Read 2 Samuel 13 and Ezekiel 20.
This devotional is about Ezekiel 20:32: “‘You say, ‘We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone.’”
Peer pressure is something we warn teenagers about, but adults are far from immune to it. Marketers use a form of peer pressure called “social proof” to get you and me to buy products. Similarly, ideas and actions that the Bible label as sinful have become acceptable in human societies because a majority of people consider them OK. Sexual activity apart from marriage, homosexuality, and transgenderism would all be in this category, but there are probably many more things that you and I could list if we took some time to think about it.
These things are now proclaimed to be acceptable, within the range of normal, in our society. The Bible warns us Christians that we would be out of step with the world around us and that the world would pressure us (Rom 12:2) to conform. Just as God’s people in Ezekiel’s time wanted to worship idols because other nations did, we Christians will feel external and internal pressure to conform to the world around us. At some point–probably soon–some major evangelical figure will come out and say that homosexuality is acceptable as long as it is practiced in a marriage covenant of some kind. Though many believers will resist, many will jump on board and urge us all to change our understanding of what it means to follow Christ.
God warned his people of judgment here in Ezekiel and in all the other prophets of scripture for conforming to the practices of the world around them. Idolatry was the specific sin then but the desire to be like everyone else was the motivation then just as it is now when we abandon God’s word and practice or condone in the church what the Lord says is sinful. Let’s prepare ourselves, then, to be faithful to God’s word even as we fall more and more out of step with the world around us.