6 And the word of the Lord came to me saying, 2 “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them 3 and say, ‘Mountains of Israel, listen to the word of the Lord [a]God! Thus says the Lord [b]God to the mountains, the hills, the ravines and the valleys: “Behold, I Myself am going to bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places. 4 So your altars will become desolate and your incense altars will be smashed; and I will make your slain fall in front of your idols. 5 I will also lay the dead bodies of the sons of Israel in front of their idols; and I will scatter your bones around your altars. 6 In all your dwellings, cities will become waste and the high places will be desolate, that your altars may become waste and [c]desolate, your idols may be broken and brought to an end, your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be blotted out. 7 The slain will fall among you, and you will know that I am the Lord.
This chapter starts out kind of funny, as God tells Ezekiel to prophesy against the mountains, and then the hills, the ravines, and even the valleys. It’s not as if the mountains can actually do anything to raise God’s wrath, right? Well, of course not! Rather, it was what the sons of Israel were doing in all those places, especially on the hills and mountains.
These were the places where the people of Israel built their shrines and incense altars, where they did things that were anything but funny. Okay, some of it had a comical angle as we see when Elijah made fun of the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. It still wasn’t really funny, but sad and tragic, as they cut themselves and danced until they passed out, or died.
The people went to great lengths to worship their idols, and one has to wonder, “What if they put all that time and energy into serving God?” But they didn’t, because they had forgotten that He was indeed Lord–that is, Master, Ruler, and King. Anything else was a farce, but they would die before giving up their illusions, as God foretells in vv. 4-7.
That hasn’t gone away as we’ve become more “civilized”, we’ve only traded our illusions for new ones. The end result of those things is no different, as God showed John in the revelations recorded in, you guessed it, the book of Revelations. Some still worship idols, but for more civilized folk, money and power remain driving forces. Along with that, the debauchery, lewdness, murder, lying, cheating, stealing–none of it has changed.
Whether we’ve gone head over heels for the farces of this world, or maybe we’ve only “dabbled”, we need to do a heart check. We ought to do it often, to look at our lives and see if they reflect the final and utmost fact. That is, do we know that He is indeed the Lord? And, even more importantly, does our life look like we know it? Ask God to examine your heart today, like David of old, who wrote this Psalm (141:1-4):
141 O Lord, I call upon You; hasten to me!
Give ear to my voice when I call to You!
2 May my prayer be [a]counted as incense before You;
The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.
3 Set a guard, O Lord, [b]over my mouth;
Keep watch over the door of my lips.
4 Do not incline my heart to any evil thing,
To practice deeds [c]of wickedness
With men who do iniquity;
And do not let me eat of their delicacies.