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The Bible Breakdown
Ezekiel 44: Guarding the Gates
Ever felt distant from God despite desperately needing His presence? The ancient wisdom of Ezekiel 44 offers a profound solution through the concept of "Guarding the Gate."
Pastor Brandon unpacks this powerful chapter about the returning glory of God and the priestly responsibilities that followed. At its heart lies a transformative principle: maintaining God's presence requires intentional spiritual disciplines. Like a runner who discovers their fitness fading after stopping training, our spiritual connection diminishes when we neglect the practices that keep us close to God.
Many believers fall into a frustrating cycle—experiencing God's presence, gradually drifting away, then desperately seeking to reconnect during crisis moments. The uncomfortable truth? We often expect instant access to God's presence without the consistent commitment of relationship. As Pastor Brandon explains, "We don't want to marry God, we want to date God... we just want Him to be available whenever we need Him."
This teaching reframes spiritual disciplines not as legalistic requirements but as relationship-preserving practices. Prayer, Scripture reading, spiritual community, and addressing sin aren't about earning God's love—they position us to experience the presence He freely offers. When crisis hits and God seems distant, the issue isn't His faithfulness but whether we've maintained the connection.
The good news shines through brilliantly: repentance always opens the door back to intimacy with God. His love never wavers, and His hand remains extended. The question isn't whether God will be faithful but whether you're guarding the gate of your heart through consistent spiritual practices. What step will you take today to move closer to Him?
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Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today is Ezekiel, chapter 44, and today's title is Guarding the Gate. Guarding the Gate what happens when the glory of God returns? How do we prepare ourselves to keep ourselves in a place where we can continue to experience His glory? We're going to talk about all that in just a moment. But, as always, if you like what we're doing here and you're new around here, make sure you take a moment to like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast it really, really does help and make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job there and, as always, the people of Israel, and it's awesome and it's great and all the good things are happening and all the stuff. But here's the thing how are they going to keep it? Who is going to keep it? Who is going to keep them moving in the right direction?
Speaker 0:It reminds me of you know, many times throughout my life I have decided that I was going to go and run, like I said, an exercise, like not run from a bear, something like that. I would do that. But the idea is like run a 5K, run a 10K, run a half marathon. And the amazing thing is is that once you train for several weeks so you can go and run this half marathon 13 miles there is this certain feeling of man. I could do this every weekend. I feel great. All this is wonderful. I don't need to exercise anymore. I got this right. Well, that's fine for a couple of weeks, but then invariably after a while I get back out there to run once I've stopped and I go. Man, this doesn't keep itself. This is a perishable skill here. I gotta keep on going, right.
Speaker 0:Well, the challenge is is that many times we think the same thing when it comes to the presence of God. We think that once we get into that place with God and we start experiencing God, we just stay there and it doesn't really matter, whereas God is constantly telling us through his word no, listen, at any given time. You've got three different enemies. You've got the flesh, the world and the devil that are constantly trying to pull you out of my presence and get you to live independently from me. So you have to guard the gate. You gotta constantly be about the business of staying in my presence, and today we're gonna read about how the priests, or the princes and the Levites and the priests about their job in this and how they have a part to play, and we're gonna see at the end how maybe we can relate this principle to our lives today. Okay, you ready?
Speaker 0:Ezekiel, chapter 44, verse one, says this Then the man brought me back to the east gateway in the outer wall of the temple area, but it was closed. Then the Lord said to me this gate must remain closed and it will never again be opened. No one will ever open it and pass through, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered there. Therefore it must always remain shut. Only the prince himself may sit inside this gateway to feast in the Lord's presence, but he may come and go only through the entry room of the gateway. Pause for a moment.
Speaker 0:There were some Jewish people who thought that this meant that only the Messiah could open this gate again, and so even to this day, there's a certain part of where the gates of Jerusalem are that, according to what I've been told, are closed, and they won't open it again until Messiah has come. So they actually see this as a messianic prophecy that only the prince, the Messiah, will be able to open the gate. We know Jesus has already come and I'll let you guess as to which gate he may or may not have came through on the triumphant entry, but that is a Mesaan prophecy that some people think of, especially Orthodox Jewish people. You ready Verse 4. Then the man brought me through the north gateway to the front of the temple and I looked and saw that the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord and I fell face down on the ground. Then the Lord said to me son of man, take careful notice, use your eyes and ears and listen to everything I tell you about the regulations concerning the Lord's temple. Take careful note of the procedures for using the temple's entrances and exits.
