ODJ: temple or idol?

May 24, 2014 

READ: Ezekiel 16:1-34 

So you are the opposite of other prostitutes. You pay your lovers instead of their paying you! (v.34).

After recent trips to two different amusement parks, I realised that our broken sense of sexuality is most visible in public places, not our bedrooms. People are in love with their own nakedness. I live in a region known for its hot summers, but what people choose to wear is more about the dictates of cultural norms than keeping cool.

From bare skin to a scarcely veiled sensuality, modern fashion leaves little to the imagination. As a mother of a teenage daughter and pre-teen son, I’m frustrated at the world’s attempt to rush our children down the slippery slope of compromise. So I believe that modesty is worth the fight.

Captivated by the culture around them, the Israelites sold themselves into captivity. Maybe they found the call to follow God outdated, or the call to holiness old-fashioned. Whatever the reason, it was their love for a standard other than God’s that brought them to the brink of destruction.

In the church, we rail against human trafficking and pornography, as we well should, but we sometimes ignore our love affair with the culture and our own bodies. Forgetting our broken past, we can sell ourselves short (Ezekiel 16:5; Ephesians 2:1-3). Paying whatever price to fit in, we can strive to buy into the world’s standard of acceptance much like a prostitute who pays for her own slavery (Ezekiel 16:33-34). We embrace compromise all because someone, somewhere in the world of advertising presented the idea that it would make us look good.

Are we a temple or an idol? (Romans 1:25; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). The choice is ours. We can’t serve the world’s standards and hold fast to holiness (2 Corinthians 6:16-17). —Regina Franklin
Jeremiah 1:1-9 ‹365-day plan