Ezekiel 8
Trouble in the Temple
Pray
Intro
√ Trouble in the Temple
The Temple in Jerusalem was the pride and joy of the Jewish people!
Represented God’s favor ~ He chose Jerusalem to be the place where His Name would be declared and His presence would inhabit.
The Jewish faith stands and falls with the Temple because the practice of their faith requires a Temple!
Yet, we find that during the life of Ezekiel the people, the priests and the rulers of Judah had transformed God’s Temple into a place of Spiritual adultery!
√ The vision
Remember that God communicated with and through Ezekiel by means of…
Vision ~ chapters 1-3
Signs ~ chapters 4-5
Sermons ~ chapters 6-7
Chapters 8-11 record a new vision that he received from God that details the…
Trouble in the Temple ~ chapter 8
The Judgment of God ~ chapter 9
God’s glory leaves the Temple ~ chapter 10
God’s judgment on the rulers ~ chapter 11
So, beginning with chapter 8 we have the record of this 2nd vision that Ezekiel received from God that he might communicate the depth of Israel’s sin and what God was going to do about it.
Ap. You are the Temple!
The lessons of these chapters find application in our own lives as Christians.
You are the Temple!
We’re reminded then that we must keep the Temple clean and free of the idols of “self” and sin that would defame the glory of God and bring His chastisement into our lives.
To Jerusalem (vs. 1-4)
Ezek. 8:1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me there.
Ezek. 8:2 Then I looked, and there was a likeness, like the appearance of fire—from the appearance of His waist and downward, fire; and from His waist and upward, like the appearance of brightness, like the color of amber.
Ezek. 8:3 He stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my hair; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the image of jealousy was, which provokes to jealousy.
Ezek. 8:4 And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the plain.
√ To Jerusalem
There are number of interesting facts stated in these opening verses that help us understand and the occasion in which Ezekiel received this 2nd vision.
Vs 1 ~ exactly 14 months after his 1st vision (ref. 1:1-2), note that he has an audience now! (the signs worked!)
Vs. 2 ~ a theophany (inspiration for the Human Torch ~ Johnny Storm?)
Vs. 3 & 4 ~ a vision, that is, he did not physically leave Babylon, rather God took him there in the Spirit.
The point is that now that God has the attention of the elders, the men of authority amongst the captives in Babylon…
…God is going to provide for them greater details about why judgment is coming, and the consequences of the coming judgment.
Ap. Nothing hidden
In this first part of the vision God is going to reveal to Ezekiel and the elders the secret sins of Israel…
…what they were doing in the dark!
Reminding us that God sees everything, both the good and bad!
He rewards those who do what is right when no one is watching, and He exposes and punishes those who do evil in the dark.
Ex. Prayer
Matt. 6:6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
Ex. Sin
Our text reveals that God saw every sin that they did in the dark, that He exposed it through Ezekiel (even naming names!).
Ap. Who you are in private is important to God
In time all things will be revealed, so do those things that will bring a rich reward from God!
Idols at the Entrance of (vs. 5-6)
Ezek. 8:5 Then He said to me, “Son of man, lift your eyes now toward the north.” So I lifted my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, was this image of jealousy in the entrance.
Ezek. 8:6 Furthermore He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations.”
√ Idols at the entrance (#1 on handout)
Beginning in vs. 3 God begins to show Ezekiel (and then the elders of Judah) the cause of His great anger against Jerusalem and her people…
…they had given themselves to the worship of idols and even set them up in His House (i.e. Temple)!!
Ex. The Temple is a replica of God’s Throne Room in Heaven!
Can you imagine putting images of false gods and goddess in God’s House!
I don’t think so!
So, you can get a sense of how hot God must be about what the people have done to the Temple!
√ Idol #1
The first idol mentioned is simply called…
“image of jealousy” ~ vs. 3 & 5
That it was set up at the…
“door of the north gate of the inner court” ~ vs. 3
And…
“north of the altar gate” ~ vs. 5
There were three gates that opened from the outer court into the inner court…
..the other two were located one on the east side, and the other on the south side.
No gate on the West side as that would have allowed people to approach the Holy of Holies from behind…
…or behind God’s throne.
No one sneaks up on God!
There’s a bit of a confusion about which gate the “image of jealousy” is near because vs. 3 and 5 seem to indicate two different gates…
The north gate ~ vs. 3
The north side of the gate by the altar (east) ~ vs. 5
So, which is it?! I think it’s the east gate because vs. 3 says that God brought Ezekiel to the North Gate…
…from which he could see the “image of jealousy” set up to the north side of the gate by the altar.
√ Name that idol!
The idol is not specifically named, that is, we’re not told which false god or goddess was represented by the image.
A good guess would be the false goddess Asherah of the Canaanites.
Asherah was the goddess of sex and war and the worship of her image involved all manner of immoral behavior.
The Bible records the sad story of many in Israel who set up her images and worshipped her.
Manasseh had set up an wooden image of her in the Temple (2 Kings 21:7), then took it down (2Chron. 33:15)…
…but we find another one set up by the time of Josiah because he has it torn down (2 Kings 23:6).
So, if we were to guess which idol was called the “image of jealousy”…
…the Asherah pole would be a pretty good candidate because the Jewish people beginning with Manasseh were bent on setting up a pole to worship her.
