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
S28 || God Will Not Be Mocked: The Fall of Jerusalem Explained || Ezekiel 23:28 - 24:2 || Session 28
Ezekiel's shocking metaphor of Israel and Judah as prostitutes continues in chapter 23 and unveils God's raw emotions about His people's unfaithfulness. Through vivid, unfiltered language, this episode explores what happens when those who claim to love God pursue relationships with other "lovers" - foreign nations and their idols.
We examine God's graphic description of Jerusalem and Samaria as two sisters who began beautiful but degraded themselves through spiritual adultery. After a thousand years of patience, God's judgment finally arrives, not as a capricious reaction but as the natural consequence of persistent rebellion. The imagery is deliberately unsettling: these once-dedicated cities had committed themselves to foreign powers, adopting pagan worship practices that culminated in the horror of child sacrifice to the god Molech.
Most offensive to God was their hypocrisy - sacrificing children to idols, then entering His sanctuary on the same day to worship Him. This attempt to maintain divided loyalties provokes one of the episode's most powerful insights: "You cannot have one foot in idols and one foot in God's kingdom. He will not stand for it." The discussion reveals how sin progressively entraps its victims like addiction, leaving them "worn out by adultery" yet unable to break free.
The prophetic element intensifies when Ezekiel announces the exact day Babylon began the siege of Jerusalem (January 15, 588 BC) - a prediction verified when refugees later brought news of its fulfillment. This historical precision reminds us that faith isn't a blind leap but rests on evidence of God's fulfilled word.
What idols compete for your devotion today? How might you be attempting to serve two masters? Join us as we reason through these challenging passages and discover why exclusive devotion to God isn't just a command - it's the pathway to freedom from spiritual prostitution that only wears us out and leaves us empty.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
If you were with us last time on Reasoning Through the Bible, we were in Ezekiel, chapter 23,. And God had taken his northern kingdom of Israel the capital there was Samaria and the southern kingdom of Judah the capital there was Jerusalem. And he took these two cities, samaria and Jerusalem, and described them as two women. They were beautiful young women when they started, but over time they had prostituted themselves out to foreign lovers. And he describes how the Jewish people of Israel and Judah had started out in Egypt and had brought their foreign gods with them and had then sought out after these foreign nations and in the end they were very disgusted with each other. So it's a very ugly, graphic picture of Israel seeking after these other nations instead of seeking after God.
Speaker 1:God was very long-suffering and patient, simply because he had let this go on for at least a thousand years, and he is finally now dealing with it In this section. Today we're going to see God pouring out his wrath and dealing with these two ugly prostitutes of these two cities. So I'm going to start reading in Ezekiel, chapter 23, starting in verse 28, says this For thus says the Lord, 28, says this the nakedness of your harlotries will be uncovered, both your lewdness and your harlotries. These things will be done to you because you have played the harlot with the nations, because you have defiled yourself with their idols. You have walked in the way of your sister. Therefore, I will give her cup into your hand. Steve, that's very graphic. What do you think of when you hear those words?
Speaker 2:What I think of is that I never want to be in a situation like that myself, so I want to guard against that. But yeah, it's something—it tells me that God is giving this descriptive language to get across to the people that are there in Jerusalem, that are still there, that are there in Jerusalem, that are still there. This is right at the time, right before they're finally taken over by Nebuchadnezzar and the city is sacked and the temple is destroyed. He's telling them as graphically and as direct as he can, the reason why that they're going to be taken over and the city's going to be sacked.
Speaker 1:If we look at verse 30, what we just read. There, he tells them exactly why the destruction was brought upon them. Steve, what is it that God says is the reason why Jerusalem will be destroyed?
Speaker 2:It says there, because they played the harlot with other nations and that they then defiled themselves with the idols from those nations. It's a direct thing that we've been talking about through all of these sessions dealing with Ezekiel the idol worship let's go ahead and read the next section.
Speaker 1:Starting in verse 32, god gets once again very graphic. These are very emotional descriptive language here of what he's going to do to these cities that were originally his chosen people. He doesn't beat around the bush, he doesn't mince words. This is some of the most direct and emotional language in the entire Bible. Steve, can you read Ezekiel 23, starting at verse 32 and going to the end of the chapter?
