Unlocking Ezekiel

PODCAST
Written By Ryan Joy & Bryan Schiele
 

250 | “It Looks Questionable”

Unlock the Message of Ezekiel

Ever felt like Ezekiel is a locked door? In this workshop episode, Ryan takes us on his journey teaching through this bizarre and beautiful "flyover book". What can we learn from a prophet who ate a scroll and whose wife's death became a sign? How does this book balance God's terrifying judgment with his patient grace? What do the gyroscopic wheels of eyes look like? And what are the practical keys — from immersion to asking the right questions — that unlock its message about Jesus? Get your toolkit ready to confidently tackle one of the Bible's most rewarding books!

Takeaways

The Big Idea: Unlocking an intimidating book like Ezekiel reveals a powerful and accessible message about God's relentless faithfulness.

This Week's Challenge: Read the one chapter Ryan recommended — Ezekiel 37. As you read, don't worry about understanding every detail. Instead, ask one question: "What does this story show me about the power of God?"

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  • Introduction and Welcome

    Bryan: This one appears to be out of like some prog rock album cover is a

    Ryan: Striper!

    Bryan: it looks questionable. well hello everyone and welcome to the Bible geeks podcast this is Episode 250 I'm Bryan

    Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy.

    Bryan: Schiele and thanks so much everyone for tuning in on today's episode.

    Diving into Ezekiel

    Bryan: We are getting into Ezekiel Yes, that's right.

    It's one of those books that can feel like a locked door with a lot of bizarre visions strange commands and Super-deep imagery but what would happen if you had the keys to unlock it well today? We're running a workshop to give you those keys

    Ryan: I just spent months teaching through Ezekiel, and we're pulling back the curtain on that journey, and by the end, we hope that you'll have a practical toolkit to confidently unlock this incredible book for yourself.

    Bryan: so get ready for that conversation where I interview Ryan about his teaching experience Which you've been hearing a lot about ready to go Ryan

    Ryan: Let's do

    Bryan: all right

    Personal Experiences with Ezekiel

    Ryan: so I had no idea that I was evidently dropping hints or thoughts about every other episode last season that I was teaching through Ezekiel. It was just so on my mind in January, February, March of this year that I just every single Bible conversation to me was connecting

    "I Just Taught Through Ezekiel"

    Ryan: back to this book I was immersed in. I'm going to be teaching two sessions on Ezekiel here coming up. like I'm right now I'm preparing to teach on Ezekiel, which is weird and deep and

    interesting and wonderful. And I'm teaching through Ezekiel right now, and there is this instruction that Ezekiel is given that I think is really hard I was deep in Ezekiel. I'm preparing for an Ezekiel class. just taught through Ezekiel, and Ezekiel promises-- or God promises through Ezekiel I Was just teaching on Ezekiel and how God is trying to clean this pot

    Bryan: So I'm teaching through Ezekiel right now so I'm teaching through Ezekiel right now It was wonderful. It's actually it's really I think it's like the essence of Bible geekery, right? When you've got something in your mind and it's like just stewing back there and you may not be talking about it right now But it's like somehow we just always like weave our way back in to that conversation and it's not just Ezekiel I'm not throwing you under the bus just alone

    Ryan: It's real.

    Bryan: I do it all the time So but you know Ezekiel is like one of these books that it's not everyone's go-to favorite book So I'm really interested to get into your brain about number one how you taught through this in a Bible class setting at your church But also just broadly about what this book is about.

    So we'll get into that here in a little bit But before we do, we have books of the Bible that are kind of like this, but what is another?

    Challenges and Intimidating Tasks

    Bryan: Intimidating sort of thing that you've had to learn and like what was your first step like not Bible related necessarily or books of the Bible Related but like intimidating stuff that you've had to tackle and like how do you get started?

