Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S5 || What Separates Us From God? || Ezekiel 4:1-17 || Session 5 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
A clay model of Jerusalem under siege. A prophet lying on his side for 390 days. Bread cooked over animal dung. These aren't theatrical props—they're God's dramatic teaching methods deployed through the prophet Ezekiel to convey urgent messages to an obstinate people.
When words alone fail to penetrate hardened hearts, God escalates to visual demonstrations. As we explore Ezekiel chapter 4, we discover how the prophet became a living object lesson, enacting bizarre but powerful scenarios that would have drawn crowds and sparked conversations throughout the exiled community in Babylon.
The symbolism runs deep—an iron plate representing the separation sin creates between God and His people, precise day counts (390 for Israel, 40 for Judah) showing God's meticulous accounting of rebellion, and severely restricted food rations depicting the coming horrors of Jerusalem's siege. Each element conveyed what the exiles refused to believe: Jerusalem would fall, the temple would be destroyed, and their hopes of quick return were false.
What makes these ancient demonstrations relevant today? The fundamental human condition remains unchanged—we all face the iron barrier of sin. But where Ezekiel could only symbolize the problem, we encounter its solution through Christ, who tore the temple curtain and removed the separation.
The prophetic reliability displayed in Ezekiel challenges us too. Those same principles of accountability and divine discipline extend to modern believers, as the letters to the seven churches in Revelation make clear. God's love doesn't make Him lenient toward persistent rebellion—whether in ancient Israel or today's church.
Journey with us through these peculiar prophetic acts and discover timeless lessons about sin's ugliness, God's precision in judgment, and the extraordinary lengths He goes to communicate with those He loves. Subscribe to be notified as soon as new episodes are published and join us as we continue through Ezekiel's remarkably relevant ancient message.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Educators tell us that lectures only have a limited amount of ability to communicate to people as far as learning. But if the learners get to see, then it increases their ability to learn things. If they get to handle things, it still increases their ability to learn things even more. God is a good educator. He's going to have Ezekiel act out some lessons People like Jeremiah had already communicated to the people of Israel and they did not listen. We were learning last time that God told Ezekiel I'm going to give you a message, but they didn't listen to me and they're not going to listen to you.
Speaker 1:God is going to go out of his way and he's going to give Ezekiel, in chapter four of Ezekiel's book, several things to act out and they're very unusual. But because they're unusual, they're going to get the attention of the people of Israel. God will always communicate to his people his message. God, in this case, will go out of his way to make it very illustrative. He's going to illustrate what's going to happen to the people. In this chapter we're going to see Ezekiel build a clay model of Jerusalem and then lay siege to it. He's going to lay on his left side for over a year. He's going to lay on his right side for 40 days and then he's going to live on a tiny little bit of food and God's going to command him to cook it over a fire of manure. Very unusual things. Let's go ahead and get into this. Steve, can you read the first three verses of Ezekiel chapter?
Speaker 2:4?. Now you, son of man, get yourself a brick, place it before you and inscribe a city on it Jerusalem. Then lay siege against it, build a siege wall, raise up a ramp, pitch camps and place battering rams against it all around. Then get yourself an iron plate and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city and set your face toward it so that it is under siege, and besiege it. This is a sign to the house of Israel.
Speaker 1:Here in verse 1, god tells Ezekiel go get a brick or a clay tablet and lay a city of Jerusalem out on it. So he doesn't give us much more instructions than that on exactly how this brick was to work, but it's very possible it would be similar to in those days they didn't have all the modern kinds of writing we had. So in those days a lot of times they would get clay, wet clay, modern kinds of writing we had. So in those days a lot of times they would get clay, wet clay and a stylus and they would write on it when the clay dried. You'd have a permanent way of passing messages back and forth that were permanent. You could make a permanent record of something that you wanted to put in writing. Some of these still exist today, from the ancient world In any case.
Speaker 1:Today, from the ancient world In any case, ezekiel was to take a brick or a pad of clay tile and create the city of Jerusalem on it and lay siege. It would be like having toy soldiers. So you can imagine a grown man this would be rather a lowering of his opinion, you might say in the eyes of the people of the city, generally a grown man, including one of God's prophets to make a model toy soldiers and play with it in the street. This would attract attention. God is having Ezekiel act out the messages that he wants to give Israel. When people can see what will happen to Israel, it'll get their attention. Then he was to take an iron plate and put it between himself and the model of Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:Of course, the imagery here is that Ezekiel was speaking God's word. He had already been saying thus says the Lord. So Ezekiel was speaking for God. When Ezekiel would make this toy city and then put an iron plate in between himself and the city, it's a symbol of God being blocked off or separated from the Jewish people of Israel. We have here the clear message that God is going to be separated from the people and that there's going to be a siege of the city of Jerusalem. Steve, what do you see in this? We have Ezekiel, god's prophet, out there playing with toy soldiers.
