A Temple Cleansing

Introduction:

Good morning again everyone… This week has been incredibly hot, and whenever the temperatures are as hot as they are, I like to think about when it’s cold… I like to think about Christmas… I am excited in a few months to walk into this sanctuary with an ugly Christmas sweater on, and it being cold outside…

Now, this week, as I was writing this sermon and thinking about Christmas… I thought about one of the greatest Christmas gifts I’ve ever gotten… I was eight years old, and I just started paying attention to college football. This was before PlayStations, but I had a Super Nintendo in my room, and I found out that there was a college football video game… And so I begged my parents to buy me the game… And my dad kinda spoiled that he had gotten me the game, and my dad didn’t really wrap Christmas presents that well… So I decided that I just couldn’t wait any longer… So on Christmas Eve, I stuck to the living room, and went under the tree, and I shook all my gifts, until I knew which present was the game….

So I gently unwrapped the box, and my plan was to wrap up the box after playing for a little bit… So I unwrapped College Football 1997, and I snuck back into my room, and I played the game… I turned the volume on low, but I had the best night ever…. Unfortunately, I loved the game so much that I lost track of time… I played all night long, and my parents came to wake me up on Christmas morning, and they found me playing the game! I was so locked in, I didn’t notice that the sun had risen and light was in my room! And my parents were sooooo mad, that they took the game back to the store the next day and returned it….

And it was this Christmas that I learned that sin starts small, but eventually takes over. I'll open the present early. I'll play the game for a few minutes. Nobody will ever know. But one little decision led to another, and just one more game led me to an entire night doing something I was never supposed to do. That's how idolatry works in our lives. It rarely begins with us deciding, I'm going to turn my back on God. It begins when we give something a little room, make one small exception, or convince ourselves that this one thing isn't really a big deal. But sin has a way of growing, and idols have a way of demanding more. What begins as a small compromise at the edge of our lives can eventually become something that controls the center of our lives. But before we talk about that, will you pray with me?

Prayer:

Father in Heaven may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight. May your word, anointed by your spirit and spoken by your servant breathe life into us today…

Setting Up the Text:

Open your Bibles with me to the Book of Ezekiel 8:1-18… We continuing on in our major prophets series, and today we begin seeing the exile of Judah from another perspective, the prophet Ezekiel… Now, I have a confession to make… If you are new to our church, and you’ve only heard the last few messages, I promise I am not always such a depressing pastor… But our Bible reading plan called Abide, has been taking us through the darkest times of Scripture… Ezekiel is a priest, but he is a priest without a temple. He is living hundreds of miles from Jerusalem among the first wave of Jewish exiles in Babylon… Where Jeremiah was among the people left behind, Ezekiel was taken away … Jerusalem had not yet been completely destroyed, and the temple was still standing. And Ezekiel is called by God to tell them something they desperately do not want to hear. The problem is not what Babylon has done to Judah. The deeper problem is what God’s people have done to God.

And that is what the opening chapters of Ezekiel begin to reveal. The book begins with Ezekiel receiving a strange and overwhelming vision of the glory of God… The revelation of his first vision is that God is not trapped back in Jerusalem. His glory has come all the way to Babylon. Then, in chapters 2 and 3, God calls Ezekiel to be a prophet to His rebellious people. He is told to eat the scroll containing God's message, and to speak God's Word whether the people listen or not.

Then, in chapters 4–7, the message becomes increasingly clear: Jerusalem's destruction is not an accident, and Babylon's strength is not the defining factor. Judgment is coming because God's people have persistently rebelled against Him. But what could possibly be happening in Jerusalem that would warrant judgment this severe? In chapter 8, God is going to take Ezekiel, in a vision, behind the walls and through the doors of the Temple itself. And what Ezekiel sees there reveals that the greatest threat to God's people… Let’s start reading our passage and see what happens…

Scripture 1: Ezekiel 8:1-6

Explanation:

Now, I know that Ezekiel is a difficult read, but try to picture this scene. It begins very ordinary. Ezekiel is sitting in his house, and the elders of Judah are sitting there with him. Maybe they have come to hear a word from the prophet? But suddenly, everything changes. Ezekiel sees a figure before him… human in appearance, but unlike any human being he has ever seen. This is the presence of God. A hand reaches out, grabs him by the hair, and lifts him up. The Spirit carries him in this vision hundreds of miles away, from Babylon all the way back to Jerusalem. And suddenly Ezekiel finds himself standing at the north gate of the inner court of the Temple.

