Like Father, Like Son

If you would please turn with me this morning to Ezekiel chapter 18. We're going to be looking at the entire chapter today, but I want to begin by reading verses 25 through 29. Ezekiel 18 verses 25 through 29. I ask you to stand please in honor of God's word as we read it together this morning. Ezekiel 18 verse 25. Here now, O house of Israel, is my way not just?

Is it not your ways that are not just? 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. Again, when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live.

He shall not die. Yet the house of Israel says, the way of the Lord is not just. O house of Israel, are my ways not just?

Is it not your ways that are not just? Let's pray together. Holy Spirit, please take the passage of Scripture before us today and grant us an accurate understanding of what it means and how it applies to us. And along with that understanding, please give us willing hearts to believe and obey what this word requires of us. Lord, if the old covenant community was capable of blatant disregard for your word, then so are we. So guard us, I pray, from the self-deception that comes from disobedience. Rescue us from the disobedience that comes from unbelief and give us the grace to submit to you in faith and with joy. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

You can be seated. The book of Ezekiel was written during a very dark period in the life of God's people. It was a time of deep depravity and rebellion against God, a time of disregard for the law of God. And it was consequently a time of great chastening for God's people. This chastening was so severe in fact that it appeared as if there would be no recovery for the covenant community.

Now, of course, there would be a recovery. God always preserves a remnant for himself, but there would need to be a whole lot of chastening before that remnant would be ready for restoration. And so as we progress through the prophetic book of Ezekiel, we discover wave after wave of sin getting exposed.

But we come to chapter 18 and we discover a very interesting twist. Instead of God bringing yet another charge against Israel, Israel brings a charge against God. Israel, in so many words, brazenly accuses the Lord of injustice.

It would almost be laughable if it weren't so blasphemous. And yet God, rather than extinguishing them off the face of the earth for their impudence, graciously addresses their accusation. And in addressing this pathetic accusation, he not only defends his absolute justice, but he also exposes and condemns the injustice of Israel. He turns the accusation back on the accusers pointing out the fact that they rightly deserve the full brunt of God's holy justice because they have broken God's law at every point.

But as we've seen time and time again already in the book of Ezekiel, there's a surprising twist to the story. There is an offer of mercy extended to the condemned covenant community. So what Israel learned and what we will learn today is that if God is a God of absolute justice, and if we are lawbreakers, then we have a problem that only mercy can fix. And church, God, who is ever a God of absolute justice, is also a God of infinite mercy.

Well, let's jump in. We'll begin in verses 1 through 4 where we discover first a charge of injustice against God. A charge of injustice against God. Verse 1. The word of the Lord came to me. What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel? The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. So there was a commonly used proverb that was being batted around within the covenant community.

This proverb is right there in verse 2. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. In other words, one generation has done something foolish or harmful, eaten sour grapes, but the next generation is the one who must bear the consequence of the previous generation's actions. Ezekiel's audience of Jewish exiles in Babylon was blaming, essentially, their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents for causing the predicament they found themselves in. Previous generations had sinned, had eaten sour grapes, but this current generation was suffering the consequences of that sin.

Their teeth were set on edge. And, of course, this wasn't just some neutral statement about the state of affairs among the exiles. This was a complaint. They were crying foul. The proverb was asserting that the exile situation was unfair and unjust. But notice this really wasn't a charge of injustice against the parents and grandparents.

They weren't the ones who had raised up Babylon to defeat Israel. God was the one allowing these circumstances to play out, and so God is the one being charged with injustice. God is punishing innocent people for the sins of a previous generation, or so the proverb goes. Now, God rejects this charge by swearing an oath in verse 3. He says, as I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. God is saying, you're not going to repeat this proverb anymore because it's not true.

But then notice the two grounds upon which he denies this charge of injustice. First, God rejects the charge of injustice on grounds that he is sovereign. Verse 3, he says, behold, all souls are mine.

The soul of the Father, as well as the soul of the Son, is mine. It's a statement of absolute, unqualified sovereignty. In other words, every person in every generation belongs to God by virtue of the fact that he created them and rules over them. Therefore, he can do what he pleases with that which is his. This is the same answer Paul gives in Romans 9 to the question, how can God find fault with his creatures since they're so much less powerful than he is? And Paul's answer is, because God is sovereign. Everything belongs to him.

He is the potter and we are the clay. Therefore, we have no right to talk back to him. And I think we can acknowledge that that is a very harsh, almost clinical answer. It's true.

