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
S27 || From Beautiful Brides to Worn-Out Prostitutes || Ezekiel 23:1-27 || Session 27
Ezekiel chapter 23 presents one of Scripture's most graphic metaphors as God depicts the spiritual infidelity of His people through the story of two sisters. These women, representing Samaria and Jerusalem, start as beautiful young women but tragically descend into prostitution, illustrating Israel's persistent pursuit of foreign gods and pagan practices.
The striking imagery serves a powerful purpose. God reveals that from their earliest days in Egypt, His people had been spiritually unfaithful, bringing idolatrous practices with them even after their miraculous deliverance. The northern kingdom lusted after Assyria's military might and cultural sophistication, adopting their religious practices rather than remaining faithful to Yahweh. The southern kingdom committed even worse spiritual adultery by pursuing Babylonian and Egyptian influences despite having witnessed their sister's destruction.
What makes this passage particularly relevant for today's believers is the parallel to modern spiritual compromise. Just as ancient Israel was seduced by powerful foreign nations, churches today often chase worldly entertainment, impressive personalities, and cultural relevance rather than remaining devoted to simple, biblical worship. We explore how congregations might prioritize charismatic speakers over spiritual maturity or entertaining programs over solid biblical teaching.
The most sobering aspect of this metaphor is God's response—He ultimately uses the very nations Israel lusted after as instruments of judgment. This pattern reveals an important spiritual principle: the sins we pursue often become the instruments of our destruction. As one pastor notes, "Sin will take you farther than you ever wanted to go and keep you longer than you ever intended to stay."
Yet even amidst this harsh judgment, we discover God's extraordinary patience. For nearly a thousand years, He sent prophets, provided deliverers, and offered opportunities for repentance before finally allowing judgment to fall. This reveals both His long-suffering nature and the reality that divine patience isn't endless when repentance is refused.
Join us as we unpack this challenging passage and consider its implications for spiritual faithfulness in our churches and personal lives today. How might we recognize and resist the "foreign influences" that compromise our devotion to God?
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Today, on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to meet two sisters, two young women that start out very young and beautiful but as they grow older we're going to see they take a very dark turn and they end up in a very bad place in their lives. We're going to learn some very important spiritual truths with that, because God is using these two sisters to describe to us some spiritual condition of his people. If you have your copy of the Word of God, open it to Ezekiel, chapter 23,. And if you've been following along with us, you'll know that God has been condemning his people in Jerusalem. Ezekiel has been taken away captive into Babylon and God is speaking through Ezekiel to the captives in Babylon about what is going to happen to the remnant in Jerusalem and why he's doing that. So today God is going to give these Jewish captives a justification for why he's about to do what he's going to do.
Speaker 1:He gives a very graphic, very blunt really, description. It's almost disgusting, but it's here in the Word of God, so we're going to read it. And in chapter 23, he gives a very graphic condemnation of two cities the northern kingdom of Israel had a capital of Samaria and the southern kingdom of Judah had the capital in Jerusalem. God takes these two cities, samaria and Jerusalem, and gives them the name of two sisters Ohola and Oholaba these two women and describes their infidelity. In the story, the two sisters start out as beautiful young women, but they end up being worn out prostitutes. It's a very ugly scene. Nevertheless, it's before us in the Word of God, so we're going to dive in. Steve, can you read the first 10 verses of Ezekiel, chapter 23?
Speaker 2:The Word of the Lord came to me again, saying Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother, and they played the harlot in Egypt. They played the harlot in their youth. There their breasts were pressed and there their virgin bosom was handled. Their names were Ahola the elder and Aholabah, her sister, and they became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. And as for their names, samaria is Ahola and Jerusalem is Aholabah.
Speaker 2:Ahola played the harlot while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers, after the Assyrians, her neighbors, who were clothed in purple, governors and officials, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. She bestowed her harlotries on them, all of whom were the choicest men of Assyria, and with all whom she lusted after, with all their idols, she defiled herself. She did not forsake her harlotries from the time in Egypt, for in her youth, men had lain with her and they handled her virgin bosom and poured out their lust on her. Therefore, I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. They uncovered her nakedness, they took her sons and her daughters, but they slew her with the sword. Thus she became a byword among women and they executed judgments on her.
Speaker 1:With this he speaks of these two cities, samaria and Jerusalem, as these two sisters, ohola and Oholaba. He says they started out as young women in Egypt. He uses the phrase they're played the harlot in Egypt. Well, steve, what's he talking about? They're played the harlot in.
