Thoughts which carry me to Jesus and to the Cross!

“Say, ‘Mountains of Israel, Hear the word of the sovereign LORD! This is what the sovereign LORD says to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I am bringing a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places.Your altars will be ruined and your incense altars will be broken. I will throw down your slain in front of your idols.I will place the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. In all your dwellings, the cities will be laid waste and the high places ruined so that your altars will be laid waste and ruined, your idols will be shattered and demolished, your incense altars will be broken down, and your works wiped out.The slain will fall among you and then you will know that I am the LORD.” (Ezekiel 6:3–7, NET)

4. But I was far too impetuous, poor wretch, so I went with the flood-tide of my nature and abandoned you. I swept across all your laws, but I did not escape your chastisements, for what mortal can do that? You were ever present to me, mercifully angry, sprinkling very bitter disappointments over all my unlawful pleasures so that I might seek a pleasure free from all disappointment.

It is one thing I suppose, for Augustine to rejoice in God in God turning Augustine’s joy and pleasures into sour, disappointing losses. It would seem to be another to rejoice in God fulfilling the destruction He has Ezekiel communicate to the people of Israel, as He rids them of their idols.

It may not be.., in fact, we need to rejoice and ask God to wreck our idols, destroying them, even if it costs us our lives. That sounds painful and it will probably be very traumatic, for these idols have burrowed deeply into hearts and souls. We don’t even recognize them as idols in some cases, they have managed to become so ingrained in our lives.

The Holy Spirit is the only one who can cut away that kind of idolatry, using the Scriptures to cut away all that is not of God. (see Colossians 2:11-12) It’s not pretty – because of the grip idolatry and other sin has on us, and our own attraction to it.

This brutal attack on our idols is God’s desire, even as it is our cry when we cry out for His mercy.

When the Spirit frees us from our idols, the freedom enables us to rejoice in the pain, to look with joy and fondness at God spoiling the joy we once found in our rebellion and sin.

So what are these idols? The things we chase after, mistakenly believing that obtaining them will lead to our peace and contentment, that will calm our anxiety. We are more sophisticated in our how we create our idols these days. But they still promise what they can’t provide, they still offer security, or fame, or health, or peace.

And God in his mercy, removes these idols crushing them, as your life seems sour, and without joy, and even dead. Jesus can and does bring life to the dead, and life where there was nothing.

We will find a whole different life as God cuts away the idols…

And we we rejoice in His work, and the difference it makes in life.

Saint Augustine. (2012). The Confessions, Part I (J. E. Rotelle, Ed.; M. Boulding, Trans.; Second Edition, Vol. 1, p. 64). New City Press.