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
S29 || Would You Rather Face God's Forgiveness or His Cleansing Wrath? || Ezekiel 24:3-27 || Session 29
Ever wonder what happens when God steps into the kitchen? In Ezekiel chapter 24, we discover a divine cooking lesson with profound implications. God uses the vivid metaphor of a rusty cooking pot to illustrate Jerusalem's impending destruction—a powerful image that exposes the corruption permeating the holy city. The rust-encrusted pot symbolizes Jerusalem's spiritual pollution, so deeply entrenched that ordinary cleansing methods prove futile.
The message intensifies as God pronounces judgment with sobering finality: "I will act, I will not relent, I will not pity, and I will not be sorry." These words reveal a dimension of divine character often overlooked in contemporary theology—a God whose patience, while vast, has boundaries. After centuries of ignored warnings and continued idol worship, God's judgment arrives with devastating clarity.
The chapter takes a heartbreaking turn when God commands Ezekiel to become a living object lesson. God takes Ezekiel's wife suddenly and forbids the prophet from publicly mourning—an extraordinary departure from cultural norms that would have shocked witnesses. This painful demonstration serves a dual purpose: it mirrors how the exiles will lose their beloved temple and illustrates how the survivors of Jerusalem's fall will have no opportunity to properly mourn their losses before being marched into captivity.
Throughout this exploration of divine judgment, we confront the fundamental spiritual choice that remains as relevant today as it was in Ezekiel's time: Will we submit to God and receive His cleansing forgiveness, or persist in our ways and eventually face His cleansing wrath? The imagery may be ancient, but the spiritual principle transcends time.
Join us as we unpack this challenging passage that concludes God's messages against Jerusalem before He turns His prophetic attention to the surrounding nations. Whether you're a seasoned Bible student or just beginning to explore Scripture's depths, this episode offers profound insights into divine justice, human accountability, and the unwavering character of God.
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Today on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to see God give us a cooking lesson. He's got his cookbook out and we're going to take a peek into his kitchen. He's going to be preparing something. Only this is what he's going to prepare is not something that the people of Israel are going to want to eat. They're not going to want to see it prepared either, because this particular meal is going to be a cooking of the people that are in Jerusalem and it's going to be quite ugly.
Speaker 1:Today, on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to be in Ezekiel, chapter 24. So, if you have your Bible turned, there we are in this chapter. Ezekiel 24 is the last of the chapters where God is speaking against Jerusalem. He had sent Ezekiel to the captives that are in Babylon and he's been speaking through Ezekiel to give messages to these captives. We saw last time that God predicted the very day that Babylon would lay siege to the city of Jerusalem. Today we're going to get a message from God where he talks about the tragedy that's going to happen in the city of Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:We'll start reading in Ezekiel, chapter 24, starting in verse 3, says this Speak a parable to the rebellious house and say to them Thus says the Lord God Speak a parable to the rebellious house and say to them Thus says the Lord God Put on the pot, put it on and also pour water in it. Put in it the pieces, every good piece, the thigh and the shoulder. Fill it with choice bones. Take the choicest of the flock and also pile wood under the pot, make it boil vigorously and seethe bones in it. So here God is using this illustration of a cook pot and taking a sheep and cutting it up and using the meat to make a broth. God is using the parable of this cook pot to illustrate what's going to happen to Jerusalem. God gave a similar message back in chapter 11, if you remember that Steamed Jerusalem is going to be boiled like a piece of meat, it's going to be put under pretty good stress and you can just picture the boiling water and the meat there as it boils.
Speaker 2:Earlier God had said that it was going to be under a crucible and he was going to take the dross off of it. So we get this picture that Jerusalem is going to be under great, great pressure and we know from history that is what happened. It went under siege and Nebuchadnezzar's army finally reached the walls, went in and killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the temple and destroyed the city itself. And even before that, during the siege, the people were under great, great stress. So it's very much of a depiction picture that you get, seeing this in your mind's eye the boiling pot with the meat in it. It's a description to the people as far as what's going to happen in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:God has introduced this idea of a cookpot and really he's describing what's going to happen to Jerusalem. So let's go ahead and read the next section. This next section has very descriptive language here, so it's going to tell us a great deal about the specifics of what's happening in Jerusalem, and it's also going to be language that is very blunt and to the point. Steve, can you start at verse 6 and read down through verse 14?
