Then I heard him call out in a loud voice, "Bring near those who are appointed to execute judgment on the city, each with a weapon in his hand." – Ezekiel 9:1

Today's Scripture Reading (August 2, 2026): Ezekiel 9

It was a little disappointing that the Donald Sterling saga hijacked the first round of the 2014 NBA playoffs. I love the playoffs in almost every sport, but amid all the excitement of the 2014 NBA playoffs, our attention was interrupted by the racism charge against Sterling. At the time, Sterling was the longtime owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, and he had been caught talking to his mistress about a picture she had posted on Instagram of herself with Lakers great Magic Johnson. TMZ released the conversation.

It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?" -- "You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that (presumably her social media accounts) ... and not to bring them to my games." -- "I'm just saying, in your lousy (explicative) Instagrams, you don't have to have yourself with, walking with black people." -- "...Don't put him [Magic] on an Instagram for the world to have to see so they have to call me. And don't bring him to my games."

Suddenly, there seemed to be more conversation about Sterling than about the great basketball being played on the court.

As a result of the recording, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was forced to intervene. After reviewing the evidence and deciding that the charges were true, which is not all that surprising given Sterling's checkered past on race relations, Silver announced that he had arrived at the punishment. This punishment would come in three steps. First, Sterling was banned from basketball for life. He was no longer to be involved in any basketball decisions or negotiations, or have anything to do with the team he owned: the Los Angeles Clippers. Second, Sterling was fined $2.5 million, the maximum allowable fine under the NBA constitution. All the money would go to charities that address racial issues. And the last part of the punishment is that Silver says that he will do everything in his power to force Sterling to sell the Clippers. Sterling's forced sale of the Clippers was an action that Mark Cuban, then-owner of the Dallas Mavericks, called justified but "a slippery slope." In the end, the Clippers were sold to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion.

Silver's action was proper and quick. Regardless of how difficult it might have been to enforce the punishment, it has received favorable reviews from players, ex-players, and fans alike. Silver recognized that something needed to be done and that it could not wait for a meeting. Silver moved and received praise from those in the basketball world for taking action quickly. There is truly no room for this kind of racist attitude in basketball, or any other place in our world.

The vision of Ezekiel continues. God has presented the evidence to Ezekiel, and now he is calling for "those who are appointed to execute judgment." It is an interesting phrase because "those who are appointed to execute judgment" are the Babylonians. Ezekiel is admitting that his removal from his home was lawful and at the instruction of the God that he served. Not only was Ezekiel's removal part of God's plan, but the judgment also wasn't finished, not yet. Babylon would continue to carry out the punishment on Judah, destroying both Jerusalem and the Temple within her walls, all with the approval of God. The call for judgment is quick. What begins on this day of Ezekiel's life will also take time to be fulfilled, but there is no doubt it will be. And in the end, the world would be a better place because of what God was doing on this day. All of this must be done if God really wants to bring his blessing upon his people at some moment in the future.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 10

He stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and in visions of God he took me to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the idol that provokes to jealousy stood. – Ezekiel 8:3

Today's Scripture Reading (August 1, 2026): Ezekiel 8

As a culture, we react negatively to the concept of jealousy. B. C. Forbes, the Scottish financial writer and the founder of Forbes magazine, even called jealousy a "mental cancer." Saint Augustine argued that anyone who experienced  jealousy was also "incapable of love." So it is a little surprising to have the word applied to God. Yet jealousy is applied to God in several places. So the only question that we can ask is this: when we speak of jealousy as a characteristic, is that jealousy the same as the jealousy that we experience as part of the human race? And the answer to the question is a qualified no.

The jealousy we react negatively to is an illogical emotion that causes so much damage in our lives. This jealousy is closely related to a lack of trust. Forbes and Augustine are both right; this kind of jealousy is a cancer that prohibits the experience of love. This human jealousy is the green-eyed monster, which reacts with too little evidence and damages relationships that could be healthy if not for it. This kind of jealousy is always self-directed and selfish.

