Chapter 33

2022 - Very much a reiteration of the principles of Chapter 18, at least through vs 20.

No time stamp, but clearly a new prophecy is starting.  MSB outline says 33 is a lone chapter with it's own main outline point.  This chapter will speak of provision for Israel's Repentance.

Starts with an analogy.  If the watchman sounds a warning, and no one heeds it, then those who ignore the warning die, and their blood is on them.  BUT, if the watchman sounds no warning, those same people still die, but now their blood is laid to the account of the watchman.  Preachers?  Teachers?  Each of us who knows the gospel, and knows about hell, and sounds no warning?  How much blood is laid to my account for a life lived in silence?

In vs 7, Ezekiel is made watchman for the house of Israel.  The following verses are pretty specific that Ezekiel will hear God's warnings, and that he is responsible for passing them on.  If he does not, then the blood of those who die is on him.  MSB refers this back to Eze 18, the chapter on personal accountability.  Hard to get what this really intends.  Is it just about Ezekiel, or is it a principle for all time?

2022 -These first 9 verses seem to lay out the rules for the "office" to which God is about to appoint Ezekiel.  It is indeed reminiscent of Chapter 18.  I note that it implies responsibility for specific individuals that God will make known to Ezekiel.  Here is the basis for that, in this verse:

8 If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. [Eze 33:8 ESV]

The phrase "...that wicked person" seems clearly to indicate that specific people are to be warned.  Unless the grammar of the Hebrews discounts that interpretation.  I just don't know how that works.  I note that vs 9 repeats that same "that person" phrase.

2024 - The verses:

4 then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. 5 He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. [Eze 33:4-5 ESV]. 

How does this fit with Jesus speaking in parables?  Did he know that some were not to be saved, and he spoke the truth so the elect could be saved, so he gave the warning, but he gave it as a parable, so that those not elect would not have their blood on them?  This seems impossible...I think the level of punishment is what Jesus had in mind.  The less they understood, the less punishment they would receive.  Because looked at the other way, the blood of all those people would have been on Jesus for not blowing a trumpet but a flute instead.  They knew it meant something, but it was not a trumpet.  Understanding that NT passage is difficult anyone - I don't pretend to have it down, I just have a "way" that I can get my head around.  It seems quite wrong to say this means we ought to preach the gospel only indirectly, so that we do not make matters worse for the non-elect to whom we speak.  We know that is not so.  Given that it would be wrong to interpret the parables that way, is it right to interpret these verses in that way?  No...it's either right both places or wrong both places.  So we can - and I think should - say that this commission is only to Ezekiel, as a prophet in the same vein as Isaiah and Jeremiah.  He was chosen to take the word to Israel, to especially be the ONE that blew that trumpet.  Singled out as watchman.  As preachers are called today.  Perhaps we all are to some extent, but I don't believe all this falls on the shoulders of every Christian.  Vs 7 confirms it:

  7 "So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. [Eze 33:7 ESV].  This section is for those specially called to this service by God.

2024 - I need to work through what it means to have another's blood on your hands, and what it means to "deliver your soul".  Are these also confined only to those called especially for this service?  It would seem so...but it starts to sound like I'm just pushing all the hard parts off on the prophets and avoiding any responsibility myself.

Vs 11 is the first verse, at least in this chapter, that offers Israel hope:

11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? [Eze 33:11 ESV]

Very clear.  God's justice requires death to the wicked.  So turn back, don't be wicked, avoid that fate that MUST come if you don't.

2022 - This is almost word for word the same as Eze 18:23.  The extension, though, indicates that the nation is addressed here, a nation, rather than an individual. 

vs 12 seems convoluted, but has much truth.  Some that is hard to accept:

12 "And you, son of man, say to your people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. [Eze 33:12 ESV]

We can not be good enough, do enough, and so on to square our accounts with God.  No matter how good we are, we sin, and for sin we are held accountable.  It cannot be offset by good.  There is no scoresheet, updated daily.  For those who turn to God, though - for the saved - there will be no fall.  God saves us from that fall, and to make sure we get what is being said, the first part is repeated.  It is not the righteous part of our lives that saves us, it is always insufficient.  ONLY GOD can save us from our sin, and He requires that we repent and determine to follow Him, and to sin no more.  This is Lordship Salvation writ large in the OT.

2026 - Good deeds and bad are not set in opposite pans of God's scales of justice.  That is not how it works.  Good deeds count so long as you stay good.  But if  you turn away and do evil instead, then you are seen as "always having been evil" in God's eyes.  The good you did before affords you no protection, no margin for being evil later.  On the other hand, an evil person who decides to repent does not  have this huge debt of the evil he has done that has to counterbalanced by his good deeds going forward. 

This sounds so very much like a proof text against perseverance of the saints. 

