One Righteous Person

Ezekiel is told the land will be devoured and the people thrown down or thrown out. The end has come, and there's no turning back on God's plan and purpose. To illustrate, the Lord references three righteous men who, if they had lived in this time, would have only escaped by themselves. 

Ezekiel 14:12–14 (ESV) And the word of the LORD came to me: 13 “Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, 14 even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord GOD.

The Lord repeated this stipulation three more times in the chapter to cover the four judgments on the land. 

Famine would follow the ravaging of animals, then sword and pestilence. 

Ezekiel 14:21–22 (ESV) “For thus says the Lord GOD: How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast! 22 But behold, some survivors will be left in it, sons and daughters who will be brought out; behold, when they come out to you, and you see their ways and their deeds, you will be consoled for the disaster that I have brought upon Jerusalem, for all that I have brought upon it.

First we should take not of the three men mentioned. Noah who preached righteousness for 150 years to a time when no one heard or listened. 

2 Peter 2:5 (ESV) if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Noah found favor with God and became the means by which the human race would barely survive. 

Then there's Daniel, a man who stood alone in Babylon and later much more alone in Persia, for the Lord's sake. He was miraculously provided for and protected by the angels of the Lord. 

Daniel 6:22 (ESV) My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.”

Finally, there's Job. Another man who stood alone in his righteousness, set apart from all the rest for his devout life in the fear of God. 

Job 1:8 (ESV) And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”

The three men represent the often experienced isolation in righteous living. Here, Ezekiel reaffirms that they stand alone and apart. Christians do well to remember that following the Lord is often times to be the only one who does so. 

Even in Israel, God's chosen people, blessed and powerful, had been reduced to wickedness beyond the nations around them. They altogether became corrupt and worthless. 

When standing for God, standing alone comes standard. In their time, no one followed Job, Daniel, and Noah, but today, billions revere them. Their example teaches us to disregard what is important in the eyes of the world and follow the Lord. Don't let this world squeeze you into its mold. What's here today is gone tomorrow, but the man who does the Word of God abides forever. 

1 John 2:17 (ESV) And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.