Speaker 2:Well, what I see is God communicating with his people in various ways. A little background the northern nation of Israel was taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 BC, but the southern kingdom of Judah was not. Babylon came in and defeated the Assyrians and had taken over their land, and in 605 BC they went against the nation of Judah, but they didn't overtake the city. There were three ways of captivity 605, 597, and then 586 is when Jerusalem finally fell. Daniel was in that first wave in 605, and we've talked about him being a contemporary of Ezekiel, but he's in the king's court learning the ways of the king and dealing with Nebuchadnezzar through his dreams and all of that. There's also a contemporary of Ezekiel, of Jeremiah.
Speaker 2:Ezekiel is taken in that second wave of 597, and he's there with the exiles in Babylon, but Jeremiah is still back in the land and he never is taken into captivity. But he is prophesying to the people that are still back in Judah and Jerusalem and he's basically saying the same thing of telling the people to repent. They're the ones that are still back at the city. Here it is, ezekiel being called in 593. The siege in the city is actually going to take place in 586 BC. We know all of this because we're on this side of history. God is telling Ezekiel in 593, build this model of Jerusalem and set it up as if the city is under siege in order to communicate to the people that are in captivity that Jerusalem is going to be taken down, it's going to become under siege and it's going to be torn down. Even though they're in captivity, god is still communicating to the people what is going on, albeit he has done it in a different way with Ezekiel than he does it with Jeremiah back in the land itself.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons that God has Ezekiel do this is because, again, as Steve, you just said, the people that Ezekiel's speaking to are in Babylon. They're in captivity. They had recently been taken there and many of them didn't believe this would last. They didn't believe that God would allow an enemy to come in and destroy Jerusalem. So, at the time this prophecy was given, the city of Jerusalem had not yet fallen. The people were listening to false prophets that were telling them what they wanted to hear, which was oh, god's not going to let his city fall, he's not going to let his entire people be destroyed.
Speaker 1:Ezekiel is giving the message here's a model of Jerusalem. It's going to have Babylon lay siege to it. Thus says the Lord, there's going to be an iron wall in between God and Jerusalem and God is not going to come and help them. Again, ezekiel is the God figure in the illustration and the iron plate is in between God and the people of Jerusalem. Ezekiel is very clearly telling these people the false prophets are incorrect, that Ezekiel is going to be laid siege upon and God's not going to come and help them, because there's a separation between God and the people. Now, steve, what causes a separation between us and God?
Speaker 2:Being stubborn and obstinate. That's what gives a separation. It's like these people. They didn't want to follow the commandments that Moses had laid out for them. They didn't want to follow God's commands. That's why they're in captivity. One of the reasons is they didn't let the land lay fallow every seventh year. So God says you're going to go into captivity for every time period of seven years that you didn't let the lay life fallow. You're going to be in captivity for 70 years. He said that through Jeremiah. That's how you get a separation between you and God is you just refuse to do what God wants us to do?
Speaker 1:Sin can cause a separation between us and God. That was true in Ezekiel's day. It's true in our day. Sin separates us from God, just like Ezekiel was separated by the iron plate. What can break the separation? Do we have something that can break through this separation caused by sin In our day we have.
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ, through his death, burial and resurrection, has broken the barrier of sin. For those who believe and trust on him, then we can have that imputed righteousness that we get from Jesus Christ because he's paid our sin debt. We can now once again have a relationship with God. But although we have belief and trust in Jesus Christ, it should be more than that from a standpoint of building an actual relationship with God through reading his word, getting to know him, who he is. It's not just the New Testament, it's the Old Testament, like what we're doing, going through these Old Testament books to learn of God's character and get a closer relationship with him. Even though this book is directed directly to the nation of Israel, as you can see, we're able to take things out of it and apply it to our lives today. While you believe and trust in Jesus Christ, follow through with it in a process called sanctification and get to know God's Word, and get to know God and build a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:Exactly that's. The only way we can break through the iron wall of separation between us and God is through Jesus Christ. Remember, when Jesus died, the curtain in between the holy place and the holy of holies and the temple was torn from top to bottom. The separation between God and man was broken at Jesus' death on the cross. So we have here, in the first part of Ezekiel 4, god had Ezekiel build this little clay city with these toy soldiers, and now he's separated by an iron plate.
