Ezekiel 8
Ezekiel has prophesied among Israel’s exiles in Babylon for a little over a year (1). Now the exiles’ elders inquire of him, evidently and understandably about home. Thus he receives a vision about Jerusalem.
At first he sees an “image of jealousy” before the altar (5-6). Whatever it was, it was not good. Then he sees seventy elders worshiping images of created things (7-13), in the dark, “each in his own room of pictures” (12). Pornography is idolatry and nothing new.
Then he sees women “weeping for Tammuz” (14-15). This was a fertility cult that required sexual immorality.
Finally, he sees twenty-five elders, turned away from the temple, facing east, worshiping the sun (16). Adam and Eve were cast out “east of Eden;” the way back into the Garden is west. Israel’s worship has become not only perverted but also inverted.
From perverted, inverted worship flows evil living: they fill the land with violence (17). Thus God only reserves wrath and silence for them (18).
Secret idolatry and immorality repulse God and repel His presence, dividing men and women, leading to unfruitfulness and violence. Sounds like the modern West. The only way of escape is to repent to living before the face of God, in rightly ordered worship. But this first requires cleansing by blood, for all our idolatries. This God would graciously provide later, His own Son crying out from a Roman cross, not being heard (18), taking our wrath upon himself, that we might be cleansed, by faith in him.
Be cleansed; come alive again; and walk in that newness of life (Romans 6:4).
1 Corinthians 10
This chapter elaborates on Paul’s statement that ends chapter 9:
1 Corinthians 9:27 (ESV): But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
This sounds like Paul could “lose his salvation.” On the one hand, it is my conviction that this is not possible (but space does not permit me to demonstrate that here). However, at the same time, we will only know for sure who had a salvation to lose at the end. We may have assurance now and produce fruit, and one factor that contributes to that is endurance, in faith, demonstrated by an avoidance of high-handed sin, until the end.
Thus Paul does something remarkable: he refers to the Israelites of the Old Testament as “our fathers” (1) - to the Corinthians, who were both Jew and Greek. The moral lessons of the Old Testament should be received and “heeded” (12) by Christians today.1
The basic moral lessons we should take is this: do not desire evil (6). Because, as James teaches us, desire gives birth to sin (James 1:14-15). Then sin leads to death, as we see with Old Testament Israel, over and over again (1 Cor. 10:8). This means not differentiating between sins - we modern, wealthy people. Bald-faced idolatry is no more an offense against God as is ingratitude (9) and grumbling (10).
Those who endure to the end without falling are those who hear the warning and “take heed” (12). The way of the spiral of the Old Testament is faith, in three truths about God (13):
God sovereignly puts boundaries and limits to every one of our trials and temptations.2
God sovereignly ordains every trial/temptation to contain “the way of escape.” But that way is not you or I being magically plucked up and out of the situation. The way out is through - “that you may be able to endure it.”
God commands us to run from temptation, like Joseph (14).
When the famous preacher Andy Stanley recently said we should “decouple from the Old Testament,” he was dead wrong, and bordering on heresy.
The original word for “temptation” in the ESV could equally be translated “temptation” or “trial.” One naturally becomes the other. Read this section with both meanings in mind.
September 5