    Ryan: I mean, parenting, marriage, you know, preaching. But I'm gonna go with skiing. A little lighter lift here. I think that you know how skiing is one of my favorite things in the entire world to do. But I remember the first time as like a 12 year old that I was taken skiing, it was it was it was rough. It was I was on the ground a lot and I remember I would I didn't know how to stop and I didn't know how to turn.

    Bryan: these are two very important things for for a good skier to learn how to do for sure.

    Ryan: they they do matter a little bit. And so we were at Arizona Snow Bowl and there's that long run, that my brother-in-law basically just said, "Okay, go for it."

    And he left me to just figure it out for a lot of the day. And so I would get to the top and I would start going down and by the bottom I was screaming down that mountain and I would start to yell at people as I got towards the bottom, "I can't turn!"

    Bryan: man.

    Ryan: Everybody would have to just like clear out of my way and then I would sort of like fall to the side at the bottom to stop.

    And this is how I learned to ski. Not the safest choice, I admit. But you know, I guess a lesson from that is how do you learn something? You dive in and it's scary and it's difficult and you're gonna make mistakes and you might not know how to do some of the most important steps. But you dive in and you figure it out as you go.

    You ask for help and eventually with practice you get better about it. So hey, what is something besides the book of the Bible that was intimidating that you've had to learn,

    Bryan: I Picked up backpacking a few years back and I think the very first time I went out by myself I was terrified and it was amazing because I had everything I needed on my back and like 17 things I didn't need on my back as well And like I just I loaded all the gear up and I went out and I just figured it out Kind of like you said, although I was going up a mountain as you were coming down a mountain I first started going to Horton Springs was my first spot that I landed and it's like a real easy on-ramp to to backpacking For sure It's not a huge hike in and out but like there's a nice water source there and a lot of stuff like that But I had way too much stuff with me and it was really painful To spend that much time hiking with all of that gear on my back And so I learned a little bit from experience But I also spend a lot of time like watching YouTube videos and as people do anymore these days learning a new skill Spent a lot of time looking at like hey guys Influencers online like telling you all the things you should get and do and whatever

    Ryan: All right, so let's get into our conversation today we are talking about Ezekiel and Unlocking Ezekiel and

    The Workshop: Unlocking EzekielThe Workshop

    Bryan: maybe it would be helpful to get into a segment that we're calling the workshop

    Bryan: Okay So we're gonna get into this segment here talking about sort of some of the tools that someone might use in Tackling a book like Ezekiel, but first it's really I think helpful for us to ask why like why is Ezekiel Ryan?

    Why did you decide to teach through Ezekiel? What was the what was the the call of this super weird book that you were like, I got to do that

    Ryan: Yeah, I... think of Ezekiel as like a flyover book, There's those states like

    Bryan: States

    Okay,

    Ryan: like Indiana or Missouri or whatever. The middle states in the country that sometimes people will talk about as flyover states where you're going from a populated area on the coast to another populated area on the coast and you just kind of fly over all of these.

    Well, there's books of the Bible that you sort of seem to skip over or at least I have done that at times in my life, You're going through your reading plan and okay, I gotta make it through Leviticus or, whatever, something like that.

    Bryan: poor

    Ryan: I

    Bryan: Leviticus always gets thrown under the bus.

    Ryan: always get... Hey, we're coming back to Leviticus at some point to spend some time there.

    But yeah, I try to make it a practice to once a year, if I can, teach one of these Old Testament flyover books that we don't spend a lot of time with as a church but also that I don't feel as acquainted with as I do say the writings of Paul or Acts or something like that. And so it's a chance for me to dive deep into something and really enjoy, drawing out some nuggets that can later on help me in my preaching and in my growth as a child of God.

