Blatantly Obvious

“What a sick heart you have, says the Sovereign LORD, to do such things as these, acting like a shameless prostitute. You build your pagan shrines on every street corner and your altars to idols in every square. In fact, you have been worse than a prostitute, so eager for sin that you have not even demanded payment. Yes, you are an adulterous wife who takes in strangers instead of her own husband. Prostitutes charge for their services—but not you! You give gifts to your lovers, bribing them to come and have sex with you. So you are the opposite of other prostitutes. You pay your lovers instead of their paying you! [Ezekiel 16.30-34]

It is one thing for a prostitute to accept payment for adulterous services rendered, and another thing altogether for the prostitute to make payment for those adulterous services.

Instead of bestowing money, protection, health and knowledge freely (as promised in God's covenant with His people), debt, insurance, medicine and technology all require payment for their services.

I don't know how much more blatantly obvious our idolatry today could be. And yet... there is more that indicts us:

“Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough? [Ezekiel 16.20]

Abortion accounted for the deaths of 73 million unborn children in 2024 alone.

You won't find debt, insurance, medicine and technology promoting righteousness. Their marketing schemes all reach out to something else in us - something earthly, something sensual, something very self-focused. They go right to the center of man's desire - his heart - and they set themselves up there. Not ironically, Ezekiel addressed this in chapter 14:

Then some of the leaders of Israel visited me, and while they were sitting with me, this message came to me from the LORD: “Son of man, these leaders have set up idols in their hearts. They have embraced things that will make them fall into sin. Why should I listen to their requests? Tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: The people of Israel have set up idols in their hearts and fallen into sin, and then they go to a prophet asking for a message. So I, the LORD, will give them the kind of answer their great idolatry deserves. I will do this to capture the minds and hearts of all my people who have turned from me to worship their detestable idols.’ [Ezekiel 14.1-5] 

Father, our sin of idolatry is scripturally undeniable. May there be a return to You that begins with me... So be it.