The Treason of a Tear: Sentimental Idolatry in God's House Text: Ezekiel 8:14-15
Introduction: The Tour of Abominations
We are in the middle of a divine tour, a guided expedition through the labyrinth of Judah's corrupt heart, with the prophet Ezekiel as our reluctant correspondent. God has peeled back the wall of His own Temple in Jerusalem, not to reveal a hidden glory, but to expose a festering, gangrenous rebellion. This is not a casual survey; it is a legal proceeding. God is showing his prophet, and by extension, all of us, the evidence. He is building His case for the coming judgment, demonstrating with stomach-turning clarity that the destruction of Jerusalem is not an overreaction, but a righteous and necessary act of cosmic surgery.
Ezekiel has already been shown the "Image of Jealousy" at the gate, a blatant idol provoking God to fury. He has been shown a secret chamber where the elders of Israel, the respected leaders, crawl in the dark to worship reptiles and detestable beasts. Each abomination is a step deeper into the darkness, a descent into a spiritual madness that has seized the people. And with each new horror, God asks Ezekiel the same haunting question: "Son of man, do you see this?" It is a question that demands more than sight; it demands understanding. It demands a verdict.
But the tour is not over. God tells him, "Yet you will see still greater abominations than these." We often think of idolatry in terms of its grossest forms, golden calves and grotesque statues. But here, the next abomination God reveals is not a graven image, but a corrupt emotion. It is the sin of sentimentalism, the worship of a feeling, a pathetic weeping for a phantom god right at the gate of the house of Yahweh. This is not just an infraction; it is high treason committed with a tear-stained face.
The Text
Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the house of Yahweh which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz. He said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these.”
(Ezekiel 8:14-15 LSB)
The Weeping Adulteresses (v. 14)
We begin with the scene God reveals to Ezekiel at the north gate.
"Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the house of Yahweh which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz." (Ezekiel 8:14)
The location is significant. The north gate was a primary public entrance to the Temple complex. This was not a hidden, private ritual like that of the elders in their dark room. This was public-square idolatry, performed brazenly in the open, at the very threshold of God's dwelling place. The worship of Yahweh and the worship of a pagan fertility god were happening just feet from each other. This is the essence of syncretism, the attempt to have God and your favorite idols too. It is the spiritual equivalent of a wife bringing her lover into the marital home.
And who is performing this ritual? It is the women. In the biblical pattern, women are often the guardians of a culture's spiritual temperature. When the women are godly, the nation is blessed. When they fall into apostasy, it is a sign of advanced cultural decay. And what are they doing? They are "weeping for Tammuz."
To understand the gravity of this, you must know who Tammuz was. He was a Mesopotamian fertility god, the lover of the goddess Ishtar. The pagan myth was a nature cycle drama: Tammuz dies each year with the summer heat, descending into the underworld. Ishtar mourns his death, which causes all fertility on earth to cease. His return in the spring symbolizes rebirth and the renewal of life. The ritual weeping of these women was a sympathetic magic, an attempt to participate in and manipulate this cycle. They were mourning the death of the crops, the browning of the grass, and they were weeping to coax life back into the world.
But what is this, really? It is the worship of the creature rather than the Creator. They had exchanged the God who sovereignly commands the seasons for a pathetic, dying-and-rising god who was a mere personification of the seasons. They were weeping for a mythological soap opera character while ignoring the living God who had given them every good thing, including the very rain and harvests they were concerned about. Their tears were not just misguided; they were acts of profound unfaithfulness. They were giving the emotional devotion that belonged to Yahweh, their covenant husband, to a cheap, pagan counterfeit.
God's Searching Question (v. 15)
God's response is not a thunderclap of immediate judgment, but a pointed, almost incredulous question to His prophet.
"He said to me, 'Do you see this, son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these.'" (Ezekiel 8:15)
God forces Ezekiel to look, to truly see the abomination for what it is. "Do you see this?" This is not just about observing the ritual. It is about seeing the treason behind the tears. Do you see how they have replaced faith in my providence with pagan sentimentality? Do you see how they have traded the covenant for a nature myth? Do you see how they weep for a false god of vegetation but have no tears for their own sins, which have brought a curse upon the land?
