How presumptuous!

An enormously insightful throwaway comment by our OT lecturer today: "Ezekiel, like the other exilic prophets, is attacking Israel's presumption.

The context: Part of the pervasive "orthodoxy" in Jerusalem, prior to its fall in the 6th century BC, was that as the city of God, in which Yahweh himself dwelt with his temple, Jerusalem was inviolable and impregnable, regardless of the moral laxity within the city.

The exilic prophets act as a corrective: that the people are in fact presuming on God's grace, taking him for granted, and thinking that he will approve of their behaviour, no matter how ungodly it is.

Considering the wider canonical context, presumption is a far greater sin than we appreciate, I think.

Yahweh strikes people dead for lifting the lid of the ark. Yahweh is furious at David lackadaisically bringing the ark up the hill of Jerusalem, without proper pomp and ceremony.

One might phrase the desire for the knowledge of good and evil as presumption: Adam and Eve were refusing to believe that Yahweh had their best interests at heart. The knowledge of good and evil, which would make humanity like God, would allow them to judge. There is no reason to judge good from evil, if you trust your sovereign creator God who has made all things good for you. It's like wanting to check his work. Presumptuous.

The warnings in Hebrews take on a similar effect. We get hung up on assurance and salvation by faith alone; but fail to see that sin matters. We have come to a heavenly Jerusalem. We have entered into the most holy place, by virtue of Jesus' blood, shed to pay for our sins. To think that our actions do not matter, when the precious blood of Jesus was spilled precisely for our sins, is a presumption from which we do not deserve forgiveness. We crucify the Lord of glory again, to our shame. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of a living God, and we need to guard ourselves from such a sin, from such a travesty.