Speaker 0:Give these rebels, the people of Israel, this message from the sovereign Lord oh, people of Israel, enough of your detestable sins. You have brought uncircumcised foreigners into my sanctuary, people who have no heart for God. In this way, you defiled my temple, even as you offered me my food, the fat and the blood of sacrifices. In addition to all your other detestable sins, you have broken my covenant. Instead of safeguarding my sacred rituals, you have hired foreigners to take charge of my sanctuary. So this is what the sovereign Lord says no foreigners, including those who live among the people of Israel, will enter my sanctuary if they have not been circumcised and have not surrendered themselves to the Lord.
Speaker 0:The men of the tribe of Levi who abandoned me when Israel strayed away from me to worship idols must bear the consequences of their unfaithfulness. They may still be temple guards and gatekeepers and they may slaughter the animals brought for burnt offerings and be present to help the people, but they encourage my people to worship idols, causing Israel to fall into deep sin. I have taken a solemn oath that they must bear the consequences for their sin, says the sovereign Lord. They may not approach me to minister as priest. They may not touch any of my holy things or the holy offerings. They must bear the shame of all the detestable sins they have committed. They are to serve as the temple caretakers, taking charge of the maintenance work and performing general duties. However, the Levitical priests and the family of Zadok continued to minister faithfully in the temple when Israel abandoned me for idols.
Speaker 0:These men will serve as my ministers. They will stand in my presence, offer the fat and the blood of sacrifices, says the Lord. They alone will enter my sanctuary and approach my table to serve me. They will fulfill all my requirements. When they enter the gateway to the inner courtyard, they must wear only linen clothing. They must wear no wool. While on duty in the inner courtyard or in the temple itself, they must wear linen wool. While on duty in the inner courtyard or in the temple itself, they must wear linen turbans and linen undergarments. They must not wear anything that would cause them to perspire.
Speaker 0:They will return to the outer courtyard where the people are, and they must take off the clothes they wear while ministering to me. They must leave them in the sacred rooms and put on other clothes so they do not endanger anyone by transmitting holiness to them through this clothing. They must neither shave their heads nor let their hair grow too long. Instead, they must trim it regularly. The priests must not drink wine before entering the inner courtyard. They must choose their wives only from among the virgins of Israel or the widows of priests. They may not marry other widows or divorce women. They will teach my people the difference between what is holy and what is common, what is ceremonially clean and unclean, and they will serve as judges to resolve any disagreements among my people. Their decisions must be based on my regulations, and the priests themselves must obey instructions and decrees at all sacred festivals and see to it that the Sabbaths are set apart as holy days.
Speaker 0:A priest must not defile himself by being in the presence of a dead person, unless it is his father, mother, child, brother or unmarried sister. In such cases it is permitted. Even then, he can return to his temple duties only after being ceremonially cleansed and then waiting for seven days. The first day he returns to work and enters the inner courtyard and the sanctuary, he must offer a sin offering for himself, says the sovereign Lord. The priest will not have any property or possessions of the land, for I alone am their special possession. Their food will come from the gifts and sacrifices brought to the temple by the people the holy grain offerings, the sin offerings and the guilt offerings. Whatever anyone sets apart for the Lord will belong to the priest. The first of the ripe fruits and all the gifts brought to the temple or, excuse me, brought to the Lord will go to the priest. The first batch of dough must also be given to the priest. So, the Lord, the world was all that Well.
Speaker 0:Once again, these are not new. These go all the way back to the book of Exodus and the book of Leviticus, for these are people that are set apart to live in my presence, to live after me, and if they want to remain there, they need to guard the gate, they need to guard my presence, they need to guard themselves by returning to a place of holiness so they can be faithful ministers. And if you remember, it's the idea of, and for some of these people he said they've been faithful to doing the things but have been doing all the things. So he's saying, he's laying it all out to them and he's saying you've got to do all of these things so that you and I can be in fellowship and you can minister for the people.
Speaker 0:To me, and one of the principles for us today is what we talked about earlier, and that is the idea of many times when we get out of the presence of God, we start wandering away and all this kind of stuff. We stop doing the things that are honoring to God, and then what happens is, when we experience a crisis, is we wanna just jump right back into the presence of God, and it doesn't work. We're like wait a minute, God. Why don't I feel your presence, why don't I feel your closeness? What's going on? And I wonder if God would be talking to us the way he'd be talking to these priests and he's saying if you want to be part of the holy things, which, if you're not, that's fine, but you gotta start doing them again.
