Ezekiel 45

so in chapter 45 of Ezekiel you have this whole this whole thing with the temple actually being in a different spot are you kidding me come on Ansel it's all so PC are you putting that up for me Todd you stud we'll see if this thing connects in any case the temple itself being in a different spot it's not actually in the City of Jerusalem in the city of Jerusalem during during the millennial period you have this whole section that's that's cut out basically for the city of Jerusalem and the temple is found to be outside of that that's another reason that you can tell that the Millennial temple is something that doesn't go along with any of the temples that you have mentioned in the Bible that have been put together previously so we did that last week and in Ezekiel chapter 46 basically it goes through and talks about some of the issues that they have with worship so let's just go through real quick we'll go through and read it and and I'll hit on a couple of things and then we'll move on let's pray before we start father we just want to again come before you Lord and thank you for your word and thank you for every part of it and you've got reasons that these passages are in here and I think I think that that some of the biggest reasons for us is so that we know that there is a time coming that's a real time where you are really coming to this earth and you are really gonna rule and you're gonna reign and I think that that's just important for us especially as we're going through the last days looking up to the time of your coming for us where we pray that as we go through your word that you'd be speaking to us and that you just use it in our lives and we ask this in Jesus name Amen one of the reasons again that I think you know Todd this isn't gonna work so can you once you advance those slides for me real quick go back to that one that one right there well this will just stick it right there that's one of the things that's been that's been going on lately just as far as last day's stuff and I hit on this on on the a little bit on the prophecy update both last year and this year is this whole resurgence of reform the reform movement and there are some things about obviously the Christian and when I'm saying reform I'm talking about those churches that historically come out of the Protestant Reformation and really haven't changed all that much from the time of the Protestant Reformation and one of the things that happened when Luther and Zwingli and some of the other guys came out of the Roman Catholic Church is obviously they had to go through and they had to do some things with last day's stuff because the but you know they're teaching through the Bible and they're looking at last day stuff right so they got to do something with it and one of the problems that you have when you're in the middle of the or at the end of the Middle Ages is that you're looking at passages that don't look like they have any ability to have a literal fulfillment and and so we've talked about that before when you got things like you know the earth being hit with asteroid said even know what a what a what a meteor was do you know this until the 1800s nobody believed that rocks fell out of heaven until the 1800s as far as the scientific establishment goes and so the sophistication that we have about some of these things you know there was no way that that was going on in past days and so these guys would go through and they you know everybody wants to be in the last days and so what they would do is they would go through and they would kind of redefine things and so the Antichrist became the Roman Catholic pope and so he still have some of that left over I I do not believe that the Antichrist is gonna be the Roman Catholic pope I think is gonna be way bigger than the Roman Catholic Pope I think you know people will say well the Roman Catholicism is is the woman who rides the Beast I don't think so I think that that the woman who rides the beast in the book of Revelation is something that's way beyond Roman Catholicism I think that in every Christian denomination that you are going to have people who are left over after Jesus comes back for us and that is the woman that rides the beast but not only that but all of paganism is going to be included in that too and so the woman who's writing the Beast is just a picture of false religion it's a picture of life life outside of God and God calls that adultery and again in the Bible he calls that whoredom and so harlotry and so that's what the woman who writes the Beast is anybody who's come up with a nother definition of following God than what the Bible says and so it's a it's a combination type of thing it just goes way beyond all that stuff in any case what's happened is what happened in the in the 1600s or 1500s when this took place was they went through and they they some things they redefined and so the Roman Catholic Church became the Beast and the Roman Catholic pope became the Anti Christ and the church were one of the things that they kept was the whole idea that the church replaces Israel and that's something that's been around for you know since the 400 is basically Augustine st. Augustine who is a really godly guy he's a good guy you want to trash the guy for you know for everything but he came up with the idea that or he was one of the ones that promoted the idea that the church replaces Israel we had some real problems with that when you're going through the Old Testament you're seeing some of the passages that we're dealing with the church does not replace Israel God is going to fulfill all his promises to these people and that includes some of the stuff that we're talking about the reason that that's important nowadays is because there is a movement abroad nowadays to reinforce that whole thing and it is causing a situation where you have churches that are turning against Israel and you have church leaders who are taking up the cause of the Palestinians against Israel and here's the issue with that you know I don't I don't think that Israel as a nation can do no wrong there are bunch of unbelievers and so that's what you're that's what you're dealing with I don't think that the United States can do no wrong because most of the guys who get run in this place are bunch of unbelievers and so I think that there are good things about the United States I think that there are bad things about the United States I think that good without ways the bad I say I think the same thing with Israel but you get this whole thing where there are people who are taking the side of the Palestinians and I you know I don't want to be insensitive towards palate the the Palestinians talking about the PA Palestinian Authority and Christians in the Palestinian Authority but one of the things that you've got to keep in mind about the argument between Israel and Palestine especially the Palestinian Christians or some of the guys that are saying that they're Christians is this whole issue of Israel's security what happens over there is people start griping in the Palestinian Authority because Israel puts up the wall do you know why I put Israel put up a wall yeah keep out the Bombers you