The High Treason of Two-Faced Worship Text: Ezekiel 23:36-39
Introduction: The Covenant Lawsuit
The book of Ezekiel is, from start to finish, a covenant lawsuit. God is the prosecuting attorney, Ezekiel is the bailiff serving the summons, and Israel is the defendant in the dock. And the charges being brought are not petty misdemeanors. They are capital crimes. They are high treason against the Sovereign of the universe. In this chapter, God employs one of His favorite and most devastating metaphors for covenant infidelity. He depicts His relationship with His people as a marriage, and their apostasy as brazen, shameless adultery.
The two sisters, Oholah representing Samaria and Oholibah representing Jerusalem, are portrayed as two wives of Yahweh who became insatiable harlots. God does not mince words here. The language is graphic, it is shocking, it is R-rated, and it is meant to be. We have a tendency to domesticate the prophets, to sand down their sharp edges and put their indictments in polite, churchy language. But God speaks here with the blunt force of a jilted and righteously furious husband. He is confronting a people who have become so calloused, so accustomed to their sin, that only the most visceral language can possibly get through.
This is not just about ancient Israel. This is a perpetual word to the covenant people of God in all ages. The temptation to spiritual adultery, to trying to have God and our idols, is the baseline temptation of the human heart. We live in a generation that has perfected the art of two-faced worship. We want to sing praises to God on Sunday morning and then offer our children to the modern Molechs of sexual autonomy, careerism, and godless education the rest of the week. We want the comfort of the sanctuary and the thrill of the high places. But God brings this lawsuit to show us that such a double life is not just inconsistent; it is an abomination. It is a declaration of war against Him.
The Text
Moreover, Yahweh said to me, “Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then declare to them their abominations. For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. Thus they have committed adultery with their idols and even caused their sons, whom they bore to Me, to pass through the fire to them as food. Again, they have done this to Me: they have defiled My sanctuary on the same day and have profaned My sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered My sanctuary on the same day to profane it; and behold, thus they did within My house.
(Ezekiel 23:36-39 LSB)
The Indictment: Adultery and Murder (vv. 36-37)
The Lord begins by commissioning Ezekiel to act as judge and to read the charges.
"Moreover, Yahweh said to me, 'Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then declare to them their abominations. For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. Thus they have committed adultery with their idols and even caused their sons, whom they bore to Me, to pass through the fire to them as food.'" (Ezekiel 23:36-37)
The first charge is adultery. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He entered into a marriage covenant with her at Sinai. He was the husband, and she was the bride. Her central vow was to have no other gods before Him. Therefore, any flirtation with the idols of the surrounding nations was not merely a difference in religious opinion; it was covenant unfaithfulness. It was cheating on God. And Israel had not just flirted; she had become a full-blown prostitute, lusting after the gods of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon.
But spiritual adultery never remains spiritual for long. False worship always leads to bloodshed. Notice the seamless connection: "they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands." These two sins are joined at the hip. When you abandon the true God, you abandon the source of all life and law. The sanctity of life is a theological principle, grounded in the image of God. When you replace God with idols made of wood and stone, you simultaneously devalue the man made in His image. It is no accident that the most idolatrous cultures have always been the most bloodthirsty.
And the ultimate expression of this bloody idolatry was child sacrifice. "They even caused their sons, whom they bore to Me, to pass through the fire to them as food." This is the horrifying apex of their treason. Notice the possessive pronoun: "their sons, whom they bore to Me." These were covenant children. God claimed them as His own. By virtue of the covenant, they belonged to Him. But the people took God's children and offered them up as food for their demonic idols. They were sacrificing God's property on Satan's altar.
We must not read this and cluck our tongues at the ancient Israelites as though we are any better. Our nation has sacrificed over sixty million of its children on the altar of convenience and sexual freedom. We call it "choice," but Molech would call it worship. We have taken the children God has given and declared them to be disposable tissue. The bloodguilt on our hands makes the valley of Hinnom look like a papercut. This is our great national abomination, and it flows directly from our spiritual adultery. We have bowed down to the idols of self, autonomy, and materialism, and those gods always demand blood.
The Compounding Sin: Profane Piety (vv. 38-39)
If the first charge was high treason, the second is a particular kind of aggravated assault. It is the sin of pious hypocrisy, of trying to mix the sacred and the profane in a blasphemous cocktail.
"Again, they have done this to Me: they have defiled My sanctuary on the same day and have profaned My sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered My sanctuary on the same day to profane it; and behold, thus they did within My house." (Ezekiel 23:38-39)
This is the part that should make the blood run cold for any professing Christian. They did not abandon the worship of Yahweh altogether. They tried to do both. They would go to the high places, burn their children in the fire for Molech, and then, on the very same day, wipe the blood and ash from their hands and walk into God's sanctuary as if nothing had happened. They would profane the Sabbath, God's sign of the covenant, and then show up for the service.
This is not just sin; it is mockery. It is spitting in God's face. It is to treat the holy things of God as common, as something that can be tacked onto a life of rebellion without any contradiction. They were defiling the sanctuary not by bringing in a physical idol, but by bringing in themselves, their idolatrous hearts still hot from the fires of the high place. The house of God was profaned by the presence of profane worshipers.
This is the very definition of taking the Lord's name in vain. It is to wear His covenant sign, to claim His name, and to live like the devil. It is to think that an hour in a pew can sanctify a week of rebellion. It is to believe that singing hymns loudly can drown out the cries of the children you are sacrificing to your modern idols, whether that idol is your career, your lust, your comfort, or your political party. God is saying that He would rather have a hot enemy than a lukewarm, two-faced lover. Their attempts to worship Him were not just inadequate; they were an additional abomination. The worship of a hypocrite is an insult to God.
Conclusion: The Call to Covenant Faithfulness
The charges laid out here are terrifying. Adultery, murder, child sacrifice, and blasphemous hypocrisy. This is the state of the covenant people when they turn from their covenant Lord. And the judgment that follows in the rest of this chapter is correspondingly severe. God will turn His adulterous bride over to her lovers, the very nations she lusted after, and they will strip her bare and destroy her.
The application for us is straightforward and sharp. We are the bride of Christ. He has purchased us with His own blood, entering into a new and better covenant with us. Our vow is to Him and Him alone. And yet, how often do our hearts go whoring after other lovers? We erect idols in our hearts, bow down to the spirit of the age, and offer our children's minds and souls to be catechized by a godless culture. And then we come to church on Sunday, perhaps even to the Lord's Table, with the smoke of those strange fires still on our clothes.
This passage is a bucket of ice water in the face of all such casual, syncretistic Christianity. God will not be mocked. He will not share His glory, or His bride, with another. The call of this text is a call to radical, exclusive, wholehearted covenant faithfulness. It is a call to tear down the idols, to repent of our adulteries, and to flee from the hypocrisy of two-faced worship.
The good news is that this covenant lawsuit finds its resolution at the cross. All these abominations, all this high treason, was laid upon Jesus Christ. He is the faithful Israel who perfectly kept the covenant. He took the curse that Oholah and Oholibah deserved. He was stripped bare and executed so that His unfaithful bride might be cleansed, forgiven, and presented to Himself holy and without blemish. Because of Him, there is forgiveness for the adulterous heart. Because of His blood, there is cleansing for hands stained with blood. But that grace is not a license to continue in our harlotry. It is the power to break with it. It is the power to return to our first love and to worship Him, and Him alone, in spirit and in truth.