https://literalword.com/esv?q=Ezekiel+6
Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Wednesday, 9 September 2026:
Ezekiel 6:1-7 — The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them, and say, You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God! Thus says the Lord God to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain before your idols. And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out. And the slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord.
God directs Ezekiel’s attention away from Jerusalem toward “the mountains of Israel,” because the hills, ravines, and valleys had become centers of idolatrous worship. God had given Israel the land as a place where His name would be honored, yet the people had filled it with high places, altars, and idols borrowed from the nations around them. What God had given as a blessing had become the setting for their rebellion. Therefore, judgment would reach not merely Jerusalem but the places throughout the land where Israel had transferred her worship from the Creator to created things.
The repeated emphasis on “your altars,” “your idols,” and “your works” exposes the deeply personal nature of idolatry. These were things Israel had constructed, valued, trusted, and served. Idols are not limited to carved images. An idol is anything created that receives the trust, affection, dependence, identity, or obedience that properly belongs to God. Money, achievement, relationships, comfort, pleasure, reputation, control, even ministry can become functional gods when we look to them for what only God can ultimately provide. Jesus therefore warned, “You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). The heart cannot finally belong to two masters.
God’s response is severe because idolatry is not merely a poor spiritual choice; it is the rejection of God Himself. The repeated “I” in “I, even I, will bring a sword upon you” makes clear that Babylon is not ultimately the central actor. God Himself is confronting the rebellion of His people. He will destroy the very things they trusted so that their powerlessness becomes undeniable. The idols will lie broken while their worshipers lie dead around them. What Israel trusted to save her cannot even save itself.
There is a searching mercy even in that terrible exposure. God sometimes allows the things we have trusted apart from Him to fail so that we can finally see what they always were. The idol promises life but cannot give it; promises security but cannot preserve it; promises satisfaction but continually demands more. Only God can bear the full weight of our trust. When He tears down false refuges, His purpose is not merely to leave us empty but to turn us back toward Himself.
This explains the first appearance in Ezekiel of the refrain that will echo throughout the book: “you shall know that I am the LORD.” Israel had forgotten who God was, and much of Ezekiel records God acting so that His people and ultimately the nations will know Him. This is not divine egotism. There is no greater truth for God to reveal and no greater good for human beings to know. Jesus defined eternal life in precisely these relational terms: “that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). We were created for the knowledge, worship, and enjoyment of God. Every idol pulls us away from the very life for which we were made.
Ezekiel 6:8-10 — “Yet I will leave some of you alive. When you have among the nations some who escape the sword, and when you are scattered through the countries, then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them.”
Into a chapter dominated by judgment comes an unexpected word: “Yet.” God will leave survivors. This continues the remnant theme introduced through the few hairs Ezekiel tucked into the folds of his garment in the previous chapter. Israel deserves complete judgment, but God will not completely destroy His people. His covenant purposes continue through a remnant preserved by grace.
But God intends to do more than preserve their lives. He intends to reclaim their hearts. Those scattered among the nations “will remember me.” They had forgotten God while surrounded by His blessings; now, stripped of land, temple, security, and idols, some will remember the One they abandoned. Their exile becomes a severe mercy through which God awakens them to what their prosperity had allowed them to ignore.
Jesus later described the same movement in the prodigal son. Far from home, after everything he trusted had disappeared, “he came to himself” and remembered his father (Luke 15:17-20). His misery did not purchase his father’s love; it awakened him to the home and relationship he had foolishly abandoned. So too, God’s discipline can expose our false loves and awaken a heart that prosperity had lulled to sleep. The question in suffering should therefore not only be, How do I get out of this? but also, What is God showing me about Himself, about my heart, and about what I have been trusting besides Him?
Verse 9 then gives us one of the most startling descriptions of sin in Ezekiel: “I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols.” Sin is not merely breaking an impersonal rule. Israel belonged to God by covenant, and her idolatry was therefore spiritual adultery. Her heart had departed from the One who loved and redeemed her and attached itself to other lovers.
This language helps us understand why God takes our sin far more seriously than we often do. We tend to evaluate sin primarily by its immediate consequences: Did anyone get hurt? Did anyone find out? Did it really cause that much damage? God takes us deeper. Sin is relational betrayal. Every idol says in some measure, You are not enough; I need this instead. God’s jealousy is therefore not the insecurity of a needy deity but the holy love of the One to whom we belong and in whom alone we have life.
The imagery becomes even more powerful when read through the Gospel. Christ calls the church His bride and “gave himself up for her” to make her holy (Ephesians 5:25-27). The Bridegroom is not casually interested in us; He gave Himself to make us His own. The cross therefore reveals both the horror of our spiritual adultery and the astonishing depth of His covenant love. We pursued other lovers, yet Christ pursued us. We were unfaithful, yet He remained faithful. He bore our sin, reconciled us to God, and now cleanses and sanctifies His bride.
