The language of the judgment against Edom and the nations suggests that God is judging them because of their hostility toward Israel and Judah. Because Edom cherished perpetual enmity and gave Israel over to the sword at the time of their calamity, God declares that "blood shall pursue you" (a paraphrase of Ezekiel 35:5–6). Because Edom said, "These two nations and these two countries shall be mine," although the Lord was there, God would deal with them according to their anger and envy (cf. Ezekiel 35:10–11). And God tells the mountains of Israel that He has spoken in His jealous wrath, "because you have suffered the reproach of the nations" (a paraphrase of Ezekiel 36:6).

The nations that gloated while God was judging Israel and Judah have now become God's target. Surely God was defending the honor of His people, right? Not exactly. While the nations' proud insults against Israel prompted God's judgment, they were not its root reason. That root reason, hinted at in the passages above, is given explicitly here: "It is not for your sake... that I am about to act," but for His holy name, which they had profaned among the nations; God would vindicate the holiness of His great name, and the nations would know that He is the Lord when through Israel He vindicates His holiness before their eyes (a paraphrase of Ezekiel 36:22–23). "It is not for your sake that I will act," declares the Lord God; "be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel" (a paraphrase of Ezekiel 36:32).

God would both judge the nations and restore Israel — not so much for Israel's honor as for the sake of His great name. Israel was judged in the first place because they profaned God's name among the nations. Likewise, the nations would be judged for profaning it against Israel, who bore God's great name as His chosen people.

Remember David and Saul? David did not kill Saul, though he had opportunities. Was it because he liked Saul, or because Saul was such a great man? No! It was because Saul was "the Lord's anointed." David was no stranger to killing, but he feared God and honored the Lord by not taking Saul's life before God's time. In time God Himself took Saul's life and established David as king, and his kingdom would be established forever.

Friends, let us learn this lesson from Ezekiel and from David. Let us put no confidence in our righteousness, our church, or our spiritual leaders, but simply and wholly trust in the Lord. Let us do all things in obedience to His Word, for His glory, and in keeping with His calling on our lives. Let us do everything for the sake of the Lord's great name!

AI-Expanded Reflection

Ezekiel 36:22–32 is one of the great gospel passages of the Old Testament, and it follows directly from the comment's text. Because God acts "for the sake of my holy name," He promises what Israel could never achieve for itself: "I will sprinkle clean water on you"; He would give them a new heart and spirit, remove the heart of stone, give a heart of flesh, and "put my Spirit within you" (36:25–27). Jesus seems to allude to this promise when He tells Nicodemus that one must be "born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5). Salvation that rests on God's name rather than human merit is salvation that cannot fail.

The comment is right that this truth humbles us — "it is not for your sake" — but it also brings deep security. If God saved His people because they deserved it, they could lose His favor by failing. Because He saves for His own name's sake, His commitment is as unchanging as He is. David prayed the same way: "For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great" (Psalm 25:11). The greatness of the sin was not an obstacle; the greatness of God's name was the ground of the plea.

Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flock? You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them (Ezekiel 34:2–4).

The shepherds of Israel were only concerned with themselves and not with their sheep. They were concerned only with their own food and clothing, but they did not strengthen the sickly, heal the diseased, bind up the broken, or seek the wayward to bring them back. They were not good shepherds. Therefore God says, "Behold, I am against the shepherds" (Ezekiel 34:10).

This oracle against the shepherds of Israel reminds me of Paul's counsel to the elders of the church in Ephesus. He told them to be good shepherds over their members. This shepherding involved two things: (1) teaching them correct doctrine and (2) supplying the material needs of needy members.

I. Hold Fast to Biblical Truth

Regarding teaching, Paul testified that he taught them the whole will of God. In other words, he did not pick and choose the things that were popular and interesting or the things that put himself in a good light. He did not simply give them words of encouragement, he also corrected and rebuked error and unrighteousness:

Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God (Acts 20:26–27).

Paul went on to command them to do the same, and particularly to guard against the distortion of the truth of Scripture. He warned them that such error and perversion of truth would arise even from within the church:

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20:28–30).

Paul had such great concern for the distortion of the truth that he warned them with unceasing and restless tears:

So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears (Acts 20:31).

Thus, it amazes me today how certain pastors are so cavalier with respect to teaching right doctrine. Though they seem to emphasize caring for one another, they are careless with God's Word. They seem to suggest that "love" and "unity" and "peace" are more important than the truth of God's Word. They build up the numbers of people in their churches but tear down the foundations of biblical truth. They are, thus, building a house of cards. As David cried out,

When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3)

Pastors that do not build their church on the foundation of biblical truth are building their churches on shifting sand. They may grow for a season, though only as a facade, but they will not endure (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:12–15).

AI-Expanded Reflection

Ezekiel 34 begins with an economic and political picture: shepherds consume the flock’s produce while failing to provide its care. In the ancient royal metaphor, shepherding includes the responsibility of rulers, not only the work of religious instructors. The weak remain weak, the injured are neglected, the scattered are not sought, and force replaces care (Ezekiel 34:2–6). The chapter thus identifies exploitation by its effects on real people. A leader may possess the title of shepherd while functioning as a predator.

