September 9 - Ezekiel 31-33: No Pleasure

Tell them, 'As sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked. I want the wicked to change their ways and live. Turn your life around! Reverse your evil ways! Why die, Israel?' (33:11)

I'm thankful that God keeps telling us what He's like and how He feels about us. After the seemingly endless messages of doom, I needed to be reminded of God's character and of His deep love for all of His image bearers. Even the wicked ones.

I'd already forgotten that Ezekiel mentioned the exact same thing a few chapters back. I've been more focused on the judgments and messages of doom.

Do you think I take any pleasure in the death of wicked men and women? Isn't it my pleasure that they turn around, no longer living wrong but living right - really living? (18:23)

Motherhood has helped me understand this point. My three-year-old has become rather determined to have her own way, regardless of what I say. She's getting spanked more often for willful defiance. And in the moment when she realizes that she's going to be spanked, she yells, "But I don't want a spanking, Mommy!"

I take no pleasure in spanking her. In fact, I hate it. I so wish she would just obey me, and I'd be off the hook for disciplining her. But she's a sinful, disobedient little image-bearer, just like her Mommy, and God tells us to love her by disciplining her. We're trying to teach her that her choices have consequences and to help her understand our authority so that eventually she'll willingly place herself under God's authority.

In a small way, I imagine that's how God feels. He doesn't enjoy giving Israel and other nations the consequences that He's warned them about for centuries. But He is the Perfect Judge, and His ways are always righteous and just.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, God continually reminds us that He is for us, and through Christ, He has done everything to bring us back to Him. He's even preserved His Word for almost three thousand years so we can know Him as He truly is.

Mighty God! Far beyond our reach! Unsurpassable in power and justice! It's unthinkable that he'd treat anyone unfairly. (Job 37:23) 

He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way (Lamentations 3:33) 

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. (John 3:16-17) 

But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. (Romans 5:8) 

[Our Savior God] wants not only us but everyone saved, you know, everyone to get to know the truth we've learned: that there's one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us - Jesus, who offered himself in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free. (1 Timothy 2:4-6)

I'm grateful for the glimpse today of our loving and merciful Father in heaven who takes no pleasure in our human frailty and failure.

As I've been struggling with these difficult readings in Ezekiel, I re-read the introduction to 66 Love Letters and appreciated the reminder of the bigger picture:

"You tremble when you recognize the Storyteller's impossibly high and unbending standards until you realize they are not the impositions of a tyrant requiring that you do things His way, but they are rather the call of a lover inviting you to enjoy His perfection." pg. xxvii

Lord, I pray You'll bring this to mind when I get too bogged down in the judgment and doom in these prophetic books. Please remind me that You're using Ezekiel to invite me to enjoy Your perfection. May I truly enjoy You for who You are, for Your perfection.