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Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast. Powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. Let's be honest, a lot of us are still treating digital ministry like it's a backup plan from 2020. But discipleship isn't just happening on Sundays anymore. People need gospel centered connection every day of the week. And if you're stuck juggling five different platforms, one for giving, another for sermons, something else for events, it's no wonder engagement feels off. That's not ministry. That's a mess. Subsplash changes that one platform. Everything you need. Media, giving, events, messaging, your app, your website, built specifically for churches. No hacks, no workarounds, just clarity and simplicity. Because every day you wait, families scroll past your sermons, new guests click away from clunky sites, and real people miss real moments with Jesus. Don't waste another summer stuck in digital survival mode. Use it to get ahead, simplify, upgrade. Get back to what matters. Head to subsplash.combible-dept and schedule a free no pressure demo. And let this be the summer your church gets focused and fully equipped. Family. Welcome to day 238. Today we are finishing our trek through the book of Ezekiel. We've got a couple of chapters, Ezekiel, chapter 45, 46, 47 and 48. We got four chapters to explain, extrapolate, interpret, study, focus on. It's gonna be great. If you've done the reading for today, then everything that I'm gonna say is gonna make perfect sense. If you haven't done the meat, if you haven't done the reading, you are seriously missing out. You're missing out on feeding your spirit. You're missing out on, I don't know, being a Bible nerd. You're missing out on a lot. So do the reading, stop the video, stop the audio and do the reading. And then come back. And like always, I'm going to provide some context clues so that we have context for what we're reading. I'm going to give some nerdy nuggets along the way. And then I'll always leave us off with a timeless truth. Because we're not just studying history, we are studying theology. So let's dive in. Context clues. If you were here yesterday, which my assumption is that many of you were, if you were here yesterday, then you remember That I gave you literary context and historical context from yesterday. I'm actually gonna recap that from yesterday because nothing has changed between the chapters that were assigned on the plan for yesterday and the chapters that are assigned on the plan for day. So the literary context is that Ezekiel is modeled after the book of Exodus, and Exodus has a ton of action. Most people honestly make it halfway through the book of Exodus and they stop reading because there's tabernacle instructions. And not only are there tabernacle instructions, but then there's a detailed account of how they built the tabernacle to prove that they were actually obedient. So we get tabernacle instructions, and it seems like we get them two times, but actually one is God dictating it to the people, and then one is Moses dictating it back to God, verbatim, repeating God back to himself to prove that they did it the right way. So most people don't actually get through all of Exodus because tabernacle instructions are not easy content to read through. Not riveting, not exciting, okay, stuff. Barber nerds like me nerd out on it, but it's not like is not the kind of reading that's a page turner, okay? Ezekiel is designed the same way. We got a lot of action all the way through the book. And now in these final. I would say from chapters 40 all the way to 48, there's this massive focus on a new temple. Remember, the temple has been destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar has torched that thing, okay? He has burned that thing to the ground, okay? He has leveled the entire city of Jerusalem. Temple gone, okay? And so there is now prediction, prophecy of hope, of restoration around rebuilding that there will be a new temple. Historical context. We are in the 10th day of the first month of the 25th year of exile. So 25 years. It's easy to lose hope after 25 years. 14 years since Jerusalem has fallen. And this places, this vision, this entire vision, including yesterday and today, in the middle of the exile, okay? They're going to be in exile for a total of 70 years, okay? So they are in the thick of exile, and Jerusalem is long gone. Any hope of return is fading as the years go by. The exiles are doing what Jeremiah had told them to do, which was to build houses, plant vineyards, marry off your sons and daughters, seek the prosperity of the city, because if you do so, you yourselves will prosper, infiltrate Babylon, essentially. And they've done that, and they've settled down. They're making their lives. They're making lives for themselves in Babylon. And now here's Ezekiel saying, but you're gonna return home. God's gonna bring restoration. Okay, so that's our context. Okay. So we're picking up right where we left off yesterday. Same exact context. You probably realized that I literally just recapped our context from yesterday, because our context for today has not