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
S26 || God's Standard Ignored: How Leaders Lose Their Way || Ezekiel 22:17-31 || Session 26
The purifying fire of God's judgment takes center stage as we dive into Ezekiel chapter 22, where divine discipline meets holy purpose. Using the powerful metaphor of a metallurgist's blast furnace, God reveals His plan to purify His wayward people by burning away their impurities like dross from precious metal.
We unpack this striking imagery that speaks to believers across millennia: will we voluntarily submit to God's refining process through confession and repentance, or resist until we face the more painful heat of divine discipline? The question resonates with remarkable relevance for modern spiritual life.
The episode takes a particularly sobering turn as we examine God's scathing indictment of Israel's spiritual leaders. Priests, prophets, and rulers all stand condemned for blurring the lines between holy and profane, inviting worldly corruption into sacred spaces, and failing to teach God's standards. Their failure resulted in a society marked by oppression, violence, and injustice – a cautionary tale for today's church leaders who might similarly accommodate cultural trends that contradict scripture.
Most heartbreaking is God's lament: "I searched for someone to stand in the gap... but found no one." This profound statement not only reveals the absence of righteous leadership in ancient Israel but points forward to Christ, the ultimate gap-stander who bridges the chasm between our sin and God's holiness. Through this exploration of divine judgment and mercy, we discover that humility remains our safest refuge from the purifying blast furnace of God's discipline.
What impurities might God be calling you to surrender today? Listen, reflect, and discover how ancient warnings about spiritual compromise speak directly to our modern walk of faith.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Modern science has told us that heat will sterilize. So in many areas of life they use heat to sterilize cooking utensils and medical equipment, and it's very effective. God knew that heat would sterilize things many, many centuries ago because he promised to use heat to sterilize his people, and we're going to see that today. On Reasoning Through the Bible, you have your copy of the Word of God. Open it to Ezekiel, chapter 22, and we're going to see towards the end of this chapter that God will take his people not just through any heat but through a blast furnace. Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a little sweaty in here today. More of God's very severe language, because God has gotten to the point with his people that he is tired of them disobeying and he is going to correct the situation. And in this next section he talks about purging the pollution from his people in a blast furnace. Steve, can you start at Ezekiel 22 and read from verse 17 to verse 22?.
Speaker 2:And the word of the Lord came to me, saying Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to me. All of them are bronze and tin and iron and lead in the furnace. They are the dross of silver. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because all of you have become dross. Therefore, behold, I am going to gather you into the midst of Jerusalem, as they gather silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into the furnace to blow fire on it in order to melt it. So I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath and I will lay you there and melt you. I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my wrath and you will be melted in the midst of it. As silver is melted in the furnace, so you will be melted in the midst of it, and you will know that I, with this God, is quite graphic.
Speaker 1:This is in this section of the Bible where God uses very descriptive, very emotional language and he talks about putting his people through a blast furnace and he calls them dross. So the first question, Steve, is what is dross?
Speaker 2:Dross is the impurities that come off of metal that's being melted or smelted. It's the things that are thrown away. It's not limited to just smelting iron or other types of metals, but it's the impurities of things, things that are wasteful, things that are of no good, things that are to be thrown away.
Speaker 1:So this is quite descriptive. He's telling his people you're a waste product, You're the dross. To get rid of you, I'm going to have to heat you to the melting point and the pollution, the impurities will rise to the top and it'll be able to skim them off. That's what they have to do, because if you want a pure metal, such as silver or any other type of metal, it comes mixed with other rock and when they mine it they have to put it through a blast furnace, heat it to the melting point and pull off the impurities. These are called draws.
Speaker 1:Blast furnaces are still used today to remove impurities from metal and if you want to make useful, pure metal, then you have to heat it to the melting point and draw off the impurities. The melting point and draw off the impurities. God says I'm going to put you through the purging fire of a furnace and remove all the waste products. The question for the Christian today is, if we try to put ourselves in the position of these ancient Israelites, would we prefer to live with our impurities and wait for God's blast furnace to get it out of us, or do we want to submit to him and let him remove it now, Because he will not leave it there, correct? So the choice for us is how do we get rid of the impurities there in our lives?
Speaker 2:It's, in a way, an unfortunate thing that many times the way that we draw closer to God is in a period of stress or a time that we have a tragedy or something tragic happens in our life, we have a downturn in our health or a family member's health.
