Engaging Scripture

The surprising antidote to economic idolatry – Ezekiel 7, Part 4

What is the antidote to economic idolatry? Sometimes I think to myself, “I hate money.” What I mean is that it can seem like life is one long travail of trying earn money. Do you ever long for financial independence, so that you don’t have to think about whether or not you have enough money? I long for it. The car breaks? No problem, I have plenty of savings to fix it. My family wants to go on vacation? Also not a problem. The finances are there, and off we go. I long for all my loans to be paid off, for a savings account safety buffer that could handle anything surprise life throws my way. Of course my wife and I are working hard toward that reality, seeking to pay debts and save money. I work full-time, she works part-time, and I also work a part-time job. But the reality is that for the last 24 years we’ve been raising a family, and it’s not cheap. We also work in careers that, while they pay solid wages, we don’t have the margin to make fast financial progress. Sometimes we also make bad financial decisions, spending on what don’t need. Sound familiar to anyone? What can happen is the longing in our hearts and minds, turns into economic idolatry. We can place our hopes and trust in money.

It seems the people of Israel in Ezekiel’s day had succumbed to the temptation of economic idolatry, as we learned in the previous post. What does God have to say about that? Look at the rest of the Ezekiel 7, and it is really bleak. Read verses 23-27.

When people have put their trust in money, rather than in God, he turns his face away, and then the end has truly come. It doesn’t matter if it is a commoner or a king. Doesn’t matter if it is in the temple or the town. There will nothing but devastation. Money will not be able to save them.

When the end comes, God says, then people will know that he is God. Money is not God. Money does not have the power to save.

We can strive and strive to make a name for ourselves, to make money for ourselves, to care for ourselves. But in the end, we learn that money will not save us. Sure, money can be a load of help in many ways, but this passage calls us to examine our hearts, our longings, to see if we have allowed money, and what it provides us, to divert our longings and trust away from God. Are we practicing economic idolatry?

To me, this is one of those teachings from God’s Word that, though it is not new, we need to hear it regularly. Just like Israel, we can be enticed by money and the promises it makes to care for us. We live in a culture that regularly tells us so. So what do we do about it? What is the antidote the economic idolatry? We must make sure that our priority is worshiping and trusting God. I think we would all say, “Of course” to worshiping and trusting God. But how does trusting in God and worshiping God work itself out in practical terms when it comes to money? I believe one of best answers to that question is found in what John Wesley preached over 200 years ago: “Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.” You can read the entire sermon here.

What did Wesley mean? First, earning money is not wrong. Some of you are gifted at it, and that is wonderful. Even if you aren’t gifted at earning money, still work hard. It glorifies God to avoid laziness and work faithfully.

Then as you earn, whether you earn a lot or a little, be very careful about the lure of that money in your heart. Once the money starts flowing, it opens doors doesn’t it? We can purchase things we could never purchase before, and it is so much FUN! It feels great. It feels like our money, that we worked hard for, and thus we can finally enjoy life! This happens a lot to younger people who are flexing their earning muscles for the first time. The transition from a high school or college part-time job to a full-time job with a significant salary is heady. After years of working for minimum wages or being the stereotypical broke college student, you now have a full-time job with a real salary. Sure, you might be paying off student loans, but you can also trade in your junker car and get a new one. You can start to think about purchasing a home. You can start to save for vacations. You can update your wardrobe, pick up a hobby, go out to eat. It feels like the world is your oyster.

This is also the case for adults who start earning bigger and bigger salaries as they advance up the ladder. It applies to empty-nesters and retirees. As your expenses go down and your income goes up, then your opportunities to spend go up. That’s when you start hearing words like “travel,” “leisure,” “entertainment,” and the like, which we can believe is our due after decades of working hard and raising families.

What I am describing is the typical American approach to money. This is also the typical Christian approach. It is very easy for that approach to become economic idolatry. It is not, however, consistent with Jesus’ approach. When Wesley sought to teach Jesus’ approach to defeating economic idolatry, after “Earn all you can,” he said “Save all you can.” What he meant was not that we should dump our money in a savings account or in investments. What Wesley meant was that we should not spend our earnings primarily on ourselves. We should save our earnings for another purpose. Wesley’s “save all you can” was a commentary on money and spending. Just as God told the Jews, we can be so enticed by what money can do for us, how it can make us feel, and it so easily becomes idolatry. The antidote to economic idolatry, then, Wesley says, begins with “saving all you can.” That means living simply.

But what is living simply? To determine whether or not you are living simply, I would encourage you to avoid measuring yourself against people wealthier than you. Instead, consider measuring yourself and your spending by comparing and contrasting yourself with Jesus and how he lived and taught. Consider people far less wealthy than you. In fact, I think we not only need to measure ourselves but also have other people measure us. When it comes to spending, we can very, very easily let ourselves off the hook to live an unexamined life. What can result is that we spend God’s money far more on ourselves than we need to. What we want and what we need has been confused. We can survive on far less than we believe or realize. We don’t need luxury. We don’t need most of what our world says we need. Yet how often do we continue to indulge ourselves? Probably quite a lot. To address this in our lives, we can ask someone who will speak bluntly to us to evaluate our entire financial world. Ask someone to audit your investments, your spending, your income. Give them access to every dollar, for the purpose of making change so that you are growing more in line with the biblical discipleship teaching of simple living.

Then take the next step, which is “Give all you can.” We’ll talk about how to do that in the next post.

When money is worthless – Ezekiel 7, Part 3

My wife, Michelle, and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary by going out for dinner. As a bonus, we had a gift card! We made a reservation, arrived a few minutes early, and sat down in the lobby, waiting for the hostess to call us for our table. I pulled out my phone to check notifications, and as I did so, I felt something funny. The gift card came out of my pocket along with my phone and fell to the ground. Whew, right? Don’t want to lose that! I grabbed the card off the floor, put it back in my pocket and eventually we got our table and ate our meal.

