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
S9 || The Dark Corners of False Worship || Ezekiel 8:13 - 9:4 || Session 9 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
What happens when God's own people corrupt His sacred space with pagan practices? Ezekiel's temple vision provides a startling glimpse into divine patience reaching its limit.
The prophet receives a disturbing revelation of what's happening in Jerusalem's temple: women openly weeping for the pagan deity Tammuz, while men turn their backs on the sanctuary to worship the rising sun. These weren't secretive acts but brazen displays of spiritual unfaithfulness in the very place dedicated to Yahweh. The parallels to contemporary religious compromise are unmistakable.
Throughout our discussion, we wrestle with a perplexing question: How could people who had witnessed God's miracles and received His law repeatedly return to false gods? This pattern of spiritual amnesia resonates today as churches incorporate cultural elements that contradict biblical teaching. We examine the fine line between sincere religious practice and false worship that merely imitates true devotion.
What makes this passage uniquely comforting amid its severe warnings is God's protection of the faithful minority. Those who "sigh and groan" over the abominations—who recognize and mourn the corruption around them—receive a protective mark. This foreshadows the New Testament concept of believers being sealed by the Holy Spirit, a reminder that even in times of judgment, God preserves those whose hearts remain true to Him.
The ultimate message of Ezekiel's vision speaks directly to modern believers: God's patience with corruption has limits, but His recognition of genuine faith never fails. As we navigate a world of competing spiritual claims, this ancient prophecy challenges us to examine what truly captures our devotion and whether we're grieved or comfortable with compromise in our worship.
Join us as we reason through these challenging passages and discover timeless principles about authentic worship, divine justice, and the mercy extended to those who remain faithful when surrounded by spiritual corruption.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. We have a ministry where we go verse by verse through the Word of God. We have teaching materials so you can help your church to have lesson plans. Check out our website at reasoningthroughthebiblecom and you'll find all of our resources there. Today we're working our way through the book of Ezekiel. If you have your Bible, open it to Ezekiel, chapter 8. Ezekiel is in the midst of a vision that God is showing him of the temple in Jerusalem. God is revealing to Ezekiel a message that he will repeat to the Jewish leaders in Babylon. The message is that the temple is full of very detestable things. Last time we saw that in the very holy place in the temple in Jerusalem, they had images of unclean animals and idols there. Today we're going to find out what the people that are supposed to be worshiping God are doing, and we're going to find that it's equally severe, equally bad. Steve, can you read Ezekiel 8, verses 13 and 14?
Speaker 2:And he said to me Yet you will see still greater abominations which they are committing. Then he brought me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord's house, which was toward the north, and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.
Speaker 1:Tammuz was a pagan deity that was part of the annual plant cycle, where the plants would grow in the spring and then die in the fall. So worship of Tammuz, this pagan deity they would rejoice in the spring, when life comes back, then mourn in the fall, when the plants start dying for the year. So mourning or weeping for Tammuz means that these women were participating in a pagan awful worship practice. Tammuz was an idol. They were lamenting for an idol. They were participating in a pagan worship service inside the very temple grounds. Steve, how could people get to the point where they're so misguided that they're participating in pagan worship services inside the very Temple Mount in Jerusalem?
Speaker 2:Glenn this is something that has perplexed me for years and it still does. Here are people that have a history of the creator of the world, creator of everything, the most high God, the God of Israel, yahweh. He has taken them and all the miracles that he did, bringing them out of Egypt, bringing them into the land. We've gone through those, as we've gone through the books of Exodus and Judges and Joshua and et cetera, and throughout their history he has shown himself to them through these miracles. Yet the people continue to go back to these idols, and it's something that has just mystified me through the years.
Speaker 2:I don't really know how to explain it, but for some reason they just keep getting lured back to these false idols and these false gods that really haven't done anything for them. Even when they were doing the golden calf, as we ended the last session, they were attributing the golden calf the god of what Aaron had built, of the golden calf to bringing them out of Egypt. So that was just within a few days of them coming out of Egypt. So I don't know. I really don't know how to explain it, but I do know that we need to guard against it. We need to guard against it if we come to a place where we think God has forsaken us or left us, we need to stay faithful and look back on the times where he has guided us and been with us and keep faithful to him, because he is going to stay faithful to us.
