Will God Forgive my Bad Choice? [36]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of 'Back to Rurality,' TJ Freeman, a rural pastor, addresses the time when we face the consequences of our poor decisions. TJ uses the story of Ezekiel, who, along with the people of Israel, faced exile due to their own sins. Despite their stubbornness, God met them in their distress and called them to return to Him. TJ encourages listeners to read Ezekiel 1 and see how God, in His glory, reaches out to His people even in their lowest moments. The episode highlights the importance of repentance, God's enduring presence, and His desire to restore us, urging rural listeners to embrace the hope found in Scripture.

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook
• Email: tj@brainerdinstitute.com

Transcript

Boy, is life full of decisions. Man, do we have to make a lot of decisions and that can be a challenge, especially if some of the decisions you make don't turn out quite like you thought they would. That's a tough experience and it's one that we're all familiar with. Everybody makes decisions that they wish they could go back and change.

And that is especially difficult if you've made some decisions that have led to some unintended consequences. It is no fun having to deal with tough consequences over decisions that you know you made. You wish you could go back and change, but you can't. One of the greatest challenges in a moment like that is that the consequences that come with a bad decision can leave you wondering if God has given up on you. If you've ever felt like that This is the episode for you.

Stay tuned.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Back to Rurality. My name is TJ Freeman. I'm a rural pastor, which means that just like you, I live in the middle of nowhere. When I want to tell people where I'm from, I put my hand out sideways, kind of looks like the state of Pennsylvania.

And I point to that little crease between my pointer finger and the meaty part of my hand. And I say, I'm from there. I'm not near anywhere that anyone has ever heard of, and that might be true of you as well. And it can get lonely out in places like this, especially if you've made some decisions that have made God seem kind of distant.

It is so uncomfortable when you know that you have failed, you've made a mistake, you've fallen back into some pattern of sin, you gave in to sin in a weak moment, whatever it is, you've done something and it has cost you. It's put you in a place where you're circumstances are actually different now because of a decision that you have made.

Well, good news. You're not the first person to feel that way, and the Bible shows kind of like rinse and repeat people who have felt that way. One of them is a guy named Ezekiel. Now, Ezekiel's whole problem is that he was part of a people who kept sinning over and over.

Ezekiel is a priest. And he's part of the Jewish community. He's an Israelite and at the beginning of the book that bears his name in the Bible, Ezekiel chapter one, he finds himself stranded in the middle of nowhere with God nowhere in sight. He's there with a small group of people called the exiles. It's a group of his people who actually got captured by the Babylonians and deported from Israel.

And they're out here at this place called the Kibar canal. And they're there because they've made some bad choices. I don't know if you've ever seen that skit with Chris Farley, where the kids are caught doing something they shouldn't be doing. So the parents call in a motivational speaker, who is Chris Farley, but he walks in and he starts to talk to them about how if they don't start making better choices they're going to end up in a van down by the river.

And that's kind of where Israel finds themselves here. They've made mistake after mistake after mistake and God was really patient with them but eventually he had to let them bear the full weight of the consequences of their decisions. And they find themselves in a van down by the river. Almost seems in that moment like God has abandoned them.

In fact, throughout the book of Ezekiel, that's kind of the feeling that you have. Has God totally abandoned his people? Have they finally sinned so bad that God has just left the building? And there's a really cool scene right here in Ezekiel 1 that I think will encourage you. And speaking of encourage, let me encourage you to go read Ezekiel chapter 1 after listening to this podcast.

I think you'll see this whole picture come to life in a way that really blesses you. Here they are suffering as exiles kind of would feel like a refugee, only they actually are under the thumb of the people in the country that has overthrown their country and their resident aliens. They're living there in exile by the Kibar Canal. Ezekiel, this priest, has a vision of the Lord. So that's how Ezekiel 1 is framed. It's a vision of the Lord, and then it's so cool. He says in verse 4, "As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came, out of the north, and a great cloud with brightness all around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of it, fire as if it were gleaming metal."

So, this is like, this scene where I picture this, for some reason, as like the Wild West. And, you're out there, leaning up against a fence post, wishing you could just go home, but you can't because of the choices you've made. You look over and here comes this great big cloud of dust and it's just getting bigger and on the horizon. You know it starts out small. It grows bigger. It's getting closer to you and you start to notice there's a metal object in the middle of this thing. What is this chariot that's rolling up to visit you in your van down by the river?

Well, you keep reading the text and you see that there's some pretty fantastical things going on there. There are these four living creatures. You might have heard of four living creatures before in the book of Revelation. Their whole job is to declare the holiness of God. Here we have four living creatures in Ezekiel that sound an awful lot like the ones from Revelation.

There are these wheels on this thing. It's like a sphere. It's like a wheel within a wheel, so this thing can go anywhere, any direction, any time, and it goes according to the spirit. And then as you keep seeing things unfold, these living creatures get really close. The chariot rolls right up in and it comes to a halt, right there, as you're leaning on your fence post.

And the dust starts to settle and these four living creatures wings go out and they're so loud. It says they're like the sound of many waters. It's like the loudest tsunami roaring ocean sound you can imagine, when these angels wings are fluttering. And they're all kind of pointed out toward this expanse that opens up over them.