About an hour later, the time came to pay the bill, so I reached into my pocket for the gift card, but it wasn’t there. I double-checked all my pockets. No card. I looked on my seat, and I looked on the ground under the table. No card. I started getting nervous. You know how the emotion builds up inside you when something goes missing? On the one hand we didn’t actually need the gift card. But on the other hand, it would sure be nice to have money come off the bill! Michelle suggested that I look in the lobby. I thought to myself, “Impossible. There’s no way, having once already fallen out in the lobby, the card would have fallen out again in the short time we were called to our table.” But I knew it was possible. What if the card did fall out, and now it was gone? I was growing concerned and unhappy, suspecting the card was gone. I retraced my steps, walked into the lobby, and there, to my surprise, sitting on the bench was the card! About an hour had gone by since we had been in the lobby, and no one had swiped it. I was elated! I hate wasting money. If I had lost the gift card, bitter thoughts would have churned inside me long into the night.

As we continue studying Ezekiel 7, learning about what caused God to say “The end has come,” what we will hear about is very similar to the idea of losing gift cards. In the previous post, I mentioned that Israel had been tempted by something. We read about this temptation in Ezekiel 7, verses 10-14.

Did you hear the temptation? Israel, it seems, fell hard for it.

Verse 10 is basically a repeat of what we’ve already heard so far. The day of doom is here. Watch out!

But in verse 11, after starting with more of judgment, the message from God concludes with a hint about the temptation that Israel fell for. “No wealth, nothing of value,” will be left. God brings up money.

Then in verses 12-13 he continues talking about it, referring to buyers and sellers. While it is true that he says his wrath is coming upon the whole crowd, what is his purpose in singling out the buyers and the sellers? What is it about buying, selling and wealth that God is addressing? Clearly, it has God concerned!

In fact, God is so concerned that he says in verse 14, that there is nothing they can do about overturning his judgment. No amount of military preparation will save them from onslaught that is coming. Let’s see how he continues with this already brutal message. Read verses 15-22.

Verses 15-18 are a callback to what we have been hearing now in chapters 4-6. In chapter 4, through a 430-day long skit, God said that an enemy army was going to attack Jerusalem and put up siege works around it. Then in chapter 5, he said that the siege would affect the people of Jerusalem in one of three ways, which was symbolized by Ezekiel cutting his hair into thirds. This same theme was repeated in chapter six, when God gives a three-part judgment about Israel’s religious idolatry. The three parts are the same each time. The people will die by sword, famine and plague. It will be awful. Notice verse 17, where the image is quite vivid. In the old NIV it says, “every knee will become as weak as water.” What does the new NIV say? “Every leg will be wet with urine.” You know what that means, right? People will be so upset, so scared, so beside themselves, they will not be able to control their bladder. Why? What was the reason, or one of the reasons for this soon-coming devastation?

In verse 19, God returns to the theme of the passage, making clear the reason. The people will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be an unclean thing. You and I both know that you don’t throw money in the garbage. Have you ever had one of those scares where you are a digging through a trash bag full of nasty, smelly food and trash because you suspect that a missing check got tossed with the mail? Yeah, I can describe that so vibrantly because I’ve had to do some of that digging. Very similar to my walk of shame back to restaurant lobby to look for the missing gift card.

Yet there in verse 19, we read that the people are throwing money out like it is garbage. Worthless. Even unclean. Why? God says that silver and gold will not be able to save them from God’s judgment. That is an interesting phrase. Silver and gold will not be able to save them. Why would God say that unless the people were looking to their silver and gold to save them?

They were looking at their silver and gold as their salvation! For evidence of this, read the final sentence of verse 19, where God describes how their trust in money will turn out to fail them. It will not satisfy their hunger, it will not fill their stomachs, because it made them stumble into sin.

So last week we learned in chapter six that the people had worshiped idols, including the detestable practices that were part of pagan worship. Now this week we learn that they were trusting in money to save them. Look how God describes their love of money in verse 20. They used jewelry to make detestable idols. That brings both issues together. But it was more than just using jewelry to make idols. God’s words in verses 19-20 show how much the Israelites had trusted in their money to save them. They were practicing economic idolatry.

God reveals what is most important in this discussion of economic idolatry. The heart. Our motivation. Our desire. As Paul would write to Timothy, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Money itself is not the problem. Gold and silver are just metals. But when our hearts become entranced by what money can do for us, we can be tempted into idolatry. For Israel, God is saying that they moved their allegiance from trust in God to trust in money. Rather than see God as their savior, they saw money as their savior.

It makes sense, because money can buy us what we need. We need food. Money buys the food. We need clothing. Money buys the clothing. We need shelter, and money pays the rent or the mortgage.

Often, though, our hearts become enthralled by the promise of money, that it will provide our hopes, our dreams, our care, our peace, our joy. God lays bare how the Israelites were doing just that. Trusting in their money and possessions, rather than him. They even crafted it into idols, which shows how far their allegiance had traveled away from him.

So what will happen? In verses 21-22, he says that he will turn over all their money and possessions to foreign oppressors and robbers. And God himself will turn away from them. God will allow them to experience what it means to trust in their money. That will reveal to them that money is not actually able to protect them. Then they will know the truth about where the real power, the real security, the real hope lies. That phrase, “I will turn my face away from them,” is the worst thing that could happen to them.

I know that you and I don’t see God’s face right in front of us. God doesn’t actually have a face. What he is doing here is using a literary device called anthropomorphism, which is when you explain a concept by giving it a human characteristic. In this case, a face. What God means is that he is watching out for, protecting, providing for his people. But because they are putting their trust in money, which is tantamount to them saying they don’t trust him; they are saying to him, “Lord, we don’t need you because we have money.” So God says he will stop supporting them. And then what will happen? If God turns his face away from us, if he stops caring for us, we are finished. And you might as well throw the money out with the garbage because it will not care for you.

And then what? God says things get really bleak. Check back to the next post to learn more.