√ Don’t worship that stick!
The reason for the Lord’s jealousy is that the 2nd Commandment forbade the Jewish people from worship of any idol. Later the Lord specifically told them not to worship Asherah…
“You must never set up an Asherah pole beside the altar of the LORD your God.” ~ Deut. 16:21 NLT
The point of the Lord’s commandment was that His Covenant with the Jewish people was like a marriage contract…
…between One God and One People.
God is portrayed as the “husband” and Israel as His “wife”.
He doesn’t share His wife with any other god!
Idols in the Courtyard (vs. 7-11)
Ezek. 8:7 So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, there was a hole in the wall.
Ezek. 8:8 Then He said to me, “Son of man, dig into the wall”; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door.
Ezek. 8:9 And He said to me, “Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there.”
Ezek. 8:10 So I went in and saw, and there—every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls.
Ezek. 8:11 And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up.
Ezek. 8:12 Then He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.’ ”
√ Idols in the courtyard (#2 on handout)
God takes Ezekiel from the outer court into the inner court and shows him how far their idolatry had extended…
“…all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls.” ~ vs. 10
The word “portrayed” can also be translated, “carved”. That is, these men…
…had carved the images of any and every false god and goddess into the walls of the Temple courtyard!
Ezekiel sees 70 men, the elders of Judah (ref. Num. 11:16-17 ~ not the Sanhedrin as they didn’t come to be until after the Babylonian captivity)…
…burning incense to the images carved into the walls of the Temple courtyard.
Incense is symbolic of their prayers (ref. Rev. 5:8).
The point is that where they should have been praying to God the Creator…
…they were instead praying to carved images of creatures!
√ Unfaithful
In vs. 11 we find that God reveals to Ezekiel something of a surprise!
That is, that God names Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan as one of the participants involved in the worship of these false gods!
That information would have come as a shock to Ezekiel and the men in his home because Jaazaniah’s family was counted as faithful to God!
But, by this divine vision Jaazaniah’s hypocrisy is exposed for everyone to see!
Idolaters in the Doorway (vs. 13-14)
Ezek. 8:13 And He said to me, “Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.”
Ezek. 8:14 So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD’S house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.
√ Idolaters in the doorway (#3 on handout)
Remember that Ezekiel is inside the inner courtyard, now God tells him to turn around and look back to the north gate that opened to the outer court where there was more idolatry going on!
There he finds a group of woman weeping for Tammuz!
Tammuz was a Babylonian god that was believed to bring the Spring vegetation.
Part of the “worship” of Tammuz involved weeping over his “death” each year as the Summer heat arrived and killed off the green vegetation.
The weeping of the woman was thought to aide in his “resurrection” each Spring.
So, the Jewish people who were supposed to be worshipping God the Creator…
…were now worshipping the cycles of creation!
Idolaters at the altar (vs. 15-18)
Ezek. 8:15 Then He said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again, you will see greater abominations than these.”
Ezek. 8:16 So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD’S house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.
Ezek. 8:17 And He said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to their nose.
Ezek. 8:18 Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them.”
√ Idolaters at the altar (#4 on handout)
The last abomination that God shows Ezekiel is a group of men who are praying to the Sun with their backs to the Holy of Holies…
…the Throne of God.
The symbolism is inescapable!
The Jewish people have turned their backs on the One True God to worship everything else in Creation!
Worse, their position in the Temple courtyard between the Altar and the Temple suggests that they are the priests of God!!
That is, the men who had been called, anointed and equipped to minister to God’s people and to protect them from the evils of false religion…
…were themselves practicing and promoting it!
The tragedy is that the priests were supposed to be the front line of defense against Satan and his tricks.
With that defense removed the people of the land abandoned their God and opened themselves up for His judgment.
That is, if those who are called to point people to God are instead pointing them to false gods…
…then the nation cannot stand.
Ex. But, one man can make a difference!
Later in the Book of Ezekiel we find God crying out…
“So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.” ~ Ezek. 22:30
All the Lord wanted was one man!
A man like Samuel, or Josiah, or Nehemiah that would stand up for God, destroy the idols and turn the people back to their God.
But there were none.
The corruption and idols in the Temple was an simply an outward manifestation of the condition of their souls…
…they had rejected the True and Living God as the King of their heart and replaced Him with false gods and goddesses that pandered to their fleshly passions.
Therefore, God would give them over to their gods, depart from His Temple and destroy it so that no false god would be worshipped in His House.
Close
√ Trouble in the Temple
The Temple was a good and holy place until the people began to bring their sin into it.
Setting up images of their gods
Worshipping the lust of their eyes, their flesh and their pride
Rejecting the One true God
The lesson is two-fold for us today…
1) Guard the church, be like Samuel, Ezra and Josiah and make sure that the false gods of the world aren’t allowed into our fellowship.
Ap. Know the Scripture and don’t shy away from defending the Truth ~ remember one man can make a difference!
2) Guard the Temple of your body
The Bible tells us that God has moved His Spirit into the lives of those who trust in Christ transforming our bodies into the Temple of God!
I Cor. 3:16
I Cor. 6:19
2 Cor. 6:16
Ap. Surrender your body to God’s purposes and don’t use it for sin.