Speaker 2:Egypt. I think he is hearkening back to the time whenever they came out of Egypt and they brought the idols with them. And just a few days after they were out of Egypt, while Moses was up on the mountain, they wanted Aaron to make them a golden idol. They made the golden calf and they attributed to that golden calf when they worshiped it were dancing amongst it. It was that God that had brought them out of the land of Egypt. So I believe that this is what God is referencing here that even though he had brought them out of Egypt, they took with them some of the idols and brought with them some of the gods that they worshiped from Egypt, meaning that they never forgot about those gods. Those gods were never purged completely out of their mind and they never 100%, as a nation, really truly followed God Yahweh, the one that truly brought them out of Egypt.
Speaker 1:This section is one of the several places in the Bible where God describes religious competition as harlotry. He describes his people as, when they go and worship other gods, other idols, he describes that as harlotry. He describes it as like a prostitute would go and sell herself to anybody that comes along. That's a very emotional description of what someone would do in their religion. Now we live in a time today that was in some sense probably similar to these ancient Israelites, as people say. Oh well, there's a lot of religion out here. I can take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and reason through to what's right. Well, god says that is prostitution. He says you will worship me and me alone, and my ways and my ways alone.
Speaker 1:He's comparing these cities, samaria and Jerusalem, as if they were young women that had been born in Egypt. Remember, god formed the nation Israel from Abraham when it was still very, very young, just a few people. He took them to Egypt and after 400 years of being in Egypt, they came out a very large nation. Israel's acceptance of foreign idols was as ugly as a young woman being molested and that was the language that we just read in here. Was this beautiful young woman being molested. It's very ugly because God sees religious competition as very ugly. He sees praying in front of statues and having idols as being quite ugly. And if we look at verse 5, even though Israel was given the great teachings of the Lord, they wanted to be like their neighbors, the Assyrians. Israel accepted many of these pagan practices that were from the Assyrians and these other gods. Christians in our day have been guilty of this ourselves, have we not, steve?
Speaker 2:We are guilty of it today, glenn, and I think the main way that we're guilty of it happening is through deception. We let leaders deceive us and we let leaders tell us God really didn't say that there are particular institutions that the leadership says you need to pray to these statues, to these saints, you need to venerate them and you need to go to them to intercede directly to God for you. That is something I don't think that is what God wants. Jesus Christ came and died so that we might have a direct relationship with God. The veil was torn and now we have access to the throne room of God. I think that brings it out in Hebrews we can go directly to God. We don't have to go through other saints. We don't have to go through other areas. It borderlines worshiping the saints and worshiping these other figures whenever we go to them, rather than just going directly to God and Jesus.
Speaker 2:Now, that might be a little bit off-putting to some of the people that are listening to our podcast here, but it's something that I think they should contemplate. It's something that they should check themselves about. Am I really truly worshiping Jesus Christ whenever I go to these different stations of the saints that I go to whenever I do the rituals, the things that the church tells me that I'm supposed to do in order to have access to God. Am I really truly worshiping Jesus directly or am I worshiping the leadership? Am I worshiping the saints? Am I worshiping the other icons that this church has?
Speaker 2:Now, that's that one particular area. There are other churches that have completely immoral people that are leaders in their churches as pastors, and those pastors are leading their congregations down into an immoral acts of worshiping God Once again, deceiving them, saying God is okay with the immoral lifestyle that they're in. All of this, glenn is in deception. It's a big thing that is going on, I believe, today, and it's something that Satan has been working the way that he's been doing it all throughout all the ages, and he's going to continue to do it. The only way that we can counter against it is to know God's Word. Go to God's Word, study it and let that be the sounding board that we go with regarding all these other leadership and traditional things that are telling us that God didn't really say what he has clearly said in Scripture.
Speaker 1:The language here that God uses in Ezekiel 23 is of these two young women, and they start out as very beautiful. Look at verse 7. Instead of being a beautiful bride, now there are harlots. She bestowed her harlotries on them, all of whom were the choicest men of Assyria. The description there is now this beautiful young woman is going and seeking out someone to have sex with, to have fornication and harlotry. With Verse 8, she did not forsake her harlotries from her time in Egypt.
Speaker 1:So the people of Israel brought the idols with them out of Egypt and they kept these practices for many years. They were still around at the end of the time where Joshua was at the end of his life. They'd been carrying these idols around for quite a while. We can rightfully condemn these ancient Israelites for bringing in these foreign worship practices. The harder part is to look within ourselves and our own churches and see are we guilty of the same thing? Because deep down, we're still just as fallible humans as they.
