God’s Ways Are Just!

19th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/19/14
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32


God’s Ways Are Just!
I. He holds each sinner accountable.
II. He wants each sinner to repent.


It happened more than two months ago and people in our area are still calling for justice in the shooting death of John Crawford inside the Beavercreek Walmart. Perhaps you’ve read more about this incident than I have, but I’m not clear what kind of justice these people want. Do they want the officer involved to be temporarily suspended or permanently removed from the police force? Do they simply want a trial by jury? If so, what charges are they looking for? And if it would go to trial, are they willing to accept whatever decision the jury makes, or, will they continue to cry for justice if the verdict isn’t what they want? I suppose there will always be people who feel that justice wasn’t served in this case.

But that’s the way it is with this life. Things just don’t seem just; they don’t seem fair. Why do some criminals spend their entire lives committing their crimes and remain free, while occasionally innocent people are declared guilty and sent to prison?

And then there’s that nagging question that never seems to get answered: Why do good people suffer while bad people seem to have a life of ease? Why does the little girl spend her remaining days on earth in a room on the cancer floor of the children’s hospital, while the drug dealer spends his days living in the lap of luxury? It’s just not fair!

If you’ve thought that way, I’m sure you’re aware you’re not alone. In fact, we not only accuse life of being unfair, we even level that accusation at God. Why is it that he seems to punish the innocent and lets the guilty go scot-free?

Those same things were in the hearts and minds of the people that the prophet Ezekiel served about 590 BC. They didn’t simply wonder if God was being unfair; they actually accused him of it. And it gave God the opportunity to defend himself. In statement after statement God declared he was fair and just, absolutely fair and just.

As people who struggle with God’s justice at times, these are good words for us to hear and take to heart. God’s ways are just! May he lead us to see how true that is and respond to him with real repentance and true obedience.

Part I.

Remember how often as a child you thought you were being treated unjustly. It was almost unbearable! Your parents treated your sibling so much better than they treated you. Your younger brother never got punished for things they way you did. Your parents always let him do things they refused to let you do when you were that age. And then there was this one—he’s the one who did something wrong and both of you got blamed for it! How could your parents be so blind to the truth?

He did something wrong and you got punished for it. The Jews to whom Ezekiel wrote these words knew all about that. In fact, they had a clever little proverb which expressed how they felt. “The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” If you eat sour grapes and your own teeth don’t feel right, you have no one to blame but yourself. So why would the Jews say that their fathers ate the sour grapes and their teeth were hurting?

You need to know their situation. I mentioned that these words were written about 590 BC. It was the beginning of the Babylonian captivity. Decades earlier a wicked king named Manasseh had ruled the Jews for 55 years and his reign was soiled with injustice, idolatry and murder. One Bible writer stated that he filled the streets with blood. The Lord was patient, but finally his patience ran out. The Babylonians attacked and defeated the Jews. Centuries of Jewish freedom came to an end.

By the time Ezekiel wrote these words, two deportations of Jews had taken place, one in 605 and another in 593. The Babylonians took the best of the Jews into exile, men such as Daniel. Ezekiel’s message to them was that the worst was yet to come. Jerusalem and their beloved Temple would be destroyed.

And the people’s response was, “That’s not fair! Our fathers were the ones who sinned against the Lord decades earlier. They are the ones who followed the evil ways of Manasseh. But we’re the ones paying for it. Our lives have been cruelly disrupted because of their disobedience. They were able to live out their days in our beloved Jerusalem. We’re the ones who will die in exile. It’s not fair, Lord!”

The holy God, who owes no one an explanation, in love provided an explanation. Punishment doesn’t get shared or transferred. God told them, “If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin, he will die for it; because of the sin he has committed he will die.” It’s not the case as it was with you as a child that one person sins and everyone gets punished for it. God does not lump us all together and punish the whole lot. He speaks clearly here. “The soul who sins is the one who will die.”

Likewise, righteousness is not shared or transferred. In the verses between the two sections of our text, God relates that a righteous man’s life cannot save his wicked son. He stated, “Will such a man live? He will certainly not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he will surely be put to death and his blood will be on his own head.”

Plain and simple—God holds each person accountable. It may look like we’re suffering for what some other person did. It may look like the wicked person is going scot-free, but looks can be deceiving. We aren’t seeing the big picture. We can’t see it. But God can. God does.

God’s ways are just. He holds each sinner accountable.

“The soul who sins is the one who will die.” Those are sobering words. They make each one of us squirm. Especially when you consider that God isn’t merely speaking of physical death; he’s including spiritual death as well. He’s talking about separation from him in hell. Those are the wages of sin we deserve. And it won’t do any good for us to claim that God is being unfair. We know our sins, our daily sins. Our critical attitude. Our prejudices. Our lack of care and compassion. Our judgmental thoughts. Our biting comments. The soul who sins is the one who will die. God’s ways are just! That’s what we deserve. But God’s ways are also gracious and merciful. He meted out his justice in his Son, Jesus. Jesus died my death. Jesus lived a holy life for me. God’s perfect justice and his mercy met at the cross of Christ. Thank God his justice for all sins of all people of all time was satisfied there. God’s ways are just. He holds each person accountable. My account and your account were paid by Jesus.

Part II.

There are several reactions to being accused. We can become defensive, trying to explain why we did what we did. We can also become offensive—we go on the attack. We shift the focus from ourselves to our accuser. We level charges against him.

You might feel like that’s what’s happening here in Ezekiel 18. And you’d be absolutely correct, if it weren’t for the fact that the other party in this case is none other than the holy God who knows all and sees all. It’s not just a foolish position to take in accusing God; it’s deadly.

Notice that God had the final say in this matter and that’s the way it should be. God didn’t minimize what the Jews in exile were experiencing. But they missed the point. Their hardships were his loving discipline, not his punishment. He intended to use this exile to draw them closer to him.

And that’s what happened as they stopped blaming their fathers for their predicament and began to acknowledge their own sins. God’s will is not for us to defend our innocence, but to admit our guilt. He doesn’t want to hear how we’ve obeyed and served him and thus deserve better treatment; he wants to hear us confess our transgressions and admit that we deserve his wrath and punishment.

In short, he wants us to repent and he says so repeatedly here in our text. “Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” The root meaning of the word “repent” is to turn. Turn 180 degrees. Instead of embracing and enjoying sin, turn away from it.

And then the Lord does what he deeply desires to do in every sinner. He wants to give us a new heart and a new spirit. He does that by faith in Jesus. The second part of repentance is something that God does for us. Through the good news of Jesus he creates and sustains saving faith in Jesus which grabs hold of the forgiveness Jesus won for us and makes it our own. And then, instead of dying, we live! We live with our God in daily forgiveness. We live with our God in daily peace. We will live with him forever in heaven’s bliss and glory.

God’s ways are just. He wants each sinner to repent.

What important things do you do each day? I mean things that your life depends on. Well, you eat and drink. You breathe. You rest and sleep so that you can live tomorrow.

What important thing should you do each day for your spiritual life? I can think of nothing better than to “repent and live.” As Martin Luther wrote in the first of his 95 theses, Jesus wants the whole life of believers to be repentance. We can do nothing better than to acknowledge every day how we’ve sinned against our God and our neighbor, to turn from those sins and to trust in Jesus for forgiveness. When we do that, we know and feel the sweet justice of our God who sends our sins away as far as the east is from the west. He fills our hearts with his comfort and peace. He removes our guilt and fills our hearts with his love, a love that moves us to love and serve him. That’s what God is looking for in us. May he give it to us through his Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.