Speaker 1:It's amazing to me as well that people can see and taste of the true things of God. They can see all of the wonderful, wise things that he reveals to us and see his hand and learn about his great things in the scriptures, and yet they can also get so far from him. They care more for an idol than they do the God of the universe. It's just amazing to me as well that people will pray before a statue when God has commanded so much to keep these images out, that people will participate in a pagan worship service and do so inside of where true worship should happen. Now, steve, again, as we said many times, it's real easy for us to point fingers at ancient Israel. Are we any better than these people?
Speaker 2:We're always vulnerable to do those things and so we have to be on guard, as I mentioned before. But we have churches today that, as I again mentioned last session, that have statues that they venerate different things that they're supposed to do. Yeah, we're vulnerable to it today and, of course, the people use the word venerate. They don't say we worship them, we honor them, but really, when you get down to it, much of the stuff they're doing is they're worshiping these saints because they want to have them intercede for them in communicating with God.
Speaker 1:How can I check myself and how can I check my church and see if we have succumbed to some of this as well? How can I tell if I am guilty of bringing in pagan things from the world into my?
Speaker 2:worship. If we're going directly to God and worshiping God directly, that's it. That's all we have to do. Anything else that we bring into it, or anything else that we say that we need to have intercede for us other than Jesus Christ, then it's an idol. It's something that can come between us and God. That's the way that we can check ourselves.
Speaker 1:Just to remind ourselves of where this is in Jewish history, these practices had been going on for quite a long time. God had sent prophets, and Israel had ignored them. He had judged them different ways, and they would always come back to this idol worship. God went on and on with Israel, but here in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah, he finally gets to a point where he says no more, it will stop here, and that's the harsh message of the book of Ezekiel and the harsh message of the book of Jeremiah. Here's the question for us, though.
Speaker 1:If God gets to the point with Israel where, okay, he's allowed this sin, this pagan worship, to go on for a very long time and not acted, but he gets to a point with them where he says no more, it's going to stop here. We have these harsh judgments in this book. Is he going to let us off the hook if we incorporate these things into the church? In other words, we at the church can say, hey, we've been doing this for a very long time. God's never judged us up to now, and we just feel like that's the best thing for us. If we turn our backs on God, are we going to get away with it?
Speaker 2:We're not going to get away with it. In the last session it was a secret place that God showed Ezekiel the hole in the wall that led to a secret room. That's how the elders the 70 that were there that were described it. This is a secret place that God doesn't know anything about, and they had idols there and carvings on the wall. It hasn't changed in our day.
Speaker 2:If, in our worshiping today and I use that word loosely from the standpoint of some of the things that are going on in supposed Christian churches and maybe specifically I could say progressive Christianity in our day there's mocking of God and they're saying the same type of things. God is going to overlook what we're doing. God doesn't really care about these things that we're doing in secret, and I can tell you it's not in secret. There's nothing that we do that is in secret from God. He knows everything. God says explicitly I will not be mocked. The people with progressive Christianity and the other areas that are mocking God. There's going to be an answer to it at some day. There's going to be a judgment on it, and I wouldn't want to be standing next to some of these people that are openly mocking God and the things that they do In this account in Ezekiel, chapter 8, we just saw the women were off doing this pagan worship practices for this pagan deity.
Speaker 1:let's read verses 15 and 16 and see what the men were doing. It's not any better. He said to me Do you see this son of man? Yet you will see still greater abominations than these. Then he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house and behold, at the entrance to the picture of our temple, we find that the main gate to the temple court was on the east side of the temple. The men were standing on the porch of the temple proper with their backs to the temple and turned their faces towards the east, and it says they were prostrating themselves worshiping the sun. This is just completely amazing. Again, to turn towards the rising of the sun, towards the east, they had to turn their backs on God. To worship this creation, the sun, they had to physically turn their back on God. They were worshiping the Son. It just floors me that they're, as Romans 1 says, they're worshiping the creation rather than the Creator.