Is God a frustrated lover? – Ezekiel 7, Part 2

Have you ever experienced the frustration of loving someone who isn’t loving you back? It is a common human relational reality. Spouses that are scorned or betrayed. Kids neglecting their parents, and parents neglecting their kids. Friends that don’t care when you are struggling.

Have you ever considered that God might feel like that? In Ezekiel we find God in the position of scorned lover.

In the previous post, God told Ezekiel to prophesy that the end has come! What “end” is God talking about? And what will happen at this end? Let’s keep reading. Look at verses 3-9.

Brutal words from God, aren’t they? Imagine being the people living around Ezekiel there in Babylon, as he conveys this prophetic word from God. Good times, right? I can imagine them saying, “Man, Ezekiel, you are really downer. We don’t even live in Israel anymore. Why are you telling this to us?”

If they listened closely, they would have heard why he was saying this to them. First of all, it was a message from God. Isn’t that alone enough reason for them to pay attention? Just because this message was from God. God is speaking! Well, apparently it was not enough reason, because we know the people did not pay attention to God. They hadn’t paid attention to him for decades. Which is not that hard to understand, because you and I often read God’s word and then go and do something different.

But there is another reason why God was communicating this message of doom and gloom through Ezekiel. As God says in verse 4, when the end comes, they will know that he is God. The insinuation is that they currently did not know that he is God. They might have said in response, “Uh no, that’s not true. We believe in God.” But their actions told the real story. Observe their current practices, and the people did not show that they knew that he was their God. That’s not hard for us to understand either. We can say we believe one thing, then live a life that is inconsistent with that belief.

So the people of Israel have wandered far afield from God, and therefore the end will come. Then they will know, God says, that he is Lord. We heard God says this phrase, “Then you will know that I am the Lord” four times in chapter six. Why does he keep saying it?

What we hear in that phrase is God longing to be close to his people. They don’t know him, and he wants to be known by them. He wants restoration and reconciliation with his people who have turned their hearts and minds away from him. That emotion from God, that longing from God is continuing here in this next prophetic word in chapter seven.

It causes me to think about why this would have happened in the first place. Why should God have to be in this place of longing and crying out for his people? Think about it. Last week in chapter six, God said he was so upset because the people were worshiping other gods, who were actually false gods, meaning that they weren’t even gods at all. There is only one true God. And his name is Yahweh. How often do you think about that? God has a first name. He actually uses his first name many times in Ezekiel.

Notice in Ezekiel 7 verse 4 that the word Lord is in all capital letters? Most English Bibles print it using a capital L, then small caps for O-R-D. When you see that, the translator wants you to know that the Hebrew word being translated there is the actual name of God, Yahweh. You might ask, why don’t English translations write out the word Yahweh? It is out of respect for Jewish culture and practice, which views the actual name of God as so holy and revered that they do not say it or write it. But translators of our English Bibles still want us to know when the actual name of God is being used in the Hebrew. So look for that capital L-O-R-D. When you see the word Lord with a capital L and lower case o-r-d, however, it is the generic title for a Lord, a ruler, a master, not the name. That helps us know when the personal name of God is being used.

I point that out because it shows us God’s heart. He wants to be in a first-name basis relationship with his people. He wants to be known by them, to be in a genuine relationship with his people. He cannot fathom that they have allowed their hearts and minds to be wooed by gods that aren’t even gods at all. Worse, there might have been demonic forces behind idol worship, including demons performing supernatural acts. No doubt, that display of power can be enticing. But we know demonic power is nothing in comparison to the power of God. What’s more is that the people of Israel had plenty of evidence in their history to remind them of the power of God. How could they have allowed themselves to be enticed to the point where God would say, “They don’t know me anymore”? You can hear the sadness in God’s voice.

I wonder if that resonates with you at all. Do you feel a distance from God? Could God say the same to you, “I want you to know me”? He does want you to know him, to be in a real relationship with him. Evaluate your relationship with God. Have you turned away from him? Can it be said of you that you are not striving to grow a relationship with him? And why? What might entice you to ignore God? What tempts you? The Jews in Ezekiel’s day were tempted in other ways too. And God, through Ezekiel, points another specific temptation that very much relates to us today. Check back to the next post to learn about that temptation.

Doge Coin, NFTs, GameStop and the end of the world! – Ezekiel 7, Part 1

Economists look back over the last year or so reporting that, in addition to Covid, it has been a unique financial year in other ways. For example, have you heard of Doge Coin? It is a cryptocurrency, a digital form of money, which I don’t have the time or knowledge to try to explain. There are many cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin is probably the most famous, but Doge Coin this past year skyrocketed in valued, gaining something like 24000%, then losing half that. Still, it made some people millionaires.

Then there were NFTs, which stands for Non Fungible Token. Also based on digital platforms, whoever owns the NFT of a picture or video or other digital media is the owner. Like cryptocurrency, NFTs can be difficult to understand. Yet people are selling NFTs for thousands and thousands of dollars.

Then there was GameStop. The video game store was doing very poorly, until supporters started buying its stock like crazy, and GameStop’s valuation went through the roof.

Then there was the New Jersey sandwich shop, Your Home Town Deli. The previous two years it did $36000 in sales, but on the stock market it was valued at over $100 million. How could this be? It led to a deep dive in complex investing, shell companies, and foreign investors seeking to cash in on manipulating the system.

All of these stories illustrate people hungering for wealth. Take cryptocurrency for example. If a person would have bought Doge Coin when it first came out, they would have seen their investment multiply exponentially. That promise of get-rich-quick is as old as time, and still plays on our hearts, doesn’t it?

We can be enamored with the promise of financial freedom, of debts gone, of bills paid, of new clothes, homes, cars, gadgets and vacations. We can convince ourselves into believing that if we just had enough money, life would be so much better.

Though I am the one saying this, don’t for a second believe that I am not preaching to myself. I can long for more money. I can dream that my dissertation will get published as a book, and I’ll become a best-selling author, and my wife and I will be financially independent for the rest of our lives.

