Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. 2 And the word of the Lord came to me: 3 “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? 4 Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, 5 that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.
6 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations. 7 For any one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who separates himself from me, taking his idols into his heart and putting the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to a prophet to consult me through him, I the Lord will answer him myself. 8 And I will set my face against that man; I will make him a sign and a byword and cut him off from the midst of my people, and you shall know that I am the Lord. 9 And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. 10 And they shall bear their punishment—the punishment of the prophet and the punishment of the inquirer shall be alike— 11 that the house of Israel may no more go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord God.”
Jerusalem Will Not Be Spared
12 And the word of the Lord came to me: 13 “Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, 14 even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord God.
15 “If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they ravage it, and it be made desolate, so that no one may pass through because of the beasts, 16 even if these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the land would be desolate.
17 “Or if I bring a sword upon that land and say, Let a sword pass through the land, and I cut off from it man and beast, 18 though these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they alone would be delivered.
19 “Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood, to cut off from it man and beast, 20 even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness.
21 “For thus says the Lord God: How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast! 22 But behold, some survivors will be left in it, sons and daughters who will be brought out; behold, when they come out to you, and you see their ways and their deeds, you will be consoled for the disaster that I have brought upon Jerusalem, for all that I have brought upon it. 23 They will console you, when you see their ways and their deeds, and you shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it, declares the Lord God.” Ezekiel 14 ESV
Ezekiel 14: 1-11 Idolatrous Elders Condemned
…13Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men. 14Therefore I will again confound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will vanish, and the intelligence of the intelligent will be hidden.” 15Woe to those who dig deep to hide their plans from the LORD. In darkness they do their works and say, “Who sees us, and who will know?”… Isaiah 29: 13-15
Certain of the elders of Israel came to me - Ezekiel is a great prophet, in line with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel, and these elders of the captivity are going to him in order to hear from the Lord.
Have taken their idols into their hearts - We don't see things the way God sees; He looks through the white washed exteriors and into the hearts. These men were coming to hear from the prophet, but they were already defying God's word. They have come to be hearers of the word but not doers, and what profit is there in that? If you come to ask God about gravity and then jump off the skyscraper anyway, what did you learn, or what good was it to you? Men will always prove God right either way, but it is eternally tragic to hear yet not take to heart. Something else is in their hearts though, and they have followed after the pattern of this world, their superstitions, their feelings, the common wave and tide. The defiance of God's word is already in place, and all these prophets have been reformers, calling them back to what they have read but not believed.
…16“As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you! 17Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and good things, and we saw no disaster. 18But from the time we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been perishing by sword and famine.”… Jeremiah 44: 16-18
Should I indeed let Myself be consulted by them - More than fair question. I have grown weary of such circular conversations. I remember a friend, actually more than one friend over the years, and he was heading for a divorce, but wanted to talk with me. "I don't want to be divorced," he said. Oh, well have you considered not cheating on your wife anymore? "It's more complicated than that," he answered. Really, I said, and what does she say? What does she want from you? "She wants me to go to counseling and quit seeing my girlfriend." So then that's what I would do - quit cheating on your wife and go to marital counseling with her. "Yeah, I should of known you wouldn't understand, I told you it is more complicated than that." Well then explain. Which of course he couldn't really explain without the caveat of her dropping the demands of the marital contract, which he was in breech of, not her. When he finally sort of, kinda, put it into words, "I want to be able to come home and watch movies with her, for her to be there for me, cook my meals, wash my clothes, love me, but I want her to understand that I am also in love with this other girl and need her approval as well." Got it, so you want to change the definition of marriage, the vows that you made before God and man in reference to being faithful and forsaking all others. "Yep, like I said, you wouldn't get it." These elders also play the whore, but still want to hear from God, especially now that things are not going so well.
8Yet I will leave a remnant, for some of you will escape the sword when you are scattered among the nations and throughout the lands. 9Then in the nations to which they have been carried captive, your survivors will remember Me— how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts that turned away from Me, and by their eyes that lusted after idols. So they will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their abominations. 10And they will know that I am the LORD; I did not declare in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them.… Ezekiel 6: 8-10
Repent and turn away from your idols - Confess it as sin, quit pretending that it's hidden or worse, teaching others that it is okay.
