The pastor to whom I had confessed my sin years earlier has walked with us through many rough times; I am grateful that he is still my pastor today. He loved me, and he showed up as the hands and feet of Christ when I did not think myself worthy of God’s love.

“Godly husband, godly father, godly leader in the Church.” That was how I so wanted to be perceived by others, but it was a lie, and I hated myself because of it. The truth was that, for decades, I had struggled with sexually addictive behaviors: masturbation, pornography, and—eventually—binges of phone sex with other men. This was a secret that I was once convinced I would take to my grave because, if anyone knew the truth of who I was, I was sure I’d be despised, rejected, and abandoned by all, including my wife and children.
The fact that I struggled with sexual brokenness isn’t surprising, especially in light of my story and the fact that I have a sinful nature and live in a fallen world. I grew up in a Christian home with godly parents, but I carried a deep wound. My dad excelled in whatever he did, and others fully expected me to follow in his footsteps, but what he excelled in was not what I wanted to pursue. Indeed, I avoided his world because I feared that I might fail and be rejected by him and others. And so any deep connection with my dad was absent. He didn’t give me the physical touch, the play, the frequent affirmation that I so desperately wanted and needed.
A therapist said to me decades later, “You were a nine- or ten-year-old boy, walking across an emotional desert, desperate for a drink of water, and you found one. It just happened to be from a polluted well.” The polluted well was the attention of an older neighborhood boy who introduced me to sexual activity. This would set in motion a decades-long history of struggle with same-sex attraction and sexual acting out. While I was still attracted to women, there was always the pull of the other that produced overwhelming guilt, toxic shame, and repeated, desperate calls to God to remove this despised thorn.
My early sexualization was punctuated by two other traumatic events during adolescence. When I was 14, my dad invited a 24-year-old man with whom he had a professional relationship to spend the night—to share my room—when this man was in town for a special event. Little did my dad or I know that the conversation this man engaged me in after the lights were out would quickly turn sexual and would lead to sexual activity that left me devastated with guilt and shame. Similarly, a sexual encounter with a predatory college professor at age 18 would also reinforce the extent of the brokenness I felt.
During my time in professional school, I fell in love with a wonderful Christian woman, and we married soon after. Finally, I thought; surely marriage would fix me. Marriage was what I needed in order to quit doing the things that brought so much pain. And it did work, for a while. But, gradually, the same old sexually addictive behaviors crept back into my life. I told myself that I was only trying to reduce the stress resulting from my job.
I thought that once we had children, I would stop. I would have to stop. But the children came, and my sin didn’t stop. Against a backdrop of frequent masturbation and binging on pornography, I kept trying to find a way to stop, believing that God and I could sort this out, that no one else needed to know.
When I was in my mid-30s, my family and I were members of a small, reformed church in the Midwest. I was approached about serving as an elder. I resisted at first, feeling like a hypocrite, but after repeated overtures from the pastor and a godly man on the church’s session, I agreed to have my name placed before the congregation. I told myself that if I were elected to the office of ruling elder, I would have to stop doing what brought so much guilt and shame. I was elected to the office of ruling elder and ordained, but, much to my disappointment, the miraculous healing I was seeking did not materialize. It was not long before I was engaging in the same old addictive patterns, at times contemplating whether suicide wouldn’t be a better alternative.
And so the pattern was set, and the decades passed. Where was God in all of this? Why wouldn’t he remove this thorn? I became more and more convinced that there might not be any hope for me, disregarding all that I had been taught throughout my life about God’s faithfulness. In my early 40s, my wife and I were in a new city as a result of my work, and the evidence of God’s faithfulness to me began to take form, although I would not see that until years later. My wife, while serving on the missions committee of the church in which I was also serving as a ruling elder, came across a request for support from Harvest USA. I can remember her saying while she was reading the literature, “This is the most grace-filled, redemptive approach to helping individuals escape their bondage to sexual sin that I have ever seen.” I was intrigued and began reading it myself. I found a modicum of hope, but I was still too prideful to confess my sin to my pastor or my wife.
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Even in the midst of judgment, the glorious, holy God of Israel prophesied restoration. He would resurrect His covenantal people as surely as Ezekiel had witnessed the revivification of dry bones (Ezek. 37:1–14). However, the Lord would not restore them merely to their condition before judgment, but He would cleanse them and give them a new heart, reestablish them in their ancestral kingdom, place over them a righteous Davidic prince, and dwell in their midst forever (Ezek. 36:22–37:28).

