7:4 - The message of this chapter is really tough to hear, because God is saying through Ezekiel that the time for repentance is over. There is no turning back to God now without punishment...there is no way to escape judgment. God will punish the people for their wickedness, with the hope that they will finally and fully learn that the Lord is the one and only God. The message is bitter, but there is a golden thread that runs through it...God is willing to do anything to bring His people back into relationship with Him.
7:19 - The gold the people of Judah have worshipped and have debased themselves to gain, will do nothing to protect them from the wrath of God. The gold is powerless...gold is not worthy of worship...gold will not feed the starving when there is no food. How many Christians today struggle with this form of idolatry? How many people who call themselves believers bow down to the altar of wealth? It is an empty pursuit that will always leave you unsatisfied.
8:5-6 - The elders of Judah come before Ezekiel begging for a sign from God that the exile will be over sooner than had been prophesied. Ezekiel goes to God, and God takes him in a vision to the temple in Jerusalem. There is the outer courts of the temple Ezekiel is instructed to look out the gates of the city. There is an idol with human form sitting outside the gates of the city...it is one of the sources of God's jealousy. Most likely, this statue is that of Asherah, a Babylonian goddess. The Jews would have put this statue up outside the city to protect it from invaders. In reality, the only thing it has done is enrage God.
8:10-11 - God takes Ezekiel into a hidden room of darkness where elders (like the ones sitting before Ezekiel in his house outside of the vision) of Israel are burning incense to all sorts of false gods and creatures of darkness. This is a form of idol worship that was most likely taken from the Egyptians. The Israelites are equal opportunity idolaters...they will worship false gods of any country in hopes of getting what they want...what they fail to see is that it is their idolatry that has brought all the suffering down on them. This passage also drives an important reminder home to each of us...God sees what we are doing...all the time. There are no hidden sins. The decisions we make every day, in every aspect of our lives matter very much to God.
8:14-15 - Ezekiel is taken to the inner courts of the temple where the women are weeping for Tammuz. This doesn't sound so bad until you understand what they are really doing. In the Canaanite religion, worshippers would weep for the death of the deity Tammuz because they hoped that they would receive good weather as the seasons changed. Canaanites believed that the false gods had a life/death cycle that mirrored the seasons. If they mourned enough for the dying god, they hoped to have pleasing weather and good crops. This is particularly disgusting to God, because in the inner courts of the temple of the Living God, the people of God are actually mourning the death of a non-entity. They waste their worship on human-created gods...when they could be connected to their Creator God. How do you waste your worship?
8:16 - The final degradation of the temple come in the altar room. In the center of the temple, where the Israelites believed that the glory of God dwelled...men are turning their backs on the altar of God and worshipping the sun. Worshipping the sun while turning their backs on the suns creator...now that is heart-breaking.
9:4-5 - God has had enough of the disgrace that has been heaped on Him by His own people and the time has come to act. Ezekiel sees a vision of the judgement of God that looks a great deal like the judgement of Egypt celebrated during Passover. In Exodus 12, the Israelites were instructed to put lamb's blood on the doorposts of their homes so that the angel of the Lord would not bring death to their house. In Ezekiel's vision, the remnant of Israel will be marked for salvation, while the unfaithful will be the recipients of God's wrath. In the midst of all this judgment and suffering, God never forgets His covenant with the Israelites and always protects the faithful remnant.
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