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
S16 || What Ancient Israel's Sins Reveal About Our Modern Hearts || Ezekiel 16:15-34 || Session 16 || Bible Study
The haunting allegory found in Ezekiel 16 reveals one of Scripture's most graphic depictions of spiritual unfaithfulness. God portrays Jerusalem as an abandoned infant He rescued, cleaned, and raised to become a beautiful bride – only to have her turn to prostitution with pagan gods using the very gifts He had lavished upon her.
We explore this powerful metaphor that uses emotionally charged language to describe Israel's spiritual adultery. The nation had taken God's generous provisions – fine clothing, jewelry, oil, and food – and redirected them toward idol worship, building pagan shrines "on every street corner." Unlike typical prostitution where payment is received, Israel was so eager to sin that they paid to do so, revealing the depths of their spiritual corruption.
Most disturbing is God's condemnation of child sacrifice, where Israelites offered their own children to pagan deities like Molech. This horrific practice represented the ultimate betrayal of God's covenant and shows how far God's people had fallen from His commands. We draw a sobering parallel between ancient child sacrifice and modern abortion practices, challenging listeners to consider whether today's society stands on any higher moral ground than ancient Israel.
The passage raises profound questions about God's patience and judgment. After centuries of prophetic warnings, Israel reached a tipping point where God "delivered them to their enemies" – language similar to Romans 1 where God "gives people over" to their sinful desires. This withdrawal of divine restraint represents God's final judgment on persistent, unrepentant sin.
For believers today, Ezekiel 16 serves as both warning and invitation. We examine how easily we too can redirect God's blessings toward modern idols of comfort, wealth, status, and pleasure. As 1 John 2:15-16 warns: "Do not love the world or anything in the world... the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world."
Let this powerful chapter challenge you to examine your heart, identify competing loyalties, and renew your commitment to wholehearted devotion to God alone. Share this episode with others struggling with divided spiritual loyalties.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
In Ezekiel, chapter 16, god gives a very graphic description of finding a baby, and it was lost and abandoned and had come from a very bad place. God picks it up, cleans it off, raises it up into a beautiful bride, and he gives a very beautiful description of this young woman. That is a symbol for the city of Jerusalem. God had raised it up to marrying age and it was a very beautiful place. And if you were with us last time, we talked about how beautiful Jerusalem was in its heyday. Today, on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to learn the next very descriptive part of how God describes how far astray that Jerusalem had gone. It started out as a very beautiful bride that God had raised up. Now we're going to see the disobedience and how ugly the disobedience is. We are in Ezekiel, chapter 16, and we're going to start at verse 15. So if you have your copy of the Word of God, turn there. Steve, can you read from verse 15 to 21?
Speaker 2:But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your fame, and you poured out your horatries on every passerby who might be willing. You took some of your clothes, made for yourself high places of various colors, and played the harlot on them, which should never come about nor happen. You also took your beautiful jewels, made of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you and made for yourself male images that you might play the harlot with them. Then you took your embroidered cloth and covered them and offered my oil and my incense before them, also my bread which I gave you, fine flour, oil and honey which I fed you you would offer before them for a soothing aroma. So it happened, declares the Lord God. Moreover, you took your sons and daughters, whom you had borne to me, and sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. Were your harlotries so small a matter? You slaughtered my children and offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire.
Speaker 1:Those of us that are conservative believers in the Bible, we hold to the inspiration of Scripture, but one of the areas that we're often guilty of stepping over is the literature value of the Word of God. This chapter chapter 16, is really just fine high literature. He gives very descriptive language. It's very interesting the way God describes what happened to Jerusalem with a mix of descriptive language and reality. He communicates some very important concepts but does so with very beautiful words, very emotional words. These are very ugly emotional words.
