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
S8 || When God Turned His Face Away || Ezekiel 7:20-8:12 || Session 8 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
What happens when God's people bring idolatry into the holy place? Ezekiel's prophetic vision reveals a shocking scene that should make every believer pause and examine their own worship.
We journey through one of Scripture's most overlooked passages in Ezekiel 7-8, where God pronounces severe judgment on Jerusalem and its temple. The language is deliberately harsh—"disaster upon disaster"—because Israel had repeatedly ignored prophetic warnings despite numerous opportunities to repent. God declares He will "turn His face from them," allowing their sacred spaces to be violated by enemies.
The most startling revelation comes when Ezekiel is spiritually transported to the temple, where he witnesses seventy elders worshipping before walls carved with images of unclean animals. These leaders had convinced themselves that "God does not see us" while they mixed elements of true worship with pagan practices. They maintained the outward motions of devotion while introducing "abominations" into their sacred spaces.
This ancient warning speaks powerfully to modern believers. How many of us have introduced elements into our worship or private lives that God might find detestable? The human tendency to want tangible objects to focus our devotion—something visible to represent the invisible God—continues today, though in different forms. Sometimes our idolatry appears as pride in accomplishments, materialism that displaces God, or theological compromises that make faith more acceptable to our culture.
God's judgment isn't a comfortable subject, but it's one we must confront. The sobering reality is that God remains the same "yesterday, today, and forever." While believers experience grace through Christ, this doesn't mean He overlooks persistent rebellion. Examine your worship and life for any "mixed" devotion. Have you introduced elements contrary to God's revealed will? Are you taking comfort in the idea that God overlooks sin simply because judgment hasn't yet fallen?
Take time today to reflect on what truly belongs in your worship and what might be displacing your devotion to the one true God.
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Today, on Reasoning Through the Bible, we have a section of the Word of God that is much ignored, and it's much ignored because it's very severe. It's a message that does not fall well upon our ears. It's a message that is very severe. It hurts to hear it, but it's a very necessary message from our Lord, god. We're in Ezekiel, chapter 7, and so far in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 1,. God showed his majesty and his glory when he appeared to Ezekiel. In chapters following that, god gave Ezekiel a message and he gave him a very difficult task to do. Ezekiel was to act out many of the messages from God. He was to build a model of Jerusalem and lay siege to it. He was to lay down on his side for over a year and he was to cook his food over manure. He was to eat a very small amount of food. At one point God had him cut off all of his hair and weigh it and scatter it about the city as an example of judgment that is coming to the people of Israel.
Speaker 1:Ezekiel has a difficult message. Like many of God's prophets, the people did not want to hear the message. Today we're in the last part of Ezekiel, chapter 7. Even today, people are like the people of ancient Israel. We really don't want to hear this message, but it's in the Word of God and we have it before us, so there's always value in it and there's always things we can learn. Let's go ahead and dive in. You have your Bible. Open it to Ezekiel, chapter 7. Steve, can you start at verse 20 and read through verse 27?
Speaker 2:They transformed the beauty of his ornaments into pride and they make the images of their abominations and their detestable things with it. Therefore, I will make it an abhorrent thing to them. I will give it into the hands of the foreigners as plunder and to the wicked of the earth as spoil, and they will profane it. I will also turn my face from them and they will profane my secret place. Then robbers will enter and profane it. Make the chain, for the land is full of bloody crimes and the city is full of violence. Therefore, I will bring the worst of the nations and they will possess their houses.
Speaker 2:I will also make the pride of the strong ones cease and their holy places will be profaned. When anguish comes, they will seek peace, but there will be none. Disaster will come upon disaster and rumor will be added to rumor, and they will seek a vision from a prophet, but the law will be lost from the priest and counsel from the elders. The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with horror and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. According to their conduct, I will deal with them and by their judgments I will judge them and they will know that I am the Lord.
