Ezekiel 6:9: “Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations where they are carried captive, because I was crushed by their adulterous heart which has departed from Me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols; they will loathe themselves for the evils which they committed in all their abominations.”

December 1st, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

This is one of the most insightful Scriptures into the heart of God in the entire Old Testament. God clearly says that He was crushed or literally broken by His people’s rejection of His love. No one who has ever loved someone and had that love rejected, needs any further explanation of this verse. Many of us have gone to great lengths to patch up broken relationships, but nothing matches God’s pursuit of His faithless people. We might say this verse foretells or foreshadows the incarnation of God the Son coming to earth to die in the great exchange of His life for ours.

Our modern idolatry is very much like what the ancient Israelites practiced in that both are essentially materialistic. Years ago, Pastor Donald Grey Barnhouse was counseling a young woman in front of the church after an evening service. She said she wanted to follow Christ but she also wanted to pursue a stage career in New York and become famous. “After I have made it in the theater, I’ll follow Christ completely,” she said. The pastor took a key out of his pocket and scratched a mark on a mailbox near them. “That is what God will let you do,” he said. “He will let you scratch the surface of success, get close enough to the top to know what it is, but never let you have it, because He will never let one of His children have anything rather than Himself.” Years later he met the girl again, and she confessed that her life had gone exactly as had predicted. She had dabbled in the stage, and, once, her picture had been in a national magazine, but she had never quite made it. “I can’t tell you how many times in my discouragement, I have closed my eyes and seen you scratching on that mailbox with your key. God let me scratch the edges, but He gave me nothing in place of Himself.”

“LORD, forgive us for our past failures to put You first in our life. We desire to put You first today.”