Speaker 1:He describes Israel as having grown up as a beautiful woman and then turning into a harlot, a prostitute, saying that she used the nice clothing that God had provided her to be a prostitute upon. Jerusalem took the fine things that God had given her and used it in a bed of prostitution. Israel took the expensive jewelry that God provided and made sexual images out of them and used them in her prostitution. Modern society is not the first to go crazy over sex. Pagans worship sex as well as some established religions do. There's some Hindu images that are specifically built around male images, just like is described here in Ezekiel 16. The ancient Israelites were taking the wealth that God provided them and using it to make expensive sex objects and using it as a prostitute would Steve? It's just a very ugly description of how far they had gone.
Speaker 2:It is, and we're using the word Israelites as the nation itself. It's the combined nation of Israel, Even though it had been split into two, into northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. We're using it in this session and on other sessions as the combined nation itself and talking about it. So, Glenn Glenn, as we see in this part here is that the nation of Israel has been unfaithful through the centuries to God and now it's getting to a point where, as we've mentioned before, he's going to take the final action for the destruction of Jerusalem, but it's also a picture of that. He's just had enough with the unfaithfulness with this nation of Israel.
Speaker 1:Look at verse 18 again. He says that he had given them these fine cloths, these embroidered cloths. Verse 18 says you took your embroidered cloths and covered them these were the shrines and the idols and offered my oil and my incense before them and the idols, and offered my oil and my incense before them. So imagine they had made shrines out of these objects, this expensive cloth, an expensive embroidered cloth that God had provided them. They were worshiping the cloth and using it as a shrine. Worst of all, they sacrificed their own children to the pagan idols. Look at verse 20. Moreover, you took your sons and daughters whom you had born to me and sacrificed them to the idols to be devoured. They had actually gone to the point where they were sacrificing their own children to an idol.
Speaker 1:This was some sort of twisted pagan idea of fertility, and it's so awful. You remember, satan is there to steal and to kill and to destroy. One of the criticisms in our day is that how harsh God was to command Joshua to go out and destroy all of the Canaanites. Well, we don't have to guess at what happens if you don't follow through with that command. Because Joshua didn't follow through with that command, at least the people under him didn't, and they didn't go out and destroy all of the Canaanites. They left many of them.
Speaker 1:Here we have, many centuries later. What we have is that, instead of Israel influencing the Canaanites for good, the opposite happened. Canaanites had influenced Israel for evil, to the point now that Israel had taken up these pagan practices of not only the sex worship, not only of the worship of objects. But here they are actually murdering their own babies before these idols. If they had done what God had commanded them to do back in Joshua's day, which was to destroy all the Canaanites, it would have saved lives here and it would have kept the Israelites from adopting these horrible pagan practices. Israel had begun to kill their own children in sacrifices to pagan statues, and in verse 21, god says the children belong to him, they were mine, you bore them to me, he says. Yet the people of Israel sacrificed them to another God.
Speaker 2:Steve, was God justified in his anger and his fury? He absolutely was, and what he means. There were these children that were born to him. Remember? The firstborn were to be dedicated to the Lord and they were to go and give a sacrifice on behalf of them from their harvest or from their cattle or whatever it might be that they had. Here he is. He's saying is that the ones that were supposed to be devoted to me. You took them and you devoted them to a false God. Not only that, but you've devoted them directly. The devotion to me was to be done through a sacrifice of something else, but no, what you've done is you actually sacrificed your child itself. Now, glenn, think about that. Think about how far someone has to fall into pagan worship of other gods to take their own child and sacrifice them to that God. I mean, that really gives me a picture of how far they had gone.
Speaker 1:If we remember what we read in the previous sessions, god was saying through Ezekiel to the Jewish people I'm going to use the sword, I'm going to use disease, I'm going to use famine and I'm going to use all of this to destroy many of you because of all these horrible practices. Destroy many of you because of all these horrible practices. If we ask the question how could people get so wicked as to sacrifice their own children and why would God get so severe in his response? Well, god had told them way back at the beginning, in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, he says if you disobey, I will curse you, and he laid out specific things he would do to them. So they knew from the very beginning this is what God is going to do.