Speaker 1:We have here a very harsh, very severe message. He tells the people disaster will come upon disaster. Steve, how severe is this judgment from God?
Speaker 2:It's to the extent of what he's talking about. The city is going to be destroyed, jerusalem is going to be destroyed completely and the temple is going to be destroyed. It's pretty serious for that to happen. This is a temple that was built for him. The glory of the Lord dwelt there, and now it's going to be gone, so it sounds pretty serious.
Speaker 1:The language here is very severe. It seems to be too late for the Jewish people. The tone here from God is judgment has come and it's going to be a very, very unpleasant, very severe judgment. God's judgment here in this message, it is sure and it is inevitable. He says in one place we just read you're going to seek a word from me and you will hear none. Disaster upon disaster. It's a very, very harsh message.
Speaker 1:In verse 20, he seems to be very angry, especially angry at the images that were created. People always seem to want some sort of object in front of them that they can look at in order to pray or worship in front of God. Expressly said do not make images. He is angry that Israel repeatedly disregarded his commands. Remember where this is in the history of Israel. This is way towards the end of the kings and is in the midst of a period when Babylon and Assyria are coming in for judgments. So, yes, it's very severe, very harsh. In for judgments. So, yes, it's very severe, very harsh. We ask ourselves why. It's because he had already sent many prophets with many messages and the people had not repented, correct, steve.
Speaker 2:That is correct. During this time, he has three prophets that are working, as we mentioned before. Jeremiah is back in Jerusalem, had been prophesying to the people there. Daniel was taken in the first wave and he's prophesying and dealing with the king and the king's court. And Ezekiel, as we're going through, he's with the remnant of the people that have been taken into captivity. So he's dealing with the people even though they're going through this.
Speaker 2:And, glenn, I think one thing that we miss whenever God says don't make graven images is what you just said a while ago is it seems like human beings need to have some type of an object. Well, one of the things that they would do with these objects that the priests from these other gods is that their incantations and their worshiping of it and the sacrifices that they would make in it would be to bring that god into that idol that they were worshiping. In other words, they were having the god coming into the idol, bringing the god down from the high place, from the heavens, into the idol that they worship. Now, they didn't do this with everything, but this was with some of them. God says don't make any graven images, not of me or any other gods. I think people lose this little bit of actuality of what was happening, little bit of actuality of what was happening. You certainly don't do that with the God Most High to bring incantations, to bring God down to you. It's a throwback to the Tower of Babel. That was one of the things that they were trying to do.
Speaker 2:This is God Most High, the one of the creation, and he's saying don't make any images, because it leads you into these areas where you're trying to manipulate the gods and bring them down to you. And I am the one and only God. You don't have to do that. I work among you. I bring prophets to you. I come through angels and give you messages and stuff. I bring you judges whenever you cry out in order to free you. I am a personal God, so don't make graven images. These other gods are false gods and they're not going to protect you. It's just bringing the flavor of God Most High. Yahweh is a personal God and whenever you worship a God through graven images and whenever you worship a God through graven images, you lose the personality or the personal relationship and you're worshiping that object rather than worshiping the God. So I can understand why he is a jealous God, as he puts it, whenever he gives the commandments to Moses.
Speaker 1:Again, the middle of verse 20 is where he says this they made the images of their abominations and the detestable things. What's interesting to me is the people doing this obviously didn't think they were in front of an abomination or a detestable thing. Whatever it was they were in front of, they must have thought it was beautiful or worthy of prayer, but God calls it an abomination, a detestable thing. So what we find is that humans can convince ourselves that this object or this statue that we're praying in front of is actually a beautiful thing. It could very well be very artistic, but God calls it an abomination.
Speaker 1:What we need to be very, very, very, very careful of is having objects inside where we worship. Any kind of an object or a statute we should not be praying in front of or we are potentially guilty of the same things, as ancient Israel is here and God will bring upon us the same punishment as he did his children back in ancient Israel In verse 22, he says I will turn my face from them, steve. Does God sometimes turn his back on disobedient people?
