Are There Idols In Our Sanctuaries?

“And he said to me, ‘Go in and see the wicked and detestable things they are doing here.’ So I went in and looked and I saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and unclean animals and all the idols of Israel. In front of them stood seventy elders of Israel, and Jaazaniah son of Shaphan was standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.

“He said to me, ‘Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’ Again, he said, ‘You will see them doing things that are even more detestable.

“Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord, and I saw women sitting there, mourning the god of Tammuz. He said to me, ‘Do you see this, son of man? You will see things that are even more detestable than this.’

“He brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, they were bowing to the sun in the east.

“He said to me, ‘Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a trivial matter for the people of Judah to do the detestable things they are doing here? Must they also fill the land with violence and continually arouse my anger? Look at them putting the branch to their nose! Therefore I will deal with them in anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to them.’” — Ezekiel 8:9-18

As we’ve noted before, God wasn’t happy with the land of Judah around 600 years before Christ was born. Even in his sacred temple, the people were turning away from God and toward idols.

Asherah poles were erected around the temple. Women gathered and worshipped a god who they felt went away in the fall and then men turned their back on God, the God of Israel, to worship the rising sun. The particular place Ezekiel was speaking of was the court of the priests inside the temple. Even the priests of God, those set aside to teach the law, turned their back on God.

For Ezekiel, a man devoted to God, it must have been painful to see such a rejection of God. For God, the one who created all things, it must have pained him greatly to see such abominable sins committed inside His temple.

These words of Ezekiel were a warning to the people in Jerusalem, but they also serve as a warning to us. A warning to not turn our backs on God and not to let idols come between us and a loving Father, a warning that rejecting Christ will bring punishment.

We can pride ourselves that in Christian churches around this world there are no idols, no Asherah poles standing in the foyers, no mass gatherings to worship the sun as it comes up — we should be proud, we don’t worship idols anymore, now let’s go to our Christian Yoga class.

Let’s make sure we raise as much money as we can to build new things. Let’s read a bunch of books by different authors instead of opening our Bibles to see if they follow Scripture, let’s instead leave our Bibles at home and depend on the words of man to lead us in the right direction.

Hmm! Idols can come in many different forms, but they all do one thing, they come between our Savior and us and they provoke Him to jealousy. I have written about this many times, but it cannot be stressed enough, as people who take upon them the name of Jesus Christ, we cannot allow anything to stand between Jesus and us — nothing.

There are lots of things we will allow to come before God, but they all are excuses and nothing that we should expect God to accept.

To be sure, Jesus has paid for our sins at the cross and if we confess and turn away from our sins, including letting a Sunday afternoon football game distract us from serving Jesus, then He will forgive that sin.

What we fail to allow many times is for the Holy Spirit to come and free us from that distraction. Remember, we don’t have to fight our battles, Jesus won the war and He is willing to do battle for us on a daily basis.

When we allow the Holy Spirit to fill our lives, he will pull down the idols placed in our lives. One by one, we will see them topple, never to stand between God and us again. Then, as they topple, the cares of the world seem to melt away. Our longings for the world will go away and we will begin to take on the heart of Christ.

This bliss awaits us if we desire it — Jesus desires it for us.

Let us close this discussion today with some words from the apostle John, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”