As one reads through the history of Judah and Israel it is hard to miss the truth that Judah was blessed with many more good kings than their neighbors to the north. Often, however, these good kings do not escape their own history unscathed. After acknowledging their overall good behavior the text often says words to this effect- “King Jeunpronouncable did not remove the high places.” These were unauthorized places of worship. Sometimes that worship was devoted to the living God, other times not. It was never, however, authorized by the living God.
While our circumstances are different, we no longer are commanded to worship in just one place, our propensities are the same. We’re sinners just like God’s people in the Old Testament. We have blind spots and our own gods that we blend together with the living God. It has always been so. The practice of chattel slavery in American history, with the blessing of huge swaths of the church would be one example. God’s people should have known better.
In our own day I would suggest three high places that stand head and shoulders above the rest. First, there is the approval of men. We syncretize this with true worship by claiming we seek nothing more than to be all things to all men. But the honest truth is we crave standing, acceptance, respectability. We, on this high place, are willing to offer as sacrifices the plain teaching of God’s Word, to lay down our prophetic mantles. We cavort with that temple whore known as Political Correctness.
Second we, not surprisingly, worship mammon. When Jesus warned His audience that they would not be able to worship both God and mammon He didn’t pick mammon by accident. He picked something with virtual universal appeal, something we love from top to bottom. Some of us are more crass, preaching a gospel in which the good news is the promise of health and wealth. Some of us are a touch more subtle, lifting up the well-off as the very model of Christian success. Some of us cut ethical corners to get more. Others of us burn the candle at both ends to get more. All of us are drawn to its false worship.
Third, we worship pleasure. More often than not, that pleasure is sexual in nature. We treat fornication as a rite of passage, adultery like a peccadillo. When reality doesn’t measure up to our imaginations we race to the airbrushed realm of the web to get our fix. And if the Bible says no homosexual behavior, well then, the Bible will have to go.
These are our high places. What we tolerate in the good times always becomes the deadliest of snares in the bad. Our calling, kings and queens as we are in the kingdom of God, is to tear them down ruthlessly. Our calling, as beggars, is to walk right past the poison repast and to long for the bread which comes down from heaven. Our calling is to return to our Father’s embrace and to feast at His table, as His children. Lord, help us to not be too easily satisfied. Help us to find our rest in Thee.