The Pride of Women & Cowardice of Men

Biblical Sexuality Sunday 2024
Ezek. 23:31-49

Prayer: Most Holy God, we tremble before You because we know that our land is under Your just judgment. We have defied You and Your Word. And our nations deserve to be utterly destroyed. But we know that in Your wrath, You remember mercy. So as we gather before Your Word now, we plead on behalf of our nations the blood of Jesus Christ the righteous, and we ask You to remember Your mercy and grant us thorough repentance for our great sins through this particular Word. And we are bold to ask for this because we ask for it in the name of the King of the Universe, the Lord Jesus Christ, and Amen.   

Introduction
In January 2022, the Canadian government enacted Bill C-4, effectively criminalizing Christian preaching, teaching, and counseling that upholds Biblical morality for human sexuality. Many pastors in Canada have determined to preach messages annually until the law is repealed and have invited American pastors to join them in proclaiming God’s truth about sexual sin and the gospel of grace. 

The Bible teaches that when God judges a people, it often comes as a kind of suicidal sexual madness. Apart from God there is only sorrow and destruction, but sometimes when people defy God for a while, He turns them over to their degrading demands. Ezekiel describes the fruit of this “sexual liberation” as self-mutilation, murder of children, and complete destruction. 

The Text: “Thus saith the Lord God; thou shalt drink of thy sister’s cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of thy sister Samaria…” (Ez. 23:32-49).

Summary of the Text
God calls the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria) and the southern kingdom of Judah “harlots” (Ez. 23:3) whom He names “Aholah” and “Aholibah” (Ez. 23:4, 36), which mean “her tabernacle” and “my tabernacle in her.” Samaria had built her own sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel with golden calves (1 Kgs. 12:28-29), imported from her adultery with Egypt (Ez. 23:8), and God delivered her into the hands of her Assyrian lovers (Ez. 23:9-10). But God says that Judah (Aholibah) was even worse, lusting after the Assyrians and the Babylonians (Ez. 23:11-31). 

So God declares that Judah will drink the same cup of judgment as her harlot sister (Ez. 23:32-33). The effect of God’s judgment will be a kind of violent, drunken madness that will result in them breaking the cup into pieces and cutting off their own breasts (Ez. 23:34-35). This madness also included murdering their own children in service to their idols, even while continuing to pretend Sabbath keeping and worship (Ez. 23:36-39). And even while these judgments were falling, Judah had the audacity to put on her makeup and get dolled up for additional rounds with other lovers (Ez. 23:40-44). God says that the just penalty for this kind of high-handed adultery is death so that all women may be taught not to act with such lewdness (Ez. 23:45-49).    

The Fruit of Feminism
While God is certainly using symbolic language to condemn the idolatry of His people, the conclusion is not at all symbolic: “Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness” (Ez. 23:48). While men were responsible for and contributed significantly to the idolatry of Israel and Judah, women played a significant role. There is perhaps a foreshadowing of this in the harlots who came before Solomon, fighting over a baby (1 Kgs. 3:16ff), but of course Solomon went after many women who turned his heart away from the Lord to other gods (1 Kgs. 11:1ff). Ahab married Jezebel who imported Baal worship into Samaria (1 Kgs. 16:31ff). By the time of Josiah’s reformation, the houses of the sodomites were “where the women wove hangings for the grove” (2 Kgs. 23:7). And there were many wicked mothers in Israel (1 Kgs. 15, 21:1, 19, 23:31, 36, 24:8, 18, 2 Chron. 24:7). 

Feminism is no new heresy. It began in the Garden of Eden when Eve ignored God’s clear word and led her husband into temptation. And the fruit of feminism is elective mastectomies and abortion (Ez. 23:34, 37). Feminism always destroys women, children, families, and nations.

Handed Over To Our Idols
Ezekiel says that God gives wicked people over to this judgement. He causes them to drink this cup of madness (Ez. 23-32-34). We see this also in Proverbs with the sin of adultery: “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the LORD shall fall therein” (Prov. 22:14). When God is angry with a man, he lets him fall into the pit of significant sexual sin. Likewise, Romans 1 says that God gives people over to uncleanness and lusts to dishonor their own bodies with one another in sexual perversion because of their idolatry (Rom. 1:24-27). In other words, pervasive sexual perversion is a sign that a people are serving other gods, and the perversion is the judgment. If we are to repent of our sexual sins, we must repent of our idols. And what are those idols? They often incarnate in images of wealth and power, but they can often be boiled down to two fundamental sins: the pride of women and the cowardice of men. 

Scripture says that Adam was not deceived in the garden, but the woman was deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), and this is one of the reasons given for why a woman may not have authority over a man in the church and be an elder or preacher (1 Tim. 2:9-14). What is it that causes a woman to dress immodestly, to try to use her body to manipulate men, or to usurp true masculine authority? It is the blindness and deception of pride – often pride in beauty, power, or smarts, verbal prowess. 

But if Adam was not deceived, then why did he accept his wife’s offer? The most likely answer is that he despaired. Instead of fighting the dragon for his wife, instead of offering to die for his wife, he chose the cowardly path. Husbands and fathers who do not protect their wives and daughters continue in the same path of cowardice as Adam. We live in a nation overrun by male fear of female sin. But we ought to take a lesson from King Asa whose own mother made an idol, and Asa removed her from being queen and destroyed her idol (2 Chron. 15:16).

Applications
Jesus said He came for prostitutes and tax collectors. He did not come for those who think there is still time to fix things, time to make some minor adjustments. He came for the blind who knew they had no hope of receiving their sight. He came for sinners who know they deserve the full wrath of God (Rom. 6:23). He came for those who know that pride and cowardice are destroying them. 

Think of your idols of pride and cowardice like a lethal poison you’ve already swallowed. God’s judgement is a cup: “Thus saith the Lord God; thou shalt drink of thy sister’s cup deep and large: thou shalt be laughed to scorn and had in derision; it containeth much. Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation” (Ez. 23:32-33). 

Our families, our churches, our nations are full of drunkenness and sorrow. The corpses of our babies make the Nazi’s look tame. And now we have young boys being given puberty blockers and girls mastectomies. And all of this is come upon us because of our sins, and our sins are a lethal poison working death in us. 

When a culture gets to this point there is no going back. There is no political solution. There is no structural solution. We have driven the train off the tracks and into the canyon and we are in freefall. It is in this place of absolute inability and powerlessness that the announcement of the gospel comes. 

And as a minister of the Gospel, this is the announcement: Jesus Christ the Righteous drank the cup of God’s wrath for you. Either we will drink the cup or Christ already has. These are the only options: either you drink death or Christ does for you. The glorious news is that if you will surrender all your pride, all your cowardice before Him, if you will acknowledge that you deserve His judgment, you will find that He has already suffered for all of it in your place. And you are forgiven and set free to be the man or woman God created you to be.  

Prayer: Father and God, have mercy upon us. Wherever there is any of this sinful rot in us, deliver us. Set us free by the blood of Christ. Have mercy upon us, and have mercy upon our neighbors, our families, and our nations. We know that there is no human hope, but Christ is no mere man. And so we hope in Him and trust in Him. And we pray to You as He taught us to pray, singing… 

Photo by Wesley Balten on Unsplash