Year 6, Day 160: Ezekiel 34

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Appetite

• Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus.  But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.

Ezekiel 34 is a very interesting chapter because it contains God’s truth proclaimed on multiple levels of society.  First we hear the declaration against the shepherds.  Remember yesterday when God told Ezekiel that if he did his job as a prophet that the people would be accountable for themselves but if he didn’t do his job as a prophet then the guilt of the people will be on him?  Here in this chapter we hear that in general the people have no shepherd.  In other words, there are no people even trying to lead anymore.  Everyone is doing whatever they want, making it neigh impossible to lead them anywhere!  Leadership is always hard, but it is especially hard when the people seek their own desires – their own appetite – and do not even seem willing to listen.

The next level of condemnation that we hear from the Lord with respect to appetite is far more literal.  Do you hear God talking upon trampling down the grass or muddying the waters?  What God is saying is that the Hebrew weren’t content living in his blessing.  They wanted more; therefore, they were willing to trample down what little blessing had been given to others so that they could maximize their own blessing.  This sounds a lot like business owners charging high prices for finished products but paying their employees low wages.  Or it sounds like wealthy countries taking advantage of developing countries by exploiting their willingness to work for pittance.  It sounds like people going into restaurants and throwing away half of their food.  It sounds like a country who throws away and rebuys rather than fixes and restores.  Through Ezekiel, God is issuing a grand declaration to all people who are so intoxicated by their own blessing that they are willing to help bring the blessing of others to a ruin just so they can get more for themselves.

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