Speaker 2:Steve, yes, he does, and we've got examples of that through scripture. One of the ways that he does that is it says that he will turn them over to themselves, and that's a characteristic of somebody that loves somebody else. If you have a person that doesn't want to have anything to do with you, then the loving thing to do is to let them go on their own way. Let them do their own thing, not try and hold them prisoner. Try to make them love you. So, yeah, he does turn his back on those that don't want to have anything to do with him. From time to time, he also shows the other side that he will bring them back or that he will love them and protect them whenever they turn to him. But yes, there are times whenever he does that.
Speaker 1:We have here a people that God is judging, and it says in this passage they will profane my secret place. The Jews thought that the temple in Jerusalem was their protection being in the temple, or that temple was sacred ground and they thought God would never allow an enemy to come in and conquer it. God says that when he withdraws from Jerusalem, even the temple will be desecrated. God says nothing is going to save you. The judgment of God here is very harsh. And we have other places in the Bible where God's judgment is very harsh. The book of Revelation says that God will judge the world just as severely. We have judgments in the other prophets here.
Speaker 1:And we have today people, I think, just like these ancient peoples in Israel. We don't want to believe that God could be harsh. We don't want to believe that God could be angry and judgmental. We want to have a loving God. We want to have a friendly God. We don't want to believe that God could be angry and judgmental. We want to have a loving God. We want to have a friendly God. We want to have an accepting God. Steve, I just find that today people aren't any different. We don't like to talk about these passages. They don't get taught because it makes us uncomfortable. The idea of an angry God that we have to answer to. The idea of an angry God that we have to answer to Do people today reject this message, just like the people in ancient Israel rejected it? We?
Speaker 2:see that they do, because we have examples in our current time of people that are in churches, places of assembly that claim to be Christians, and they mock God, they make fun of him and, through the messages and the so-called sermons they have, they basically say God is so loving that he loves us in the abhorrent things that we do. In its essence, they thumb their nose at God and say that he's going to overlook the pagan things that they preach about, the pagan things that they do in these churches that are supposed to be preaching the word of God. We have it in our day to day and the thing is like you said. They preach the all loving God, that's all accepting. They don't preach the judgment of the God that abhors these things and that he will turn his face from them and that they're going to have to answer to these things at some point in time. As long as you don't talk about having to answer for the actions that you have to do to a God, then you can go ahead and live whatever lifestyle you want to.
Speaker 1:That's exactly the problem. People today think that God will never judge the church the way he judged ancient Israel or as harshly. My friend, our God is the same yesterday, today and forever. We have a God that, yes, he has declared his children that have accepted Jesus Christ. He has declared us sinless and when he looks at us he sees Christ's righteousness. But, my friend, if we think that because we're in the church then God will not pour out his anger on his children when we are grossly disobedient, then we are the ones that are mistaken. He judged ancient Israel, even though he promised them. Then he will judge us if we continue in sin. Just because we are Christians doesn't mean that he's not going to deal with us if we have rebellion and sin.
Speaker 1:The church needs to be very serious about studying the Word of God and submitting ourselves to it. If we just decide anything that feels good to my flesh I get to do because I believe in Christ, well, we are inviting God's anger the way that the ancient Israelites invited God's anger. That brings us to the end of chapter 7. And moving into chapter 8, we see the language here where he starts another vision, another section of the Word of God he mentions in chapter 8, verse 1,. He talks about the year and the day and the location and that's a textual clue that he's giving a new message. Steve, can you read the first 12 verses of Ezekiel chapter?
