Turn and live

Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?" says the Lord GOD, "and not that he should turn from his ways and live? - Ezekiel 18.23

Ezekiel is a pretty sombre and serious book. It is a book of doom and gloom. It is a book that really shows the brokenness of this world. There is a lot of judgement for sin and wrath of God there. It is a clear picture of a society without God.

But even here we see God calling out with the answer ‘I don’t take any pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ He says, ‘I take pleasure when they turn and live.’

We see it all the time in the scriptures. When the serpents were biting people in the wilderness Moses said to ‘look to the brazen serpent and you will live.’ Jesus used that to illustrate the need to look to Him in John 3 when he was talking to Nicodemus. I think of the prodigal son’s father waiting on the front step for his wandering son to turn around and come home – and when he did turn for home the father ran to him.

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He would that all would turn to Him. Turn and live was God’s call to Israel. It is still God’s call to a broken world in 2017.