Son of man, set your face against the mountains of Israel; prophesy against them … - Ezekiel 6:2

Today's Scripture Reading (July 30, 2026): Ezekiel 6

In 1842, Edgar Allan Poe published his short story "The Mask of the Red Death" (now better known by the slightly different title "The Masque of the Red Death"). The story follows the adventures of Prince Prospero as he tries to avoid a plague known as the "Red Death." Prospero plans to hide with his nobles inside the walls of his Abbey. While death reigns in the countryside, the prince and his nobles hide safely behind the walls of the Abbey. According to Poe's story, one night Prospero decides to hold a masquerade party. But as the party progresses, a visitor appears in the room disguised as a victim of the Red Death. Prospero confronts the stranger, but there is no substance to him. However, as a direct result of the contact that Prospero has with this apparition, Prospero dies, and in short order so do all of the nobles who had gathered in the Abbey. The moral of the story is that, in reality, there is no way to avoid a plague, and it is the height of foolishness to believe you can.

No one really knows what the Red Death represents, but some interesting suggestions have been made. Maybe one of the most interesting ideas is that the Red Death was Poe's representation of the disease consumption, or what we now know as tuberculosis. The argument is that Poe had extensive experience with the disease. Poe's mother, step-mother, and brother had all died of tuberculosis, and at the time of the writing of the Red Death, Poe's wife was suffering from the disease. It is thought that Poe himself was in denial about the disease's finality, but that, deep down, he might have known the truth, which Poe understood and revealed in his writing about the Red Death.

Ezekiel is commanded to set himself against the mountains of Israel. It was in these mountains that Israel found their security. It was there that they had sacrificed to the false gods. It was there that they had built their cities, making them hard to attack. The mountains were the walls behind which Judah had tried to hide, secure in the thought that the mountains would protect them. Judah was in denial of what seemed to be so apparent to everyone else who was watching, that the nation was about to fall, and the mountains couldn't save them any more than the walls of the Abbey could save Prospero and his friends. Judah had placed their faith in the mountains, and in the end, it would be the mountains that revealed the stupidity of the nation's plan.   

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 7

 

Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: You have been more unruly than the nations around you and have not followed my decrees or kept my laws. You have not even conformed to the standards of the nations around you. – Ezekiel 5:7

Today's Scripture Reading (July 29, 2026): Ezekiel 5

As the Nazi Party began to take hold of Germany in the 1930's, it quickly became apparent that the political structure of the nation was being set up for a conflict with the Christian Church. Adolf Hitler was willing to take steps beginning with a mediating position concerning the church. Still, ultimately, Hitler believed that Christianity and all other religions were incompatible with the National Socialism espoused by Hitler's Nazi Party. The problem, for Hitler, was that Germany had strong Christian roots. So, the only response for the Nazi's was to change Christianity.

The plan began by restricting the church's teaching. Nazi racism meant that Christianity had to make a clean break with its Jewish roots. The attack on the Jewish basis for Christianity appears to have had two main focal points. First, the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) had to be removed from Christian teaching. So, Hitler adopted a position similar to the position that the heretic Marcion had held in the second century; everything Jewish had to be removed from the Christian Bible. The second attack was found in the Nazi accusation that the Jews bore the guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus. What more could be expected from what Hitler believed was an inferior people? But there was a third line of attack. Quietly, Adolf Hitler was portrayed as the new Messiah: the new Jesus. And the specter of a "Positive Christianity," one dominated by the policies of National Socialism, rose within the nation.

The unfortunate truth was that many Christians seemed to be willing to make the shift from a historical Christianity to a Nazi-dominated version of the Christian faith. But not all Christians made the switch. A remnant of the confessing church remained active in the nation, and leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer kept the image of the Biblical Christ fresh in the minds of those they encountered. But for others, it seems that Jesus' message of love was all too easily exchanged for the Nazi-dominated Messiah characterized by hate. Knowing what Christ had demanded, they decided to go in a different direction. And the truth that the world discovered as the Second World War ended was that the Nazi's had not only violated the teachings of Jesus, but they had not even lived up to the moral standards of nations that had never accepted the teachings of Christ.

God warns the nation of Judah that their sins were greater than those of the other nations because, although they knew what God had demanded of them, they had decided not to keep his decrees and follow his instructions. Not only did they fail to measure up to the instructions of God, but they also did not even live up to the morality of the pagan nations that surrounded them. For God, that was unacceptable. It was then, and it remains unacceptable in modern times. God demands more of us. The disturbing truth is that the church still seems too willing to exchange the message of Jesus of love for one based on hate. In doing so, we continue to reject the demands of God, and we fail to live up to the moral standards of even our secular world. And God remains unimpressed by our moral ineptitude. 

