Turn back to our study in the book of Ezekiel, and we’re going to be taking a look tonight at Ezekiel chapter 22. Ezekiel chapter 22. This particular chapter, although it’s 27 verses long, can barely be divided into four parts.
And this evening we’ll be looking at those, and we’ll be taking a look at what the message is that the Lord gives Ezekiel to share with the nation of Israel, or Judah, at this particular time in history. And it’s a lesson that we really all need to learn. The first portion of the book, verses 1 through 12, deal with the sins of Jerusalem.
And then verses 13 through 14 deal with the punishment that is going to be coming. Verses 13 rather through 24 deal with the punishment that will be given to Jerusalem. And then verses 25 through 29 deal with the fact that there is no one who stands not guilty of the sins that they’ve committed.
And then verses 30 and 31 are the call that God puts out, is there a godly person to stand in the gap. And so we’re going to be taking a look at this book this evening. So let’s just open with a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity that you’ve given to us to study your word this evening. Lord, I pray that you would just help us as we look at your word to not only see how the sin and the punishment and everything that was happening in Judah can really be applied to our nation and the circumstances that are going on because the sin is very similar. And Father, your word tells us that all men will stand accountable for the things that we do.
And Lord, I pray that you would just help us to be willing to be those people that would be righteous and stand in the gap and cry out to you and proclaim the truth. Lord, now I pray that you just speak to us through your word this evening, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let’s begin by reading these 31 verses this evening and then we’ll go back and take a look at dividing them into the four different portions.
Ezekiel 22:1-31
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 2 Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt shew her all her abominations. 3 Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord God, The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself. 4 Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed; and hast defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries. 5 Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, which art infamous and much vexed. 6 Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood. 7 In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow. 8 Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths. 9 In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness. 10 In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness: in thee have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution. 11 And one hath committed abomination with his neighbour’s wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter in law; and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his father’s daughter. 12 In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.
13 Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee. 14 Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it. 15 And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee. 16 And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.
17 And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 18 Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross: all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they are even the dross of silver. 19 Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because ye are all become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. 20 As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you there, and melt you. 21 Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. 22 As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon you.
23 And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, 24 Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. 25 There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. 26 Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. 27 Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. 28 And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken. 29 The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. 30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. 31 Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God.
This is a very powerful passage that deals with what was happening in Jerusalem at the time that Nebuchadnezzar was invading, and why God allowed Nebuchadnezzar to invade and to come against Israel, and why He was going to allow Jerusalem to be destroyed, the temple to be destroyed, and the people to be taken into captivity, and very few of them would remain in the land of Judah.
It was because, as he starts out, because of their sin. First of all, I want us to take a look at what he says their sins are. First of all, we find in verse 9, He says, Three things there, and we’re going to look at these in greater detail.
First of all, they shed blood. Now, what they did is there was no regard for life, and they shed blood in a couple of ways. First of all, they shed blood because they were involved in idol worship, which was one of the next things that we’re going to be looking at, and the idol worship resulted in them offering their own children as sacrifices to idols.
They offered human sacrifice when that was an abomination to the Lord, and they did this in the high places that they rebuilt after the time of Josiah, and they were involved in things that were extremely lewd and wicked and evil. Not only that, they did not have regard for human life, and did not show value of life in the way that they treated other people, and the death of people did not mean anything to them. This was brought about by the second thing that he talks about, and this is found not only in the verse we just read, but also in verses 3 and 4, where it says, Then say they, Thus saith the Lord God, The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself.
Thou art become guilty of thy blood that thou hast shed, and hast defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made, and thou hast used thy days to draw near, and to come even unto thy years. Therefore I have made thee a reproach to the heathen, and a mocking to the countries. We see that the second thing they do is they set up idols, and they worshipped idols.
We were talking a little bit about this before the service tonight. Idols just weren’t something that they put ahead of God, but it was actually idols that they fell down and worshipped. It was false gods that they were worshipping.
Gods that behind these gods were demonic spirits. It’s interesting today that there are still false religions where there are demonic spirits behind these gods, and they come against everything that God stands for. Now, there are religions today that are very much like what was happening in Israel in the way that they are really practiced and worshipped.
