The Trajectory of Idolatry

Well, a few Sundays ago in our evening services, we began a series of sermons to the book of Ezekiel.

We're only two sermons into that journey, but most of you, as I'm aware, have not come along for that ride. And so I want to take just a couple of moments before we get into the message this morning to catch you up and explain to you the sort of the approach that we've been taking through this epic book in the Old Testament. The setting of the book of Ezekiel is Babylon during the time of the exile. The Jews had disobeyed God. That disobedience had reached a climax, and so God had set in motion events that would culminate in the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the death of most of the Covenant community, and the exile of a small remnant of Jews. Among that small remnant was a young priest by the name of Ezekiel. God called Ezekiel to prophesy, to preach to the exiles in Babylon, and declared to them that divine judgment was certain. Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed, but also that divine restoration was certain. A remnant would return to the promised land and rebuild what had been destroyed. We come this morning then to chapters 8 through 11. The temple is still standing. Jerusalem is under siege but has not yet fallen, and what we're going to read about is among the most perverse and saddest state of affairs in the Old Testament.

Now you heard me right. Our sermon text is four chapters long. We're trying to maintain a pace that will allow us to make it through the entire book of Ezekiel in a in a timely fashion, and so we're not looking at every verse.

We're just kind of hitting the high spots. We're trying to comprehend the overarching message of the book without necessarily digging into all the rich but difficult details, and so just to get us started this morning and to to get us oriented to the thrust of chapters 8 through 11, I'll read Ezekiel chapter 11 verses 14 through 21. Ezekiel 11 14 through 21, and I'll ask that you would please stand with me in honor of God's word. And the word of the Lord came to me, Son of Man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, go far from the Lord.

To us this land is given for a possession. Therefore say, thus says the Lord God, though I removed them far off among the nations and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone. Therefore say, thus says the Lord God, I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel, and when they come there they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations, and I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God. Let's pray. Almighty God, you are enthroned in heaven and your rule extends over all the earth.

You see everything we do, you hear every word we speak, you know every thought we think, and yet how prone we are to act and speak and think as if you are absent and unaware. Please use your word this morning to jolt us out of our lethargy that we might repent of our rebellion and walk in the peace that only a righteous fear of you can bring. Lord, we are under a siege of our own making and we need help. We need an escape hatch. We need a hiding place, a rescue, and we find that help today in the person and work of Jesus Christ, your son whom you sent for our redemption. May the glory of Jesus become so sweet to our affections, so captivating to our minds that we gladly forsake our attachment to this pathetic world and its idols and find rest and joy and glory in you. Amen.

Be seated. Well the challenge of covering as much ground in one sermon as we're gonna try to cover this morning is trying to give enough detail so that nobody gets lost or confused but not giving so much detail that we missed the overarching point. So before we jump into the text, I want to give a quick summary of what's happening in these four chapters and then I want to summarize the point of these chapters in one sentence.

Now that way we'll have a sort of skeletal structure to hang on to as we walk through this lengthy passage. At the beginning of chapter 8, God brings Ezekiel to Jerusalem in a vision. Now remember Ezekiel is physically in Babylon along with the other exiles who have been in Babylon for some time now. So Ezekiel is not physically being brought to Jerusalem.

He's there in spirit, in a vision, in a prophetic dream. But what he sees when he gets to Jerusalem is heartbreaking as God shows him scene after scene of the most wicked idolatry that you could imagine. All over the temple and all over Jerusalem there is abominable idol worship happening. There is violence in the streets, willful neglect of God's law and all this is coming not from the Babylonians, not from the Philistines, not from the Egyptians. It's coming from Israel, from God's own people.

That's chapter 8. Chapter 9 then describes God's response to Israel's idolatry and it's not pretty. God is righteously angry.