Speaker 2:Yes, it floors me as well that they once again think that they can get away with this Right there in the shadow of the temple. It's a brazen slap on the face of God is the only way I can describe it. It just makes you think what are going through people's heads whenever they do these type of things?
Speaker 1:And we tend to see these people here. Make note. These people were sincere and they were religious and there was probably somebody standing on the sidelines saying, ezekiel, these people are doing their thing and you do your thing, and we need to be very pluralistic here. We need to get along and go along. Why be judgmental? Well, the Lord, god says I created these people, I created the universe, I gave you the true path and you're rejecting it for these falsehoods. These people were still religious. They were religious, but they were falsely religious.
Speaker 1:Not all paths lead to God. There is a true path and a false path, and these men were confused. They had fallen out of the true way into a false way. Just because they're religious doesn't mean it's true. There is a false way. If we ask ourselves, what confusion do we see today? Steve, I can think of a fairly lengthy list.
Speaker 1:Yahweh, the true God of the Bible, is not Allah. It's not the same God. Our God is not the same God as an idol. People today pray in front of statues and prostrate themselves in front of idols, and it's false worship, says the one true God. Jesus said I am the way. No one gets to the Father, but by me.
Speaker 1:Now I always have to remind people I didn't make that up. I wasn't saying that it's Jesus. He said I am the way and nobody gets to the Father but through him. We either accept that and submit ourselves to the one true God or we're going to have some sort of mixture of false worship and will ultimately be judged for that. We will not get off the hook, just like these people didn't get off the hook. The criticism of today is that God is jealous. Why should we give respect to a jealous God? Well, my friend, he created the world. We're living on his planet, breathing his air. He made us and he can lay out the truth for us. We can go and accept falsehoods, but we're not going to find our way to God, we're not going to find our way to heaven, if we insist on false worship.
Speaker 2:I think, glenn, that there's one area where we get off base from the New Testament perspective. We have John 3.16. That says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. So we take that verse and it's a true verse. God did love the world so much that he came himself in Jesus Christ and lived a sinless life and died and was buried and resurrected and lives today so that we could have eternal life.
Speaker 2:But there's people that just stop there and they don't want to talk about the judgment of not following God or not worshiping God. And then they go to the opposite extreme and say well, I don't want to worship any type of a God that's going to punish me if I don't worship him. That's not what we're saying. There's a balance between the two.
Speaker 2:God loved the world that he provided a satisfactory sacrifice, but there's consequences to the sin. There's consequences for not following him, and many times not following him means doing abominable things in his sight worshiping other gods, worshiping other creation, just like these men were doing. They were worshiping the sun, something that was created by God. There's a balance between the two. We tend to in our day and age, just want to look at the loving side. But, as you've been pointing out, god is saying now, at this particular period. But, as you've been pointing out, god is saying now, at this particular period enough is enough. I'm not going to allow it anymore. And there's a future day coming in our future that God is going to say the same thing Enough is enough.
Speaker 1:And there's going to be judgment as for all the abominable things that y'all are doing. I've got a kind of a homely illustration that I think will help us realize the significance of what's going on here. Let's say you fall in love and the person that you're falling in love with you want to get married. So all the preparations for marriage, and you actually do get married and the marriage is a real happy time. But then, two or three days after the marriage, your spouse says well, I know I married you, but I want to go hang around with all my old lovers too. Then they take off every night and they're gone across town for somewhere. And when they come back, you ask them well, where'd you go? And they say, well, that's none of your business. I mean, I want to stay married to you, but where I go is it's not really any of your business as long as I'm still married to you. What kind of a marriage is that? Is that a true marriage? Would it make you angry? I mean, how is the average person going to respond? Well, steve, that's not a marriage.
