chapter eight. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, of Lamentations, Ezekiel. Ezekiel chapter eight, page 884, most of the blue ESV chapter eleven. Just one of those sections. Those are four chapters that go together. Uh I hesitate a little bit to say this because our plans for Ezekiel are always being tweaked and changed a little but I think we're going to go to the end of this section next week to the end of chapter eleven. So, we'll kind of have the beginning and the end of this of this section within Ezekiel be reading and considering the 18 verses of this chapter. Let us hear the Holy Word of God. In the sixth year, the sixth month, on the tenth day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, hand of the Lord God fell upon me there. Then I looked, and behold, a form that had the appearance of a man. Below what appeared to be his waist was fire. above his waist with something like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming metal. He put out the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head, and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the gateway of the inner court that faces north, where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the valley. And he said to me, Son of man, lift up your eyes now toward the north. So I lifted my eyes toward the north, and behold, north of the altar gate, in the entrance, was the image of jealousy. He said to me, Son of man, do you see what they are doing? The great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations. And he brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, Son of man, dig in the wall. So I dug in the wall, and behold, there was an entrance. And he said to me, go in. and see the vital abominations that they are committing here. So I went in and saw, and there engraved on the wall all around was every form of freaking things and loathsome beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel. And before them stood 70 men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jahazinah, the son of Shaphat, standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand. and the smoke of the cloud of incense went out. And he said to me, Son of man, have you seen what the elders in the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, the Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land. He said also to me, you will see still greater abominations that they commit. Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the LORD. And behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these. He brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord. And behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshipping the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? Behold, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them. So far the reading, the grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our Lord is yours forever. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Have you ever had a dream where in the dream you had more hair than you actually had at that time? Well, that question may sound like it doesn't fit anywhere in our text. And part of that is because we're not reading every single chapter and working through every single chapter of Ezekiel. So perhaps if you are reading the chapters in between when we do jump from one chapter to another, maybe you know where this question is coming from. In Ezekiel chapter 5, the side act of the prophet was that he was to take a sword and to use it like a barber's razor, and to pass it over all the hair of his head and the hair of his beard. And then he was to use all the hair that he'd chopped off with a sword, and he was to use his hair as a symbol of the people. He was to burn some, to cut some, to scatter some, and to save a few. in order to symbolize what would happen to the population of Judah. Now, chapter 8 is a few chapters away, but in terms of time, it is very near. The timestamp of chapter 8, verse 1, together with the time markers from the first few chapters, tells us that this is only a matter of perhaps days or weeks later. In other words, Ezekiel just chopped off his hair. He doesn't have his hair back yet. is picked up by this man who appears to him in a vision. Who is it? It's the Lord God, who appears in the form of the appearance of a man. For those who were here back in chapter one, we talked about how this is God in his glory. This is pre-incarnate Christ. It's the same man of glory who comes in the form of the appearance of a man. What does he do? Verse 3, he put out the form of a hand, and he took me by the lock of my head, and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem. So now another question I'm going to ask is, have you ever flown in a dream? Because the picture that we have here is something like that. It's something like he's being flown, transported the 1,000 miles from the Tiber Canal to Jerusalem to have these dreamlike visions. of what is going on in Jerusalem. And so he is brought to Jerusalem in this dreamlike vision and what does Ezekiel see there? He sees that instead of worshiping the one true God as he himself, as Yahweh has commanded, the people of Judah are