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 6

Then lie on your left side and put the sin of the people of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side. I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the people of Israel. After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the people of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year. – Ezekiel 4:4-6

Today's Scripture Reading (July 28, 2026): Ezekiel 4

The more I deal with broken relationships, the more I wonder whether we have any relationships at all. I mean, we assume, maybe I should say that I assume, that we mean what it is that we say. We want to be assured that words, in whatever medium we might find them, mean something. However, in broken relationships, words that have been spoken often don't carry the meaning we think they should. Maybe the classic example is when one partner tells the other that the relationship is over. Often, admittedly not always, what is meant is that the one wants the partner to fight for the relationship and not just give up. But too often, we quit, thinking this is the required action. The truth is that words carry a message, but often that message is veiled and hard to understand. Maybe the clearest statement of what we really feel is displayed through what we do.

Ezekiel seems to be the master of speaking through his actions. And this passage is no exception. Ezekiel does not speak with words; he speaks with his actions. Unfortunately, separated by time as much as we are, we often miss the message. Ezekiel starts his message by lying on his left side for 390 days. Ancient peoples often oriented themselves to face the rising sun, or the east. Therefore, the left would be the north. Spending 390 days on his left side would indicate the time spent by the Northern tribe of Israel in their sin. However, 390 is also a significant number. Forty is the Hebrew number or symbol for punishment. Israel spent forty years in their desert wanderings because of their lack of trust and obedience to God. Lashings or beatings were often administered with the instruction that the one being punished was to receive forty stripes less one, or thirty-nine. Since Ezekiel is lying on his left side for Israel, the math is pretty simple. It is thirty-nine times the ten tribes of Israel; forty less one for each tribe. It is an illustration that repeats something the prophets have spoken of a few times: the northern ten tribes of Israel may be missing, but they are not forgotten, nor is God through with them. The Northern tribes would still have a role to play in the future that God was setting up.

Ezekiel lies on his right side for forty days. Following the same imagery we used for the Northern tribes, we find that the action pertains to the punishment of the Southern Kingdom, which had become dominated by one tribe, Judah, even though Judah consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The southern kingdom retained the name of that one, dominant tribe. But, interestingly, Judah was not to suffer the normal forty minus one – they were to suffer the full forty. The reason might be simply that their punishment was fully upon them. Judah would have felt the coming destruction of the city of Jerusalem and of the Temple as consisting of the full punishment of God. This time, it would seem, God was holding nothing back.

But often this seems to be where our analysis stops. Maybe the most significant aspect of the story is often left unmentioned: that Ezekiel bears the punishment for both the northern Kingdom of Israel and its southern counterpart, Judah. And in this, he becomes a type of Christ, and the image he portrays becomes a forerunner of the sacrifice that Jesus will make on behalf of all the people of the world. And Jesus would once again bear the full punishment for our sins; he would give his very life.      

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 5

 

You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel—Ezekiel 3:5

 

Today's Scripture Reading (July 27, 2026): Ezekiel 3

A while back, I read an article by Brian McLaren about our responsibility to creation. McLaren starts off the article by describing where he was. 

RIGHT NOW, I'M thigh-deep in muck. Clad in hip waders, I'm slogging through a spring-fed bog in northern Maryland. I'm surrounded by tussock sedge, alder, jewelweed, skunk cabbage, and swamp rose. And I'm having a great time (Brian McLaren)

At that time, McLaren had been part of a volunteer team for a couple of days each year that studied and tried to protect the North American Bog Turtle, the rarest turtle in our part of the world. But as he tells his story of his search for the turtle, he also begins to describe his own disappointment in a Christian Church that does not seem to care about protecting the ecology of our world. In fact, he openly points to Christians as part of the problem. Unfortunately, he is right. We have become enamored with an escapist theology that preaches that this world will one day be thrown into the trash pile, and we will simply escape to somewhere else. Yet, in Genesis 1, God looked at creation and called it good, and in the end, he called it very good. Why would he want to throw all of it away when time has been completed?