Speaker 2:Thus says the Lord God, you will drink your sister's cup, which is deep and wide. You will be laughed at and held in derision. It contains much. You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow the cup of horror and desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria. You will drink it and drain it. Then you will gnaw its fragments and tear your breast. For I have spoken, declares the Lord God.
Speaker 2:Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, bear now the punishment of your lewdness and of your hollertrees. Moreover, the Lord said to me Son of man, will you judge Ohola and Oholaba, then declare to them their abominations, for they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. Thus, they have committed adultery with their idols and even caused their sons, whom they bore to me, to pass through the fire to them as food. Again, they have done this to me. They have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and have profaned my Sabbath, for when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered my sanctuary on the same day to profane it, and lo. Thus they did within my house. Furthermore, they have even sent for men who came from afar, to whom a messenger was sent. And lo, they came, for whom you bathed, painted your eyes and decorated yourself with ornaments, and you sat on a splendid couch with a table arranged before it on which you had set my incense and my oil. The sound of a carefree multitude was with her, and drunkards were brought from the wilderness and men of the common sort, and they put bracelets on the hands of the women and beautiful crowns on their heads.
Speaker 2:When I said, concerning her, who was worn out by adulteries, will they now commit adultery with her when she is thus? But they went into her as they would go into a harlot. Thus they went into Aholah and Aholabah, the lewd women. But they, righteous men, will judge them with the judgment of adulteresses and with the judgment of women who shed blood because they are adulteresses and blood is on their hands. For thus says the Lord God, bring up a company against them and give them over to terror and plunder. The company will stone them with stones and cut them down with the swords. They will slay their sons and their daughters and burn their houses with fire. Thus I will make lewdness cease from the land, that all women may be admonished and not commit lewdness as you have done. Your lewdness will be requited upon you and you will bear the penalty of worshiping your idols. Thus, you will know that I am Lord God.
Speaker 1:This, again, is a very descriptive, very emotional passage. God is being quite graphic with why he's doing what he's doing and what he's going to do. If you were with us before, it had been maybe a thousand years that God had put up with this. So if I ask myself, what can I learn from passages such as this, I learned that when God gives commands, we have to take that very seriously.
Speaker 1:The people of Israel had said well, you know, yahweh's been around all this time. We've been able to kind of worship other things too. We've had these worship practices now for a while and God hadn't done anything, so he must approve of it. Well, no, he had sent many prophets saying that he didn't approve of it. So one of the great lessons is, when God says something, he doesn't have to repeat himself. He should only have to say it once, and we should take that very, very seriously, because he will act and we will not get away with sin even though God may not have acted for a while. Steve, what do you get out of passages like this? It's so emotional and so to the point. It's just very different from what we hear from the sugar-coated God that we often see in our churches today.
Speaker 2:They were saying that God hadn't done anything, meaning that he hadn't disciplined us so far, and God had actually done the opposite. He had protected them many times. The book of Judges is all about that. Where they were oppressed, they called out to God and he sent a judge for them. And, as we've mentioned before, whenever the Assyrians came and took off Israel in the north— that Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, laid siege to Jerusalem and God protected Jerusalem and sent a death angel out and killed 185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers and Sennacherib withdrew from Jerusalem. Those are just some examples. And so, yes, they were saying God hasn't done anything for us. In fact, he's actually protected us and they had gotten used to that.
Speaker 2:They had gotten to the point that they just said we can actually do anything we want to and God is not going to really discipline us. This is the point that they had arrived at. It is a lesson for us to know that God is serious and that we need to pay attention to what His Word says and that we don't need to be deceived and we need to stay close to His Word and understand that we can make the choices as to what we do, but we can't control the consequences, and if the choices that we make are always going to be in line with the Word of God, and if the choices that we make are always going to be in line with the Word of God, then we're going to be on the protected side. But if the choices that we make go directly against the Word of God, then there's going to be consequences to those choices and, according to what we're just reading here, it's not going to be pretty.
