Scripture: Psalm 49.12-13
People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
they are like the beasts that perish.
This is the fate of those who trust in themselves,
and of their followers, who approve their sayings…

Reflection: Lamenting Materialism :: A Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

Reading through the prophets, (since May we’ve covered Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and now Ezekiel) it is difficult to ignore the constantly recurring refrain that the powerful and wealthy were neglecting their God-ordained responsibility to care for and provide justice to the outcasts, the marginalized, the poor, and the isolated.

The only thing mentioned as frequently is idolatry, but the idols Israel was worshiping were directly connected to wealth and financial success. In ancient agrarian society if you worshiped a sun god or a fertility goddess or a god of weather or a god of bountiful harvest you were worshiping a god of financial success. It is akin to our worship of stock performance or financial forecasts or political economic policies.

Guaranteeing continually renewing cycles of growth was Ba’al’s main gig. Today, Ba’al wouldn’t be a rain god, he’d be Gordon Gekko. Or Bernie Madoff. Or Jordan Belafort.

Materialism is one of the chief idols of our age and a recent article in The Atlantic discusses how we are teaching our children how to worship it.

As part of turning away from our idolatry, today we join in a prayer of lament based on today’s reading from Psalm 49 combined with Sunday’s reading of Psalm 51.

Prayer of Lament for Materialism
Lord we weep over our culture’s sinfulness.
Not distancing ourselves, claiming to be righteous,
But weeping at our complicit hearts.

People, despite their wealth, do not endure;
they are like the beasts that perish. — Psalm 49.12

We confess that we equate security and safety with the accumulation of wealth.
We store up for many years and say to ourselves, “I am secure.” (Luke 12.19-21)

This is the fate of those who trust in themselves,
and of their followers, who approve their sayings.
They are like sheep and are destined to die…
Their forms will decay in the grave,
far from their princely mansions. — Psalm 49.13-14

Help us, Lord to break our materialist thinking.
Help us escape the snare of jealousy and comparison.

Do not be overawed when others grow rich,
when the splendor of their houses increases;
for they will take nothing with them when they die,
their splendor will not descend with them. — Psalm 49.16-17

May we escape selfishness and greed and never cause others to live in hardship for our benefit.
May we soften our hearts of generosity, welcoming the needy and oppressed.
May we cling to you only, releasing our resources to your purposes.

You are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge…
Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me. — Psalm 51.4, 10

Reteach us, Lord, how you can bless our cities through us.

May it please you to prosper Zion,
to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous. — Psalm 51.18-19

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick…And indeed I did not come to to call the virtuous, but sinners. — Matthew 9.12-13

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Ezekiel 10 (Listen – 3:16)
Psalm 49 (Listen – 2:10)

This Weekend’s Readings
Ezekiel 11 (Listen – 3:53) Psalm 50 (Listen – 2:26)
Ezekiel 12 (Listen – 4:26) Psalm 51 (Listen – 2:19)

Additional Reading
Read More from Prayers of Woe and Weeping :: Guided Prayer
Weeping for our own hurts and harms is one thing. Weeping for what grieves God is a prophetic task and a work of faith.

Read More about For These Things, I Weep
Jesus knew the weight of what he called the rich to do. He was intimately familiar with the path of self-denial.

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Scripture: Ezekiel 9.3-4
Then the Lord called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side and said to him, “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”

From John:
To weep and lament for the corruption in our world is a fitting activity for believers. In Ezekiel’s vision we witness a different kind of passover, as God’s judgment passes through Jerusalem it is lament over the detestable practices in the land that marks God’s remnant.

Lament is a task that the people of God take up as we become increasingly pressured, sidelined, and exiled. It is a recognition, not just of the sin of those around us, but of our failure to live out and proclaim the gospel to them…

Reflection: Lament the Effects of Hard-Heartedness :: Throwback Thursday
By Richard Baxter (1615-1691)

Take notice of the doleful effects of hard-heartedness in the world.

This fills the world with wickedness and confusion, with wars and bloodshed; and leaves it under that lamentable desertion and delusion, which we see in the majority of the earth. How many kingdoms are left in the blindness of heathenism, for hardening their hearts against the Lord!

How many Christian nations are given up to the most gross deceits, and princes and people are enemies to reformation, because they hardened their hearts against the light of truth!

What vice so odious, even beastly filthiness, and bitterest hatred, and persecution of the ways of God, which men of all degrees and ranks do not securely wallow in through the hardness of their hearts!

This is the thing that grieves the godly, that wearies good magistrates, and breaks the hearts of faithful ministers: when they have done their best, they are obliged, as Christ himself before them, to grieve for the hardness of men’s hearts.

Alas! We live among the dead; our towns and countries are in a sadder case than Egypt, when every house had a dead man. Even in our churches, it were well if the dead were only under ground, and most of our seats had not a dead man, that sits as if he heard, and kneels as if he prayed, when nothing ever pierced to the quick.

We have studied the most quickening words, we have preached with tears in the most earnest manner, and yet we cannot make them feel!

*Abridged and language updated from Christian Ethics

Prayer: A Reading
Jesus taught us, saying: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, what can make it salty again? It is good for nothing, and can only be thrown out to be trampled under foot by men.” — Matthew 5.13

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Ezekiel 9 (Listen – 2:05)
Psalm 48 (Listen – 1:28)

Additional Reading
Read More from Richard Baxter: On Idolizing Man :: Throwback Thursday
This iniquity [idolizing man] consists not simply in the heart’s neglect of God, but in the preferring of some competitor.

Read More from Richard Baxter: What Slavery We Choose :: Throwback Thursday
A people-pleaser cannot be true to God…The wind of a person’s mouth will drive him about as the chaff—from any duty, and to any sin.

