Ezekiel 14

When the sons of Asaph wanted to describe the city of Jerusalem, they wrote, “Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King” (Ps. 48: nkjv). The Babylonian Talmud says, “Of the ten measures of beauty that came down to the world, Jerusalem took nine” (Kidushin 49b), and, “Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in its splendor has never seen a lovely city” (Succah 51b). Of modern Jerusalem, Samuel Heilman wrote, “It is a place in which people actually live; it is a place that lives in them.” One of the Jewish exiles in Babylonian wrote: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Ps. 137:5–6 nkjv). When Jewish families around the world celebrate Passover, they conclude the meal with, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

The Jewish exiles wouldn’t be happy with the three messages Ezekiel would bring them from the Lord, for he was going to announce the destruction of Jerusalem and the ravaging of the Promised Land. It was bad enough that the Jews were exiles in a pagan land, but to be told that they would have no city to return to was more than they could bear. No wonder they preferred the encouraging messages of the false prophets.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” During the siege of Jerusalem (606–586 BC), error had the support of government and religious leaders, and most of the Jewish exiles in Babylon agreed with them. “We will never give in to the Babylonian army!” was the cry of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. “The Lord will never allow the Gentiles to destroy His Holy City or defile His holy temple!” One dissenting voice in Jerusalem was Jeremiah; in Babylon it was Ezekiel. Both in his “action sermons” and his oral messages, Ezekiel warned the people that they were trusting in illusions. No matter what the officials, the false prophets, and the people said, the city and the nation were doomed. In these chapters, Ezekiel exposes the errors that brought the nation to ruin.

Except when God told him to leave, Ezekiel was confined to his house (3:24) and was not allowed to speak unless he was declaring a message from the Lord. The elders of the exiled people came to visit him to see what he was doing and to hear what he had to say about their situation (8:1; 20:1). The prophet gave them two messages from the Lord.

He exposed their hidden sin (vv. 1–5). God told His servant that these elders were like some of the spiritual leaders Ezekiel had seen in his vision of the temple (chap. 8): outwardly they were serving the Lord, but secretly they were worshipping idols. Instead of having a love for God and His Word in their hearts, the elders had idols in their hearts. Yet they piously sat before God’s prophet and acted spiritual, but to them, listening to Ezekiel speak was more like religious entertainment than receiving spiritual enlightenment (33:31). They were like the people in Isaiah’s day who drew near to God with words but not with their hearts (Isa. 29:13). Jesus said that the Pharisees in His day were guilty of the same sin (Matt. 15:8–9), and so are some professed Christians today. Idolatry in the heart puts a stumbling block before the eyes (Ezek. 13:7; 7:19; 18:10; 44:12), and this leads to a tragic fall.

It’s not likely that believers today would have a love in their hearts for actual images, but anything that replaces God in our affections and our obedience is certainly an idol. It might be wealth, as in the case of Achan (Josh. 7), Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5), and the man we call “the rich young ruler” (Matt. 19:16–26). Jonah’s idol was a selfish patriotism that made him turn his back on the Gentiles who needed to hear his message. Pilate’s idol was holding the approval of the people and his status in the Roman Empire (Mark 15:15; John 19:12–16). What we have in our hearts affects what we see and how we live. If Christ is Lord in our hearts (1 Peter 3:15), then there will be no place for idols.

Loving and accepting the false prevents us from knowing and loving the true (2 Thess. 2:10) and results in our becoming estranged from the Lord (Ezek. 13:5). By worshipping false gods, Israel abandoned the Lord whom they had “married” at Sinai (Jer. 2:1–14), and they needed to turn back to the Lord. Like the believers in the church of Ephesus, they had “left their first love” (Rev. 2:4). God told Ezekiel that the Jewish people had deserted Him to follow after idols and that He would discipline them in order to “recapture” their hearts.

He called them to repent (vv. 6–11). Repentance is a change of mind; it means turning from sin and turning to the Lord. The Jewish exiles needed to change their minds about idols and the sin of worshipping idols, and then turn to the Lord who alone is worthy of worship. God would judge each sinner personally and deal with each one personally (v. 7), and some of them He would use as examples to warn the other exiles (v. 8).

A casual reading of verse 9 would give the impression that it was the Lord’s fault that people were worshipping idols, but that isn’t the case. Everybody in Israel knew the Ten Commandments and understood that it was a sin to make and worship idols (Ex. 20:1–6). Even if someone very close to them enticed them to practice idolatry, they were not to yield (Deut. 13). God permitted these enticements to test the people to make sure they were loyal to Him. Of course, God knows what’s in the human heart, but we don’t know our own hearts, and these tests help us to stay humble before the Lord and walk in the fear of the Lord. An illustration of this truth is seen in 1 Kings 22. God permitted a lying spirit to work in the minds of the false prophets to convince Ahab to go into battle. Micaiah, the true prophet, told the assembly what would happen, but they rejected the truth and put their trust in lies. God spared the life of the king of Judah but took the life of wicked King Ahab.