2026 - MacArthur gets around this by saying this passage is about physical death as a result of apostate behavior.  Jerusalem is about to fall.  Why?  Because so many in Israel have turned to evil.  All of them are going down because of the abundance of evil in the city.  Even those who have believed and followed God in the past have now turned to idolatry and sin.  Why should they be saved from the sword about to fall?  Should they be allowed to escape because they worshiped rightly way in the past, or is it real justice that they fall - by sword or pestilence - because of how they are behaving now?  But what about those who see the invading army and repent and correct their past sins by paying people back and the other things in vss 14-16?  If all the evil in the city do that, would God not jump to forgive and save from the invaders and preserve this city he calls his own? 

2026 - Look at us in the US today.  How far toward evil have we gone now?  We are invading churches in the name of criminal aliens and then the whole nation debates whether that was ok or not!  Should we be saved from death?  Death by crime, death by invasion, death by collapse of our medical system...Are not all these things tantamount to long term siege that will ultimately bring about the fall of America?  Should be we allowed to go on being evil because the nation's founders were pious and devout?  Or should we fall for what we are now today?  The blessings came when we were a Godly nation as they should have.  We rose to world superpower.  Now?  Look around.  Be honest.  What should happen to us based on how we behave today?

2026 - We are at the tipping point, if not already unchangeably beyond it. 

13 Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die. [Eze 33:13 ESV]  Another verse to use as a proof text that the Mosaic law never ever saved anyone.  Dependence and trust in God Almighty is all that saved then, is all that saves now.  Belief in Jesus' name.  Does this recant "perseverance of the saints"?

2022 - Works can never save is what it really says.  Works in the midst of unjust behavior.  What it is saying is that this is not a balance, with our good on one side and our evil on the other, and that so long as the good side stays heavier - weighted with good deeds done not from the heart but from a desire to keep the good side heavier because we are counting on those deeds to keep us out of hell, even though we are doing as much evil as we think we can get away with without tipping the scales that way - we are fine.  This is "trusting" in works to stand by themselves, rather than as works as the spirit of faith.  It is the attitude that accompanies the works that imparts value to them in God's eyes.

This text goes on and reiterates this principle, and approaches it as both the verse and the inverse.  It is viewed from all possible angles, to make sure there can be no misunderstanding.  Just as personal responsibility was analyzed in depth against all arguments back in 18.

But people have such a hard time accepting this as a just way of doing things.  They rebel, because they want to be in control of their own destiny.  They don't want God deciding at the moment of their death, they want their cumulative score to be what matters.  They want grounds for argument!  But then these verses:

17 "Yet your people say, 'The way of the Lord is not just,' when it is their own way that is not just. 18 When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it. 19 And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. 20 Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways." [Eze 33:17-20 ESV]

Long, but infinitely important.  God says that no matter what we think about this system, He will apply it.  It is His to judge us, and He will set the standard, and has done so, and has explained it to us.

There is fuel here for those who say you can lose your salvation.  The same argument applies here as in the NT.  Those who go out from us were never of us.  Those who turn from righteous were not righteous.  They did good by force of will and not by intent of heart.  The other way to argue is that of the dispensationalist, who might say that the people Ezekiel was addressing labored under a different law than we do today.  I don't see this.  If the age of the Gentiles, and it's ultimate end, is analogous to the age of Israel, and its end in 586 BC, then God's part in it all will be the same.  As it was in Noah's day.  They were judged by their hearts, at the moment of their deaths.  Those in Noah's day, in the days of Ezekiel, and in the latter days.  It has always been about hearts!

vs 21 has a time stamp:  Year 12, month 10, day 5.  Backwards a couple of months?  Ezekiel now receives word that Jerusalem has fallen to Babylon.  There is an MSB note with much chronology here.  Ezekiel had been mute - by God's doing so that he could not have spoken for the last 36 months during the siege of Jerusalem even if he'd wanted to do so - but the night before this messenger arrives with this news, God restores Ezekiel's voice. 

God addresses and argument that the people make saying that they will keep this land.  They say Abraham was only one man, and the land was given to him, yet they are many, so shouldn't it be given to them?  Logic, right?  But God recounts their sins, and says because of that big difference between them and Abraham - a difference of heart - they have no chance of possessing the land.

The last few verses are sort of an outside looking in.  God tells Ezekiel that though the people come to him and enjoy listening to him, they see him as a performer on a stage, not as one who is relaying the objective truth of God.  They hear his words, and clap about how eloquent he is, but they don't do a thing he says.  How many in churches today are this same way?  What a great sermon today about how we shouldn't cuss!  And then on Monday...Put in your own "little sin" here.  This is one for FB.

2024 - In vs 21, Ezekiel's mouth is opened.  Yet in the previous chapter, Ezekiel is told that if he doesn't sound the trumpet when God tells him, then the blood of some will be on his hands.  If Ezekiel could not talk at that time, how was the trumpet to be sounded?  Or do we look at chapter 33 as a previous or later insertion, the conversation actually having taken place before or after this time?  I guess a trumpet can be blown without a voice...