Speaker 2:Therefore, thus says the Lord God, woe to the bloody city, to the pot in which there is rust and whose rust has not gone out of it. Take out of it piece after piece, without making a choice, for her blood is in her midst. She placed it on the bare rack. She did not pour it on the ground to cover it with dust that it may cause wrath to come up to take vengeance. I have put her blood on the bare rock that it might not be covered. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, woe to the bloody city. I also will make the pile great heap on the wood, kindle the fire, boil the flesh well and mix in the spices and let the bones be burned, then set it empty on its coal so that it may be hot and its bronze may glow and its filthiness may be melted in it, its rust consumed. She has wearied me with toil, yet her great rust has not gone from her. Let her rust be in the shoulder.
Speaker 1:The problem was that the pot was bad. The pot was rusty and crusty and not clean, and of course, we would never take good meal and cook it in a pot that was a filthy, crusty old pot. What ended up happening was that the meal ended up ruined. It had a layer of scum in it. God says in verse 6 that he's going to take out piece after piece, without choosing any for himself. All the meal is going to be wasted. Several times in this passage we just read, god is lamenting the blood that is spilt in Jerusalem. He talks about how filthy the pot is and how it will be heated on the coals and the meat poured out and wasted. Steve, this was just a very graphic description of what God is going to do with a filthy and polluted people that live in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2:It is a graphic description and he describes it as being a rusty pot which you really wouldn't want to cook food in, and then he sets the pot back on the coals just to get red hot. And it's just a depiction of once again the cauldron, so to speak, that Jerusalem is going to go through the pressure and the chaos and everything else that the city of Jerusalem is going to go through. In this judgment from God.
Speaker 1:He says in verse 12 that he is weary with what Jerusalem is doing. He's tired of all of the sin and lewdness that's there. The next verse, verse 13,. God says Jerusalem was filthy and lewd is the language that's used there. He says I would have cleansed you, yet you are not clean, steve. What is it that makes us unclean today?
Speaker 2:Well, before we become Christians, before we become believers in Jesus Christ, we're unclean because we have sin in our lives and sin means to miss the mark in its basic form. We miss what God wants us to be. We miss what he would like for us to do to worship Him and to rely on Him and to be in His ways and walking with Him. When we're not with Him, we're not believers in Him, then we've missed the mark. We have this sin in our lives. To us it might be described as through the Ten Commandments, we have lied, we have stolen. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says if you look after another and you've lusted after them, you've committed adultery. If you've hated somebody, you've committed murder in your heart, things like this. Those are all descriptions of missing the mark, descriptions of sinning. So the sin separates us from God. It makes us unclean from that perspective.
Speaker 2:But in order to get clean, we then believe and trust on the Lord Jesus Christ. Then God looks at the righteousness that Christ has and doesn't look at us as the uncleanliness. So the way that we get clean today is to look upon Jesus Christ and believe in him. In their day, the way that God would have cleaned them up would be for them to have trusted God and had faith in God, follow his ordinances, statutes, not for salvation, but to live long in the land we talked about that at length at one of our earlier sessions but to follow him and have trust in him, and God would have cleaned them up. So the salvation of the Jewish people is the same as yesterday as it is today Faith, faith in God.
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ is God that in Romans, chapter 3 talks about. In that propitiation, that satisfactory sacrifice that God gave through Jesus Christ, that he overlooked the sins from before and at the time of the crucifixion and death, burial and resurrection, those sins were forgiven. People prior to the cross look forward to the cross. Us in our time look backward to the cross. It's all one way for salvation though faith in God and faith in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:God looks at the people of Jerusalem in Ezekiel, chapter 24, and calls them filthy, calls them lewd and they are in need of cleansing. That same type of description is used over in the New Testament for the state of the lost person coming to salvation. Used over in the New Testament for the state of the lost person coming to salvation. In the New Testament, sin and lostness, separation from God, is described as being filthy, in need of cleansing. In 1 John 1, it specifically tells us that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. In verse 7. And then 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's the picture of cleansing. We are polluted, we're filthy and we are in need of cleansing. That only happens through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ and trusting in him, god.