There's no denying it. God can and does do as he pleases, and it is his right to do as he pleases. But that answer, while absolutely true, doesn't really address the charge of injustice, does it? You see, God could be sovereign and not just. His sovereignty simply makes him stronger than us, more privileged than us, but it doesn't mean he is just in the use of that sovereignty. Perhaps God is simply a cosmic dictator who arbitrarily or even maliciously sits on the throne of the universe playing with his creatures like so many mindless ants who exist to serve the whims of an omnipotent being. This could be the case if God's sovereignty is not a just sovereignty. God is sovereign, and so it's not our place to challenge him, but is God just?

That's really the crux of the question. Well, God answers the charge of injustice in that last statement of verse 4. He says, the soul who sins shall die.

And he'll repeat that statement throughout this chapter. The soul who sins shall die. God does not use his sovereign power arbitrarily or maliciously. He uses it in a just and a righteous manner, stipulating the rules of justice very clearly.

If you sin, you will die. That is the rule of justice, and God observes that rule impeccably. In fact, he acts just because he is just. His character gives justice its very definition. The whole premise of Israel's accusation against God assumes some innate sense that justice is good and right.

Where did that innate sense come from if not from their creator? Israel would have no concept of justice if they had not been endowed with it by a just and righteous creator in whose image they were made. So right out of the gate, God answers this charge of injustice on the grounds that he is sovereign, all souls are mine, and that he is just. The soul who sins shall die. Now, there's a devastating implication in God's answer. If Israel is accusing God of punishing the innocent, and God's answer is that he only punishes the guilty, it implies, does it not, that the exiles who are currently experiencing divine judgment are guilty. They evidently are among those souls who sin in verse 4.

We're going to see that explicitly here in a moment, but I want us to notice the implication right here at the start because that really is the root of the issue. The only way sons and daughters of Adam feel comfortable yelling unfair at God is if we think that we are sovereign or that we are righteous, but we are neither. We're not sovereign, and so it's not our place to sit in judgment of God. Neither are we righteous. And so it's not even within our ability to correctly assess the justice or injustice of the very one who gives justice its meaning.

We're subtle, though, just like Israel was. We don't typically accuse God outright. We mask our accusation towards God as an accusation towards other people. We're too sophisticated to blame God directly for injustice. We just blame other people for our sin.

We focus on the faults and flaws of others to the exclusion of our own. We say those baby boomers have really dealt us a terrible hand. They've left an awful mess for us to clean up. Or we say those millennials are ruining everything.

Can't they see what a disaster they're causing? When we begin to experience the death and decay of sin, we don't like it. But rather than confess our sin and repent, we blame shift and accuse and say that generation over there has eaten sour grapes and now we're having to pay for it. It's really nothing more than a masked accusation of injustice against God.

But we forget that we're neither sovereign nor righteous. Well, God is not going to ignore this accusation. In fact, there's going to be a full trial and a verdict.

The court is now in session. And it begins with a case study in Justice in verses 5 through 18, a case study in Justice. God lays out a scenario that includes three generations, a righteous first generation, an unrighteous second generation, and then a righteous third generation.

And he uses this case study to make the point that each generation gets exactly what it deserves. Righteousness yields life, sin yields death. Verse 5, if a man is righteous and does what is just and right, and then he lists several examples of righteous living, essentially describing a man whose morals conform to God's law, verse 9, he walks in my statutes, he keeps my rules by acting faithfully, he is righteous, he shall surely live, declares the Lord. Now, the second generation in verse 10, if he fathers a son who is violent, a shearer of blood who does any of these things, though he himself, the first generation father, did none of these things, and then God describes again a man who does not live his life according to God's law, verse 13, he shall not live. He has done all these abominations, he shall surely die.

His blood shall be upon himself. So an unrighteous man will die for his sin even if his father was righteous. This brings us then to the third generation, verse 14. Now, suppose this man, the second generation guy who was unrighteous, fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father had done, he sees and does not do likewise, verse 17, he shall not die for his father's iniquity, he shall surely live. And so this case study of sorts encompasses all the possible sequences, a righteous man begetting an unrighteous man, an unrighteous man beginning a righteous man, and in every possible scenario, guilt or innocence, is determined not by lineage but by conformity to God's law.

By the way, we're not going to look at it today, but Ezekiel chapter 20 kind of goes with chapter 18. It takes this hypothetical case study and makes it historical by tracing the history of Israel from the Exodus generation all the way to the Exilic generation, and it demonstrates that each successive generation was guilty in its own right. At no point has God punished the descendants for the sins of their ancestors. This case study then describes the justice of God as a justice that is flawlessly consistent and absolute. If you sin, you will die.

If you obey, you will live. At no point does God's justice condone the punishing of an innocent person. And again, we have to ask ourselves what then is the implication. The implication is that the current generation of exiles are not innocent bystanders.

