Spiritual Light

Spiritual Adultery

The primary purpose for marriage, especially in the ancient world, was procreation. Only by having children could the family name be carried on.

This was also the purpose of that holy marriage at Sinai. God was to be the head of the family. Israel was to bear Him children. If Israel would be faithful to her husband, His light and mercy and truth would spread throughout the world as membership in His family grew and grew. If she were unfaithful, there would be no light in the darkness, no instruction for the ignorant, and Israel would have entered into covenant with God to no good end. Being spiritually barren, she would have taken His name fruitlessly, for nothing - in vain!

To "take God's name" means to bear His name, to become a part of the family that is called by His name, to enter into covenant with Him and become His. To take His name in vain is to enter into covenant with Him and then fail to live up to the terms of the covenant, resulting in fruitlessness. The wise man in Proverbs 30:9 said that he could take God's name in vain being a thief. We could as well say that a believer who has become a glutton, or a liar, or an adulterer, or who lives in any way that is contrary to God's will, has taken God's name in vain. This is what the Third Commandment warns God's people not to do. It does not specifically forbid what is commonly called "cursing" and using the word "God" as part of that foul language. There are other Scriptures which forbid the misuse of the name of "God" (e.g. Lev. 19:12a; 24:10-23).

The Third Commandment charges God's people to bear His name faithfully in holiness, for the way to God's mercy is lighted by the lives of His people. And if God's own are living in darkness, how much greater is the darkness which is already in the world! Therefore, God plainly warned Israel that "the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain."

The young bride Israel was to do just that. Rather than bear God's Law and light to the nations, she partook of the idolatry and immorality of those nations. She prostituted herself and God's gifts by disobeying His commandments and following the ungodly ways of the heathen. In yielding herself to foreign gods, Israel became a spiritual adulteress, bringing a reproach upon the holy name of Jehovah, the holy name she bore. Israel took the name of the Lord in vain.

Returning now to the chapter in Ezekiel with which we started, let's continue reading God's powerful message to Israel concerning His care for her in her impoverished youth:

"Then I washed you with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with broidered work, and shod you with badgers' skin, and I girded you about with fine linen, and I covered you with silk. I decked you also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon your hands, and a chain on your neck. And I put a jewel on your forehead and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head. Thus were you decked with gold and silver, and your raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; you ate fine flour, and honey, and oil.

"And you were exceeding beautiful, and you prospered into a kingdom. And your renown went forth among the heathen for your beauty, for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon you, says the Lord God.

"But you trusted in your own beauty, and played the harlot because of your renown, and poured out your fornications on every one that passed by; his it was. And of your garments you took, and decked your high places with diverse colors, and played the harlot thereupon; the like things shall not come, neither shall it be so. You have also taken your fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made to yourself images of men, and committed whoredom with them, and took your broidered garments, and covered them, and you have set my oil and my incense before them. My meat also which I gave you, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed you, have you even set it before them for a sweet savor; and thus it was, says the Lord God.

"Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne unto me, and these have you sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of your whoredoms a small matter, that you have slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them? And in all your abominations and your whoredoms you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and were polluted in your blood.

"And it came to pass after all your wickedness, (woe, woe unto you! says the Lord God) that you have also built unto you an eminent place, and have made you an high place in every street. You have built your high place at every head of the way, and have made your beauty to be abhorred, and have opened your feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied your whoredoms. You have also committed fornication with the Egyptians your neighbors, great of flesh, and have increased whoredoms, to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over you, and have diminished your ordinary food, and delivered you unto the will of them that hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of your lewd way. You have played the harlot with them, and yet could not be satisfied. You have moreover multiplied your fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet you were not satisfied with that.

"How weak is your heart, says the Lord God, seeing you do all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman, in that you build your eminent place in the head of every way, and make your high place in every street, and have not been as an harlot, in that you scorn hire, but as a wife who commits adultery, which takes strangers instead of her husband!"

(Ezek. 16:9-32)

History of Infidelity

Prophet after prophet was sent to Israel, pleading, warning, delivering to her the great Husband's commandments for His household. And prophet after prophet was scorned, beaten, and even murdered for his effort. When the Lord Jesus neared the time for his own betrayal and death, he wept and grieved aloud:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together ... and you would not!"

(Mt. 23:37)

So Israel was left alone, but only after mercy upon mercy had been shown to her for her unfaithfulness, and chastisement upon chastisement had befallen the nation, until both mercy and chastisement had lost their effectiveness.

God had kept her alive in the desolate wasteland of Sinai forty years because He had promised Abraham that his children would live, even though keeping her alive meant keeping her alive to dirty His name in heathen worship and disobedience. He won battles for her and established her in the land He had promised, only then to watch as she compromised the honor of His name for the savagery of godless living. And when, because of her own disobedience, foreign nations humbled her, He still cared for her and caused deliverers, called "judges", to rise up and break the yoke of foreign domination.

"And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge, for it repented the Lord because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them. They ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way."

(Jud. 2:18-19)

And Israel could not answer God's haunting question, "Why have you done this?" (Jud. 2:2).