SINS THEY ARE UNAWARE
OR UNREPENTANT OF 1-32
Here God reviews the different periods in Israel’s
history of Gods preservation of them as a nation in spite of their repeated
rebellion.
(1) They rebelled in Egypt 5-9. This
section begins with Thus says the Lord God vs 5. That is what we are to
say to those rebelling against God not our own opinions or prejudices about it.
God sovereignty selected these people vs 5 by revealing Himself to them
beginning at the burning bush as a nation! God promised to deliver them from bandage
and oppression and take them to a land flowing with milk and honey vs 6. God
asked them to be faithful to Him s well by removing all idolatry of Egypt but
they had refused and were unwilling vs 7-8. God resolved to judge them but
spared them instead because of His name and reputation among the nations was at
stake. Instead of giving them judgment which they deserved He delivered
them from Egypt vs 9. God gives grace
and mercy as a work of God not as part of His character. He does not have to be
gracious and merciful even though He chooses to do so. God is always just,
eternal, love, omni’s because that is His character.
(2) They rebelled on the journey from Egypt to
promised land 10-17. God did not rescue Israel only to abandon her in
the desert but to set her apart as a unique nation with Gods laws and statutes
on the books vs 11-12. This first generation rejected, profaned and abandoned
this platform and rebelled against Gods rule in the land. Now the people
deserved to be annihilated but once again god spared them tho the ones who had
sinned were not allowed into the land until they all had died and it took 40
yrs.
(3) They rebelled in the wilderness 18-26. God
graciously repeated His opportunity of blessing to the second generation in the
wilderness vs 18-20. But they reacted as their parents had violating God’s laws
and statutes. Once again they deserved annihilation but God did not destroy
them but instead imposed two forms of judgment. First was dispersion vs 23.
Just before these had entered the land god commanded obedience for His blessing
or they would be scattered among the nations and dissolve as a nation. Second
was abandonment vs 26. God’s giving over of the people to sin was His judicial
act. Because they had refused to follow His righteous ways God w9ould abandon
them to the consequences of their actions. Paul expresssed a similar judgment
by God on all unbelievers who willfully reject God’s righteousness Romans 1:24,
26, 28. Sometimes God’s judgments come in the form of letting us have what we
want. We also get the
consequences associated with that as a form of judgment. If you want to keep up
with the Jonses and you are willing to live with credit cards and lines of
credit to do that, then God says you can have that but you also get the debt
and slavery too.
(4) They rebelled when they came into the land of
Canaan 27-29. Israels new location in the land of promise did not change
her sinful actions. There they continued to offer sacrifices to idols,
sacrificed firstborn to idols and blasphemed God’s name in the land. The
worship of idols competed with the worship of God making Israel’s God look
foolish. Israel never recovered from its worship of idols. Idols are images of
God we create that fashion God into an image we believe Him to be.
(5) They rebelled during Ezekiels own generation
30-31. Israel was still rebellious just like their ancestors and
still practicing idolatry and child sacrifice.
God says they have lost the privilege of inquiring of God what they
needed to know. They no longer had God’s ear and He would not be a divine quija
board to manipulate answers whenever they pleased from him. Some sin is much
harder to overcome in our lives than others. Since the beginning of their
existence, These people were plagued with idolatry. They never overcame this
sin and it eventually destroyed them.
We too have sin in our lives that is
just as difficult for us to overcome. This sin is a form of rebellion against
God. Our attitude though about this sin is crucial to God. We can either
pretend to submit to God when in fact we are only agreeing with him or we can
cooperate in a spirit of submission to Him about this sin in our lives. We will
struggle with sin until we are finally released by death or by rapture. We must
never give up the struggle against sin just because it is a struggle. Our
attitude about this sin is key to victory in the daily struggle against it in
our lives. The other alternative is to set ourselves against God and continue
to invite it’s consequences into our lives.
We too are to judge other believers in
the sense of letting them know of their past sins if they are unaware or
unrepentant of them just as God did with Israel. Rebellion against God in
believers lives must never be swept under the rug, ignored by us in the
tolerant spirit of our age. God never does that with His people and has
commanded the church to fulfill this responsibility to one another (James 5; 1
John 5).