WHAT GETS YOU IN TROUBLE WITH GOD (PART 7)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“In you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts.”

Ezekiel 22:9b

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Murder. Disrespecting their parents. Mistreating foreigners, orphans, and widows. Despising the Lord’s holy things. Desecrating the Sabbath. Slandering others.

This was the list of sins the Lord has charged the Israelites with thus far in this none devotion series on things that will get you in trouble with God. Today, we look at another and it deals with the way worship was conducted. Look at today’s verse:

“In you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts.” Ezekiel 22:9b

Looking at this verse in just one translation doesn’t really provide us a clear picture of what God was getting at here but when we look at the verse through the lens of the following translations, we get a fuller view of what actions had angered Him so much:

You are filled with idol worshipers and people who do obscene things. NLT

Some of you eat meat sacrificed to idols at local shrines, and others never stop doing vulgar things. CEV

Some of them eat sacrifices offered to idols. GNT

Every mountaintop is filled with idols. TLB

The people in you eat food offered to idols at the mountain places of worship. NCV

Go to the root of the Israelites’ sinfulness and you will find a general disobedience and unwillingness to comply with His commands. In the case of this devotion, we need to go back to some of the earliest (and most fundamental) commands God gave to His people, commands which began with this:

“You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” Exodus 20:3-5a

The bottom line was that God’s people were to give all their honor, glory, and praise to the Lord God Almighty, the Maker and Master of all creation, and they were to give it to Him alone. There were plenty of other cultures existent who worshiped an entire host of gods and paid no homage to the one true God. The Lord knew His people would end up in the midst of these other cultures and wanted to make His expectations clear.

There to be no gods placed before Him and only He was to be worshiped.  

Fast forward now to where we’re studying from in the Book of Ezekiel. The Lord has clearly exposed the worship practices of His people, practices He called lewd, vulgar, and obscene. Earlier in this book, He also called the practices “detestable”. No matter the descriptive word used, the ways the Israelites were worshiping were sinful and they included:

1. Worshiping idols.

God’s people bowed down and paid homage to items fashioned to represent idols, items that were as lifeless as the faith of those worshiping them. The number of idol worshipers was many and accordingly, there was no shortage of mountain places where the Israelites could find an idol to devote themselves to.  

2. Sacrificing to idols.

God had commanded His people to bring sacrifices to Him and Him alone but by His own charges, we know His people were offering sacrifices to the pagan idols instead and in again going back to earlier scriptures in this book, we know that some of those sacrifices involved killing their own children. That’s how far gone the Israelites were in their worship practices.

3. Eating meat sacrificed to the idols.

The Lord had also strictly given His people direction to keep them from defiling themselves with things that were unclean. Eating meat first used as a sacrifice to idols fit into that category perfectly.

Today, we find any number of religions which hold their own methods of worship and given that God’s people still have the free will to choose what they do, we find many who are adopting worship practices separate from full devotion and commitment to God. In essence, people are still engaging in idol worshiping today, even those who claim to not have a religion for they often are worshiping the things of the world, even if they fail to acknowledge a god exists. Worldly offerings become the things they idolize. And some people even idolize themselves so much that self worship raises its ugly head, a self worship that is just as sinful as any other idol worshiping.

Friends, rest assured that God’s command has not changed. In fact, as we move into the New Testament, we see Jesus burst onto the scene, the Old Testament’s promised Messiah who lives and dies to save God’s people before being resurrected in power and ascending to sit at God’s right hand where He has been placed in authority over all creation.

The scriptures attest to us that Jesus and God the Father are one and so when it comes to our worship today, it is to be directed to God and Jesus alone. They are to get the fullest measure of our honor, glory, and praise and there are to be no other gods before them.

The Israelites disregarded this order from God and that got them in trouble. Big trouble. Trouble that involved complete destruction of everything they had and seventy years of captivity in a foreign land, seventy years to think about the errors of their ways, particularly when it came to the way they worshiped.

Do we want to go through that same experience today?

If not, we had better turn our hearts, minds, and souls to God and Jesus, giving them the fullest measure of our devotion and adoration. For only they are worthy of receiving it, now and forever.   

Amen

In Christ,

Mark
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