Speaker 1:Steve, we asked that question.
Speaker 1:What just screams out of us is that how, how could people get so wicked as to sacrifice their own children? How could people get so wicked as to kill their own children? What I think of is that in our day, how could we get so wicked that we sacrifice our own children? Because we can't sit here and say that we're more sophisticated and we're more educated after two or three, 4,000 years of history, that we're any better, because in thousands of years we're more educated after two or three, four thousand years of history that we're any better, because in thousands of years we're no better, for people in our day sacrifice their own children through abortion. The fact that we find the mention of abortion in church uncomfortable tells us that we're equally depraved as these ancient Israelites. If we ask ourselves how how could they get so evil? Well, it's when we ignore God and we allow sin and we're not close to his teachings and we get so focused on ourselves that we lose track of what we're doing. Steve, we are no better than the people of ancient Israel.
Speaker 2:And that question of how could the people allow it? You have this vision in your mind of them taking these children up to this idol and putting them on this idol and, like you said, it would have been heated up to the point this idol to Molech that it just scalded the children. Now, in some cases, maybe the child had been killed before that, before they put it on there, but nevertheless the child is dead and the people allowed that to happen. The mothers or the fathers allowed them to do it and were fully behind it. And he asked the question why didn't somebody stand up and say wait a minute, this isn't the way that we're supposed to follow God, this isn't even the God that we're supposed to follow.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm sure that there were people that did that and they just maybe didn't mention it. They just stood by and watched it and they might have said, well, I'm not going to participate in that, I'm going to continue to follow Yahweh. But it had gotten to a point where not enough people had stood up to stop the practice and it had continued. I encourage people if you have never seen a video of an actual abortion there are ones that are there Go to a pro-life site and there will be videos showing what happens during an actual abortion. If you've never seen that and you're pro-abortion, I challenge you to go watch and see what actually takes place when an abortion happens.
Speaker 2:If you still come out of that and you're pro-abortion, then I submit to you you're in the same category as these people in that day and age that were taking their own children and sacrificing them, and also of the same people in this day and age that here we're talking about, of Ezekiel, that stood by and let those people sacrifice their children on that altar and said nothing about it, maybe turned around and said, well, I'm not going to do that, but they didn't stand up or didn't say anything about it.
Speaker 2:And, glenn, you made a good point about it in that when churches bring up the subject and people squirm in their aisles associated with it, then that's a problem. And it's so much of a problem that I think modern day churches don't even address the subject very often in their messages, if not at all, maybe once a year during pro-life week or something like that, but other than that they don't even mention it. And it's an abomination to the Lord that the church, the body of Christ, should be standing up in union with and crying out and saying this is wrong. We need to stop this.
Speaker 1:One of the ways we can stop it is doing what churches should be doing, which is reaching out to women in need and helping them with their physical needs, their financial needs and their family needs and their housing needs and all of the daily activities, which is one of the things that drives part of the problem with abortion. That is really the solution is to go help women in need and not just curse the darkness. Moving on in this chapter, god continues with this very descriptive, very emotionally gripping description of the horribleness of the people of Israel. I'm reading, starting in verse 22. Besides all your abominations and harlotries, you did not remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare and squirming in your blood. Then it came about after all your wickedness. Woe to you, declares the Lord, god that you built yourself a shrine and made yourself a high place in every square. You built yourself a high place at the top of every street and made your beauty abominable. Steve, he gives a very graphic description here. First of all, what is a high place?
Speaker 2:A high place is where they would go and build their altars to these false gods. It would literally be on a hilltop or a mountaintop. It would be a place where all the other surrounding city or people that were in the valley would be able to see. It was up on a high place where they could look up and see the activity that was taking place there and also that it was a place of worship. It was a way to call the people to an area to worship these false gods, because everybody knew where it was in the community. It was on a high place.
