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Ezekiel 7:27  The king mourns, the prince is wrapped in despair, and the hands of the people of the land are paralysed by terror.  According to their way I will do to them, and according to their judgements I will judge them, and they shall know that I am the LORD. 

One of Israel’s greatest sins was hypocrisy; they always felt vindicated when their prophets pronounced God’s Judgement on the surrounding nations, but felt defensive and ‘hurt’ when their own very similar, and even worse, sins were exposed.  This is the nature of the human heart: seeing clearly the wrong in others, but being blind to one’s own failings.

Ezekiel’s words, ‘by their own standards I will judge them’ is applied to all of us by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he speaks about not judging and about specks of dust and planks in people’s eyes:  “For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:1-5)  Paul presses home the same point in Romans 2:1-4 when he talks about how fair and even-handed it will all be on ‘the day of God’s wrath’.

So why is this important to us?  Israel’s problem was their lack of sensitivity to the power and the intensity of God’s wrath.  In spite of strong warnings from many prophets, they were devastated when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Babylonians.  They were equally devastated 600 years later when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans, and this in spite of the strong warnings from the Lord Jesus himself.

We are God’s people, the ‘New Jerusalem’, the ‘New Temple’, the ‘New Israel’ – and we are waiting for the Lord to Return in power to judge and to save.  While Jesus was on earth he made it quite clear what the ‘Day of the Lord’ would look like (eg Mark 13).  And Paul warns us in 1 Corinthians 10:6 that the Scriptures are to serve as a warning to us that we don’t make the same mistakes as they made and come under the same Judgement.

Warnings of God’s wrath and judgement have never been popular, and that is especially so today.  I must admit that I find it very distressing when the M’Cheyne reading program requires me to read, day after day, about God, the LORD, the compassionate, covenant-keeping God, pouring out his wrath upon his own Covenant People whom he faithfully loves (with ‘chesed’ love!). But these are truths we can’t afford to ignore.  The Good News for us is that we have a King who ‘mourned’ in our place, a ‘Prince’ who was ‘clothed with despair’ in order that we might escape the punishment we deserve.  And it is good for me to be reminded often of what Jesus went through for me as he suffered and died on the cross under his Father’s Judgement.

“There was one who was willing to die in my stead that a soul so unworthy might live; and the path to the Cross he was willing to tread all the sins of my life to forgive.  They are nailed to the Cross, they are nailed to the Cross, Oh how much he was willing to bear!  With what anguish and loss, Jesus went to the Cross, and he carried my sins with him there!” (Carrie Breck)  How foolish it would be not to flee to him and hide in the shelter he provides against that Day!

– Bruce Christian