It is always the High Places where adultery is committed: in full view under every spreading tree, upon the naked heights, at the roadside, on every high hill. Spiritual adultery always happens in public while we are being 'spiritual', when we think we are near to God, when we are meeting together, when we are doing work for God, when we have multiplied the places of worship. It does not happen in secret; it happens in full view of the assembly with their complicit silence or celebration. And it always involves the Priests, the Prophets, the Leaders, the Officials and the King.
When the people of God have broken off their easy yoke for some 'freedom', when they are no longer persuaded of their sin and insist they have not sinned - indeed, that they are innocent, when they have mis-made God in their own eyes and image and present that to the people, when there is no awe of God and she is free to roam and changes her ways and teachings regularly, when she invents many gods, one after the other, then you can be sure that deception and false teaching have been in the making for generations and that judgment upon the House of God is imminent, for it will not start with the world until the Lord has started with His People.
We do not need idols upon the heights anymore but the sound of weeping and pleading upon the barren heights. We must forego our trinkets and programs, and crawl upon the barren heights and make the dust clot with our tears of repentance. We must bring nothing but ourselves and our sorrow for perverting our ways. We present ourselves to God and then maybe, if God finds this acceptable, authentic and true, He will reveal Himself as He truly is - not as we make Him out to be, not as He is misrepresented to be. It is only God who reveals God; we cannot take a crowbar and force it out and then 'wing-it' because He is impenetrable. We have to wait at the foot of the mountain for 40 days for the completeness of His revelation . . . but we are not willing to wait. We would rather take the blessings of God in the form of gold earrings and make an idol of them. Our need becomes our god and anything that serves our need qualifies as god.
Crying and weeping must be heard once more, not the sound of idolatrous commotion: the sound of war and singing in the camp. This is not a time to play (act without consequence); it is a time to strap a sword to our side and go about the camp to deal with our brother and our neighbour.
Jeremiah 2-4:9
Exodus 32
