Some churches focus on God’s judgment and anger as a key motivator for why we ought to follow God.

I’ve always wanted to have a different emphasis, to recognize that following God makes a positive difference in our lives now.

In high school, we used to make fun of some of those judgment and wrath preachers. We actually once saw a street preacher with a big old hand painted sign that said, “Turn…or Burn!”

Turn from your wicked ways, or you will burn forever in hell. It didn’t strike us as the best reason or the most appealing way to get someone to follow God. But it hung with us.

We found ourselves trying to come up with similar sayings. We developed this long list of word pairs that rhymed, like turn and burn and that also followed the same pattern; the first word emphasizing some kind of change, the second word emphasizing the punishment that would come.

Turn or burn… Shake or bake… Try or fry... Repent or be sent… It’s a fun little game! You can try yourselves at home!

I find it more helpful, most of the time, to have a different approach.

The bible is the true record of God’s loving pursuit of us, the wayward human beings. Paul talks about Christ’s love compelling us. Jesus told stories about God being like the shepherd who searches for the one lost sheep, like the loving father constantly scanning the road for the sign of his long lost prodigal son.

I find lots of evidence in the bible for God’s love as a motivator for us to follow him and live as God intends.

But here’s the thing: the street preacher can find evidence of his slogan in the bible, too.

And if I’m going to be a person who lets the bible shape my life…if I’m going to let God be God, and not just some being that I create in my own image…then I can’t just throw out the picture of God as judge. I can’t just eliminate any hint of our wrong choices having consequences.

I think it is good to frame the overall relationship between God and ourselves as one where God lovingly pursues us. But it is also important for us to remember the other things the bible tells us about God’s character. It’s important to remember that our actions have consequences in our life with God.

Ezekiel 18 is one of those passages in the bible that makes us wrestle with these characteristics of God.

Ezekiel was a prophet who lived long after Micah, who we studied earlier this summer. Micah lived around the time the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed, and he spoke of the future destruction of the southern kingdom of Judah.

Ezekiel lived after what Micah predicted, after the end of the kingdom of Judah. In Ezekiel’s time, many of Judah’s people had been exiled to Babylon. Eventually, much of Jerusalem was destroyed, even the amazing temple that Solomon built. The words recorded in the book of Ezekiel come both before and after the destruction of the temple.

Ezekiel spoke to people who had lost everything. Their very identity as “Israel” was centered on the promise of the land that God gave them. Now, the Babylonian army had taken it away, and Ezekiel was one in a long line of prophets who told the people that this was a result of Israel’s people turning their backs on God for years and years.

Turn with me to Ezekiel, chapter 18? [READ v. 1-2]

Why would they be saying something like this? What does the proverb mean?

It’s something like, “The fathers eat sour grapes, but it’s the kids who bear the consequences.” One generation makes the bad investment, the next generation goes bankrupt. One generation gets drunk, but it’s the next generation who gets the hangover.

They’ve listened to the prophets, they look at their lives in a foreign land as exiles, and they start using this as the explanation. Our ancestors disobeyed, and we’re paying the price. Why even try to live like God wants? It doesn’t matter. We’ll just keep being punished for things we didn’t do ourselves. God really is not very fair. We might as well just live however we want.

They assume some things that are quite different from the way many of us think today.

The proverb they are quoting shows they don’t look at the world as individualistically as we do. They assume that they could be guilty before God because of actions by their ancestors, and that brings a sense of hopelessness. Why worry very much about what I do? I might get punished for somebody else, anyway.

There’s not much doubt in their minds that wrong actions, sins, result in someone paying a price sometime. Perhaps that’s something we’ve moved away from in our culture, the idea that wrong actions have bad consequences. Maybe we’re not so convinced that sin exists, that our wrongdoing matters.

Through Ezekiel, God wants to get two major things across: each of us does have personal responsibility for our actions; and, we need to choose to walk away from our wrong choices, or there will be serious consequences. Let’s continue. [READ v. 3-4]

No more with that old proverb!

