The Rebellious House: a Tale of Beams and Motes

My pastor is preaching through Ezekiel right now, and I have been enjoying the walk-through of a book of the Bible I’ve always had trouble understanding. Pastor made an interesting point in one of his recent messages which got me to thinking.

In Ezekiel 2, God tells Ezekiel that He wants him to take His message to the people, but that they are a “rebellious house” and will not listen to him. The word “rebellious” is used repeatedly throughout the chapter, and Pastor pointed out that it is the same Hebrew word the Israelites used to describe the Gentiles. Now, God was using this same derogatory term to describe them!

I imagine that must not have gone over well with the Israelites.

But God is a God of truth, and what He said was indeed true. The Israelites who looked down on the sin and unbelief of their Gentile neighbors were themselves being taken to task for sin and unbelief. And in a sense, the Israelite’s sin was worse.

The Israelites had been given God’s law directly from the mouth of God Himself. They had a society structured around that law from the ground up. They had access to all the details and intricacies of the law, and they had every opportunity to follow it. They even had God Himself protecting and guiding them and had seen His hand at work over and over throughout their history.

And yet, they had cast off the worship of God and obedience to His laws and taken the sin and idols of the Gentiles and made them their own. Their self-righteousness was absurd, and their rebellion was compounded by their pride and hypocrisy.

It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:4

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

I wonder how often we do the same thing as the Israelites? How often do we look down on the world, while borrowing from it? Just as Israel was chosen to be God’s special people, called out from among the nations to be a separate, holy picture of His righteousness, we who are the saved in Christ have likewise been called out to be separate.

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9)

Israel had rejected the very things that were meant by God to set them apart as His special people. Are we doing the same? Do we claim the status of being God’s “peculiar people” while refusing to be “peculiar?” Or, are we, like Ezekiel, standing boldly in the midst of a rebellious generation, a “watchman” faithfully warning God’s people and faithfully reminding them of the danger of rebellion and the reality of the holy God.