One that you can take is Hinduism. Hinduism worships all kinds of things as gods, but they have actually idols that they worship, and they worship men as God. They place other things as God and actually worship them.
They feel that these other gods can hear and answer their prayers. They feel that these idols are worthy of their praise. And not only that, it also devalues life.
We see that Hinduism, at the heart of it, is a devaluation of the human being. They do not view that men are created in the image of God, and they place different values upon different humans, and so consequently they have the caste system in India. And if you’re of the higher caste, you’re viewed as worthy, and you’re really almost to be worshipped.
And the lower caste are viewed as not even worthy of anything. For example, if someone is dying or lying and needs help, and they’re of a lower caste, the higher caste will just walk over them, or just can walk over them because they’re not worthy of them, and they’ll defile themselves by dealing with the lower caste. It shows a human degradation of the value of human life as idol worship replaces the worship of God.
Not only that, you have the same thing in Islam. A lot of people say, well, Islam, they worship just one God. Yeah, but the one God they worship is really Satan, not God.
And if you look at the heart of Islam, it’s a religion that sheds blood. It’s a religion that doesn’t value life. It’s a religion that places different values upon different humans.
For example, they devalue women to the point that women are made so much lower than men that they’re just there to be used by men and to serve men. And we see that also they are willing to sacrifice their own children to accomplish the purposes that they want to accomplish. During the war between Iraq and Iran, a lot of people forget that they put bombs on their kids.
They also had their children walk into areas where there were minefields so that the mines would be exploded before the soldiers went through there. And they were willing to sacrifice their children. We see that even today they will have bombers that they will tell them if you die for the cause of Allah, that you’ll go to paradise.
And if you’re a man, you’ll have 74 virgins waiting for you there. And so people will actually strap bombs to themselves, blow themselves up to kill infidels or to promote the cause of Islam. And so there is no value on life.
And it’s a religion that values death instead of life. And the shedding of blood is viewed as something that’s a worthy cause. The other thing that they value is they value lies instead of the truth.
It’s the exact opposite of what the scriptures say. Yet the confusion that comes in our nation and around the world today is many people view that Islam is equivalent to Christianity. And they are exact opposites.
And again, at the heart of it is idol worship. Islam started by Muhammad who was an idol worshipper. And then that flows into the third thing, the third sin that they committed which we’ve already just mentioned a little bit of, and that was the shedding of blood or murder.
In verse 6 we read the following, Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood. They used the positions of authority and power in the city of Jerusalem. If they were the princes or leaders of Israel, they were willing to shed the blood of their own people to accomplish their purposes and to promote their causes and to lift up themselves.
I think an example of that could be seen within the news just this last week of what Satan was willing to do with Islamic religion in Iran where the United States said that if they didn’t capitulate to the things that President Trump wanted them to do, that they were going to start blowing up their power plants. And so the leaders of Iran got children and women and surrounded the power plants so that if bombs were dropped on the power plants all these women and children would be killed. They had no problem with that.
They felt that was a good use of women and children. And they had no value of human life. They were willing to sacrifice and murder people for their cause.
That’s exactly what was happening in Jerusalem. They were sacrificing and murdering people to promote their cause. And it was a horrible abomination to the Lord.
The fourth thing, they had contempt for their parents. They had oppression of strangers, of orphans and widows. Find that in verse 7 along with some later verses.
But in verse 7 it says, And thee have they set light by father and mother. In other words, they don’t pay any attention to their father and mother. They don’t hold them in regard.
This is exactly opposite. Now if you look at these things, they’re all the opposite of what God has told His people to do, what was given to them in the law, and how they should live their lives. One of the Ten Commandments is what? Honor thy father and mother.
And it’s the only commandment of promise. And if you do that, you shall enjoy a long life. Yet we see that these people who had been given that as part of their law to show the importance of honoring generation, the generation that went before you, and then later on honoring your children, those that come after you, and passing the values that are God’s values from the father and mother to you, to your children, what they did is they viewed their parents in light.
