Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 34-36.

Through Ezekiel God condemned those leaders who fail to take care of the people over whom God has given them charge.  Ezekiel speaks of God’s anger at those who use the position of leadership, which God gave them, to benefit themselves without taking care of those whom God has put into their care.  Ezekiel makes it very clear that leaders’ first concern should be caring for those who have been put in their charge.  But Ezekiel does not stop with condemning the leaders who failed to care for God’s people.  He extends the same metaphor to the abuse of our fellow man by those of us who have not been given positions of leadership.  In a way, this is an extension of his condemnation of leaders, because the leaders should be preventing one person from bullying others.  In another way, Ezekiel tells us that we have the leaders who fail to care for us because the stronger among us bully the weak.    Those who have been given positions of leadership among us should be gathering the weak together into God’s flock and protecting them from abuse.  The strong among us should use their strength to shelter the weak and to help them gain the sustenance they need.  Instead, all too often, our leaders prey upon the weak, while the strong among us crush them.  Both scattering God’s people rather than drawing them together in safety.  Some who see in the Church today the situation Ezekiel is describing, and it does exist all too often in the Church today, use it as an excuse to go their own way.  But that is not God’s prescription.  God says through Ezekiel that He will gather the weak and care for them.  He will protect the weak against the strong.  If we are strong enough to faithfully serve the Lord on our own, we should never-the-less gather with others so as to protect the weak when others attempt to shoulder them aside.

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