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Scripture: Ezekiel 8.6
And he said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing—the utterly detestable things the Israelites are doing here, things that will drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see things that are even more detestable.”

Reflection: Lamenting Our Detestable Things
By John Tillman

Ezekiel is an account of a priest removed from the temple he was to serve in and a prophet in exile from the land he is prophesying about.

Ezekiel was exiled to Babylon approximately 597 B.C.E., probably along with Jehoiachin and those who were taken at that time. Ezekiel is thought to have been a young man during the reforms of Josiah, where he would have seen the possibilities of a nation turning back to God and rejecting its entrenched idols.

Although it is possible Ezekiel saw the destruction of idols during Josiah’s day, he would also have seen them gradually returning to prominence and usurping the worship of God.

Just as ancients made idols from their environment—the sun in the sky, a stone from the ground, a tree from the forest—we make idols from our environment. Ours are less likely to be made of durable goods. We make idols out of people, pixels, programming, politics, or (the all-consuming god of materialism) profit.

Idols are an expression of our desire for control and self-reliance. They are fueled by our selfishness and self-importance. In response to idolatry, God leaves us without his presence—he gives us what we want and lets us fall into the ruin that we choose.

God tells Ezekiel that the detestable idolatry will cause him to move away from his temple. The very place God designed for people to approach him for the intimacy of prayer, repentance, and restoration, he abandons when the people brought gods to replace him. He exiles himself; then he exiles them.

Many have written about Christianity becoming a community in exile in a modern anti-faith culture. Part of being in exile is lamenting what has been lost. Some Christians settle for lamenting the loss of cultural power. But to join with God we must lament not the things we have lost but the sinful idolatry that caused God’s judgment. We must own our part of our culture’s and our nation’s sin.

Ezekiel had been removed from his place of service in the temple, removed from his country, but through lament, God came to him. No matter how far our culture drags us away from God and from scripture, if we seek him, he can be found.

Like Ezekiel, God will find us and God will speak to us when we lament our culture’s sins as our own.

Prayer: The Request for Presence
O Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on me. O Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on me. O Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, grant me your peace. — Agnus Dei

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Ezekiel 8 (Listen – 3:21)
Psalm 46-47 (Listen – 2:15)

Additional Reading
Read More about How to Read Prophetic Judgment :: Readers’ Choice
The best way to read prophecy is to imagine yourself not as the speaker, but as the spoken to.

Read More about Prayers God Hates
So what makes the temple a den of robbers? What makes prayers pointless—detested by God? (It’s not book shops in the foyer.)

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Last month over 22,000 Park Forum email devotionals were read around the world. Support our readers with a monthly or a one time donation.

Bonus Readers’ Choice:
We were blessed with such an overflow of Readers’ Choice posts this year we couldn’t fit them in just one month. So we are going to scatter the rest of them out through the Fall, sharing one or two a week. Thank you to all who contributed! Your voices are important for our community to hear. — John

Selected by reader, Melanie, from Washington DC
As we were reading through the prophets, I was dwelling on the question suggested in this devotional’s title: how should we read prophetic judgment? Or, how does prophetic judgment relate to our lives today? This post really helped me access the prophetic texts in a new way.

Originally posted on May 29, 2018 with readings from Isaiah 30 and Jude 1.

Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. — Jude 5

Reflection: How to Read Prophetic Judgment :: Readers’ Choice
By John Tillman

There are many passages in the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments that are meant to comfort us. But the more typical function of prophecy is to cause us discomfort. Examples of both comforting and afflicting passages occur in our readings today—both in Jude and in Isaiah.

Comforting:
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! — Isaiah 30.18

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. — Jude 20-21

Afflicting:
“Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant. — Isaiah 30.12-13

Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them. Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion. — Jude 10-11

When we read prophecy in the Old or New Testament, we often try to identify ourselves with one of the groups mentioned. Are we the prophet? Are we the Israelites? Are we Balaam? Are we the Gentile nations?

This can be an interesting intellectual exercise, but is often a waste of time. One reason is it is unhelpful is that when we do this we take it easy on ourselves.

We tend to identify ourselves as the Israelites when prophets are saying comforting things to Israel, but when the prophet is condemning Israel, we imagine ourselves as the righteous prophet and our evil government or evil culture as the target.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that much if we understand who is analogous to the nation of Israel or who is analogous to the nation of Babylon. It matters far more to understand why God is angry, what he requires of us, and what he wants to do through us if we return to him.

Prophecy can spur us on to love and good deeds, to mark a clear path of repentance and clarify the consequences of disobedience. But we blunt the point of prophecy’s spurs when we avoid the probability that we are the ones a prophecy is about. We miss the point of prophecy entirely when we weaponize it to attack others.

The best way to read prophecy is to imagine yourself not as the speaker, but as the spoken to. Judgment-filled prophecy is one case in scripture where it is safer to assume it’s about you than others. Once you do this, you can take whatever steps of grace-filled repentance the Holy Spirit directs you to.

Following this approach we will be far more uncomfortable reading prophecy, but our discomfort will lead to a more richly flourishing faith.

Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed. — Psalm 51.8

– Prayer from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Prayers from The Divine Hours available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Ezekiel 7 (Listen – 4:32)
Psalm 45 (Listen – 2:17)

Additional Reading
Read More about Christian Pagans and Disasters
As Paul says, we are not to treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all—holding on to what is good and rejecting evil.

Read More about Decorating the Tombs of the Prophets
The most difficult thing about following a risen and reigning prophet, priest, and king, is that He will keep bugging us. He will keep saying uncomfortable things to us. He will not stop challenging us to break down our idols.

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