You’re not just in exile because of your parents…you have responsibility too! There’s also a word of hope that will come later: you are not forever stuck, forever condemned, because of your own past or your family’s past.

The kids don’t suffer for the parents mistakes; the actions of each one of us has consequences.

In the rest of the chapter, Ezekiel lays out a hypothetical, three generation family for his hearers. It begins with a good father, who acts well. That one is righteous in God’s sight, says Ezekiel; that one will live.

Then comes the bum of a son. Despite the good example of his father, he turns his back on God, and lives in disobedience. That bum of a son will suffer for his wrong choices.

Along comes the grandson of the first man. He looks at his father’s wicked life, and decides to live differently. He won’t be punished because of his dad’s actions; he’ll live!

Each of us does have personal responsibility for our actions.

We are not defined by our families or our past…not for good, and not for evil. Verse 20 and 21 make that crystal clear [READ].

We have the choice before us, before each one of us: how will we live? How we live seems to really matter to God.

I’ve heard a surprising amount of people tell me things that show me they don’t really believe that. Sometimes, the result of not believing that our actions matter is that people don’t think they have anything to be sorry for. God’s grace just covers everything, and we don’t have to worry.

This kind of thinking is sad and dangerous. The old testament and the new testament both speak very clearly about our actions, our need to obey God, our need to repent when we have disobeyed.

But there is another side to this, too. Some people think it is just too late for them. They have made so many wrong choices in life that they have given up hoping that things could be any different. But we are not defined by our past! It is never to late to ask God for the help to change, for the strength to live as God intends. [READ v. 21 again]

What things might God want to change in me?

What’s been so striking to me are the examples of right and wrong that Ezekiel gives in this chapter.

I think in our churches today, we are much more likely to hear that “sin”– if it is mentioned at all– we are much more likely to hear sin defined in a much narrower way than Ezekiel. We’ve not only shrunk our emphasis on the reality of sin, we’ve made the scope of how we disobey God so much smaller.

For lack of a better term, our churches usually talk about personal lifestyle types of sin. Sexuality, things we eat or drink or wear or do with our free time, those behaviors are the ones that most often get separated into the “ok” pile and the “sin” pile.

Ezekiel has those, too. God does care about our sexuality and our personal moral lifestyle. But Ezekiel reminds us that those things are only a part of the wide range of areas God cares about. [READ v. 15-17]

Our worship, the way we think about God matters.

Mountain shrines and idols were the ways that the people of Ezekiel turned their backs on God as supreme in their lives. What personal preferences for worship have we put ahead of God himself? In what ways do we take our very lives into our own hands, rather than wait in dependence upon God?

Our personal morality matters. Sexuality outside of a marriage hurts and defiles. The way we treat others matters. Following God means not only refusing to take advantage of others ourselves, not only keeping ourselves from taking from others, but it also means going out of our way to help others who HAVE been oppressed, who DON’T have enough.

Reading Ezekiel, it’s challenging to recognize that keeping my own personal morality in check is only part of the battle. My bank account gained at the expense of others is an issue. Even my honestly received bank account, if it isn’t used to help others, is an issue.

My life before God, my personal moral choices, my interactions with other people, my striving for issues of justice all matter.

Julie’s words earlier in the service have been working in my heart for weeks since I read her first draft.

God is moving in us at Newberg Friends, tilling our soil, preparing us. Just like our gardens need preparation and tilling each year, our own lives have periods where we need to be broken and re-tilled for God’s seeds to grow.

Are we willing to be honest with ourselves and with God about the places in our own lives that need to change, that we need to turn from?

When the area that can be labeled as sin is as broad as Ezekiel defines it, we all can find areas in our lives of which we need to repent. That means to say to ourselves and God, “That is wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t want to do it anymore, and I need your help.”

But those areas of sin never become impossible to overcome. We never get to the place where we are beyond redemption and beyond hope. Don’t let despair OR pride keep you from turning away from wrong actions and turning to God.

Listen to God’s heart of longing, to God’s loving desire for us to have a new heart and a new spirt.

As you listen, consider what you may need to repent of today.