The big deal about God’s anger towards Jerusalem and Israel was their idolatry.

[Note: When reading in the Bible about Jerusalem, applied today, this would be the church because Jerusalem was the place where God’s name was. It was the place of worship.]

[Note: When reading in the Bible about Israel, applied today, this would be all of the people of God as a whole. Israel was made up of 10 tribes but prior to the split it represented all 12 tribes.]

Today I believe the issue is that people don’t understand idolatry.

I believe that people look at idols as being a carved image of something that one bows down and prays to.

I don’t think it is understood that an idol is any person or thing that consumes (uses up or spends) your thoughts, words, time, energy, or money more than God.

What consumes us while we are awake? Where do we spend the most of our time and energy?

We are all given 24 hours in a day.
Of that 24 hours, God only asks for 10%.
What is 10% of 24 hours?

2 hours and 40 mins. (Round it up to 3hours.)

In a 24 hour day, if you spend 3 hours in the presence of the Lord, you still have 21 hours for other things.

In a 7 day week, you have 168 hours of which 21hours would have been spent with the Lord giving you 147 hours to do whatever with. But if the only time you have spent with the Lord is 3 hours on Sunday, then you are operating at a deficit and there is idolatry in your life.

Malachi 3:8,9
“Will a man rob God?
Yet you have robbed Me!
But you say,
In what way have we robbed you?
In tithes and offerings.
You are cursed with a curse,
For you have robbed Me.
Even this whole nation.”

We have made this verse about bringing money to the church. But these verses are about more than that.

We need to figure out what is consuming our time, energy, thoughts, words, and money other than God, and we need to figure this thing out now and repent of it and turn from it or else the retribution spoken throughout God’s Word will come upon us.

I don’t know how we can read God’s word and not see this.

The prophetic books in the Bible is full of God’s judgment on this. I am currently being broken by the book of Ezekiel.

It’s heart wrenching and God’s word said that the sword was going to slay.

There is two ways to be slain by the sword. Either we will read God’s Word and allow it to cut out of us our hearts of stone. Or we will fall slain to the sword of this world. (I choose to be cut by God’s Word.)

Collectively there is a problem and collectively we are all being dealt with but apparently collectively this issue of idolatry is not being understood. So, We need to examine ourselves individually and fix us because it is individually that we are going to have to give an account to the Lord.

Time is running out. We are in the last hours. God is merciful, faithful, and just.

Just don’t wait to the last minute because the last minute might be too late like it was for those in Noah’s day who were consumed with eating drinking marrying and being given in marriage – every day normal things, that they took no note until it was too late.