Today’s reading: Ezekiel 6; 1 Corinthians 16
Reading Ezekiel 6 this morning, I couldn’t help but think about how important it is that we agree with God’s Word about what He declares to be sin, even if we don’t like it, agree with it, or feel bad about doing it.
There are some sins that we can all, pretty universally, get behind as sin. You ask 100 people if it’s wrong to rape or murder, you’re probably going to get 100 people saying, “Yes.” But then there are other things that God calls sinful that our culture either doesn’t take any issue with, or actually celebrates, and it’s in these areas that people tend to lean more toward the culture or their feelings about it than toward the Word of God. Right now, homosexuality is maybe one of the biggest in this category. Our culture not only affirms, but celebrates homosexuality, and really more considers it a sin to not actively support it, and yet the Bible calls it sin. Another right now would be sex outside of marriage, or pornography. Both are viewed, by our culture, as healthy expressions of sexuality and sexual freedom, but the Bible calls them sin. Drinking to excess, or doing drugs that impair your ability to make wise decisions, these aren’t taboo in our culture anymore, and are completely acceptable, but God calls them sin. Excessive eating, excessive consumerism, selfishness with our money, resources, or our time, are all things the Bible calls sin that the world around us either takes no issue with, or, at times, celebrates.
The problem tends to be when the sin we want to indulge doesn’t have any immediate, obvious, negative consequences. You explode in anger at your spouse? You’re going to be dealing with the immediate repercussions of that sin, and so you recognize it as a problem. Whether you’re willing to do anything about it or not is a different question, but you're at least more likely to recognize there is an issue. But so many of these other sins God warns us against don’t have such immediate or impactful consequences, and that makes it easy to convince ourselves that it really isn’t so bad, and God is probably overacting a bit in taking issue with it. We, like Adam and Eve, start to believe that we, and our culture around us, clearly know better than our Creator. But, whether we recognize it or not, sin is damaging; to us, to our families, and to our communities at large; and we will eventually run into problems when we decide that we know better than God.
The middle of our chapter today is what makes me say this, where God says:
"Yet I will leave some of you alive. When you have among the nations some who escape the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them."
What God is describing here is not His scattered people receiving a new revelation, information they were previously unaware of, and recognizing that what they previously did in ignorance was wrong. No, He specifically says that they will remember, and when they realize where their actions have led them, "they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed."
Way too often, this is how sin works. We indulge a "small" sin and see no consequences from it, making it safe to indulge again, again, and again. As we indulge our sin more, we need more of it, so we invest more in it or we edge our way further into it, all the while becoming increasingly comfortable with it. Where once our minor indulgence left us with a twinge of guilt, we begin to step boldly into the sin, assured by our own past experiences of just how wrong God is to call it a sin. And when we do feel that guilt or shame bubbling up, we whisper to ourselves that that doesn't really mean we are doing something wrong, it just means we have been conditioned by an overly Puritanical upbringing or church culture to be too sensitive, and our guilt and shame become something to overcome rather than something that gives us pause. We become like the Israelites God is speaking about, who at one time dabbled cautiously in idolatry, but then gave themselves fully over to it, turning entirely away from God.
This is the ultimate goal of sin, to turn our hearts away from God; to convince us that God doesn't really know what He is talking about and really can't be trusted. And the problem is that there is no isolation of this erosion of our faith. When we begin to doubt the Lord, it isn't constrained to just the area of sin we have been indulging, but it spreads like a virus, infecting every aspect of our relationship with God, causing us to question and doubt every Word He has spoken, until we begin to wonder why we ever bothered following Him at all.
When things get this far, the greatest mercy we can receive from God is to come face to face, like the Israelites, with the full brunt of our sin; to have our eyes opened to all the damage and destruction our sin has wrought in our lives, and to know just how far astray our sin has led us; that it might turn us back to the Lord.
When we choose to listen to our culture or our feelings, rather than the Lord, when He calls something sin, we make that choice at very real peril. The Lord does not call us away from sin because He wants to keep us from enjoying the best things life has to offer, He calls us away from sin specifically because He wants us to enjoy the best things life has to offer, and sin will only ever pollute, corrupt, or destroy those best things.
I don't always know best, but I have a Father in heaven who does.
God, give us the hearts to trust your Word over our own inclinations, and to turn from the sin which so easily entangles us, so that we can know, experience, and enjoy the fullness of the life you have for us.
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