They didn’t have any value for their parents. One of the sad things is, you’re going to see as we come into the final conclusions of these sins, and you begin to examine our own culture today, you’re seeing many of these same sins in our culture. And not only in the United States, but in Western culture, which is supposedly based upon biblical Christianity, but is turning far from it.
So we see that they dishonored their parents. Not only did they dishonor their parents, but there was an oppression of strangers, orphans, and widows. Those that were the most vulnerable in society, they did not seek to help, but instead oppressed, suppressed, and used.
And that was an abomination to the Lord as well. The Lord tells us in his word, that he becomes a father to the orphans, and he becomes a husband to the widow. He views them as those that are in need, especially in the culture in which Israel found itself.
It was a culture that was an agrarian culture. It was also a culture where if you did not have a man to help support the family, you were in very deep trouble. Because they didn’t have a job structure like we do today, where women could go out and get a job and support their family.
The families were supported by the men, and often times it was tied to agriculture and the land around them. That’s why when you see in the book of Ruth, when Naomi loses her husband, and then loses her two sons, her whole means of support within the land of Moab became non-existent. She didn’t have anybody to help her or meet her needs.
That is why she was going back to Israel, where she had family, and she had those that could be relatives that could help take care of her. And you look at the whole account that is given in the book of Ruth, and you see that Boaz became their redeemer, their kinsman redeemer, and he is the one that took care of Ruth. He ended up marrying Ruth, and he became their protector.
That wasn’t happening in Judah. If you became a widow or an orphan, you were just left on your own, and a stranger, if he had a need, was also left on his own. And Jesus gave a parable about this very thing.
You remember the Good Samaritan, where the Jewish man was injured, laying alongside the road, injured, and a priest walks by him, a Pharisee walks around him, and they make sure they don’t get close so they won’t be contaminated or defiled by touching someone who, they didn’t know if he was dead or not, but he definitely was injured, and they’d be defiled. And then the Samaritan comes, and he not only helps the man, but he takes the man to an inn. He pays the innkeeper to keep him, and he pays him to take care of him until he can get better.
And Jesus commended the Samaritan, and the Samaritan was looked down upon by the Jews as being less of a person because the Samaritans were really half-breeds. They were partly Gentile, because of the intermarriage that occurred when the Assyrians came into the country after they’d taken and led the Northern Kingdom into captivity. Some of the Jews they left in Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and they had their people come back in, and those people would intermarry.
And so they had a, their bloodline was not pure in the eyes of the Jewish people. And then they also had a religion that had been contaminated by false things, and so they looked down upon them as something less. Yet Jesus commended the one who they looked down upon because he had compassion on the person in need.
Those in Jerusalem at this time had no compassion on the needy. It was every man for himself. And we see that later on when the city is brought under siege by Nebuchadnezzar, and Ezekiel had even told them, as well as Jeremiah, that they were going to experience pestilence and also starvation because of the city being under siege, and they would literally do the unthinkable.
They would resort to cannibalism, and it was really preserving my own life at the expense of others. And that was their attitude, and they’re condemned for that by God. The fifth thing we see is that they desecrated the temple and they were breaking the Sabbaths.
We find that in verse 9, and in thee men that carry tales to shed blood, and in thee they eat upon the mountains, and in the midst of thee they commit lewdness. And we see here that what they’re doing, what he’s speaking about, they eat upon the mountains. It’s not that they took out a picnic lunch to go up on the mountain and have a lunch on the mountain.
That’s not what he’s talking about. When he says they eat upon the mountains, they go up to the mountains to worship. They go to the high places.
They go to worship their false gods. If you look throughout the Old Testament, you will see that when the nation of Israel turned to worship idols, one of the things they did is they went into the mountains to worship the places where they had the trees that they set up and they worshiped their idols and they set up their false religions. And that’s what he’s talking about, going to eat upon the mountains.
They go there to worship. They don’t go there just to have a good time. And instead, they abandoned the temple.
They desecrate the temple. Remember the Jewish people when we were studying in the book of Kings, that at the last Kings, some of the things they did is they allowed the temple to be desecrated. They allowed idols to be brought into the temple and false worship to be established within the temple.