Speaker 1:And you could see where God says okay, I brought you out of Egypt. I created you as a nation, I gave you the truth. I set you up. I defeated your enemies, I gave you the true path. Now you're continually bringing in and worshiping somebody else. You can see that's not a relationship. That's why God can finally say I'm drawing an end to this. And it happened. After this Babylonian captivity, the Jewish people never had idol worship again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but look to what extent that it cost them. It cost them being taken off into captivity, their city and their temple being torn down and ransacked. Their kingdom had become divided, and all of that land was under occupation and remained under occupation for hundreds of years after that. So at what cost was it that they finally got this urge to worship other idols out of them? It was a tremendous cost, but it does show the length and extent that God will go to in order to bring people back to himself.
Speaker 1:So in this vision, god showed to Ezekiel what was going on in the temple in Jerusalem. And then, in chapter 8, verse 17 and 18, god gives the message to Ezekiel of his interpretation of this. He said to me do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they have committed here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked me repeatedly? For, behold, they are putting the twig into the nose. Therefore, I indeed will deal in wrath. My eye will have no pity, nor will I spare, and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will not listen to them. Steve, this sure seems like God's pretty angry. I sure wouldn't want to be on the other end of his wrath.
Speaker 2:No, me either. So, as we've talked about, there's a way to not experience that wrath is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust on him. God has provided a way out of that. The people that are going to feel his wrath are people that have rejected him and they've been told that this is going to happen. But I know I wouldn't want to be on that end either.
Speaker 1:Steve, here's a question. I've asked this before, but I'll ask it again. Israel God approached them and said I'm choosing you. They were God's chosen people. Today, god's working through the church. We are God's chosen people. Will God spare us if we fall away and disobey into the same type of sin, if we?
Speaker 2:have true belief and true trust in Jesus Christ. We're told that there's nothing that can take us out of his hand, that we have protection, and some of them people refer to that as once saved, always saved, and there's been some debate through the ages as to whether or not that's valid or not. I happen to believe that it is valid. So, from that perspective, no, we're secure in Jesus Christ and we're going to be protected and we're going to be taken Now. That said, I also believe that we're indwelled with the Holy Spirit whenever we become a believer and that the Holy Spirit is constantly going to be drawing us back. My testimony is I went through a period of time where I wasn't in close relationship with Jesus Christ and I wasn't doing real bad things, but I had walked away a little bit from him and then I came back later and I've had a close relationship ever since. To your exact question, glenn, was God going to let us off the hook?
Speaker 2:If we're true believers, we're going to face a judgment. It's called the Bema Seat Judgment but that judgment doesn't have anything to do with our salvation. It does have to do with our rewards. I think there's going to be many, many people that are going to lose rewards or not have rewards that they could have had by the way that they act once they are Christians. There's still a judgment that's going to happen, but it's not going to be a wrathful judgment. That's going to happen to us that are in Christ, the body of Christ, the so-called church.
Speaker 1:Up to now in the book of Ezekiel, god has been describing why he is angry with the Jewish people, the people of Israel. Chapter 9, we're still in this vision. But in chapter 9, god starts meting out his judgment and punishment. We've seen why he's angry. Now we're going to see what he's going to do about it. And it's not very pretty. As a matter of fact, it's quite ugly. We're going to have a very unpleasant chapter here. In chapter 9, god is going to mark out those who are his own, and God puts a mark on his own and all the others get killed. God's glory is also going to leave the temple in the process from chapters 9 through 11. The glory of God leaves the temple and God is removing his blessing from the Jewish people. God is being just here. He is finally giving them what they deserve. Steve, can you read the first four verses of Ezekiel, chapter 9?
Speaker 2:Then he cried out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying Draw near O executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand. Behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his shattering weapon in his hand, and among them was a certain man clothed in linen, with a riding case at his loins, and they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. His loins, and they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. Then the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherub on which it had been to the threshold of the temple, and he called to the man clothed in linen whose loins was the writing case. The Lord said to him Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.