What I am really longing for? Peace. Security. Stability. I can spend a lot of time thinking that it is money that will bring what I hope and dream for.

What I wonder is if this is actually economic idolatry.

Please hear me that I am not just talking about rich people. Can rich people have economic idolatry. Of course. But what about people with less money, or no money? Can they have economic idolatry? Yes. And because this is a sermon to Christians, is it possible that there is economic idolatry in the church? Yes.

What, then, do we do about this?

I suggest that our continuing study through Ezekiel’s life and ministry will help. A major focus of the Old Testament book of Ezekiel involves God, through Ezekiel, calling out the people of Israel for their idolatry. Last week we looked at religious idolatry. This week we’ll see how Israel committed the sin of economic idolatry, how we can too, and most importantly, what we can do about it.

So open up a Bible or Bible app, turn to Ezekiel 7, and read verse 1.

This chapter starts with a phrase that is standard for the prophets, “The word of the Lord came to me…” What word of the Lord? What we are going to learn is that this next word or message from God to Ezekiel is in a very different method from what we have studied so far. To this point, God has asked Ezekiel to perform a variety of bizarre skits. Now in chapter 7, God gives Ezekiel what appears to be standard prophetic preaching, just words. There is no vision, no skit. Ezekiel just hears the word of the Lord, and that is what God wants him to proclaim.

In fact, we will see that this prophetic message in Ezekiel chapter 7 is not only the stereotypical prophetic method, but also the stereotypical prophet message. Look at verse 2, where we read that the word from the Lord is, “The end has come!”

Now you know where those street corner preachers get their message from. Ezekiel 7. It reminds me of the guys with the megaphones shouting that the end is near. Or maybe they’re holding signs with “The end is near!” painted on it. Might be a big sign on a sign post, or those placards that have a front and a back sign that they wear over their shoulders and walk around. That way they can display the signs saying, “The end has come!” and yell into a megaphone at the same time.

Normally those prophets of doom and gloom are talking about the end of the world. Maybe they are referring to Jesus coming again. Maybe the battle of Armageddon which is described in the book of Revelation. Or they could be suggesting some other kind of massive upheaval like a world war. What “end” is God talking about? And what will happen at this end?

Check back to the next post, as we’ll find out!

Are we living in the end times? – Ezekiel 7, Preview

The end is near!!!

Encouraging start to this post, huh?

But have you wondered if the end actually is near? Have you looked at our world situation, our national situation and wondered if we can last much longer? If you have, you’re not alone. I’ve heard people speculate about it a lot lately, especially given the tumult in our world and nation in the last few years. Geo-political strife. Racial tension. Religious persecution. Ethic cleansing. Global warming. Nuclear disaster. It can seem like life on planet earth is grim. Maybe we need to support the efforts to get back to the moon or Mars…

Musings about the end times have been a part of Christian discussion, and especially evangelical belief, for a long time. Remember how popular the Left Behind series was? The Left Behind series was an attempt to dramatize what it would be like if the end times happened in our world. The first novel was published on December 31, 1995. 15 novels later, the series concluded in 2007. It also spawned a load of kids’ books and three movies. The end times were a fascination, however, long before the Left Behind series began. Larry Norman’s popular song about the rapture, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” came out amid the turmoil of 1969. Keep traveling backward in history. Imagine how Christians living through the World Wars must have felt about the end times. They had a far better case for believing that they were living in the end times than just about any other time in history. Now travel back further in time to the 1860s, and our American Civil War was another awful period that sure looked like end times. Globally, speaking there are plenty of other examples. Genocides, Holocausts, terrible disasters, war, and displacement. All seem like end times.

The original proclamation of “The end is near!” goes back way further still. Millennia further! 600 years before the time of Jesus, Ezekiel boldly declares not that “The end is near,” but that “The end has come!” While he may have heard the prophet Amos say this years earlier (see Amos 8:2), Ezekiel is simply declaring what God told him to say about the times he lived in. So what end had come during Ezekiel’s lifetime? More importantly, why was God saying that had the end come?

Though the end has not come for us, meaning that Jesus has not returned, we can learn much from the end times that had come upon the Israelites in Ezekiel’s day. God has important principles to share with us through the message he gives to the prophet Ezekiel. As I studied the passage this week, it struck me how relevant it is to our current situation of American Christianity in 2021. Check out Ezekiel chapter 7 ahead of time to see for yourself, then I’ll look forward to discussing it further with you next week.

How to have the right kind of worship service – Ezekiel 6, Part 5

I’ve heard a variety of opinions about Faith Church’s worship service over the years. Maybe you’ve heard similar sentiments about your church’s worship. “We should be more liturgical.” “We should be more traditional.” “We should be more contemporary.” “We should be more professional…” including the suggestion that we hire instrumentalists. Lot of opinions. Often they conflict.

Our worship serve team has thoroughly studied, prayed and discussed these opinions numerous times, and we have come to the conclusion that worship that God desires flows from worshipers who have humble, teachable hearts. Humble worshipers say, “God, I come to worship you, not thinking that I have worship figured out, not thinking that I have to worship in my preferred way, but instead I come to worship you as a learner of worship. Teach me God how you want me to worship you.”

As a result, Faith Church has attempted to add experimentation and creativity into worship. We want it to be participatory rather than professional. While we strive for excellence, we also give grace. We rise above our personal preferences and opinions, seeking to know God and become more like him. We do not want to be idolaters of false worship.

Therefore, we seek to learn about worship from a variety of Christian traditions. There are many Christians who practice a high liturgy. Some Christians emphasize silence. There are megachurches, house churches, online churches and churches of all shapes and sizes. All of them have potential pros and cons that we can learn from as we think about how we worship God when we gather. But God must be the focus. Every time we gather for ritual worship, just like we do every Sunday, we pray, “Lord, help me learn to worship you, to keep you as the focus.”

