September 27, 2020 Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Dear Friends in Christ,
If we pay attention we know what brings our loved ones pleasure. Maybe they like a certain treat or type of food. We know they enjoy a good massage or having their hair brushed. We can bring them pleasure in telling them their team won and a team they don’t like lost. We see their face light up at receiving a certain gift. We know what pleases them.
What gives God pleasure? What makes God happy? People worshipping Him consistently. Trust in his Word. Prayer. Faith. Love.
Today we are going to delve into something we probably don’t think a lot about. The mind of God. He lets us in through the words of Ezekiel. What is our Lord thinking?
“WHAT IS GOD’S GOOD PLEASURE?”
God delights in life. He has since the beginning. He took man from dust and put air in his lungs and made him a living creature. In the Gospel of John He says that whoever believes in Jesus should not perish but have eternal life. He tells us to have life and have it abundantly, also in the Gospel of John.
Life was poured out on you at the baptismal font. You feed on the living self of Christ at the Communion rail. From this pulpit, the Father speaks into your heart new life. What is God’s good pleasure? That you live.
Why do people die? Does death give God pleasure? Never! People die, we die, because we chase our own pleasures. “Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.” (v. 30b)
God designed us for life, life like His own. When we live to make ourselves happy that is the real killer. “Behold all souls are mine…the soul who sins shall die…” (v. 4) Turn down God’s gift of life and you’re a goner, gone forever. “You’re dying because you’re guilty, not because somebody else sinned.” That makes it very personal. The fact you will die begins and ends with you.
We can’t pass that off. Ezekiel was hearing the blame game. God heard it in the Garden of Eden. Do you ever whine, “Life’s not fair.”? “There wasn’t anything I could have done about it.” The Lord could just let us wallow in this quagmire of excuse making. He is heart-struck by the accusation. God defends Himself even to us: “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?” (v. 25) Ezekiel then quotes the Lord in the next verse, “When a righteous person turns away from his righteousness, and does injustice, he shall die for it; for the injustice that he has done he shall die.” (v. 26) There are no excuses.
Still, God says, “When a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life.” (v. 27) God wants to forgive. God wants to give life. He declares, “Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die.” (v. 28)
We need to turn away and repent and cast away our selfish desires. Only the Lord can create a new heart within us. We turn away from our sin to Christ’s forgiveness. We cast away the death we deserve and turn to the Lord’s gift of life. The resurrected Christ has given the good news that changes everyone. God gives life.
On April 26, 2006, Newell and Colleen Cerak received a phone call that their daughter Whitney, who was traveling in a Taylor University van, was involved in a crash with a semi. The van had nine passengers, five were dead. The Cerak’s daughter Whitney was one of the five.
That same evening another phone rang in the home of Don and Susie van Ryn. They were told their daughter Laura had been in the van; she was in intensive care, barely clinging to life.
More than 1,000 people came to Whitney Cerak’s funeral. Meanwhile, the van Ryn family stayed at Laura’s bedside. She came out of the coma. Five weeks after the crash her sister asked, “What’s your name?” To the shock of the family, the girl they thought was Laura said, “Whitney.” The coroner and the hospital had confused the two horribly battered young women.
The van Ryn family for weeks had believed their daughter Laura was alive. Devout Christians, the van Ryns now rejoiced to see the Cerak family receive Whitney back from the dead. The Cerak family were also devout Christians, and four years later, they invited the van Ryns to Whitney’s wedding. Whitney was married in the same church where her funeral was held.
God makes no mistakes. “The soul who sins shall die.” (v. 4) Because He takes up the whole horrible load of my sin, Jesus dies. No mistake. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. Why? The Lord, your God, declares that He has “no pleasure in the death of anyone.” “So turn.” Turn to Jesus “and live.” (v. 32)
Amen.