Speaker 1:Now God, in the next few verses, tells Ezekiel to do something even more unusual. I'm reading, starting in verse 4. As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it. You shall bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it, for I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity 390 days. Thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
Speaker 1:When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have assigned it to you for 40 days a day for each year. Then you shall set your face towards the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared and prophesy against it. Now behold, I will put ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege. Steve, this is quite unusual. He has them lay on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for 40 days. What can we make of this?
Speaker 2:very unusual act. He says right here in the text that each day represents a year. When we're talking about orientation, everything in Scripture is noted as facing the east. That's the main direction. The temple faced east, the tabernacle faced east. Whenever the gate to the Garden of Eden was facing east and whenever Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden, there were guards that were put there and they were outside east of Eden. When he lays on his left side, that means he's facing north and that is to represent the northern kingdom of Israel. Then when he lays on his right side, he's facing south. That would represent the southern kingdom of Judah.
Speaker 2:Now there's been a lot of discussion in regards to well, what is this? 430 years, glenn? I don't know what you have there, but in some of my research the thought is that a lot of people and scholars look back on the history of Judah and Israel and Israel, the combined kingdom altogether, and try and place this 430 years into that timeline. But there's a thought that if you look to the future from Ezekiel's time, that 430 years 390 plus 40, that it puts you around the time of the Maccabees, the Maccabean revolt in 160 BC or so, and that possibly that's the 430 years that God is trying to represent there, but it is a mystery as far as the sages and scholars through the years trying to figure out what this 430 years is. What did you come up with?
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you one thing we can be absolutely sure of of what the 390 and the 40 mean. One thing it means is that God keeps track. Wherever he's counting from, he's keeping track. It's not a random number. It's exactly 390 and exactly 40, and that means that God is keeping track. And it says it is the years of their iniquity. That means that God knows exactly how much sin that Israel has and exactly how much sin that Judah has. And it means God has a record and he remembers. And they didn't get away with their sin. So, regardless of where he's starting from and ending from, it means God kept track and God knows precisely how much sin there is and he is meeting out precisely the exact justice required from that.
Speaker 1:God is a fair judge and he will give out punishment exactly according to the people's guilt. They will not get away with it. He will deal out punishment for sin. God keeps track of this. It says a day is a year, somewhere there's a 430-year period or a 390-year period where they thought they were getting away with it Very long time, where they thought, oh, god's silent, not going to have any issues here, we can just keep doing like we're doing. God says no, no punishment will happen. The good news for us is that he has. Well, I guess the bad news for us first is that he's kept track of our sin too. He's kept track of every sin and he knows it, and we thought we got away with it, but we didn't. The good news for us is that Jesus paid for all of our sin and if we but have faith in him, then all our sin can be washed away and we won't have to lay on our side for a year and a half or any other odd punishment, because Jesus took all of that.
Speaker 1:Now we also know here verse 8, that the number of days are called the days of your siege, it says in verse 8. So, therefore, god is clearly connecting, in this act of laying on his side, two concepts. One is God is punishing Israel and Judah for their sin, and it's an exact punishment for an exact amount of sin. Judah for their sin, and it's an exact punishment for an exact amount of sin. Secondly, babylon's siege of Jerusalem is in God's hand of punishment, that God was using Babylon, the evil, wicked Babylon, as punishment for the people of Jerusalem by having Babylon come in and attack them.
Speaker 1:So we have those concepts, god knows exactly how much sin they have and they thought they were getting away with it for a very long time. But God is going to go in and have an evil nation do his will, and those are both very profound concepts that still today, our old flesh rebels against. But if we just sit back in awe at a wondrous God that he's the one in control and he is the one that moves all the chess pieces around on the chessboard and we may not understand what he's doing he didn't take us into his counsel to explain it, but we submit to him and follow his rules and we can have confidence that everything's going to turn out well If anything.
Speaker 2:Ezekiel is an organized book and there's three sections. The first section here goes up to chapter 24, and it's all God dealing with Israel. Then you have a middle section of God dealing with the Gentile nations, and then you have the last section where God is giving a future encouragement of a restored Israel.