Speaker 1:He says here in Ezekiel 24, I would have cleansed you. The reason he didn't was because they were holding on to their sin. They insisted on doing things their way. Instead of cleansing them from his forgiveness, he's going to cleanse them with his wrath. He says quote you will not be cleansed from your filthiness again until I have spent my wrath on you. Unquote. We have here. They're going to be cleansed. They're either going to be cleansed by kneeling at the feet of God and saying God forgive me, and then obeying his commands, or he's going to cleanse them with his wrath and this particular people. He had sent many centuries worth of prophets there. They refused to turn from their sin.
Speaker 1:Verse 14 gives us a picture of God that many modern churches just don't hold and don't want to believe in. God says there in Ezekiel 24, 14, I will act, I will not relent and I will not, and I will not pity and I will not be sorry. According to your ways and according to your deeds, I will judge you, declares the Lord God. So we have here a God that is to the point, steve, where he's just judging these people and he says I'm not going to be sorry, I'm not going to turn, the wrath is going to be poured out. It is a terrible situation to be in.
Speaker 2:It is a terrible situation to be in and I would not want to be in it. That's why I'm so thankful that he provided a way for us to have salvation. He is the propitiation, the satisfactory sacrifice, so that God might be just and the justifier Again. Romans, chapter 3, verses 25 through 26,. Right in that area. It's not a good position to be in, but the great news is the good news. The gospel is that we don't have to be in that position. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. It's really in that position. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. It's really just that simple. So remember.
Speaker 1:Ezekiel is speaking to these captives in Babylon and as such he is telling them. Thus says the Lord, and because of that the people view Ezekiel as the God figure. He is speaking for God, he is God's spokesman, so they view him as a picture of what God is saying. In the next section we're about to read Ezekiel gives a message from God that he has to act out. It's one more of these object lessons that Ezekiel is going to act out. Only, this one is going to be quite painful. His wife is going to die and he's not going to be allowed to mourn. He has to keep a stoic appearance in front of the people there. So I'm going to start reading in verse 15, and we'll find out a hard task that Ezekiel has before him.
Speaker 1:And the word of the Lord came to me saying Son of man, behold, I am about to take from that. Ezekiel has before him said Bind on your turban and put your shoes on your feet and do not cover your mustache and do not eat the bread of men. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died, and in the morning I did as I was commanded. The people said to me. Will you not tell us what these things that you are doing mean for us? Then I said to them the word of the Lord came to me saying Speak to the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord. God Behold, I am about to profane my sanctuary. The pride of your power, the desire of your eyes and the delight of your soul, and your sons and your daughters, whom you have left behind, will fall by the sword. And your daughters, whom you have left behind, will fall by the sword. You will do as I have done. You will not cover your mustache and you will not eat the bread of men. Your turbans will be on your head and your shoes on your feet. You will not mourn and you will not weep, but you will rot away in your iniquities and you will groan to one another. Thus, ezekiel will be assigned to you according to all that he has done you will do. When it comes, then you will know that I am the Lord.
Speaker 1:As for you, son of man, will it not be on the day when I take from them their stronghold, the joy of their pride, the desire of their life in one blow? Know that I am the Lord? God tells Ezekiel that he's going to take away the desire of his life in one blow. He is not to mourn or cry. Then, in verse 17, ezekiel is to put on his turban and his sandals, which means he's ready to go somewhere. And Ezekiel's not going to be allowed to sit around the house and be sad that evening his wife dies. God takes his wife. God says in the early verses there he says I am going to take away the desire of your eyes. In that culture, when someone's spouse died, not mourning would be very odd and catch a lot of people's attention. Would be very odd and catch a lot of people's attention. Steve, why would God do this? What's the lesson? Why would God take the life of his wife and then tell Ezekiel not to cry?