Speaker 1:You look at the church in the Middle Ages. Then what did those churches do? They made their church buildings look like a competition of the king's castles. So they'd have these grand, large cathedrals that were supposed to look imposing and they established these worship practices that look like kingly processions, with the robes and the banners and all of the things that look like the king that was just across the way there. So the church wanted to look like the world in those days, like we have a grander castle than they, our cathedral's grander, and we have more gold inside our church than the king does, and they put the gold up front to try to impress people.
Speaker 1:Some churches still do this In our day. In the modern day, we tend to not do that. We tend to look at worldly entertainment and bring it in to our churches to try to compete with the worldly entertainment to say, look, we're just as good, we're just as entertaining as them. Steve, what should we do? Instead of chasing after the world, as Christians, can we be satisfied with simple, simple but spiritual worship practices with the real God?
Speaker 2:I think the most simple thing that we can do is preach the Word of God, that that should be the focal point, and when I say preach the Word of God, I mean make it a focus of every sermon that is preached, not just a few verses that are kind of mixed in with some motivational speaking. And I believe that in many of our churches today that that's what has happened. We've turned into having motivational pastors that give us feel-good messages about what we should do and how we should live our life, but yet it's sprinkled with the Word of God, rather than having the Word of God be in the foundation. I think that some of the pastors they feel that if I just go and read the Word of God, then that's boring. That is something that the people aren't going to like. They're going to want to go off somewhere else or they're going to want to go to the other church where there actually is some entertaining things to do, and I have to admit to you that's a decision that those pastors are going to have to make. But in the long run, whenever you answer to how you handled the Word of God someday because as leadership we're all going to have to answer that question is are you going to say, well, I did the most entertaining thing I could in order to get the lost people into my congregation? Or are you going to say, I stuck to the Word of God and I preached the Word of God and then that is something that you can stand on?
Speaker 2:You know many of these pastors. They say that God is going to bring the increase, we plant the seeds and that God cultivates it and God brings the rain, and things like that, but yet they don't practice it in the pulpit. They think that they have to go out and actually do the raining, the cultivation, from the standpoint of doing the things. That's through entertainment, that is through motivational speaking, that's through different ways. So what goes along with that, or drops to the wayside, is the actual verse-by-verse teaching of the Word of God.
Speaker 2:I know that at least I'm sounding, in this particular session, maybe a little bit harsh on things, but the text that we're dealing with here, glenn, is very harsh. Think of it that God is depicting these two capitals of the nation of Israel as being harlots and that they have slept with the other nations that they wanted to bring in and that they had brought into worship and had been influenced by them. So we have to, I think, bring that to mind them. So we have to, I think, bring that to mind. Do we want to have God speak harsh things of how we are worshiping him and handling his word today? Do we want to be compared to harlots someday? I know, I don't. I don't know about you.
Speaker 1:If we look at verse 8, she did not forsake her harlotries from her time in Egypt. The next verse, verse 9,. Therefore, I gave her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. What happened was Israel had wanted to go after these foreign nations for their power and their religion, so God ultimately withdrew his hand of restraint. He withdrew his spirit that was drawing them back and let them go follow their heart.
Speaker 1:Anyone who ever has the phrase follow your heart is going to be deceived, because our hearts are desperately wicked beyond all things. Who can know it? Our hearts will draw us away from God and God's Holy Spirit will draw us back to Him. We need a heart transplant with new desires. We need a desire transplant. We need God to draw us in with His Spirit, because, left to ourselves, we will be just as bad as Ohola and Oholaba here in Ezekiel, chapter 23. We will end up lusting after other idols. And if we look, then, at verse 10, what is the result? What happens when God gives them over to their desires? What does it say there, steve is going to happen. What is the terrible?
Speaker 2:result? The terrible result is that he slew him by the sword and in this case what he means is he allowed the Assyrians to go in and take the northern kingdom of Israel off into captivity and the capital of Samaria was destroyed. And in the latter part of that verse 10, he says that she became a byword among women and they executed judgments on her. This once great capital we all like to think that the capitals of our nations are something that we're proud of was resulted down to just being a byword. It's something that was taken and judged by God through another nation. So, once again, we want to be sure that whatever we do, that is in our life and our studies that are true to the Word of God, so that what our ministry, that we have, doesn't become a byword.