Speaker 2:We do see that, as you mentioned, god is using Babylon as the judgment for the nation of Israel, for Judah, and to take the siege on to Jerusalem and to tear down the temple and ransack the city. But over in Zechariah we also noted God saying the same thing. I have used Babylon to punish the people, but yet they went too far and I'm going to hold them accountable. Even while God is holding Israel accountable, as you just so aptly put, and keeping track of their iniquity, he's also keeping track of the iniquity of all the other nations, and they're going to pay a penalty too if they don't turn back to God and become a believer in Jesus Christ. They have a penalty that's going to be put on them too. They're not going to get away with being overbearing and going too far if they happen to be a nation that is used to discipline Israel.
Speaker 1:In the passage again, ezekiel builds this model. This clay model puts an iron wall in between himself and the city, lays on his side for over a year. Then it says Ezekiel is to turn towards the model of Jerusalem that he had built and give a message about God's judgment against Jerusalem. That's what he's saying here. At the time this message was given, Jerusalem was still standing. It had not yet been destroyed. So the message was really clear to the audience around. Ezekiel is that Jerusalem's going to be destroyed. It's going to be destroyed by God's hand. God's not going to come to its rescue. He's going to allow the evil, wicked Babylon to destroy it. It would also seem that, if we haven't read yet but we'll get to the commands coming up about cooking the food, and there's a passage about his hair that it would seem that these were done during this 390-day period and 420-day period that Ezekiel would not have been laying down 24 hours a day. It would seem like because the other things he had to do was about the same time. There's the commands about his food and things like that. So it would seem like he would lay down for portions of the day. Why act this out? Why was God trying to show? Well, he was trying to show in a dramatic way that Babylon was going to capture Jerusalem and God was sending Ezekiel out to act these things out in a very dramatic fashion instead of just standing on a street corner and saying it.
Speaker 1:God will go to great lengths to get his message to his children. There's an old kind of chestnut question of what happens to the guy on the deserted island that never heard about God. Well, god will get his message to his people. His lesson of the Old Testament and the New is that God will send a prophet. Where was Jonah going? Jonah was going to Nineveh, a non-Christian quote-unquote nation, non-jewish nation. He was sending a prophet to a nation that he was about to judge. So the lesson is always God's just not going to randomly go land on people. He sends a message and when they won't listen, he sends another one. And has Ezekiel dramatically acted out to make it clear, steve? Has God made his message clear to us today?
Speaker 2:Absolutely clear. He came himself in Jesus Christ so that he could be a satisfactory sacrifice. He lived among his creation. I mean, what greater love can you have than that is to actually come and dwell among your creation for 30 plus years and then become a satisfactory sacrifice for that creation so that they might have eternal life. The way to 100% have eternal life with Jesus Christ is to believe and trust in him. Here's another question.
Speaker 1:Can we take these Old Testament messages and things that God's doing through Jeremiah and Ezekiel? Are we in the church immune? In other words, the Jewish nation was God's chosen people from way back in Genesis, them pouring out his wrath, and he says quite clearly they were obstinate, they were rebellious, they weren't following my rules. So therefore, I'm going to send this evil, wicked Babylon in as punishment, destroy their nation, take them off into captivity, destroy Jerusalem and punish them because of that. He did that to ancient Israel. Is the church immune? Can we sit and claim the blood of Christ and be immune to all this? And the reason I ask that is because, if we look across the Christian landscape today, boy, there's some churches that are. Just the only thing I can say against them is they're rebellious, they're obstinate, they're doing some of the same things. They're refusing to follow God's commands and taking the ways of the world and bringing them in. Is the church immune today? Or Is it possible for God to pour out punishment on the church today?
Speaker 2:And that's really what you're talking about. Is the church immune from being disciplined by God? And no, I don't think they are immune. We're given a great responsibility to go and make disciples and teach the world the teachings of Jesus Christ, to spread the good news.
Speaker 2:What was it that he said to the church at Ephesus in Revelation? He was upset with that church because they had lost their first love, their love of Jesus Christ, and what they had, and they had gone off into a wayward way. I think it was the church of Laodicea. He said you're lukewarm, I'm going to spit you out of my mouth. If we want to think that the church is immune to God's discipline, go read the first three chapters of Revelation and you have Jesus's letters himself to those churches that I think describe different stages of churches that they go through, and ask yourself which church the church that I go to which of these churches are described of these seven churches in Revelation, and then look and see what the discipline and the punishment was, or the rebukes that Jesus gave to those churches that he did actually give rebukes to in Revelation.