And it was a horror to the Lord. And so we see that. And then the other thing that they did along with that, along with having false worship on the mountains, they ignored the Sabbaths.
And it wasn’t just Saturday that they ignored. They ignored all the Sabbaths. If you remember in the study of Kings, when it came to King Josiah, he was the first one to reestablish the Passover.
The Passover was a special feast and it was a high Shabbat or a high Sabbath. It says it was the first time since the time of Solomon that the Passover had been celebrated in Jerusalem the way that it was supposed to be celebrated, the way that God had intended it to be. They had done it improperly all those years between Solomon and Josiah.
We also see that they ignored the seventh year, which was a year of rest and a year where the debts were to be forgiven and lands were to be returned. And they ignored that. They ignored that Shabbat.
They ignored the year of Jubilee, which came every fiftieth year. They didn’t worship that as well and do what God instructed in His word there. They totally ignored everything that God did and was to set them apart and make them a different people.
And so they did all of this and it came to a head during the time that Nebuchadnezzar began to invade because they had become so corrupt that they weren’t worshipping anything correctly in the temple any longer. Then we see that the next thing is we find is highlighted in verse 10 and that was immorality. In thee have I discovered their father’s nakedness, in thee have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution.
And then he goes on and he talks about other things, about illicit relationships that are outlawed by God’s word and are judged according to God’s word as being that which is worthy of judgment. And yet they found these relationships common in the city. And the sexual perversion became part of their lifestyle.
And he said the immorality and also part of that immorality was found in verse 11 which was adultery and incest. And these things are totally outlawed by God. Because why? The family is held up as the most important institution that God established to carry on His values and to proclaim His name.
Marriage between husband and wife and the holiness of the family was to be an example of Christ and His church. And yet here we see adultery where there was a breaking of the bond and the covenant between the husband and wife. We see incest where the family was desecrated and destroyed by improper sexual relations.
And he says that God looked upon it with great disdain, disgust and abhorred it. And yet this was being done in Jerusalem. And you begin to look at these things and it’s horrible.
And then the eighth thing that they were involved with bribery, usury, extortion and forgetfulness of God found in verse 12. In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood. Thou hast taken usury and increased and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.
The Lord tells in His word that you’re not to gain by usury.
What would even be common and then extortion, they made people pay for things that they shouldn’t have had to pay for. And you begin to look at these crimes and it reminds you of a Godfather movie where you have the thugs coming around to the shop owners and saying we’ll give you protection and if you pay us so much money we’ll protect you but if you don’t you’re probably going to have a break-in and you’re probably going to have your store destroyed and then they’re the ones that will break in and destroy it because they’re using extortion to gain money out of you and to instead of protecting you the way that they should. This was common in the city of Judah, these things were common and what it did it was a reflection of the fact that they had totally forgotten God.
Now I just want to reassess these sins and look at our nation in light of these things. First of all bloodshed in America today and in western culture abortion has become commonplace and even though Roe versus Wade was overturned yet there are more abortions occurring today than before Roe versus Wade was overturned because the day after pill has really been mailed out to hundreds and thousands of women and really what they do is they’re aborting their baby and they can do it in the privacy of their own home. The human value of life is totally ignored for the expediency of self-centeredness and myself and whatever I want has become more valuable than life itself.
So bloodshed and then on top of that there is euthanasia which is being promoted especially amongst older people even in our country it’s done under different names it’s not openly called euthanasia here but there you go to Canada and there’s open euthanasia. There’s assisted suicide which is really a form of euthanasia where you kill someone simply because they don’t deem at that particular time their life is valuable and even to the point I determine for example as your children that your value of life doesn’t merit that you should continue to live maybe you’ve got Alzheimer’s and you’re ill and so we should just put you to death like we would a pet that is terminally ill and so the value of life is totally gone from our culture and it has gone down tremendously as a as our view of the bible has gone down the value of life has gone down in our culture as well. In idolatry we’ve got all kinds of things that are coming into our culture as far as idols and it really there’s false religions where literally you’re worshipping false gods Hinduism, Islam, what was referred to as western Hinduism, the new age movement, various things that are called out to be worshipped as idols.