Speaker 2:Through those situations we're drawn closer to God. In a way. The impurities, the things of life that might seem important before the tragedy strikes are no longer important and they're cleansed out of our life and we once again focus everything we have on God in relation to the tragedy to come through it, whether it be with us or be with the family members. I say unfortunately because many times and I include myself in this we wander and we go through our life and kind of wander away from God a little bit sometimes and don't maybe spend the time with him and his word or building the relationship that we should with him. Now, whenever a tragedy strikes, then we want to get back to him, real close and again, not speaking from firsthand knowledge, I know this very intimately how this happens. So this is the type of things that I think that speak of the impurities in our life, get them out of our life, get back to that close relationship with God.
Speaker 1:We all have impurities, we all have weak flesh. Again, over in the New Testament, john tells us if we say we have no sin, we're a liar, we're deceiving ourselves. And we all have this same problem how do I get rid of the impurities? And in verse 20, god here is very blunt with the people of Israel. He says I will gather you in my anger and my wrath and I will lay you there and melt you. This is quite blunt, quite severe. So the question for us today, steve, is how, how can I as a weak, fallible Christian, stay out of God's blast furnace?
Speaker 2:Well, in the examples I gave just a while ago it's health-related. There are maybe some things that we can do to avoid being in an unhealthy situation, but there's other times whether through genetics or through aging or situations that we have of where we live that we might contract some sort of a terminal disease. Those type of situations we can avoid. But then there are other situations where we're doing things that we shouldn't be doing and that we can make choices to not do those things. I'm going to call them ungodly things.
Speaker 2:Whenever I say that, some people might think of really harsh things. But ungodly things are really just things that God doesn't want us to do, that we shouldn't be doing. We should be focusing on spreading the Word. We should be focusing on spreading the Word. We should be focusing on discipling others. We should be focusing on being a Christian in our community and showing a Christian light and becoming more Christlike. We focus on those things and try to not do the ungodly things. Then I think we can possibly stay out of the blast furnace that has to do when those type of ungodly things. Then I think we can possibly stay out of the blast furnace that has to do when those type of ungodly things are exposed.
Speaker 1:The good news for us as Christians is we have the Lord Jesus as an intercessor. He is our advocate. If we merely go to him and beg forgiveness in confession and repentance, then he will forgive us. He is faithful to forgive us of our sins, and it was much rather be able to go to Jesus and confess our sins and beg forgiveness than to have God pour out his wrath on us in some sort of a purging of a blast furnace. The good news is that all we really have to do is fall at his feet and beg forgiveness. 1 Peter 5, verse 6 and 7 say, quote humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. Unquote you in due time. Unquote. That's our mere goal is we are now child of the King and all we have to do is beg forgiveness.
Speaker 1:1 John 1.9, quote if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we just merely go to him and confess, he is loving and he will embrace us and bless us. If we hang on to our sin, like the ancient Israelites did and ignore him, then he will eventually pour out his wrath on us. Why is he putting Israel through the blast furnace? Because over and over again, they would not come back and submit themselves and humble themselves before him. If we do not humble ourselves, we will ultimately go through God's blast furnace. If we do merely humble ourselves at his feet and confess our sins, then he is faithful. We are weak. He is faithful and he will forgive us of all unrighteousness. Let's go ahead and read the next part. The prophets and the teachers are going to be dealt with next. Steve, can you read from verses 23 to 32?
Speaker 2:And the word of the Lord came to me, saying Son of man, say to her you are a land that is not cleansed or rained on in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in her midst, like a roaring lion tearing the prey. They have devoured lives, they have taken treasure and precious things. They have made many widows in the midst of her. Her priests have done violence to my law. Her princes within her are like wolves, tearing the prey by shedding blood and destroying lives in order to get dishonest gain. Her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying Thus says the Lord.
Speaker 2:God, when the Lord has not spoken, the people of the land have practiced oppression and committed robbery, and they have wronged the poor and needy and have oppressed the sojourner without justice. I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one. Thus I have poured out my indignation on them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. Their way I have brought upon their heads, declares the Lord God.
Speaker 1:With this, god is again quite graphic, quite blunt, quite descriptive of his thoughts on how the Jewish people have been obeying and disobeying his commands we have here. He speaks, in verse 25 and 26, to the priests and the prophets. These, of course, would be the Bible teachers, the allegedly more spiritually mature, or at least supposed to be, to people that would guide the rest of the population. The priests and the prophets were the ones who were supposed to be the most spiritually mature, but yet he has here a long list of discretions and sins that they have, starting in verses 26,. What things are God holding these priests and prophets?
Speaker 2:to be guilty of. They're being held responsible for the things that they have taught to the people. He says there that they have profaned my holy things. He says that they haven't made any distinction between holy and the profane and they haven't taught the people the difference between clean and unclean things, the difference between clean and unclean things. These were basic responsibilities that they had to shepherd the people and to teach the people God's ways. But they had completely abandoned that and were not teaching the people that. In fact, it says here they were doing the exact opposite of the things that they should have been teaching the people.
