Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations.
– Ezekiel 5:8
What a phrase to hear God say, “I am against you.” You can’t stand if God is against you. You have no hope if God is against you. Now, we know in Ezekiel and all these prophets in the Old Testament, there are glimpses of hope even as God shows his judgment, but get the picture here. When God executes his judgment, when God is against you, then your only hope is for God to relent and to be for you. And that changes everything when God is for you.
And here, we see the necessity of the Gospel, the beauty of the Gospel. We deserve, you and I, every single person in the world deserves the judgment of God. We’ve rebelled against God. We deserve his holy wrath.
Remembering the Good News
This is Romans 1–3, we all stand under his judgment, but the good news, the greatest news in all the world, is that God has made a way for us to be saved from our sins, to be saved from his holy judgment, that God loves us and has sent his Son so that all who have sinned and fall short of his glory can be justified by his grace through the wrath, the judgment that was poured out on Jesus instead of us.
This is what the Cross is all about, Jesus taking the judgment you and I deserve upon himself, the judgment that we warrant, so that we could be saved, so that we could be reconciled to God, so that we might know God for us not against us. Oh, Jesus, we praise you in a fresh way today based on this picture in Ezekiel 5 of your judgment, oh God.
Ezekiel 5:8 Praises Jesus for the Cross
Jesus, praise you for taking the judgment we deserve upon yourself, for dying on a cross for our sins, and for rising from the dead in victory over sin so that we, through faith in you, through trust in you and your love can be forgiven, are forgiven of all our sins, our reconciled relationship with you and can know that you are with us and for us. And if you are for us, then nothing can stand against us. This changes everything. All glory be to your name, oh God.
And we pray that you’d help us to feel the weight of this, especially as we think about people around us who don’t know this good news, who have not received it, who are right now under your judgment. I think about talking to one of my kids, and it was like they were realizing, God, the reality of eternity in hell in a fresh way and, with tears, just saying, “It lasts forever.” God, we pray that you would help us not to lose sight of the eternality of hell, of the seriousness of judgment that, Jesus, you warned us about during your time here, that’s all over your Word.
Praying for Spiritual Awakening
So God, use our lives and our families and our churches to proclaim the good news of your grace to more and more people right around us. God, we pray for spiritual awakening in our communities, in our cities. And we pray for spiritual boldness to proclaim your Word, just like Ezekiel was doing. We pray for this right where we live and far from where we live.
God, for Tibetans in India, God, we pray for the hundreds of thousands of them who don’t know, haven’t even heard the good news of your grace, who are unreached by the gospel. God, we pray that you would use our lives and our families and churches to remove the concept of unreached people today, that there would be no people unreached by the gospel.
Ezekiel 5:8 Helps Us to Live in Light of God’s Grace
God, help us to live for that in light of your grace, your glory, and in light of coming judgment for all people who, right now, are under your holy judgment and need your grace and love in Christ. God, help us to live to spread this even as we rejoice in this, that by your grace, the thought of it, you are for us, not against us. Thank you, Jesus, for making this possible. We praise you and we pray that you would use our lives to make your glory known among the nations. In your name we pray, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