The third thing, murder. Murder is becoming more and more commonplace. I remember when Verda and I were first married we took a trip to Washington DC and I remember turning on the tv to watch the news the first night we got into the motel and they talked about how there’d been I don’t know it was two murders that day and a lady had opened up her door and somebody threw acid in her face and it was just like we never heard about that stuff in Fargo.
Well guess what’s this last year in Fargo I believe there was three or four murders in Fargo and you go to Chicago murder is commonplace in Chicago it’s like how many people are going to get killed this weekend is it going to be three is it going to be five is it going to be seven and the value of human life has gone down so much in our country as God has been removed. The contempt for parents, the oppression of strangers and orphans and widows. In our country today all you have one has to do is is go to the mall and watch families and kids do not honor their parents.
Kids don’t listen to their parents and then you look at when they get older to be teenagers they really don’t listen to their parents. The oppression of parents and uh and then widows and orphans are and the whole abuse in that area as well. Then you go desecrating of God’s house and his and the temple and breaking of the Sabbath.
The church the Christian church in America today really they desecrated the house of God by bringing false religions in and be part of the worship and uh they they bring philosophies in that are ungodly satanic philosophies at heart and they incorporate them into the worship services. They worship false teachings that are an abomination to the Lord promoting homosexuality promoting uh all kinds of deviant lifestyles within the Christian church and giving it blessing. That’s exactly what they did there.
Immorality, immorality has grown in our nation. We don’t have to spend a lot of time looking at that. Adultery and incest is increased tremendously um and then the whole concept of a bribery and extortion of people and taking advantage of others and you have a whole business model built on stepping on people to gain your position in the world and to gain money.
Well what is God telling them in Judah and Israel specifically Jerusalem about this? He says well there’s going to be coming punishment and there’s three three you can kind of group these punishments into three categories. First category is uh the punishment is going to come um because of the the three reasons for this punishment. The first is dishonest prophets and the bloodshed and it’s going to be uh the because of this the dishonest prophets those that should be the the promoters of God’s word are not promoting God’s word and then because of the extensive bloodshed that has occurred within their own culture within the Jewish culture.
He says you’re going to be scattered amongst the nations. I’m going to scatter you and uh you’ll be taken out of the land and scattered amongst the nations. Uh this happened at the time uh of uh Jeremiah when he was living at the time when Ezekiel was living uh the first scattering of the Jews occurred uh as they were taken to Babylon and the nation the Judah was taken to Babylon Israel was taken to to Assyria and uh uh and they were scattered amongst the nations at that time.
God brought them back under Nehemiah and Ezra and then again in 70 AD they were once again scattered amongst the nations and when they were scattered amongst the nations that time they did not come back as a nation until 1948 when God said that in the last days he would once again call them back they would remain a people that would be identifiable but they would be scattered amongst the nations because of their sin and because of their rejection of the Lord. The second thing is the second punishment would be that Jerusalem would be a refined pot and the people would be like dross and melted. Jerusalem would be used by God not as a place where the people would worship but it’d be a place of judgment and this was done during the time of Nebuchadnezzar and again during the time of Titus uh where Jerusalem was used to judge the people and it became literally a place where there were the people were placed in there and it became a refining fire.
Now, what is he speaking of? He talks about metals—how they are placed in the fire to purify them. When metals are put into the fire, it separates the dross from that which is pure. He says that those who would be tested, left, and ultimately consumed by the fire in Jerusalem would be like the dross that comes off silver when it is refined.
If you look at metals, when they are placed in fire, at certain temperatures they begin to liquefy. As they liquefy, they separate. For example, if you have ever seen silver or gold melted down, you can observe that the impurities separate from the pure metal. These impurities rise to the surface and can be scraped off, leaving behind what is refined and valuable.
God says He is going to use this as a refining fire. But the problem is that what will be left in Jerusalem will be dross—what is worthless. The dross is not silver; it is not gold. It is what is discarded in the refining process. You do not keep it—you throw it away—because the goal is to purify the silver and the gold.