have people who are walking across the border going through fields walking into restaurants and blowing the people up walking into schools and blowing up children walking onto buses and blowing up kids and mothers and that kind of stuff and they have you know it's like the Palestinians would not stop it and so what they did was they built a wall and when they built the wall in all these areas guess what happened to the whole bomber issue it went away and a problem over there is that you've got a bunch of people in the Palestinian Authority area who have their jobs in Israel so they live in the PA but they've gotta cross the border to get to Israel so that they can have work and part of the reason for that is because there is no work in the PA because it is nothing but chaos over there and on top of that you have you have situations where literally Christians are being driven out of Palestine in 1948 when Israel took over Bethlehem for example was eighty to ninety percent Christian and now it's fifteen percent Christian when when the Palestinian Authority started Arafat Arafat took over a Greek Orthodox Church and made it is home a greek orthodox monastery and made it his home Saudi Arabia and some of the other countries over there first off the wood when there's a Muslim controlled area like Bethlehem one of the things that happens is the Muslims will not give the Christians jobs if they are if there are business owners they will not give the Christians jobs and then on top of that they start it's called have you heard of D me D me is the idea that there is a tax on anybody who is not a Muslim and specifically on Christians and Jews people of the book is what what the Quran calls us Christians and Jews and so there was a tax that was put on Christians and Jews by the Islamic sand the tax went like this I can walk in your house take anything I want and you can't say diddly about it and it's still like that and that's that's one of the reasons that Christians have this tendency to leave Muslim countries and go to places like for example Israel Israel's Christian population has increased 400% since the 60s and so you you have this whole thing that's going on over there where where Muslims are coming into Bethlehem and they're literally driving the Christians out and maybe they make life miserable for these people and then on top of it the Saudi Arabians are sending money to the Muslims and offering the Christians twice the amount that their houses are worth to give up their their land and so the Christians do that move to Canada and move to Brazil and move to you know that kind of stuff and so the Christians would be being driven out of this place and one of the one of the again one of the things that you have with some of the some of the Protestant churches that are getting involved in this whole thing is they're coming down on the side of the Palestinian Authority and saying that the reason that this is going on is because the wall has been put up and the Jews won't let these people come into Israel without going through a checkpoint okay which you know if people are gonna walk in with bombs and guns and stuff like that being stopped at a checkpoint I think that's rational at that point and if you don't want to be stopped at a checkpoint you don't want a wall you know going across between your territory and Israel maybe what you ought to do is instead of focusing on the Israelis or big bad people you ought to start looking at the terrorists in your own country and drive them out and then the Israelis might be more conducive to taking out and taking down walls and and that kind of thing in any case that's some of the stuff that's going on over there right now and you see this in the news all the time but again one of the things that you have is Christian denominations getting behind this whole anti-jewish flavor thing the Jews are these big bad bad oppressors who are real awful and they bring up the wall and they bring up checkpoints and they say it's apartheid and I don't know if you've seen this in the news but they're doing this stuff and they're given a flavor to it and it's anti-semitism and it's exactly the same stuff that that we had going on pre-world War two one of the specific things that's going on in Europe right now which I believe is going to be the seat of the Antichrist one of the specific things that's going on in Europe right now is they've got this movement where they are boycotting any Jewish goods do you realize that in Germany one of the first moves that the Nazis did was to boycott any Jewish business they went through and did the same thing and it's just amazing that in less than 60 years you can come full circle and start doing all this stuff again and just because they're Jews is the is the deal again you know ya have this whole thing and one of the reasons that many times that there is animosity between Jews and Christians over in the Middle East is because the Christians don't believe the Jews should be there because the Christians believe that they replace the Jews that's why to this day you still have a situation where the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize Israel as a country because the Roman Catholic Church is Israel as far as Roman Catholic doctrine and so you got all this stuff going on and again what's interesting about it is that there is this whole setup for the end times because in the end times Israel has to be in a situation where no one stands with her no one stands with her no country stands with her and in the first attack that takes place on Israel we read about in Ezekiel 3 38 and 39 there are people who are not involved but what they do is basically give some mamby-pamby diplomatic protests on the thing and that's what we're that's where we're headed and again when we're going through passages like this it's detailed and specific and again I think that one of the main reasons that we have this is not only because you know maybe maybe God's just gonna go straight from the book when the millennium starts but to let us know that he means business when he says that he's going to do these things it is going to happen and so all the promises that God gave to Israel are going to be fulfilled and one of them is that God was gonna rebuild the temple and that's what we're reading about so with that chapter 46 it says thus says the Lord God the gateway of the inner court that faces toward the east she'll beat shut shut the six working days but on the Sabbath it shall be opened and on the day of the new moon it shall be opened the Prince shall enter by way of the vestibule of the Gateway from the outside and stand by the gatepost the priests shall prepare his burnt offering and his peace offerings he shall worship at the threshold of the gate then he shall go out but the gate shall not be shut until evening likewise the people of the land shall worship at the entrance into this gateway before the Lord on the Sabbath's and the new moons and then he talks about the offerings he says the burnt offering that the prince offers to the Lord on the Sabbath day shall be six lambs without blemish and a ram without blemish now in in the original offerings and this