God Responds.
“…Then and there you’ll remember all that you’ve done, the way you’ve lived that has made you so filthy –– and you’ll loathe yourselves. But, dear Israel, you’ll also realize that I am God when I respond to you out of who I am, not by what I feel about the evil lives you’ve lived, the corrupt history you’ve compiled. Decree of God, the Master.” -Ezekiel 20:43-44 (msg)
Some day we will all come face to face with the ‘filth’ in our lives, and we will see everything for what it truly is… including our own hearts… and God’s promise is that, in this day, He will respond out of who He is. This, my friends, is really Good News. Our God does not meet filth with more filth or hate with more hate… He meets filth with Love – not the cheap kind of plastic-trinket-love… but the kind of Love that conquers evil… An unwavering, unrelenting Love, a Love that tolerates nothing less than Goodness and has the power to Help in the only way that truly Saves. Ezekiel 20 goes on to say … “I’ll set a fire in you that will burn up every tree, dead trees and live trees alike. Nobody will put out the fire.” (Verse 47)
I can’t help but believe that God is referring to the Holy Spirit, the Fire that will burn within us and remove all that is not Eternal… all that is not Good.
Verse 49 finishes with, “And I said, ‘O God, everyone is saying of me, ‘He just makes up stories.’”
For the entire history of mankind, our humanness will try to dismiss Reality, but this dismissal won’t stop God from being God and being Good and setting His World Right.