Speaker 1:They would build shrines. They would put a place there, usually on a hill, a place to overlook. People would be drawn to this literally higher place, but it was the place you'd put a pagan statue. You'd put a statue there and build a shrine. So that's what he's talking about, and in verses 24 and 25, the Lord condemns them for putting these shrines and these statues in the public square and on every street. It says they were totally given over to false worship. Even today, if we travel around some cultures and some cities, they put shrines and statues on public streets and on the hills, and God condemns this practice the idea of putting a shrine with an object that you would pray in front of. Well, these people were doing the same things as what happens in many of our places today. There's something about the human nature that wants some object in front of us to pray in front of. God condemns this practice.
Speaker 1:It was in the Ten Commandments to not make images and not bow down to them, and it was a categorical do not make images. The only image that was in the Old Testament tabernacle was behind the veil in the temple. The average person couldn't go in there, only the priests saw it and it was like one day a year. It wasn't something you bowed down in front of, although the people were prevented from that. God made it quite clear do not build statues, do not make images, do not bow to them, do not pray to them. And here they had done it. On every street corner they had put an image some side of a statue, everywhere. In verse 27, it gets very interesting. God uses the language, says he delivered them up to their enemies. Romans chapter 1 uses similar language of people being so sinful that God removes his common grace, removes his influence from them and gives them over to their own passions and their own sin. Steve, is it possible to be so far into sin that God stops trying to bring us back?
Speaker 2:It says that he'll walk away from them. Earlier in these verses in the previous chapters, he says you separated yourself from me, therefore I'm going to separate myself from you. So absolutely. We're told throughout Scripture that at some point God gets to a point where he has over and over again come to people, said that he wants them to return to him, and when they get to a point that they don't do it, at some point he then walks away from them or at least turns themselves over to themselves. Is the way it's put in Romans Thinking themselves to be wise, they exchanged a lie for the truth and God ends up turning them over to their own reparate mind.
Speaker 2:So my advice is is if you're still feeling the tug of conviction on your heart, today is the day of salvation. Don't continue to resist God's pull and His draw to Him, because the more you resist, the more of a callous you build up on your heart and at some point in time might be a day whenever God says that's it, I'm going to turn you over to yourself, and then you won't have people coming to you, talking to you, drawing you to God, giving you the message or the gospel of the good news. That's where the nation of Israel finds themselves at this time. Glenn, he says enough is enough. The final straw is going to happen with the city of Jerusalem. It's going to be sacked and you're going to stay in captivity for a period of 70 years.
Speaker 1:Next, god continues with this very graphic, very descriptive, very emotional description of the lost state of Jerusalem. I'm reading, starting in verse 30. How languishing is your heart, declares the Lord God, while you do all these things, the actions of a bold-faced harlot when you built your shrine at the beginning of every street and made your high place in every square in disddaining money. You are not like a harlot. You, adulterous wife who takes strangers instead of her husband, men give gifts to all harlots, but you give your gifts to your lovers to bribe them to come to you from every direction for your harlotries. Thus you are different from those women in your harlotries in that no one plays the harlot as you do, because you give money and no money is given to you.
Speaker 2:Thus you are different, or them being unfaithful if they happen to be married to a spouse, they receive payment from the person that is coming to them, but Israel did just the opposite, through this allegorical tale of them being a harlot to pagan gods. They used their wealth to go out and worship the pagan gods While they're a harlot. They're actually paying for this harlotry to take place, which is the opposite from the way harlotry usually takes place.
Speaker 1:All prostitutes are in business. If they're anything, they're in business. They want to get paid for what they do. It would be crazy for a prostitute to pay the customers. That's not the point of the business here.
Speaker 1:The Lord is saying that no one came to you and paid you, influenced you to go worship the other gods. You were doing just the opposite. Instead, israel approached the other gods and gave offerings to them. Steve, you used the word allegory. Some of this is allegorical, some of it's not. Some of these idol worships had just blatant sex worship. They were actually doing exactly this. Literally, they were going in prostituting their women and even the men too, and paying to do so. They were paying the offerings to these idols and doing sex worship in front of these shrines. It was as bad as it could get.