is another one another thing that's different and you know this is just for your information it wasn't six lamps it was two lamps in a ram and so even the offerings are different during the Millennium verse five it says in the grain offering shall be 1.e4 a ram and the grain offering for the lamps as much as he wants to give as well as a hint of oil with every Aoife on the day of the new moon it shall be a young bull without blemish six lambs and a ram they shall be without blemish now under the Levitical offerings it was two bulls one Ram and seven lambs and so again you have you have a difference between those two it goes on and says he should prepare a grain offering of an ephah for a bull and he fought for a ram as much as he wants to get for the Lambs and a hint of oil with every e-file there you go so if you wanted to know what that what the offerings were there it is in your Bible when the prince enters he shall go in by way of the best of you love the Gateway and go out the same way but when the people of the land come before the Lord on the appointed feast days whoever enters by the way of the north gate to worship shall go out by way of the south gate and whoever enters by way of the south gate shall go out by way of the north gate he shall not return by way of the gate through which he came but she'll go out through the opposite gate the Prince shall then be in their midst when they go in he shall go in when they go out he shall go out at the festivals and the appointed feast days and the grain offering or the grain offering shall be an ephah for a bull he fought for a ram as much as he wants to give for the Lambs and a hint of oil with every ephod now when the Prince makes a voluntary burnt offering or voluntary peace offering to the Lord the gate that faces toward the east shall then be open for him and he shall prepare his burnt offering in his peace offering as he did on the Sabbath day then he shall go out and after he goes up the gates will be shut he shall daily make a burnt offering to the Lord of a Lamb of the first year without blemish you shall prepare it every morning and you shall prepare a grain offering with it every morning sixth of an ephah third of a hint of oil to moisten the fine flour this grain offering is a perpetual ordinance to be made regularly to the Lord thus they shall prepare the lamb the grain offering and the oil as a regular burnt offering every morning ok so let me do a couple things with you off this picture this is the east gate and this east gate is not a gate that that the regular people can go into it's only for the prince who earlier on is identified as King David so King David raised from the dead the Bible says and he's the one who is going to be going in and out there he goes in on the Sabbath day and he saw offers the offerings that are spoken about there and what he would do is he would go in here and then he would go up into this area right here this is this is where the altar is and he would offer his offering the people on the other hand will be coming in through these gates these two right here and so if you come in this gate you go in this gate you go and do your offering you go out that gate if you come in this gate you come in you do your offering and you go out that gate so you got this constant flow of people and he's organizing it basically and so again it's it's detailed that you know you know I I don't know you may go home tonight and go wow what a blessing to know that but it's again detail that's in there on how worship is going to be going on during the millennial period here's another thing that's that's kind of interesting that I don't know if I've shared with you before you have this whole thing with Sabbath and New Moon's and in the Bible the Sabbath and the New Moon are connected and so whenever you see the term New Moon used in the Bible it's usually in connection with the Sabbath day and so it'll say this is what you do on the Sabbath and on the new moons and so for example one of the things that you're supposed to do on the Sabbath day is you're supposed to rest right no business is what supposed to be happening you're supposed to be doing work well Amos 8/5 says exactly the same thing actually it's a it's a slam on the people of Israel in the place where where they say you know when is the New Moon gonna be over when is the Sabbath going to be over so we can go back to business they don't like you know taking the time and resting with God so one of the things that you find out from the Bible is that the New Moon was a day of rest it's also a day of feasting as you go through the Bible and in there's some passages for example we've been doing David so in 1st Samuel chapter 20 you have this whole thing with David and Saul and it is the day of the new moon and there is a feast going on and Saul is asking why is David not here during the feast so you have a feast that takes place on that day and you also have a day of rest that's taking place and here's the reason I'm telling you now in the book of Colossians and I think that we dealt with this last time in the book of Colossians the Bible teaches that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the feast days which includes Passover unleavened bread feast of firstfruits Pentecost the Feast of Trumpets Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles all those things are fulfilled in the ministry of Christ so for example Jesus's or Passover is our sacrifice so he was sacrificed on the day that they ate the Passover he was buried on the on the on the beginning of the feast of unleavened bread he was raised on the feast of firstfruits and the Holy Spirit came down on the day of Pentecost and one of the things that they did on the day of Pentecost it's called the feast of weeks one of the things that they did on that day was they took two loaves of bread and they put them to get put them together in their hands and there's a difference between this bread that's used in that in that ceremony and every other type of bread that's ever used in temple and temple sacrifices this bet this bread is leavened bread every other time that you're using bread or grain or whatever it's always unleavened because eleven is a picture of sin but on the feast of weeks or the Feast of Pentecost they would take two leavened loaves and it would you know I don't know I don't know what it what exactly it would look like it probably looked like you know something like sour dill or something you have those long loaves of sourdough they take those two things they put them together and then they would do what was called a heave offering which is like this and then they would do a wave offering which is like this so they take these two leaven loaves and make a sign of the Cross and they specifically did it on that day why and the reason is because that's when the church will get started and the church is identified as two groups of people Jews and Gentiles who are both imperfect and sinful and God takes those two groups of people takes away the middle partition that separated them brings them together and he does it through the cross of Jesus Christ and so it's fulfilled in Jesus right when you