Speaker 1:The things that stand out to me in this list was one of the things he says here. They were making widows. Well, making widows means you're causing the death of the husband. He also talks in here about money and doing things for a profit. I think of Steve. Still today, too many people make religion a racket. They make money out of it. There's people in religion that get quite wealthy or at least have, if not wealthy, a sense of power, and they're not doing it for a sense of serving others. They're doing it to enrich themselves.
Speaker 1:This is one of the things that God has very little patience for and he condemns thoroughly. He also says in here did not follow the Sabbaths. Well, this is, of course, one of the commands in the Mosaic law. People that don't follow the Sabbath are people that think well, I have a better idea of how to live my life than God does, so I'm going to do what seems right to me, and of course, that spirit is alive and well today. It may or may not be Sabbath-keeping, but it could be. There's a thousand other things that God commands. That people today say, you know, just seems to me that the right thing to do is, and they just basically ignore what the Scripture says. Are people today guilty of these same type of sins? What?
Speaker 2:was the major theme in Judges Glenn. When we went through that, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. That's something that we need to guard against, even in our day. It's something that we need to guard against in our lives. It's something that we need to guard against amongst our leaders of our churches, even, we could say, the leaders of our nations.
Speaker 2:Doing things that we think are right in our own eyes means that we're not bouncing the ideas or our lifestyle or the decisions we're making, the things we're doing against the scriptures, against the Bible, and that is God's Word today. We're not sent prophets today like they were in that day, because we have a complete canon of scripture, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The Word of God is given to us. It's very plain and clear what he wants us to do and the instructions and commands that we have in how to become more Christ-like. So that's what our model should be, that's what we should bounce our decisions off of, and when we don't do it, it's called doing what we think is right in our own eyes.
Speaker 2:That's what these prophets and priests were doing then. They were doing things that they thought were right in their own eyes, meaning that they were doing things that would help themselves. They weren't concerned about the repercussions that were going to come from God. They were doing things that were, as I mentioned before, the exact opposite of what they should be doing. So it's a cautionary tale for us today that we've been left specific things that we should be doing and we need to be following that and don't be doing things that we think is right in our own eyes, because if we do, that's where we get off base and there's going to be consequences for that.
Speaker 1:We have to have a standard of what's right and wrong, and the question for us fundamentally is going to be am I going to use God's Word as the standard of what's right and wrong, or am I going to use my opinion? And I can't impose my opinion on God's Word and then filter out parts of it. I have to take God's truth that I am flawed in my moral compass and therefore I need Him to guide me in what's right and wrong. Look at verse 26. I want to ask an important question about that. Of course he talks about the priest and that's the—in our day it would be pastors, leaders, bible teachers.
Speaker 1:It says they profaned my holy things. And he also says there they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean. So here's a question, steve the unclean and the clean. So here's a question, steve. Today I don't hear a whole lot of talk in Christian circles about the difference between holy and profane. In fact, it seems like the world just creeps in. The profane things of the world tend to creep in and mess up everything holy. The unclean, profane things either sneak in under the door or people bring it into their pocket or something, because I think we need more of a sense of the distinction between the holy and profane, do we not? How can we address that in our day?
Speaker 2:What is happening to Judah and what had happened to the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom, before, is the result of letting the influence of the other nations come into their kingdoms and influence them, rather than themselves staying true to God and influencing the outside nations. It's the same as us today letting the world come into our areas of worship, where we go to study the Word of God and worship God. Whenever we let the world come in and start influencing our worship services, then there's going to be consequences. That's why I think it's important, glenn, that we study these Old Testament books. Yes, this is all speaking directly and specifically to Israel and Judah. What's going to happen? He's finally fed up with them, he being God and he's disciplining them and he's telling them he's going to put them through the blast furnace. But it applies to us today, from the standpoint that we need to guard against letting the world come in.
Speaker 2:This was a main thing that they had done. They let the other nations influence them. It was a direct disobedience of what God told them. Even before they went into the land, he told them you go in and you drive the others out. I'll be with you to drive them out. And he says don't intermarry amongst them. Why? Because you'll bring in their idols amongst your people, and that's not what's supposed to happen. God had explained all of this before Israel had gone into the land, and yet they didn't do it. They let their guard down and, in fact, the way it's described here, they actually invited these other nations in, and God describes that as being a whore and a prostitute to invite these other nations in.