Speaker 1:It's not pretty at all. It's quite ugly. Look again at verse 33 and 34, the horrendous nature of the emotion that God is describing here. He's going to give this cup of wrath to these two cities that he's describing as women, the cup of horror and desolation. You will drink it and drain it. Then you will gnaw its fragments and tear your breasts.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded there of one time I heard a description of an addict that was wholly taken over by their drug. It was to the point of self-destruction. The language this addict used was that this drug was heaven and the devil at the same time. They were drawn to it, but it was the worst thing they could imagine. But they couldn't get away. They just kept going back because they had this addiction and the national leaders of Israel were drawn and seeking the favor of these other nations. That's what he's talking about here. They were drawn to the power and the glory of Egypt and they were drawn to the power and glory of Assyria. Once they were given over to them, they became to hate it, but they kept going back. Instead of trying to get away from it and going to God, they just kept lusting after these foreign nations, to the point that it was just destroying them. They couldn't stop, just like a harlot can't not stop. They're drawn to something that they just absolutely hate.
Speaker 1:In verse 35, god is punishing Jerusalem for lewdness and he will punish our generation for lewdness as well. These people had sought after these foreign nations because of the wealth and the power, but they had also sought after their gods, and in some cases there was sexual worship going on. It was lewd to the extreme. Our nations today and our cultures are lewd to the extreme and we will not get away with it, just like ancient Israel will not get away with it. Look at verse 37. Steve. What sins does God list in verse 37?
Speaker 2:It says that they have blood on their hands because they committed adultery with their idols and they even caused their sons that were dedicated to God.
Speaker 2:Remember one of the statutes and ordinances where the firstborn were to be dedicated to God to pass through the fire to them as food? This is a description of the worship of the god Molech, and what that was done to worship him was to give them child sacrifice. The huge idol and statue that was made contained a place for a fire, and they would heat this fire up, and it had arms that were outstretched. It would get so hot that then they would place their children, their babies, on the arms of this God, and there are places in Scripture that talk about when they did this that they would beat their drums so loud to drown out the screams of the children that were being fried on the arms of this God Molech. You can see now, glenn, why God had become so disgusted with them. They had gotten to the point that they were sacrificing their own children to a foreign god. You just kind of wonder how in the world did it get to the place that they had let that nation influence them to the point that they would do that?
Speaker 1:In verse 37, he mentions child sacrifice. They had been sacrificing their children to these terrible idols. Two verses later, verse 39, he mentions the same sin of causing the death of their own children. What's amazing is he also mentions twice here in verse 38 and 39, that on the same days they would go into God's temple. They would go and do these horrible pagan worship services, sometimes even sacrificing their own children, and then go and attempt to worship God on the same day. Steve, I hope people out there aren't actually sacrificing their children although we could have a nice conversation about abortion on that but the real question for us is can God allow us to have idols in our lives and then go into church and worship Him at the same time? Can we have one foot in something that's very ungodly and then one foot in God and get away with it?
Speaker 2:Let me put it a little bit more bluntly, glenn. Will God allow us to have some abominable sin that's in our life, something that really goes against Him? And I'm not talking about telling little white lies or something like that. I'm talking about something that is very, very sinful, something that is really on the conscious of a person, a lost person, and is bearing down on them, or on a saved person. The Holy Spirit is really convicting them to a point that they know that this is a sin that God does not like. Yet they then turn around and go in and worship God. On the next day, I can tell you that God doesn't like that, that God doesn't like that, and that what we should do is that we should confess our sins to him. So that's something that I think we can get out of this, and that we can see that God is not going to let something like that escape and continue to be done. That sin is going to be found out and he's going to deal with it and there's going to be consequences to it. I know that we keep repeating ourselves with this, but the nation of Israel kept going further and further and further. They weren't listening.
Speaker 2:I think it applies sometimes to our lives, and especially to people's lives who have not committed or given their life to Jesus Christ. The question is are you running? Are you running from God? Are you running away? Are you at a place where you know that what you're doing is ungodly and that God doesn't approve of it? If you are, then all you have to do is reach out to Jesus Christ, believe on Him, ask Him into your life, ask Him to forgive your sins, acknowledge those sins that you have done, acknowledge that those sins are separating you from God, and ask him to come into your life and to forgive those sins and to become a believer on Jesus Christ, on the debt that he has paid, on the death, burial and resurrection. Your life will be changed and you'll no longer burial and resurrection. Your life will be changed and you'll no longer be running from God, but you will be running towards God, and you'll never know a time of more happiness than that whenever you give your life completely over to Jesus Christ and trust on him.
