Ezekiel 20:31 “For when you offer your gifts and make your sons pass through the fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols, even to this day. So shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live,” says the Lord God, “I will not be inquired of by you.”

September 13th, 2021 by Pastor Ed in devotional

The elders said they wanted to inquire of the Lord, but God said, “I will not be inquired of by you.” At first reading, this sounds like a harsh statement, but sadly, the elders’ request was not genuine and God was calling them on their hypocrisy. Through Ezekiel, God laid out the history of Israel’s continual rebellion against Him, putting their request and His rejection of it, in its proper perspective. God had rescued them from Egypt, led them through the wilderness, and brought them into the Promised Land because of His goodness, not because they deserved it. But they rebelled against Him at every turn. And when they finally entered the Promised Land, they assimilated the evil religious practices of the inhabitants, breaking the covenant they had made with God.

Perhaps the greatest abomination they practiced is listed here: making their “sons pass through the fire.” Moloch was a false god worshiped by the Ammonites, which Israel also began to worship during one of its periods of apostasy (1 Kings 11:7). The Israelites took up the horrific practice of human sacrifice, sacrificing their own infant sons in fire. When a late Bronze Age temple near the Amman Marka International Airport in Jordan was excavated, they found large quantities of animal and human bones, evidence that the temple was associated with the Molech fire cult (“Excavation of a Late Bronze Age Temple at Amman,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 1966: p. 162).

It is all too easy for us to point our fingers at those terrible sinners back in the Old Testament and fail to examine our own idolatry by the stark light of God’s word. It has been said that today the sin of idolatry is found in our me-first attitude. An attitude that has even blinded believers into choosing their own personal happiness over what is right and good for someone else. Just as a drowning man is unable to save himself, the people then and the people today are drowning in a flood of sin. We need a Savior. There is only One who can rescue us from our sin and eternal death, Jesus the Messiah. According to the great truth found in 1 John 1:8–9, complete forgiveness awaits all who will confess and repent:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

“LORD, we confess and turn from our sins and ask for Your forgiveness this day, in Jesus’ name.”