Day 236: Ezekiel 37–39 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by ARMA. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 236. We are in Ezekiel chapters 37, 38, and 39 today. We've got two things to cover in Ezekiel chapter 37, but then just one thing to cover in Ezekiel chapter 38 and 39. So two things in the first chapter and then one thing in the last two chapters. So we'll dive in and like always I'm gonna give you context clues so that you understand not just what you're reading but the context behind what you're reading because context makes content come to life. And if you've done the reading then you actually have context for the stuff that we're actually gonna walk through in this episode. If you haven't done the reading then you don't have context. And you gotta have context to get some context. So you may want to stop this video, pause the audio, and do the reading. Ezekiel chapter 37, 38, and 39 shouldn't take you long and then come right on back and we can dive into the episode. So like always I'm gonna give you context clues so that we can greater appreciate what's going on in a passage. I'm gonna give you as many nerdy nuggets as I can and then I'll always leave off with a timeless truth so that we can not just be hearers of God's Word, but doers of His Word. We want to be able to apply the principles that we learned because this is not just a history lesson. It's a theology lesson because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So with all that said let's dive in. The context actually is the exact same as yesterday. Okay, so this is three years after the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has now fallen. They've gotten news of Jerusalem falling. The silence is broken off Ezekiel. He's been silent for about three years and now we break into the section of the book that's restorative, okay? Everything that we are going to get from this point on is future-oriented. What God will do. Everything about the book has been future-oriented. It's just that time caught up with the predictions that Ezekiel was making in the beginning of the book and those predictions were not like, not happy, okay? They were

Nebuchadnezzar is gonna march into Jerusalem and he's gonna siege it. He's gonna burn to the ground. He's gonna destroy it. Those predictions came true. During the entire siege Ezekiel is silent. He's not able to speak and now the prophetic gift, the ability to speak the words of Yahweh, have returned and we are in Ezekiel chapters 37, 38, and 39. All right, first thing, let's get into some nerdy nuggets, okay? We'll kind of march through the text. I'll give you as many nerdy nuggets as I can. First thing, we get a vision of a valley of dried bones. This is a very, very, very well-known popular passage. It says this in verse 1, The hand of the Lord was on me and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley. Bones that were very dry. He asked me, son of man, can these bones live? So the context here is obviously a battlefield, okay? It was very, very common for ancient wars to be fought in valleys. Obviously, you don't want to fight a war from a valley against someone who's in a high place because they have the advantage. So both groups would get into a valley and they would fight it out. And so that is the context that any ancient reader would have. They would immediately assume, oh God, yeah, I'm in a valley and I'm looking at all the deceased soldiers or I'm looking at a group of deceased military men who have been defeated, okay? The Lord has a question. Can these bones live? I love Ezekiel's response. You alone know. I think there's lots of times where God asks us something that requires faith of us and instead of answering yes or no, I think a great response is you alone know, Lord. The safest response. Do you think I can heal your marriage? God, you alone know. Okay, do you think that you guys can get pregnant? Lord, Lord, you know. That's better than no. Not quite. Yes. I have faith for it, but at least there's hope. Lord, you alone know. I think that's a humble response.

Then he said to me, prophesied to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. And so they began to come together. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and I was prophesying. There was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Now we're gonna get a call back to the Garden of Eden. Ezekiel actually has a lot of call backs to the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden is gonna get mentioned over and over and over and over again. Actually, in yesterday's reading, the Garden of Eden was actually mentioned. I may as well actually read it to you. It's Ezekiel 36, verse 35. They will say this land that was laid waste has become like the Garden of Eden. The cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed are now fortified and inhabited. And God, remember, is saying he's gonna renew, he's gonna rebuild, replant, resettle, return, and all those re words that God's gonna bring restoration. He goes, hey, right now the land is laid waste, and that word laid waste is very similar to tohu vavohu. Okay, so the land is desolate, it's laid waste, it's destroyed, it has experienced the chaos of war, and it has experienced tribulation and trial,

