Ezekiel 8:12 He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’”    

    One of my favorite memes is the little kid who begins, “Have you ever had a dream that you…?”He then begins a long statement of nothingness really that goes on and on until he brightens up at the end as he comes to “…that you could do anything!?” I love it be-cause I can relate. I try to tell what I dreamed but it comes out like that. Ezekiel had had a vision. A dream, if you will. But he does remember and can articulate it because God wanted him to!

    He and a large population of exiled Jews were in Babylon. But he saw in his vision the ones that were left at Jerusalem. His vision focused specifically on the temple and what was going on there, and it was not good. The temple was being filled with idolatry! Any hope that Ezekiel might have had that the people had learned their lesson was dashed in this vision. 

    How could they do that? How could they commit such evil? We are told. 

        They say, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.’”    

    They had a wrong view of God. God had revealed Himself to them in many ways in their past, but at this point in history they had most of the Old Testament already written. God had clearly shown them and told them Who He was and how to worship Him. Maybe they just didn’t know? They don’t get off that easily. These were the elders of Israel. They knew. But they had created their own image of God. They had decided that they had a better under-standing of Who God was than what it said in those dusty old scrolls. Those were ancient! They had created a god in their image. And He was somewhere else, unable to see what they did. 

    If only this were a ‘long-ago’ problem! One that people had learned from. But sadly, that is not the case. People are constantly remaking God in their image. We have access to the Bible today that could not have been dreamed of even fifty years ago. It has been trans-lated into almost every language of the world and is available online. For anyone with internet access, audio versions are even available. We have no excuse for not being aware of what the Bible teaches us about God. 

    But we too often would rather create our own version. “Well, I think God would…” “I can’t believe that God would…” “A loving God would never…” If we aren’t committed to the Bible, we will, like those in Ezekiel’s vision, be guilty of creating a god in our image. But God Himself will not be pleased and will not play along with us! A wrong view of God will always lead us into sin. And any version of God we might come up with will be less than the original. Who He is can be found in the Bible and cannot be improved upon!

 

Blessings  

Pastor Russ