This is why, over the years, we’ve worked hard at Faith Church to make sure God is the focus of our worship services. But really, that is exterior work. By exterior, I mean the way the sanctuary looks, the songs we sing, the style of music, the audio, the visuals, the preaching, the other elements of worship. They are all important, and they should all help to focus us on God.

But the more vital work that needs to be done is in our hearts and minds. God often says to the Israelites that he despises their outward worship, even when that worship looked correct, because he did not have their hearts. What we studied this week, Ezekiel 6, made that very clear. Obviously, the people had not given their hearts and minds to God because they were willing to give their hearts and minds to false idol worship!

This, then, is a call for us to examine our hearts and minds, asking God to help us cast away any opinions that might be getting in the way of us worshiping him and him alone.

Finally, we can Christians can worship Christian celebrity. In the first post in this series, mentioned Mars Hill Church and Mark Driscoll. Think about the Christian authors, singers, podcasters or TV preachers that you follow. Be careful that your heart and mind worships God and not those Christian celebrities. Of course, other Christians, including the celebrities can help point us to God, including how to live more faithfully to him. But, frankly, too often a Christian celebrity becomes larger than life in our minds because they tell us what we want to hear. They believe what we believe, and in a world of many competing beliefs, we find great comfort in having our beliefs affirmed. The problem again, though, is that those beliefs are so often just opinions. The celebrities don’t point that out, though, because their celebrity status relies on popularity, on gaining followers who support their ministries and purchase their products, so they tend to play to and affirm the opinions of their base, telling them that those opinions are actually the truth. That is dangerous, and so often leads to false worship.

Do you need to repent? Do you need a person like Ezekiel in your life to examine your opinions and confront you that those opinions are not actually keeping worship of God as primary in your life? Have you allowed your opinions about worship to become idolatry?

How Christian worship can become idolatry – Ezekiel 6, Part 4

“That’s not worship!”

The person saying this to me was sitting across the table from me, while we were having a worship meeting in our church conference room. The person was a long-time member of the church, and they were upset. We had been experimenting with worship, and they declared that one of the experiments was not worship.

What did we do?

This week we have been studying Ezekiel 6, observing God’s anguished cry to the Israelites because of their practice of ritual idol worship. Maybe the person accusing Faith Church’s worship experiment felt that we doing something akin to idol worship?

I don’t know if this will be shocking to you, but I have seen false worship happen in my Faith Church family. Maybe you have seen it happen in your church too. What I am talking about is when people say they have to have a certain kind of worship service in order to worship. Let me explain.

Years ago, we sought to improve the life and ministry of our church family, so we took a survey to help guide us. The idea of the survey was that it would receive input from 30 people in the congregation, compile their feedback, and give us a ranking in each of eight key areas of church life. The goal would be to work on the weakest area, then in 6-12 months, we’d perform the survey again to see if we had improved that weak area. If not, we’d keep working on it. If we had a new weak area, we’d work on that one. Theoretically, if you keep strengthening the weakest link, your church will become healthier and stronger. Our weakest link was worship. So we began experimenting with ways to improve worship.

In our building our sanctuary is situated next to our Fellowship Hall, and the two rooms are separated by an accordion divider. It is a wise design choice. If the sanctuary fills up to standing room only, we can open the divider, seat people in the Fellowship Hall and they can participate in the worship service. Normally the divider was closed every Sunday, because we had enough space in our sanctuary to seat everyone comfortably. But as we brainstormed how to improve our worship service, we talked about how our current sanctuary set-up is fairly rigid, given our rows of pews. We wondered if some people would feel more free to worship if they could sit in the Fellowship Hall at tables. For a month of Sundays, the divider was open, and some people sat back there.

After one month of having the divider open, our worship committee met to review the experiments we had implemented. That’s why I was in our conference seated across from the person who was extremely upset about it. Commenting on the divider being open, they said forcefully, “That’s not worship!”

Really? Do the dividers have to be closed in order for us to worship God? Of course not. What that person revealed was not some special insight about worship, but instead what the person revealed was a spirit of false worship in their heart and mind. That is idolatry. How so? They were worshiping a specific version of worship services, their version of worship, which they had allowed to take root in their heart and mind. They elevated their opinion to the level of God’s truth.

We can all have opinions. We DO all have opinions. Opinions are not wrong. You probably like one style of worship better than others. Over my 19 years being a part of Faith Church, I’ve heard all sorts of opinions. Some tell me they want more hymns. We have some who tell me they want more contemporary worship. Those are opinions. But when those opinions take hold of our hearts and minds to the point where we are unhappy or unwilling to worship any other way, then we have fashioned worship after our own image, and not after God’s heart. That is idolatry.

We can do this with the kind of seating we have in our worship spaces. I’ve had people tell me that a church’s worship space should have pews. They can’t support that viewpoint from the Bible, because God’s word says nothing like that, but they still try to make a case for it. Do you know what they are doing? They are elevating their opinion to a place it should not go.

We Christians should strive hard to identify opinions that we have elevated inappropriately. Instead we strive to worship God as he is, him alone, who he truly is. We do not need a building, a room called a sanctuary, with pews and a sound system. When we were on Covid lockdown last year, we worshiped without any of that. In fact, we couldn’t even be together!

We had a realization a few weeks ago when we took communion. We opened the communion rails for the first time since February 9^th, 2020. Kneeling at the communion rail is the traditional way Faith Church has practiced communion since before my time. Over the years, we have added different methods because we feel it is important to have variety and experiment. During Covid we learned a couple new ways to partake of communion, didn’t we? At home communion, bring your own communion, and of course pre-packaged communion. A couple weeks ago before worship, we were having our prayer time before worship like we always do. Me, our worship leader, the host, and singers. We prayed and then we talked about the worship service, to make sure we’re all on the same page. As we talked about having communion up front kneeling at the communion rails, our worship asked how it works. Initially in my mind, I was a bit confused. Why would our worship leader ask how communion works? Then it hit me. He had never been part of a Faith Church worship service that had anything other than at home communion, bring your own communion, or pre-packaged cups. His first day as worship leader was the first Sunday of lockdown! I had forgotten about that. So I quickly gave him an overview about how we were going to celebrate communion that morning.