    Ezekiel's Themes and Messages

    Bryan: So you're just thinking about Ezekiel from the standpoint of like I've never studied that before or we haven't studied that lately That would be a good one Was there anything that you were like kind of aware of with Ezekiel that didn't really? Resonate with you very much until you actually started like getting into teaching it again Like was there something there that was like I know something in there But I don't know exactly what it's talking

    Ryan: mind when you talk about that is the promises in Ezekiel 36, which really became kind of my favorite part of the whole book, which is where he says, God says, "You guys have hearts like stones and I'm gonna take those out, I'm gonna do a surgery, and I'm gonna give you a heart of flesh, and I'm gonna put my spirit in you, and you're gonna start obeying me."

    And what you start to see as that fits into the whole book is this is kind of a summary of the entire history of Israel or of humanity even, that we are this hardened people that God keeps trying to direct us in the right way, and he'll bless us or he'll judge us or he'll do all of these different things to try to direct us in the right way and soften us.

    And eventually he says, "You know what? I'm gonna get more involved. I'm gonna get so intimately involved, I'm going to do this work. I'm gonna take this hardened heart out and I'm gonna give you a new heart." And so it really showed to me this patient, active grace of God. He doesn't give up, he just goes deeper, and that's what the New Covenant is all about, is this transformation that through Christ he brings about in

    Bryan: book seems to me to be one of these really good prophetic books from the Old Testament That's basically this tension between God being completely and utterly terrifying in his judgment and in his holiness but also swinging so far the other direction to being like caring and nurturing and Forgiving and it's a tough one to really center in on well He's both of course He he is the God who?

    Judges and he is the God who forgives and nurtures and that's just such a powerful thing that I see without having like super Studied it, in reading through some of it It's like this is this is God's character at play here in the Old Testament Of course the same God of the New Testament as well.

    Ryan: you're really on to something there because you see the book talk about his anger and his jealousy more than any other really Old Testament book, but that word "jealousy," for instance, it's really about passion. We think of envy or something like that, but what you're seeing in all of this is God's passion for his people, his passion for his own name, which is the only way that the nations or anybody is ever going to be saved.

    He loves deeply. He is not this dispassionate God that's distant from the universe. Sometimes I get this sense from people that they think that the most righteous way to be is to detach. Maybe it's an Eastern way of thinking, detach yourself from life and from all the things that are going on.

    Don't be so emotional. Well, God is not detached and he doesn't call us to be detached. Because he's a God of love, he has anger, righteous anger. He has this passion for his people to worship him alone and serve him and to be saved and not to hurt each other and for justice and goodness and mercy to happen, and that really all comes out throughout the book.

    Bryan: so the anger of God is very present, and I could see that making people want to keep their distance, and it's a weird book. What else do you think keeps people from loving and wanting to dive into this crazy book?

    Vivid Imagery and Apocalyptic Literature

    Bryan: it's so weird that seems to be one of the biggest difficulties in studying a book like this

    Ryan: It is,

    Bryan: you get to some very strange sign acts here that you know And maybe maybe that is leading into a deeper question here But for me, that's kind of a challenge when you get into some of this stuff and some of the oddities around this book You know when you think about like having looked at everything I mean I mentioned the sign acts but like what what sort of sticks out to you that you're learning about God or that you're Learning about his relationship with us from this book Like are you seeing something deeper as a result of now having studied it on the other side like that that we?

    Should all know and as we're like trying to get past these strange and weird sign acts and very strange Imagery and other things along the way.

    Ryan: so many things are richly brought forth. I mean, just talking about the synax, one of the things that you see Ezekiel doing that's really helpful to me is he is willing to do whatever it takes to get people's attention. it's like the difference between me and you having the conversation versus me, like, trying to teach toddlers where I'm, like, standing on my head and, "Hey, let me grab a prop!

    Let me tell you a story! Hey, no, look over here!" he is gonna do whatever it takes. He tells parables, he acts out almost like this Lego version of the siege of Jerusalem with bricks forming, this picture of Jerusalem. he does so many different things, and then his visions are God bringing this dramatic, vivid message to him that he can then bring to us.