Baby Bog Turtle

And it is not just our ecology that is taking the brunt of our negligence. Evangelically, we have carried the same carelessness into our practices, often going all over the world to talk about the "love of Jesus" but ignoring the ones who are closest to us, the ones who live around the place where we live. Mission has become something that we do somewhere else. The idea of following your passions and searching for Bog Turtles close to home as part of our mission often seems absurd.

Yet, it might be the most important part of our mission. When I first became a Pastor, one of the earliest pieces of advice I received (from a retired Pastor and Missionary) was that I would now dedicate my life to things I did not want to do. My days were now to be spent on things that I was not gifted for, rather than the things for which I possessed a talent. This removal from areas where I was gifted was the life of a Pastor. It was like he was saying that God had gifted me, he had given me a set of talents and passions and had helped me to develop them; all so that one day I could become a pastor and throw all of the gifts that he had given to me away. My gifts become just a part of God's disposable creation.

For me, this is the passion of this passage. God speaks to Ezekiel and says, I am not sending you to speak to a foreign people. I am not calling you to be a Jonah and travel to Nineveh to speak to the foreigners; I am sending you to your own people, those who speak the same language you do. And not only am I sending you to them, but I also know that you have a passion for them. I am the author of that passion, and now I need you to use your passion for them as you deliver the message I am giving you.

Ezekiel is a strange book filled with strange images. But part of that arises from Ezekiel's passions, passions that God was able to use because he was willing to submit them to God. We all have passions, but sometimes we refuse to see them as opportunities for mission. McLaren, as he searches for Bog Turtles in Maryland, is every bit as much of a missionary as someone who chases all over Africa in search of the heathen (maybe more, but I might be accused of pushing it). I am thankful for the passions God has given each of us. Passions for people and things, even a passion for this world that God created. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that the earth is part of our mission, and that when the end comes, the earth will be restored rather than destroyed. God's message to each of us is that when we are chasing our passions (even our passion for turtles), we are chasing after him. And that is precisely where we want to be.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 4

You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. – Ezekiel 2:7

Today's Scripture Reading (July 26, 2026): Ezekiel 2

Former astronaut Ed Lu, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions and an extended stay on the International Space Station, argues that the risk of a collision between Earth and a city-destroying asteroid is much higher than previously thought. And part of the problem is the small size an asteroid would need to be to level a city. NASA currently monitors space for Earth-changing asteroids 0.65 miles (3,432 feet) in diameter or bigger, which could come into close contact with our planet. But it would only take an object with a diameter of 131 feet to level a city. The problem is that we have had no idea how to monitor space for such a small object, and space seems well populated with rocks of this size. Since we don't know how to find these objects, much less what to do with them when we do find them, why worry about them? Our attitude has been that we might as well ignore the possibility until we have found a solution to the problem.

Ed Lu is talking about these objects because he thinks he has a solution to the problem. However, now he needs public opinion to swing in his favor on detecting these smaller space rocks so he can finance his solution. Ed Lu's space rocks also reveal what seems to be a disturbing trend, at least to me, in the public statements we make. Politically, scientifically, and spiritually, there appears to be a trend to speak messages that are expedient rather than true. It seems that in all areas of life, we are ignoring the small rocks we don't know what to do with. In the area where I spend most of my time (the spiritual arena), it is revealed in a reluctance to talk about what is true because it is not the truth that the people around us really want to hear. We have become the Pied Pipers of our society, just telling people what we think they want to hear. After all, some wonder what we could do with the truth even if we did know it?

Yet, knowing the truth has consistently driven us toward imaginative solutions. Repeatedly throughout history, knowing the uncomfortable truth has forced us to move in the right direction. But if we don't know the truth, we can't develop the fix the problem requires.

God tells Ezekiel to give God's message to the people, even if they aren't listening. If the truth is hidden from the exiles, it won't be because they haven't been told; it will be because they were unwilling to listen. And we stand in a similar situation. The prophets of our society need to be willing to speak the uncomfortable truth, a truth that might surprise us from a God who loves us, all of us, dearly. But if we don't understand that, it must not be because we have never been told. It has to be because we were unwilling to listen.     

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 3

In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. - Ezekiel 1:1

Today's Scripture Reading (July 25, 2026): Ezekiel 1

In 525, a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus proposed dating events by referring to a common point in time. For Dionysius, because of his commitment to the Christian faith, that moment in time was the birth of Jesus Christ. Dionysius made a few mistakes in how he counted the five centuries that had passed between the birth of Jesus and his own life, and because of those mistakes, his dating is off by somewhere between four and seven years, yet the idea itself has stuck. Today we still date back to the same point in time. We call it the Common Era (or the Current Era or even the Christian Era), but it was originally called Anno Domini, or in the Year of our Lord, usually shortened to AD. The system allows us to date historical events so we can compare events across cultures, something that was once much more difficult. The last Western European nation to switch to the common calendar was Portugal, which made the change in 1422. 