My point in sharing this story is that while we wish we never had Covid, we can learn from it. The Covid lockdown reminded to us that we should be careful that our opinions about a particular style of worship stay as opinions. We can allow our opinions and preferences to rule to us, to get out of control, and worse, to become a law that we bind on others saying that everyone should believe like us, or they are wrong. When we allow our hearts to be captured like that, we are idolaters.

Is God trying to get your attention? – Ezekiel 6, Part 3

If God were trying to get your attention, how do you think he would do so? Often when we go through a difficult time, we wonder if God is trying to get our attention. But think about what you know of God’s heart. Does it sound like him to zap you with hardship, when he could get your attention in so many other ways? I don’t think so. Of course we can learn through difficult situations, and God desires to redeem them, but that doesn’t mean he causes them.

So how does God strive to get our attention?

In our study of Ezekiel, God has been trying to get the Israelites’ attention. He asks Ezekiel to perform some bizarre skits specifically because he wants to communicate with his people who have turned their backs on him. This week we have been studying Ezekiel 6, and the skit God asks Ezekiel to perform is what I have been calling The Prophetic Stare, where Ezekiel is to “set his face against” something. You can read the first post in the series here. But would The Prophetic Stare grab people? Or would they just think that Ezekiel is weird? Just in case the people outside Ezekiel’s house aren’t listening to him as he preaches this while he is doing the Prophetic Stare, God tells Ezekiel to do something else in this sign act. Read verses 11-14.

If people were not listening to Ezekiel as he stared off in the distance, abruptly he pauses his sermon and he starts clapping his hands together, stomping his feet and yelling out “Alas!” That surely caught their attention. I can see people stopping in their tracks, turning to find the cause of the commotion. What did they think of Ezekiel’s display? Did they think he was dancing? Or throwing a tantrum? Or that he was possessed? Or just out of his mind?

What they should have seen was a God who deeply loves them though they were mistreating him; a God who is desperate for reconciliation, desperate for healing, desperate for his love to be reciprocated. This is a prophetic cry of anguish that seeks to wake the other person out of their self-focused slumber and back into communion with God.

Interestingly, verse 12 has a bit of warning. Notice the words: “He that is far away will die.” Who is God speaking to that might be “far away”? Well, Ezekiel and the other 10,000 Jewish exiles lived far away from Jerusalem. 900 miles away. In Babylon. That, too, could get their attention. God is saying, “Just because you are no longer living near the mountains in Israel [which we talked about in the previous post], don’t think you’re off the hook. I am just as concerned about your adulterous, rebellious behavior here in Babylon.” The destruction that will come to the idolatrous high places erected by the adulterous people of Israel will be a sign to all that God is who he says he is. As he concludes in verse 14, then they will know that he is the Lord.

Why does God warn them? Because they weren’t living like he was their Lord. They had allowed their worship, their beliefs, their faith, their allegiance to be given to false gods! They did so in ritualistic ways up there on the mountains, at the high places, when they lived in Israel. Even now in Babylon, they were not living for God.

So for the remaining two posts in this five-part series on Ezekiel 6, I will attempt to apply what we have been learning this week about idolatrous ritual worship to contemporary Christian worship practice. I have been a member of and worshiped, for nearly all of my 47 years, at three churches here in Lancaster: Grace Baptist, Westminster Presbyterian, and for the past 19 years, Faith Evangelical Congregational. If you attended worship at any of those three in the past 50 years, you would find them fairly similar. Yes, they all have unique elements, and they have gone through changes, but I suspect most long-term attenders of any of those churches would not describe their worship as ritual. We just call it “worship service,” but it is ritualistic, and I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. A ritual is simply an act that is repeated for a larger purpose.

Think about how worship services are ritualistic. In most worship gatherings, they involve people coming together every week to sing, pray, study God’s word, give and fellowship, all out of a larger purpose to worship God. It is true that we are to worship 24/7, so that we view all of life as an act of worship to God. But because Ezekiel 6 focuses on the false, idolatrous ritual worship of the Israelites, it is important for us to examine ourselves to discover if there are any ways in which we can allow ourselves to practice false worship.

Is your church worship service idolatrous in any way? Check back to the next two posts in this series, as I will suggest some ways that Christian worship can become idolatry.

Why we wander from God – Ezekiel 6, Part 2

Have you ever wandered from God? I have. It wouldn’t surprise me if we all have in some way big or small. Maybe you have wandered from him many times. Maybe you feel distant from him right now. In today’s post, as we continue studying Ezekiel 6, we’re going to hear about people that wandered from God. But there is hope for the wanderers, the lost, the weary, and it is hope that God speaks to us.

In the previous post, we learned that God told Ezekiel to set his face. I am calling that The Prophetic Stare. What is The Prophetic Stare? Read the previous post here to learn more about it. In today’s post, we talk about the recipient of the Stare! Look at Ezekiel 6, verse 2, and what is Ezekiel to set his face against?

The mountains of Israel. Mountains? Yeah! He’s bringing a heavy symbolic prophetic stare against the mountains of Israel. Even when I try to write that with dramatic tension, it still doesn’t seem all that important, right? Why would God tell Ezekiel to set his face against the mountains? It would be like God saying, “Christians, I want you to declare prophetic judgment against the Appalachian Mountains.” If I heard that, I would be thinking, “Why? What’s wrong with the mountains? They’re just natural formations. And actually, God, you created them.” If he said, “Set your face against mosquitos or poison ivy or humidity,” then I would get that. I am extremely allergic to poison ivy, and I have to take medicine every time I get it, so I would be totally okay prophesying against it. But mountains?