look at the at the at the Feast of Trumpets on the Feast of Trumpets what would happen is in the middle of the workday the priests would stand up and they would start blowing these trumpets and if you were Jewish you would leave what you were doing and you would go up to the temple and there was a whole Worship session that you would go through and so two would be working in the field one would leave and the other would be left so if you got one Gentile Gentile and a Jew or Samaritan and a Jew working in the same field a believer and unbeliever the believer would leave and go to the father's house and the other guy would be left and there's this whole thing with a trumpet okay and ten days later you had the day of atonement okay ten days later the last seven days of those ten days were called the Days of Awe so you have the Feast of Trumpets first this period of time of 10 days first three days are kind of indeterminate but the last seven days are the days of on it was the period of time when Israel was supposed to prepare be preparing itself for the judgment that comes from God and then they would do the day of atonement well obviously Feast of Trumpets could be fulfilled by the rapture of the church it's gonna be a trumpet sound believers gonna be taken that whole thing seven days of aw you know it's like I said there's 10 days but the seven days of aw there's a seven-year tribulation right before Jesus comes back to specifically judge Israel and then after that you have the Feast of Tabernacles and Tabernacles represents it's a picture of going through the wilderness and God's provision for you through that time and Tabernacles is one of those those feasts that is specifically mentioned as being celebrated during the Millennium looking back on the time when God was taking us through the wilderness which is what this is and how he provided for us and thanking him for it during that time and so all those feasts have already been fulfilled than Christ or are going to be fulfilled in Christ at his second coming so first coming He fulfilled the first set second coming he'll be he'll be fulfilling the last set right and it's the same thing with the Sabbath day we talked about Jesus's hour rest and with a new moon so basically what you've got when you're going through the Bible and you look at all these things all these days were Sabbath days by the by by the way there were days of rest and so when you're going through and looking at at these feasts you have weekly Sabbath's the Jews had you had monthly Sabbath's which was the new moon and you had yearly Sabbath's which are the different feast days that would take place you also have a Sabbath of years and the Sabbath was all over the place and so you had six years where you were allowed to plow your land and in the seventh year you were to let it rest and God promised enough produce from the sixth year to cover the seventh year and the eighth here so you could replant and get a harvest on that on that eighth year and so you had that whole thing and all of that is a full is fulfilled in Christ it's all a picture of Jesus and so again we're looking at at Christ from you know basically from this side we're going to do communion that's looking at Christ from after his death and it's going to be the same thing with these feasts and with these sacrifices it's looking at it's a looking back at what Jesus has done for us and given for us the sacrifices before the time of Christ were looking forward to what Jesus was going to do and again that's why all of this stuff is so important in that instance verse 16 it says thus says the Lord God if the Prince gives a gift of some of his inheritance to any of his sons it shall be lying to his sons it is their possession by inheritance his time well to give to the land but if he gives a gift of suddenly the sea of his inheritance to one of his servants it shall be his until the year of liberty after which it shall return to the prince but his inheritance she'll belong to his sons it shall become theirs can you put up that that picture of the country Todd where you have the the divisions of the land and all that stuff then it says moreover the priest shall not take any of the people's inheritance by evicting them from their property he shall provide an inheritance for his sons from his own property so that none of my people may be scattered from his property yeah that's that's good enough okay so basically you're you're looking at Israel here from the east and so this down here is the Dead Sea and so this would be Judea this would be you know or excuse me well yeah this would be the area of you know like this is Gaza over here this is the Palestinian Authority and Jerusalem's right in here in any case this whole section right here there's a section that goes straight across the land and it's in in between all the land that's given to the different countries and this section right here is for the Prince and what he's saying here is if the Prince decides to give some of his people any of this land it's theirs until what's called the year of Jubilee you guys familiar with the year of Jubilee what would happen is they would go basically seven years was was kind of this cycle and there was a seven seven cycle there was 49 years that they would go through and then the next year was what cut what was called the year of Jubilee and so you never actually sold your land if you decided that you were gonna sell your land you could sell it but at after 50 years it was basically just a 50-year lease and so on that date on the year of Jubilee everybody's stuff went back to everybody else you never had this whole thing where you just lose it forever and the reason for that was because god when he brought the people in the land it was his land that he was giving to his people and he gave it out by allotment to different groups and you know so you could have a you could have a cycle where maybe you were poor 50 years and he had to sell your stuff but at the end of that cycle it was a reboot and you got everything back now there is no record that they actually did that in the the time of the of the nation of Israel there's no record that they actually did that but during the Millennium that's exactly what's going to take place you don't get that you don't gonna take somebody's inheritance and keep it forever and again it's it's one of those things where God is saying I'm going to do it the way that I designed it and we're going to the whole thing is going to work the way that I designed it okay he goes on here he says now he brought me through the entrance verse 19 which was at the side of the gate into the holy chambers of the priests which faced toward the north and there was a place situated at their extreme western end and he said to me this is the place where the priests shall boil the trespass offering in a sin-offering and where they shall bake the grain offering so that they do not bring them out into the outer court to sanctify the people can you put that Temple picture back up Todd then he brought me out into the outer court and caused me to pass by the four corners of the court and in fact in every corner of the court there was another