but it's gonna be like the Garden of Eden. And so, again, I know it can be difficult to maybe interpret the chapters about the King of Tyre and not bring in Satan into those interpretations, but every time I see the Garden of Eden throughout the book of Ezekiel, I just wanna begin to highlight, hey, actually, the Garden of Eden is in this book a lot, over and over and over again, and we didn't really touch on that in yesterday's reading, but here it is again, not the words the Garden of Eden, but the idea, okay? In the Garden of Eden, Adam is there, formed, okay, bone, flesh, skin, all of it, but no breath. And so what happens here, the bones come together, but there's no breath. So now, verse nine, Yahweh says to Ezekiel, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to it, this is what the sovereign Lord says, come breath, from the four winds. Another nerdy nugget for you is that in Hebrew, the word for wind and breath and spirit are the same word, okay, ruach, ruach, sometimes it takes me a little while to get the Hebrew right, ruach, okay, spirit, wind, breath, same exact word in Hebrew. So prophesy, so that it's not odd that Ezekiel would have to say, come breath from the four winds and breathe into these slain, because wind and breath and spirit

are all the same word in Hebrew, all the same idea. So I prophesied as he commanded, me and breath entered them, they came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast army. So it goes from a slain army to a vast army. And this is a picture of restoration. What has happened? Well, Nebuchadnezzar has come through, he has leveled Jerusalem, he's burned a temple to the ground, and Israel is like a slain army in the middle of a valley, lifeless, dead, and decaying. And God says he has the ability, he alone has the ability to breathe life back into Israel. Why? Because he's the God that's been breathing life into humanity ever since he created Adam. He's been the God that's been bringing things from chaos to order ever since the beginning of creation. And the same God that brought the original creation from chaos to order is the same God in chapter 36, who's gonna take all of these cities that have been laid waste and make them like the Garden of Eden. And that same God is gonna take this army that's lifeless and actually gonna breathe his ruach, okay, into them so they can become living beings just like he did with Adam. Next, we're gonna get this, and then we get verse 14, sorry.

We get this next, just promise again, verse 14. I will put my spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. And you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and have done it, declares the Lord. So now, again, the predictions in the beginning of the book caught up to just time, time caught up to the predictions. So now we're getting new predictions about restoration. Okay, and tomorrow's content will. really dive into the fact that by the time we get to tomorrow, the people have really been in exile for a couple of decades. And so the prophetic words that Ezekiel begins to share are really helpful because by the time they're there for three decades, I mean, they're losing hope. Okay. So Ezekiel is now prophesying. Nope. The same way that I prophesied that Israel would fall, that Jerusalem would fall and no one really wanted to believe that, and then it happened. Now I've got good news that God is going to restore. And isn't it crazy how when, when there's bad news, we don't want to believe it. But then when there's good news, we don't want to believe it because we don't want to get disappointed. We don't want our expectations to, to get, you know, to, to get high and then only to be disappointed. So, and that fascinating that when there's bad news, we're tempted to believe good news. And then when there's good news, we're tempted to believe bad news. That's just the nature of humans. Not in even our timeless truth for the day. So family, the wait is over.

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Like that one detail has a massive, massive, has massive, massive implications, but I feel like that's lost on a lot of just like church going And so I always like to help people go, Hey, there's a Northern kingdom of Israel. There's a Southern kingdom of Judah. They got exiled at different times, but the Lord is saying, um, that he's actually going to take these separate sticks and he's going to unite them together and part of the promise of restoration is that they would not be two distinct governments or kingdoms, but that there will be restoration. And actually by the time of Jesus, there is a restoration. Now there's tons of ethnic strife between the two groups because the Northern group essentially becomes a Samaritans and the Southern group continues to be Judah and will become really the foundation of the Jewish people going forward ethnically. And that's getting into a whole lot of nerdy detail that we don't really have time for. So, uh, let's keep moving. Okay. And then we get to chapters, uh, 38 and 39, and we are going to begin to start getting a glimpse of apocalyptic content tomorrow, uh, reading will be very apocalyptic in nature. Um, but we are going to begin to get into the content that will become the foundation for the book of revelation. So it's hard to understand the book of revelation. A lot of times you kind of need to come back to these very, very, very, very early, like the, the stuff that is the source material, uh, for the book of revelation and begin to try to interpret the stuff. So, uh, we're going to see two names in the book of revelation that you're going to see right here in Ezekiel chapter 38, and that is Gog and Magog. And this would be an eschatological event where the nations of the earth gathered together for war against Israel.