Why bring the Prophetic Stare of judgement against the mountains of Israel? But notice in verse 2, Ezekiel is also to prophesy against them. That means he will be speaking God’s words of judgment against them. “What did those evil mountains do this time?”

Look at verse 3, where we read what God tells Ezekiel to say.

At first, it sounds like God really has it out for the mountains, what with their mills and ravines and valleys. He says, “I am going to bring a sword against you.” In Minecraft you can use a sword to break rocks, but not in real life. Instead, it seems like God is writing a Monty Python skit where he sends someone to use a sword against mountains, and they start hacking away at the rocks on a mountain cliff. It might look hilarious. Not productive! What is going on in God’s mind?

Instead, in verse 3, we get a clue as to what this is all about. In the last phrase in verse three, God says, “I will destroy your high places.” Here God is not talking about high elevations, as if the mountains are too high and mighty or something. God is not saying that he needs to cut them down to size because they’re so high above sea level that they are starting to get a little full of themselves. As if he needs to show those mountains some humility.

No. “High places” is another way to refer to pagan places of worship! Read how God describes this in verses 4-7.

What God is referring to in verses 4-7 is the fact that the people of Israel would travel up into their mountainous areas and build altars and set up idols, and there they would worship pagan gods.

Why would Israel do this? When they had a history of the one true God’s power, provision and presence in the life of the nation, why would the people of Israel choose to wander away from him? It is a question with an answer that I suspect we might understand if we take a look into our own motivations. Many of us can say that we, too, have experienced the work of God in our lives, and yet we have wandered away from God, even after having encountered him.

The people of the nations around Israel believed and practiced a variety of pagan religions. At first glance, you and I might have a hard time understanding how those pagan religions could be attractive to the Israelites. As we think about the socio-cultural dynamics at play, though, remember that those nations were often powerful and thus influential to the peoples living around them. We want peace with our neighbors, and one way to do promote peace is to do what they do. Consider the belonging and acceptance the Israelites might feel by being included in the practice of pagan cult worship. Further, it could be that demonic powers were resident in ritual worship, even producing supernatural signs and wonders that promised peace, health and wealth to practitioners. Finally, cultic worship could entice the Israelites through sensual worship, including prostitution.

No doubt about it, the Israelites’ God, Yahweh, called them to a different kind of life, a clean life, and that meant Israel was to be different. Being different is not easy, even if it is a demonstrably better life. This has many parallels to living as a disciple of Jesus in a world that does not find Jesus’ life as attractive. Simply put, living the way of Jesus can feel lonely, or worse, as if the disciple is constantly rowing against a current flowing forcefully in the other direction.

So Israel would give in to temptation. There, up in the mountains, Israel would build religious shrines to the false gods of the surrounding nations. They would make idols out of wood, metal and stone, and practice religious rituals, including offering sacrifices to the idols there. Clearly worshiping false gods was wrong. But it could get even worse. Worship at these high places could include practices such as self-mutilation, drinking of blood, engaging in prostitution and even child sacrifice. It is no wonder God told the Israelites to stay away from wicked idol worship, and it is why he is so upset that they were participating in such vile practices. Not only was their idol worship a breaking of relationship with him, not only was it disobedient, but it was evil.

That’s what Ezekiel is setting his face against, and that is what God tells him to prophesy against. So there he is outside his house in Babylon, staring at the mountains, and declaring that God is going to lay waste to the false worship on the mountains, including killing the Israelites who are involved in this.

You might think, “Hold on…they’re 900 miles away…how is this going to matter to the Israelites practicing pagan worship in the mountains of Israel?” Good question. It won’t matter to the people back in Israel. But it will matter to the Israelites living there in Babylon. It is a warning to them, a call for them to repent and turn to the Lord. While the prophetic stare was about the wickedness happening in Israel, it was a message for the Israelite exiles in Babylon.

There is more to the message. Look at verses 8-10.

You can see how these words from Ezekiel might have caused his neighbors to pay attention. Maybe they were even thinking, “Oh, maybe he’s talking about us.” Why might they have wondered that? Notice verse 8. God says that some of the Jews in Israel will escape the sword and be scattered among the nations. Who were the Israelites scattered among the nations? There were many, including Ezekiel and his neighbors and the 10,000 Jews with them that had been exiled in Babylon. There would also be many more in the years to come. And what does God desire of them? He tells them in verse 9 to remember him. To take seriously the sin that they committed.

He mentions numerous sins. First, they have adulterous hearts which turned away from him. Second, their eyes have lusted after idols. Third, they committed evil deeds, and fourth, the did detestable practices. This prophetic stare is the spotlight shining the light of truth on the lives of the Jews living in Babylon. They should hear this truth and say with sorrow and remorse, “Yes, that is true. I behaved like that. We have behaved like that. We have rebelled against God. Woe is me!”

Though the prophecy includes severe judgment, notice that hope is not lost. Even though they have already been exiled in Babylon, look at the hope God communicates in verse 10. Despite all that horrible stuff they did, they can still know him. They can be restored. We wanderers, lost and hurting can be restored too! I would love to talk about it further with you. Just comment below!

But are they paying attention? Just in case the people outside Ezekiel’s house aren’t listening to him as he preaches this while he is doing the Prophetic Stare, God tells Ezekiel to do something else in this sign act.

Check back to tomorrow’s post, as we’ll talk about the shocking twist this skit takes.

The Prophetic Stare? – Ezekiel 6, Part 1

I’ve been listening to a compelling podcast called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Mars Hill is the name of a megachurch in Seattle, Washington. It was a church started by a small group of people in 1996, but eventually came to be synonymous with its lead pastor, Mark Driscoll. At its height, the church had something like 10 extension campuses and 15,000 attenders. In the summer of 2014, after a series of accusations and troubles, the pastor, Driscoll, suddenly resigned. Rumors of problems had been whispered down the lane, but it didn’t seem like anything close to a resignation was coming. While he admitted that he could have been a better leader, Driscoll pretty much pled not-guilty to the church discipline brought against him. The accusations were severe, revolving around his brutal, aggressive and abusive leadership style. Instead of fighting the charges, Driscoll resigned and left. What surprised many people both inside and outside of Mars Hill is that the church fell apart rapidly. Within months, it closed. There is no Mars Hill anymore. Imagine that. A church of 15,000 done in a matter of months. And why? For many reasons, of course. One reason I would like to suggest is religious idolatry. We can worship celebrity. If the celebrity falls, others can fall with them, because those followers have placed the celebrity on a pedestal.