And right there, at the entrance to the inner court, stands what Ezekiel calls the “idol that provokes to jealousy.” It’s location is incredibly important in this chapter. This thing was not hidden in somebody's house. It was standing at the entrance to the inner court, near where God's people came to worship Him. And somehow Ezekiel can still see the glory of the God of Israel there. Think about that picture: God's glory and an idol have been brought into the same space. The people have taken the place that belonged to God and made room for something else.

Then God says these practices are driving Him away from His own sanctuary. This is the language of a broken relationship. These people belonged to Him, and He belonged to them. Yet now they have brought another god right into His house. And before Ezekiel can even process what he is seeing, God tells him that there are even more detestable things coming. In this chapter, we see an escalation… This scene is bad, but the next two are worse… But before we get to those, we see this in the text

Point 1: Idolatry at the gate: it begins when we allow something else into God’s proper place.

Application:

When I was in college at Louisiana Tech University, college jobs were hard to come by… The town had about 20,000 people, and there were 10,000 students looking to make money while in college… So I had the worst job in college, I was writing parking tickets on campus…. So I wore a huge yellow vest, and I walked around writing tickets to cars what didn’t have stickers, or were parked in the wrong place… Let me tell you, that did not make me popular… And I felt horrible doing it… I got yelled at many times… But my job was pretty simple: if you weren’t supposed to park there, it didn’t matter your excuse… You weren't supposed to park there.

And here's the thing: There wasn't anything wrong with the vehicles I gave tickets to..The problem was where it was parked. That parking space had already been designated for somebody else. And when you pulled your car into it, you were taking a place that did not belong to you. You were putting something in a space that had already been reserved.

And I think that's a pretty good picture of what Ezekiel sees at the gate of the Temple. The idol is standing in a place that has already been reserved for God. And that's often how idolatry begins in our lives…. Many times, we don’t even know its an idol… It didn’t begin as something evil. But overtime, it look God’s place in the importance of our lives… And listen, our families are good. Our careers can be good. Money can be useful. Our hobbies, our traditions, even our plans for the future can all be good things. The problem comes when we take a good thing and park it in a place that belongs to God alone. Only God alone deserves our deepest loyalty and worship. And idolatry at the gate begins when we allow something to take our eyes off of God… But now it gets worse… Let’s go back to our passage and see the next stage of Ezekiel’s vision.

Scripture 2: Ezekiel 8:7-13

Explanation:

The first thing Ezekiel saw was out in the open, but now God takes him somewhere different. He brings Ezekiel to a hidden room inside a wall. All over the walls are pictures of crawling things, unclean animals, and the idols of Israel. These are the kinds of images that God warned His people not to turn into objects of worship. But notice the difference from what Ezekiel saw at the gate. That idol was where anyone could see it. This is behind a wall. This is being done in secret. God is taking Ezekiel beneath the surface and showing him what is happening where nobody else can see.

Ezekiel notices seventy elders of Israel, and the smoke of their incense rises through the room. These aren't outsiders, but the leaders of God's people. These are men who protected the worship of Israel, and supposedly led the people in faithfulness. God is showing Ezekiel that the problem in Jerusalem isn't a few rebellious people on the edges. The corruption has reached the leadership . The very people who should be leading Israel toward God are secretly bowing before idols. Publicly, they have positions of spiritual responsibility. Privately, they have their own shrines.

These men say to themselves, “The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.” Did you notice they found a way to explain their sin to themselves. God isn't watching. God has abandoned us. So what difference does it make? But the entire vision proves that God sees. The elders believe they are hiding from God, but God is the One exposing their sin. So now, their idolatry have moved from the gate to the darkness, and we see this:

Point 2: Idolatry in the darkness: it grows when we lack integrity

Integrity simply means that who we are in private is the same as who we are in public. It means we don't have one version of ourselves for people to see and another that we keep hidden in the darkness. That's what these elders lack. In public, they were leaders of God's people; in private, they bowed before idols. And we lack integrity when we excuse in secret what we would be ashamed for others to see.

Application:

Whenever I was in high school, one of my best friends named Richard worked at a Mexican restaurant called El Chico. And whenever he was working, our friend group would go eat at the restaurant… Eventually, I noticed that even though Richard worked there, he never ate the food. Now, for the rest of us, that seemed a little strange. The tables were clean, the food smelled good, and people were always there. From our side of the restaurant, there wasn't any reason not to eat there.

