Ezekiel 28:17 -CEV- “It was your good looks that made you arrogant, and you were so famous that you started acting like a fool. That’s why I threw you to the ground and let other kings sneer at you.”
This scripture is speaking of Lucifer or the devil as we know his name to be. The devil was a created angel – a Cherub – Ezekiel 28:14. He made a decision a choice to become evil – or to go against the will of God. This is why Jesus said that the devil is the father of lies. The scripture also says that God created Lucifer to be beautiful. This is what Ezekiel 28:17 is referring to as …your good looks made you arrogant. Scripture also says that God made Lucifer to be above other angles, and we know there are various kinds or ranks of angles in God’s kingdom. So, Lucifer was known by all the angles in heaven, he was good looking.
I want to bring this into our world and what we know and have seen happen so many times in our history and in our everyday living. How many “movie stars” can we identify who are/were good looking, and famous and because of these things the devil and human nature tempted these “stars” to act foolishly. It is in every day published rubbish you see while waiting in line at a grocery store checkout. It is what is plastered on the internet – social media every second of every day. Somehow, people desire to know this kind of information. However, my point is that we see famous people, well known people (even in small-town circles), from “movie stars” to business moguls, and politicians all the way down to the local town class clown, make foolish decisions and act them out every day in every facet of our society, from an original intention of gaining more. If even in God’s kingdom an angel can become foolish, here on earth we are certainly capable of doing so and we see it so. Lucifer was a ranking member of the angle family. He had respect and he was with God until he wasn’t. Do you realize this truth. The devil, before he was the devil, was with God and there was no evil in him until there was.
If this can happen to an angel, don’t we know in our fallen state of humanity, that it can and does happen to people and all the time, and every day as I mentioned above. We see this everywhere.
How about in the pulpit? How about the pastor or the preacher or the teacher, is it possible to see Ezekiel 28:17 happen to those people? I know we can look back in just a short 50-year history in the US and find preachers who became famous and started acting like a fool. We see popularity tempt pastors all the time and that temptation is like adrenaline that courses through their veins so that it feels good and what feels good is repeated. What we know about adrenaline is that a body becomes use to a level and the effect wears off, so we need more adrenaline (a bigger action) to get to the next high, and so on. It is like this with someone well known, who likes to be known and says or does things to keep that position and to escalate that to the point that everyone else around them can see they have become foolish, and they may be the last to know.
The church is susceptible to falling into carnal ways for this very same reason. A carnal church is like the church at Corinth that Paul wrote about. It is a church that goes after appealing to the eye/the flesh and it is a church that can only handle a very basic truth – one that cannot eat meat but must drink milk. It is a church that must go back to basics because it has wandered off or lost its way. The carnal church today is: We want more, we need more, we like the popularity, and we need to raise the bar to gain more. The bar becomes crossing a hard line (theologically speaking) in the sand at some point. I mentioned to someone one time that it is like a pendulum. We swing a pendulum to gain people to our church, to cause enough attraction so that people from our towns who are carnal, may find it just tolerable enough to make a visit one Sunday. I believe that we do this to a healthy point. We may bring a food truck on a Sunday and that attracts people, it promotes fellowship, but (God forbid) if a church starts bringing in drag queen shows, it has gone too far – it crossed a hard line. I believe for many churches the pendulum has swung too far and often a pastor a preacher a teacher has acted foolishly because as we learn from scripture, someone who seeks fame is susceptible to attack from demons and tempted to act foolishly. When a church pendulum swings, with every increase there is a risk of decrease and the moment that the decrease is more than or even matching the increase, I believe that shows a pendulum that has swung too far. The church loses sight of the power of Jesus Christ and the focus on Him and Him alone.
If a church could catch people with one cookie and a glass of milk, and the church sees increase, why would it ever decide to offer more to the point of losing more than it gains. It goes back to Ezekiel 28:17.