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Hello, my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
On this the final day of February 2025 I urge us all to pause for a few seconds and look back over the shortest month of the year. Amazing things have happened in these 28 days in many parts of the world, much of it driven by a passionate, new leadership team in Washington DC who seem determined to make every day count in helping to repair significant damage and disasters in America and many parts of the world.
Billions of dollars rescued from shocking leadership corruption; hostages released from several nations where they’ve been wrongfully detained; negotiations undertaken to end wars; radical solutions suggested for gender identity dysfunction in many social arenas in several parts of our world and much more.
As I’ve watched all this, a disturbing question is stirring deep in my soul. What question? What accountability should there be for failed leadership who have allowed such deep damage to be done to entire societies in so many places in our world?
Did you know that 2600 years ago God sent messages both to Jeremiah and Ezekiel about that very same question? Last Friday we looked briefly at Jeremiah’s chapter 23 message from God which was directed to the final Jewish king and leaders in Jerusalem during the last months before judgment came and the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586bc.
A few years after the demolition of Jerusalem and slaughter or captivity of many of those final, failed Jewish leaders, God sent a very similar and important message to Ezekiel, himself a captive, living among the Jewish captives in Babylon, which he recorded in Ezekiel 34.
The proud, wicked, Jewish leaders had refused Jeremiah’s words, and their pride resulted either in their death or captivity when the Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem. Now, a few years later, Ezekiel’s scroll and this new message from God would be distributed to Jews in exile throughout the massive Babylonian empire. and even those who had gone down to Egypt to seek refuge, as we saw yesterday.
For all of them, no matter where they lived in captivity, their question was the same… what accountability is there for failed leaders who reject the wisdom of God’s prophets and lead the people into wicked rebellion against God?
“The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel: ‘Son of man, prophesy AGAINST the shepherds of Israel…say to them: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘WOE to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock?” (Ezekiel 34:1-3)
Everyone knew exactly what God was saying. “The shepherds of Israel” were all those who had been in leadership roles with the Covenant people of God, Israel, both the northern and southern kingdoms, down through the centuries. This included government leaders: kings and officials; religious leaders: Levites, Priests, Prophets and any who were responsible to lead the people spiritually; and civic leaders: the elders and other tribal, clan and even family leaders.
Leadership is a big deal to God and God was calling them out, thousands of them, leaders who had failed the people. The time for reckoning had come upon them!
“Woe” is a word we don’t often use, but when God uses it, pay attention! Do you remember Jesus echoed Ezekiel 34 when He chastised the Pharisee spiritual leaders in Jerusalem by declaring “Woe to you…” with seven powerful statements of judgment recorded in Matthew 23? When God says “Woe to you” it means God’s patience has run out.
It means God has been watching and God is calling failure to a reckoning. It means judgment and with God judgment is very serious! God’s message through Ezekiel was to several generations of failed Jewish leaders; but also to God’s Covenant people Israel who had in large measure followed the failed leadership! God wanted the people to know that He had been very attentive to the leadership failure and none of them were getting away with their failed leadership. God’s Justice would be accomplished!
Leadership responsibility and accountability is a high priority for God!
Like a prosecuting attorney, God declared in Ezekiel 34:3,4 several specific failures of these guilty leaders. Then God proclaimed His judgment: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against the shepherds, and I will hold them accountable for My flock. I will REMOVE them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves…” (Ez. 34:7-10)
Oh my! Can you imagine hearing the terrifying declaration that God is against you; that God will hold you personally responsible for failure; that God will remove you from leadership? In the Jewish society many key leadership roles were traditionally passed down from generation to generation.
Thus, if God removed a failed shepherd, it meant immediate unemployment, public humiliation resulting in family shame and often destitute survival. It also meant their descendants, who might have been anticipating a comfortable, respectable leadership role, were marked as sons of FAILURE and excluded from possible leadership consideration!
For thousands of Jewish captives living in exile this message would have at least brought them a sense of gratification that justice was being done. But God wanted hope to arise even while they might have seen their captivity as hopeless, so Ezekiel continued writing as God spoke His message: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock while he is with them so I will look after My sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on the days of darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them to their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel …I will tend them in good pasture…” (Ezekiel 34:11-14)
This promise of God, when added to Jeremiah’s letter we looked at about 10 days ago, as recorded in Jeremiah 29, would have brought great hope to the Jewish exiles. God had not forgotten them, nor had God abandoned them, nor had God passed judgment that they and their descendants would forever be exiled from their land of Israel. No, God here was promising that HE would take personal responsibility to one day bring their descendants back to their land of Israel.
They knew then, and many other generations of Jewish exiles have known, it would take a miracle for God to accomplish this promise, but it has happened, hasn’t it? Not once or twice in history but even today, Jews are returning to their ancestral homeland by the miraculous provision of God!
I think we should pause right here and take the time to thank God that He is a promise keeping God and these words He proclaimed to Ezekiel, around 580bc, have been and are being fulfilled right before our eyes! Tomorrow we’ll look at more that God promised in Ezekiel 34 but today let’s praise Almighty God that He is a Promise Keeping God and He will make a way! And let’s join in this worship song…
Today’s Scripture: Ezekiel 34:1-14.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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