Speaker 2:It's a cautionary description for us today regarding the world, that we shouldn't abandon God's Word and let the world come into our worship services. We need to let our worship services and the preaching from our pulpits and the teaching from our small groups be ones that stick close to the Word of God and reject the worldly things out of it. I don't know how much more forceful I can be, glenn. I think it's an important lesson that we can take from how God is disciplining Israel that he will also discipline his church, and I'm not talking about salvation, I'm talking about disciplining his church. If you let the world come into the worship services, god is not pleased with it, and we need to understand that he's not pleased with it. Here he's saying they didn't make a distinction between the clean and the unclean, the profane and the not profane. We've got to make that distinction today.
Speaker 1:I think this whole section at the end of this chapter is speaking to church leaders, and he's holding these leaders responsible for how they lead the flock and how they influence the people around them. The church is indeed still held to the concepts of the holy and the profane. In the church age, we're not held to the same clean and unclean dietary laws, but the concepts still apply with the holy and the profane. Pastors, teachers and church leaders are expected to teach a difference between things that are holy and things that are profane, and if we don't, then we won't get away with it, any more than these priests and these prophets did back in Ezekiel's day. God is pouring out his wrath on these people and he says look down at verse 30. He says I searched for someone to build up the wall and stand in the gap, but he found none.
Speaker 1:Now, build up the wall is a metaphor. It's a descriptive language for setting up protection for the church, setting up protection for God's flock. There's going to be gaps in the wall, so he needs someone to stand in the gap. What that means is there are enemies out there of the world the flesh and the devil and they're going to be attacking the flock and he needs someone to stand up and point out that there's an enemy out there and point out to the flock to beware of this, and point out to the flock that this is holy. You need to be doing these things and this is profane. You need to stay away from those things. Stand in that gap. So, steve, are there still enemies of the church today, like there were enemies in Ezekiel's day?
Speaker 2:There are enemies and the main way, I think Glenn, is through deception. Satan's tactics have not changed. What did he do with Eve? He deceived Eve, he put doubt in her mind, so she disobeyed God because she was deceived. Then Adam who the text says probably was standing right there watching the whole exchange between Eve and Satan deliberately disobeyed and ate of the fruit that he wasn't supposed to eat of.
Speaker 2:Today, yes, deception is out there and I think that's the main way that Satan works. Today, they're questioning what God's Word says and saying does God really say that Anytime that you have any teacher or pastor that is giving that delivery? Is this really what God is saying? You need to be very cautious as to the next things that he says and listen to it. Very cautious as to the next things that he says and listen to it. And again, we should know what Scripture says, what the Word of God says, so that we will not be deceived. That is something that Jesus has said many times whenever he was giving his parables, whenever he was giving his lessons let no one be deceived.
Speaker 1:We are familiar with the accusations against the world, the flesh and the devil, but how does that play out? Well, it plays out in the realm of ideas, values, false doctrine, things like that. That is where our church leaders need to stand in the gap. But, steve, the biggest gap is the gap between a holy God and our sin, and there was a man who stood in that gap, named Jesus Christ. He bridged the gap, stood in the gap in between our sin and a holy God, and I really think that is the one man that we can praise because he stood in that gap.
Speaker 2:Exactly, glenn, and that is the most important aspect of all the scriptures. It's all about redeeming man, and we have the ability to be able to be redeemed through Jesus Christ and what he's done. As we finish up this section, I just want to mention here that he's talking about the leadership on the worship side. But then in verse 27, he mentions her princes and in verse 28, he mentions her prophets. So here again, this is something that he has done earlier in the book. He's also done this over in Zechariah and some of the other prophets, that he goes to all areas. He goes from the priests and the teachers to the princes, which means the rulers, the kings that were over the nation, to the prophets. And then in verse 29, he says the people, it's the whole spectrum. Everyone is involved in this. Everyone has responsibility on their own to be holy and separate and know what's between the clean and the unclean and not to profane God.
Speaker 2:Everything that he just got through reprimanding the priests about also pertains to our leaders, the prophets. At this time we don't have prophets these days, but then we have the responsibility ourselves. And it says there in verse 29 that the people of the land have practiced oppression, committed adultery. They weren't friendly to the sojourners that came to the land. These were all commandments and statutes that had been given to them. So we all play a part in knowing what God wants us to do and we're all going to be responsible for our actions. So we can't just turn to the leadership or our pastors and say, well, I was just doing what they told me to do, I was just following what they said. God's very clear here in verse 29, that us, the people ourselves, are going to be held responsible as well.
Speaker 1:That brings us to the end of chapter 22. Be with us next time. We're going to meet two sisters that start out as beautiful young women, but we're going to see what happens to them as they mature and we're going to find again that God is not very happy with these two sisters and he gets quite graphic and quite blunt with what happened to them and what he's going to do with them. God is not through with dealing his wrath and his anger on the Jewish people. So be back with us next time. We will continue to reason through the book of.
Speaker 2:Ezekiel, thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
