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The Bible Breakdown
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The Bible Breakdown
Ezekiel 41: A Heart of Worship
The captivating journey through Ezekiel continues with Chapter 41, where the prophet receives a divine tour of the temple sanctuary. Far more than architectural specifications, these detailed measurements reveal God's unwavering commitment to restore His presence among His people after years of exile and spiritual distance.
As the mysterious measuring angel guides Ezekiel through chambers, doorways, and corridors, we discover something remarkable about God's character—He never abandons those He loves. Despite Israel's unfaithfulness, God meticulously plans His return, designing every aspect of His dwelling place with intention and purpose. The repeated motifs of palm trees throughout the temple decorations point to something profound: God's desire to restore Eden-like fellowship with humanity.
This revelation transforms our understanding of worship. Pastor Brandon challenges us to move beyond limiting worship to Sunday music and instead recognize that everything—from silent car rides to patient interactions in traffic—can become sacred moments of connection with God. The heart behind our actions creates worship, not the actions themselves. Just as God designed His temple as a space for relationship rather than mere ritual, He invites us to approach our daily lives with the same intentionality.
Are you recognizing God's presence in your everyday moments? How might your perspective shift if you approached routine activities as opportunities for divine fellowship? Join us as we explore how God continues building His presence among us today, creating spaces for the Eden-like communion He's always desired with His people. Listen now to discover how your life can become a living temple where God's presence dwells.
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today, ezekiel, chapter 41, and today's title is A Heart of Worship. A Heart of Worship and this is borrowing the title from a very famous Christian song. We may or may not get into that in a minute, but we're going to continue the idea of God building His place of worship, his place to meet with his people back into the nation of Israel. We're going to get into all in just a moment. So you have your Bible. I want to open it up with me to Ezekiel 41.
Speaker 1:While you're doing that, if you're new around here, make sure you take just a moment and like, share, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you are leaving us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. If you'd like to receive the updates every single day, you can go to your text messaging app and you can text RLCBIBLE to 94000. And make sure you're going to the Facebook discussion every single day. Every day, they are posting a new devotion and I'm gonna tell you they're wonderful. They're really, really wonderful. We wanna engage with you. We wanna learn from you, as you learn from us as well, and, as always, the more we dig, the more we find.
Speaker 1:And once again, if you are just now joining us, we are nearing the end of this long but amazing journey through the book of Ezekiel, with the overall idea of Ezekiel is God's promise of renewal, and that's an amazing thing because along the journey it hasn't always looked like that promise was going to happen. I mean, maybe you would disagree with me, but there were times when you're just like man I don't know, I mean the people of Israel. They're just not turning back to God. But one of the things I love is that God never gives up on them, right? And that, of course, immediately speaks to. If he doesn't give up on them, he's not going to give up on us. And now we are in this place where God is setting up his home, metaphorically, back among the people, and he has got Ezekiel going through with this angel and they are measuring the temple and it is a metaphor about God settling himself in among his people again. And now, as we get into Ezekiel 41, he's going to continue the idea of measuring in different things, but once again, remember, as he is getting in and he is measuring the holiest place, this is where the ark of God would be the central focus of God's presence. Remember, these are symbols symbolizing the return of God's presence to be among his people and so to the nation of Israel. This would have been the most refreshing and hope-filled thing, because it meant God was no longer forsaking them. God was moving back in. So, if you're ready, ezekiel 41, verse 1 says this.
Speaker 1:After that, now, that's yesterday, when we were talking about all these different measurements of the inner and outer court, the man brought me into the sanctuary of the temple. He measured the walls on either side of his doorway and they were 10 1⁄2 feet thick. The doorway was 17 1⁄2 feet wide and the wall on each side were 8 3⁄4 thick long. The sanctuary itself was 70 feet long and 35 feet wide. Then he went beyond the sanctuary to the inner room and he measured the walls on either side of its entrance and they were three and a half feet thick. The entrance was 10 and a half feet wide and the walls on each side of the entrance were 12 and one-fourth feet long. The inner room of the sanctuary was 35 feet long and 35 feet wide. This he told me talking about this, it says the man with the bronze face, most likely an angel. Some people think it might've been Jesus. Either way, it wasn't. Ezekiel this guy said this. He told me is the most holy place, remember. That's the place where the high priest would meet with God. It's where the Ark of the Covenant was. This is the holiest place in the nation of Israel.
