Bible Passage
Ezekiel and the Terrible God of Judgment
by Eric Venable
So I’ve been reading through the book of Ezekiel now for the last several months on a quest to read the books of the Bible that I’ve never read through, and to be honest, I’ve been pretty shocked disturbed. If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, you probably don’t want to flip to Ezekiel (I’d just stick with the gold standard—Leviticus). If Stanley Kubrick was a Christian while he was alive and made a film, it would straight up be Ezekiel chapter one with all its glorious strangeness that includes an other-worldly vision of God (complete with angelic animal creatures and ufo-like spinning objects!). But something else that has struck me, and you get this in most of the prophets, is just how much judgment fills this book. Now, like all the prophets, Ezekiel doesn’t preach all judgment from God, all the time. Some of the more moving pictures we get of God’s coming new covenant redemption can be found in places like Ezek. 36 and 37. However, I would say that large portions of this book involve God telling his prophet to proclaim, in horrifying graphic detail, how God will bring mass death and destruction to his people, and Israel’s enemies, which include folks like Egypt, Tyre, Sidon and a bunch of other people around Israel. And after reading chapter after chapter of the gory, bloody, terrifying details of God’s judgment, you can begin to feel a bit overwhelmed. Here’s just a sample of the kind of thing that you can find in most chapters in Ezekiel:
Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your abominations, therefore I will withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity. A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst; a third part shall fall by the sword all around you; and a third part I will scatter to all the winds and will unsheathe the sword after them. Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself. And they shall know that I am the LORD—that I have spoken in my jealousy—when I spend my fury upon them” (Ezek. 5:11-13)
So as Bible-believing Christians, what do we do with passages like this, where the God we love and serve is furious and determined to bring panic-inducing judgment upon the people he has created and cared for? How can we worship and love a God who gets really really angry and then swears that he will have no pity and will satisfy himself by pouring out red-hot wrath on people?
Another interesting aspect of the above passage is that it contains a phrase that you see literally dozens and dozens of times in the book of Ezekiel, and that is the phrase, “And they shall know that I am the LORD…” Now there are occasions when this phrase follows God’s proclamation of how he will redeem and save his people, but, the vast majority of occasions this phrase comes immediately after a terrible description of how God will bring mass, bloody destruction to a particular group of people. So this phrase tells us something very important in the book of Ezekiel and that is how God particularly reveals an essential part of his character in his display of wrath and judgment on sin and sinners. It as if all throughout Ezekiel, God tells people, “In case you weren’t sure exactly who I am, you will definitely know who I am after I completely destroy you.” Talk about an aspect of God that most in our culture would find immediately offensive! However, as Sola-Scriptura Christians, we must ask ourselves, “Do we see God’s judgment as an essential part of his nature, as essential as his love, mercy and sovereignty?”
On a side but related note, I find it extremely interesting that even pagan people, when pushed, can easily imagine a furious God of judgment. I recently remember hearing a particular victim of Bernie Madoff on CNN speaking of how she hopes God will show Madoff no mercy. Even people who scoff at an idea of an afterlife can easily, without any squeamishness , craft a hell for people like Hitler or Bin Laden.
But as Christians who stand on what the church has confessed for centuries and centuries, that God has revealed himself in a special way in the Word of God written, we need to really wrestle with the implications of what so many passages of judgment mean when we come across them over and over again in the Bible. Here are few things that have swirling around in my mind for a few months now regarding what these passages of God’s terrible judgment mean for us.
1. Every passage in the Bible regarding God’s judgment gives us a great picture of the awfulness of sin. If you ever feel yourself growing a hard heart towards specific sin in your life or the sin-soaked world that we are surrounded by, we need to read through books of the Bible like Ezekiel to shock us back into a God-centered perspective on the ugliness of sin. We live in a world where sin is most often the punch line, the reward for hard work, a popular escape, or just the cultural wallpaper that we nonchalantly walk by every day without giving it the first thought. Ezekiel shows us that sin should be stirring and even infuriating, something that makes us want to jump up and scream and yell as if we had just woken from a dream and discovered that our house was burning down around us.
2. Every passage in the Bible regarding God’s judgment should make our hearts swell for love of the gospel, a message which fundamentally proclaims the wonders and glory of a crucified king who has ended God’s righteous fury towards sinners. Really believing this is what enables us to be outraged at our sin and others, and yet be gentle, humble and joyful, because we see that God has made a way for his righteous and terrible judgment to be extinguished. Our good, God-centered anger towards sin should always be tempered with the knowledge of the gospel, that God has actually made a way, through his Son Jesus, to pour out all his wrath on sin so that no furious anger is left for his people who justly deserve all the condemnation and judgment of God that we see in books like Ezekiel.
Check out these books if you’re looking for some good stuff on how we we understand our merciful, loving, sovereign and judgmental God: -The commentary on Ezekiel in the NIV Application Commentary Series. This is by Iain Duguid and is a great guide that is extremely readable and pastoral if you’re trying to navigate an intimidating book like Ezekiel. He does a great job of helping us understand passages of God’s terrible judgment in light of Christ’s work. - Tim Keller’s A Reason for God. I’m about 2/3 of the way through this book and have really enjoyed it. In the first half, he attempts to answer the most common objections against the God of the Bible and in the second half he puts forward his positive case for the existence of the God of the Bible. In my opinion, his chapter, “How can a loving God send people to hell?” is the best stuff in the whole book and almost worth the price of the whole thing.