https://literalword.com/esv?q=Ezekiel+8
Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Friday, 11 September 2026:
Ezekiel 8:6 — And he said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary? But you will see still greater abominations.”
Ezekiel 8 begins a new vision that continues through chapter 11. Ezekiel is sitting in his house in Babylon with the elders of Judah when the hand of the Lord comes upon him. In the vision, the Spirit carries him to Jerusalem and brings him to the temple. There Ezekiel sees a shocking contrast. The glory of God is still present, but so is an idol that provokes God to jealousy. The people have brought their false worship into the very place set apart for the worship of the Lord.
God’s jealousy is important to understand. Human jealousy is often selfish and insecure, but God’s jealousy is the rightful response of a loving God whose people belong to Him. Love seeks the very best for the loved one at any expense. God is Love. God is Life. God desires nothing to come between His Love and His loved ones – this is godly jealousy.
Israel was His covenant people. Their idolatry was not simply breaking a religious rule; it was spiritual adultery. God had loved them, rescued them, provided for them, and made Himself known to them, yet they were giving their hearts to other gods. Scripture uses the same language for our relationship with Christ. The Church is His bride (Ephesians 5:25-27), and James warns believers that friendship with the world can become spiritual adultery (James 4:4-5). God wants our hearts because we were created for Him, and because everything we substitute for Him eventually fails us.
The disturbing part of this scene is that religion has not disappeared. The temple is still there. Religious leaders are still present. Worship is still taking place. But the people have mixed worship of God with worship of idols. They have religious activity without faithfulness to God. Jesus confronted the same problem when He described people who honored God with their lips while their hearts were far from Him (Matthew 15:7-9). We can attend church, read Scripture, pray, serve, give, and do many good things while quietly allowing something else to become the real center of our lives. Religious activity cannot compensate for a heart that belongs somewhere else.
That is why God says their abominations are driving Him far from His sanctuary. God has not become unfaithful; His people have. Sin separates them from the God they still claim to worship. The Gospel answers that separation in Christ. Jesus did not come merely to make us more religious. He came to reconcile us to God. Through His death, He bears our sin; through His resurrection, He gives us new life; and through His Spirit, He makes us His dwelling place (Romans 5:10; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Union with Christ therefore changes worship from something we perform for God into a life increasingly lived with God and for God. The question is not simply whether I worship, but whether Christ actually has my heart.
Ezekiel 8:12 — Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.’”
God takes Ezekiel deeper. He tells him to dig through the wall, where Ezekiel discovers a hidden door. Behind it he sees walls covered with idols and seventy elders of Israel offering incense before them. These are not people who openly rejected religion. They are leaders of God’s people, secretly worshiping other gods while maintaining their public religious lives.
The picture is painfully relevant because every person has a life that other people see and a life that very few, if any, people see. There are thoughts, desires, fantasies, resentments, ambitions, habits, and private compromises that can remain hidden behind an outwardly faithful Christian life. We may be able to hide them from our spouse, family, church, friends, or coworkers, but there is no hidden room before God. “No creature is hidden from his sight” (Hebrews 4:13). Jesus repeatedly taught that God sees what is done in secret (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18), and He pushed obedience beyond outward behavior into the heart, where murder begins as hatred and adultery begins as lust (Matthew 5:21-28).
The elders explain their behavior with two statements: God does not see us, and God has forsaken the land. Both are false. God sees everything, and they have reversed the real problem. God has not abandoned them so that they are forced into idolatry; they have abandoned God and then blamed Him for the distance their own sin has created. We can do something similar when life does not go the way we expected. We become disappointed with God, pull away from Him, seek satisfaction somewhere else, and then point to His apparent absence as justification for what we have chosen.
Beneath that thinking is often a distorted view of our relationship with God. We begin to treat obedience almost like a bargain: I worship, serve, pray, give, and try to live well, and God is therefore supposed to give me the life I want. When He does not, we feel cheated. But God is not here to serve our plans. We are here for Him. We were created through Christ and for Christ (Colossians 1:16). We worship God because He is God, not because worship is a way to get something else from Him. His blessings are gifts of grace, not payment for religious performance.
The Gospel exposes that kind of transactional relationship because salvation itself is something we could never earn. Christ loved us while we were sinners, not after we had performed well enough to deserve His favor (Romans 5:8). We come to God empty-handed and receive Christ by grace. As we live in Him, obedience increasingly becomes the response of love rather than an attempt to control outcomes. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The difference matters. One person obeys in order to get something from God; another obeys because in Christ he has come to love God Himself.
