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December 20


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Ezekiel 44-46

We are in the Prophetic Stream reading from the New Century Version.

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Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

Lord of Heaven and earth, your plans and ways are beyond understanding. Build our faith and increase it through a knowledge that understands that your ways are even greater and higher than we know or understand. Amen.

The final nine chapters of Ezekiel [40-48] are the vision of the rebuilt Temple.  Ezekiel is telling of a temple that didn’t get built after the exile. And it isn’t Herod’s temple from the first century; That one was flattened by Romans in 70 A.D. just as Solomon’s Temple from ca. 950 B.C. was flattened by Babylonians in 586 B.C.  This is a vision of a Temple that will be an item to behold during the Messianic Era; is it in the Millennium and yet there are elements that do not seem to fit a Millenial Era temple – and I hope we can employ that term without triggering too many arguments.  Of those nine chapters, today we read about the fifth, sixth, and seventh of these chapters.  It is not a simple nor straightforward layout not a simple interpretation.

44 – The gate that is talked about here in the first three verses is the gate [as it happened] that Jesus came through for the Triumphal Entry days before His Crucifixion.  It has been mortared shut over the centuries by those hostile to Christ; to Judaism, Christianity as they thought themselves smart to make sure Christ doesn’t return through here (like He said He would).  The Muslims who did this centuries ago are not privy to Ezekiel 44, they are simply thinking they are out-foxing Jesus. Let them play their games, you might say.  But after this gate detail is mentioned, Ezekiel sees the glory of the Lord in his vision.  Then the remainder of the chapter is spent reminding the priests of their rightful duties.  Since the divided Kingdom they have had quite a habit of forgetting to follow or teach the Law. God will have no more of this.  And in the era of this rebuilt Temple, with God’s glory even more a dynamic, is He going to let the priests go lax on their assignments? Hardly.   The minutiae of the steps they are to take are eerily similar to what is laid out in Leviticus, btw.
45 – As the land is allotted there will be land set aside for the Temple that is much more than it has been. Jerusalem and its perimeter is apparently much bigger.  The priests shall have their place. And ‘the ruler’ (some translations call him “the Prince”) will be granted a notable portion of land.  The powers-that-be in Jerusalem are near scolded in their warnings to be be fair and just, and to stop the cruelty. They still have offerings to bring forth. There are feasts to observe, and the Passover was to be celebrated along with the other feasts.  If we are in the Messianic Era during all this, is the Law for unconverted Jews to follow? Are they for the Christians to exercise so to commemorate all that Christ has replaced through his sacrifice long ago? It is ambiguous and Ezekiel does not confirm it for us. This certainly keeps the discussion upended and lively, doesn’t it?

46 – The rigorous details of the worship services, the feasts, the offerings and the priestly duties continue through this chapter. The offerings are to be regular, daily, seasonally, annually. The Temple details tell us it is a Temple that is yet to be built.  The sacrifices are clearly reminiscent of the second millennium B.C. It leaves one pondering what millennium we are in … then when we go straight into a fountain of life as we do next week {Ez. 47ff], it goes right back to sounding like the Messianic era.  Perhaps this is ethereal verbiage to have us musing about how God is going to distill all of history into a cohesively unified concept that reaches back AND forward through all history through is only begotten Son…? Perhaps this is the point that encapsulates the truth without being specified?  Well, Ezekiel wrote this final vision and finished it up in 570 B.C. And here we are 26 centuries later still discussing it.  It could be his way of keeping our minds on the ever unfolding plans of God. If that is what and why he did it this way, it is still working.  For we are still reading and discussing “this Temple.”

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