TWO STEPS TO TROUBLE:
1. AN IDOL IS A SUBSTITUTE FOR GOD THAT WE PUT ON OUR HEART'S THRONE.
- Ezekiel 14:3, 4, 7.
- The triple repeat is interesting and significant.
- An idol is the start of the problem. It’s a substitute God.
- Let’s look at three examples. We’ll start with this step and then come back to them in the second step in order to see how this works.
a. Job.
- You put your career on your heart’s throne. Nothing means more to you than climbing the ladder.
b. Children.
- You put your kids first. They are your highest priority.
- It might be worth pausing here to address those who think I’m speaking out of turn. “Our kids should be our highest priority!” Well, no, they shouldn’t. I love my kids and they mean so much to me but God is supposed to be the greatest love of our lives. As we’re going to find out as we further explore this issue, anytime you put something else on the throne of your heart, bad things are going to happen, even if it’s something as lovely sounding as our kids.
c. A relationship.
- You meet a romantic partner who is amazing. Your relationship with them becomes the greatest part of your life.
- You put that relationship on the throne of your heart. More than anything else you want that relationship to work.
- Again, like with the children point a moment ago, this sounds somewhat benign to many of you, but once again there are negative consequences to actually living this out.
- So here we have these idols. There are, of course, countless others that can take that seat on the throne of our heart. Any of them who aren’t God are idols.
2. DOING THAT INEVITABLY CREATES STUMBLING BLOCKS TO ANY ATTEMPTS TO FOLLOW THE REAL GOD.
- Ezekiel 14:3, 4, 7.
- Now we come to the second part of equation that Ezekiel gives us those three times: “wicked stumbling blocks.” This is an interesting phrase and worth us thinking for a moment about what he’s getting at. This isn’t just a random word choice – he’s pointing us toward what happens when we put idols on the throne of our heart.
- The picture is something like this:
a. We make a choice inside us (consciously or unconsciously) to put something on the throne of our heart. That becomes an idol. Note that all three verses speak of this happening in our heart.
b. Once that has happened, there is a real world consequence to that action.
- That consequence looks like this. I make some effort (big or minor) to move in the direction of God (the real one, not the idol) but it doesn’t go well. I keep stumbling and tripping and falling. Why? Because it turns out there are stumbling blocks littering my path.
- What are they? They are hurdles that my idol has put in the way of pursuing the real God. I have given my heart to an idol and that commitment I’ve made it going to impede the progress I might otherwise of made toward God.
- These are “wicked.” They are sinful things that block my (admittedly limited) moves toward the real God.
- Note also that the passage says they are “before their faces.” This speaks to real-life situations. That’s exactly the way it happens.
- This will become clearer when we look at a few examples. Let’s go back to three we just shared under point 1: job, children, relationship. What are practical examples of step two happening because of step one?
a. Job.
- The person has made their job the idol of their life. They make an initial step toward the real God in wanting to go to church but that effort quickly hits a “wicked stumbling block” of the hours they need to put in on Sunday to stay ahead of everyone else.
- There is at some level a desire to go to church but as they walk in that direction they quickly find themselves on the floor. The stumbling block that their idol placed there gets in the way.
- A second example of this might be that this person wants to be a “good person.” He wants to do what’s right. But then he sees the quarterly returns are going to come in significantly lower than he needs them to. If he bends the rules just a bit and massages the numbers he won’t have the danger that his boss might be made at him and demote him. His aspirations couldn’t take a demotion. He has to get that promotion he wants to badly. So when he tries to walk in the direction of doing the moral thing, his idol has put a “wicked stumbling block” in the way and he finds himself on the floor.
- Note before we move to our second example that this is exactly what I spoke of: the idol in your heart creates real-life hurdles.
b. Children.
- The second example is someone who has made their children their idols. Of course, they would never say, “I have made my child my idol.” No, instead, it would sound like “My children are my highest priority.”
- One example of what might happen is a family that is gone to travel ball games all the time. This goes on for years. Why are they doing that? Because their child and their sports’ dreams are their highest priority.
- Now, they are in church when they are in town but they are gone a lot. What happens? First, the child learns that church is something you do when your higher priorities have been fulfilled. Second, the child misses out on a ton of Bible learning and building relationships within the church.
