FBC Morning Light – September 23, 2022

Well, a good Friday morning to you. We've come to the end of another week and looking forward to the weekend, gathering together in God's house on this coming Lord's Day. Hope you're planning to do that and looking forward to it.

Encourage you to gather with God's people with anticipation and preparation. Prepare your heart for that gathering together. Anticipate that the Lord will meet with His people and that He will speak to us even as we worship Him and offer to Him our praise, offer to Him our attention and our hearts that are submissive and readily obedient to what He has for us this Lord's Day.

I hope we'll prepare and come together with that kind of a mindset on the Lord's Day. Well, today we're in the book of Ezekiel again in chapter 23. And you know, there's a thought struck me in reading this chapter, which is really kind of a difficult chapter to read just because of some of the graphic nature of it.

But what strikes me is the fact that those who pursue lovers, illegitimate lovers, never realize the heartache that those lovers are going to cause to themselves and to others. They don't think about that.

No thought of it whatsoever. They see something attractive. They pursue it and they may be gratified to some level. But in the end, there's going to be heartache caused by the lover. And that's what comes out here in this chapter.

Spiritual Adultery in Ezekiel 23

And the Lord uses that illustration of a harlotry kind of lover to bring home a spiritual point. He talks about these two sisters, Ohola and Oholaba. He uses those names to stand for Israel and Judah, the two halves of the nation of Israel.

He says in verse 4 that Samaria is Ohola, and that name, by the way, means her own tent. And Jerusalem, he says, is Oholaba. And Oholaba means her tent or my tent is in her. Okay, whatever the significance of that is, nevertheless, there's these two women, two sisters that stand for Jerusalem and Samaria, the capital cities of Judah and Ephraim or Israel to the north.

And the Lord says to them, you have been harlots. You've played the harlot. You have gone after other lovers. And those lovers are going to end up making you absolutely miserable. And the reality is that lovers that are pursued in unfaithfulness to the Lord ultimately provide no satisfaction.

Now again, the Lord is using the graphic illustration of sexual promiscuity to describe the spiritual reality of those who are supposed to be God's people going after other gods, worshiping other gods.

And in the case of Israel and Judah, they were pursuing idols of the Gentiles. That is actually specified in the latter part of the chapter. He says in verse 30, I will do the Lord is going to send his punishment, the spiritual adultery or the harlotry or the infidelity, if you will, is going to yield misery.

The Lord says, I will do these things to you because you have gone as a harlot after the Gentiles. All right, there's the imagery. And then he specifically says what that is, because you have become defiled by their idols.

You've gone after their idols. And they did. I mean, they pursued these other lovers. And the Lord says, here's what's going to actually happen. He says in verse 22, I will stir up your lovers against you from whom you have alienated yourself.

All right, so here's what Israel and Judah did. They went after those idols of the Gentiles, false gods and so forth, who were gods of foreign nations, foreign lands, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and so forth.

They pursued after those idols. They worshiped those idols. But then the peoples of those idols, the Assyrians and Babylonians, they started to attack God's people, the people of Israel. And so the people of Israel tried to alienate themselves from their lovers, those idols that they had gone after.

But the Lord says, I'm going to stir up your lovers against you from whom you have alienated yourself, and I will bring them against you from every side. The Babylonians, all the Chaldeans, Pechad, Shoah, Koah, all the Assyrians with them, all of them desirable young men, governors and rulers, captains and men of renown, all of them riding on horses, they shall come against you.

They shall come against you. And it isn't going to be fun. It's going to be miserable. This is the consequence of going after other lovers, spiritual adultery. So the challenge to us is to be sure that we are faithful to our God, faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ.

What other idols, what other lovers are vying for our affections and our attention that are taking us away from fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ, fidelity to the one true God? What are those things? Who are those things?

They need to be rejected. We need to be faithful to our God. Let us not be guilty of spiritual adultery. It always brings pain, whether it's real or spiritual. It always brings pain and heartache. So let's be encouraged today.

Be faithful to our God. We have a good opportunity on the Lord's Day to demonstrate our faithful, loyal love to our God by gathering with His people as He wants us to and worshipping Him as He has called us to.

Let's do that. Our Father and our God, we thank you for this challenge today, and I pray that we would be a faithful people unto you. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Alright, well have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend.

May the Lord bless you in it.