Speaker 2:8?. It came about in the sixth year, on the fifth day of the sixth month, as I was sitting in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me At the hand of the Lord. God fell on me there, at the hand of the Lord, god fell on me there. Then I looked and behold a likeness as the appearance of a man. From his loins and downward there was the appearance of fire, and from his loins and upward the appearance of brightness, like the appearance of glowing metal. He stretched out the form of his hand and caught me by a lock of my head and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me, in the visions of God, to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the idol of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy, was located, and behind the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the appearance which I saw in the plain. Then he said to me Son of man, raise your eyes now toward the north.
Speaker 2:I raised my eyes toward the north and behold, to the north of the altar gate, this idol of jealousy was at the entrance.
Speaker 2:And he said to me Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations which the house of Israel are committing here, so that I would be far from my sanctuary but yet you will see still greater abominations.
Speaker 2:Then he brought me to the entrance of the court and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall. He said to me, son of man, now dig through the wall. So I dug through the wall and behold an entrance. And he said to me Go in and see the wicked abominations that they are committing here. So I entered and looked and behold every form of creeping thing and beasts and detestable things, with all the idols of the house of Israel were carved on the wall all around. Standing in front of them were seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, standing among them, each man with his censer in his hand and the fragrance of the cloud of incense rising. Then he said to me, son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, the Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.
Speaker 1:With this we have God taking Ezekiel in a vision to the temple in Jerusalem. We know it's a vision. He says it is here and also this vision lasts from here at the beginning of chapter 8 through the end of chapter 11. And at the end of 11, in 11, verse 24, ezekiel says it was a vision. So we have here God giving a message to Ezekiel in a vision, and in verse 1 here of chapter 8, he again gives the year, the day and the month and where he was at the time. So he's giving a documentation of where this happened and who was there and what was happening. We have again a first-person eyewitness account of Ezekiel, who wrote this and saying this is what happened to me. Here's the date and where it happened. Whenever he gives the year, month and day like this, it's a clue not only of documenting it historically, but it's also a clue to us that he's giving a new message.
Speaker 1:This is where God gives an additional message to Ezekiel and he's passing it on to the leadership of Jerusalem. And in verse 2, he sees a figure of a man who is glowing with fire. We take it this is a messenger from God, an angel, if you will. In verse 3, he's taken through the air to the inner court of the temple in Jerusalem. Now Ezekiel sees God in this passage. He says in verse 4, like the appearance which I saw in the plain, that takes us back to chapter 1. If we remember, all of chapter 1 was this image of God arriving with his chariot and we had the beings with the four faces and the wings and the wheels within wheels. He's seeing. That's what I saw. It was just like that vision when I was there in chapter 1. So he takes them. God is here. God is again arriving with Ezekiel, giving him a message, and he takes them to the temple in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:This vision over the next several chapters are about the temple. Before we get into the specifics of it, what is the significance of this temple? Why there? What is the significance to the Jewish people of this temple? Why is it important?
Speaker 2:The temple was the central part of their worship of God Yahweh, and it was built under the specifications that he had given them as to how it should be built. And the temple proper itself contained two rooms. One was called the holy place, and then there was a large curtain behind it was what was called the holy of holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, and it was there where they worshiped God. The lampstand was there, the table of showbread was there, the altar of incense in this inner place of the temple, and then outside of that you had several courts that were there, and the one outside was where the brazen altar was, where they did their sacrifices and things like that, and then beyond that you had even more outer courts of storage rooms and other areas that helped to support the temple of the worship, but the temple itself was the very center of their worship, of their god Yahweh.
Speaker 1:Exactly the temple and the temple grounds. That was the center of all of the worship. It was the center of the government, because the government and the religion were tied up together. It's the most important place of worship in all of Israel. It says here in verse 3, he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the inner court. There was an inner court and an outer court. From that north gate of the inner court, what would Ezekiel have been able to have seen?