Speaker 2:Well, the connection between his wife is with the sanctuary that God mentions there a few verses later. So it's talking about the temple. The temple is going to be destroyed when Nebuchadnezzar comes in and destroys the city. The temple was something that was precious to the people and it was their pride. They would look at it and say this is where our God dwells, this is where we worship our God. Yet at the same time, glenn, we've seen in the previous chapters that they were disrespecting the temple. They were worshiping other gods on the temple complex. They had a secret room that had hieroglyphics of other gods on the wall. They were worshiping the sun by facing the east, which means they would show their backside to the temple. On one hand, it's a very precious thing to the people, but on the other hand, they were disrespecting it, and I think God, through taking Ezekiel's wife, he is showing them and telling them that not even the thing that is very loving to them and sacred to them is going to be spared. It's going to be taken as well. Now I can tell you from my experience I have lost a spouse, and when my wife passed away, it's a pain that you can't describe to anyone else. There's nobody else that knows that pain, except for another one who has lost a spouse. It's like a part of you are gone and it's different than a divorce, because when they're divorced, one or the other party are agreeing to go and then they're still living, you still have contact with them, but whenever they pass away you no longer have contact with them and it's a very difficult time. So I can tell you that, through this object lesson here with Ezekiel, that it's, I think, a way for God to drive home the point through a little bit of maybe shock to the people that Ezekiel, who has been shown to them to do all of these different object lessons and to do these various things that God has told them, sometimes right in their midst, right in front of them, has been shown to them to do all of these different object lessons and to do these various things that God has told them, sometimes right in their midst, right in front of them, so that they can't miss the point that they're going to see that Ezekiel's wife has passed away and they're going to ask why is it? Why is it that this has been done?
Speaker 2:God has given Ezekiel a message to give to them, but I think, in its basic definition form, it's a message to the people that your most precious item, the temple, the sanctuary where you worship, is going to be taken from you.
Speaker 2:It's going to be destroyed. Unfortunately, ezekiel, as the prophet of God, is going to have to suffer through this, yet silently, through this period of time and to add the last to it, just as we completed the few verses before, god says I'm not going to relent, I'm not going to pity and I will not be sorry. He said that in verse 14. So that's why I think he's telling Ezekiel don't show mourning outside to others, because this is something that's happening to them. It's going to happen, yet it's a disciplinary move and it's something that really once again the extent that God is going to in order to drive this final idol worship problem that the nation of Israel has had for hundreds of years going off and worshiping other gods. It's like the final act, the final loss of something that's most precious and dear to them, in order to get that final message to them that they have to stop worshiping other gods.
Speaker 1:Many centuries had gone by with the Jewish people that were worshiping idols. They were having sex worship, they were sacrificing their children to these pagan idols. They continued to go out and seek them. They brought them into their worship centers and their sanctuaries and their homes and God sent prophet after prophet to get them to stop and they refused. Here he's saying I'm going to deal with this and I'm going to do it very stoically and again, ezekiel is the picture of God. So we have Ezekiel having the loss of a loved one, but he has to stay very unemotional about it. That's the reason is this is an object lesson.
Speaker 1:God was about to allow Babylon to come in and take the lives of the Jewish people and the people there that were listening to Ezekiel. In captivity, they had children, loved ones, perhaps parents, still back in Jerusalem and they were going to die. It was all because of driving out this horrible worship service, of driving out this horrible worship service and also, when the Babylonian army destroys Jerusalem, there would be no time for the Jews to mourn the loss of their family members. Typically in that culture, there would be a specific period of maybe 30 days or so where people would go into mourning, possibly even longer. There would be no time they would go through this with their turban on their head and their sandals on their feet, because the survivors were going to have to go into captivity themselves. That's why it is one more object lesson of God taking action to drive out and do justice for these horrible practices that he had given much time for the Jewish people to repent from.
Speaker 1:So it also brings up a question, though. Why would we look at God and say well, here's God that takes the life of this woman and he says at the beginning of that section I will take her. It wasn't the case that he was just waiting until she died, and God knew it. No, god says he's going to take her. So how can we justify this? How could a good God do something like that? Well, first of all, we have to realize that God created life and gave it as a gift. Because of that, we abuse it Again. The people in that day were sacrificing their children, and many of them deserve to die because of that. God gave life and he has the right to take it back again.
