Whitewashed

​Whitewashed 
Read Ezekiel 12-14
 
Ezekiel 13:2 & 10-13 “Son of man, prophesy against the false prophets of Israel who are inventing their own prophecies. Say to them, ‘Listen to the word of the Lord.’” & 10-13 “This will happen because these evil prophets deceive my people by saying, ‘All is peaceful’ when there is no peace at all! It’s as if the people have built a flimsy wall, and these prophets are trying to reinforce it by covering it with whitewash! 11 Tell these whitewashers that their wall will soon fall down. A heavy rainstorm will undermine it; great hailstones and mighty winds will knock it down. 12 And when the wall falls, the people will cry out, ‘What happened to your whitewash?’ 13 Therefore, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will sweep away your whitewashed wall with a storm of indignation, with a great flood of anger, and with hailstones of fury.”
 
AS I was growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, our barn was built with 8-foot-high cement walls as its foundation. This was the structure in which the cows were milked each day and also housed during the winter months. These walls also served as a foundation to a large wooden framed, roofed storage area to store tons of hay and straw for feed and bedding throughout the winter months.
   The cement walls were sturdy, but they still needed special care. To meet proper cleanliness codes for a dairy farm, we were required to cover the bare cement interior walls with a water-lime mix called whitewash. This was similar to a watery paint sprayed on the walls to make the cement more easy to clean. 
   The walls looked good and clean for several months. But evrey 12 months the whitewash had fadeded, and the walls needed to be whitewashed again. Every year we had to hire someone to whitwash the walls again. Whitewash covered the foundation, but it was not the foundation.
   God’s message to Judah here is to condemn the false “whitewashing” prophets. He tells them they have whitewashed God’s foundational truths not to protect them but to cover Judah’s sins to look clean. These false, whitewashed teachings removed the strong foundation of God’s commands from his people. They had no sure truth supporting their faith because the whitewashed words quickly faded.
   Looking back to these disobedient people, we can be prone to judge them and ask, “What was wrong with you?” But we must use these accounts of God’s ongoing judgments to assess our own faith walk. We know many churches through the ages have whitewashed the truth, forming God in their human image, omitting the discussion of sin and even blocking the way of salvation. Too many teachers and preachers continue to whitewash the Bible their frail coverings called “popularity” or “seeker friendly”. We live our own lives, too, whtiewashing our sins to say, “That’s just me. I can’t help myself.” We use such worldly concepts as self-determination, self-worth and self-purpose to create a life whitewashed with our own will.
   What are you doing with God’s truth? Do you cover your life with whitewashed world views? Perhaps you might hide some weaknesses of griefs to make your life look clean on the outside.
   God wanst you to know you build your life on the sturdy, lasting foundation of God’s Word.