Speaker 2:Well, like most gates that are coming in, he would have seen the brazen altar that I mentioned before that's on the outside and the temple itself. Obviously it's up on a mount, mount Moriah, so it's an area that could be seen throughout all of Jerusalem and it was something that was to behold. Now it doesn't look like some of the depictions people might have today of the ornate temple, of Herod's temple. That was the rebuilt temple and that was during Jesus's time that Herod had come in and made it real opulent, but nonetheless it is a temple that has a permanent structure. It's not a tabernacle anymore of a tent, a meeting. It's a permanent structure that's there. But he would have seen the goings-on through this north gate.
Speaker 1:Again, this was the center of things. From that north gate he wouldn't have been able to see the altar where the sacrifices happen. That is the center of the most important parts of Jewish worship and ability to approach God. And it says towards the end of verse 3, at this entrance of this north gate there was the seat of the idol of jealousy. So the first thing he sees from this gate in the inner court is a statue, an idol, right there. What's the significance, steve, of there being an idol there?
Speaker 2:It's right there in the shadow of the temple itself. So, once again, as we've talked about this idol worship, it's just amazing that the people would do this right there in this courtyard of the temple area, where they're worshiping their one true God, the God of Israel, the one that has brought them out of Egypt, as he mentioned so many times, and has brought them through so many things Story of Judges, the story of the kings and all of that. Here they are brazen enough to build an idol and a statue right there on the courtyard, in the temple complex area. It takes a lot of gumption to do that.
Speaker 1:This shows the depths of the idol worship is the fact that they had put a statue of an idol right in the center of where the true worship should happen. In verse 12, it even says that the elders of Israel were there praying and worshiping before these statues, these idols. And he says in verse 8, he digs a hole through the wall of the temple to get inside. This would have been the temple building proper to the holy place inside. Once he digs through this hole, look down at verse 10. What does he see inside the temple?
Speaker 2:He sees along the wall carvings of all these different type of animals and type of idols that were put together that represent all different types of gods. It harkens back to Egypt and their past history where you had all different types of gods represented through animals or hybrid man-anim of different areas of fertility or with rain or the sun god, things like that. We talked at a very extensive length when we went through Exodus Glenn about these gods and they had a god for every type of activity. Where Yahweh is the most high god, he is the only god. There are no other gods and he's the creator. But here they are. They're in this secret room in the temple complex area with all these reliefs and little statues and idols of other gods. Again, they think it's a secret place but it's not.
Speaker 1:He says specifically there in verse 10, he climbs through the wall into the holy place inside the temple proper and he says creeping things were there and beasts and detestable things, and these were carved into the walls and all around. So they had placed statues and images of creeping things. This would be bugs and beasts and animals. Steve, this smells like unclean animals. Whenever we see animals anywhere, especially in the Old Testament, we have to ask ourselves does this align with the clean and unclean animals that are given in the Mosaic Law In the book of Leviticus? It outlines which animals were clean and which weren't, so creeping things were on the unclean list. What is the significance of there being unclean animals images on the walls and says all around inside the holy place. What does this tell?
Speaker 2:us they weren't to be around any unclean animals. If they came in contact with unclean animals, they would have to go off and do a ritual to purify themselves again to be able to come into the presence of the Lord or to be able to do the priestly work around there. So the fact that they're going into this room and you have all of these idols of the unclean animals and insects, beetles, scarabs were a big thing. Once again, with Egyptian idol worship, it's just a picture of them not adhering to the statutes that God had commanded them. Ostensibly they didn't go out of here from worshiping these different idols of these unclean animals and go purify themselves. They would just walk out of there and maybe go about their regular priestly duties.
Speaker 1:So all of this is just a slap in the face of God that they had brought unclean things to the holy place shows that the Jewish leadership had fallen to the depths as far as they could fall.
Speaker 1:That they had unclean things of all type of animals. That they would have unclean ones in the very holy and holiest places in Jewish worship was a complete slap in the face to God and it was a complete rejection of the true God, and shows how detestable their worship had become. They had brought in outside things into their worship. And it's easy, steve, for us to sit here and point fingers at these ancient Israelites saying, oh, they should have known better than to bring foreign things into their worship. Steve, are we just as guilty Do we sometimes bring foreign things into our worship in our churches and even sometimes bring it into our personal lives? I know I've been guilty of waking up someday and finding, wow, I've brought something that is not of God into my life and I need to get rid of it. Can we be just as guilty of bringing in detestable things into our personal life and into our worship.