Speaker 1:Those rebukes in Revelation, chapter 2 and 3 were just that rebukes. He was warning churches that hey, if you don't change, then something bad's going to happen. Here we are today. We can't go visit those churches because they don't exist anymore. And I also think of Romans. Chapter 11, verses 20 and 21, says exactly the same thing. God tells the church quote Do not be haughty, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches and he's talking about Israel there if God did not spare the natural branches, he may not spare you either.
Speaker 1:The New Testament message is clear yes, we are saved by grace, through faith, but at the same time we're held to a responsibility. We can't just go live like the world and we can't go lay our own desires on what the church ought to be. We have to submit to his will or else we'll be in the same position as ancient Israel. And we'll be in the same position as ancient Israel. And we'll be in the same position as the churches in Revelation, chapter 2 and 3. The next section. We have some instructions to Ezekiel about his food. Steve, could you read verses 9 to 17?
Speaker 2:But as for you, take wheat, barley beans, lentils, millet and spelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself. You shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side three hundred and ninety days. Your food which you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight, and you shall eat it from time to time. The water you drink shall be the sixth part of a hen by measure. You shall drink it from time to time. You shall eat it as barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung.
Speaker 2:Then the Lord said Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them? But I said, ah Lord, god behold, I have never been defiled, for from my youth until now, I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat even entered my mouth. Then he said to me water by measure, and in horror, because bread and water will be scarce and they will be appalled with one another and waste away in their iniquity.
Speaker 1:In this section he's giving a clear lesson about food and remember the overall lesson is about the siege of Jerusalem. In verse 9, god tells Ezekiel to take wheat, barley beans, lentils, millet and spelt, which were grains and legumes, mixed them all together to make bread. And the reason why was because there was not enough of them to make a loaf of bread by themselves. There wasn't enough wheat or enough barley to make barley cakes or wheat bread all by itself. What he's saying is that there's going to be a real shortage of food. The measurements he gave there were very small. For an adult to live on this, or even a child, this is a very small amount of food. One of the lessons is God gave Ezekiel a hard task here, which is to lay on your side and live for more than a year on a very small amount of food, steve. What's the overall lesson there that he's trying to communicate about this siege? That?
Speaker 2:it's going to be just that. What happens whenever a city is laid siege, their food supply is cut off. That's what the opposing army does. It surrounds the city and doesn't let any food get into the city, and if they can cut the water off, then they'll cut the water off to the city. They're doing it so that the city will surrender. The hope is really for the opposing forces that they can take the city without having to lose any of their forces, but that's what's being communicated. The people in Jerusalem are going to be starving to death and they're going to have to do exactly what you're saying is mix all of these grains together in order to just come out and make enough food for them to be able to eat. We know from history that that's actually what happened, that inside the city it got really bad and even to the point and God will point it out with the object lessons to Ezekiel that the people succumbed to cannibalism at some point in order to just make food for themselves in this siege that happened with Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:What God is showing through this action of Ezekiel is there's going to be a siege. It's going to be very horrible in the sense that there's not going to be hardly any food and not hardly enough to live on, and there won't be any wood to cook the food with. Because he says here to take excrement and use it for fuel, and it originally was human excrement. But Ezekiel protested. He says God's allowed him to use cow manure and that is burnable if you mix it with straw, let it dry, but it's still rather gross, it's still rather ugly.
Speaker 1:What God is showing is quite clear One this siege is going to be bad. He's also showing the ugliness of sin that was being judged. It's going to be a very bad siege and it's a truly ugly punishment, an ugly pouring out of God's wrath because of the sin. Sin is very ugly and we gloss it over and put paint on it and think that sin's not so bad. But God sees it for what it is, which is very, very ugly and very, very sickening.
Speaker 1:God is giving a very clear message to the people. He's given a very clear message to us today. But so far in the story, through Ezekiel's actions, we've seen God give the fact of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, the reason for the siege of Jerusalem, the length of the siege of Jerusalem and the severity of the siege, and so that's so far, and the severity of the siege, and so that's so far. All those things were literally fulfilled. We're going to see other fulfilled prophecy next time when we get to chapter 5. We're going to see even more messages about Babylon being a punishment for the people of Israel.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. Through these short-term prophecies that God is giving to Ezekiel, he's going to prove himself as being a trustworthy prophet. So then we can trust the far future prophecies that we're going to see later in the book. Yes, and we will reason through that next time. Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