But Richard had seen the kitchen. He saw what customers could not. He saw behind the scenes, and what he saw was enough for him to never eat there… We could judge the restaurant only by the dining room. Richard judged it by what he knew was happening in the kitchen. And suddenly, the clean tables and nice appearance out front didn't mean quite as much.

In the passage, the elders looked faithful where everyone could see. They held positions of leadership. They said the right things and appeared devoted to God. But God knew what was in the kitchen. God knew what was happening behind the wall, in the room where they thought nobody could see. And the same danger is there for us. Integrity isn't looking faithful where other can see; integrity is being faithful when nobody is around. Because church, there is no room dark enough, no door thick enough, and no part of our lives hidden enough that God cannot see. Idolatry in the darkness grows when we lack integrity. But now we have one more section, and one more image … Let’s go back to our text and read verses 14-18

Scripture 3: Ezekiel 8:14-18

Explanation:

God brings Ezekiel back to the north gate, and there he sees a group of women sitting and mourning for a a foreign god. Women from God's own people are participating in it. They are looking to a foreign god for the hope of life, fertility, and renewal rather than looking to the LORD.

Then God takes Ezekiel right near the alter… to sacred ground. And there Ezekiel sees men with their backs turned to the Temple of the LORD, and they are bowing toward the rising sun. They are worshiping part of God’s creation. Don't miss the picture Ezekiel gives us. These men are standing near the altar, but they aren't facing God. They have physically turned their backs on Him. Their posture is revealing their spiritual hearts.

And God makes clear that this isn't just about bad religious practices. He points Ezekiel beyond the Temple and says that the land has been filled with violence. They have turned away from God, and they turned against each other. And so the vision ends with words of judgment: the God they have repeatedly refused to hear will eventually refuse to hear them. God gives them over to their idols… And so we see this:

Point 3: Idolatry at the alter: It is complete when something else receives our worship

Sometimes the idol we worship is much harder to recognize because we still call it “God.” We can create a version of God who thinks like we think, approves of what we approve of, and never confronts us or asks us to change. Instead of allowing God to shape us, we reshape God until He fits comfortably into the life we already want to live. When that happens, we may still use God's name and call what we're doing worship… but we are actually worshiping our version of God rather than God as He has revealed Himself.

Application:

A few months ago, we talked about the golden calf in Exodus 32, and we saw something important in that story. Israel wasn't trying to trade Yahweh for a different god. Aaron builds the calf and then announces, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD.” They still think they are worshiping the God who brought them out of Egypt. But they have taken the invisible God and given Him a form that they can see and control. Instead of allowing God to reveal Himself to them, they have tried to remake God into an image that suits them.

And that's what makes the golden calf so dangerous. They didn't stop worshiping; they corrupted their worship. But they gave their devotion to an image they created and attached God's name to it. And we can do something very similar… We can create our version of God…

And we have plenty of golden calves in American culture today. We may not bow before statues, but we are constantly tempted to give our devotion away. We can worship success. We can worship money and believe security is found in what we possess. We can worship politics and begin looking to a party, candidate, or nation to give us the hope only God can give. We can worship comfort or even our own happiness. Idols may not be statues anymore, but the temptation is still the same: to make God into what we desire… instead of being formed and shaped into the hands and feet of Jesus…

Take Home:

That's where Ezekiel's vision ends. At the gate, something else was allowed into God's place. In the darkness, that idolatry grew in silence. But now, at the altar, people turned their backs on God and worshiped something else. That's where sin and idolatry ultimately lead. It wants our allegiance. It wants our sacrifice. It wants our worship. And whether the idol is a golden calf, the rising sun, or the trappings of this world, the result is the same: our worship turns away from God to something else… And all of this leads to our take home this morning:

Tale Home: Idolatry never stays on the edge of our life. What we allow in will eventually ask for our worship.

Conclusion:

We need to ask ourselves what we have allowed through the gate. What has slowly become more important than it should? What do we protect in the darkness because we don't want anyone else to see? What receives our time, attention, money, and allegiance? For some of us, it may be our career, our comfort, our politics, our possessions, our reputation, or simply getting our own way. None of us walks into church intending to turn our backs on God. It begins little by little, and a small compromise that once sat at the edge slowly moves toward the center. So may we have the courage to name our idols, bring what is hidden into the light, and give God what belongs to God alone.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Bow with me.