Speaker 1:Steve, if we ask the question, what is the lesson for us? Hopefully, nobody in our listeners are doing these exact same things today, but I think if we're honest with ourselves, we can admit that we can be drawn away towards idols. If we're honest with ourselves, our hearts can be drawn away as well. I know I am. I'm reminded of that old Christian hymn that says Prone to wander, lord, I feel it Prone to leave the God I love. Then it goes on to say Lord, please take my heart and seal it and protect it. So that should be all of our prayer, should it not? Because we know that we're susceptible to wander. Sometimes there's been cases, I'll confess here, I've sought out places to go sin that's as bad as these people. So it's easy for us to sit here today and be hypocritical and point fingers at these ancient Israelites, and it's something else entirely to live a righteous life today. How should we take this down and apply it to our lives today.
Speaker 2:The lesson that we can learn from that, glenn, I think is best summed up over in 1 John. Starting in 1 John 2.15, it says Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world. It says that in 1 John 2.15 and 2.16. That's the enticement that we have today is the world and all the sin.
Speaker 2:I think, glenn, can be boiled down to one of those three things the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.
Speaker 2:Eyes and the boastful pride of life that's the enticement of the world that wants to lead us away from Jesus Christ and we need to guard against that. Our flesh is tied to this world. We need to always renew our mind, learn about God, stay in his word, get into a good Bible-believing church that preaches the word of God and get into a small group that has teachers that teach the word of God and resist the devil, resist these lusts and the pride of life that it mentions over here in 1 John. That's the protection that we have, as Paul puts on it. Put on the armor of God every day, put on Christ every day. That's the way that we protect ourselves from getting to the point of what Israel did these people of the nation of Israel during Ezekiel's time. We need to protect ourselves from that and not be enticed by it and pulled into it. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Speaker 1:In these passages we've been reading, it has God giving a very severe condemnation and pouring out of his judgment wrath on the ancient Israelites. If we hold ourselves up to this, mirror us today in the church age, would God punish? Of course he's not.
Speaker 2:God is a God who doesn't change. God is still a jealous God, as he told Moses on Mount Sinai not to worship other gods. Because I'm a jealous God. He's still a jealous God. He doesn't want his creation to go off and worship other false gods. And it has always been a curiosity to me, glenn, as to what did these false gods hold that kept the people going back and worshiping them, going back over and over again? You've mentioned it in some of our earlier sessions.
Speaker 2:God had had enough of this, and it took this captivity in Babylon to break them from idol worship. When they came out from the exile of Babylon, to come back into the land, they were no longer idol worshipers. That's at least one thing that they were broken from. But look at what it took to break them. So, no, we don't want to get to a point where God has to do something drastic in our lives in order to break us from a habitual sin that we have. If we know that the sin is habitual, we need to put it aside.
Speaker 2:Earlier in the earlier chapter, he said that these sins that they were doing was right there in their face. It was something that was right in front of them. It was a stumbling block to them. So no, god's the same God today as he was then, and we're still human beings. We have the grace of Jesus Christ and belief in him that we know about today. They still had belief through faith, just like we have beliefs in faith, but we're both still human beings, just like they were. And like I just read, we need to resist this world because we're tied to it, but God is not going to let us off the hook because we're on this side of the cross. He's still the same God today that he was then.
Speaker 1:These great lessons back in these passages that are so ignored. These lessons are so valuable for us and they're so current, so up-to-date, and we get such a blessing from learning them. I think it can help us in our spiritual walk and I trust that you would believe that as well. We're going to continue to reason through this. The book of Ezekiel has many, many wonderful things yet to tell us as we continue to reason through the Bible.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening, as always. May God bless you.
