“Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire? And in all your abominations and acts of harlotry you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood.”
“Then it was so, after all your wickedness —‘Woe, woe to you!’ says the Lord God — “that you also built for yourself a shrine, and made a high place for yourself in every street. You built your high places at the head of every road, and made your beauty to be abhorred. You offered yourself to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your acts of harlotry. You also committed harlotry with the Egyptians, your very fleshly neighbors, and increased your acts of harlotry to provoke Me to anger.” — Ezekiel 16:20-26.
Men, Israel has played the harlot with deities of neighboring lands. Worse, Israel has sacrificed her sons and daughters, who should have been raised in the ways of the Lord God, by having them “pass through the fire.” In other words, Israel has taken their children and killed them by burning them in ritual worship to false deities. Israel has built shrines on every street and even played the harlot with Egypt. Not so many generations before, God had delivered Israel from the Egyptians, and made them His people, now they’ve turned back voluntarily to pursue Egypt’s gods.
We would like to think that horrors and indiscretions as these could never happen in our time. We may not consider it worship, but millions of aborted babies “pass through the fire” of incinerators without a thought or care. We may not call it worship, but very real false deities are still getting their sacrifices. Convenience seems to be the image the Lord is conveying as He references shrines on every street. We might say we’re doing well since we have a church on every street. Perhaps so, but we carry access to the shrines of our hearts in our pockets. If we begin to define worship and harlotry as the Lord does, we may find ourselves convicted by what we place emphasis upon, or apply time and energy to.
Yes, we’ve made harlotry more convenient than ever. We can search, copy and paste, send links, and share/ like our harlotry with multitudes a few clicks. We can even upload pictures, reviews and mark the locations of our harlotry with GPS coordinates. Whatever offenses we have committed, the Lord God welcomes us back through repentance.
Many may consider God harsh to judge with such a heavy hand. We may do well to consider how much horror from humanities hand it takes to compel God’s hand to move in judgment.
Move forward men, repenting on behalf of our nation. What have we made convenient in our lives? Would God consider you and me a harlot by the actions He sees us engaged in?
Vance Durrance