The idea of dating events back to a common point is an old one. In ancient times, it was often dated to a significant event or death. The problem was that each culture chose different starting dates, and those dates changed with every generation. So, Ezekiel starts his account with a dating system, a common point in time that his readers would have understood. The NIV translates the dating very personally. Ezekiel dates his prophecy to "my thirtieth year," but it is unlikely that Ezekiel was counting the years of his own life.

For one thing, the idea of celebrating birthdays is more of a current practice. The dates of birth in ancient times were not celebrated. A better translation of the verse might be "in the thirtieth year," dating back to some common event. The problem is that while his first readers understood the connection to a common event, that event has been lost over time.

However, we can make some guesses. Ezekiel might have been dating back to the last year of Jubilee that had been celebrated in Judah. The problem with that idea is that the Jubilee celebrations in Israel were sporadic, if they were ever really celebrated at all.  Another possibility is that Ezekiel dates back to the discovery of the law during the days of Josiah. Dating the events of his life to the discovery of the law during the Temple renovations is the solution suggested by the Jewish Targum. Hilkiah found the book of the law in 621 BCE, which means that Ezekiel's vision dates to around 591 BCE, or five years before the fall of Jerusalem.

All of this indicates that Ezekiel was among those taken before the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, and that it is in Babylon that his prophetic career begins. What is significant about this is that God finds Ezekiel far from home and the Temple dedicated to God by the Jews. Here, by a river in Babylon, Ezekiel hears the instructions of God and is compelled to follow them. The law found in the Temple thirty years earlier was still the instruction by which Ezekiel would structure his life, and the God who ruled in Jerusalem was still the God who ruled over Ezekiel and the exiles, even though they now found themselves living in a foreign land.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 2

Concerning the Ammonites: This is what the LORD says: "Has Israel no sons? Has Israel no heir? Why then has Molek taken possession of Gad? Why do his people live in its towns? – Jeremiah 49:1

Today's Scripture Reading (July 24, 2026): Jeremiah 49

Israel was always designed to operate as a theocracy, a nation where God was supposed to rule as the physical king. What we sometimes forget is that, while that is an unusual form of government, Israel would not have been the only theocracy in ancient times. Many nations were built on the idea of the "rule of the gods."  And another possible candidate for a theocracy is the Kingdom of Ammon and the Ammonites. In this case, the god in question would be Molech or Molek. But for the Ammonites, Molek was not just the name of their God; it was the name of their king. In fact, Molek seems to mean "the god who is king." Another interesting parallel between Ammon and Israel is that both nations were known as "The Children of." The people of Israel were known as "The Children of Israel," and the people of Ammon were known as "The Children of Ammon."

Gad was a Transjordanian tribe of Israel (a tribe that had settled, along with Manasseh and Reuben, on the east side of the Jordan River, while the rest of the tribes settled on the west side of the river). But the territory, which had been part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, not Judah, was no longer a possession of the descendants of Jacob. By the time of Jeremiah, the Kingdom of Israel had long been defeated by the Assyrian Empire, and Israel had been carried into exile, now just a province of a foreign empire. Yet God still seemed to expect Judah, who represented the surviving children of Israel, to be in control of the cities of the Northern Kingdom, specifically the cities of Gad, which had long been lost to the Kingdom of Ammon. God's question is: why did Judah allow this situation to arise?

So, God's message to Judah asks the question, "Does Israel (or Jacob) have no sons? Because the cities that I gave to the children of Israel are now in the possession of the children of Molek" (either the god, the king, or both). This lack would form part of the charge against Judah; they had not had the faith to keep all that God had given to them.

It is a question that I admit that I wrestle with. Do I have the strength and the faith to keep what God has given to me? And I am not sure that I always know the answer. But I do believe that the church has become a safe church, not that it is a safe place to be, but rather, a safe place that is unwilling to risk for God. And because of that, we have lost the holy places and the people God intended for us to impact. And I wonder if at some point in the future, the question that Jeremiah asked of Judah will be asked of us. Why have you lost the ones whom I entrusted to your care?

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 1