Now there's a couple of things. A lot of people try to interpret this to mean a lot of things. And before we run off and say like, Oh yeah, well, that's got some historical significance in like what's happening today. Uh, we don't want to just pick up the newspaper and try to interpret the newspaper based on what's going on in the book of revelation or in the book of Ezekiel, uh, we actually want. to keep what's happening here. We want to interpret it based on the context that we find in the scripture. So what is the background for Gog and Magog? Also, this like final battle or last battle idea, that idea, that picture is not new. We've actually seen similar battles described in Joel chapter two, verse 18 to 27, Zephaniah chapter one, verse 14 to 18, Isaiah chapter 29, verse five to eight. Also, Isaiah chapter 66, verse 15 to 16, Daniel chapter 11, verse 40 to 45, Zechariah chapter 12, verse one and nine. Also, Zechariah chapter 14, verse one to 15. And of course, Revelation chapter 20 is a picture of a final battle or a last battle or an eschatological battle. The battle of Armageddon, right? The final battle that is going to decide the fate of earth, okay? That is a theme that's actually all throughout the scriptures. And we're gonna get one here in Ezekiel

in chapters 38 and 39. This is gonna be a final battle. And this is gonna be the one that's gonna inspire a lot of John's final battle in the book of Revelation. Okay, so the characters, Gog and Magog, I'm gonna be straight up with you. Scholars do not know like what these names mean or who they are. So let's talk about who they symbolize. Because I actually think that who they symbolize is more important, okay? Because the moment where you try to say, well, it's Vladimir Putin or it's Osama bin Laden, like you're just getting into, you know, at that point you're kind of cooked, like you sound crazy. But so we kind of want to like reign it in, okay? Reign it in. We're not conspiracy theorists, we're Bible nerds. Okay, so let's reign it in. And so let's kind of talk about this, okay? Most of the names involved in this great horde that's attacking Israel can be found in Genesis chapter 10. Now that's fascinating. Genesis chapter 10 is often called the table of nations as it tells the people groups that came from Noah's descendants and where they settled. So Magog, Meshach, Tubal, Cush, Put, Gomer, Tugarmash, Sheba are all ancient people groups rather than the nations of Ezekiel's time, okay?

So Ezekiel can't be talking about people in his own time. He's actually using ancient names and ancient words. Words that we actually find in Genesis chapter 10. The nations of Ezekiel's time would have been Babylon, Egypt, Moab, Phoenicia, or other enemies of Israel in chapters 25 and 32. So a closer look at Genesis 10 tells us a lot more information. Here's what it tells us. That they are all people groups descended from Japheth and Ham. None are descended from Shem, so no Semitic groups. They are all therefore Gentile groups from Africa, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, meaning all the places from where Israel has been attacked or oppressed from its past. These are the people groups and places of Israel's historic enemies. So this could be a symbol, key word here, symbol, a picture of all the persecuting Gentile people groups coming together to attack Israel with Gog as their personified head. I'm really comfortable with that, that this is a symbol. And because it's a symbol, John can pick up on that symbol and reinterpret it and go, yep, there's now a true Israel, not just an ethnic Israel, but a true Israel in the same way that the Israel of the Old Testament was gonna be attacked by the Gentile nations. Now the true Israel, not ethnic Israel,

but the true Israel, which includes the church of Jesus Christ, is gonna experience the exact same thing. And the symbolism is able to morph. And so what's more important then, so what's gonna happen next year? Or what's gonna happen in 50 years? Instead of trying to predict the future, the better thing to do is try to interpret the symbols so that we can understand what's actually happening. There's a bunch of sevens in these chapters, the debris providing firewood for seven years, or the burial of the bodies lasting seven months. This picture is of complete destruction and judgment. If you combine both ideas, Gog and Magog are a symbolic picture of the complete defeat of all Israel's historic enemies. I think that's really helpful. There's also a progression of hope. This idea fits the progression of hope we have seen in these chapters. Okay, the people would go home from exile. The land will be blessed. They will be washed, cleansed. Yahweh will give them a new heart and put his spirit in them. His holiness would be manifested in them and in the sight of the nations and then he would defeat all her enemies, all their enemies. All examples of those who had hurt his beloved. Now, there's obviously a massive connection between Ezekiel and the book of Revelation. We're going to really, really dive into that tomorrow. OK, and we're going to really dive into what is apocalyptic literature. How do you interpret apocalyptic literature? So that is that. OK, so in Ezekiel 37, we're going to get two things.