Speaker 1:The faithful believer in that day and in our day does not lose their life, in a sense of ending at annihilation, the faithful believer gains the presence of the Lord. Ending at annihilation, the faithful believer gains the presence of the Lord. If Ezekiel's wife was a true believer, she would be blessed by going into the presence of the Lord. Taking his children to himself is a blessing. We have to have an eternal view on this. God was also using Ezekiel's wife to teach a lesson, and God has the right and the prerogative to do so Again. He had sent and said words and they didn't believe him. They didn't follow the other prophets, so now he's taking action. God allows us to suffer, but always has greater gains that we do not see.
Speaker 1:Lastly, I would say who are we to question an all-powerful God? Just look at the answer that God gave to Job when Job questioned whether God was right in doing what he did to Job's family. Then look at verse 22. God gives the message that was prophesied by the death of Ezekiel's wife, namely that God is about to cause the destruction of his sanctuary, the temple and remember this was the temple of Solomon, this was the temple, this was the one that was very grand and very beautiful, and the Jewish sons and daughters would be killed in the battle. The question in front of us, steve, is are we willing to submit to God and beg forgiveness, and submit to his ways and follow His ways, even though it might cut against my flesh, or am I going to continue doing what I think's best and have to later deal with God's cleansing wrath?
Speaker 2:The obvious answer is that we admit our sins and we submit to His forgiveness.
Speaker 2:Is that we admit our sins and we submit to his forgiveness. We acknowledge that we have this problem and that we have this separation from God, and that he has provided a way for us to be reconciled back to him once again through belief and trust on Jesus Christ. But, glenn, just like the people in that day, the people in our day today, many of them justify what they're doing. They don't see them as doing things that are against God. They don't see themselves as being separated from God. Many of them don't even want to have anything to do with God. Those people that do acknowledge yeah, I don't have any type of association or relationship with God, but I don't want to have one then those people are going to face God's wrath at some point and his judgment, whether it be in this lifetime or in the next life, when they pass on to the other side. Those people will never submit to God because they have pride and they're arrogant that they don't feel that they need to submit to God. Of course, they're arrogant on this side of death, but once they cross over to the other side, I think it'll be a different story whenever they face God's judgment, then Now, some of the people that are, I think, might be lucky to face God's wrath on this side while they're still alive, because then they might come to the realization that they are separated from God and they have a chance, while they haven't passed away yet, in order to come to a belief and trust in Jesus Christ. While that's a harsh lesson, it's at least one that gives them an opportunity to be reconciled back to God, and I think that is the final thought and lesson here in chapter 24 of Ezekiel, as God finishes up this section dealing with the Jews and Israel and the temple. What's going to happen with Jerusalem is that the people are facing God's wrath.
Speaker 2:He says many times throughout all of these sections and verses then you will know that I am God. When these things come about, you will know that I am God. That's really the bottom line for them to know that he is God, and at this time he's serious about driving this sin of worshiping other gods out of them. He's serious about disciplining them. He's reached the final straw where the final discipline is going to happen and they're going to see God's final wrath.
Speaker 2:The uplifting part, though, as we've talked about through all of these sessions so far. Glenn, though, is that he does give them hope in a couple of areas, that he's going to restore them and that they will be restored at some point in time. At this time, they have the ability to acknowledge their sin, acknowledge to get back right with God, and they also had the hope, as a nation, to be able to get back to God as well, and he's going to restore them. We're going to see that in a later chapter of Ezekiel, but that's the bottom line. Your question is is it better to submit to God and admit your sins or face his wrath? The obvious question, as I stated at the beginning, is to submit to God.
Speaker 1:Chapter 24 is the last of the section where God is giving messages about Jerusalem and the Jewish people. Starting in chapter 25, god begins to direct his attention towards the nations around Israel, and we'll see next time how he gets into dealing with them. Meanwhile, we'll direct you to our website. If you have need for small group Bible study materials or learn to teach classes for yourself, we have all those materials available to help you. So please check out our website, reasoningthroughthebiblecom, and we love your comments. Send us feedback at info that's I-N-F-O at ReasoningThroughTheBiblecom, and we trust that you'll be back with us next time as we continue to reason through the.
Speaker 2:Bible. Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
