The Bible reading plan I am following lands me in the prophets each Friday and this morning found me in Ezekiel 8. In it, God takes Ezekiel on a journey through the streets of Jerusalem, where the iniquity of God’s people is on full display.
Ezekiel sees the elders of Israel bowing down to idols and the women weeping to the false god Tammuz. As Ezekiel witnesses their sinful acts, God declares to him ominously that, “You will see even more detestable acts than these.” (Ezekiel 8:13, CSB)
Finally, God brings Ezekiel to the inner court of the temple, where he finds the following scene:
So he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house, and there were about twenty-five men at the entrance of the Lord’s temple, between the portico and the altar, with their backs to the Lord’s temple and their faces turned to the east. – Ezekiel 8:16, CSB
I want us to take a moment to evaluate the scene. In a vision, Ezekiel is taken on a tour of Jerusalem. God carries him through the streets and buildings where he witnesses detestable acts of rebellion by the people of Israel, who are high-handedly sinning against the God that saved them out of Egypt.
As Ezekiel witnesses each act, God announces that there is yet more evil to be seen. That is when God takes Ezekiel to the temple, the heart of both the city of Jerusalem and the Old Covenant. The temple was where God dwelt with his people, the place where his glory chose to abide. It was the place where heaven met earth.
And the men have their backs to it.
Why?
The end of verse 16 gives us the answer: “They were bowing to the east in worship of the sun.” (Ezekiel 8:16, CSB)
The men of Israel are at the entrance of the place where God has chosen to meet with them, and their backs are turned because they are too busy worshipping the sun!
In true fallen human fashion, they have chosen to worship the creation rather than the Creator and are doing so in the shadow of the temple — in other words, in the shadow of the presence of God.
It is easy to denounce these men for their utter pagan foolishness, but I am afraid that this scene is all too familiar in our own lives. Although we might not be outside of churches worshipping the sun, we give our worship to the creation in other ways.
Any time we sin and as a result give our hearts to something other than God, we are choosing to worship the creation. In other words, any time we choose to sin we are, in effect, turning our backs to the temple.
When we give in to sin, we are actively turning away from God and towards something that has been created by God and choosing to worship it rather than the LORD. We are turning our backs to the temple.
The men who were engaging in sun-worship, as well as the rest of the nation, experienced the judgment of the Lord. God declared later that he would, “Slaughter the old men, the young men and women, as well as the children and older women.” (Ezekiel 9:6, CSB)
Such goes the way of those who choose to break covenant with Yahweh. And if those under the Old Covenant administration experienced such harsh judgment, who are we to think that we will fare better when we rebel against God? When the men who were worshipping the sun turned their backs to the temple, they were turning them to a mere shadow of what was to come. But when we as Christians sin, we are turning our backs to the true temple, Jesus Christ. So then, as Hebrews tells us, “How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God?” (Hebrews 10:29, CSB)
Therefore, what are we to do? We all sin daily and are so often guilty of turning our backs on God. How do we keep ourselves from high-handed sin against our Savior and thus, from the chastisement of the LORD?
Simply put, we bask in his glory. Rather than turning our backs on Jesus, we should gaze at him in all of his splendor and beauty, seeing him for the treasure that he is. It is through this gazing that we are changed. 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us that, “We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” (CSB)
Don’t turn your back on the temple, friends. Instead, embrace the true temple for what he truly is: the perfect Son of God that can save you from your sin!