Speaker 1:What we just described was the Northern kingdom, with Samaria as the capital. Next we're going to find what God says about the southern kingdom Jerusalem is the capital. He's still very blunt and very graphic with what he thinks the actions of Jerusalem is. I'm starting in now, in verse 11. Now her sister Oholabah saw this, yet she was more corrupt in her lust than she. And Now, in verse 11, all of them desirable young men I saw that she had defiled herself. They both took the same way.
Speaker 1:So she increased her harlotries and she saw men portrayed on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girded with the belts of her loins, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers, like the Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth. When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them. In Chaldea, the Babylonians came to her to the bed of love and defiled her with their harlotry. And when she had been defiled by them, she became disgusted with them. She uncovered her harlotries and uncovered her nakedness. And then I became disgusted with her, as I had become disgusted with her sister.
Speaker 1:Yet she multiplied her harlotries, remembering the days of her youth when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their paramours, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose issue is like the issue of horses. Thus, you longed for the lewdness of your youth. When the Egyptians handled your bosom because of the breast of your youth, Steve, there, it's very graphic. One of the things I think of is like a drug addict. A drug addict longs for this drug, and initially it's this desire that they're seeking, but eventually the drug takes over and now it's an addiction and they're going after something that they hate, and the drug ends up killing them. That's somewhat of happened here. Israel and Jerusalem had lusted after these foreign nations because of their power, and they ended up worshiping their gods because of wanting to be like them, but ultimately, these other nations were the ones that ended up being their destruction.
Speaker 2:There's a description here of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Those are three things that 1 John talks about and I think that all sin can be boiled down to one of those three areas, if not all of them at certain times. The description here of these other nations they're described as being handsome men, handsome princes, strong, and that this is something that is enticing to the southern kingdom of Judah. And at the very beginning of this section, glenn, it says that Judah did even worse than the northern kingdom of Israel. And look at what Jerusalem had, the temple that was there and some of the things that we have discussed and talked about in the earlier chapters of Ezekiel the things that they did, the priests were doing, the secret room that they had and the worshiping of idols and all the other detestable things that were going on.
Speaker 2:It's something that God describes as enticing and it's this enticement that people are brought over to that evil side. All of these priests as with the last session priests, princes, prophets, the people enticed, enticed, wanting to go after the lust, to go after other gods, in this case to go after worldly ways. That's an enticement that we even have to fight in our day and age, glenn, and it's not pleasant. It's something that we have to be on guard against, but I think that we can apply how the nation of Israel was in the Samaria and Jerusalem here. We can tie it directly to our lives today and the things that we have to look out for, so that we will not be enticed of the worldly ways and go to the point where we then abandon.
Speaker 1:God the descriptions here. In this last section, there's these young men with the muscles and the flowing turbans and the riding the horse, and they're very handsome, and it speaks of Jerusalem as being this woman that's lusting after this man and we're condemning them. God is condemning them because they were seeking these people instead of seeking people that were spiritually mature. I submit that today we're potentially just as guilty and take it down into our world. Today, how many times have you seen a church bring in a church leader that was oh, this is a very, very mature spiritual person, but boy, is he ugly. You never see that. What you do see is people oh, this pastor, he speaks well, he's young, he's good-looking and we really don't know much about his spiritual maturity. That's what I see too many times today, steve.
Speaker 2:I think so. And again, we are talking about leadership here. But it is the people that go and bring the leadership in. They're responsible as well. You know, I get it.
Speaker 2:Some people might be listening to us and saying, yeah, I understand what you're saying, but all the churches in my area are like that. They're all the same. All I can say is that make sure that you're at least in a small group that is studying the Word of God, and continue to look for churches that will preach the Word of God and stay true to the Word of God. And whenever you can make a difference within your own church, If you're given a position of some sort of leadership, do it in the right way. Don't do it in a rebellious way, Don't do it in a way that you're causing factions or anything else like that. But when you have the opportunity, maybe you're going to be asked well, what do you think about this or what do you think about that? Be truthful and tell them how you really think about it, and through those type of situations then you might be able to bring about some change.
Speaker 1:In verse 16, it's talking here about Jerusalem. They didn't merely accept the foreign worldly people and ideas, they actually went out and sought them. They went looking for them. They went out to seek them out and find them. And then in the next verse, the end of verse 17,. Once they found them and became familiar with them, they became a taskmaster. She became disgusted with them.