- A second example might be an indulgent parent. They grew up poor and want their children to have the material blessings that they missed out on. But those blessings are expensive to buy. The parents decide they just can’t afford to tithe anymore because “raising kids is just so expensive these days.” In reality, raising kids isn’t cheap but it’s actually indulging kids that is so exorbitantly expensive. So they are not faithful to God in giving because their kids are a higher financial priority than their faith is.
c. Relationship.
- The third example we used was a relationship that becomes the idol of your life. Again, a couple examples.
- First, an obvious one: a woman feels that she needs to have sex with her boyfriend in order to keep him. After all, it seems like everyone is doing that. Surely he will dump her if she claims that it’s her religious conviction that sex should be reserved for marriage. So maintaining the relationship becomes more important than honoring God because the relationship is the idol of her life.
- A second example. A Christian guy is dating someone who isn’t big on religion. He decides that he is not going to abandon his faith but maybe he doesn’t need to be hard-core about the more challenging and controversial aspects of walking with Jesus. Let’s just keep it happy and upbeat. That way he can still say he has faith but, more importantly, he can maintain his relationship.
- The problem with that, of course, is that the difficult parts of the faith are really important. We need to be challenged to grow. If we only keep the parts of faith that we already agree with and find easy to fulfill, well, that’s not much of a “life-changing faith,” is it? But he will settle for that because the truth is that the idol of his life is that relationship and he wants to preserve it even if it requires some changes to his faith.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT GOD WILL BRING JUDGMENT? Two of the biggest ways are natural consequences and blowing things up.
- Ezekiel 14:4b, 8.
- This passage doesn’t get into specifics on what God will do. Verse 8 indicates that there is a point where a hammer falls.
- Although there are certainly other possibilities, let me share a couple possibilities, one more preliminary and one more dire.
- More preliminary: allowing natural consequences to happen.
- Sometimes the simplest thing that God can do is allow us to have the full brunt of our actions. Our sins come home to roost and we have to deal with the implications of what we’ve done.
- This reminds me of early in Romans where Paul talks about God “giving them over” to the consequences of their sin.
- More dire: blowing things up.
- Verse 8 points us more in this direction.
- God brings the hammer. Full punishment is brought. What verse 8 mentions is horrible: being cut off from your people.
- Let’s talk about today for a moment.
- Both are still on the table.
- There are times when God may allow the consequences of our sin to hit us; there are times when He might bring the hammer down.
- I’m not sure we believe this much. We presume on God’s grace and mercy and figure that His forgiveness will protect us. But forgiveness is not license.
WHAT DOES GOD WANT INSTEAD OF JUDGMENT? Repentance.
- Ezekiel 14:6.
- Verse 6 makes it abundantly clear what God is after: repentance.
- This, of course, is in line with the messages of Jesus and John the Baptist in the gospels.
- It’s important to remember that repentance means a change of direction, not merely feeling bad. God wants them to move away from the unfaithful behavior that has characterized them and led to these “wicked stumbling blocks.”
WHAT IS THE GOAL? God wants their hearts.
- Ezekiel 14:5.
- I know this is not a new point to anyone in this room, but it is something that is evergreen in its stunning reality. God most wants that we would love Him. He wants our hearts.
- He doesn’t just want our respect. He doesn’t just want begrudging obedience. He doesn’t just want us to mouth the right words and move on.
- He wants us to love Him.
- Our thoughts immediately go to Jesus’ interactions where He is asked the greatest commandments. “Love God and love people” is the short version of His response. Loving God is the greatest commandment.
- It’s an odd juxtaposition: the command to love. Yet it’s where we are.
- It tells us a lot about the nature of God. It tells us a lot about His heart.
- When we look at a passage like Ezekiel 14 (and the numerous other parallel passages), we see God deeply bothered by the wandering hearts of His people. They made a covenant with Him. They promised to be faithful. He was faithful to that promise but their hearts went wandering.
- This is one reason why the consequences we discussed earlier are needed: He wants to guide us back to Him. Not because He is lacking in love or lonely but because He wants us to love that which is most worthwhile and meaningful. And that’s Himself.