court in the four corners of the court were enclosed courts 40 cubits long 30 cubits wide all four corners were the same size there was a row of building stones all around in them all around the four of them and cooking hearts were made under the rows of stones all around and he said to me these are the kitchens where the ministers of the temple shall boil the sacrifices of the people this is what he's talking about back here on both sides here there is a kitchen for the priests and so when the priests would take their part of the offering and they were going to eat it before the Lord and that's one of those things that you did they would take it back there and this was for the priests but in every one of these corners right here around the temple there was a kitchen for the common people and the priests the Levites would be cooking the the meat that was offered as a sacrifice for the families that are coming okay and so again here's here's the importance of that for us Jesus said behold I stand at the door and knock if anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into him and sup with him it says in the King James Version and he with me and what he was talking about is this whole thing of a sacrificial meal when you brought your sacrifices to the Lord what you were doing was your your whole family was having a meal with God that was the picture now there were times when the Jews thought that they were feeding God and that's what the pagans thought that they were feeding their gods and if they didn't feed their gods that their gods would get mad at the pagans to this day believe that if they don't feed their gods their gods will get mad at them so we just went to India and they have all these little spirit houses and stuff where they put food and so your kids may be starving but the rats are not because they're eating what's in the spirit houses in any case that's what they think that they're doing there were times when God said when they believed that God was doing the same thing and in Psalm 50 God says to them I'm not gonna rebuke you for the multitude of your sacrifices but I just want you to know that if I were hungry I wouldn't tell you you're familiar with us I own the cattle on a Thousand Hills and that's where that comes from God saying you think you're feeding me you're not feeding me I don't need you to take care of me and in fact he goes on in that passage and goes this is what I want from you you calling me on the day of the trouble and I'll deliver you and you'll glorify me that's what I want from you I'm not interested in your charity in that sense so you always keep that in mind when you're offering a sacrifice to God and we sacrifice in our giving and that kind of stuff and it's not you know I don't know man I there have been times when I've been watching Christian TV and I when I was an unbeliever I always thought God was broke poor guy needs a hand you need to help the guy out that kind of thing is just not true we're not helping God out if if God doesn't use you he'll use somebody else to advance his causes and that kind of stuff and so you always keep that in mind when when your sacrifices Lord what God was picturing there was a meal with God and so God gets his part my part that priests got their part and it's like a barbecue so every time you went to worship God you were having a barbecue okay and it's not quite a barbecue because they were boiling the mean and we're on a big fan of boiled meat but that's that's what they were doing but it's it's a it's a it's a festival meal and that's what Jesus was talking about that's what the Jews would understand when he said I'm standing at the door knocking I want to come and have a meal with you it's the idea of God being with you and having this closeness this close connection the urban hangout was somebody that you know you were you were close with that I don't know you have you gone to a meal that was just uncomfortable with somebody went to a restaurant or whatever it's just way formal went to their house and it's way formal and you know yeah I don't know you felt you just didn't feel like you could have the conversation that you wanted to have and things like that then you got other friends who you know they'll let you eat from their burrito I'd bite my burrito yeah Ben came up to me today and he said I had my I had some coffee out there I have a mocha every morning and I had my coffee out there and Ben came up and said hey Steve can can I have a drink of your coffee and I said yes Ben no I said nope you can't have a drink of my coffee he goes where is our relationship I go we have a relationship where you don't put your nasty lips all over my coffee cup that's the relationship and we have but and he goes well I'll take the Google I'll take the lid off I don't care yeah and God is obviously different than that Jesus would share his burrito with you and he would care to share his mocha with you I have a ways to go no whole thing in any in any case that's that's again the the picture that's taken place Serge so you had this whole thing where every time you go to the temple you're having a barbecue basically here's how you're they're having a good time spending it with the Lord and obviously that's what God would have from us I think that our worship of God should just be you know it should be it should be a blessing to us that's what it's supposed to be chapter 47 it says then he brought me back to the door of the temple and there was water flowing from under the threshold of the temple or the East for the front of the temple faced east the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple south of the altar okay and so here's the temple there's the altar and so the water is flowing out and this is this is the the right side and this is the south side of the altar okay and it goes on and he says he brought me out by way of the north gate which would be this one and led me around on the outside to the outer gateway that faces east and there was water running out on the right side and so you're the water's coming out here Ezekiel's taking out this gate brought around here and he notices that this water is running from here and it's running out the out the out the right side and in this in this thing right here you have this little trench thing that's being pictured a little trench thing that goes like this now I don't know if it goes over here it looks to me that it kind of goes up through the it looks like it goes up to through the gate to me I don't know if it does or not but in any case there's this water that comes out and it says when the man went out to the east with the line in his hand he measured a thousand cubits and he brought me through the waters and the water came up to my ankles so it goes out a thousand cubits was which is about five hundred yards and that water is deep enough to hit your ankles at that point and then he goes on and says again he measured a thousand and brought me through the waters and the water came up to my knees it's another five hundred yards and there's more water now that's up to your knees again he measured a thousand and brought me through and the water came up to my waist so