Who Is in Charge

When you were in fourth grade, maybe you learned Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.” You know, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both, and be one traveler, long I stood…” The memorable line is, “Two roads diverged in a wood…I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” The takeaway from that poem for me is the importance of decisions and that decisions are part of life. You have to make decisions and be able to discern, distinguish between one thing and another. Any person who wishes to do well in life and to honor the Lord has to have the God-given ability of discernment and to distinguish, to notice the differences that matter in life. We are living in a world that is confusion because we fail to see distinctions where they actually exist.

Ezekiel 44 is full of distinctions, differences, and the need to see those differences. God is talking about a temple in future times. So, you have the old temple and the future temple. God distinguishes those who were sell-outs. In verse 10 He talks about the Levites who were far from Him. They had dishonored God instead of leading God’s people in worship. In contrast verse 15 says of the Levites, “They shall come near… to me to minister unto me.” The reason they could do that was their faithfulness.

In verses 17-19 there is a distinction between the outer court and the inner court of this future temple. In verse 23 God shows the difference between the holy and the profane. He shows a difference between the unclean and the clean. The question is, “How do you see distinctions where they may not be obvious?” How do you have discernment to know which path to take? Well, one of the underlying words in Ezekiel 44 is the possessive pronoun my. It is used fourteen times. God talks about His sanctuary and all that is in it belongs to Him. He talks repeatedly about “my charge” that He delegates to the priests.

So, the reason that God judges the old priest is because they forgot who owned the temple and therefore the temple was destroyed. They didn’t make a distinction. They didn’t distinguish between God Jehovah and the gods of the lands around them. They didn’t discern between right and wrong. What you learn by reading this chapter is that discernment begins by knowing who is in charge. Discernment, the ability to tell one thing from another, begins by knowing who is in charge. If I think that my purpose in life is to make decisions based on my environment, I am going to be in trouble, exactly where the Levites were who had gone far from God. They saw the nations around them and the changing culture in Israel and they made changes based on the environment around them and not on God’s unchanging truth.

There was a business writer who essentially said, “The question to ask in changing times is not, ‘How should we change?’ but instead, ‘Who are we and what do we stand for?’” God’s people need to make every change necessary in order to be the same, to be following God Almighty. So, discernment begins by knowing who is in charge. It is not me or the environment around me. It is God.

It is not pleasing self. So many times, we make decisions based on what is easy or pleasant, but that goes nowhere fast. In Isaiah 58 God is judging people who seem to be religious. They sought God daily and delighted to know God’s ways. They appeared to be intent on God’s ordinances, but there was a question that hung in the air. God asked, “Is this not the fast that I have chosen?” He describes what He intended by the fast that He described and the way God’s people had been doing what they were doing in ways that pleased themselves and not God.

So how do you discern between right and wrong and which way to go? The answer is by knowing who is in charge. In verse 23 God says to Ezekiel, “And they [the priests to come] shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.” How does one do that? Verse 24 says, “And in controversy they shall stand in judgment; and they shall judge it according to my judgments: and they shall keep my laws and my statues in all mine assemblies; and they shall hallow my sabbaths.” So, discernment comes by realizing that God is sovereign, holy, righteous, and unchanging. There is a changing world and our own desires that swirl around each of us. The question to ask is, “What does God want?”

It is interesting that in verse 21 it says, “Neither shall any priest drink wine, when they enter into the inner court.” This is a reflection of what was given earlier in the Old Testament, but one of the reasons for this is that drunk people cannot discern. They cannot tell one thing from another. In the New Testament, Ephesians 5:17 says, “Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” How do I know which way to go, what is right, and what is God’s will? It continues, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” I would add, why just a little of either? Why just a little wine and a little of God’s leading in my life? I should want God’s complete control over the decisions I make. It is hard to know things you do not want to know. So, how do you know what is right, which path to take? The answer is discernment, to distinguish one decision from another. It begins by knowing who is in charge, and that is the God who made you.