Scripture Daily

Context No. 999 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 14:6-11: in context

6“Therefore tell the house of Israel, ‘The Lord GOD says: “Return, and turn yourselves from your idols! Turn away your faces from all your abominations. 7“‘“For everyone of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who live in Israel, who separates himself from me and takes his idols into his heart, and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and comes to the prophet to inquire for himself of me, I the LORD will answer him by myself. 8I will set my face against that man and will make him an astonishment, for a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from among my people. Then you will know that I am the LORD. 9“‘“If the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand on him, and will destroy him from among my people Israel. 10They will bear their iniquity. The iniquity of the prophet will be even as the iniquity of him who seeks him, 11that the house of Israel may no more go astray from me, neither defile themselves any more with all their transgressions; but that they may be my people, and I may be their God,” says the Lord GOD.’”

God tells Ezekiel to call Israel to repent, to turn away their faces from their idols and abominations. Then he exposes something subtle: a man who separates himself from God and takes his idols into his heart, and yet still comes to the prophet to inquire of God, will get an answer from God himself, but not the one he wants. God sets his face against such a person. And a sobering word about the prophets: if a prophet is enticed to speak, God's own hand is against him too; both the one who inquires with idols in his heart and the prophet who indulges him bear the same guilt.

The piercing phrase is idols in the heart. These are people who still come to church, so to speak, who present themselves to the prophet to seek a word from God, while carrying idols hidden in the heart, cherished rivals to God tucked out of sight even as they go through the religious motions. God is not fooled by the inquiry. He sees the idol behind the pious question and will answer accordingly, dealing with the person as they actually are, not as they present. The idol does not have to be a carved statue; it is anything set up in the heart as a rival to God while the outward forms of devotion continue. And God takes it so seriously that he warns even the prophet not to play along, not to give a comforting word to someone whose heart is divided. The whole aim, the passage says at the end, is that Israel may stop straying and truly be his people. God wants the heart, not the performance, and he will not answer the divided heart as though it were whole.

What idol am I carrying in my heart even as I go through the motions of seeking God, and what would it mean to turn my face away from it and come to him whole?

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