In their time of crisis, the elders of Judah came to Ezekiel to inquire of God. God refused them. That doesn’t seem very welcoming of a God who speaks much about wanting to restore His people, does it? The problem was, they weren’t coming to Him for reconciliation, but to fulfill their requests. They weren’t seeking Him, but His advice. But He didn’t want to be sought only for what He could reveal; He wanted sought to be known by them.
God had brought them to this point of exile, loss, defeat, humiliation, and disappointed hopes, so that they would turn to Him. He longed to know them in the way He created man to know Him and fellowship with Him. These people turned to Him in their suffering all right, but not in the way or for the reason He wanted them to turn to Him. He wanted them to know Him; they wanted answers to their questions – and by implication, they wanted favorable answers, answers that would make them happy, because this is what they had gotten from the so-called prophets and so they had come to expect that of a prophet. As if their desires and the words they influenced the false prophets to say could manipulate God into doing what they wanted Him to do. They didn’t want to know God at all; rather, they wanted to do all they could do to see their desires fulfilled.
If God’s ultimate correction tactic failed to correct, what was God to do? Would He finally give up on His people? If He gave up on His people, what would happen to mankind, who so desperately needed the Savior He promised to send through them?
He was not going to give up on His people, but since He couldn’t do anything with that generation, He was going to destroy them. It wasn’t going to be business as usual with them.
The challenge for us in today’s reading is whether we are like His Old Covenant people who ended up destroyed. Do we seek God for what He can do for us, or for the sake of knowing Him? Do we think we can manipulate God? Do we try?
God is so far beyond what we could imagine; He exceeds our imaginations. Why would we try to manipulate Him into doing what we want Him to do? Why wouldn’t we wait with eager anticipation to see the great things unfold that He wants to do? Why wouldn’t we seek to know more of what this great God is like, seek to know Him, when this is what He wants from us?