He is righteously jealous and so he purposes to judge Israel for her sin. Chapter 9 then describes the judgment, the wrath of God against Israel. Chapters 10 and 11 have got to be some of the saddest chapters in the whole Bible. These verses describe almost in slow motion the departure of God's glory from the temple, eventually from Jerusalem itself. The glory of God abandons Israel to its doom. But then the second half of chapter 11, what we just read, gives us a glimpse of hope God has a remnant in mind that he intends to bring back to the Promised Land one day and bless them beyond imagination. So even in the midst of the the sin and the devastation of these chapters there is grace and hope and a future. Idolatry destroys but glory, the glory of God that is, restores.

And that's really the sentence that summarizes the message of these four chapters. Idolatry destroys but glory restores. So now that we have sort of an overarching idea of where our passage is going let's zoom in on the details and and see what we can learn this morning from Israel's failures.

Failures that we are all too often far too well acquainted with. First we consider the trajectory of idolatry. And I say trajectory because there's an obvious progression in Israel's idolatry. It doesn't start with an all-out worshipping of the Sun and filling the land with violence.

That's where it ends. But its beginning is much more subtle, almost imperceptible, which is really how idolatry works, isn't it? It creeps in quietly, unnoticed, unannounced, until it's taken over everything. The downward trajectory of idolatry is highlighted in a in a recurring phrase that appears several times here in chapter 8. It's the statement, you will see still greater abominations.

Every time Ezekiel thinks he's seen it all, God tells him wait there's more. It gets worse as if there's no end to the degradation that idolatry brings. Where does this downward spiral of idolatry begin? Well it begins with a willingness to coexist with wickedness.

A willingness to coexist with wickedness. This isn't explicit here in chapter 8, but we're familiar enough with the history of Israel to know that at the very outset of their life in the Promised Land, they failed to obey God fully, didn't they? They failed to rid the land of its idol-worshipping peoples. They intermarried with foreign women who were not worshippers of Yahweh. They entered into covenants with their pagan neighbors.

And these compromises would lead first to a toleration of disobedience and eventually to a wholehearted acceptance and even impassioned defense of disobedience to God. Israel had this thing for wanting to be like other nations. They have a king, why can't we have a king? They have images of their God, why can't we have images of our God?

They can worship on high places, why can't we worship wherever we want? Ezekiel 11 12 says that Israel had not walked in God's statutes nor obeyed God's rules, but acted according to the rules of the nations that were around them. Adultery often begins as a simple, seemingly innocent comparison of my life to the lives of ungodly people.

A willingness to amicably coexist with wickedness. In Israel's case, this led next to compromise in worship. When Ezekiel arrived in Jerusalem via his vision, God said to him, chapter 8 verse 5, son of man, lift up your eyes now toward the north. When Ezekiel looked to the northern perimeter of Jerusalem, which by the way was the site of the city from which invading armies would typically attack, he sees an idol, a graven image, a statue. Ezekiel calls it the image of jealousy. This tribute to a false God was supposedly going to protect Jerusalem from its enemies.

They had Yahweh, the maker of heaven and earth to protect them, but instead they were gonna rely on a false God, a demon, a deity of their own invention. It's bad in Jerusalem and yet God says, you will see still greater abominations Ezekiel. Verse 7, and he brought me to the entrance of the court, that would be the court of the temple, and there was a hole in the wall. Through that hole Ezekiel is able to see, verse 9, vile abominations that they are committing in there, inside the temple. The temple is now full of idols and not only that, but the ringleaders of this idol worship in the temple are, verse 11, the elders of the house of Israel. Verse 12 gives us a clue as to how these elders are able to justify such blatant disobedience and disrespect to God. Verse 12, for they say the Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land. Idolatry doesn't grow in a vacuum, does it? It grows in the soil of a wrong view of God.

He doesn't see, he's abandoned us. But it still doesn't end there. God says you'll see still greater abominations. In verse 14 Ezekiel goes to the north gate of the temple and there he sees women weeping for Tammuz.

Tammuz was a Babylonian god of fertility. These women are grieving for a false God of the very people who are going to attack and destroy Jerusalem. Their affection is directed a hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction towards the very God, little G God, who stands in direct opposition to Yahweh. They're worshiping their enemies, God. Can this get any worse?