God then shows Ezekiel women mourning for Tammuz, followed by an even more offensive scene: men standing in the inner court with their backs toward the temple while worshiping the sun. The physical position tells the story. They have literally turned their backs on God to worship something He created. Paul describes the same exchange in Romans 1:25: fallen humanity worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator.
We may never bow before the sun, but the exchange is still common. God gives us money, relationships, careers, sex, families, health, influence, comfort, possessions, recreation, and countless other good things. Sin takes a gift from God and asks it to do what only God can do. A career becomes our identity. Money becomes our security. Another person becomes the source of our worth. Comfort becomes the goal around which we organize our lives. Even ministry can become a way of seeking recognition rather than serving Christ. The problem is not usually the created thing itself. The problem is the place we give it in our heart.
Jesus restores the order sin has reversed. He does not simply remove idols; He gives us Himself. Through union with Christ, our identity, security, acceptance, and life are rooted increasingly in Him. “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). As that becomes more real to us, created things can return to their proper place. We can enjoy God’s gifts without needing them to be God. We can lose something valuable without losing ourselves because our life is anchored in Someone who cannot be taken from us.
Ezekiel 8:18 – “Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.”
The final scene connects false worship with the way people actually live. God says Judah has filled the land with violence. That connection matters. What we worship eventually shapes who we become. When people turn away from the God who made human beings in His image, they eventually begin treating people as though they have less value. Jesus therefore joins love for God and love for neighbor together (Matthew 22:37-40). We cannot claim to love God while consistently treating people with hatred, injustice, cruelty, dishonesty, or selfishness (1 John 4:20).
– 2 Timothy 3:1-4 — But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
This also explains why God refuses to treat Judah’s idolatry as a small thing. Their false worship has produced a false way of life. They have rejected God, filled the land with violence, and then cry out when judgment finally reaches them. Their cries are not necessarily evidence that they want God; they want relief from what is happening to them. There is a difference between wanting God and wanting God to make the pain stop.
That difference reaches directly into the heart of repentance. We can be deeply sorry about what sin has done to us without being deeply sorry that we have sinned against God. We may want the marriage repaired, the consequences removed, the reputation restored, the anxiety relieved, or the circumstances changed while still resisting the God we offended. Paul distinguishes worldly grief from godly grief because godly grief produces repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). Real repentance does not merely say, “God, get me out of this.” It says, “God, I have sinned against You. I want You more than I want escape from the consequences.”
This is where Ezekiel 8 ultimately drives us toward Christ. The chapter exposes the frightening depth of the human heart. There are idols in the sanctuary, idols behind the wall, idols among the leaders, idols in the emotions, and idols even among those closest to the altar. Sin works its way from public worship into private thoughts and then outward into the way people treat one another. We do not need a thin layer of religious improvement over that kind of heart. We need a new heart.
That is exactly what God will promise later in Ezekiel and what Christ provides through the Gospel. Jesus bears the judgment idolaters deserve, reconciles us to the Father, gives us His Spirit, and begins changing us from the inside out (Ezekiel 36:25-27; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21). In Christ, God does not merely clean up the visible parts of our lives while leaving the hidden rooms untouched. He enters those rooms too. As we abide in Christ, the Spirit exposes what competes with Him, leads us to repentance, and increasingly forms the character of Jesus in us (John 15:4-5; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
What is in my life that I would prefer God not examine too closely? Is there a difference between the Christian life other people see and what I allow in the hidden rooms of my heart? Have I been disappointed with God because I expected obedience to produce certain blessings? Do I really want God, or do I mainly want what I hope He will give me? What good thing has begun to carry more weight in my heart than Christ? If God took away something I deeply value, would I still be able to say that Christ Himself is enough?
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 11 September 2026: Set aside ten uninterrupted minutes today and ask God to show you one “hidden room” of your life — a thought pattern, desire, habit, resentment, relationship, ambition, or private compromise that competes with Christ. Confess that specific thing to Him, and take one concrete step today to turn from it rather than continuing to hide or excuse it.
Pray: “Father, You see every part of me, including what I hide from others and sometimes try to hide from myself. Forgive me for giving Your gifts the place that belongs only to You and for wanting Your blessings more than I want You. Thank You for Jesus, who bore my sin and brought me back to You. Search my heart, expose what competes with Christ, and by Your Spirit teach me to live openly before You. Deepen my union with Christ so that I increasingly love what He loves, worship You alone, and become more like Him. Amen.”
Defenders Bible Reading Plan 