Ezekiel chapter 13, the Lord had been giving in Ezekiel messages to share with the people and he’d been using object lessons that he would have Ezekiel do to help the people understand the message he was bringing. Last time we looked at the fact that Ezekiel got his bags together and he left on what appeared to be a journey and it was really symbolizing that the nation of Israel would be taken out of Judah and they would have to pack their things, what they could, because they wouldn’t be going back. And then he also gave the example of going through the wall and digging through the wall and the example that was given of King Jerechiah, who would attempt to escape via tunnel system to Jericho, but he would be caught by the Babylonians and his children would be killed in front of him.
He would be blinded, taken away to Babylon, a land that he would be taken to but never see. And he would be blinded as he was taken there. And these things were shown as prophecies because they hadn’t yet happened and Ezekiel was to tell this to the people as an example.
Well one of the problems that has brought all of this on is what the message is that the Lord will have Ezekiel bring as we look at today’s lesson. And it’s a lesson that is very apropos for us today because it deals with truth. And are God’s people willing to proclaim truth or do they want to tell lies to try and tickle ears and appease man instead of call men to repentance and turning back to Christ.
So let’s take a look at Ezekiel chapter 13 beginning at verse 1.
And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 2 Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the Lord; 3 thus saith the Lord God; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! 4 O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts. 5 Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. 6 They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word. 7 Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say, The Lord saith it; albeit I have not spoken? 8 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord God. 9 And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord God.
10 Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered morter: 11 say unto them which daub it with untempered morter, that it shall fall: there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it. 12 Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it? 13 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury to consume it. 14 So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered morter, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall, and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the Lord. 15 Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered morter, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it; 16 to wit, the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and which see visions of peace for her, and there is no peace, saith the Lord God.
17 Likewise, thou son of man, set thy face against the daughters of thy people, which prophesy out of their own heart; and prophesy thou against them, 18 and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Woe to the women that sew pillows to all armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and will ye save the souls alive that come unto you? 19 And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your lies? 20 Wherefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. 21 Your kerchiefs also will I tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. 22 Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life: 23 therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations: for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.
Let’s just bow in prayer. Lord, I pray that you just help us understand the horror of false prophets and diviners. And Lord, help us to see the truth that is contained within your word of what was happening in Israel at the time that Ezekiel was bringing these prophecies, and help us to not follow those that bring vanity for their messages, but to seek the truth of your word. Speak to us now, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
One of the amazing things that we see happening here is everything was happening the way that Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel said it would happen, with Jerusalem, the Temple, the countries of Judah and Israel.
And we saw that everything that God said, the judgment that would come, was coming. Yet in the midst of all of this, you have false teachers. And one of the things that we see is that Satan is very busy presenting lies instead of truth.
Now, there’s two groupings here in this particular passage. The first group is the false prophets, and the false prophets would be the men of the false prophets, which would be the men of Israel. And the second group is the women of Israel, which are really false prophetesses, and they come with even more wicked things than the men with their lies.
The men come with lies, the women come with really occultic symbols that they say are to be used to bring about healing to the land of Israel. Let’s begin to just take a look at this, and then compare it to some things that are happening in our culture today, and even in the church. It says in verse 3, Therefore thou, son of man, prepare the stuff for removing and remove.
Chapter 13, beginning at verse 3. Thus saith the Lord God, Woe unto the foolish prophets that follow with their own spirit and have seen nothing. The first thing is, where does the false prophet get his message from? Well, it’s not from God. And it’s either from his own spirit, he’s determining what he thinks he can pull over, if you will, on people to get him to follow his lies and believe his lack of discernment, or also he’s influenced by satanic influence.
The Apostle Paul talks to us that we’re not to follow the foolishness of this world, and nor the vain philosophies of this world, nor the lies that would be presented to us. Well, that’s exactly the same message that Ezekiel has been given to share with the people. Why are you listening to these people? They don’t have any word from the Lord.
It’s all coming from their own imaginations, their own hearts. One of the things you see is that whenever God’s people present something, it’s always from the Lord. And when a prophet speaks, it will come true.
The day in which we live, we had false prophets, and they’re still at work. There’s a man by the name of Howard Brown, and he brought about the fact that he said there was a great revival that was occurring, and it was called the Toronto Revival. And also, he said it was going on in other places, and it was nothing godly about this revival.
People didn’t repent. Instead, they walked around barking like dogs, howling like monkeys, rolling and screaming on the floor, and it had nothing to do with being repentant of sins and walking holy in your lives. Well, he’s still active in the church today presenting other false prophets.
Well, what are some of the things that the false prophets presented in the day in which Ezekiel lived? We see that some of the things is they said there was peace when there was no peace. It was evident there was no peace. At the time that Ezekiel was bringing these messages, Nebuchadnezzar had attacked the city of Jerusalem two times, and he was going to attack it a third time and destroy the whole city.
Yet they kept saying there’s peace. They said that the Lord is going to deliver us, and peace will be restored, and we will have power and authority once again. All of it lies.
