06/24/2026
Amen 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Ezekiel 7 is one of those chapters that feels like standing on a beach and watching a tsunami race toward shore while everyone around you is still acting as though it is an ordinary day. Kids are building sand castles, somebody is setting out lawn chairs, another person is arguing about what to have for supper, and life feels completely normal right up until the moment you look out toward the horizon and realize that dark line isn't a storm cloud at all. It's a wall of water, and it's coming fast.
That is where Israel was. God had sent prophets. He had given warnings. He had called people back again and again and again, showing remarkable patience over generations, yet they kept assuming tomorrow would look just like today and next year would look just like this year. Then God says, "An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land." (Ezekiel 7:2 ESV). Not someday. Not eventually. Not after one more warning, one more prophet, or one more opportunity to ignore what was being said. The consequences they had been outrunning, excusing, and postponing for generations were finally arriving at their doorstep.
What strikes me about this chapter is how many things people suddenly discover cannot save them when the moment of truth finally arrives. Money can't save them. Status can't save them. Military strength can't save them. Their silver and gold, the things they spent years accumulating, protecting, investing in, and trusting for security, suddenly become almost worthless. Ezekiel 7:19 says, "They cast their silver into the streets, and their gold is like an unclean thing." The very things they believed would provide stability, comfort, and safety turn out to be completely incapable of helping them when they need help the most.
It reminds me of how easy it is for us to convince ourselves that if we just had a little more money in the bank, a little more influence, a little more control over our circumstances, or a little more certainty about the future, then we would finally feel secure. Meanwhile, life has a way of exposing what our real foundation is, often when we least expect it. A market crashes. A diagnosis appears. A relationship falls apart. A phone rings at an hour when nobody wants the phone to ring. Suddenly all the things we thought were holding us up begin to wobble, and the things we assumed were permanent start revealing just how temporary they really are. They can end up feeling about as dependable as a Jersey calf's promise that she absolutely, positively, without question, will not stick her head through that opening again. We both know exactly how that story ends, and chances are good she is already halfway through the opening before she finishes making the promise.
The most sobering part of Ezekiel 7 is that God wasn't judging them because He enjoyed judgment. In fact, the entire book shows exactly the opposite. He warned them repeatedly because He wanted them to turn around. Every warning was actually an act of mercy. Every prophet who stood up and spoke was an invitation. Every delayed consequence was another opportunity to repent. Every year that passed without judgment falling was evidence of God's patience. The tragedy wasn't that God spoke too harshly. The tragedy was that people became so accustomed to hearing Him that they stopped listening altogether.
Yet even in a chapter this heavy, there is something important to remember. We read Ezekiel from the other side of the cross. We know something Ezekiel's audience did not yet fully understand. We know that God didn't just announce judgment. He stepped into history Himself. Jesus took the punishment we deserved so that anyone who trusts Him can find forgiveness, restoration, and life. The same God who warned Israel because He loved them enough to tell them the truth is the God who sent His Son because He loved the world enough to make a way back to Himself.
Maybe that is the question Ezekiel 7 leaves us with. What are we trusting in? What are we assuming will always be there? What have we quietly placed our confidence in besides God? Because kingdoms fall. Economies rise and fall. Possessions break. Bodies age. Relationships change. Careers end. Even the things that seem permanent have expiration dates attached somewhere in the fine print. The only thing that remains completely unshaken through every generation, every crisis, every triumph, and every disaster is God Himself.
And maybe the most beautiful thing about that is that He isn't hiding. He isn't playing some cosmic game of hide and seek while hoping we fail to find Him. He has spent thousands of years calling people to Himself through creation, through Scripture, through prophets, through Christ, and through the testimony of countless believers who have gone before us. The question has never really been whether God is speaking.
The question is whether we're listening before the tsunami reaches shore.
