In Ezekiel 20, God has had it with the Israelites. His summary:
Your parents [coming out of Egypt] further insulted me by betraying me. When I brought them into that land that I had solemnly promised with my upraised hand to give them, every time they saw a hill with a sex-and-religion shrine on it or a grove of trees where the sacred whores practiced, they were there, buying into the whole pagan system.The whole pagan system is our life every time we insert what God calls a no-god idol. He continues:
What you're secretly thinking is never going to happen. You're thinking, "We're going to be like everybody else, just like the other nations. We're going to worship gods we can make and control."We make gods out of things we can control to avoid investigating and submitting to the true control of the Living God. Will He let us continue that no-win road? You decide:
Since they were determined to live bad lives, I myself gave them statutes that could not produce goodness and laws that did not produce life. I abandoned them. Filthy in the gutter, they perversely sacrificed their firstborn children in the fire. The very horror should have shocked them into recognizing that I am God.I do not have words for this. I just want to run and run and run back to God to avoid His scathing summary that I might be chasing no-god idols.
The staggering truth is that God's invitation is to enter into a unique environment, unique because God "controls" with love and mercy and grace. His way produces goodness and life.
Are we sacrificing our firstborn heart to any no-god idols, things that we can make and control?
Run hard. Away. From anything God sees as worship of a no-god idol.