And if you just looked, you could see what was happening around you, and you could see that they were lying, but the people wanted to believe them. We see that what Jesus said would happen in the last days is there would be a group of people that would come, and they’d say peace, peace, and there’d be no peace. As you look at some of the things that are happening in the world today, one of the things that you oftentimes hear is, well, there’s peace coming, but where’s the peace? There isn’t peace in the Middle East, but yet they say there’s peace.
You have President Trump’s Board of Peace. You have the fact that they say there’s going to be peace in Gaza. It’s going to be all rebuilt, and it’s going to become this great attraction to the world.
And that they say that there was peace with Iran. They got rid of the nuclear armaments that Iran was trying to put together, and yet we see that there’s no peace there. Up to 30,000 or more Iranian, mostly young people, who wanted their freedom have been killed and murdered.
There is no peace. There’s no peace in Syria, and yet the president of Syria has come to the White House and had met with our president, and our president says he’s a good guy, and he’s there to try and bring about peace. But no peace as the Kurds are being slaughtered and the Druze are being hunted, and we see that other minorities in Syria are being destroyed by this man and his group of thugs.
So we see that the same message is given today, peace, peace, when there is no peace. One of the things that’s going to come is going to mark the last days, if there’s going to be the appearance of peace. And the appearance of peace is going to come when we see that the Antichrist will come to power, and he’s going to make a peace treaty with the nations around Israel and Israel, so they’ll have the appearance of peace.
But it’s ultimately going to lead to the greatest attack on Israel they’ve ever seen, where the whole world will come against them, and they will try to destroy all the Jews and fulfill what Hitler couldn’t do. And so we see that this is a common message that comes from the false prophets in the lies of Satan. The second thing that I’d like you to see is found in the second half, and that is where the prophet Elijah is speaking about the women of Israel, who are coming, and they’re coming with a message that’s based upon the occult, and occultic activity.
And what we see in verse 18, And say, thus saith the Lord God, Woe to the women that sew pillows to fill all the armholes, and make kerchiefs upon the head of every statue to hunt souls. Will ye hunt the souls of my people? And will you save the souls alive that come unto you? The things that they’re speaking of there, the women are making things that would be used in occultic activity, with different things that either they would put curses or blessings on you, using these objects as part of it. And what they were doing is introducing Satanism into Israel, and saying it was really from God, and God was using these things to deliver his people.
Now it’s interesting that the same type of things are being used in the church for the last 20 years, and it’s becoming more common in some areas of the church. If you just will send us your money, we’ll send you a handkerchief, and we’ll pray over this handkerchief, and then you take that handkerchief, and God will use it miraculously to hear and answer your prayer, whether it be for healing or money or whatever. Very similar to what these people were doing.
These will be used as blessings from God. These will be used to touch your body, to heal it, to bring peace and salvation. Handkerchiefs can’t do that.
And it’s really occultic techniques that are being used, and it’s used in cultures where shamans use objects to try and use to heal people, to answer their prayers through these objects, and it has nothing to do with God. And the women of Israel were turning to the occult and addressing really using satanic devices to try and get deliverance from their enemies and bring about peace and to have those that were being judged by God brought out from judgment. All false lies.
Today in the church, there’s things that we’ve talked about before. The occult brought into the church through various things, like yoga, like the New Age movement, like centering prayer. And it’s interesting, a lot of these are brought into the church by women.
They’re not brought in by men, although some of them are, but a majority of them are being promoted by women and they call themselves prophets. One of the things that if you go on the internet today, you will find all kinds of false prophets proclaiming false prophecies, dealing with the world, dealing with the United States, and a lot of them are women. And the thing is, if you look at the history of whether their prophecies came to truth or not, or actually came about, you’ll find that majority of them did not.
And the Bible tells us that if a prophet isn’t 100% right, he’s a false prophet. In the Old Testament, they would be stoned because they were working for the adversary, not for God. So Elijah warns the people that this is coming and that they’re hunting souls.
Now, what does he mean they’re hunting souls? Well, they want the people to believe in something besides God. And so they’re hunting the souls of men to get them to turn from God and to get them from repenting from their sin and turning to the Lord and calling on the name of the Lord instead to believe in their false prophecies and in their false occultic techniques. And so their souls will be delivered into judgment instead of delivered into the hand of God.
And in verse 19, And will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread to slay the souls that should not die and to save the souls alive that should not live by your lying to my people that hear your lies? Now, what is he saying there? They were doing this for profit. Their main goal was to achieve money through doing this in the form of money that they needed was food. There was a lack of food in the city of Jerusalem at this time.
Nebuchadnezzar had besieged the city. The Lord had said there was going to be a famine. And so there was food, it was lacking food.
But they’re saying, well, what we can do, we’ll give you these things which will give you deliverance and just pay us and you can pay us with bread. You can pay us with barley because at this time that would be better than money because that would enable them to live. And at the same time, the souls that should live, that is the ones that would believe, they were trying to lead to believe that there was a different way of deliverance than what God had said.
And those that should fear judgment wouldn’t fear judgment because they’d actually believe these lies. And they’d say, well, all we got to do is do what they tell us here and just give them a little bread and barley and it’ll work. The same thing is done today.
