S114P4 – Golden images: Jerusalem’s betrayal
Eze. 16:15-17
But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. You lavished your favors on anyone who passed by and your beauty became his. You took some of your garments to make gaudy high places, where you carried on your prostitution. You went to him, and he possessed your beauty. You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them.
She had seen him playing on the courts when he was just a boy, but she saw promise there. After watching him play for some time, she offered to coach him to see how good he could get. Only a few short years later, she was sitting in the stands watching him win his first major tournament. She had built this prodigy into a champion by focusing on hard work and humility as the cornerstones. After this big win, however, she noticed a change in him. As he moved up in the rankings, he began to think more highly of himself and think less of others. He was constantly unsatisfied and decided that the only person he needed to coach him was himself, leaving behind the great architect of his career.
These words of rebuke spoken by the Lord to Jerusalem paint a grim picture of betrayal. The daughter of Zion was to be a jewel for the Lord, a center of worship. He taught her and trained her up in the way she should go, but her prosperity corrupted her. She stopped trusting in the one who built her and decided to trust in herself. It is a picture of a betrayal of her leadership, but this is also a story of adultery. Jerusalem made her own idols of gold, and she used those idols to be unfaithful to her Lord. That is the way in which we walk when we, the bride, betray the bridegroom by seeking other lovers. The ties of idolatry run deep, and they cut to the soul to try to sever our relationship with our true love.
The golden images that try to attract us with their allure want us to betray the one we love. When we chase those images instead of God, we give our hearts away to them. We take back what we already have given to the Lord, and we enter a place of false intimacy with one who desires our destruction. False intimacy, false comfort, and false pleasure set the trap for us to be unfaithful to the only truly faithful one. Our golden images might not be literal, but they are no less damaging. Father, remind us that our raising up of idols is a betrayal of our first love and an infidelity to our Lord.