WHEN GOD SAYS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 25

 

Ezekiel was a contemporary prophet of both Jeremiah and Daniel. The book of Ezekiel was most likely written between 593 and 565 B.C. during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. Ezekiel’s generation, much like our own, was exceedingly sinful.

 

One of the key passages in Ezekiel is 2:3-7. Christians today would do well to remember these verses in their goal to be faithful in proclaiming the truth. Then He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the sons of Israel, to a rebellious people who have rebelled against Me; they and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day. I am sending you to them who are stubborn and obstinate children, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ As for them, whether they listen or not—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, neither fear them nor fear their words, though thistles and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions; neither fear their words nor be dismayed at their presence, for they are a rebellious house. But you shall speak My words to them whether they listen or not, for they are rebellious. Five times the word ‘rebellious or rebelled’ is used to describe the people to whom God would send Ezekiel. They are a hardened and bitter people. And God was rightly offended by them!

 

God tells Ezekiel to be faithful to speak His words no matter what the people are like. In 18:4 He says that every living soul belongs to him, but the soul that sins will die. In Ezekiel 28:12-14, we see a very rare description of Satan before his fall. In 33:11, God makes it known that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather He wants them to turn from their ways and live. Or else, they will die. When Israel is restored in the future, God says on that day the name of the city from that time on will be: THE LORD IS THERE. In Chapter 8, the Lord was in His Temple in Jerusalem, but the people didn’t appreciate nor care about that fact.

 

Bitter captives, living in a land far from home needed the one thing every human being living in this wicked world needs: The Word of God. Ezekiel had nothing to offer his people but God’s Word. If they would have ears to hear it, they would have hope to walk victoriously in their suffering. If they didn’t, Ezekiel was still faithful to God, the only thing that truly matters in this life. Whether those to whom Ezekiel had been sent by God listened or not, God would be glorified in Ezekiel’s faithfulness.

 

In Chapter 8, God supernaturally transports Ezekiel in spirit with Him (from Babylon) to Jerusalem to witness the abominations being carried out in the Temple by those who were responsible to lead God’s people to Him in worship. The major spiritual decline in Israel began when temples were constructed to pagan gods on the temple mount area during Solomon’s reign. You will remember that Solomon married many foreign, pagan wives and allowed them each to build whatever temple or altar she desired to the gods or goddesses of her choice (1 Kings 11:1-8). Along with a spiritual decline came a resurrection of Baal worship (1 Kings 16:31-34; 17:1-17). This ended up resulting in the division of the nation into the northern and southern kingdoms after Solomon died (1 Kings 11:41-12:33). One commentator wrote: “When the leader of a country endorses paganism it flourishes.” Can we not see that in our own day?

 

At the entrance to the North Gate of the inner court, the leaders had set up an image that provoked God to jealousy. (Ezekiel 8:3) Israel knew from her early days that God is a jealous God. Their provocation was intentional. Did you ever witness a teenager testing his parents by trying to push the line of authority? Why did they do it? Led by the evil one, they were living for the here and now, deluded by their fleshly desires, not fully able to comprehend the consequences of their rebellious behavior. The temporal ecstasies associated with idol worship cannot ever be overcome by the flesh. Satan is able to deceive easily those who are not walking in God’s Spirit focused on His will. They knew they were never to make a graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. They were not to bow down to them or serve them.

 

On an almost unbelievable note, we see here: The glory of the God of Israel was also there—but ignored. In verse 6, it appears that they are provoking God to jealousy in order to drive His presence from the Temple. What they failed to realize is that if God’s presence would be driven away by their sin, so too would they be physically removed from the land He had given them.

 

Bodily, Ezekiel is in Babylon; in his spirit, he was very clearly witnessing all that God saw in Jerusalem. As we saw earlier, idolatry didn’t ‘come out of the closet’, so to speak, before wicked Manasseh. With Manasseh’s reign, idol worship was flagrantly blatant.

 

It is not difficult to believe that the image Ezekiel saw was some sort of image of Asherah, “the queen of heaven.” The widespread cult in Jerusalem at the time was filled with occultic worship that was Babylonian in nature. (Jeremiah 7:17-18) At the very gate where men entered to meet with holy God, this blasphemous image of jealousy (no doubt, with some sort of sexual enticements) stood in proud defiance of God Almighty.

 

 

They were naturally compelled to drive the Light of God’s glory from the Temple. Why? Because those who love their sin also love the darkness. John 3:19-20 says: And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed. The people didn’t actually care if God saw what they were doing. They didn’t care whether the people around them saw their sin. What they did care about protecting, whether they realized it or not, was the freedom to sin without restraint. Because they loved their sin, they didn’t want their own consciences to convict them. Without God around, they could go on sinning without any reminder that what they were doing was wrong! However, this was Ezekiel’s job—to keep on reminding them. And it is ours as well. We are called to be salt and light in this dark world no matter how much push back we receive from the hands of the wicked.

Ezekiel 8:7-13

In verses 7-13, we looked at some of what Ezekiel saw yesterday. He sees a virtual pantheon of idolatry going on. He sees beasts being worshipped, pictures on the walls, and idols literally everywhere defiling God’s holy Temple. But the most troubling of all was what the leaders were doing. Ezekiel witnessed 70 elders worshipping the images with incense censers in their hands. Romans 1:23 rings in our ears as we read this: …and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible mankind, of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. Where did this come from? Most undoubtedly from Egypt where many animal cults were worshiped.