another five hundred yards it's up to your waist again he measured uh he measured one thousand and it was a river that I could not cross for the water was too deep water in which one must swim a river that could not be crossed and he said to me son of man have you seen this and then he brought me and returned me to the bank of the river when I returned there along the bank of the river were very many trees on one side and the other then he said to me this water flows toward the eastern region goes down into the valley and enters the sea when it reaches the sea its waters are healed can you put that up that last map that you had taught and it shall be that every living thing that moves wherever the rivers go will live there will be a very great multitude of fish because these waters go therefore they will be healed and everything will live wherever the river goes it shall be that fisherman will stand by it from and geti to end in eglim they will be places for spreading their nets their fish will be of the same kinds as the fish of the great sea exceedingly many but it's swamps and marshes will not be healed they will be given over to salt along the bank of the river on this side and that will grow all kinds of trees use for food their leaves will not wither and their fruit will not fail they will bear fruit every month because their water flows from the sanctuary their fruit will be for food and their leaves for medicine ok and so basically again you have this is the area where the temple is and there is a river that runs from the temple and goes down into the Dead Sea down into this area and gety is down over in here and eglim is up in here and so what he's saying is that the Dead Sea is going to be healed that the water is gonna be fresh enough that it will have fish now I think we talked about the Dead Sea last time that we were doing the study and when you're in the Dead Sea it's a kind of thing there it is so salty you don't you don't put your face in it in fact it feels really oily it's really weird so you don't put your face in it and when I float in the Dead Sea I float with my chest out of my water out of the water that's how high you float in this stuff and you don't want it splashed on you that kind of stuff it's really radically salty they use it for you know they have they have spas and stuff like that down there they use it for that but they don't you know they don't there's no fish in there that's why they call it the Dead Sea okay it's got an inlet Jordan River and some of the other rivers that go into it has no outlet and what God is saying here is that during the time of El Monte them the Dead Sea is going to be healed and it's going to have somewhat the same salt content that the Mediterranean does that's the Great Sea and so this is the Mediterranean right here this is the Dead Sea and according to Zechariah chapter 14 not only is there a river going this way there's a river going this way that heals this area right here and it also heals the Mediterranean why does the Mediterranean need to be healed and the reason is because the Bible says that during the tribulation that there are two events that take place that destroy all life in the sea one of them is that whole thing where I talked about things coming from outer space and hitting the ocean and when that happens it says 1/3 of life in the sea dies and 1/3 of the shipping has destroyed and so you know big tsunami basically then later on in the book of Revelation in chapter 16 it talks about the fact that not only is 1/3 of life destroyed all of it is destroyed NSE becomes like blood and so it looks like a cascade event in the sense that it started off by this judgment in Revelation chapter 7 and then it cascades and becomes worse and worse over time till the point you get where the ocean is literally dead so there's no life in the sea by the time that you get to the end of the tribulation period and so it needs to be healed and one of the things that you have described when Jesus comes back is the fact that he begins healing everything he fixes everything in fact let's real quick look at that passage in zechariah zechariah chapter 14 the Zechariah Malachi Matthew in the first seven verses it describes a second coming of Jesus and there's a there's a the coming of Jesus he touches down on the Mount of Olives and it splits in two there's a valley there's an earthquake and all set that takes place he gives the timing in verses six and seven and then he says and in that day it shall be per se that Living Waters shall flow from Jerusalem half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the western sea in both summer and winter it shall occur and the Lord shall be king over all the earth in that day it shall be the Lord is one in his name 1 all the land shall be turned into a plane from giba to rimmon south of Jerusalem Jerusalem shall be raised up and inhabited in her place from Benjamin's gate to the place of the first gate and the corner gate and for the tower of Hannah kneel to the King's wine presses the people shall dwell in it and no longer shall there be utter destruction but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited the reason I'm part of the reason I'm showing you that is because the the passage that that talks about the the two rivers but that area that's being described here's giba and here's Rimmon and these are the Judean mountains okay and what it's saying is that these mountains all these mountains here are going to be turned into a plane and that Jerusalem is going to be raised up and so you have this weird geography thing that takes place during the tribulation towards the end of the tribulation it talks about the mountains are knocked down and all the islands are wiped out and that there that the only thing that's exalted is Jerusalem which is really weird because again what's God changing the geography for and you can you can see some some causes for that again you got a couple of things slamming into the earth that looks like during during the tribulation so that's gonna crack things up and there gonna be other issues that you know that take place during that time earthquakes are going to be increased as a there's a bunch of radical earthquakes that literally level the cities of the nations so you have all this stuff going on and it looks like the reason that he's doing that is to change the changes of climate to change the climate the major reason that we have climate zones in the world today is because of mountains and so we're living in a desert area because of the Cascades as you approach the Blue Mountains it becomes more and more wet you get on the other side of the Blue Mountains you have another desert area overnight awho and it's just like that so say it same thing in Southern California you get it to the Sierras that's that's one of the most productive farmland areas in the world in the since Central California then you get to the other side and you've got Nevada which is nothing but you know dirt and rocks it's that kind of thing and one of the things that the Bible talks about is the fact that the deserts bloom and that can't happen unless you start getting rid of mountains and one of