mixing all sorts of idols into their worship. The temple of God has become the home of many abominations. So this chapter serves as a warning to every generation. We must not practice mixed worship. That's our theme tonight. Remove the attitudes of this world from the worship of Yahweh, LORD in all caps, the covenant name of God. We're going to first look at idols of jealousy and then idols of disgust. Our second point will be a little longer, and then we're gonna look at our third point, more idols and the weight of sin. So our first point is the first abomination, and verses one to four serve as the introduction, bringing us into this vision. In those verses, verse three mentions this image of jealousy. And then the first abomination, verses 5 and 6, zooms in on that image of jealousy and tells us where it is. It is by the entrance of the north gate of the temple. And this idol is not specifically named in the text, but especially because of the Hebrew word image, which is really a technical, rare word for a carved, wooden idol. You get various clues then that this is Asherah. Asherah, the goddess of the Canaanites, who, in the popular Canaanite religion, stood parallel with Baal as the top gods of the Canaanite pantheon. And this was the gate of the temple, which faced right to the palace of the kings of David. And we know that an image of Asherah, this specific kind of carved wood idol, was put right at that gate so that Manasseh could walk by it whenever he would walk from the palace into the temple. Josiah took it down. Now the indication is that just one generation later has been put back up again. At this point, brothers and sisters, let's slow down for a little bit. Let's remember what jealousy is. How could we define jealousy? One way to define jealousy is this, desiring that which someone else has. Now, like anger, most of our jealousy is what? Unrighteous jealousy. Often we are jealous because we see something that rightfully belongs to someone else, and we think, well I want to have that. That's usually how our jealousy works. And so we think that we deserve that car that we just saw, that we deserve that toy that someone else just received for their gift, or et cetera, et cetera, whatever it is. That's usually how jealousy works. But like anger, jealousy can be righteous. There's such a thing as a righteous jealousy. What if the thing that we desire to have really does belong to us? And like anger, God is jealous, just as the anger of God is always a righteous anger, so the jealousy of God is always a righteous jealousy. And so when this old idol, as if this is actual, which probably it is, what is that? That's an old idol. That's the Canaanite idol, which the people of God were supposed to wipe off the face of the earth centuries earlier. It's the old idol. It's the idol of the Canaanites. It's the idol of Asherah. There is one text that was found by archaeologists that referred to Asherah as Yahweh's Asherah. What was the implication? It's that there were people in that place that said that Yahweh was married to Asherah. This is not so. God does not unite himself to the false goddess of the Canaanite people. God will not tolerate the old man being put into his place. Now let's return again to the concept of righteous jealousy. What is the primary picture of righteous jealousy? The primary picture of righteous jealousy is when one spouse would commit adultery against another and there is righteous jealousy on the part of the one who's offended. Now, we say that because Ezekiel uses that image repeatedly and sometimes very much in detail in various chapters of the book of Ezekiel. So, God uses that image to describe his righteous jealousy. when we would worship Asherah and say that we could worship Asherah and God when we would worship anyone or anything or any of the ideas or things of this world and put that on par with Yahweh and say this is Yahweh's Asherah. We are in effect committing spiritual adultery. against lord god who requires exclusive worship. And so the righteous jealousy of god is present. Another reason why it's not only because the book of Ezekiel comes back to this image of the uh people of God as being an unfaithful spouse and provoking his jealousy. It's also because this is, again, this is almost certainly the idol of Asherah. Now what does Asherah stand for? She's the fertility goddess. Basically, to worship Asherah is to worship sexual immorality. That's basically what it is. So, when I say the attitudes of this world, there are immediate connections between the idolatrous attitudes of today and the ancient worship of the idol goddess Asher. Because whenever anyone takes the moral law of God and says that the moral sex ethics of God are not what they want to follow, they're making an idol. And it's really just the modern day Asherah. So whenever you say that, you know, God allows something other than sex between the marriage of one man and one woman, anything else, then that's essentially the modern form of Asherah worship. It provokes the jealousy of God. And we would define sexual ethics in any other way. And it's especially heterosexual sins which were the issue. for the people of