Their tears were for a god who represented their immediate, material concerns: crops, livestock, fertility. They wanted a god they could manage, a god whose favor could be curried through emotional display. This is the root of all paganism. It is a transactional religion designed to serve man's felt needs. True religion, in stark contrast, is about serving God on His terms, regardless of our circumstances.
The Lord is showing Ezekiel, and us, that idolatry is not just a matter of incorrect theology; it is a matter of disordered loves. These women had given their deepest affections, their grief, to an idol. They were emotionally invested in a lie. This is a profound insult to the living God, who demands all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. To weep for Tammuz at the gate of Yahweh's house is to stand before your husband and grieve for a dead lover. It is an abomination of the highest order.
And yet, God says the tour is not over. "You will see still greater abominations than these." As horrific as this public display of emotional adultery is, it gets worse. The apostasy goes deeper still, right into the inner court, where the men, the priests, will turn their very backs on the Holy of Holies to worship the sun. The progression is from the leaders in secret, to the women in public, to the priests at the very heart of worship. The corruption is total.
Modern Weeping for Tammuz
It is easy for us to read a passage like this and feel a sense of smug superiority. We don't sit at the church doors weeping for ancient fertility gods. But we must not miss the principle, because the spirit of Tammuz is alive and well. The worship of Tammuz is any religion that prioritizes emotional experience over doctrinal truth. It is the elevation of sentimentality to a place of spiritual authority.
Where do we see this today? We see it in churches where the music is engineered to produce an emotional response, regardless of its theological content. We see it when people judge a sermon not by its faithfulness to the text, but by whether it "moved" them or made them "feel good." We see it in the therapeutic gospel, which presents Jesus not as the holy Lord who saves us from our sin, but as a divine therapist who helps us with our self-esteem. We see it in the worship of "authenticity," where personal feelings are considered more true and more authoritative than the objective Word of God.
We see it in the environmentalist movement, which often functions as a secularized version of nature worship. People will weep over a threatened species of owl or a melting ice cap, displaying a religious fervor for "Mother Earth," while remaining utterly indifferent to the slaughter of millions of unborn children, who are made in the image of God. They are weeping for Tammuz, for the creation, while ignoring the Creator.
We see it in the cult of victimhood, where people's grievances and emotional wounds become the central, sacred reality of their identity. They nurse their sorrows, they weep over their oppressions, real or imagined, and this becomes a form of worship. Their pain becomes their idol, and they have no tears left for their own sin against a holy God.
The Only Tears that Matter
The problem with the women weeping for Tammuz was not that they were weeping. The Bible is a book full of tears. Jesus Himself wept. The problem was the object of their weeping. Their tears were wasted on a fiction. They were pouring out their hearts for a lie.
The gospel redirects our tears. God does not want us to stop feeling; He wants us to feel the right things. The Holy Spirit does not deaden our emotions; He quickens them and aims them at the proper targets. The first work of grace in a man's heart is to bring him to tears, not for a dying god of the crops, but for his own damnable sin against the living God. As David prayed, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise" (Psalm 51:17).
The gospel shows us a true dying and rising Lord, not a mythological one. Jesus Christ did not metaphorically die with the seasons. He truly died, once for all, on a Roman cross for the sins of His people. And He did not just represent the hope of spring; He is the resurrection and the life. He rose bodily from the grave, conquering sin and death forever.
Our faith is not in a feeling, a cycle, or a myth. Our faith is in a historical fact. And our response should be one of deep emotion, but emotion that is tethered to the truth. We should weep over our sin that nailed Him there. We should rejoice with loud celebration at His empty tomb. We should grieve when the church commits spiritual adultery, and we should long for the day of His return.
God is still asking, "Son of man, do you see this?" He wants us to see the cheap, sentimental idolatries of our age for the abominations they are. And He wants us to turn from them, to repent of our wasted tears, and to fix our hearts, our minds, and yes, our emotions, on the one true God who is worthy of all our worship.