That grace changes the way repentance works. The remnant will “loathe” the evil they committed. This is not the self-destructive shame that drives us away from God. Gospel repentance increasingly teaches us to see sin as God sees it and therefore to hate what separates our hearts from the One we have come to love. Paul describes a similar “godly grief” that produces repentance leading to salvation (2 Corinthians 7:10). We begin to grieve not merely because sin hurts us, embarrasses us, or brings consequences, but because we see what it does to fellowship with the God who loves us.
Union with Christ makes this repentance more than an attempt to behave better. We belong to another. Paul says believers have been joined to Christ so that we might “bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4). Jesus describes the same reality as abiding: “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4). The answer to idolatry is therefore not merely trying harder to stop loving created things too much; it is knowing and loving Christ more deeply. As His beauty, sufficiency, faithfulness, and love increasingly capture our hearts, rival loves lose their power. Christlikeness grows from communion with Christ.
Ezekiel 6:11-14 — Thus says the Lord God: “Clap your hands and stamp your foot and say, Alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, for they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. He who is far off shall die of pestilence, and he who is near shall fall by the sword, and he who is left and is preserved shall die of famine. Thus I will spend my fury upon them. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when their slain lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill, on all the mountaintops, under every green tree, and under every leafy oak, wherever they offered pleasing aroma to all their idols. And I will stretch out my hand against them and make the land desolate and waste, in all their dwelling places, from the wilderness to Riblah. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”
Ezekiel is commanded to respond visibly to what God has revealed. The hand and foot gestures communicate the intensity of both Israel’s evil and the judgment it has produced. God does not speak casually about sin, and neither should His prophet. Yet “Alas” keeps this from becoming a celebration of destruction. Biblical faithfulness never requires delighting in the ruin of sinners. Jesus Himself would later look upon another rebellious Jerusalem and weep because its people “did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44). We can take sin seriously, affirm God’s righteous judgment, and still grieve deeply for those who remain separated from Him.
Again, the people will fall beside their idols. There is profound irony in the scene. They had offered pleasing aromas beneath the trees and upon the hills to gods they believed could bless them, but those gods will stand helpless as judgment falls. The places where Israel pursued life apart from God become monuments to the inability of idols to give life.
The chapter therefore ends where it began: “they will know that I am the LORD.” The phrase appears repeatedly because this is ultimately what Israel’s crisis is about. Their fundamental problem was not Babylon, political weakness, military defeat, or even exile. Their fundamental problem was that they had abandoned the knowledge and worship of the living God. God’s judgment exposes that rebellion, while His preservation of a remnant demonstrates that even judgment serves His larger redemptive purpose.
The Gospel brings that purpose into its fullest clarity. God has made Himself known in Jesus Christ. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus said (John 14:9). At the cross we see both the holiness that will not overlook sin and the love that bears sin’s judgment for us. In the resurrection we see the living God triumph over the death our idols can never overcome. Through the Spirit we are then united with Christ so that knowing God becomes not merely information about Him but shared life with Him. We increasingly become like the One we behold (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Ezekiel 6 therefore asks us to look beyond the obvious idols of ancient Israel and examine the loyalties of our own hearts. What created thing do I fear losing because, practically speaking, I believe I need it to be secure, satisfied, significant, or whole? Where do my thoughts and desires repeatedly go when they are free to wander? Is there anything with which I am spiritually “flirting” while telling myself that I still belong completely to Christ? When God exposes or removes something I have trusted, do I merely want Him to restore my comfort, or do I allow the loss to draw me into deeper knowledge of Him? And does my repentance arise mainly because I dislike sin’s consequences, or because I increasingly love Christ and grieve anything that competes with the intimacy, obedience, and oneness with Him for which He redeemed me?
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 9 September 2026: Identify the one created thing you most readily turn to for security, satisfaction, comfort, or significance apart from Christ. Abstain from it for the rest of today if possible, and each time you desire it, deliberately turn to Christ in prayer and confess, “You alone are my Lord; my life and satisfaction are in You.”
Pray: “Father, You alone are God, and You alone are worthy of my whole heart. Forgive me for giving created things the love, trust, and desire that belong to You. Thank You for Christ, who loved me and gave Himself for me even in my unfaithfulness. Expose and tear down every rival in my heart, and by Your Spirit draw me into deeper union with Jesus. Teach me to hate what separates me from You, to abide in Christ, and to increasingly reflect His faithful, holy, and undivided love. Amen.”
Defenders Bible Reading Plan 