God's jealousy is different. For starters, it is never based on a lack of trust, nor is it selfish. God's jealousy is always in defense of his creation, grounded in a covenant he has made with his people. Because of this covenant, God and his message are to be carried to the world. God's words to Abraham at the beginning of the story were that all of the earth would be blessed through God's blessing of Abraham. God loves the world he has created and desires to be a blessing, but the path of this blessing was always supposed to be through a group of people.

However, the people rejected God, and therefore, the blessing that was meant for the world was never given. And this is what aroused God's jealousy. The people, along with the world God loved, were suffering, and for God, there was no response but jealousy. It was not a selfish jealousy but rather one borne out of love for his creation.

God gives Ezekiel a vision. He takes him to the temple gate and shows him the image in the Temple that had made God jealous and caused Israel to lose the power that should have been theirs. We don't know what the idol was; most experts believe that it was likely an image of Baal, but it doesn't really matter. Any image of a false deity placed in the Temple would cause God to become jealous and his blessing to cease flowing to his creation.

The people whom God wants to use now to bless the world include the Christian church. But that can only happen if we are willing to put our idols aside and let God bless us. Any other response will do nothing but arouse God's jealousy once more.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 9

The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own standards I will judge them. – Ezekiel 7:27

Today's Scripture Reading (July 31, 2026): Ezekiel 7

There is a "WKRP in Cincinnati" episode where the city of Cincinnati is about to be hit by a tornado. The radio stations, including WKRP, are asked to get the word out about the coming storm and what to do in case a tornado strikes in your area, but Les Nessman, WKRP's news anchor, does not have a script to follow concerning significant weather disruptions. Nessman's boss remembers that Les did pen a script about a possible communist attack on the city. (I mean, in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is the more obvious danger, an attack by communists or the possibility of a tornado?) So, on the boss's instructions, Les reads his warning bulletin on the attack of the communists and substitutes the word tornado every time he sees the word communist. Although the episode's subject matter is deadly serious, the resulting news release is amusing, and at least once, Les gets to utter the phrase "those godless red tornados."

Where I live, we are in the middle of storm season. I am hearing warnings of tornado clusters. (If Les were writing the news release, maybe we would get to hear the phrase "godless red tornado clusters.”) And there have already been deaths and damage caused by the season's tornadoes. However, today is also the thirty-ninth anniversary of an F4 tornado that ripped through the area on July 31, 1987. Part of the destructive outcome of this tornado was the result of the sixty-five minutes that the tornado stayed on the ground. Hurricanes are also brewing over the warm waters of the world's oceans, and all of this is to be expected. However, in recent years, it seems that the storms have been getting worse.

One writer recently commented that we need to start thinking about removing the phrase "Act of God" to describe these storms. It might be that Les Nessman is actually right. The storms that are attacking are godless. While this planet has always suffered from severe storms, the magnitude of the storms we are facing today might have less to do with an unpredictable "Act of God" than it has to do with being the very predictable result of the things that we have done to our planet. We are the ones who have decimated the earth's ability to withstand the various storms on the planet, and the result has been that these storms have become more threatening, more dangerous, and have caused much greater loss of property and life than ever before. The only ones we can blame for this outcome are ourselves.

Ezekiel writes one of the scariest lines of the Bible in this passage. Writing concerning the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah, Ezekiel says that God will "deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own standards [he] will judge them." Basically, God has decided to leave the people to their own devices. And the same comment might be applied to us. In the same way that God allowed the rulers of Judah to destroy their nation so that they would finally recognize that God is God over all, maybe he has allowed us to destroy our planet so that we will recognize the same thing. There is a bit of a strange epitaph that could be added here. It is not in the beauty that we recognize God (a beautiful sunrise is never called an "Act of God," although I believe that it is.) It is in the storms that we see God. And I think that is sad, but deep down I know that it is also our choice.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 8

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