“You say, ‘We want to be like the nations all around us, who serve idols of wood and stone.’ But what you have in mind will never happen.

Ezekiel 20:32

God’s people were chosen and set apart. They weren’t meant to assimilate into the world’s system; they were meant to separate from the world’s system.

• “For I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.’”
  Leviticus 11:45 (NASB 1995)

Everyone who is saved was chosen and set apart. We weren’t meant to assimilate into the world’s system; we were meant to separate from the world’s system.

• But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior.
  1 Peter 1:15 (NASB)

Love God and His ways, not the world and its ways.

• Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
  1 John 2:15-17 (ESV)

Discipline is necessary to ensure our separation from this world.

• For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life.
  Proverbs 6:23 (ESV)

• For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
  Hebrews 12:11 (ESV) 

• Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.
  Revelation 3:19 (ESV) 

God’s way of living gives life.

• They wouldn’t obey my regulations even though obedience would have given them life.
  Ezekiel 20:13b

The world’s way takes life.

• I gave them over to worthless decrees and regulations that would not lead to life.
  Ezekiel 20:25

I took a solemn oath that day that I would bring them out of Egypt to a land I had discovered and explored for them—a good land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the best of all lands anywhere.
Ezekiel 20:6

I think the words “discovered” and “explored” are interesting when said of God. This is what I found.

“After the manner of man God speaks, as if he had been the spy to go from place to place to search out the best, and to appoint it for them; it was his wise and good providence which assigned this land to them.” - Matthew Poole

Every generation in the Bible tried to have the world and God too, that’s not possible. Allow God to work the world out of me.