We Must Choose Whom to Serve

He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the
house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of
his own idol? They said, ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has
forsaken the land.’ ”
—Ezekiel 8:12

The prophet Ezekiel was swept away in a vision, transported to Jerusalem to the temple, to the gate through which God’s people came to worship. And there, in the entry to the court, stood a vulgar, indecent idol described literally as “an idol that makes God jealous.”

The idol Ezekiel saw was a phallic symbol, a carved pillar representing the worship of sex and everything associated with it. It stood opposite the shekinah, the cloud that represented the presence of God among his people.

These forces still vie for our affection. On the one hand there is sexuality; on the other hand, spirituality—the two most powerful forces in the world. The thrill of lust always leads us away from God. Lust and love for God cannot co-exist. They are antagonistic; one displaces the other.

Every day we move between these two passions; every day we’re forced to choose whom we’ll serve: God or Phallus? The choice we make is the choice we take with us into our souls.

If we bow before God, He will begin to deal with all our other choices. If we worship sex, it will enter into the secret places in our lives and corrupt us. We will go from bad to worse. As the angel said to Ezekiel, in effect, “You haven’t seen anything yet!” (8:6).

Ezekiel was taken then to the entrance of the inner court where he discovered a hole in the wall, as though someone had been trying to gain entrance. He was told to start digging—and there he discovered a secret door.

God said, “Go in and see what they’re doing in there.” So Ezekiel peeked into the room.

First he saw dirty pictures scrawled all over the walls, like the graffiti you see on cubicle walls in public restrooms. Then he saw a group of men on their knees worshiping the drawings on the walls and saying to themselves, “The Lord does not see us” (8:12).

The Lord said to Ezekiel, “Have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol?” (8:12), using a word for idol that is often translated “imaginations” in the Old Testament.

Imagination is the image-making function of our minds, the remarkable ability we have to form mental images with thoughts even though actual objects are out of sight. It’s a promising faculty, but one we can prostitute, making the pictures pornographic, playing at sex in our heads, bedding down in that secret boudoir in our brains.

The first images tend to be ill defined, but we have the capacity to sharpen the focus and portray the pictures in vivid color and live action on the walls of our minds. Then they become memories, indelibly inscribed drawings to which we return again and again for worship. With each visit the pictures gain greater definition. All this goes on in those secret places from which we have excluded God.

Sexual fantasies are sins we readily excuse. Who knows, who cares, and who gets hurt? A victimless crime—or so we think. But sin always bears bitter fruit in us and in others. We cannot long contain its effects; it always breaks out in greater defilement. As the angel said again to Ezekiel, “You will see them doing things that are even more detestable!” (8:13). The result, as Ezekiel went on to see, is a slow sort of dying.

There is deliverance from this. We must choose whether we’ll serve God or Phallus. It’s a choice we make every day.

And then we must invite God into every part of our lives, even into those darkened rooms in our minds where we have our own four walls—rooms that we have staked out for ourselves and from which we have excluded Him. He will enter in, the entrance of His words will give light, the images on the walls will begin to fade, and He will write His own thoughts in their place. Our love for Him will be restored, and we will once again be the men God has created us to be.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.