Speaker 1:The other thing I think of, Steve, besides just churches, it's our sin. That's the way our sin works. We are enticed by the sin and we're drawn to it. But once we get familiar with it we find it's very disgusting and we end up hating it and we want to get back to purity and back to the Father. In this picture, the two women never did repent. They started out as beautiful young women. They lusted after foreign gods, they became prostitutes and they ended up being worn-out prostitutes that the prostitute didn't want the men and the men didn't want them. It was really just disgusting all the way around. In the next section we're going to see what God actually does about it. So, Steve, can you read from verse 22 down to verse 27?.
Speaker 2:Therefore, o Aholabah, thus says the Lord God behold, I will arouse your lovers against you, from whom you were alienated, and I will bring them against you from every side the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, pechad and Shoah and Koah, and all the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, governors and officials, all of them officers and men of renown, all of them riding on horses.
Speaker 2:They will come against you with weapons, chariots and wagons and with a company of peoples. They will set themselves against you on every side, with buckler and shield and helmet, and I will commit the judgment to them and they will judge you according to their customs. I will set my jealousy against you that they may deal with you in wrath. They will remove your nose and your ears and your survivors will fall by the sword. They will take your sons and your daughters and your survivors will be consumed by the fire. They will also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewels. Thus, I will make your lewdness and your harlotry, brought from the land of Egypt, to cease from you, so that you will not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.
Speaker 1:My goodness, that language is just so emotional, so powerful, so descriptive. Jerusalem had wanted to be like the nations around them, wanted to worship these other gods, wanted these other nations to protect them. So the Lord says he's going to send those same nations in to destroy her in judgment. The nations that Jerusalem was lusting after would end up surrounding her and destroying her. Steve, is it ever the case in our lives today that the sin that we lust after will eventually surround us and destroy us?
Speaker 2:I think it absolutely will. I've heard a pastor say before that sin will take you farther than you ever wanted to go and keep you longer than you ever intended to be kept. That's how sin works. It creeps in and it's a little thing that you might say, oh, this little thing is not going to be a problem, and before you know it you're down a path of corruption and you're down a path that you think that you might not be able to get yourself out of. And of course, who do you go to that you might not be able to get yourself out of? And of course who do you go to? You run to God in order to get yourself out of that situation.
Speaker 2:But with Israel here, the nation, and in this case southern of Judah, they had done it for centuries. They had mocked God and abandoned God for centuries. God is finally through with them and he's turned themselves over to these nations that are going to judge them. I submit to you don't let any sin in your life get to a situation or to a point to where God will just turn you over to your own sin and then the judgment be there on you, on the sin that you've committed. Stop that. Go back to God, confess your sins If you haven't already believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and your sins will be forgiven.
Speaker 1:We live in a day where people like to second-guess God in the sense of well, they don't think God was moral in destroying these people. If you've been with us through Ezekiel, there's a lot of God talking here about how he's going to cause the destruction of large numbers of people. If you've been with us through Ezekiel, there's a lot of God talking here about how he's going to cause the destruction of large numbers of people. He's going to put some of them to the sword. He's going to burn some of them. There was going to be a large amount of death and destruction, especially in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:But if we remember what this is saying right here, that we've just read in chapter 23, the idol worship and the seeking after other nations had been going on all the way back to Egypt. If we remember our biblical timeline, that's at least a thousand years. For a thousand years, god had told them prior to that hey, if you get in the land and you seek after other gods, then it's going to end up causing your destruction, but if you just believe me and trust me, I'll drive out the enemies. Well, they didn't believe him and didn't trust him. So for a thousand years, he kept sending prophets and kept sending messages and kept reminding them, and they kept on seeking and lusting after these foreign idols and these foreign gods. Steve was God, long-suffering and patient, prior to when he actually says this is the end and now the wrath is coming.
Speaker 2:He was absolutely patient and long-suffering. He sent them judges at times whenever they cried out to him. He was merciful to them. He showed many times that he brought them out of the situations that they were in, only to have them just continue to go back. But yes, he was merciful and long-suffering with them.
Speaker 1:We probably should pull it to the curb right there for today, simply for time. We're in a very graphic, very blunt, very emotional section of the Word of God, but there's things that—there's medicine that we really need to take today so that we don't end up in the same position as these ancient Israelites. Oh, how valuable the Word of God is back here in.
Speaker 2:Ezekiel, it certainly is, glenn, as always. We thank you so much for watching and listening and, as always, may God bless you.