Speaker 0:And I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people who are experiencing trauma and difficulty and grief in their life and they're going. You know, pastor, I just don't know where God is and I feel like God's not there and God's not faithful, and it just breaks my heart to hear that, because I know that's not true. And so we start doing some investigating and not Not always, but most of the time. What I have seen is I have seen, whereas I've talked to people, they will tell me well, before I started going through this trauma, I really wasn't close to God anymore. I wasn't reading his word, I wasn't praying, I wasn't part of spiritual community, I was in open sin in my life and I was doing these different things. Of course it's always. I wasn't a bad person, I just wasn't following God any possible way. You know what I mean.
Speaker 0:And then they started experiencing trouble, experiencing trauma, and they just wanted to jump right back in and go. Wait a minute, I feel like it's even worse than before, like where's God? And the idea is God's there. But you got to understand. If you're going to be in God's presence, you got to do the God things, and the first thing is repentance. God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I walked away from you, I'm sorry that I wasn't being faithful to you. And here's the thing God's not mad at you. He'll go. Man, you're forgiven. Come on back into my presence. But you gotta sanctify yourself.
Speaker 0:And that's a hard one because for many of us, unintentionally, we don't want a relationship with God. We want an occasional relationship with God. We want an occasional relationship with God. We don't want to marry God, we want to date God. So, in other words, we don't want to be committed to him, we just want him to be available whenever we need him. And I'm trying to. I got a lot of different examples going on in my brain. It's basically got to do with being a sugar daddy, but I don't want to go there. Okay, I don't want to go there, but you get the point. Use your imagination. No, don't use your imagination, just trust me.
Speaker 0:The thing is is God wants relationship with us, he wants fellowship with us, and what this chapter is talking about is he is saying hey, you who want to live in my presence, there's rules so that you're able to be in my presence, so that you're able to abide with me. If you don't do the things, then you can't stay here, but if you do the things, you can. And therein lies that balance. Again, if we're not talking about legalism, we don't do these things so that God will love us. We do these things because God loves us and it's out of the overflow of our gratitude that we follow his word.
Speaker 0:Get rid of sin in our life, start walking toward freedom Doesn't mean we're perfect. It just means we're walking toward freedom every day. We get God in our lives in every area, praying, talking to him, all the things. And when we do that, we're guarding our relationship with God. And that doesn't mean we won't go through hard times. It just means that when we do, we're close to him and he's able to walk with us.
Speaker 0:So my question for you is are you guarding your relationship with God? Are you staying close to him? Are you reading his word, guarding your relationship with God? Are you staying close to him? Are you reading his word? Are you praying? Are you in spiritual fellowship? Are you working to get rid of the broken places and the sins in your life? Are you working in that direction? Are you guarding the goodness of God in your life? If you are, praise the Lord.
Speaker 0:If you're not, what next step do you need to take? Where do you need to go to God and say, god, I want to repent of this. I want to walk toward you. I'm telling you, god loves you more than you can imagine. You've never been more loved than you are right now. So this isn't a warning of do better. The warning is, man. God wants you free. God wants you full of joy. God wants goodness for you and his hand is open, but you got to take it and move in that direction. Let's pray together right now. God wants goodness for you and his hand is open, but you got to take it and move in that direction. Let's pray together right now, god, thank you so much for today, lord.
Speaker 0:I pray for those first who are doing these things. They are walking in your presence. That doesn't mean that everything's always easy. It just means we never walk alone and I pray that you'll encourage them, you'll move in their life and you'll help them in all things. Know you more, god. I pray for maybe some of those who maybe they are in those places where they're going.
Speaker 0:God, where are you? Where have you been? And maybe, holy Spirit, you'll open their eyes to see that really, the question is on them when have you been? Why haven't you been walking close to God? That's not to bring shame, it's to bring hope to go. I do have a path back and that is to return to the Lord with all my heart because he is waiting with open arms and he loves them. I pray you will fill them with that love and that it will draw them close to you again. In Jesus' name, we pray amen. And what God's word says in Ezekiel 37, verse 14,. It says I will put my spirit in you and you will live again. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. For Ezekiel chapter.
