Who can you blame? - Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

One thing that people are very good at, is playing the blame game. The easiest examples of this are in politics. Politicians are professionals at moving blame from themselves onto something or someone else. During the Watergate scandal, Nixon blamed the media for making a big deal out of something that he claimed was not a big deal at all. He later would say it was something his staffers did but kept him in the dark about. He tried his best to make people believe he had nothing to do with it, until the tapes came out showing his direct involvement. Or maybe you remember Roseanne Barr. Shortly following the reboot of her show, Roseanne tweeted some questionably racist things and got the second season of her show cancelled. Her response? It was because of the sleep medication ambien that I tweeted that. I don’t actually believe those things I said. Recently I watched a video about a promotion the Cleveland Indians ran in 1974 for a game against the Texas Rangers. They lowered the price of all of the beer in the stadium to just 10 cents each. Who could imagine what could go wrong with that? Well after a number of disruptions, in the 9th inning of a tied game, the fans rioted on the field and began attacking the players and the umpires. Cleveland players were ordered by their manager to go out and defend the Rangers players with their bats. It was a madhouse. Many of the drunk fans had ripped off pieces of the bleachers and were using them as weapons to attack the players on the field. The general manager of the team, rather than acknowledging the effect that the alcohol might have had on the crowd, blamed the umpires for losing control of the game.

The Israelites that Ezekiel was writing to in this section had experience playing the blame game. They had failed to follow the law that the Lord had given them through Moses. They had accepted and begun worshipping other Gods in Israel. They had refused to listen to prophets like Jeremiah who warned them what would happen if they continued in their sinful ways. Because of this, the Lord allowed the Babylonians to capture Jerusalem and send many Israelites, including Ezekiel, into captivity. At this point they have been living in captivity for 5 or 6 years, longing to return to Jerusalem. Ezekiel is prophesying to them about what will happen to Jerusalem if they do not turn from their sinful ways. The Israelites argued that this punishment which God had put on them for their unfaithfulness was unfair. It had become common for them to quote this saying, “The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?  This was their way of saying it’s not my fault. They were blaming their parents and acting as if they were being punished for something that they had not done. After all, they weren’t the ones who set up the Asherah poles to worship the God’s of Canaan. They weren’t the ones who were the first to start worshipping at mountain shrines. That was their parents. Sure, these Israelites had maybe spent some time worshipping there, but they were just living the way that their parents had taught them. But they were not just blaming their parents, they were also blaming God. In questioning their punishment, they were letting it be known that they thought what God was doing to them was unfair. They blamed God for allowing this punishment to come to them when it wasn’t a punishment that they thought they deserved.

We’ve played this blame game too. Maybe for you, you’re like the Israelites. You’ve blamed your parents for the things that you’ve done or the things that have happened to you. Parents are sinful humans too. They aren’t always perfect, they don’t always know what to do, I’m sure that your parents have messed up. If you, like the Israelites, have continued on in the same sins of your parents, you might blame them for giving you this example. If only my parents had been around more when I was growing up, maybe they could have taught me how to be better. If only my parents had been kinder to me. Then I would be more comfortable showing kindness to other people. It feels a lot better than taking the blame ourselves.

Or maybe you had great parents and can’t blame them for your sin. I’m sure though that you have played the blame game. Maybe it’s the worlds’ fault. If that scene didn’t come on tv then I wouldn’t have been tempted to lust after that woman. If we didn’t have to push others down to get ourselves to the top of our field, then I wouldn’t have had to play dirty. If Omg wasn’t just common slang that people used, I wouldn’t be so quick to misuse the name of the LORD. You can tell yourself that all your doing is fitting in and doing the things that are expected of you.

People love to talk nature vs nurture. Am I born this way or are my failures just a result of the influences around me? If you are blaming your parents or the world then you think your sin is a part of these outside influences that would be called nurture. But God says that it is our sinful nature that explains why we are the disgusting sinners that we are. The sinful world we live in certainly doesn’t help, but it can’t be blamed for our sinful nature choosing to follow along with the sin we see.

So maybe you don’t blame the world. Maybe you go even a step above and blame the only one you could blame for making you the way that you are. Maybe you blame God. We could blame God because so many of the wicked things of the world feel good to us. It’s so hard for us not to give in to temptation when it’s what our flesh craves. We are just weak creatures that can’t resist going back to our sin like a dog who returns to its’ vomit. Can’t we blame God for making us this way?  This has been going on since creation. If God hadn’t made it possible for us to sin, if God hadn’t tempted Adam and Eve with that tree, if God hadn’t put that woman with me to eat the fruit, if God hadn’t made such a bad snake. Look at all of these things we can blame God for. People have been playing this blame game since grandpa and grandma Adam and Eve. Sinful people will do anything to get the blame off of themselves and put it somewhere else. Nobody is happy when they are the one sitting in the hot seat. Our struggle to remove our guilt can even make us willing to blame God.

The problem with this blame game that we try to play is it just doesn’t work. These excuses don’t take away any of the filth of your sin. When the Israelites were playing this game, God said to them, The one who sins is the one who will die. There is no fooling God by passing the blame to someone else. God knows your sin and he doesn’t accept any excuses. He says clearly what the punishment for sin is, the soul who sins will die. It’s not someone else fault you sinned, it’s not someone else’s fault you fall to temptation. It is your sin alone, and the punishment for that sin is death.

By the way, this also means that if someone else is blaming you, or maybe even you’re blaming yourself for their sin, rest assured, their sin is not charged to you. Each of us carries our own blame for our own failures. I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. They might blame you for what they have done. They might blame you for what they have not been able to do. But God does not charge the sin that others commit against us. So don’t allow yourself to be burdened with the sin of someone else, we each have plenty of our own. We don’t need to also carry their guilt.

Like the Israelites we try and cast all of our blame onto other people and even blame God himself. Yet we see in Ezekiel that God came to these sinners and gave them an explanation that they didn’t deserve. God spoke to them through Ezekiel and pled with them to turn from their sinfulness which leads to death so that they could live. Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. 31 Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit.. If I were God these men would have been struck from the earth for the disrespect they showed in questioning my judgement. Thankfully God has much more patience than me. He chose to give all of us a chance to repent that we do not deserve. Why? Because he loves you. Listen to how he passionately pleads for your repentance. Why will you die, people of Israel? 32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live. Your God wants you to be saved. But he knows that in his perfect justice someone must be blamed for sin.

So if we can’t blame our parents, and we can’t blame the world, and we can’t blame God, and other people can’t blame us, then what can we do? God has given us somewhere to put our blame. He tells us to blame his son. Jesus didn’t do evil, but God blamed him. Jesus didn’t fall to temptation, but God blamed him. Jesus didn’t have anything to do with our sin, but God blamed him. God blamed him because he loves us, and Jesus took the blame willingly because he loves us too. God gave us his only son so that we could cast all of our guilt onto him. We can’t clear our name by trying to convince God that our sin is someone else’s. Jesus had to go before God for us and say, that sin is mine. He took the blame onto himself and received the punishment for all of it so that we no longer have to live in the filth of our sin.

People love to play the blame game. Nixon did it, Roseanne did it, you do it. It’s the way that we all try to escape from the blame that we know we deserve. We are willing to blame anyone, even God for the bad things that we do. As long as it makes us feel better about ourselves. This blame game will never be able to cleanse us. But God has given us a place where we can rest our sin. He sent his son to take all of our blame so that when we repent and turn from our evil ways, we will never have to die for our sin. Because he received that punishment already.  Amen