I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 24-26.

    Ezekiel starts today’s passage with yet another metaphor. He gives the metaphor of a cooking pot. He makes the point that when you throw various cuts of meat into a pot with water and cook it over an open flame before long all of the meat is the same. It doesn’t matter if you pull out a steak or a roast, the texture and flavor will not change. This shows us the danger of being part of a sinful society. It is all too easy to allow the sins of those around us make us insensitive to our own sins. If we allow this to happen to ourselves, we will suffer when God’s judgment is poured out on our society. I was going to say “more importantly” about my next point, but I am not sure it is more important. If we do not find a way to separate ourselves from our sinful society, the entire country will become so corrupted that God will need to destroy the whole thing.

    The second part of today’s passage is a series of messages to those who rejoiced in Jerusalem’s downfall. Those nations which celebrated Jerusalem’s downfall should not have. They suffered the same fate themselves. We should not celebrate the suffering of others, even when that suffering appears well-deserved. The fact of the matter is that we all deserve to suffer. Rather than celebrate the sufferings of those who we believe deserve it, we should strive to live so that we do not deserve the same fate. In addition, we should strive to be an example and an influence on those others so that they change their lives and become less deserving of suffering.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 22-23.

    In today’s passage Ezekiel prophesied against Jerusalem, her leaders and her people. The leaders are bent on murder, parents are treated with contempt, foreigners need to pay protection money, orphans and widows are wronged, and on, and on the list of the sins of Jerusalem’s people goes. Let us look at the list of sins which Ezekiel lays out. Doesn’t it sound a lot like the sins of our country? Ezekiel goes on to talk about leaders who destroy people’s lives for money and religious leaders who make false prophesies to cover for them. Even the common people oppress the poor. Society is corrupt from top to bottom.

    Then Ezekiel uses two metaphors which I really love. The first is the refiner’s fire. A refiners purifies metal by heating up to the melting point and then the impurities are skimmed off of the top. In a similar manner, God sends trials and tribulations against a people or nation to purify them. He, also, sends trials and tribulations into the lives of individuals to purify them. We need to embrace this when it happens to us. However, the second metaphor is in some ways even more powerful. God is looking for people to rebuild the wall of righteousness to hold back His fury against the sins of the nation. Or, failing that, someone to stand in the gap in the wall to turn aside the coming onslaught. Are we working to rebuild the wall of righteousness which once protected our society against its sins? And, if we fail in rebuilding the wall before God’s judgment is poured out (perhaps because there were not enough workers), are we willing to stand in the gap, to offer ourselves up to protect our fellow man from the coming destruction?

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 20-21.

    When the leaders of the people of Israel came to Ezekiel asking for a message from God, the message which God gave Ezekiel for them was, “How dare you ask for a message from Me?” Ezekiel went on the tell them how God had called their ancestors to give up their idol worship in exchange for the good things which God would do for them. Generation after generation their ancestors had rebelled against God and refused to give up their idols. Then Ezekiel accused the leaders who came to him of continuing to pollute themselves by worshiping idols, in particular of sacrificing their children to those idols.

    As I first read this I knew it applied to us today, but I was not quite sure where to go with it. Then, as I read it through once more, I read this:

For when you offer gifts to them and give your little children to be burned as sacrifices, you continue to pollute yourselves with idols to this day.

I knew immediately where I was going to go. I am sure that the people who came to Ezekiel acknowledged the sins of their ancestors, just as majority of the people of today acknowledge the sins of earlier generations of our country (I apologize to those of you who are not U.S. citizens or residents for applying this to the U.S. today. I am sure if you think about it, you will know similar things applying to your own country). People readily acknowledge that slavery was a terrible thing, for which our country received the terrible judgment which was the Civil War. People acknowledge the sins of segregation and the resulting judgment which was the riots of the Civil Rights era. However, most of those who want to make sure we never forget those sins are silent about the sin we practice as a society today when we sacrifice our children on the altar of convenience through the practice of abortion. The descendants of the slaves are sacrificed in our abortion mills and those who most loudly decry the evil of slavery mock any who question the practice.

    After all of this condemnation, God makes a promise of restoration. God promises that He will bring them before Him and judge them, purging them of those who insist on rebelling against Him. God promises to transform the people of Israel into a faithful people who will be a pleasing sacrifice to Him. For those of us who oppose the sins of our countrymen, do we pray for that transformation? Do we get down on our knees and ask God to send His Holy Spirit to pour down upon our fellow man? Do we beg God to use us to bring about this change? Are we willing to be sacrificed in place of those children?