Read Ezekiel and you realize how creative God is in describing the sin of His people. Actually, maybe it’s not so much God’s creativity as it is sin’s multiplicity — the root of sin manifesting itself in many and various ways. The symptoms of the disease are many. For example, there was pride and idolatry. Impudence and rebellion. Violence and injustice. The sanctuary defiled as the first commandment was defied.

And it’s one of those symptoms of sin — one of those tell-tale signs God presents in His case against a people who have strayed — which catches my attention.

“For you have not walked in My statutes, nor obeyed My rules, but have acted according to the rules of the nations that are around you.”

(Ezekiel 11:12b ESV)

Instead of obeying God’s commands and walking according to God’s way, the people had been infiltrated and infected by the world around them so that they acted according to the rules of the nations.

Though they lived among the nations they were to conduct themselves in a manner distinct and separate from the nations. Though they were in the same game as those around them, they were to play it differently. Yet, they adopted the playbook of the nations. They acted according to the rules of the nations around them.

Can’t help but think this is one of those 1 Corinthians 10:6 observations. That while I might be taking note of something that happened to them, it’s intended to serve as an example for me, “that we might not desire evil as they did.” A reminder that as God’s people, while we are in the world, we are not to be like the world. A reminder that we are to play by a different set of rules.

Rules that might seem foolish to the world and its ways. Yet rules which are reflective of another world and of a heavenly kingdom. Rules intended not to win one of the world’s shiny crowns but to cast light upon and be preserving salt against the world’s metastasizing corruption.

So, whose rules are we playing by? Whose rules am I playing by? Not in the big areas of sin that we can easily eschew, but in the subtle dynamics of our culture which seek to draw us in and define us as just another “tribe.” A tribe defined more by position than presence. A tribe which operates like other tribes, rather than as a people which stand apart conducting themselves in “simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God” (2Cor. 1:12). A people whose rule book calls us to be “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation” (Php. 2:15).

Conduct matters. Not just what we stand for, but how we stand for it. Not just that we engage in the game, but how we play the game.

Not acting according to the rules of the nations, but according to the ways of the kingdom.

Only by His grace. Always for His glory.