The first is a valley of dry bones that is actually going to come to life. I would actually say in a literary sense, it's coming to life because there's a final battle coming in chapters 38 and 39. So I see an immediate connection between these two. Chapter 37, we get new life, resurrected life, new breath that that is in this army. And then we get unity. OK, God is going to heal the brokenness that started right after Solomon's death. And God is finally going to heal the disunity between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. And then we immediately move in to a final battle, a decisive battle with all the pagan nations against the people of Israel. And that final battle, of course, culminates in God's defeat of all Israel's enemies because he is sovereign. He's in control. He has no rivals. He has no equals. He's completely omnipotent. He's all powerful. And so there's a final battle, not because Israel is the best army or the most advanced, but because Yahweh fights for Israel. And this is, again, part of the bigger picture of the restoration of all things, the renewal of all things. It's funny, I was I was in Germany maybe a couple of months ago and I didn't know that like post World War Two, there were all these sanctions placed on Germany. And Germany really didn't have like a standing army, didn't have a strong army, that there are more American soldiers that are guarding and protecting Germany than German soldiers. And so you could totally see how in the restoration of Germany, part of that plan would have to be you guys have to build a military and build an army because you weren't allowed to after two world wars where Germany essentially was part of ravaging most of Europe.

And so in the wake of Hitler's death, the United Nations declared, hey, you're no longer going to be allowed to have a standing army. Also, there's a generation of pacifists that have risen up post Hitler that don't want to fight. You know, they are very aware, like, yeah, we're not interested in in in even the potential of going down that road again. We're ashamed of what our grandparents and what our great grandparents did under the Nazi regime. And so part of restoration is building an army again, is building a group of men who can actually defend its borders. That's part of the restoration plan. So I want you to read this Valley of Dry Bones in the context that there's a restoration plan that God's up to and a part of restoring his people is restoring them to a place where they can defend their borders, where they can be an army. Part of what it means to be restored is not just that you have homes again and vineyards again and you live in houses again, but that you can actually have victory over enemies again and raise an army again. And that's part of God's restoration plan for his people. And you can see that in chapters thirty seven, thirty eight and thirty nine. Our timeless truth for the day is that God's goal is that you would actually be able to defend yourself. It's funny how army imagery gets symbolized, highly symbolized in the New Testament. A lot of times Paul is going to say you're a soldier in the army of the Lord. You you're not a civilian. No, no, no. Like you're you're part of this army of God. And so does that mean we, you know, collect guns and ammunition and fight people who don't believe in God?

No, that's not what that means. That means we stand for prayer. That means we know how to fast. That means we understand spiritual warfare. That means that we live our lives in such a way that is cognizant. spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is not just all night of prayer and laying hands on people and interceding. Spiritual warfare is also loving one another, being kind to one another. And so this restoration of an army is not just true for Ezekiel's context, it is true for our context as well. We are the army of the Lord. And honestly, ARMA, the group that powers this podcast, is actually big on you being able to wield the sword of the spirit. That's why we named the organization ARMA. It's Latin for armor, so that you would be able to defend yourself against the fiery arrows of the enemy, so that you'd be able to defend yourself against an attack of the enemy. How do you defend yourself? Well, you defend yourself by knowing the Word of the Lord. And so my prayer for you is that this wouldn't just be a time where you stick a lot of things in your head, but that you actually digest it. That it gets a part, gets to be a part of who you are, so that you would be somebody who knows how to use the sword of the spirit. So that you can defend yourself, your family, your friends, your fellow believers. You can use God's Word to your advantage to fight against the lies of the enemy. And that is not just true for Ezekiel's context, that's true for us as well. That's our time of truth for the day. Tomorrow we got day 237. We got a lot of reading tomorrow, okay? Not even gonna hold you, okay? We got a lot of reading tomorrow. We got Ezekiel chapters 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44, okay? So Ezekiel chapters 40 to 44 tomorrow, and then the next day we've got Ezekiel chapter 45, I think maybe to 48. I think the book ends at chapter 48. Let's see, why not fact-check myself. Yeah, the book ends at 48. I was right. So two more days in Ezekiel, and I'm super excited about it. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. If you're not, I still love you. I still love you. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we continue our trek to the

book of Ezekiel. Love you, peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.