changed. Okay, let's get into some nerdy nuggets. Okay. I'll try to give you as many as I can. Maybe one or a couple for each chapter. Ezekiel, chapter 47, is really, like, where the magic is in today's reading. It's gonna take a while for us to get there. But let's start with Ezekiel, chapter 45. Okay? We're gonna get land allotments. Okay. I don't know if you remember this from the books of, like, Numbers and Joshua. We've seen land allotments before. And in the same way that Moses was preparing the people to go into the land, Ezekiel is preparing the people to go back into the land. Although it's not going to happen for another, you know, 35 years. So there's. Yeah, he's preparing the people to go back into the land. And so we're going to have to get land allotments. Okay. There's a couple of things that are different about the new land allotments for Ezekiel's vision of land allotments. Also, we're going to continue to see tons of links between Ezekiel's temple here in this final section of Ezekiel, and John's temple, the vision that John gets of the temple in the Book of Revelation. Tons of parallels. Okay, so. So most scholars would not say that Ezekiel's getting a vision of what's going to be Zerubbabel's temple or the second Temple period, but Ezekiel's actually getting a vision of an eschatological temple, of a temple that is not simply the temple that's going to be rebuilt in the next couple of decades following this prophecy. The thing that is really, really different that I want to point out in chapter 45 is the creation of what we can call a hol district in this new Israel. Okay? It's a strip of land around Jerusalem that stretched from the sea to the Jordan that was given over to the prince Levites and priests. Okay. Another thing that we want to highlight, the ruler of Israel is not going to be called a king in any of this stuff. Where Ezekiel is prophesying about the future, only the word prince is going to get used. And this is actually fantastic because God's original vision for David or Saul. The original kings were that they would never be kings like the other nations, but they would serve under Yahweh, who was the king, which would make them princes. Okay? A royal ruler who's subservient to the king, but is also shares DNA with the king and is a son of the king, is a prince. Okay? So God's original vision was always that we would be princes, never that we would be kings. Okay? It's funny. Like, I don't know. And sometimes I overthink. But, you know, white dudes never do this to me. I don't think white guys do this to each other. Black dudes, for whatever. We dap each other up like, yo, king, what's up, king? And I don't do that. I don't call nobody king. And I don't call myself king. Cause I'm not a king. At best, I'm a prince. I'm cool with the word prince. Cause the word prince, that's biblical. And I'm cool with that. I think that's great. God is king. Jesus is king. We are quite literally not kings. So for all the black dudes out there calling each other king, I'm not with that. There's no Bible for that. Do I think that I'm the son of a king? You? Yes, I'm the son of a king, which makes me a prince. I'm not a king. I'm a prince. Now, I'm a short king because I'm five. Five. But that's a whole nother story for a whole nother day. And I hope you're laughing, actually, because that's quite hilarious. But we're not kings. Like, that's not true. And I actually think that it's a little blasphemous for us to say it. I also think that it can be an overcompensation. So if you feel insecure or if you feel like, man, we don't get. We don't get the props we deserve in the wider culture. Let's just call each other kings. Let's build. Build us build each other up that way. Well, you don't build people up using a lie. That's not. That's not how you build people up. You build people up by calling them what God calls them. And God calls us to be prince and princesses in the earth. That's what God calls us to do. Let's keep trekking through the book of Ezekiel. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now. And Available everywhere books are sold. Literally today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. 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Use code DEPARTMENT10 at checkout to get 10% off your entire order. We're going to have a holy district set up for the Prince, the Levites and the priests. The significance is of course that in the previous land allotment the tribe of Levi was given no land, okay? Save a few scattered cities among with the other tribes, okay? Yahweh was to be their portion, not any physical land. Which is basically why there was a tithe that needed to be given to to the Levites, okay? Because they couldn't have land. But now they were actually going to have land, okay? So in Ezekiel's vision, the priests don't just get Yahweh as their reward, they actually get some land. So that's fantastic. This again raises questions as the status of the Levites did not change. After the exile. Okay, so this is not fulfilled in Zerubbabel's temple. It's not like this is fulfilled in Second Temple Judaism. So I would go ahead and say I think Ezekiel is getting a vision of something