Ezekiel 33:7-11

            {Prayer}

            Waiting is never easy. We live in a time where I can have whatever information I need at the ask of Google or Siri or ChatGPT. We have a hard time waiting for texts, emails, for pretty much anything.

            It’s even worse in a waiting room. In a hospital waiting room. There are uncomfortable chairs. The ticking or blinking clock. The cold tile floor or drab carpet. Maybe the strange experience that ordinary life continues on around you while your whole world has stopped.

            You’re waiting for someone to come through the door and tell you something, anything.

            As time slowly ticks by … the questions begin.

            How long? What did they find? What happens next?

            And then finally … “Why is this happening?”

            These questions aren’t just for the hospital room though. These are questions that come with the struggles of the everyday life waiting room.

            While we don’t like it, we spend so much of life waiting. Waiting for an answer. Waiting for relief. Waiting for grief to ease. Waiting for the situation to change. Sooner or later … the question becomes deeply theological and deeply personal.

            “God, why?” “Is this fair?” “God, is this what you really want for me?”

             The people of Israel know a little bit when it comes to sitting in a waiting room. Ezekiel, in our Old Testament reading, is writing to the Israelites who are in captivity in Babylon. They’ve been exiled from their homes and brought to this foreign land. Jerusalem is hundreds of miles away. Hanging over everything is God’s warning that Jerusalem will be destroyed. All this raises a devastating question among the people … “What does all this mean about our relationship with God?”

            It is into this wreckage that God appoints Ezekiel as a watchman. This is an important and hard job. God tells Ezekiel, “Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you need to warn the people. If you don’t, their blood will be on your hands.”

            You see, there is really such a thing as sin. There is really such a thing as God’s judgment. The watchman isn’t permitted to tell the people that everything is going to be fine when it isn’t.

            The person in the waiting room, they want someone to walk through the door and tell them “Everything is going to be fine.” But sometimes it isn’t fine. As much as the doctors and everyone wants it to be fine, a faithful doctor doesn’t lie about the diagnosis. … Neither does a faithful God.

            God tells Ezekiel what the people themselves have been saying, “Our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?” (33:10).

            There’s the question. The people know things aren’t right. They shouldn’t be where they are but they’re there because of their own actions.

            Beneath the question of “How then can we live?” are other questions. There’s the good Lutheran question, “What does this mean?” But there are other questions, deeper questions. Has God abandoned us? Is God against us? Is God against me?

            Our version of these questions sounds more like this, … “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

             We try to answer this by saying “I’ve tried to be faithful. I’ve tried to do what is right. I’m not as bad as that person over there. Why did I get the diagnosis? Why did I have to bury someone I love? Why can’t we get ahead?”

            What we’re doing with these questions is we’re trying to interpret what God is doing from the waiting room. And that’s a dangerous thing to do. It’s dangerous because suffering can start telling us who God is. …

            Here’s the thing … God doesn’t answer every why question. Sometimes we desperately want Him to. Sometimes we pray for an explanation and nothing comes. But instead of explaining everything that happens in the waiting room, God tells us something even more important. He tells us who He is and what He desires.

            “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked …” (Ezekiel 33:11a).

            Did you catch that? God swears by Himself. “As surely as I live”. You want to know what God’s disposition is toward sinners? Listen to Him. He says, “Repent. Turn back. Turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die?”  

            For us pastors especially, it’s hard not to hear the words of Ezekiel 33 personally. God has entrusted His Word to His Church, and pastors are called to proclaim the whole counsel of God, not merely the parts people want to hear. We would love to say that everything is going to be fine all the time. But we have to a call a spade a spade and a sin a sin. Will it upset people? Absolutely. Does that bother us? Absolutely.

            But we do it because God is faithful. The watchman warns because God desires life. He wants you to live with Him. To live with Him now and forever.

            The Law that kills us and makes us recognize our sinfulness isn’t spoken because God enjoys catching sinners. We speak it because sinners, like us, are walking toward death and God wants them back. God wants His wandering children to come home!

            So, the point of this … don’t let the waiting room tell you who God is. Let God tell you who God is.

            But God does more than just speak into your waiting room. He enters it!

            Jesus says in Matthew 18, “Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost” (18:14). The God who says in Ezekiel 33, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked” comes looking for those who are perishing.

            “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

            Look at the cross. There on the cross between two thieves hangs the One and only person that the description “good” could be applied to. Innocent. Righteous. Without sin. Doesn’t deserve to be there and look at Him. The worst thing possible happens to Him.

            It happens not because His Father delights in death, but because this is how far God is willing to go to save sinners from death.

            Christ enters our death to overcome it.

            Our sin is real. God’s judgment of sin is real “for the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). Ezekiel’s warning is real. … And Christ bears it all … for you.

            The Watchman’s warning ultimately drives us to the One who takes our death upon Himself so that sinners like you and me might turn back to God and live.

            And while the wages of sin is death, thank God that isn’t the end of that sentence. Good Friday is not the end of the story of Jesus. “For the wages of sin is death, but … but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

            The stone is rolled away. Christ is risen and walks out of the tomb leaving your sins and death behind. They don’t come out with Him. Christ comes out alive and glorified.

“How then can we live?” the people asked. There’s your answer. Because Jesus lives, you will live. Death does not get the final word.

            As great as that is … that doesn’t mean that Christians stop sitting in the waiting room. We still get cancer. We still stand beside graves. We still have bills to pay that we don’t know how we’re going to pay them. We still experience things which God hasn’t given us a satisfying answer to. Christianity doesn’t empty the waiting room.

            But Easter changes what it means to wait there. We’re no longer waiting to discover whether God loves us. We’re no longer waiting to discover whether God desires our life. Those questions have been answered. “As surely as I live …” and “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”

            Let’s go back to that hospital waiting room I started the sermon with.

            You’re still sitting in the uncomfortable chair. The clock continues to move too slowly. The door hasn’t opened with the doctor coming through it yet. And perhaps, you still don’t know why.

            Our faith in God doesn’t require us to pretend we know what is going on. But we know something we didn’t learn from the waiting room.

You know what God desires for you.

            “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked …”

            You know what God has done for you.

            Christ is crucified.

            You know what God has promised you.

            Christ is risen.

            Thus, you know where the waiting finally ends. Not merely with better circumstances. Not merely with an answer to why. But with the resurrection and eternal life in the new heavens and new earth.

            We are waiting. We don’t know what news is going to come through the door. But we know Who is coming for us in the end. And because Jesus Christ has died and risen from the dead … the waiting room is not our home. … Life is. Amen.

            Let us pray. … Gracious Father, when we do not understand what You are doing, keep us from measuring Your love by the circumstances of this life. Instead, turn our eyes to Your Son, crucified and risen for us. Teach us to trust what You have spoken: that You desire life for sinners, and that because Christ lives, we too shall live. Keep us in that promise as we wait; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.