    And so there is a lesson to me in just Ezekiel the person, and how God used Ezekiel, and what he was willing to do. There's a moment at the midpoint of the book where Ezekiel's wife dies, and he's told ahead of time that the delight of his eyes will be taken away. And you could think of it as, "Oh, we've been hearing that the temple is gonna be lost," or, something like that.

    As a priest of God, he might be seeing that something like that is gonna be taken away from him. But no, that night his wife dies, and he's told not to mourn, not to wear the clothing of mourning, but to eat and to keep going forward. And this becomes a way that God uses this heartbreaking moment in his life to express something about who he is, who God is, and who the people of Israel have become for him as Jerusalem falls in 586 BC as kind of like a center point of the book.

    And it's very Hosea-like, right? For him to go through all of this, and at the very beginning of his call, God says, "They're not gonna listen to you, and you can't get caught up in whether they listen or not. You let the people who hear you hear you, you let the people who don't hear you not hear you.

    I'm gonna make your head, your forehead, as hard as steel, like a diamond in its strength." So like, you don't want to have a hard heart, but God is gonna make his forehead super hard, and he's gonna make sure that he keeps speaking and doesn't get so involved in people's response. And boy, I don't know, Bryan, have you ever gotten a little too caught up in whether people are taking the wisdom that you're trying to give them, or how people are doing that are around you?

    Bryan: I've never had that problem. No, and I don't know anyone else who does either I think that's a totally not unique to anyone that I know. No Yeah,

    Ryan: Yeah, it's something I need to learn for sure, and and so it was a really helpful--I mean, it happened, I was teaching that through a time when, as a congregation, we were dealing with some challenging people who are not taking instruction well from our elders or from others, and boy, it can make you think, "Am I doing this wrong?"

    And Ezekiel teaches us, "No, you just do your part. You're the watchman. Leave the message to do its work, and leave God to evaluate the rest." Yeah,

    Bryan: I think that is from the standpoint of hooking people into why Ezekiel is a cool book to read I think is I think it's a helpful on-ramp because you know again You're you're just expressing here how passionate you are about this book and you know How much this book is relatable and I think seeing that is a is a really good on-ramp from people Maybe to start seeing this as an approachable book So let's maybe move into here.

    Teaching and Understanding Ezekiel

    Bryan: That was sort of the why of like why this book is cool How does somebody now like moving on how does somebody get into a book like this that they feel stuck? We're calling this episode Unlocking Ezekiel as if Ezekiel is somehow like you were talking about a flyover book like it's all chained up and it's got a lock On it like let's tackle this book in an easier fashion and in some of our conversations earlier You were talking about immersing yourself in this book as like a good way of getting started into it And I think that's kind of how Ezekiel is told to deal with this when he's told to literally eat the scroll So, how does this sort of translate into like a practical first step for somebody diving into the book for the first time?

    Ryan: Yeah, I think you just want to take your time and soak into the book, to use a different metaphor, or eat the book, to use Ezekiel's metaphor,

    Bryan: the scroll.

    Ryan: Eat the scroll. Digest it. Think it through. We did this episode years ago where, I don't know, maybe we can link to it. It was one of our first 10 episodes on meditating

    Bryan: fully infused Yep,

    episode 4.

    Ryan: Whoa, you're ready with that.

    Bryan: I I just went through our back catalog like yesterday. So I'm yeah, I'm locked and loaded buddy

    Ryan: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, and we talked about the word, the Hebrew word, "hagah," I think it was, for meditating, and how it may have this onomatopoetic tie-in to the way that you're chewing something, or the way even a cow would chew the cud, and this sense of really taking your time digesting. You're not swallowing it whole, you're savoring it.

    You're thinking, this is a gross illustration, I know, but we're gonna stick with it.

    Bryan: yeah

    Ryan: You're really taking your time. So I started early with the book, and months ahead of teaching it, I was making sure I had lots of time to read it and reread it, and going back to, you were talking in our last episode about going for walks, or sitting down, thinking through it, taking it with me on long drives, read a passage and then just ponder it while you're going.