 

Who was this Jaazaniah, who is singled out in verse 11 of Chapter 8? Remember Hilkiah, the high priest, who found the book of the law when Josiah was king? Shaphan was the scribe who read the book to the king. This is his son. The son of the God-fearing Shaphan was the leader of the animal cult worshippers. And what were they saying the whole time? “God doesn’t see us.” But He did; and He sees everything that is going on in your life and mine right this very moment.

 

Yesterday, we looked at verses 14-15 where the women were weeping for Tammuz. Here’s another interesting fact to add to what we have already seen. Nimrod was the first to establish kingdoms. The first was in Shinar, including Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh. The second kingdom is Assyria, called the land of Nimrod in Micah 5:6. When God confused the language of the people at Babel, Nimrod was driven to Assyria from Babylon. The two have seen many connections since that time. Tammuz, supposedly having been conceived by a sunbeam, was now the supposed reincarnated Nimrod, (the counterfeit version of Jesus’ birth). We looked at Semiramis a.k.a. “Virgin Mother”, “Holy Mother”, and the “Queen of Heaven”, who claimed to be the virgin that bore Tammuz. She was symbolized by the Moon, also a symbol of Islam. The high priestess of the Babel religion was also the founder of all mystery religions as well as a goddess.

 

At Babel the language was confused, then the people were scattered and took “their own goddess” with them wherever they went. The celebration of Lent, also with no basis in Scripture, developed from the pagan celebration of Semiramis’ mourning for forty days over the death of Tammuz before his alleged resurrection. Interestingly, in all the mother/child cults, the child never grows to adulthood.

 

I will never forget one conversation I had with a beloved Catholic family member who had just returned from ‘Midnight Mass’ one Christmas Eve. She was recalling a conversation she had that night with a lady kneeling beside her who had cancer. She told the woman that she needed to focus on the baby Jesus who would heal her. I assured her that Jesus was no longer a baby in a manger but the King of the world!

Ezekiel 8:16-18 What is seen next in Ezekiel 8 is men worshipping the sun. Deuteronomy 4:19 had warned against this: And be careful not to raise your eyes to heaven and look at the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the heavenly lights, and allow yourself to be drawn away and worship them and serve them, things which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. This was the most sacred inner court where only priests could go. It is interesting that there are 24 orders of priests and one high priest; so, this group was the religious representatives of the people, the very ones who were to bring the people before the Lord and offer sacrifices on their behalf. The Lord had very detailed specifications regarding the building of the Temple and had fixed the position of the sanctuary in a way so that the entrance would be facing west, just to avoid this very thing. Upon entering the Sanctuary, one would be facing the Holy of Holies with his back to the sun in the east. Worshiping towards the east was in absolute strict defiance of what the Lord had commanded. This was thumbing their nose at God and His holy dwelling place.

What they were doing was the ultimate abomination to the Lord. To them? It was no biggy! But paganism is allegiance to Satan, a liar and murderer from the beginning. It always results in violence toward one another. We see it happening before our very eyes today. One commentator said this: “When God is defied, abused, and denied, there is no reason to maintain the moral order He created.”

Matthew 24:37-39—For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.

 

In the days of Noah, the people were going about their everyday life taking care of normal business not paying attention to the judgment of God they were already under. Society seems to drift into apostasy upon gentle waves and cool breezes more swiftly than in tempestuous waves and gale force winds. The people no doubt thought life was good. God saw it for what it was. Genesis 6:11-2—Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for humanity had corrupted its way upon the earth.

We live in a day wherein everyone seems to be offended by every little thing. Perhaps the liberals around us are trying to get our focus on all the little things that offend them so that they can avoid the one major stone of stumbling and rock of ‘offense’ (skandalon from where we get our word scandalous) that trumps all others. The person and work of Jesus Christ was so contrary to the expectations of the Jews concerning “their” Messiah, that they rejected Him, and by their obstinacy made shipwreck of their salvation. How arrogant to be so concerned about every insignificant and petty annoyance around you that you fail to consider that God may be offended with YOU!

The earth was corrupt and offensive in God’s sight before the Flood; He was offended by what was happening in Ezekiel’s day inside His Temple; and He is offended by what is happening in our country even today. God told Ezekiel that He would no longer put up with the Jews since they had rebelled to the point of no return. Pastor John MacArthur gave a similar-type sermon a few weeks ago regarding America. The only thing that was going to bring the Jews back to Him in Ezekiel’s day was wide-scale persecution. That would save some individually. But Jerusalem was on course for destruction, and nothing could turn God’s hand back from that judgment.

America, as a nation, has been drifting out into the sea of apostasy for some time. While it is never too late (before someone dies or time as we know it comes to an end) for individuals to turn from their wicked ways in repentance and to humble themselves before God, there is a day when God says of a nation, “Enough!” According to Romans 1, the United States of America is on a downward spiral and gaining speed at a rapid rate. We must learn from history. God never changes; sadly, man doesn’t change either unless God intervenes.