Speaker 1:If we ask the question will God allow us to have one foot in the world and one foot in him? Then the answer is no. He will not allow us to have anything that's in front of him, anything that is in between us and God. Anything that we would hold is more important than him. He wants that out of the way. We cannot have one foot in an idol or the world and then the other foot in God's kingdom. He will not stand for it.
Speaker 1:Then back to our analogy here, our picture of what started out as these beautiful young women. Look at the last half of verse 40. The women there bathed themselves, put on fine clothes and fine jewelry, prepared themselves for their lovers. It talks about a fine table, a fine feast, expecting this handsome people to come in. But if we look at verse 42, who actually came? What actually came were not handsome princes. Who came was drunks, useless people, uncivilized people.
Speaker 1:It was a very ugly scene. By now we have what started out as these beautiful young girls, these beautiful young women had prostituted themselves to these idols, and now they are seeking a lover and all they get are drunks and common people, because they are worn-out prostitutes. It's a very sad picture of what happens when we turn away from God and his true path. In verse 43, he uses the phrase worn out by adulteries. Sin will wear us out, use us up and then continue to keep us like an old, worn-out prostitute. It's a very ugly description. And if we look at verse between 45 and 47, what will God do with such people? What does he say there, steve? What's God going to do with these people?
Speaker 2:He says that they're going to be judged, they're going to be a judgment upon them, and the reason for the judgment is because they shed blood in verse 45, and the blood is on their hands Again goes back to the sacrificing of their children. It says that God's going to bring a company against them, a company of men, a company of soldiers and of a nation, and that they're going to be stoned with stones and they're going to cut down with the swords, and that their sons and daughters are going to be stoned with stones and they're going to cut down with the swords, and that their sons and daughters are going to be slayed and they're going to be burned in their houses with fire. This is a depiction of the sacking of Jerusalem and what happened whenever Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army came in that they completely destroyed Jerusalem, burned it to the ground and also destroyed the temple.
Speaker 1:If we go back into the Mosaic law, god had given them rules for what to do for an adulterer. The punishment for adultery was death, usually by stoning. We find that in Leviticus 20, verse 10. Chapter 20, verse 10. And here in Ezekiel, verse 47, the enemy will exact God's justice by killing them with stones and swords. What you do will come back to you. God will not be mocked. His punishment will be sure. What you sow, you will reap. That's what God says. So he is bringing it about. He had sent them prophets. They had ignored it, and now his wrath is sure. And he tells us the reason why he's going to destroy them Verse 48, to make the lewdness cease. The lewdness had gone on long enough. God says I'm going to stop it. And the middle of verse 49, so Israel will quote bear the penalty of worshiping your idols. They will be punished for this. And then quote thus you will know that I am the Lord, god.
Speaker 1:A repeated theme in Ezekiel is that God will bring the punishment of his people so that they will know who is the real God. Remember one of the main reasons why God had the 10 plagues in Egypt was to demonstrate which gods were the real one. They had been worshiping multiple gods, and he's going to show you. Now you will know who is the real one. He's going to show you now you will know who is the real one. Whenever we go off into some distraction, god always says I'm going to do something, so you will know that I am the real God. Steve, that is just such a powerful message for us today.
Speaker 2:As you mentioned there, glenn. In verse 48, it says I will make lewdness cease from the land. This is verbiage, that God is saying look at what he's had to go to in order to get this out of them. He has had to take the northern kingdom off and to destroy those cities, that capital, samaria. He's now had to do the same with Judah. He's had to take the city of Jerusalem. It's going to be, I mentioned, sacked in a horrible, terrible way, and the temple is going to be torn down, his dwelling place, a place that was built where they worshipped him and for the purpose of worshipping him. This is what it has taken to get this lewdness out of the nation of Israel, the people themselves. And he says then it's going to cease, this is the final act that has to do it.