Speaker 1:Verse five there were rows of rooms along the outside wall and each room was seven and a half feet wide. These side rooms were built in three levels, one above the other, and there were 30 rooms on each level. The supports for each of these side rooms rested on exterior ledges on the temple wall. They did not extend into the wall. Each level was wider than the one below it, corresponding to the narrowing of the temple wall. As it rose higher, a stairway led up from the bottom level through the middle level to the top level.
Speaker 1:I saw the temple was built on a terrace which provided a foundation for the side rooms. The terrace was 10.5 feet high. The outer wall of the temple rooms was three and three-fourths feet thick. This left an opening area between the side rooms and a row of rooms along the outer wall of the inner courtyard. This open area was 35 feet wide and it went all along the way around the temple. Two doors opened from the side rooms into the terrace yard and it was eight and three-fourths feet wide. One door faced the north and the other south. A large building stood on the west facing the temple courtyard and it was 122 and a half feet wide and 107 and a half feet long and its walls were eight and three-fourths feet thick. Then the man measuring the temple oh, feet thick. Then the man measuring the temple, excuse me, then the man measured the temple and it was 175 feet long and the courtyard around the building, including its walls, was an additional 170 feet in length. The inner courtyard to the east temple was also 175 feet wide. The building to the west and its two walls was 175 feet wide.
Speaker 1:The sanctuary, the inner room and the entry room of the temple were all paneled with wood and there were frames from the recessed windows and the inner walls of the temple were paneled with wood above and below the windows. Pause Now, this is not how it was. But when it says that, it makes me think of all those 1980s paneled walls everywhere. And I got to get that out of my head because I'm guaranteeing you the temple did not have paneling walls the way I'm thinking of in the 1980s, paneling everywhere. But that's what's in my head. All right, now that I've confessed that to my brothers and sisters, let's move on.
Speaker 1:Verse 17, the space above the door leading into the inner room and its walls inside and out were also paneled. We really need to find another word for that. Verse 18, all the walls were decorated with carvings of cherubim, each with two faces, and were carving of the palm trees between each of the cherubim. One face, that of a man, looked toward the palm tree on one side. The other, the face of a young lion, looked toward the palm tree on the other side. The figures were carved all along the inside, of a young lion looked toward the palm tree on the other side. The figures were carved all along the inside of the temple, from the floor to the top of the walls, including the outer wall of the sanctuary.
Speaker 1:There were square columns at each of the sanctuary, and the ones at the entrance of the most holy place were similar. There was an altar made of wood, five and one-fourths feet high and three and a half feet across. Its corner base and side walls were made of wood. This, the man told me, is the table that stands in the presence of the Lord. Both the sanctuary and the most holy place had double doorways, each with two swinging doors. The doors leading into the sanctuary were decorated with carved cherubim and palm trees, just as on the walls, and there was a wooden roof at the front of the entry room to the temple. Both sides of the entry room were recessed windows decorated with carved palm trees. The side room along the outer walls also had roofs.
Speaker 1:So, as we can see, there's still this idea of God building the temple and decorating it and all this. But as we get ready to finish our time together today, I want to draw your attention to something that we read yesterday and we read again today, and that is at the end of it. It starts talking about how there are these different palm tree decorations in the temple. Now, most theologians Old Testament theologians when you read about the temple, the original temple being built, it talked about how there were these different carvings of palm trees and pomegranates and all this kind of stuff. And one of the reasons why is a lot of the theologians believe that it was in the temple where God would meet with his people. Remember, he would meet with the high priest, and all this.
