idolatry adultery

For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me.
Ezekiel 23:37

God tells a vivid story about the unfaithfulness of His people. He uses the extended metaphor of adultery to make the point that He is a jilted husband. In the metaphor two sisters (representing the capitals of Samaria and Jerusalem) are loved and cared for by God. Both sisters reject the faithful marital love of their husband and become lust-filled prostitutes.

Their unfaithfulness breaks the heart of their loving husband. Using very strong and graphic language, God describes the degree to which their lust consumed their desires and controlled their actions. They wanted their foreign lovers and were filled not with love but with lust. And it would be their foreign lovers who would ultimately humiliate and destroy the whoring sisters one by one.

God equates their idolatry with adultery. Both are sins of lust. Both are sins of unfaithfulness. Both are self-centered methods of illicit fulfillment. And both idolatry and adultery are outward actions that flow from the deepest longings of the human heart.

Marital unfaithfulness destroys the foundations of a home. It breaks hearts at the most pain-filled level. It violates the most intimate of trusts. And it is beyond repair outside of the healing grace of God. It brings awful consequences to all people involved. And it is unfortunately all too common. As a pastor I am constant witness to the devastation it brings. And the emotion of that experience -- the pain, betrayal, anger, and sorrow are how God explains His heart over the unfaithfulness of His people. God is all too often the broken-hearted lover. But unlike us, He is not powerless. He will judge sin. The cross of Christ is where He judges the sin and forgives the sinner and the cross is the place where He will restore and remake the whoring heart.