Speaker 2:All of this descriptive language here in chapter 23, it's really showing an embarrassment for the nation, acting as a prostitute, adulterating themselves to the other nations that are around them and worshiping their gods, their idols, then to the point again that we've mentioned that they're sacrificing their children to the other nations, going off and worshiping the other idols and turning around and coming back into the temple of God and going through motions of acting like they're worshiping God. This is not a very good picture, and it's also depicting the lengths that God is going to to discipline them. That's another thing that we get through here that even though God does discipline Israel, he does mention times of whenever he's going to bring them back, and we're going to get to a chapter a little bit later on in the book where he is going to mention about bringing them back, but still it's something that the lengths that God will go to in order to get them to come back to him. It's not a pretty picture, but in a way, it's showing the love that he has for Israel.
Speaker 1:That brings us to the beginning of chapter 24. And chapter 24 is the last of the chapters in Ezekiel that talks about the destruction of Jerusalem. He's been giving this message to the Jewish people in Babylon for many chapters now and he's going to wrap up the message about Jerusalem in chapter 24. We're given another very graphic illustration in this chapter of how severe the battle was. The first two verses of Ezekiel 24 say this and the word of the Lord came to me in the ninth year, in the tenth month on. The word of the Lord came to me in the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth of the month, saying Son of man, write the name of this day. This very day, the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem. This very day.
Speaker 1:Now, here God tells the Jewish people that were a long ways away as captives in Babylon. They tells them the exact day that Nebuchadnezzar started the siege of Jerusalem. He says here ninth year, tenth month, tenth of the month. We know what day this was. It was January 15th, 588 BC and the captives were a long way away from Jerusalem. At least in those days, the journey in the news would take a while to get there. This information would not normally come to them until many days later by telling the Jewish people this day is the day he starts the siege. This day is the day he starts the siege. Then, within a few weeks or months, when the news finally got back to the people, ezekiel was right.
Speaker 1:Ezekiel knew the very day that the siege began and that way the Jewish people would know this was a true prophet. All of God's prophets were able to predict something in the immediate context. People would know that they were a true prophet. Only a true prophet would have been able to predict ah, today, this very day, is the day that the siege begins. Therefore, god is giving evidence of Ezekiel being a true prophet. God always gives evidence so that we can know logically who is a true prophet and who is a false prophet. He always gives enough evidence to people to believe his word. Christianity is never a blind leap in the dark. Faith is built on evidence. It's built on God's Word that has proven itself, and because Ezekiel proved himself, then they knew that. We can write down all the rest of his words, even though some of them were future Steve. What else can we tell about this chapter?
Speaker 2:There are a couple of things in the previous chapters whenever Ezekiel gave dates. The one was the year 591. The next time it was the year 588. And all of those depictions that were given by God through Ezekiel were talking about the sacking of Jerusalem and et cetera. We've gone through all of those depictions. So the previous visions that were given to Ezekiel were all before the actual happenings that took place. Where Zedekiah is taken out, he's blinded and taken off into Babylon and etc.
Speaker 2:Now, as you've pointed out, glenn, now it's a depiction of actually what's happening in real time with the siege of Babylon. One other thing too is over in Zechariah. Remember, there were some fast days that the people had come up with in order to mourn the sacking of Jerusalem. This is one of those fast days that came out of it because of the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of Jerusalem. So we have a crossing between the prophets of the various activities and the things that we have a cohesive story between all of them related to the story of Jerusalem, the story of the nation of Israel and God working with his nation and his chosen people.
Speaker 1:He again gives this day here in verse 1, the ninth year tenth of the month. That same day is mentioned in 2 Kings 25.1, jeremiah 39.1, and Jeremiah 52.4. So it's significant because it marks the beginning of the end for the city of Jerusalem. Ezekiel is giving this prophecy even though there's no way other than divine revelation he could have known this was the beginning of the siege. Later in this same book, in Ezekiel 33, 21, a person arrives who had escaped from Jerusalem and brings news that Ezekiel's prophecy was literally fulfilled. So we have literal fulfillment of a divine revelation so that the people can know that Ezekiel is a great prophet. We probably should pull it to the curb for today because of time, but next time we'll get to this last section about Jerusalem here and it's going to be equally graphic and equally emotional and I'm sure our listeners will want to come back as we reason through the destruction of Jerusalem.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