Speaker 1:We have here, in verse 1, god bringing in executioners, and the executioners are going to go to Jerusalem. He tells them to bring their weapons. So the executioners are bringing their weapons. It's no secret what they're about to do. In verse 2, six executioners come plus a man with a writing case. So the writing case is God is going to have him put a mark on the forehead of those that are truly following God, the ones that are mourning for all of the abominations, and all the others are going to get killed. That's the purpose of the man with the writing instruments. God is going to mark out those that are to be saved, the true believers, the ones who actually are following him. All the others are going to be executed.
Speaker 1:Steve, I submit that in our day we can take a great lesson here. This is in the midst of God pouring out his wrath on an unbelieving and disobedient world. Here, at least to people, we can take comfort that, in the midst of a time when God is going to pour out his wrath, god still knows who it is that truly loves him and will follow him. And he's going to take a pen and write our name in the book of life. And God is also going to document what's going to happen. He knows, he keeps records and he marks out those that are really his children. Even in a time where God is pouring out his wrath, we have some comfort in knowing that God is going to do it justly and if we but submit to him and love him, that he will put a mark on them protection, just like when they were coming out of Egypt.
Speaker 2:The blood on the doorpost and the lentils was a sign for the death angel to pass over their house and a sign of protection for those who would truly believe. Whenever they did that and put that markings on their doorpost and the sacrifice, that mark that said I'm a believer in Yahweh and I follow him and I follow his directions these same people, as you pointed out, glenn, they're weeping and mourning over all the abominable things that are going on in the city. They're true believers. There's a remnant, there's always a remnant of believers in God In our day and time. Glenn, I'm glad to say that we're a remnant, that we're believers in Jesus Christ and we follow him, and that we have that seal and that marking on us, as you just so poignantly put out, that we're going to be protected from God's wrath whenever it comes.
Speaker 1:Once again, verse 4 has the instructions that God is giving out here put out that we're going to be protected from God's wrath whenever it comes. Once again, verse 4 has the instructions that God is giving out here. It says go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst. So again, god is marking out the ones that are grieving, the ones that are sighing and groaning over all of the false worship and false abominations that are in the city. The ones that are not bothered by it don't get the mark and are going to be destroyed. They're going to be executed.
Speaker 1:In our day we have also people who ignore God's law and don't really care whether there's abominations inside the church. We also have people that look around and mourn because of sin. They mourn over their own sin, they mourn over the failures of the church and they're grieved over the condition of themselves and the people around them. Those are the people that, even today, god recognizes. When our heart is torn over false worship and false things that have crept into our worship, that's when we have a heart that the Lord loves. King David committed sins, but God said that's a man after my own heart. Why? Well, because David, when confronted with his sin, grieved. Read the Psalms. He grieved, so the same is true for us, is it not, steve? In our day, we have people that are just going through the motions worshiping and they're dancing around abomination, thinking that that's okay, but just because it's religious, and we have people that their hearts are torn because of all the failures of the church. Today and still today. Nothing has changed since all the way back in Ezekiel's day.
Speaker 2:If you're at a church that is doing pagan things in their worship and what's being preached from the pulpit is not in line with the word of God and you're not stirred in your heart and mourning or disturbed like these people were here, then you should do a heart check because you should have something stirring in you saying this isn't right and I shouldn't be here.
Speaker 2:I need to go find a place where I can truly worship God. If you're not at that place, then you need to do a heart check. If you've never been a believer before, then you can be saved from God's wrath. You could have a heart where you are sensitive to these things that are being done against God by simply believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, what he's done through his death, burial and resurrection. Your name can be written in the book of life and a seal can be put on your forehead. That will give you a protection and you'll have a relationship that won't be like any other relationship that you've ever had before. If you feel that tugging in your heart from the Holy Spirit, then heed the Holy Spirit and surrender yourself and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Is what the Scripture says.
Speaker 1:All the way back here in Ezekiel, in these dark corners of the Word of God, we find such wonderful, wonderful messages, oh, that we would not neglect such great teachings, steve. There's still more. Everywhere we go we find some really gold nuggets. We're going to keep doing that as we continue to reason through the book of Ezekiel.
Speaker 2:Thank you, so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
