‘“The young men of Heliopolis and Bubastis will fall by the sword, and the cities themselves will go into captivity. Dark will be the day at Tahpanhes when I break the yoke of Egypt; there her proud strength will come to an end. She will be covered with clouds, and her villages will go into captivity. So I will inflict punishment on Egypt, and they will know that I am the Lord.’” Ezekiel 30:17-19.
Even out of context, these three verses sound terrifyingly harsh. I cannot count the number of times, even before I became a christian, that I sat down with verses and passages like this and questioned how a God who is all loving and could say things like this. I have questioned how a God who is all loving, could kill countless people, send multitudes of His followers into war, and even have people like Queen Esther order men to be impaled on poles for ordering a genocide upon the Jews.
This past week, this question stared me square in the face as I began reading through Ezekiel. After reading a couple of books which briefly touched on the subject and sifting through the pages of Ezekiel, pieces of this puzzle began to slowly fall into place as the Lord shed His light upon the issue.
Our God is a God who wants to be desired. I love the way John Eldredge articulates this truth in His book Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret to a Man’s Soul:
“I am convinced beyond a doubt of this: God wants to be loved. He wants to be a priority to someone. How could we have missed this? From cover to cover, from beginning to end, the cry of God’s heart is, ‘Why won’t you choose me?’ It is amazing to me how humble, how vulnerable God is on this point. ‘You will find me,’ says the Lord, ‘when you seek me with all your heart.’ (Jeremiah 29:13). In other words, ‘Look for me, pursue me — I want you to pursue me.’ Amazing. As Tozer says, ‘God waits to be wanted.’
This love and worship which the Lord so evidently wants, is made complete in our obedience. We see this stated clearly and boldly in 1 John 2:5-6. “But if anyone obeys His Word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did.” This fact is again supported in chapter five of first John in verses two and three. “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep His commands. And His commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”
Upon first reading these two scriptures I was faced again, with more difficult questions, questions like: “How could this possibly be fair?” And, “If He really loves me, wouldn’t He want for me what I truly desire?” The truth is, He is a just God and He does want for us what we truly desire, as long as it lines up with His will.
To provide some perspective, picture this: You’re God at the beginning of time. You have created the Earth to tilt on its axis, the sun to rise, vegetables to eat, and sons and daughters to glorify You, as it says in Isaiah 43: 6-7; 10. What happens about four days later, is these sons and daughters you have created, choose to betray you, despite the fact that it goes against your command, against the very design which you have created in complete divinity and perfection, and against their own wellbeing. Of course it would be found grotesque.
The Lord knew we would fall short, but of course He is still angry when we sin. Sin hurts both Him and His beloved. If we had a God who didn’t get angry when we disobeyed and when we chose idols instead of Him, we would be left with a God of apathy. We would be left with a God of injustice. Isn’t it much more infinitely loving that our God fights for us? Is it not in our favor, to serve a God who is not tame, not safe, but powerful and dangerous? Without these qualities, we would serve a God who would sit idly by as we are abused and thrown around by not only this dark world, evil forces in the spiritual realm, but also our own pride and selfish ambition.
Ezekiel 23:37 says, “They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people and I will be their God.”
I think this is a beautiful example of the Lord truly loving us enough to save us. Quite frankly, the entirety of the book of Ezekiel can seem extremely gruesome when taken at immediate face value. However, when the Lord’s anger and passion for His people are considered as just that, FOR His people rather than AT them, the lenses shift completely. What is revealed is a God who loves deeply and fights for justice just as passionately as He fought on the cross for our eternal dwelling with Him. It is evident in Romans 12:19 and in Ezekiel 25:17, that not only does vengeance belong to the Lord but He actually hungers after it. He hungers after justice for Himself and for us. In fact, God is rich in justice.
So often throughout the Scriptures, God’s passion and anger resonate in passages in which His people defile themselves and others defile His people. In His fierceness and His intensity, I see a God who is rich in vulnerability and humility by expressing His anger and His broken heart for a people He desires the well being and the praise of, yet so often do they choose anything and everything that isn’t Him. It results in their hurt as well. It’s a raw, real, and beautiful thing. It’s strikingly admirable, and strikingly human. In this, we see the One who created us in His image.
Even from a psychological perspective, we see that because we are made in His image, some of our most innate desires reflect the Lord, however, we often pervert them with our sinful nature. How often, for example, is it that we desire to defend? How often do we absolutely hunger for justice? We constantly see the desire to defend after we or a loved one is wronged. This is the case in books and movies, and it’s such an innate desire and reaction that we even see it in small children. As soon as we’re old enough to defend ourselves we try with everything we have, whether it’s physically, mentally, or emotionally. The Lord makes it clear that He has this desire as well, and that He is our ultimate Defender, and it isn’t meant to be done all by ourselves. What a comforting fact that is. That our God does not seek revenge, and nor are we meant to, but He seeks to protect, and to avenge in a just and holy manner.
Daniel 3:16-18 says, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from your majesty’s hand. But even if He does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.’” He wants us to rely on Him in all situations. Where we fall short, He shows up and fills every empty space. He exceeds our expectations when He shows up. We merely need “faith as small as a mustard seed.” He is our protector. We see this all over scripture with all the Lord’s people.
We serve a God who seeks us first and desires us and pursues us longer and far more constantly than anyone else ever will, and even further beyond what we could ever deserve. Yet He calls us worthy of His pursuit.
It can be argued that an all-loving God would never be gruesome or kill people, just because they wrong His people or because they lead others astray or go against how He intends them to live. However, we are then faced with the question: “What kind of creator invites His creation to do the exact opposite of what He designed them for?” We serve a God who is just. He would be a worthless protector if He weren’t dangerous, a worthless judge without recognizing and enforcing morality, and a worthless savior if He didn’t fight for us.
His love is indeed intense, passionate, and bold. It is difficult sometimes to think about the way He has protected His people in the Bible and the ways in which He has sought vengeance and justice. But the reality of it is, He is God. He has the utmost sovereignty and He knows what is loving and what is not. If we truly serve an all-loving God, is it not a given that He knows infinitely more about love than we do? Our Abba is dangerous, but He is also good. His power and His hunger for justice do not make Him any less loving, but on the contrary, they enable Him to be even more loving than we could ever comprehend.