the other one of the other things that you have in the Bible is that before the flood it looks like the mountains weren't as high as they were after the flood in fact the you know people wonder where the water water from the flood went there's a there's a psalm that talks about God raised the mountains up and he lowered down the valleys they have this situation where where God begins this this whole kind of balancing act with continental plates and oceanic plates and basically he just tips the balance and as soon as it you know the world's covered with water and as soon as he tips the balance it just kind of goes like this and once it starts the waters gonna rush to the lowest part and it's going to cause that that process to increase and go faster so that you literally have continents floating up you know that you know that the that the crust is floating on magma basically on the mantle it's all busted up into pieces and so in the continental plates they're up higher in the oceanic plates they're down lower that's called plate tectonics and we just discovered that you know actually we probably that's that's something that's relatively new since the probably the 50s the 60s that we came up with that the Bible comes up with that all the way back in the Book of Psalms okay so got lowered the valleys he raised the mountains and all mountain ranges when you when you're talking about geologically speaking even if you use evolutionary geology all of them are recent all of them are there from after the time of the dinosaurs and in fact they're from the period of time that's just before what the what the geologists will call the Ice Age and so they're late tertiary is where is where mountain building took place and so geologically speaking mountain building is recent it's not something that's ancient its recent it's not something that you had in the world from the from the very beginning and I would agree with that I just don't agree on the dating so it looks like most the mountain building took place after the flood and that's when climate changed and everything got different and what it looks like what God's doing is he's taking it back to what you had pre flood and so we know from geology and from anthropology we know that the world was significantly different in the ancient past and so you can find palm fronds in the permafrost up in Alaska for example and they've got evidence of the same thing going down going on down in Antarctica and you got evidence of us the semi-tropical climate all over the planet and why is it so different now and it looks like that may be evidence of things that were taking place we you know before the flood and after the flood everything changed including the lifespan of mankind including the lifespan of animals so for example did you know that most reptiles don't have the same aging process that we have and I've put a pituitary in the sense that they stopped growing at a certain age a reptile will continue to grow as long as it's alive okay it's so if you have a lifespan of say a crocodile that's I don't know what their lifespan is maybe it's 25 years or something if the lifespan of a crocodile is 25 years it's only got 25 years to grow if you give a little line on a longer lifespan it's going to get bigger right and so you have that with reptiles now I don't know how to explain mammals did you know that there are huge beavers in the fossil record like 8 foot long beavers size of a grizzly bear did you know that yeah that's like in fact well maybe I'll do that with you next week we're running out of time here but in any case the world was radically different before the time of the flood and it looks like what God's going to do during the time of the millennium when he when he causes all this stuff to go back to how it was before is he takes and he reverses the process sorts taken the mountains out so it can level off the whole climate thing and cause the world to be watered like maybe it was before the flood all that's conjecture but it looks like that may be what's going on so God's got some practical things going on when he causes the mountains to melt like wax as the Psalms say and he causes all the mountains and the and the islands to disappear the other thing that you see back in that passage in Ezekiel is this whole thing with the river keeps getting deeper the further you go now that may be because there's tributaries going into it that might be a possibility or it might be some kind of miraculous thing I don't know you know where the tributaries are coming after 500 yards that make it go from your ankle up to your knee in 500 yards I don't know where that's coming from but it could be it could just be an evidence that the climate is in Israel is radically different there's more rainfall and that kind of thing it might be that kind of thing or it might be something miraculous in a sense that when the water from God goes out it doesn't diminish it just gets deeper and deeper and that could be a word picture for what God does in our hearts when I become a believer one of the things that Jesus said was you come to me you believe in me and out of you will flow rivers of living water a lot of guys have taken a pat whole passage and I have no doubt that that's exactly what's gonna happen I'm not going to allegorize that I think that when we get there 500 yards from the temple it'll be knee deep or well was ankle deep then a thousand yards from the temple it'll be knee deep and you know fifteen hundred yards it'll be wasting and and then you're swimming that kind of thing but it can be pictured as an allegory of your walk with the Lord and when you first become a believer following Jesus can be pretty difficult the sense that you're having to trust him on some levels that you never trusted anybody before and you know I kind of look at my life like that when I first followed the Lord you know everything was ankle-deep with me y'all go in but it's gonna be a nickel deep and you know I'm gonna I'm gonna check things out and I'm gonna make sure everything's everything's cool I don't mind ankle deep but you know you know I don't really want to get any deeper than that and then God moves you on and you get a little further along and then you brings you to the place where you're up to your knees and then he moves you on you get a little further on and it starts making you nervous have you noticed that when you're in deep water and especially if it's moving you know ankle deep is okay no problem there knee deep starts getting a little bit more hairy and when your waist deep and something that's moving it's like okay you know I could lose I could lose my footing here and it might get bad so you start you start being careful and then you get to the point where it's like you're all in and you're just floating and that's that's the picture that he gets that's a great picture of a walk with God you know where God wants you right he wants you all in it was one union there tipping you know to tow it off with your ankles and if you're at that point your walk right now that's okay but he's not gonna leave you there and he's gonna make you get deeper and deeper you know I mean the whole thing up to