Ezekiel 7:17-22 – View and use wealth appropriately!

The house of Israel had tested God to the limit and spurned His kindness toward them repeatedly. Defiantly, they committed their abominations. Worst of all was to put Him on par with their other gods and false idols. What was happening to them was their own making. Opportunities were accorded to them to repent and be restored, but they had spurned them all. God’s patience was tested to the limit that He had to declare the coming of the judgment. They land and people would be taken. War, famine, and pestilence would follow them, whether within, without or away from Jerusalem. If they did not experience war, it would be famine, if not either of them, they would succumb to plagues. Every aspect of their lives would be disrupted. Many would die. Bodies would lay before the altars in the high places in a prostate position. But instead of offering pleasing aroma only the stench of decomposed bodies would be offered to their gods.

In Ezekiel 7:19-22, more woes would be piled on Jerusalem and Judah’s wayward people. Described in verses 19-22, were more miseries that awaited them. God said that their silver and gold would become worthless. These would be a hindrance more than a help in their attempts to flee the calamities. In their despair, they would throw them into the streets as if they were unclean things.

 They had abused the wealth that came to them from the blessed hand of God and used their jewellery to make detestable idols. These vile images that they had made, God was going make an unclean thing of them. Wicked invaders meaning the Babylonians would be allowed to loot their wealth and take away their possession as spoils and desecrate and defile the temple which God had loved.

One lesson we take away is on how to view wealth and use the wealth entrusted to our stewardship. People, even Christians have unduly depended on material possession. Many have prices their precious possession above God. When judgment arrives, our wealth would mean nothing. They cannot get us the food we need or the freedom we want. Wealth can get us the medicine that we need now but can never cure us of the disease that inflicts us. We can but favor with money but not the salvation that we need. That’s why we must hand wealth carefully.

Remember Jesus’ parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12. Wealth, when not rightly viewed and handled can be a curse instead of a blessing. That's the reason the Lord took the opportunity in Luke 12:15 to warn against it. And with that, He launched into telling the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16-21. The problem with the rich fool is that he was so taken up with the things of this life that he had no time to consider the ultimate future. When a person's entire focus is merely on acquiring wealth, and the “here and now,” he inevitably fails to see the “there and then” and the importance of having God. That would spell his disastrous outcome.

What is our priority in life? Work and wealth have their places in our lives. But life is not entirely about work and wealth. God should be factored into one's life whether in work or in wealth. It’s foolhardy to go for wealth at the expense of one’s health, only to spend one’s wealth to get back to health.