greater than what's gonna get fulfilled when the people come out of exile. Although there is a message of restoration that's directly applied to the people coming out of exile, I think that Ezekiel speaking to that specific context and scenario, but also looking way further into the future. All right, Ezekiel, chapter 46. Okay, we're gonna get feasts renewed. Okay, That's a big deal. Okay. The feasts and the festivals of the Old Testament, obviously if you're in exile, you're not able to practice them. The feasts are connected to two major feasts themes throughout the Hebrew scriptures. Okay. The first is going to be your relationship with God. Okay? You sharing a meal with God, you rejoicing with God, you celebrating with Yahweh means that you and Yahweh are on good terms. It means that you and Yahweh are at peace. All right, so that's. The first is the spiritual connection that the people have with Yahweh. That is why these feasts are important. The second is not. So the feasts are not just about Israel's connection with Yahweh, but Israel's connection to the land. The schedule for the festivals are built on the agricultural calendar, all right, Of Israel. So their relationship with Yahweh is also, I would say, filtered through their relationship with the land. So their relationship with Yahweh is kind of in extricably connected to their relationship with the land. Yahweh, after all, is the one who gave them the land, who created the cycles of nature. Rain, dry seasons, planting, harvest, et cetera. So the festivals were a way to mark the stages of the agricultural year and also to thank God for providing for Israel. And as the sowed and harvested, as they sowed and harvested in the natural, they were sowing and harvesting in the spiritual too. As the feast renewed, maintained, restored and celebrated their covenant with Yahweh, which again, was about their relationship with Yahweh. So the festivals are about their relationship with Yahweh and about the land, but really the land producing agriculture is really the thing that helps them to mediate their relationship with Yahweh. Okay, so all roads go back to their relationship with Yahweh. So the feasts are going to get renewed. Chapter 47. Okay, we're gonna get a vision or Ezekiel's gonna get a vision of water flowing from the temple. Now, this is fantastic because Ezekiel kind of stands in the middle, okay, of something that came before it and something that's gonna come after it. So Ezekiel gets a vision of water flowing from the temple. Where does this come from? Well, in the Garden of Eden, there's a river flowing out of the garden. Okay? So the garden represents the temple of God. You may not have thought about the Garden of Eden as God's temple, but it a hundred percent is God's temple. It's the dwelling place for his presence. It is the place where man and God can commune together. It's the place where man and God cohabitate. It is the overlapping of heaven and Earth. Okay, so, you know, like a Venn diagram. You got heaven, you got Earth. The place where they overlap, that is the Garden of Eden, and that is the temple, okay? That's holy space. It's where heaven breaks into Earth. It's a portal. It's kind of like the wardrobe in Narnia. The wardrobe is in Narnia, but it's also just in. In. In Earth. Okay? So it's a portal between two worlds. And that's what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be. That was. That's what the temple was, so that the garden had a river flowing through it. John is gonna pick up on this, and he's gonna, like Ezekiel, say in the end, in the renewal of all things. Not just what's directly applicable to the people of Israel, but the renewal of all things, the eschaton. In the end, there's a temple, and there's a river flowing through it. Okay, so John is literally just gonna adopt the language from the Book of Ezekiel. Jesus is also going to use this language. He's gonna say in John 7:38, Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. So what is Jesus actually saying? Jesus is saying that what I am going to accomplish on the cross for you will turn you into a temple. That no longer is the goal to be in a physical temple, but the goal is that you would become a temple. And so when we refer to ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit, that is totally biblically accurate. That's good. And there's not supposed to be a lake of the Holy Spirit on the inside of us, because it's not for us. There's a river of living water moving through us that is actually for the healing of everybody who's around us. And boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. If that's not a timeless truth. There's so many people, they want the deposit of the Holy Spirit to help them accomplish their personal goals. But the Holy Spirit living in you is not just for you. The Holy Spirit living in you is actually moving. It's a river of living water that is supposed to impact everybody that's around you. It's not your personal lake to swim in. It is a river of living water that's supposed to provide healing and restoration and faith and hope and justification and purification for everyone that you come into contact with. In the