Ezekiel 5:7 – “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to obey my decrees and regulations. You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you.”
If you want to learn more about the overall themes and story of the book of Ezekiel, check out The Bible Project’s videos (be sure to watch both part 1 and part 2). It’s helpful to get the context of the various books of the Bible, especially ones like Ezekiel that can be extra confusing.
In today’s chapter God gives Ezekiel instructions for enacting a punishment that Israel will receive for turning away from God. They have been extremely two-faced, worship idols and other gods while still assuming that Yahweh (the God of the Bible) will protect them from their enemies. They have been exiled and they are starting to see that they cannot take God for granted.
Here’s your freedom for today:
You are only truly free in relationship with God.
The Israelites had abandoned God. They were engaging in idol worship, which often comes with a host of other sexual sins and sometimes even child sacrifice. In today’s highlighted verse, we see that they were acting even worse than some of their heathen neighbors. I believe this is a message for us today as well. We worship all kinds of idols in American culture: money, power, fame, and many others. Christians do this too, and when they do it’s often worse because they hold up these idols “in the name of Jesus.” Let us be challenged by today’s verse. Is your behavior worse than even some you see around you? Are non-Christians doing a better job loving or living rightly than you have been? What about collectively? Are we as the American church loving and living better than our “ungodly” neighbors? What can we do to turn back to God’s heart?