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

Ezekiel lays out the reasons that God will destroy Jerusalem.  He lays out how the political leaders have shed blood to advance their interests.  While it became culturally acceptable to treat parents with contempt, oppress foreigners, mistreat orphans and widows, despise the Holy, behave in all sorts of sexually inappropriate ways, profit off of the poor, and extort unjust gains.  Ezekiel goes on to describe how the religious leaders fail to distinguish between the holy and the common and teach that there is no difference between the clean and the unclean.  How can the people be expected to honor God when those who claim to speak on His behalf fail to distinguish between good and evil?

I was going to write about a news story I recently read which illustrates the ways in which political and religious leaders profit off of the poor while claiming to speak on their behalf, but decided that would distract from my point.  Reading this passage and seeing how it applies to our society today makes it look like we are doomed, like God’s judgement will inescapably fall on us.  However, there is one other thing in this passage.  Ezekiel tells us that God looked in Jerusalem for people to repair the wall against unrighteousness, for people to stand in the gaps while it was being repaired.  And He did not find them.  Well, He is looking for such people today in our society.  Will you work to repair the wall? Will you stand in the gaps in the wall?  Or will you just put whitewash on it to cover up that it is about to collapse?

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