Judah. Between various Old Testament books, especially Ezekiel and Jeremiah, at one point or another, basically any heterosexual sin you can think of is listed in one place or another, describing the generation of the people of Judah that leads up to the destruction of Jerusalem. This is an example of an old Bible, which too easily applies to the attitudes of today. to the idolatrous attitudes of day, which is idolatry. When you say, I don't care how God defines what all of these things should be. I'm just going to define it however I want. That's nothing other than modern idolatry. And it makes God jealous. It provokes his righteous jealousy. He is the only one who has declared the holy law. He must be worshiped alone in the way that he calls us to worship him. God demands exclusive worship and tells us of the exclusive way of salvation. There is only one true God. How did Jesus Christ speak about the exclusive worship which is due to him, the exclusive salvation which is found in him? He said it so briefly and beautifully in John 14 verse 6. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. But there are more. So we come to the second abomination, we come to our second point, as Ezekiel is now brought to a hole in the wall, idols of disgust. Now, remember, so what have we got? We've got Ezekiel digging through a hole in the wall. As he does so, he finds this room with all these engravings of disgusting, crawling creatures who are being worshipped. These are engraved images. Now we're talking about something drawn into the side of a wall. In this vision, the room is part of the temple, but Ezekiel has to dig through part of the wall to get there. But yet, in verse 12, God says to Ezekiel that this is a picture of what each of the elders are doing in his room of pictures. In other words, somehow this vision Communicating that this is what each of these 70 elders is doing in their own home Okay, so now what's what's going on? Remember, what is this? This is a dream vision? So have you ever had a dream vision where there were rooms in? that exist in a strange way that they don't exist in reality. Have you ever had a dream vision that kind of bent the rules of physics, if we want to put it that way? Just to go into this a little bit further, everything else we can place where it is in the temple. There's lots of details about the blueprint of the temple in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. We have no evidence vision. Okay. So, the second abomination is a little bit bizarre. We just need to remember that this is a dream and ask yourself if you've ever had a dream about very strange rooms. I just speak just for one example of from my life. I had this vivid memory of uh my sister talking to me in this very strange white room. It's not a room that exists in the but it can exist in a dream. Okay, so this is what's going on. Ezekiel has this strange, almost bizarre image, but whatever it is, it's communicating to him what the 70 elders, who are the 70 elders? Since the time of Moses, there are 70 elders, that's 70 political leaders, basically. All the way back to the time of Moses, he set up 70 elders, and so this is, political leaders from the nation of Israel, okay? And this is what they're doing. They're worshiping these images of carved pictures. Why? They say the Lord has not seen us at the end of verse 12. The Lord has forsaken the land. Well, that's not true. It will be true soon. It's not true. The reality is that the people have forsaken God. But they say, the Lord has forsaken us. What are we going to turn to? Well, what are images of crawling things? Well, that relates to idolatry of Babylonians and the Canaanites, but especially of the Egyptians. The Egyptians especially like to worship their snakes and their crocodiles. So most likely what we have here is the political leaders of Israel saying, well, There's a big looming threat up there in Babylon. What if we worship the gods of the Egyptians? Maybe they'll help us. Maybe that would be our deliverance. Certainly there are texts that make it clear that was the attitude of Zedekiah and some of the political leaders around him. Well, this is second, the second abomination, you know, in the holding through a hole in the wall, a room that doesn't actually exist in the temple. Second abomination is a little bizarre. But, you know, have you ever been in a bizarre place in your dreams and seen a very real person? Again, remember, the example I gave was a really weird, bizarre white room, but the person who was there with me was one of my sisters. She's a real person. I don't know who she was. And, well, that's kind of what we have here. here for his ego. This is bizarre. What's going on in this room? But he recognized some of the people. One of the people jumps out and he says, Jahazania, the son of Shapin is here. Jahazania, the son of Shapin is here. Now, Shapin is one of those people who is mentioned a dozen times at least in the Old Testament, but it's all in different places. So we probably don't know who he is. Who is Shapin? When I start saying some of the events, you'll probably know. Are you familiar with the time when the Levites found the scroll and