Ezekiel 6:8 - Meaning and Application

Judgment has ruled so far, but here mercy rejoices over judgment. A sad end comes to this stubborn people, yet it is not a total end. The ruin looks complete, and still God says, “Yet I will leave a remnant,” a small group set apart from the rest, a few left after many perish. It is God who leaves them, which means they deserved to be cut off with the others, and would have been, if God had not spared them (Isaiah 1:9).

God also works by his grace in them what he has in mind when he saves them. This is a preserved remnant, kept from the ruin that falls on the nation as a whole (Ezekiel 6:8). God had said earlier that he would send the sword after those who were scattered, so that destruction would follow them even in exile (Ezekiel 5:12). Yet even in that anger, mercy is remembered, and some Jews in exile are promised escape from the sword.

None of those who stayed near Jerusalem will escape, because they trusted the city walls instead of God and will be put to shame. But some in the nations will escape, because there they have no other support and must lean on God alone. They are called survivors because they will become the seed of another generation, and Jerusalem will rise again from them.

This remnant is also a repentant remnant (Ezekiel 6:9). Those who escape will remember God. If God plans life for someone, he will also give repentance, a turning back to him. They are spared the sword so they will have time to return. God’s patience leaves room for repentance and should encourage sinners to repent. He gives space for repentance where he intends to give grace, though many who get the time do not receive the heart to change. Many escape the sword and still do not leave their sin, but these will.

This remnant also points to the larger remnant God keeps among mankind as monuments of mercy, people made safe by being brought to repentance. Their repentance begins with a mix of judgment and mercy. Judgment came because they were carried away as captives. Mercy came because they escaped the sword in the land of their captivity. They were driven from their own land, but not out of life itself, unlike others who died as they deserved. The hard dealings of God, joined with the mercy still shown, should move us to repent and answer God’s purpose in both. True repentance is accepted by God, even when troubles lead us to it. In fact, holy suffering often becomes a means of conversion, as it was for Manasseh.

The root of their repentance is that they remember God among the nations. Those who forgot him in times of peace and comfort, when they grew fat and rebelled, now remember him in exile. The prodigal son did not think of his father’s house until hunger brought him low in a far country. So the first step back to God is remembering him. There is hope for sinners when they begin to ask, “Where is God my Maker?” Sin starts with forgetting God (Jeremiah 3:21). Repentance starts with remembering him and our duty to him.

God says, “They shall remember me,” meaning, “I will give them grace to do so.” Without that grace, they would keep forgetting him forever. That grace will find them wherever they are. By bringing God back to mind, it will bring them back to their right mind. Like the prodigal, when they remember their father, they also remember how they sinned against him. They first recall the shameful wrong they did to God through idolatry, and true repentance always fastens on that and mourns over it most deeply.

They left God for idols, giving honor to false gods, which were only the products of human imagination and human hands, the honor they should have given to the God of Israel. They turned away from God’s word, which should have been their rule, and from God’s work, which should have been their concern. Their hearts turned from him. God asks for the heart above all else, and when the heart leaves him, it is like a wife running away from her husband or a subject rebelling against his king. Their eyes also chased after their idols. They admired them and expected help from them. Their hearts chose gods they could see, and then their eyes followed their hearts in worshiping them. This sin is deeply evil because it is spiritual unfaithfulness. Idolatry breaks covenant with God. It sets the heart on a rival and gives in to a base desire that deceives and defiles the soul, while greatly dishonoring God.

They also remember how this grieved God and how he responded to it. They will remember that he was broken by their unfaithful heart and their eyes that were full of spiritual adultery. He was not merely angry, he was sorrowful, like a husband wounded by the shame of a wife he truly loved. It broke his heart that they dealt so falsely with him. He was broken like an aged father whose rebellious child wounds his spirit and brings him low. “For forty years I was grieved with that generation” (Psalm 95:10). Some understand this as meaning his measures were broken, that is, his flow of kindness toward them was stopped, and he was forced to punish them. In repentance, they will remember this, and it will humble them more than anything else, not so much that their peace and country were broken, but that God himself was broken by their sin. Then they will look on him whom they pierced and mourn (Zechariah 12:10).

Nothing troubles a true penitent more than knowing that his sin grieved God and the Spirit of his grace. The result of this repentance is that they will loathe themselves for the evil they committed in all their abominations. God gives this grace so they can be ready for pardon and rescue. Though their unfaithful heart had broken him, he would not utterly reject them. His goodness shines all the more brightly because it rises from their great evil (Isaiah 57:17, Isaiah 57:18; Hosea 2:13, Hosea 2:14).

True repenters see sin as a vile thing, the very thing the Lord hates. It makes sinners, and even their worship, hateful to him (Jeremiah 44:4; Isaiah 1:11). Sin also stains a person’s conscience and, unless that person is hardened and numb, makes him despise himself. An idol is especially called an abomination, something hateful and disgusting before God (Isaiah 44:19).

What sinners once loved, repenters come to hate. Things that once seemed sweet to them now seem filthy. Sin also holds many evils inside it. Many other sins grow out of one act of rebellion, and one sin can carry several guilt-stains at once (Leviticus 16:21). In their idol worship, they were sometimes guilty of sexual immorality, as in the worship of Peor, and sometimes of murder, as in the worship of Moloch. In those abominations, more evil was bound up than first met the eye.

This also shows the deep wickedness of sin itself. Sin is an abomination filled with evil. Those who truly hate sin cannot help hating themselves because of it. Self-loathing always comes with true repentance. Repenters struggle with themselves and cannot settle peaceably in their own hearts until they have some hope that God has been reconciled to them. Even then, they still feel shame, though God has turned his anger away from them (Ezekiel 16:63).

God will also be glorified by their repentance (Ezekiel 6:10). They will know that he is the Lord. They will learn this by experience and be ready to admit it. They will see that he did not speak in vain when he said he would bring this evil on them. What he said came true, and it served his good purpose. It was not an empty threat, and they had good reason to be warned and punished.

God will make sinners know and confess that he is the Lord, one way or another, either through repentance or through ruin. All true repenters come to admit that God’s word is right and powerful, especially its warnings. They justify God in those warnings, and they also justify him when he brings them to pass.