An idol, however, can be any false idea about God or substitute for Him that turns us away from knowing His true character. John stated that Jesus Christ is the true God (v.20). To know Jesus is to know the Father. To be intimately related to His Son is to be forever related to the eternal God.
It is possible for me to worship an idol I call "Jesus" that leads me away from Him. Perhaps my Jesus resembles a teddy bear that lulls me to sleep, or an indulgent father, or a Santa Claus who doesn't take my sin seriously. Such misconceptions are not the Jesus of the Bible but an idol. That's the reason John warned us to keep ourselves from idols. - Precept Austin
Turn away your faces from all your abominations - They were elders, and those that should be upholding the moral law before the people, but they were hypocrites. They loved their shiny gold, and would sacrifice the widow and the orphan to get it.
…13I know where you live, where the throne of Satan sits. Yet you have held fast to My name and have not denied your faith in Me, even in the day when My faithful witness Antipas was killed among you, where Satan dwells. 14But I have a few things against you, because some of you hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block before the Israelites so they would eat food sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality. 15In the same way, some of you also hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans.… Revelation 2: 13-15
…8He who increases his wealth by interest and usury lays it up for one who is kind to the poor. 9Whoever turns his ear away from hearing the law, even his prayer is detestable. 10He who leads the upright along the path of evil will fall into his own pit, but the blameless will inherit what is good.… Proverbs 28: 8-10
I will set my face against that man - He will become an object lesson, showing that God means what He says, and that He will not be mocked.
"Make him a sign and a proverb" A sign is a non-verbal symbol which conveys a specific message or meaning. In this case the effect of God setting His face against these evil men would result in a significant event (severing these men from Israel) that betokens God presence and His intention.
A proverb is a pithy maxim or a saying which communicates wisdom usually in a terse, vivid and easy to remember manner. - Precept Austin
If the prophet is deceived and speaks a word - God has the power to keep a man from doing that, yet He can judge by having that man do what is in his heart, allowing that desire already within to be grasped by that temptation from without. Many false teachers start out in good churches, respected in their schools of learning, yet the love of money and other idols pulls them away.
Prevailed (pathah) means to be open, spacious or wide and is figuratively used to describe one who is open to enticement, not having developed discriminating judgment as to what is right or wrong. This word describes one who is easily deceived and is so translated by several of the other versions. God uses this word to warn Israel to
Beware, lest your hearts be deceived and you turn away and serve other gods and worship them." (Dt 11:16)
The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge has this explanatory note
That is, I have suffered him to be deceived; I have given him up to "strong delusions to believe a lie," as a just judgment upon him for going after idols, and setting up false pretensions to inspiration. God, according to the genius of the Hebrew language, is often said to do a thing, which He only suffers, or permits.
I'm not a huge fan of Daily Bread all the time, but this is a good application.
A Slow Fourth - When golf professional Paul Azinger learned in 1993 that he had cancer, he said, "I was in shock. I had thought that Dr. Jobe would tell me they had discovered some form of weird infection in my shoulder or possibly even a stress fracture. The one word I never expected to hear him say was cancer."
The good news was that it was curable. Now, after some time away from the professional golf tour for chemotherapy and radiation treatments, the man who's called "Zinger" is back, cancer-free.
When people ask Azinger if golf is still important to him, he says, "Yes and no. Yes, of course golf is important to me. I love the game; it is how I make a living. But no, golf is no longer at the top of my priority list. In fact, it runs a slow fourth. My priorities now are God, my family, my friends, and golf. Golf is no longer my god. Golf is hitting a little white ball. God is my God, and God is a whole lot bigger than golf."
A serious disease has a way of putting things in perspective. First place belongs to the Lord; we are to worship nothing in our lives above Him (Dt. 6:13-19).
Make God number one in your life, and your dearest pastime on earth will become only a "slow fourth." — David C. Egner
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