Speaker 1:And it was intended to symbolize the Garden of Eden Because, if you remember, all the way back in the book of Genesis, when God created Adam and Eve, man and woman put them in the garden. The goal of the people was to have fellowship with God. He was going to meet with them in the cool of the day. He told them hey, listen, I'm going to give you a job to do fill the earth, subdue it, take care of the garden, and you and I are going to be in fellowship with one another. Then sin happened and they were taken out of the garden, and the goal has always been for God to get us back into that innocent, pure relationship with him. And so, as a symbol of the closest we can get on earth, during the time of being back into the presence of God, the symbol was getting us back to Eden over and over and over again. And so what I love about this is, as God is building the temple again, and he is using this symbol, as this is where I'm going to meet with you again, I'm going to create this environment again, he makes sure to say, and it's going to be like Eden again, which gets us to our title the heart of worship.
Speaker 1:You know, many times in life when, as a Christian, we hear about the idea of worship and we think of worship being music, Like every time we worship, we even call the music portion of our church service the worship time. And that's unfortunate, because music is a part of worship. I mean, we've got a book of the Bible with 150 songs in it. God obviously loves music and he loves worship. So I'm not in any way downplaying that. What I am lifting up is everything can be an act of worship if the heart is right. And in this situation, god is saying I want to create a space where you and I can dwell together, and it is a moment where we can go back to the Garden of Eden and we can have that kind of fellowship.
Speaker 1:And so the heart of worship, the goal of worship, the centrality of worship, is fellowship. It's relationship, and so anything we do as a way to have fellowship with God can be an act of worship. When we serve somebody else, it can be an act of worship if we do that as a way of blessing somebody else, as an act of honoring God. When we sing, if we just sing the words and it's a song. It's not worship. But when it's pointed at God and pointed at fellowship with God, then it becomes worship. When we read God's word, when we listen to preaching, there's just a thousand different things. If we use it as a way to have fellowship with God, then it becomes worship.
Speaker 1:And so my question for you today is what can you turn into worship today? What can you turn into a moment of fellowship with God? Let me give you some examples. One is today, when you are driving back and forth. What if you took a moment and when you drove, you turn your music off you turn everything else off after you finish this podcast, of course and you took a moment and you let the silence be worship. In other words, you just said God, I want to pretend as though you and I are driving in this car together and you are, and just sometimes you know if you're around a real good friend. You don't even have to talk, just enjoy each other's company.
Speaker 1:That can be a heart, a form, a central focus of worship. What if you serve somebody else today, sometimes just by having a listening ear, maybe meeting a need, and the heart behind it created worship? What if you you know, going back to the car illustration what if today, instead of trying to hurry and get to where you go as fast as you possibly can, what if you served everyone by slowing down and letting other people go ahead of you and just saying, god, my heart today is to serve others and so I'm gonna serve them? I know these are silly, but there's a thousand different ways that the heart behind what you do can create worship. And as you do that, you're going to start to sense God's nearness. That was the whole focus of these chapters of where he is talking about the temple. Remember, this is an analogy, it's a, it is something that is happening that God is wanting Ezekiel to go back and tell the nation of Israel, and what he's wanting to tell them is I am building my presence, I'm building a place for my presence back among you. In other words, I am not going to be far off from you anymore. You just need to recognize that I'm there.
Speaker 1:What would it look like in our life if our heart began to do things as an act of worship? I'm telling you, we would start to notice God everywhere. Let's pray together right now. We would start to notice God everywhere. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today.
Speaker 1:God, here's my prayer today I pray that you will help us to have a heart to worship and that, as we do the different things today, god, we may do the exact same things we do every day, but today we're gonna do them as acts of worship and as we do, I pray you'll open our eyes to see that you're all around us, that you're all around us, that you're moving in ways that we just never noticed before. But now that our eyes are open, we can see that we can turn anything into a time of worship. And as we do, I pray, god, that you will multiply our efforts, that not only will that bless us, because we're able to bless you, but also be a blessing to others. We're thankful for that. Today, in Jesus' name, we pray amen and what God's word says in Ezekiel 37, verse 14 I will put my spirit in you and you will live again. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. For Ezekiel, chapter 42.