And as the expanse becomes visible, those wings go down at the side of the four living creatures, and they're quiet. So everything is led up to this moment where the expanse opens and there is a throne there. And on the throne is this character who looks like he's got almost like an oven for a chest.

It's this gleaming metal with fire on the inside. Fire for legs. And it's giving you this image, whoever this is, it's really, really impressive. And you start to think who could be rolling in with the four living creatures on this kind of chariot that goes everywhere, anywhere it wants to. Oh, by the way, I didn't mention the rims have eyes so it can see everything.

It sees everything. It goes everywhere. Sounds kind of omni ish, if you ask me. And it opens up to this expanse. And then from the throne, a voice speaks.

At the end of chapter one, everything comes to this grand crescendo. As it says this, "such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell on my face. and I heard the voice of one speaking." Now, if you were to keep reading in the book of Ezekiel, you'll see that the people of Israel are really stinking stubborn.

In chapter two, they're called stubborn a couple of times, and throughout the book, their stubbornness is just put on display. And what's going on is they are tired of having to listen to the Lord. They just want to do things their own way. They want to be left alone. They don't want to have to be accountable to what the Bible says.

They also don't want to put their hope exclusively in God because they're afraid that if they do that, they might miss out on something even greater. And I know you don't feel like you'd ever do that, but how often do we ignore the voice of the Lord in favor of lesser pursuits? I mean, just think about how much time you spent on social media in the last week or so.

How does that compare to how much time you spent with the Lord? Think about how much the Lord has told you through his word how you need to be loving and patient and how you need to think about the needs of others and actually put them ahead of your own needs. How you need to have an eye toward the sick and the needy, the widows and the orphans. How you need to be sharing the gospel with others because you have this hope in Christ. How you need to be actively engaged in the body of Christ.

I mean, there's so much that we exchange here in this world for what God told us to do. You know he said to do these things and for whatever reason, we come up with these excuses to do things that we think are more important or better, or at least God should understand why we're doing these things because life's hard and it's not that simple.

There's just so many ways that we can look like Israel here. We can be a pretty stinkin' stubborn people! Am I the only one? Well, what does God do with stubborn people? Throughout the book of Ezekiel, he shows us. And you're not gonna like what you see. The whole reason they're in exile is because of their stubbornness, but it's not gonna stop with the exile.

God is actually going to judge these people, and the judgment is going to be severe. So severe, it's even uncomfortable. To read about in the book of Ezekiel. I know what you're thinking. I started this off going, do you ever have to deal with these consequences and you wish you didn't have to? And now I'm kind of going like, well, due to your failure, good luck with that.

God's probably going to destroy you. That is not the point of the book of Ezekiel at all. Otherwise, it really wouldn't need to be written. Do you realize what happened in Ezekiel 1? There they were, out in exile. Because of the consequences of their sin, and God meets them there. It's beautiful. God, in all His glory, in all His splendor, comes out to be with His people, even in exile.

And what you'll see throughout the book of Ezekiel, if you were to read it, is that even though these people are stubborn and rebellious, God is warning them again and again and again to return to Him before it's too late. I'm sorry that you're dealing with some consequences that you wish you didn't have to deal with but what you need to understand is that maybe even through a podcast like this God has shown up.

He has not left you. He's not abandoned you. He has made himself known to you and here's what the Lord says, return to me. Return to me with your whole heart and that's not that easy of a thing to do. There's guilt. There's shame. There's pride. There's the fact that it's so easy to drift, even if we do try to return.

Once things start getting better and the pressure lets off, we kind of have this natural tendency to go back downhill.

Returning to the Lord seems complicated, but the truth is, God in His kindness has come to you already to invite you to turn your eyes and your heart toward Christ. What the people in the book of Ezekiel needed to do was repent, to ask God to forgive them, and to ask for his help. And he was there already to help them.

He was there with them, and his desire was to restore them. His desire is to restore you. He's using these consequences as a way to help wake you up to the fact that what you were doing before wasn't good or right. You don't even want to live in the kind of world that produces the things that you were chasing.

You want the kind of world that the Lord offers you. And no matter what it is you've been doing, you can return to the Lord, seeing this challenging situation you're walking through as a loving warning from a God who has come to meet you in your time of distress, in your time of exile. Hey, I'd love to talk to you about that.

If you would like to discuss this or anything you've heard on any episode of Back to Rurality, just reach out to me, tj@brainerdinstitute.com. That's tj@brainerdinstitute.com. I would love to talk with you more. This has been a production of the Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry. We want to see a healthy church in every rural town, and you, my dear rural friend, are part of the answer to the problem that exists in this nation. 

There are not currently healthy churches in every rural community, and I created this podcast to help encourage you to start praying about what it looks like to be a part of a healthy church in a rural place. God wants to be glorified even from the middle of nowhere in places like where you live.

And where I hold up my hand sideways and point to that weird part of my hand where I live. Praise God for his kindness to people like us out here in the middle of nowhere for his glory. For now, let's get back to life, back to rurality.