Yes it can. Verse 15, you will see still greater abominations than these. Idolatry has Israel spiraling downward as fast as they can as their worship reaches unthinkable levels of compromise. In verse 16 Ezekiel is brought to the inner court of the house of the Lord and what does he see but 25 men standing between the porch of the temple and the altar. It says with their backs to the altar worshiping the Sun toward the east.

Right there in the presence of the very altar that served as a daily reminder of their need for redemption and forgiveness. They are boldly and brazenly turning their backs on God and worshiping the Sun, which by the way their God had spoken into existence. Israel had coexisted with wickedness which led to unimaginable compromises in their worship but it didn't stop there. We see in verse 17 of chapter 8 that their idolatrous hearts spilled over not only into their forms of worship but also into their morals, their ethics, their behavior, their walk.

It resulted in a corruption in walk. You see idolatry is not content to merely change the thinking or the worship practices of a person or a culture. It wants to rule everything including one's behavior by definition, by nature idolatry goes all the way and so God rhetorically asks in verse 17 of chapter 8 is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abomination they commit here in the temple that they should also fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger. Idolatry has corrupted every facet of their lives now and this is where idol worship leads. This is its trajectory. It goes for the jugular.

It takes no prisoners. With idolatry it's got to be all or nothing. Now before we move into the next section of our text this morning it might be helpful to remind ourselves that idolatry is not some primitive antiquated obsolete sin that unenlightened people commit.

Brothers and sisters it's a sin that any son of Adam is capable of committing. No matter how educated, how culturally sophisticated, how technological or even how irreligious a person may be. You see idolatry is not limited to what we formally or in externally worship. Idolatry is what we internally worship.

It begins in the heart, in the mind, in the affections. Like Israel saying we want to be like other nations. That's a desire of the heart and from there it forces its way into our formal worship and into our speech and into our conduct.

Begins with an innocuous toleration of evil but before it's finished it will have dragged us through compromise after compromise that we previously would have thought impossible to the point that we will bend over backwards to distort the nature of God and dismiss his law. Your idols might be forbidden things like immorality or cultic practices. Your idols on the other hand might be inherently good things like education, health, leisure, a good reputation or financial security but things that you have elevated to the status of object of worship. An idol is anything I'm willing to disobey God for. Anything I'm willing to disobey God for.

So let's not fool ourselves into thinking we're not susceptible. Well where did all of this end for Israel? Where does it end for us? It ends with judgment. It ends with the condemnation of wrath from a holy God who will not share his glory with another. In chapter 8 verse 18 God says therefore I will act in wrath my eye will not spare nor will I have pity and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice I will not hear them. It's a death sentence for Israel and this is where unrelinquished idolatry always ends up condemned and silenced by the only true God. Chapter 9 then describes the judgment that God carries out against the guilty Israelites.

