Ezekiel is a prophet who has been called to speak to the Israelites during their exile in Babylon. He sees the most incredible sights of the Lords glory while he is with those in exile (its definitely worth reading about) and then in chapter 8 he has a bizarre experience where he describes a figure who appears to him. The figure appears like a man but it’s clear he is way more impressive than just a man.

Ezekiel is then lifted, yes lifted, by his hair, between earth and heaven, and through the spirit and visions he sees Jerusalem (bear in mind he is well away from Jerusalem at this point). The account tells us he is positioned at the idol of jealousy (most likely erected by King Ahaz) and from there God tells him to look and see the horrible things that were happening in the city.

As I read through this I found it interesting that God takes Ezekiel to three specific sins, three specific ways that the people were rejecting Him, each more detestable than the others. While the sins God highlighted were specific to Israel the root of those sins are central to the human condition i.e. they are all sins we struggle with. I’ve tried to create a little summary of what stood out to me.

1 – The Desire for Self creation

He said to me, “Son of man, now dig into the wall.” So I dug into the wall and saw a doorway there. 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. Ezekiel 8:8-11

This was obviously the sin of worshipping something other than God, but at the core of it was the desire to be in control, to worship a god that suited them. What we find out in the next verse is that each of the elders were doing things (probably fairly dodgy things) before the shrine of their own idol. The inference here is that they created those idols, or at least chose them, rather than the way of the Lord where this is reversed – He chooses us!

We must remember that these weren’t simply powerless images and idols. Yes, the drawings and the idols themselves weren’t powerful in and of themselves, but any partnership outside of the will of God is a partnership with the enemy, and he is not powerless.

This is just as prevalent today as it was then. We might not be worshipping images scrawled on walls or pieces of wood and clay (at least I don’t think so) but we are worshipping the idol of self creation, the idol of me. We give into sensual, fleshy, desires, rather than holding to what we know is good for us in the eyes of the Lord even if it might not feel that way. We too often bow to our animal desires and partner with the enemies plan for our lives.

Our deepest desire should be to worship and come under the authority of God, to remember that He chose us. Our desire to self create has good in it but we cannot use the freedom God has given us to worship what we please.

2 – The Desire for Sex and Possessions

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 Tammuz. Ezekiel 8:14

This one is a little more obscure but a little bit of research helps us here. Tammuz, sometimes called Dumzuid in other cultures, was a god of fertility. In Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mythology he was thought to be a king who was dragged to the underworld (it’s a long story). His death was believed by his cult to be the reasons there was drought and infertility, and so in the month which bore his name people all across the ANE would engage in public, ritualised mourning for him. This mourning, if appropriate, would ensure fertility and food for the people.

This is what the women were doing in their mourning. Some even believe that these women could have planted miniature gardens dedicated to Tammuz where they would carry out sacrifices as a part of the mourning ritual. Ultimately, the people who should have been worshipping the one true god are instead mourning this Tammuz character.

Deep down their worship is driven by their desire for sex and their stuff. They want to be productive (in the truest sense of the word) and they want to have plenty. That, as we all know, is a very human desire. The desire for sex, and the connection it brings, the desire for a family, and the desire to have enough and ensure a comfortable life is a normal thing. The huge problem with this desire is that it often overtakes our desire for God and instead of trusting Him for family and possessions, we decide to take the matter into our own hands. In doing so we move our trust from God and onto us. We misdirect our worship once again, just like these women in Ezekiel.

3 – The Desire for Power

He then 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 down to the sun in the east. Ezekiel 8:16

The sun has always been there. From the earliest days of creation there was a sun and a moon; both which have an effect on our world, but clearly the greater of these is the sun. The sun’s power is clear for us all to see, my pale skin has borne the marks of its power on a warm day many times! In the ANE, a fairly hot, arid area, people were all too aware of the suns power to bring life and to take it. It didn’t take a lot of thinking for people to make the jump from thinking of the sun as a powerful thing that God created to thinking of it as a powerful god in it’s own right.

It seems like the Egyptians were one of the first to properly give the sun a real place as a god. They called their son-god, Re. He was a dominant figure among the Egyptian gods and this is why in the 10 plagues when God caused darkness to fall over Egypt it was counted as the defeat of Re. Clearly this practice of sun worship had grown and spread, perhaps even the Israelites had brought it with them from Egypt from long ago, but wherever it had come from it was wrong and mixed up.

Everything God created was good, that was the lowest bar the book of Genesis gives it. It’s why we marvel at stunning views, gasp when we see a beautiful beach, and breathe deeply in thick forests. I know that I often meet God in these places. However, I recognise that I am only encountering His presence through His creation. Without that knowledge I might misunderstand and think that the view, beach, or forest, has a power of its own, which leads me to worshipping those trees, oceans, mountains, the sun etc.

These people knew that without the sun their world wouldn’t bring forth life. They wanted its power, they needed its power, they desired its power and in doing so they didn’t worship its creator. They didn’t worship the one who actually gave it it’s power.

So there we have it.

The desire for self, sex, possessions, and power.

We must fix our eyes on Jesus and realise that in Him all of our needs and desires will be met in a way that is better than we could create on our own. They may not all come to us in the way that we expect though and so trust is vital.

Let’s make our one desire the desire to serve God with all we have and are.