People don’t want to talk to people about the state of their soul and the need of giving their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ. And instead, if you do this, God has to do that. And they make God merchandise and they trade God for money instead of preaching the true gospel.
Verse 20, Wherefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly. And I will tear them from your arms and will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly. What is God talking about there? He’s talking about the judgment that’s going to come against these false prophets and their techniques of divination.
And there’s going to come a day where judgment will come and the reality of the truth will be seen. And the souls of men will realize they cannot be delivered by pillows and kerchiefs for barley and bread, but they need to rely upon the Lord Jesus Christ for their deliverance and their salvation. The same thing is true today.
The only means of salvation is found in Christ. And one day judgment is going to come against the false teachers and they will be judged. Your kerchiefs also will I tear and deliver my people out of your hand.
And they shall be no more in your hand to be hunted. And ye shall know that I am the Lord. God’s going to show who’s got the power, the false prophets with their lies of divination or the true and the living God who can give real deliverance to souls and real help to men.
And if you look at what happened with Israel, as we’re going to see later on in Ezekiel, the nation’s going to be told that God is going to deliver the nation. It’s not going to be by means of divination, of handkerchiefs and pillows. It’s not going to be by false prophets, but it’s going to be by the power of God.
And we’re also going to see later on as we looked at in the book of Daniel, that Daniel who was living during the time of Cyrus would actually see how God could turn the heart of Cyrus, the king of the Medes and the Persians, to allow the people to come back into the land. And it wasn’t through means of divination, but it was God working upon the heart of Cyrus and answering the prayers of those who sought to have the temple rebuilt and the city of Jerusalem once again re-established. And God had promised it would happen.
And He said it would happen at the end of 70 years that they’d been in captivity. And that’s when it happened, at the end of 70 years. And it wasn’t because of these people that lived during the time of Ezekiel doing these things, but rather it was when God revealed His power and was able to deliver on His word.
Verse 22, Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way by promising him life. Now, why did they make the heart of the righteous sad? Well, they weren’t telling the people of Israel the promises that were there for them to hear. What do you see today happening in the church? You see that people not telling about, number one, the rapture is eliminated from teaching in a lot of churches.
Well, as you look around the world and you see things getting worse and worse, many people in Christianity say, oh, we need to make the world better and better and we’re going to take over the world for Jesus. Jesus can’t return until the world is righteous. But yet we see unrighteousness growing, not declining.
And so the heart of those that should be happy is made sad. And then the heart of those that should be sad is made happy, because they somehow think that they can achieve what only God can accomplish. And that’s the same message that’s being done today, that people are being told, you can bring about a righteous kingdom upon this earth and all it’s doing is setting us up for the final judgment of God that will be brought upon the Antichrist as he takes over the whole world and brings about his terror of rule as he comes.
And so the very thing that Ezekiel is speaking to the Jewish people is what we are seeing happening in our culture today. Verse 23, Therefore you shall see no more vanity nor divine divination, for I will deliver my people out of your hand and ye shall know that I am the Lord. How is God going to reveal himself? Well, he’s going to ultimately destroy the forces of darkness and reveal himself as the one who is the true power, the Lord, that he is the Lord and he can deliver upon his promises.
A lot of people today don’t want to believe in the rapture and I was just listening to a man talk this last week and he said one of the things that is coming to the church is people say, well, the rapture is just something that’s very new. It came with Darby from England and it wasn’t there before, but yet the Apostle Paul talked about it in the first century of the church. He spoke about the rapture.
He believed that the rapture could be at any time. Nobody knows when the rapture is going to occur, but it’s something that is going to happen and the rapture cannot be stopped by false prophets, diviners or Satan himself, but God will come and deliver his people and God will come and judge the world and God will come and establish his righteous kingdom just as he said, and everyone will know I am the Lord. The Apostle Paul tells us there’s coming a day where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Christ and when that happens, it means every tongue and every soul, every person is going to confess.
It’s going to be a complete confession, both the one that claims to be a non-believer and the one who is a believer. We’ll all confess that Jesus is Lord. We’ll all confess that he is king because he’s going to reveal that to everyone and those who have denied him and have willfully chosen to rebel against him will have to stand before him one day and take account of their rebellion.
This is the same message that Ezekiel was bringing to the nation of Israel as they had turned their backs on the only hope they really had, which was the Lord. Otherwise, only judgment was coming and judgment was real and it didn’t matter what the false prophet said and it couldn’t be stopped by false divinations because God would work upon his timetable in his manner to bring judgment and also to bring deliverance and the only way that the people could see it happen was to call on his name, not on the name of the false gods that they were being introduced to or the false prophets that brought the false message. Let’s just close in prayer.
Lord, I pray that you just help us to understand these things, help us to see the reality of the false teaching and the day in which we live and help us instead to seek to bring forth the truth that those that should be led into deliverance and are longing for deliverance will be led there and that those that want only judgment would experience that and that your hand would move in their hearts and lives as well. Lord, now speak to us through your word and may we take it with us and help us to share it with others. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.