God is going to use this process to ultimately purify a people who will turn back to Him. But those who will not turn will be consumed by the fire and will become like dross.
The third thing is that the land will be deprived of rain and fruitfulness. This is found in verses 23 and 24. Because of their sin, and because God is going to remove them from the land, it will lose its productivity and vitality.
This became true during the first captivity. When the people returned under Ezra and Nehemiah, they found the land desolate. Jerusalem was destroyed—the walls were broken down, the houses ruined—and everything had to be rebuilt. Yet as the people returned to the Lord, the land became fruitful again.
The same thing happened after 70 AD, when the Jews were scattered among the nations by Titus. The land, then known as Judea under Roman rule, became largely unfruitful. Those who visited it noted its barrenness. Even Mark Twain, in the mid-1800s, described it as a desolate and forsaken place—sparsely populated, with little growing.
But today, Israel is entirely different. God said the land would be blessed when His people returned—and that is exactly what has happened. Yet when they were removed because of judgment, the land, which He had promised to them, became desolate—just as He said it would.
The next question Ezekiel raises is: Who is guilty?
In verses 25 through 29, the answer is clear—everyone is guilty.
It begins in verse 25: “There is a conspiracy.” What is a conspiracy? It is when people come together with hidden motives, making something appear one way while intending something entirely different.
There was a conspiracy against God. The people wanted to maintain the appearance of being God’s people. They wanted to hold on to the temple. But in reality, they were turning against Him.
Who was involved?
“There is a conspiracy of her prophets… like a roaring lion ravening the prey.” They devoured souls. They took treasure and precious things. They made many widows. There was a deliberate effort to destroy true worship and replace it with false worship—to take what was holy and replace it with what was vile and evil.
And who led it? The very ones who should have led the people in righteousness—the prophets.
Then the priests: “Her priests have violated my law.” Those who were supposed to teach the law were instead breaking it. They profaned holy things. They made no distinction between the holy and the profane, between right and wrong.
They took what was sacred and placed it alongside what was wicked, treating them as if they were the same. Idols were brought into places meant for the worship of the Lord, and the people were told it was acceptable.
We see the same pattern today—calling good evil and evil good. Those who stand for truth are often labeled as the problem, while unrighteousness is praised. That is exactly what was happening then.
He goes on to say they made no distinction between the unclean and the clean. They ignored God’s Sabbaths. Everything that God had established as holy was disregarded.
Then the princes—the political leaders—are described as wolves, tearing apart the people for personal gain. Instead of serving, they exploited. Jesus said that a true leader serves, but these leaders consumed the people for their own benefit.
So we see that all levels of leadership—political, religious—and the people themselves were involved in this ungodliness. Everyone was guilty: the rulers, prophets, priests, officials, and the people.
Then God closes the chapter with something deeply striking.
“I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge.”
The hedge represents protection. God was looking for someone who would stand in the gap—someone who would protect the people, stand for truth, and intercede.
He says, “And stand in the gap before me for the land.”
Who would pray? Who would come before God on behalf of the people? Who would stand against the evil and plead for mercy?
But He says, “I found none.”
There was no one willing to stand.
Even the prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were proclaiming judgment, because the people had gone so far. There was no one acting as a true spiritual defender of the nation.
And so God says in verse 31:
“Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them… I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath… their own way have I recompensed upon their heads.”
Because of sin at every level, because of their refusal to repent, and because no one stood in the gap, judgment came.
When we look at this, we should take it seriously. God brought judgment on Jerusalem—His city—and Judah—His people. And when we see the same patterns in our own culture, it should cause us to reflect.
Who will stand in the gap? Will we repent?
Let us close in prayer:
Lord, help us to understand the seriousness of this message. Help us to see the urgency of the time in which Ezekiel spoke—and how it applies even today. Lord, it is not enough to say we follow You; we must truly turn to You and walk in Your ways. Give us hearts that seek You, that stand for truth, and that are willing to stand in the gap. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.