They're guilty bystanders. Now, I want to just pause for a minute and take a brief theological excursion because I think this description of an absolute divine justice that refuses to take generational succession into account raises some important questions for us in light of other Scripture passages that most certainly do describe a generational component not only to the curse of sin, but also to the blessing of righteousness. What are we to do with passages like the Second Commandment in Exodus 20, which says, You shall not make for yourself a carved image.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. And here it is, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Or Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, which say, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

And here it is again, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. What are we to make of all the covenant promises that are given to parents and their children, promises associated with Old Testament circumcision and given to Abraham and his seed, or promises associated with baptism and given to Christians and their children on the day of Pentecost? Does Ezekiel 18 destroy the whole notion of covenant theology and federal headship? Does it make the blessings of the covenant of grace or the curses of the fall an entirely individualistic proposition in which a man or a woman, boy or girl, stands or falls on their own before God with no influence, effect, or significance associated with previous or successive generations? To put it simply, is there a corporate aspect to our standing before God, or is it entirely individualistic?

That's a big question. Well, if we believe that all of Scripture is inspired and inerrant and therefore perfectly consistent with itself, then we cannot deny the reality of a corporate representative nature in God's covenant with man. Scripture makes it very clear that in Adam all have sinned. Romans 5. The whole gospel, in fact, is predicated on the fact that if you are in Christ, if he is your representative before God, then you are credited with his righteousness even though you have sinned. The Christian faith is then unavoidably a covenantal, corporate, representative kind of faith. So our answer to this big question must acknowledge that our standing before God involves both aspects.

It is simultaneously personal and corporate. So how do we put these two aspects together in our understanding of God's economy of grace and judgment? Church, it only works if our starting point for every individual person is one of enmity with God. If our default position is that every human being is a sinner and already stands condemned before God for their sin, then it can legitimately be said that every person receives God's wrath for their own sin because every person is a sinner. However, a parent's sin has undeniable practical effects on children. Children see their parents' sin, and that sin through the habitual observation on the part of the children becomes normalized in the eyes of the children, which has the typical effect of increasing that same sin in the next generation.

What parents allow in moderation, the next generation excuses to great excess. What we need to understand, though, is that long before the child ever consciously and knowingly observed sin in his parents, he possessed a sin nature that was all his own. He wasn't made guilty by the influence of his parents' sin. He was perhaps made more prone to certain sins through the parents' sin, but his sin nature was already there, waiting and even wanting to be exploited. And so it is simultaneously true that number one, every person deserves God's wrath because every person is a sinner. And number two, that short of intervening grace, a parent's sin increases the sinfulness of the next generation and consequently increases the wrath of God against that generation's sin. Sin begets more sin generationally. But this is not unjust because the starting point of every generation is already one of sinfulness. Ezekiel 18 assumes the corporate nature of sin and its consequences. It's not introducing some sort of new individualism in the covenant of grace. No, it's asking whether the corporate nature of sin and its consequences is just.

Is that fair? As it turns out, it is just because the first and the second and the third and the 1,000th generation have all eaten sour grapes. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. None is righteous, no, not one. If that's the situation, then, church, the real question is why would God ever not punish a generation? Why would God allow a sinful parent's faith to ever have a positive effect on subsequent generations of sinners? You see, the fact is not only does sin beget more sin, righteousness somehow miraculously, graciously also begets more righteousness.

That's the miracle. That is exceptionally gracious on God's part. But the starting point of every generation is still one of sinfulness. As we think about these things, I think we come to see in all of this that parents have a huge motivation to be faithful because it really does have consequences. God doesn't owe us the salvation of our children, but he graciously promises to bless and multiply our feeble faithfulness for the good of subsequent generations. And so there's a message in this for hopeless parents who think the souls of their children are beyond the reach of God.

God's grace is more than adequate to cover your failures. So Christian parents trust the Lord with your children. There's also a message here, I think, for arrogant, self-sufficient parents who think their faithfulness is sufficient to secure the salvation of their children. There is no sinner whose faithfulness is adequate to secure the salvation of anyone. So stop trusting your ability and trust the Lord. His grace and his grace alone is sufficient for these things.

I think there's also a motivation for children, and I include even adult children, not to hide behind the faithfulness or even the unfaithfulness of their parents. We don't earn favor with God through the righteousness of our parents, nor do we avoid the wrath of God because of the sin of our parents. Verse 20, the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. This brings us to verses 19 through 24, in which we see a defense of God's justice and mercy. His justice, but also his mercy. First, we are confronted again with the fact that God's justice is an uncompromising justice. Verse 20, the soul who sins shall die. God is just. A sinner gets what he deserves. But then verses 21 through 23 contain, again, a surprising plot twist in the story.

It's an unexpected mercy. Look at it there in verse 21. But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. How can those two things go together? A wicked person and he shall not die. They're incongruous.

They don't belong in the same sentence. Wicked people, according to perfect justice, ought to die. But here, allowance is made for a wicked person to avoid the death penalty through repentance. That's not justice.