Ezekiel’s pages are littered with tension of all sorts: the people of God severed into exiles in Babylon and besieged residents in Jerusalem, a wound-up prophet from a priestly lineage who lies on his left side for 390 days and who refuses to mourn the death of his wife, and visions of esoteric symbolism combined with graphic, unsettling oracles (Ezek. 4:4–8; 24:15–24). Perhaps the greatest tension in Ezekiel lies in the revelation of God’s character: transcendent but immanent, holy and offended by sin but forgiving, and terrible in His judgment but wondrous in His mercy. Although these tensions have the potential to distress or confuse the reader, the book of Ezekiel makes known the name and glory of the Lord in a unique and instructive way.
These three things should assist you in unwinding the tension and delighting in Ezekiel’s prophecies.
1. Ezekiel’s Strange Visions and Oracles Reveal a Glorious but Knowable God
You don’t have to read far into Ezekiel to experience bewilderment. His inaugural vision and call feature four living creatures (later identified as cherubim) with monstrous characteristics, a theophany of the “likeness of the glory of the Lord” that rattles the mortal senses, and a series of activities that come with his commission—including consumption of a scroll and muteness (Ezek. 1:1–3:27; 10:20). And this is just the beginning of the book. Symbolic acts, images, and pronouncements, and visitations by the glorious Lord and His angelic entourage, recur throughout its entirety (see Ezek. 10:1–22; 40:1–4).
But know this: you should experience wonderment. Encountering the glory of the transcendent God demands a response of amazement and humility. Upon receiving it, Ezekiel falls on his face (Ezek. 1:28). Part of the purpose for this record of his Spirit-filled ministry is to prompt the same awe-filled response in us. Human beings like Ezekiel, like the Babylonian exiles, and like us cannot know God on our own terms: He must make Himself known. Yet, make no mistake, Ezekiel discloses that our sovereign God is immanent and does make Himself known throughout the world, as the phrase “You will know that I am the Lord” occurs throughout the oracles both to Israel and to the nations (Ezek. 7:4, 9; 11:10; 13:9, etc.).
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In contemplating the anger of God, we are drawn into a more profound and reverent worship of Him. It is a solemn reminder of our sinfulness, the holiness of God, and the incredible gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

When attempting to know God, believers are sometimes confronted with attributes and aspects of His character that challenge our finite minds. If it were up to us, we would get to know God by the traits and qualities we enjoy most, such as His grace, mercy, and love. But what about when we are confronted with other attributes wholly central to understanding who He is that chafe a bit more against the soul? What are we to think then? Today, I would like to discuss an aspect of God’s character that many, including weak-kneed preachers, totally avoid. That is His perfect, all-consuming, and righteous fury.
The Nature of God’s Anger
God’s divine wrath, as the psalmist declares, is neither capricious nor born of the frailties that often mar human emotions. He is a righteous judge (Psalm 7:11) whose holiness is demonstrated in all He does (Isaiah 5:16). As Habakkuk so aptly testifies, God’s anger emanates from the pure and undefiled nature. His eyes are too pure to approve of evil or to look favorably upon the wicked (Habakkuk 1:13). When His anger does break out, it is not quick-tempered or wreckless (Nahum 1:3). It emanates, instead, from a long-suffering, compassionate, and gracious countenance that demonstrates His lovingkindness to thousands but who will by no means leave the guilty unscathed (Exodus 34:6-7).
In His sovereign and holy displeasure, God responds with terrifying fury upon the ones who provoke Him with their sin and idolatry (Deuteronomy 9:7-8). Indeed, God is endlessly enraged over all ungodliness (Romans 1:18-23), covenant disloyalty (Joshua 7:1), religious hypocrisy (Matthew 23:27-28), and social injustices (Zechariah 7:9-12). Yet, as fearsome as His anger is, it perfectly accomplishes the will of God (Jeremiah 23:20) and is ever in harmony with His unfathomable holiness and love (Psalm 85:10). The Scriptures, particularly in Romans 2:4, reveal the redemptive purpose behind God’s wrath, which is not solely punitive, but also restorative, leading the sinner to repentance. For those who harden their hearts against Him, His vehement opposition towards them will consume them for His own glory (Deuteronomy 32:16-17). For those who repent and turn back to the Lord, His anger is only for a night, with new joys and mercies coming in the morning (Psalm 30:5).
In the Scriptures, the redemptive arc of God’s anger spans from the very first moments of history (in the fall of man) to the eschatological future when everything that provokes the anger of God will either fall into destruction or find perfect healing in the eternal state. His wrath encompasses the coming judgments upon all nations who oppose His reign, as Jeremiah 4:7 and Psalm 2 reveal, and also extends to the cosmic consequences of sin leveled onto the wicked individual, as Colossians 3:6 so solemnly warns. Yet, in this wrath, there lies a protective purpose for His chosen people (Exodus 32:10), an impartiality that transcends human notions of fairness (Romans 2:11), and an inevitability that marks the certainty of His justice (Nahum 1:2-3), which ought to lead us to repentance. God’s wrath stored up for believers is not a trumpet call for God to blisteringly wage war against them (as He does against the wicked) but a clarion call for our repentance, an invitation to return to the paths of righteousness, as echoed in Revelation 3:19.
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