We’ve been studying the life and ministry of the prophet Ezekiel, and what God has to say in Ezekiel chapter 6 will speak to us about religious idolatry. Ezekiel lived in the city of Jerusalem about 600 years before the time of Jesus. The city was attacked by Babylon, who defeated Jerusalem and then exiled 10,000 of its Jews, including Ezekiel, back to Babylon. There they lived for five years, when God showed up in a glorious vision to Ezekiel, calling Ezekiel to be a prophet to his fellow 10,000 Jews, because they were rebellious. Curiously, God calls Ezekiel to communicate this message through skits. This week God has a new skit he wants Ezekiel to act out. Turn to Ezekiel chapter 6, and read verses 1-2.

There we read what we will hear over and over throughout the book, God speaking his word to Ezekiel. God specifically instructs Ezekiel to, “set your face against the mountains of Israel.” God will ask Ezekiel to “set his face” toward or against things at least nine times in the book. What does this mean, setting your face?

I am calling this the Prophetic Stare. To set your face is to stare, willfully, resolutely, and for a reason.

Through the prophetic stare, there is not actually any inner supernatural power coming from Ezekiel. Have you ever heard of superheroes who have laser vision? Or heat vision? That’s not what the Prophetic Stare is. Ezekiel is not like Superman with his laser vision. There is no physical power in Ezekiel’s Stare.

The Stare is, instead, like all of Ezekiel’s prophetic sign acts, a symbol of what God will do. God has the power. Ezekiel doesn’t. Sometimes God gave prophets power to do miracles. But not Ezekiel. Instead, the Prophetic Stare communicates a message about God’s power.

Therefore, the Prophetic Stare is better compared to a spotlight that is illuminating something. Maybe you have seen this on TV or movies when a police helicopter is chasing a suspect at night. The chopper is flying very low over the ground where the suspect is trying to flee the scene of the crime. A spotlight operator up in the helicopter shines a powerful spotlight back and forth, seeking to find the suspect. Suddenly the light reveals a person running like mad, and the suspect is caught.

The Prophetic Stare is like that. But the light shining from Ezekiel’s stare is not a massive ten million candle-power spotlight. Instead, the Prophetic Stare shines the light of God’s truth, exposing the reality of a situation. Through the Prophetic Stare, God is shining is light of truth and judgement on something.

Maybe you’ve experienced this. Have you ever been hiding something, and you get caught? Or maybe you’ve told a lie, and the truth comes out. I think that probably describes all of us at some point in our lives. So what hidden truth is God asking Ezekiel to reveal through this Stare? Keep following along with the posts this week, and we’ll find out.

In the rest of this post, though, I want us to consider how the Ezekiel would have looked performing the Prophetic Stare. Remember the context? Ezekiel is living in Babylon along with 10,000 of his fellow Jews who have been exiled there. He has already gained a reputation for performing skits. Here in chapter six we read about the third prophetic skit. The first was in chapter three (which I blogged about starting here), when Ezekiel was to go to his house where people would tie him up, and God would make his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth so he couldn’t speak, that is, until God freed his tongue to speak only and precisely what God told him to speak. Then last week we learned about the second skit, in chapters 4 & 5 (which you can read about starting here), and it was a doozy. Ezekiel was to build a little model of Jerusalem being attacked, then lay down on his side 430 days, eating a very specific diet, and cooking over cow manure. Likely he was performing the skit outside where people could see him, and I suspect the other Jews wondered if he had lost his mind. That second skit got even weirder when, at the end of the 430 days, he shaved off his hair and beard with a sword, dividing the hair up equally in three parts, burning one third, chopping up one third, and throwing the other third in the wind. Why? All of it was a prophetic message of judgment against Israel.

Now today we have another skit, and I want you to picture in your mind as Ezekiel walks out of his house, into to the street out front. People in the ancient world didn’t stay inside like we do. They lived in the hot middle east, and there was no such thing as A/C or ceiling fans or window fans. So they would find shade outside where the air could move more easily. Many of Ezekiel’s neighbors would have been outside. There would likely be people walking on the street. So imagine, Ezekiel walks out of his house, in view of his neighbors and passersby, and he stops and stares.

A man in my church family and I were recently talking about the weirdness of Ezekiel, and this man, who has been a fireman for decades, told me that he once went on a fire call to a local apartment community. When the firemen got there, the person living in the burning apartment was standing outside the burning apartment. Stark naked.

Get this, she had cut her hair, put it in the sink, took off her clothes, set the house on fire, and walked outside where she waited. What would we do if she said, “God told me to do it as a sign”? We would do exactly what the authorities did with her. They committed her to the hospital. My friend said that when she was released, she went back home and set her house on fire again! Think about that. She’s not altogether different from Ezekiel, right? Minus the property damage. My point is that people are watching him. You can imagine people in the street, especially kids, saying, “Oh look, look, look, here comes Ezekiel out of his house! What’s he going to do this time?” This time he walks out the door, and he stares.

Did he allow his eyes to wander around, or did he keep them fixed straight ahead? Furthermore, did he stare a long time? Maybe he was just standing there like a statue for a while? I wonder if people tried talking to him, “Watcha looking at, Ezekiel?” Did they get up close to his face, wave their hands in front of him, saying, “Earth to Ezekiel, earth to Ezekiel, are you there?”

Who was Ezekiel staring at? And more importantly, why would God ask him to stare? We’ll talk about that in the next post.