The promise that follows is crucial. God does not merely replace one management style with another; he declares that he himself will search for his sheep and appoint his servant David to shepherd them (Ezekiel 34:11–24). In Christian reading, Jesus’ description of himself as the good shepherd draws meaning from this prophetic background (John 10:11–18). The shepherd’s authority is revealed in his willingness to give his life for the sheep. This reverses the opening picture of leaders taking life from the flock to sustain themselves.

Acts 20 applies that pattern to church oversight. The elders must first watch themselves, then the flock (Acts 20:28). The order is significant: a leader’s confidence in his capacity to identify error elsewhere does not eliminate his own vulnerability. Paul also locates danger inside the leadership circle as well as outside it. The mechanism of distortion is not merely an incorrect sentence; people alter teaching in order to gather disciples around themselves (Acts 20:30). Personal dependency and doctrinal manipulation can reinforce each other.

The original rightly resists an account of love that avoids truth. Yet the biblical alternative is not truth delivered without love. Paul’s tears in Acts 20:31 are evidence that those being warned are people he loves, not material for a controversy. Ephesians 4:15 joins truthful speech and love because both are necessary for growth into Christ. A church can therefore ask two questions of its teaching: is the account of Scripture faithful, and does the manner of ministry seek the actual good of those hearing it?

Psalm 11 also deserves its full movement. The question about destroyed foundations in verse 3 is answered by the Lord’s enthroned rule and scrutiny in verses 4–7. The faithful are not left with panic as their only response to threatened institutions. Similarly, 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 identifies Jesus Christ as the foundation and tests what ministers build upon him. It warns against careless building without authorizing us to measure God’s approval by a congregation’s immediate growth or decline.

Practical fidelity includes explaining the text’s context, distinguishing central confession from disputed inference, and making correction possible when a teacher errs. It includes asking whether vulnerable members can raise concerns without being branded disloyal. Truth becomes pastoral when it equips people to follow Christ rather than making them dependent on the teacher’s charisma. The church’s strength is not the absence of difficult questions, but a shared readiness to submit its teaching and its use of power to the shepherd who gives himself for the flock.

Ezekiel, like Jeremiah before him (see Jeremiah 31:31–34), describes the coming New Covenant: God will sprinkle clean water on His people to cleanse them from their impurity and idols, give them a new heart and a new spirit, remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, put His own Spirit within them so they'll walk in His statutes and keep His judgments, and dwell with them as their God (a paraphrase of Ezekiel 36:25–28). The heartbeat of this covenant, ratified by Christ's own blood, is that God does for His people what they couldn't do for themselves — giving the faith and righteousness needed for people who fall short of His glory to nonetheless share in it through Christ. When this covenant was first announced, God made clear the people weren't receiving it because of any merit He found in them — He was acting for His own name's sake, a point He repeats three times for emphasis (see Ezekiel 36:22–23, 32). The language throughout is unilateral: God doesn't say He'll merely encourage or persuade His people toward obedience — that had already been tried, and had shown only how weak human nature is on its own. Instead, He says He will give a new heart, will cause His people to walk in His statutes. I read this as strong evidence that saving faith itself is entirely God's gift, not something that originates in human free will or cooperation, since Scripture elsewhere describes that same faith as something we're given, not something we independently produce (see Ephesians 2:8–9; John 1:12–13, which specifically traces this new birth to God's own will rather than to human descent, decision, or desire). I recognize this is one of the most debated questions in Christian theology, and that sincere, faithful believers land in different places on exactly how human response and divine grace relate to each other in the moment saving faith begins. My own conviction is that framing faith as something we contribute independently of God's prior work risks understating just how completely salvation depends on Him from beginning to end — which is really the deeper concern behind Paul's warning in Galatians against any gospel that reintroduces human effort as a condition for right standing with God (see Galatians 1:6–9; 5:1–4). Whatever a person's view on the mechanics of how faith arises, Scripture is clear that no one should boast in themselves, since even our capacity to respond to God at all is itself something we've received rather than generated. Praise God, who is at work in us both to will and to act for His good pleasure (see Philippians 2:13) — to Him alone be all the glory.

AI-Expanded Reflection

This comment stakes out one of the strongest positions in the historic Calvinist-Arminian debate — that faith itself, not merely the opportunity for faith, is entirely and exclusively God's unilateral gift, with no meaningful contribution from human choice at any point. As elsewhere in this project, it's worth stating plainly that this is one serious, carefully reasoned position within Christian orthodoxy, not the only one held by faithful believers: the Wesleyan/Arminian tradition, along with a great many Christians across denominations, affirms with equal conviction that salvation is entirely by grace and that human beings contribute nothing meritorious to it, while still holding that the grace enabling a genuine response is itself offered rather than irresistibly applied to a select few. Both traditions share the same core conviction this comment is ultimately defending — that no one is saved by their own effort or worthiness — even though they continue to disagree, in good faith, on exactly how that grace operates in the moment a person comes to believe.