brought it to Josiah? And as Josiah heard it, it tore his clothes. That day of repentance and rediscovering the law was the beginning of the Reformation. Do you know who read the scroll? To Josiah, it was Shechem, his secretary of state. It was Shechem. Shaken by every uh detail we can see in the narrative of second kings and second apostles was a faithful political leader who stood with Josiah for the great reformation. Now, we're only one generation later. So, here's a son of Satan. participating in the worship of the Egyptian idols appealing to the He is going against the rest of his family. Shapin's other sons are mentioned a number of times. Many of his family members are mentioned. They were, in short, special allies and helpers of Jeremiah. Shapin's son Ahikin helped to save Jeremiah from King Jehoiakim when the king was trying to put Jeremiah to death. Another son of Shapin. Alisa was one of the two men who was trusted by Jeremiah to bring his prophetic letter to the captives in Babylon. Another son, Tamariah, was in the court of King Jehoiakim when Jeremiah's scroll was read Getariah tried to stop King Jehoiakim from burning the Prophet's scroll, but Jehoiakim would not listen. It continues, much faithfulness from one generation to the next. The grandson of Shabin, Getariah, When Jeremiah was old, and when you're old, you gotta go live with somebody who can take care of you. You can't take care of yourself anymore. Remember, Jeremiah is still living at this time. He's getting old. And in whose house he lived in? He was very old. He lived in the house of the grandson of Shaphir. He lived in the house of Gedaliah. And Gedaliah, This is important because it helps us. This is also what makes our second point a little bit longer. But I want us to hear this so that we can have some idea of the political attitudes of the day. What happened to Gedoliah? He was a friend of Jeremiah. When Jeremiah was old, he lived in Gedoliah's house. Gedoliah said to the others who were left in the land, we can still serve the Lord, even though the Babylonians are now our governing authority. The Babylonians appreciated that. Sometimes the world appreciates things for the wrong reasons. They made Jebeliah the governor of the remaining exiles. What did the people of Judah do? They didn't like his attitude. They didn't like the message that he followed in Jeremiah's steps forward. They didn't like the message that we can continue to serve the Lord, even though we're now in a very difficult situation. And they didn't like the fact that the Babylonians gave him some authority over their broken, exiled community, and they put him to death. They took the sword and they put Goliath to death. Now, we go back to Jehoshamia, the uncle of Jehoiah, the brother of all these faithful men who helps Jeremiah, the son of Meshach, who helps Josiah and his reform. And do you see that the attitudes back then and the struggles back then are not so different from the attitudes and struggles we deal with today? What happens now when we put it in these terms? Jeremiah's message is not popular. It's a message of, we're going to be defeated, but we can serve the Lord anyway. Most of the family of Shaphan stood by Jeremiah. One of the sons of Shaphan wanted to go with the crowd. He wanted to follow in the popular attitudes of the day. So, he's one of the 70 elders. He's one of the political leaders appealing to the gods of Egypt for deliverance because he thinks that God has abandoned them when in reality, it's the people who have abandoned God. Oh, there's more that we can say. We're just going to note one more thing before we move on to our third point. The elders are political leaders. There's no indication that any of these men are Levites. What are they doing? They're performing. Not only are they worshiping idols, but they're performing the worship ritual. They're burning the incense. The law of Leviticus laid down very specifically how you were to burn incense, who you were to burn incense to, only Yahweh. And who wants to perform those rituals? Only the Levites. In short, this is all kinds of messed up. And again, just before we move on, this idea that, you know, the The wrong person is taking spiritual authority to themselves, and like, is that no big deal? This is a big deal. That is part of the abomination, is the fact that they're burning incense, that they're doing rituals of worship that they're not supposed to do. So, again, if we make a direct application to today, you know, what do you do when, you know, when I was in college and a friend of mine who lived in the dorm comes up to me and he says, you know, our RA leaders just led the Lord's supper for my dorm last night. I don't think that's right. That's not right, is it? My baseball teammates knew that I wanted to go to seminary, so I got all of those questions from anybody who was struggling with something. They get just like, I know that's not right. You shouldn't just do that, whoever wants to, wherever they want to, right? But it's kind of like, I'm not sure. So we had a good discussion about that. As part of the abomination, you can't just do whatever you want, however you want. by whomever you