Is The Twig To Your Nose

 

Ezekiel chapter 8 breaks my heart every time I read it…

I studied through this chapter last March as I planned a lesson for the Names of God series that I teach in chapel at our homeschool co-op. It broke my heart then… and it breaks it still.

It breaks my heart because I feel the pain in my God’s heart and experience the grief of the Spirit within as I read through that chapter. How it must have broken God’s heart to see the people that He had redeemed mocking Him in such a way. They were committing these abominations in the temple… right under the Holy of Holies… right outside the temple gates… even inside the temple walls.

And He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, 

the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, 

so that I would be far from My sanctuary?

But yet you will see still greater abominations.”

Ezekiel 8:6

 

Ezekiel is there looking through a hole in the wall right into the heart of the temple and all that he sees is people dressed in priests clothing but practicing things that God has said were wrong and detestable… and they don’t care if it hurts Him… they are going to do it anyway.

This breaks my heart because if Ezekiel were to come to the entrance of the majority of our American churches what would he see at the entrance gate? What would he see as God took him past the entrance gate into the very depths of the hearts of those sitting in the seats of the sanctuary…

Or do you not know

that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you,

whom you have from God,

and that you are not your own?

1 Corinthians 6:19

Would He say again…”Look, look and see why I am so far away from My sanctuary… look and see why My Spirit is not moving in this place and see why they do not feel My presence in their individual lives.”?

 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness,

we lie and do not practice the truth;

1 John 1:6

So Ezekiel 8 breaks my heart because the things that our God calls abominations are so very prevalent in our American society today and they have even been welcomed in our sanctuaries and as a whole we don’t abhor them… we barely even acknowledge them. And please know that I am not one who limits the “abomination” to homosexuality… just scroll through the pages of the Proverbs and underline abomination and you will clearly see that we are very shallow and prejudiced if we actually think that as long as we don’t struggle with this sin then we have not committed any great sin before the heart of our God.

I see it… I see it everywhere. Most no longer care what God has to say about many things… they will agree that He says it is wrong, but then they will do it any way. We choose our abominations over God. We provoke Him to jealousy and then many even blame Him when they experience the consequences of their choice.

We sit in the sanctuary in our church clothes with our church face and then we walk out the door and then in the walls of our homes and schools and offices and among our “friends” we do everything God abhors… we do the things we have been taught clearly are wrong…

                  and we break His heart… the very heart of the One who redeemed us… the very heart that poured water and blood out after being pierced through by a spear.

We just keep jabbing the spear in a little bit deeper and twisting it around and grace will cover it… right?

For I am afraid that perhaps when I come

I may find you to be not what I wish

and may be found by you to be not what you wish;

that perhaps there will be strife, jealousy, angry tempers, 

disputes, slanders, gossip, arrogance, disturbances; 

I am afraid that when I come again my God may humiliate me before you,

and I may mourn over many of those who have sinned in the past

and not repented

of the impurity, immorality and sensuality which they have practiced.

2 Corinthians 12:20-21

So how many of us have the twig to our nose? How many of us sit in church on Sunday or Wednesday and we walk out the doors and we turn our backs to everything we have heard and everything we know to be true and right and fall prostate before the things of this world with our rear-end to God and basically tell Him to kiss it while we live however we want?

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