first century, if you wanted to meet Zeus, you had to go to the Temple of Zeus. If you wanted to meet Artemis, you had to go to the Temple of Artemis. Well, how has Jesus set up his church in the New Testament that if you want to meet God, you go to the Temple of God. And who's the Temple of God? You are the Temple of God. You don't have to wait for Sunday to invite your friend to church. No. They can experience the power and the presence of God at the cubicle, at the job, because you are Temple of the Holy Spirit, and there's a river of living water that is moving through you at all times. That's not just true for Ezekiel's audience in 572 BC. That's true for you, and that's true for me. Here's one more nerdy nugget. I know we've already crossed the threshold into our timeless truth, but I want to give you one more nerdy nugget. When Ezekiel sees this vision of the temple, he doesn't see fire in the Holy of Holies. Remember, we kind of talked about yesterday that the glory of God and fire doesn't really come in this new temple, but we get water, okay? And there's actually this cool juxtaposition between fire and water. There's a stark contrast to the other main image of Yahweh's presence in the temple, which is fire. Okay? Ezekiel sees water, but that's in stark contrast to fire. Yahweh is holy. His presence brings both life and burns the uncleanness in the very air around it. This was always a paradox about the presence of a holy God on Earth, even in such a fleeting matter. He gives life water, but his holiness is fatal fire. So the images that we get for God in the Old Testament are always fire and water, okay? And that's the juxtaposition of the paradox that we have to walk through. But this temple vision, like John's temple vision, does not focus on Fire. There is no fire mentioned. Okay? But on the life giving water, Yahweh's holiness remains, but it is no longer his holiness that destroys anything, but only gives life. Which again is another clue that Ezekiel doesn't just get a vision of the temple that's gonna get built in 35 years from when he's prophesying. He gets a vision of an eschatological temple. He gets a vision. And even you and I, Christians, if you have the Holy Spirit on the inside of you and there's rivers of living water that are moving through you as you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, we are a. We are a signpost. The reality of our life is pointing to the fact that I'm a temple. But one day, this is simply just a preview of what God is going to do in his cosmic temple, in his eschatological temple, in the temple that we are all going to get to enjoy when we live with God forever. And by all, I mean Christians that have surrendered their life to the lordship of Jesus and accepted his grace and have become saved. Okay, so our timeless truth. Okay. Ah, one last dirty nugget. Oh, gosh. Oh gosh. In Ezekiel, chapter 48, we get more tribal allotments. And one thing that you're going to realize in the tribal allotments is that Reuben and Gad, remember Reuben and Gad, settled on the east side of the Jordan. When we get these new tribal allotments, they are no longer on the east side of the Jordan, but they are back where they belong because God restores and he is going to fix that mistake that the tribes of Reuben and Gad made all the way back at the end of numbers, beginning of Joshua. If you've been tracking with us for a long time, you may remember that it was a tiny little compromise, small little mistake. They asked Moses for permission, he said, yes, they did it. But God actually was not a fan of it. And they were some of the first tribes to get exiled because it was. It was dumb, it was bad. Okay, so we already did our timeless truth for the day. I gave you context clues. I gave you a bunch of dirty nuggets. I got into our timeless truth, but then I forgot some dirty nuggets and went back. The timeless truth is that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, that there is a river of living water that is moving through you at all times. It is not a lake for your personal edification and self improvement. No, it is a river because the people that are around you need God. And if they need God, then they need to look no further than a temple of God. And you are that temple. Tomorrow we've got day 239. We're gonna be in the Book of Daniel. We are totally done with the Book of Ezekiel. Not for life. You're gonna read the Book of Ezekiel next year. Cause you're gonna do this reading plan every single year. But for now, we are done with the Book of Ezekiel. Tomorrow we got the Book of Daniel. I love the Book of Daniel. And if you've ever done a Daniel fast, then you're probably familiar with our homie Daniel. Can't wait to see you tomorrow. If you're on a streak, I'm so proud of you. Even if you're not on a streak, I'm still proud of you. I'm glad you watched this video today. How about you start a streak because the Bible's good for you. I love you so much. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we start the Book of Daniel. Base. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram at the Bible Department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.