    And starting to collect my resources and that kind of thing. But I think that's a key part of any text you're gonna teach, or any book. If you're gonna preach on something, if you're gonna teach a hard book, an easy book, let it soak into you so that you've already made the applications, the insights, a part of your life, and you're teaching from the other side, having integrated it into yourself.

    You're not discovering so much on the way there, you're able to say, "So here's how I've found this helpful in my life." Does that make sense?

    Bryan: Isn't it interesting how you know? You said use the phrase eat the scroll and in the context of that in Ezekiel doesn't the scroll contain like? Lamentations and woes and it's like a really sort of depressing or challenging or convicting message But when he eats it, it's like sweet as honey Isn't that the the picture that we're getting from Ezekiel

    Ryan: Yeah, so there in chapter 2, verse 10, he speaks of lamentation and mourning that are on the book. The book is fully written all over the place, and then he eats it, and it's like honey, and this connects to something that happens to John in the book of Revelation, in Revelation 10. He's eating a scroll that are full of difficult words, and there is a bitterness and a sweetness to it, and so I think one of the things that you can start to see is sometimes you take in difficult things, and you need the hard truth, and Israel needed the hard truth, he needed the hard truth, but at the end you start to see the goodness of God, even in the hard things he has

    Bryan: And I think that's what for me is helpful about a book like this You're talking about immersing yourself in the book and the idea there of immersion Into a book like this that could be difficult is to see the positive things in it Not like, Pollyanna looking for the silver lining but like I think when we do wrestle with difficult hard things it can lead us to Appreciating God's goodness in deeper ways.

    And so maybe if immersion in the text is like the first step Where do you then turn for help when you get to like a difficult passage or you know something about it is like, you know You're wrestling with it and you don't exactly know Are there any resources that you're going to because you sort of talked about that in like collecting resources?

    Ryan: yeah, the Ethiopian eunuch needed someone to explain something to him that was unfamiliar to him, right? Yeah,

    Bryan: Yeah, I see where you're headed

    Ryan: and I think we all want to have conversation with people who are a little further ahead. They've been thinking about this longer and doing a lot of work on it, and can help you make connections as you're thinking through this, so you want to try to collect good resources.

    I found that Daniel Bloch's commentary--he has this two-volume commentary on Ezekiel--just massive. It's not the kind of thing you're gonna read front to back, whenever I had a question that I wanted to dive into, that was one of my go-to spots, was to--it's in the Nikot series, and standard disclaimers on everything, but he has done a lot of really good work on the book, and that was really helpful.

    little bit more of an accessible commentary on it is Christopher Wright's Message of Ezekiel, and that gives more of a summary of each section, but it's still really good in helping to ground you in, the nature of each text, and there's good scholarship behind it.

    So those are two--I mean, I could--I'll put a bibliography of some others in there. Also, I wanted to note, the Bible Project has a course, they do these videos, but they also do a few courses, and so Tim Mackey did a classroom on Ezekiel that I went through that whole thing, and I found that helpful too, and that might be a good sort of entry point, easy way in with a book like Ezekiel is to sit down and watch some videos on it.

    Bryan: Okay, so I know Allen Greeley is gonna be really happy that you mentioned the Christopher Wright commentary because he's a he's a big fan Of his as well, and I also have appreciated the things he's written So moving on here you think about these resources you pull together You've immersed yourself in the book and now you got to put it into action.

    You got to take it to heart So what is it that you are using here to kind of move from like? Understanding the book as a high level to actually putting it into practice in real life Is that something you're doing like before you get into a classroom setting in some ways or are you really looking? For like the group to kind of work through those things together

    Ryan: Well, definitely both. It's a really good question. Like, that's maybe a conversation point that we could knock back and forth here, because I'm really interested in your take on what kinds of Bible classes you love to be a part of and love to teach, because I definitely--I want some level of "the teacher has something to offer me that they have really worked hard to prepare," but I also want to see, ideally, some level of dialogue where we're sort of discovering together and thinking through it.