Speaker 2:There are statues that people venerate, there are stations that they go to, and they will pray to each one of these saints for different reasons, and they are to leave cards there, or they are to leave money there, or they are to do different things for these statues whenever they go, and they use the word venerate I would use the word worship them because they want to go through these saints in order to have a relationship or a prayer that they're saying to have them intercede for them to Jesus. There's that aspect. Another aspect is anything that we think that we have done on our own and that we have done without the blessing of God can come between us and God, much like Nebuchadnezzar and his pride of overlooking. Look at all the stuff that I have done and what I have put together Whenever God had previously said you have these things here because I have allowed you to have them and I have actually helped you to acquire this and I helped you to build this kingdom up. And it was this pride, whenever Nebuchadnezzar was overlooking this, that he was then turned into a beast as these depicted in Daniel for a period of seven years.
Speaker 2:Your answer is not just idols or statues to worship or venerate, but anything that we might think is prideful that comes between us and the relationship. Look what I did. I built this company, even though maybe throughout that whole time you were praying to God. Lord, lead me and give me wisdom on the things that I need to do in order to make this company better so that I can support my family and so that I can then do something with this company and the proceeds from it to worship you and to prosper the kingdom. But then we turn around at some point and say, look at what I built, and we leave God out of the equation. So, yes, I think there's many things that we can do, not necessarily having specific statues, but tangible things that come between us and God through the pride that we have In chapter 8, verse 11, it says Standing in front of them were seventy elders of the house of Israel.
Speaker 1:So there were seventy of them and he names one of them and it says in there that each man had a censer in his hand. Now, a censer was a small container where they would burn incense. Back in Numbers 16-17, the priests were told to have the ability to burn incense in the temple. So that part of it was part of what was left over from true worship that God had given them. So what they were doing here is they had mixed true worship with false worship. They had gone through the motions of true worship of the true God, yahweh, but they had brought in creeping things, detestable things, at the same time. They thought they could worship both. This was why God was jealous. God says there will be none of this. His command is to get rid of these things, take them out. They shouldn't be here. This is why God is about to judge them.
Speaker 1:The priests were going through the motions of worshiping God, but had abominations in there as well. At the end of verse 12, the priests were convinced that God was not going to act, that he had already gone away and we're not going to see what they were doing. Steve, I just can't help but find that there's situations like that today. We have churches that are still going through the motions. Maybe there was a time in the past when they were doing true worship, but they brought in a lot of extra things that God never commanded them to, and some of them are quite detestable, quite abhorrent to God. They have the opinion. Well, we've been doing this for a very long time and so far God's not judged us, so we must be doing right. Well, that's the exact same line of thinking that these priests in ancient Israel were doing, but the message of Ezekiel is that pain's coming this last part of 12 here, Glenn, as we started this out, you made the statement.
Speaker 2:It seems like human beings always want to have something visual in front of them, always want to have something visual in front of them, and this last part of 12 reminds me. They come out of Egypt and the people come to Aaron and say Moses has been up on the mountain so long. We don't know what he's doing up there, we don't know if he's ever coming back down. Make us a golden calf. So Aaron did it. It's the same type of thought I think. They say here that the Lord has forsaken us. So therefore, where do they turn? They turn to false idols, they turn to false gods. That's just always fascinated, how quickly that we can turn away from God whenever we think that he's not around us.
Speaker 1:This is very strong medicine and it's not easy to take, but it's very necessary and it's not going to get any better because next time we're going to see even more of this very strong medicine. So I trust that you'll be back here with us next time as we continue to reason through the book of Ezekiel.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
