 longs, for people to be saved from judgement.
We know that sin and rebellion have to be paid for.
We know that God can’t just look the other way when people reject his pattern for life, and as a result, hurt others, damage themselves, and fail as stewards of creation.
There has to be judgment!
But you cannot depend on somebody else’s right standing before God, in order to ensure your own.
You cannot buy salvation insurance.
And of course that makes perfect sense!
Think of a thief, in court, standing before the judge.
But the thief interjects, “Your honour, I ought to be spared the punishment, because, yes, I did offend, but my next door neighbour has never stolen anything in his life!
Anyone can see the flaw in that logic!
Except that even today, I meet people who view other people, usually some member of their family, as some kind of a lucky charm.
A walking, talking, 4 leaf clover.
Someone in their family, who they see as offering some kind of religious covering, religious insurance.
And they talk about this other person, as if knowing them, somehow exempts themselves, from the reality of facing God’s judgment.
There is no salvation insurance.
But hasn’t God promised,?
But in living as if there is, these Israelites are taking a promise that God had made in one context, and seeking to claim it, in an entirely different context!
See God had promised, to his people, the ancestors of those in exile in Babylon, God had promised that whole families, would be included within the blessings of the covenant.
So gracious was God, in pouring out his blessing on that first generation of his people, that those who came later, in subsequent generations, they too would reap the fruit of God’s kindness.
So, Deuteronomy 7:9 for example, Know therefore that the Lord your God is God;, he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations, of those who love him, and keep his commandments.
This all becomes particularly important, next week, in chapter 18, but we can get a little head start on it today, because it will help us see why the people of Israel so easily fell into this misunderstanding of thinking someone else’s right standing before God counted for them.
See the assumption built into those promises, in Deuteronomy 7:9, and made absolutely explicit in the very next verse, is that those future generations will reap the benefits of God’s kindness, because they themselves love God and keep his commandments!
And it was an assurance that God wouldn’t just unilaterally abandon his covenant once the original generation had died out.
What God was offering in entering into a covenant relationship with the people of Israel, wasn’t just a limited lifetime guarantee.
I bought a new Bible the other week, and much to my delight, I discovered that it has a lifetime guarantee! So if it stops functioning, I’m not entirely sure what that looks like, but if it stops functioning at any point, I can get my 29 dollars back!
But if, when I die, I leave my new Bible to my son Jamie, and then in his old age, the Bible stops working, if all the pages fall out, or something, I don’t imagine that the Bible people will give Jamie the 29 dollars back!
That was the kind of relationship that the false gods of the ancient world were thought to offer.
They were a capricious lot, and there was no guarantee that any arrangement you thought you had entered into with them, would count for your children, or your grandchildren too.
But within a context of continued obedience, continued love for God, then generation after generation would receive the blessings of God.
Ezekiel and the rest of the Exiles though, are not in that context are they?
The exiles were in a context of generation after generation of rebellion.
This wasn’t one generation teaching the next what it means to obey God and keep his commandments.
This was a nation who had collectively walked away from God.
But you cannot buy salvation insurance.
You can buy alien abduction insurance, to cover the costs of, well, I don’t know, whatever the costs are that you incur when you’re abducted by aliens.
One English company even sold insurance to cover women in the case of virgin conception, to cover the cost of raising a child born unexpectedly in that manner!
You can buy insurance for just about any eventuality, but you cannot buy salvation insurance.
Now, this highlights the challenge that we face, standing where we do in salvation history, after the life and death, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
We don’t share the same context as any of God’s people in the Old Testament!
Nothing of what God said to them, did he speak into situations that mirror ours.
But we have to make sure that any similarities we see don’t lead us to conclude that the contexts are identical, and therefore any promise or Word of God applies to us in exactly the same way as it did to the original hearers.
We, for example, and most significantly, see God’s plans and purposes fulfilled in their rightful place:, In Christ Jesus.
We stand at a time when God has past tense, judged sin.
We live in the age when, chapter 14 verse 11, we have been made God’s people, through Jesus’ death in our place.
Ezekiel’s countrymen, would see only a partial judgement of sin.
Their own sin and rebellion still had to be paid for.
And in fact, some, besides the righteous, some sons and daughters would come out of it.
See verse 22, as a sign and a comfort to others. You will be consoled, God says, when you see their conduct and their actions, for you will know that I have done nothing in it without cause, declares the Sovereign Lord.
When those in exile, see the wickedness, in those who escaped the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, they would see that God is absolutely just and right, and that judgment was both deserved and necessary.
God hadn’t done anything, without just cause.
One of the great themes of this book of Ezekiel, is his concern for God’s honour.
See God, for who he is.
I wonder what our, kind of, overarching goal for life is?
Or do we long for the right thing to be done.
Or, is our great desire, that we be vindicated, on each and every occasion?
Will we endure hardship, and persecution, and suffering, so that through us, God’s glory might be seen in the world?
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