We're gonna skip over that chapter this morning. I encourage you to go home and read chapter 9 on your own but then we come to chapter 10 and and here we see not the trajectory of idolatry but rather the trajectory of the glory or the manifest presence of God and what we're gonna discover is that God's glory his presence is leaving Jerusalem as an act of judgment but it's also going to Babylon as an act of grace. First we see God's glory moving away from sin. God's departure from Jerusalem is described here in chapter 10 in four slow halting steps almost as if God is reluctant to leave. The departure begins in chapter 10 verse 3 as we see the cherubim who who carry God's chariot throne the same chariot throne that we encountered back in chapter 1 and they're waiting it says on the south side of the temple waiting for God's presence. Now you'll notice that all of the action all of the attention all the busyness has been on the north side of the city and so God is essentially departing from what has become the most obscure spot in the temple the south side without fanfare without notice where no one is watching where nobody cares but it's also the spot that is furthest from the abominations that have established themselves there on the northern side of Jerusalem. Chapter 10 verse 4 indicates that God's presence moves from the graven cherubim that topped the Ark of the Covenant there in the Holy of Holies out to the threshold of the temple where the real cherubim have come to meet in. We come down to verse 18 and now the glory of the Lord crosses over the temples threshold and stands over the cherubim these marvelous creatures begin to carry the visible manifestation of the glory of God out verse 19 to the entrance of the east gate of the temple so the glory of Yahweh is now standing at the front door of the temple and nobody but Ezekiel even notices. Before that final departure of God from the temple and from Jerusalem Scripture indicates that God's presence pauses one last time and speaks a parting word of judgment on Israel and I want to slow down here and read these verses so that we don't miss what's happening it's a little bit obscure verse 1 of chapter 11 says the Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of the house of the Lord which faces east and behold at the entrance of the gateway there were 25 men and I saw among them Jazaniah the son of Azor and Pelotia the son of Benaiah princes of the people and he said to me son of man these are the men who devise iniquity and who give wicked counsel in this city who say the time is not near to build houses this city is the cauldron we are the meat therefore prophesy against them prophesy O son of man so these these are obscure verses I want to just take a moment to maybe clarify what's going on there were two men Jazaniah and Pelotia who are speaking wicked counsel false teaching to the Jews in Jerusalem and chapter 11 verse 3 tells us what this false teaching is they're saying the time is not near to build houses the city is the cauldron and we are the meat I don't know if you remember or not but there's an exhortation over in Jeremiah 29 Jeremiah by the way is a contemporary of Ezekiel Jeremiah 29 foreign following says this thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon build houses and live in them plant gardens and eat their produce take wives and have sons and daughters take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters multiply there and do not decrease but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare in other words you're gonna be exiled in Babylon for a while so don't live as if rescue is is gonna happen next week it's not imminent you're gonna be there for some time so go ahead and build homes and plant gardens and marry and have children and grandchildren don't live in limbo don't do long-term kinds of things because this is your home for the foreseeable future now back in Jerusalem these false counselors and Ezekiel 11 it seems are poking fun at the exiles and their predicament as if to suggest that the exiles are the ones being judged by God they're the ones having to build homes in foreign lands while those in Jerusalem are safely in the center of God's good graces therefore the Jerusalemites unlike those condemned exiles don't have to worry about building new homes and re-establishing themselves they're safe they're secure so they think these false preachers also say in verse 3 that Jerusalem is the cauldron and the Jerusalemites are the meat it's a good thing in other words we are still safe in the pot you're in the fire exiles we're in the pot we're in Jerusalem we're safe you're outside of the camp you're under judgment but God tells them you've got it wrong inhabitants of Jerusalem in fact their assessment of the situation situation is exactly the opposite of what was actually the case as it turns out the exiles were carried off to Babylon to be preserved as a remnant we'll see that here in a moment while the Jews that remained in Jerusalem were about to be judged by God and executed for their sin and just to make the point clear God says to them in verse 11 this city shall not be your cauldron nor shall you be the meat in the midst of it I will judge you at the border of Israel and you shall know that I'm the Lord just so they know who's in charge they'll die outside of Jerusalem the fourth and last step then of God's slow departure from Jerusalem is described in chapter 11 verse 23 and the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city this mountain on the east side of Jerusalem is called in the New Testament the Mount of Olives the Mount of Olives and there is an amazing parallel between Ezekiel 10 and 11 and Matthew 23 and 24 the Olivet Discourse and I just want to highlight this parallel for a moment but go home and and read these two passages side by side because the parallels are so so very rich in Matthew 23 Jesus has just condemned the Jewish leaders with with a scathing rebuke with woe after woe after woe and then in verse 37 Jesus says Oh Jerusalem Jerusalem the city that kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to it how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing but then notice what Jesus does next