I Will Turn My Face from Them
By Mark McWhorter
In
Ezekiel 7:22,
we read, “My face will I turn also from them, and they shall
pollute my secret
place; for the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it.”
God,
through Ezekiel, is telling of his condemnation of
Judah.
He states that he is going to allow strangers (non-Israelites) to enter
the Temple
and pollute it. He
will do this because the Israelites have become so wicked. In verse
twenty, we
learn that they had made horrible idols in the Temple. They
were worshipping these idols. In
8:10, Ezekiel, in a vision, sees these terrible idols and sees the
leaders of
the people worshipping them.
In
8:16, Ezekiel sees leaders of the people standing in
the Temple
looking east. They were worshipping the sun. The sun rises in the east.
Therefore,
many sun worshippers worship while looking east.
God
always pictured Himself as being in the west. In
the Tabernacle that He had Moses build, the Holy of Holies was on the
west end
of the Tabernacle. The gates to enter the Tabernacle compound, the Holy Place
and the
Holy of Holies were on the east side. The gate to the Garden of Eden
that Adam
and Eve were sent out after their sin was on the east. The picture is
that to
look back to God they would look west.
To
worship the sun in the Temple required
one to turn his back on God.
This is exactly what we read in Ezekiel
8:16,
“...with their backs toward the temple of the
Lord...” Since the people had
turned their back on God, He would also turn his back on them. In the
verse
from Chapter Seven, God is turning His back. Not only was He turning
His back
on the people of Judah
to
allow strangers to enter the Temple,
but He was
turning His back from the strangers while they defiled the Temple.
This meant that He would allow them
to do something that usually brought death. However, since the people
of Israel
had already defiled the Temple and
turned their backs on Him, He
would allow the strangers to do this.
Live obediently to God. I
know you do not want God to
turn His back on you. However, if you do not live according to His laws
given
in the Bible, He will turn His back on you. Keep studying your Bible.
If any of
this is hard to understand, ask an adult to help you.
I Will Not Accept Them
By Mark McWhorter
Some
religious people think that it does not matter
what they do in their lives or how they act. They think that they can
do
whatever they want as long as they go to worship on Sunday. They think
that if
they spend an hour or two per week going through the motions of
worshipping God
that He is satisfied. They do not think that God cares about how they
worship
Him either.
However, God does care
about how He is worshipped. He
does care about how people act when they are not worshipping Him.
In
Amos 6:21-23,
the prophet Amos tells the people of the Northern
Kingdom
that God is disgusted with their worship. God says He will not smell or
take
delight in their assemblies. He will not accept their sacrifices and
offerings.
The Israelites had become
wicked. They did all sorts of
evil things during the week. They were dishonest. They cared more about
money
than they did ethics. They were immoral. They hated having to go to
worship,
but they were worshipping.
Yet,
God is not interested in just seeing man go
through the motions of worshipping Him. God is interested in
man’s heart. God
expects man to be interested in worshipping Him. He expects to be
worshipped
right, both in the truth of the worship and in the right emotions of
worship.
Do not be like the Northern Kingdom. Do not have
God say to you, “I Will Not Accept Them.”
Study your Bible. Learn God’s will. Then, obey Him and
worship Him. If any of
this is hard to understand, ask an adult to help you.