When people will not receive “the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” God may “send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, so that they all may be condemned” (2 Thess. 2:10–11 nkjv). It’s the condition of the person’s heart that determines the response to the Lord’s test, for God deals with people according to their hearts (Ps. 18:26–27). The attitude of the lost world today is that there are no absolutes, and therefore there can be no “truth.” Satan is the liar and the deceiver, and he has blinded the minds of people so that they believe lies and reject the truth of God. We must do all we can to share the truth of the Word with a blind and deaf world, trusting the Holy Spirit to open their eyes and ears and save them by His grace.

In this particular message, the Lord described once again the four judgments He would send on the people of Judah and Jerusalem, and He emphasized one compelling fact: there would be no escape. Perhaps some of the Jews remembered how their father Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah, and how the Lord promised to spare the city if He could locate in it ten righteous men (Gen. 18:16–33). God had told Jeremiah to stop praying for the people because they were beyond hope (Jer. 7:16; 11:14; 14:11), and now He would tell Ezekiel that the presence of three righteous men whom the Jews revered would not save the city of Jerusalem.

The judgments described (vv. 12–21). The first judgment is famine (vv. 12–14). God would break the staff of bread and cut off the lives of humans and animals. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel mention this judgment (Jer. 14; Ezek. 5:12, 16–17; 6:11–12; 7:15; 12:16), and it came as promised. But God in His covenant with Israel had warned that famine would come if the people disobeyed His Word (Deut. 28:15–20, 38–40, 50–57). “But surely there are enough righteous men in Jerusalem to turn away God’s anger,” the leaders argued; but God silenced their lips. If Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the city, their righteousness would deliver only themselves and could not save the city.

Why did the Lord choose these three men? For one thing, all three of them are identified in the Old Testament Scripture as righteous men (Gen. 6:9; Job 1:1, 8; 2:3; Dan. 6:4–5, 22). All of them were tested and proved faithful, Noah by the flood, Daniel in the lions’ den, and Job by painful trials from Satan. They were all men of faith. Noah’s faith helped to save his family and animal creation; Daniel’s faith saved his own life and the lives of his friends (Dan. 2:24); and Job’s faith saved his three friends from God’s judgment (Job 42:7–8). However, the faith and righteousness of these three men could not be accredited to others. Noah’s family had to trust God and enter the ark; Daniel’s friends had to pray and trust God; and Job’s friends had to repent and bring the proper sacrifices. There is no such thing as “borrowed faith.”

The responsibility of each person before God is a key subject in the book of Ezekiel, and he will deal with it in chapter 18. God doesn’t punish people because of the sins of others, nor will God accept the righteousness of others to compensate for the wicked deeds of sinners. This principle is made clear in both the law of Moses and the covenant God made with Israel. The only time God abandoned this principle was when Jesus Christ His Son died on the cross, for He suffered for the sins of the whole world. When we trust Jesus as Savior and Lord, we receive the gift of His righteousness and God accepts us because of His Son (Rom. 3:21—4:25; 2 Cor. 5:19–21).

The second judgment was wild beasts in the land (Ezek. 14:15–16). This judgment was also mentioned in the covenant: “I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be desolate” (Lev. 26:22). The Lord gave Israel victory in the Promised Land in about seven years, but the “mopping up” operation took a little longer. God gave the Jews victory over the residents “little by little” so that the land wouldn’t revert to its natural state and the wild animals take over (Deut. 7:22). But now in a developed land, with many people, towns, and cities, the animals would still take over at the command of God! Unfortunately, it would be innocent children who would suffer most. But even if these three righteous men were living in the land, they couldn’t deliver anybody other than themselves.

The third judgment was the sword (Ezek. 14:17–18), which means war. The word sword is used at least eighty-six times in Ezekiel. The Babylonian army would sweep through the land and show no mercy (Hab. 1:5–11). They would surround Jerusalem and besiege it until its food ran out and its fortifications failed. The presence of Noah, Daniel, and Job could not have saved the city.

The final judgment was pestilence (Ezek. 14:19–20), which usually accompanies famine and war (Rev. 6:3–8). Dying people and decaying corpses certainly don’t make a besieged city a healthier place in which to live. Again, God gave the warning about the inability of the three righteous men to rescue the people. The fourfold repetition of this truth surely got the message across to the elders, but the Jewish people had a tendency to rest all their hopes on the righteousness of their “great men.” Both John the Baptist and Jesus warned the Pharisees and Sadducees that they couldn’t please God just because Abraham was their father (Matt. 3:7–9; John 8:33–47) or Moses was their leader (9:28).

God’s judgments vindicated (vv. 21–23). The absence of even three righteous people in Jerusalem would make God’s judgments of the city even worse, and when all four of His judgments converge, how terrible it will be! No doubt the false prophets and some of the other captives would debate with the Lord and argue that He was being too hard on Judah and Jerusalem. But in His grace, He would allow some of the people to escape the four judgments and be taken captive to Babylon (12:16). When the exiles who preceded them to Babylon see the wickedness of these people, they will have to agree that the Lord was righteous in His judgments (Jer. 22:8–9). The hearts of these survivors must have been incurably sinful if they could watch the siege, see thousands die, be spared themselves, and still not repent and turn to the Lord. Indeed, their eyes were blind, their ears were deaf, and they were a stubborn and rebellious people.