    Bryan: questions are absolutely at the heart of this I think is is getting and it's of course Jesus teaching style all the way, you know just asking really powerful questions and rather than trying to get everybody on the same page with what like what exactly this Each part of the sign act means and everything else, but you know asking these sort of alignment questions with with everyone You know, are we seeing God in the way that this book is portraying God?

    Like are we allowing this book to help us know God in a deeper and more accurate way? is what I would be trying to ask in these questions throughout a class like this So yeah, suppose the question angle is is a really positive way of getting people to take these things to heart

    Ryan: because it is really easy to get sucked in to the details and the weirdness and the explaining of, yeah, of, okay, what is going on with Gog and Magog over here, or why is he, baking bread in this particular way, and all that kind of thing, and you want to explain, but I like what you said there, you got to keep coming back, and you have to, as a teacher, keep steering us back to, let's step back, what are we supposed to, in the big picture, take from all of this?

    And really, that's one of my main points of advice, maybe, in how to deal with a book like this, is don't get too caught up in the details, because I don't think every detail is meant to, at the most minuscule level, give you a puzzle to decode, it's meant to give you a message that you're taking away.

    It's like whenever you take a parable and you turn it into an allegory, what does this vision mean?

    Bryan: So maybe it would be helpful as those of us who may not have recently read through Ezekiel and have no idea what the details Are maybe let's take a quick fly over tour a quick tour of this book and see kind of the high-level details What are the big sections what's being tackled here? And then maybe we'll get into some of the weird stuff in just a second But break break it down for us, old-style rap for me

    Ryan: Old-style rap. I'm gonna bring out the Sugarhill Gang here.

    Bryan: Go for

    Ryan: So, like, a really, really simple way to break the book down and understand it is Ezekiel loves to break things in half, and he breaks chapters in half, he takes whole sections of the book, and he'll have, 96 verses on this side, 96 verses on this side, and then the core point in the middle, and he breaks the whole book into two halves.

    So, the first half of the book, chapters 1 to 24, are about judgment. They're bad news for Israel. And the last half of the book is good news. The last 24 chapters, good news for Israel, good news for all of us. And so, that's a really simple, to me, easy way of just remembering. Half bad, half good. And then, that first half, you start out with his call where he sees this strange vision, the glory of God.

    It's probably on his 30th birthday, and he is a priest, but he's a priest that's not in Jerusalem. He's a priest that has been transported to Babylon, far from the temple where he wants to be. And so, the 30th, your 30th birthday is when you would start your ministry as a priest. Your 50th year is when you would end your ministry as a priest, and that's when the book of Ezekiel ends.

    So, the whole book is a statement, a detailing of his prophetic priestly ministry as he serves before God as a priest these 20 years. And so, he does see the temple, sort of, in that opening vision. It is God's glory, only it's like his glory with wheels on it, right? Because this is like a getaway vehicle for God, because he is leaving.

    The king is leaving his house, and so Israel needed to know, "I am not stuck in this building. I can take my glory wherever I want to go." And he's gonna leave so that he can let Babylon come and invade and destroy Jerusalem. And that's really the first half of the book, using signs, sign acts, parables, visions, all of these prophetic weird stories he's gonna tell that are really powerful once you get into them.

    And then the second half of the book starts to unpack the good news, starting with some weird good news, which is judgment on all of the bad guys, all of the nations around them, which Ezekiel frames as good news for Israel. God is bringing about his purposes for Israel there as well.

    Bryan: it feels like God's glory is one of the most Important figures or ideas I suppose that that get Constantly returned to in this book as you're reading through it God's glory shows up so often and you know as you're talking about there His glory leaving and then later on in the book his glory returning And I think that's something to focus on while you're reading.