Matthew 24 one says Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple but he answered them you see all these do you not truly I say to you there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down Jesus the glory of God incarnate departs from the temple and then just like the glory in Ezekiel he pauses to predict the destruction of the temple this of course is the rebuilt temple Herod's temple finally Matthew 24 3 tells us that from there Jesus went to the Mount of Olives and sat down just like the glory of God in his chariot thrown back in these Israel Ezekiel Church those who claim that the God of the Old Testament is not gracious or that the Jesus of the New Testament is not angry at sin miss the connection here there is only one true God and he never changes Jesus Christ is the glory of God incarnate on the Mount of Olives both in Ezekiel and in Matthew and from that vantage point outside of the temple outside of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives Matthew records that Jesus proceeds to tie the whole Bible together from Noah to the final day of judgment and he puts himself the Son of Man at the center of it all and he tells his disciples to make sure they're ready for that ultimate day of judgment now if the story ended there we would all go home frightened scared to death spend the rest of our lives cowering in fear at the at the prospect of God the Almighty coming to judge the world but the story doesn't end there Ezekiel indicates that God was not merely moving away from sin he was also moving towards his people and we need to not miss this in fact Ezekiel goes out of his way to make sure we understand that the chariot throne which left Jerusalem was the same chariot throne that arrived in Babylon in chapter 1 chapter 10 verse 15 these were the living creatures that I saw by the Khabur canal chapter 10 verse 10 verse 20 these were the living creatures that I saw underneath the God of Israel by the Khabur canal chapter 10 verse 22 they were the same faces whose appearance I had seen by the Khabur canal yes God is abandoning Jerusalem but he's not abandoning his people he's going to Babylon to save a remnant and we read about God's salvation of a remnant in verses 14 through 20 of Ezekiel 11 the verses we we read at the beginning of the sermon in these verses God promises some amazing things to his people he promises to be a sanctuary to them the temple is going to be destroyed but God himself will be their temple their sanctuary he promises to bring them back to the promised land but not just to any promised land to a purified cleansed promised land with all those detestable abominations that incurred God's judgment removed how how can this be it's because God's going to do a miraculous work in their hearts he's going to remove their sinful stubborn hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh he's going to fill them with his Holy Spirit he's going to be their God and he's going to make them his people it was to be a glorious restoration of a remnant that God himself would reserve for his special blessing and we'll see more and more of that glorious restoration as we make our way through the rest of Ezekiel but as we bring this to a close this morning I want to share with you a sentence that I came across this past week this sentence just sort of lodged itself in my mind and heart and wouldn't go away because I think it exposes the subtle deception that makes us such easy pray for idolatry here's the sentence the essence of idolatry is not so much denying the reality of God but the relevance of God it's not a denial of his existence his reality but of his value of his relevance Israel loved their precious temple along with all the accoutrements that went with it but they didn't love the God of the temple they assumed he was unaware and not listening disinterested and not watching when it came to fighting their political enemies or ordering their homes or loving their neighbors or raising their children God wasn't missing he was just irrelevant he didn't matter his rules didn't matter the purity of his worship was unimportant his power and promise to save was unimpressive they would rather have a flashy statue standing guard over the city the world could see a flashy statue their children could be impressed with the shiny idol but Yahweh he was invisible he was hidden away in the Holy of Holies he had too many stipulations and so he became he became to them irrelevant I just feel like God is too distant I feel like he doesn't hear me he doesn't get me my boyfriend gets me my coach affirms me my academic credentials make me valuable my vocation fulfills my need to feel important and be useful and just like that we begin to shift our allegiance and our affections from the only true God to an insipid substitute of our own making idolatry destroys the church the glorious presence of God restores if we are to return to God we must kill our idols an idol killing always begins in the heart what have you enslaved your affections to what have you yielded allegiance to who do you obey which are really just other ways of asking what do you love because what you love will shape what you become the trajectory of idolatry is always towards destruction but the trajectory of a life lived in the presence of God even though it may carry you to Babylon for a time will always end with salvation and increasing purity and holiness and eventually joy unspeakable and full of glory congregation I don't know who among you is living in rebellious Jerusalem playing church flitting about with idols of your own making or who among you is grieving on Babylonian soil wondering if God has forsaken you but hoping against hope that he is not what I do know is this the same Christ who proclaimed judgment on the Mount of Olives also provided a way of escape from that judgment on Mount Calvary it is a quick journey back to God through the cross Jesus Christ is the only place to hide from judgment Jesus Christ is the only way home from Babylon so run to him rest in him and find rest for your souls let's pray father you are holy we are sinful we deserve wrath but you give us grace may your people find hope in this truth today we pray in Jesus name amen