the waist that's always really uncomfortable with me you know it's well it's one of those I'm not one of those people that jumps in you know a little bit at a time that just makes me crazy so if I'm going to the beach or something if I'm gonna you know it's like one of those things where you're like just into the water just get it over with my wife on the other hand will go in in little ways trying to come back go in little ways and come back like what is what's wrong with you I grab her I carry her out no I don't do that I did it once and I stopped it in any case and you know it's kind of like that with her walk with God no I'm just joking she's not here she should be here or be talked about in any case like again it's that it's that kind of picture with our with our walk with God you know you maybe ankle-deep you made me be knee deep he may be getting in that place where it's really getting uncomfortable you know because you're there real trust issues when it gets way steep but where God is going with you is he wants you all in he wants you floating in the waters of God water if God represents the Holy Spirit - he wants my life to be led and controlled by the Holy Spirit the Bible talks about the spirit coming upon you for power and you know that that can get dangerous in the sense that you know God's always a gentleman but it doesn't always do what I wanted to and when you get to this whole Holy Spirit thing you know when he first came along it's like tons of fire floating over your head that's weird right so you're all in the room bugs about rushing mighty wind you know it's weirdness at that but that's what I be that's what I'd be thinking I wouldn't mean going oh God thank you for the tongues of fire thank you for the wind of your spirit like all the Christians do now I wouldn't be doing that I'd be going whoa what's going on you know if that was happening here if I started seeing little tongues of fire over the top of your head I'd be coming oh this is intense and agains that that's the point and then they all start talking in these other languages bunch of crazy people talking in these other languages as a Spirit gave them utterance like it says and they're people on the outside going wow that is weird it's that kind of thing and so the Holy Spirit is a gentleman he's not going to just make you do stuff but there are times when you're all-in and it's like you don't know where you're going and that's what God wants with us and that's where he that's where he's always going in our relationship with him further on deeper in further on deeper in that's where he's gonna go with you right and we obviously started that with our confession of Jesus and our confession of our sin and our repentance and it's a good thing to look back on what Jesus did when he first came in my life that's why we do communion it's a good thing to look back on that and and and just keep the freshness there that's one of the things I love about communion that I'm always looking back on what Jesus did for me and it's just this cool reminder of what it was like when I first got sick I remember the first time I could I took communion it was a big deal to me it was a big deal and ever since then I've never wanted to lose that I remember when I first confessed Christ I remember when I first gave my heart to him I remember the first time I prayed for real and it was a big deal and I wanted to be like that for the rest of my life so I looked back on those things but I don't want to stay there I don't want to stay there I'm gonna be going further on and deeper in and so there's a time when the memorial is good to look at it but this isn't all that there is this is where it starts and we always look back to it because that's where it starts but there's better there are bigger things that God wants me to do with my life and again it it has the idea of being completely dependent when Ezekiel gets in that water and he's and it's it's water so deep that you can't touch the bottom which is what's happening there is he's being carried along by the current carried along by the current and so up until that point you got some control ankles knees waist you've got some control but where God wants us is to be carried along by the current allow him to do the work right are you willing to go there are you willing to go there that's just a you know that's just a practical thing God whatever you want so that might be something you want to pray about you know as we're as we're partaking of communion you know God if I've been holding back if I just you know have I have I you know just been ankle-deep in my walk with you do you want me to move on here do you have something more for me and you know the answer to that right and but it's a it's a good thing to look at let's pray and we'll partake of it father we come before you and thank you Lord for communion thank you Lord for the the picture that we have here we've we've just talked about it in a couple of different ways that whole picture of a sacrifice and having a meal with you and the fellowship that we have with you as we partake of that sacrifice we know the sacrifice was your son and when we are partaking of the son we're all partaking of him together and again this is what what this represents we all have a part in each other because we we have a part in Jesus and so God you make us one with each other because of that and Lord we have a part with you because we have a part with Jesus we're taking him in and he's becoming a part of us he's becoming one with us and again Lord we know that it's a symbol but that's what the symbol is and God we want that to be true to where we want our fellowship with you just to be deep and awesome and we just want to be all in God I pray for anybody that's here this evening that main may not have been walking right with you yeah maybe they've come in and you know even dragged himself in this place and Lord it's always good to know that we can come to you and as we're partaking of communion we can we can come again looking to the sacrifice that you've made for us and just get that healing that we need healing from our past healing from our our sin healing for our emotional junk and Lord that that we can be cleansed bread represents your broken body that was broken for us by your stripes were healed and Lord that's what we want and the cup represents your shed blood and it's with the blood of Jesus that were that were made clean he said that you wanted us to come and reason together with you and you said although our sins may be as scarlet that you would make them as white as snow and God we pray that you would do that for us here tonight I want to pray for specifically for anybody here that's needing healing that as we partake of the bread that you would just touch their body and make them whole we asked us all in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 2,147

Rating: 4.7333331 out of 5

Keywords: ezekiel chapter 45, Book of Ezekiel (Religious Text), Calvary Chapel (Organization), Steve Whinery, The Bible (Religious Text), Ezekiel (Religious Leader)

Id: Omqsqr5WFj4

Length: 59min 46sec (3586 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 27 2013