want to do it. Well, now, let's come to a third point. Oh, I'm sorry. I said the second point was longer. Verse ten, the word for idols in verse ten is not the normal Hebrew word for idols. It's a word that appears about 50 times in the Old Testament. Almost all of those are in the book of Ezekiel. It's a word which associates idols with something that can flush down the toilet. It's a word that tells us idolatry equals scatology. is telling us that idols are disgusting. They don't always look disgusting. They might sometimes be worshipped in secret, but idolatry is disgusting before God. Now we come to our third point. Moral idols and the way they are sinned. The third abomination is more quickly explained in verses 14 and 15. And here, the idol is explicitly named. It's Tammuz. Who's Tammuz? Well, that's one of the idols of Babylon. So what have we got? We've got the idols of Canaan. We've got the idols of the Egyptians. Now we have an idol of Babylon. Tammuz came back to life, supposedly, each spring as women would perform the Tammuz ritual, which may have included acts of sexual immorality. These women are in the temple of the living God worshipping this idol of death. The fourth abomination quickly follows that in verses 16 and 17. Now, we're no longer a strange vision in a weird, perhaps non-existent room. The third and the fourth visions, these are direct pictures of what is happening in broad daylight. Not only is it happening in broad daylight, the fourth abomination, verses 16 and 17, is the worship of daylight. This happens between the porch and the altar. Where is that? That's standing close to the Holy of Holies. How do you enter the Holy of Holies? from the east facing the west. So, so in other words, what's the picture here? The priests. So, now, we have priests about twenty-five of them have turned their back on the holy of holies to worship the sun as it rises in the east. Forget about secret rooms. We're doing this in broad daylight. every sin is a serious matter but there are some sins which are especially gross. to worship the creative son of your back turns to the creator of god and his symbolic presence in the holy of holies. This is the fourth and final abomination listed in chapter eight. You know, at this point, you can People of God, how does the Lord speak about all of these abominations? Verse 17, then he said to me, have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they do? Now remember as we read that, these sins are not so different from the sins of our day. The idols take a different form. They often take the form of attitudes and false imaginations about what god does or does not allow. We don't too often actually carve the wooden image anymore but the idols are really the same kind of thing. The same kind of follow the crowd and attitudes and all of that. The same kind that we don't have to worship. God exclusively, exclusively in the way that he's called us to worship him, finding our salvation exclusively in Jesus Christ, all of these things. Now, I hope that this is a heavy sermon. Because we're talking about heavy things. I hope this is not the easiest sermon to listen to. Because we need to know that sin is heavy. Remember again that the connections of the sins of old are not so different from the sins of today, not at all. And here again, the light of God, He's not just talking about the worship of the sun in broad daylight. He's talking about all the abominations of the people. Is it too light? And then, the rest of that verse connects their false worship with their violence, with their false acts, and so the word is connecting those things. Let us hear that language. Let us hear that call. Let us remember that sin is heavy. Repentance of sin is no light matter. It is an essential matter in the life of the church and in the life of individual believers. We must You must be willing to come to the word of God and to see sin exposed for the heavy matter that it is, for the righteous jealousy of God, which is provoked, and for the disgusting view which God takes of sin that he rightly should. And you must say, Lord God, forgive me, a sinner, my sins, are heavy and I need your salvation. And Lord, if I think you have departed me, if I think you have departed from me, show me my weakness and my failure to understand your faithfulness. And remind me that you do not delight in the death of the wicked. Remind me that you do not bring judgment until it is overdue, and remind me that you delighted mercy, and remind me that though my sins are heavy, they are paid for by Jesus Christ, who took that heavy burden upon Himself at the cross, and that I am saved there. So now I see the heaviness of sin for all that it is. I also see that the burden of sin is lifted. And now Lord, help me to worship you as you have called me to worship you. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, You are slow to grab. You are completely just. You are righteously jealous. You are rightly disgusted. Help us to be disgusted by sin. Help us first to be disgusted by our own sin. help us to mourn at the abominations of sin all around us. Surely, we are saved only by Jesus Christ. In his name, we pray. Amen.