That's mercy. A sinner not getting what he deserves. So in answer to Israel's accusation, not only is God not unjust, he is unexpectedly and graciously merciful to sinners. Well, having cleared his name, God now turns the accusation back on the Jewish exiles in verses 25 through 29.

He brings a charge of injustice against Israel. Verse 25, you say the way of the Lord is not just. Hear now, O Israel, is my way not just?

Is it not your ways that are not just? And once again, God reiterates what he's already set forth, namely that he is perfectly just because he never punishes someone who has not sinned. Israel, on the other hand, is the unjust party. They are the ones who want innocent people to die. We see that in verse 19. Why should not the son suffer? And they're the ones who want guilty people to live. We see that in the proverb of verse 2, a proverb that essentially dismisses their own sin by blaming it on their ancestors' sins. But the truth God continues to drive home to Israel and to us is that there are no innocent people. If we are expecting the death of exile and if we're experiencing the death of exile and if God only sends that death to guilty people, then the only possible conclusion is that we are tarred with guilt before God. If that's the case, then we have no right to sit in judgment of God and evaluate his sense of justice. The criminal doesn't get to play judge for a day.

The bank robber doesn't get to advise the bank on how best to secure the vault. We are guilty, and we deserve whatever divine wrath comes our way. This brings us finally to the end of the trial in which God's sentence against guilty Israel is given in verses 30 through 32.

And once again, God surprises us with unexpected grace. God has cleared his own name. He's declared that Israel is guilty not only of injustice, but of all manner of sin. And so in light of what we've learned about God's absolute justice, we expect him to say, therefore, Israel, you are sentenced to death. But what does God say?

Look at verse 30. Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel, everyone according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin.

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God. So turn and live.

Church, that is incredible. We expect the death sentence. In fact, that's what Israel rightly deserves. But what they get instead is an offer of forgiveness and restoration and life. In the face of absolute justice, the hope of mercy is extended from God. Now granted, this chapter leaves us hanging.

There's still mystery and uncertainty at this point. I mean, after all, how are these exiles supposed to do what God's calling them to do? How are they to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit? God is commanding them to do the impossible.

Jeremiah asks, I think with great sarcasm, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil. Sinners can't change themselves.

Sinners don't even want to change themselves. Something extraordinary, something supernatural must happen to these condemned sinners or else this unexpected offer of mercy will be lost on them forever. And in time, we'll come to see how that offer was not lost on the exiles. We'll see how God extended his mercy even further and gave them a new heart and gave them a new spirit that they could not produce on their own.

But then I suspect you already know how this ends, don't you? You know how God fixes the unfixable situation that guilty sinners like us find ourselves in. God fixed the unfixable situation by entering the barren wasteland of a fallen world to become an exile with us.

He's objected himself to all the injustices and the backbiting and the blame shifting that we engage in to show us that's not the way, to show us that we cannot right our wrongs by crying unfair. We cannot wash away the crimson stain of sin simply by pretending it's my parents' fault or it's my grandparents' fault or it's God's fault. Brothers and sisters, Jesus took all of our sin right up to the foot of the throne of heaven and said, Father, punish me for what they have done.

Rather than shifting the blame, he took the blame, a blame that wasn't even his mistake. God said the soul who sins shall die. Jesus became that soul and died in our place so that we could be credited with his righteousness.

And the only qualification one needs to benefit from that transaction of divine grace is to admit your need for it by resting in Christ. You see, as long as we are insisting upon our innocence, we're living under the law. We're trying to garner favor with God through trickery. We're trying to fool an omniscient God into thinking that our law-breaking isn't as bad as someone else's law-breaking. But justice is justice. It doesn't bend.

It cannot compromise. If we are to live by the law, we will be condemned by the law and die. But if we admit to our sin, if we plead guilty, God stands ready to forgive, not by ignoring justice, but by allowing his only begotten son to absorb the full brunt of that justice. If God is a God of absolute justice, and he is, and if we are law-breakers, and we are, then we have a problem that only mercy can fix. Brothers and sisters, the goodness of the gospel is that mercy has been extended to you, and this mercy is accessed simply by confessing your sin and running to Christ.

Admit that your guilt is your own guilt, not someone else's, and that you have no other hope, nowhere to hide, no other resting place than Jesus Christ. You see, in reality, it was Christ's teeth that were set on edge for the sour grapes that we have eaten. He subjected himself to the unbearable sentence of justice in order that we, who deserve that sentence, might live. Let's pray. Lord, would you please do in us what we cannot do ourselves? Would you give us new hearts, new spirits, new desires to forsake sin, and return to you, the one who is eternally just and righteous, but the one who is also infinitely merciful and kind? We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.