First Warning by Larry Perry

Ezekiel 14:3 English Standard Version (ESV) “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them?

I began to read in Ezekiel 14 and saw wondrous things and upon returning to the text once again, I see here this warning. While God wants to communicate with His creation it has to be on His terms. When we set our hearts upon things of this world rather than God and hide our faces from Him He stops listening.

God knows the hearts of all mankind but will not give counsel to those whose hearts belong to another. He warns His people to first get their hearts right before coming to Him with their problems.

Ezekiel 14:8 English Standard Version (ESV) And I will set my face against that man; I will make him a sign and a byword and cut him off from the midst of my people, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

Look carefully to His wording here. “I will make him a sign and a byword.” God is dealing with a nation and a sign to the nation is what happens to individuals who have sinned against God. As a nation with a view of relationship and blessings from God, this is how a nation gets lost to God, by not heeding the warnings. People who do not heed warnings join those sinners as one by one they turn their backs on God.

So what are we to do about these warnings?

Isaiah 42:16-18 English Standard Version (ESV)

¹⁶ And I will lead the blind
    in a way that they do not know,
in paths that they have not known
    I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
    the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I do,
    and I do not forsake them.
¹⁷ They are turned back and utterly put to shame,
    who trust in carved idols,
who say to metal images,
    “You are our gods.”

¹⁸ Hear, you deaf,
    and look, you blind, that you may see!