    Ryan: the immense weight of God's holiness and the uniqueness of his presence. And the interesting thing is you've got several temple visions throughout the book, and you see that, yeah, he's leaving, but the Israelites, the people of Judah, had already left him. And so Ezekiel is teleported in a vision from his house, where some elders in Babylon are sitting in front of him, and he's brought into the temple in Jerusalem and taken on this tour in chapters 8 through 12, chapters 8 through 11, I guess, where he sees like pictures of creatures and, idol worship everywhere in the temple.

    There's this moment where all of these people turn away directly from the temple and turn their backs to God so that they can look up at the sun and worship it. So God is seeing they are not worshiping--this isn't my temple, this is something else now. And so he's leaving it, not to leave behind his people, but to ultimately redeem them, and that's part of the storyline we see as we go.

    And even when he leaves, in that vision, that temple vision in 8 to 11 in chapter 9, you see him putting a signature of his hand on people's foreheads that are--this is a vision, obviously it's figurative--but he's saying, "These ones are mine in Jerusalem. I'm gonna protect them, but those who have turned their back on me, I'm walking away from also, and I'm letting you have your way, basically."

    And so the book of Ezekiel, in a lot of ways, it is a defense against the problem of evil. It's God explaining through Ezekiel, "This is why I'm doing what I'm doing. I didn't turn my back on you, you turned your back on me first."

    Bryan: you you mentioned here about this vivid imagery That's being used here. This is definitely is this apocalyptic literature in general like very Allah, you know the book of Revelation

    Ryan: Oh yeah, the book of Revelation definitely has roots in Ezekiel, along with Daniel and other things.

    Bryan: and I think a lot of times when you get to a pop apocalyptic language Like we don't view this type of literature very often We don't really have a lot of this kind of language in our own modern Vernacular and so it I found it very interesting as I was going through this

    Armchair Quarterback

    Bryan: It's gonna lead to a tiny mini segment that I'm gonna throw at you and surprise you with called armchair quarterback So I'm gonna send you a photo here in our super secret private text channel and you're gonna have to look at that photo I'm gonna give you two more after this one and I want you to just sort of see what you're seeing here Is this an accurate picture of

    Ezekiel Imagery: #1

    Bryan: what you think is being depicted here? This is a line art drawing This is I do not even recall where this came from very old looking Yeah, this is there's a wheel there with like a bunch of eyes on it There's like an animal creature with like four different kinds of animals sticking out of it.

    There's a tiny little boy head It's sitting there. We will have a link for this image in the show notes This is great podcasting by the way in which I describe to you

    Ryan: you hate this kind of thing

    Bryan: I absolutely do but I need everybody to see these images and I want your take on it What do you think about this type of depiction? Do you think this is what Ezekiel was seeing?

    Ryan: Yeah, sort of. I think I have some problems with it, but let me talk about what I like here. The wheel is really interesting. So the wheels, that is kind of a gyroscope idea, it's not a hundred percent agreed on by everybody what it means that there were wheels within wheels, but I like this idea of a wheel that could go in any direction, like a gyroscope, like what this image has, because the idea, I think, is unlike a chariot that's kind of locked in going one direction,

    Bryan: Yeah

    Ryan: this chariot of God's glory here could go wherever He wanted it to go, and His Spirit was in the wheels leading things as the four living creatures are guiding it later in Ezekiel 8 to 11, they're identified as cherubim. So generally I like the wheels here. I don't know why there's like a pile-up of these different figures here, all like almost looking like they're one. They should be tied, each one, I think, to one of these four wheels, and there is the face of a human on one and different creatures on the different ones,

    Bryan: So this is my first image and it does not get much better from here So, let me give you the second image

    Ryan: the old man on the throne is my least favorite part of it, I'll note that as we go.

    Ezekiel Imagery: #2

    Bryan: Well, if you don't like the old man on the throne, you're definitely gonna not gonna like the old man on the UFO. So

    Ryan: Oh boy, okay.

    Bryan: This one appears to be out of like some prog rock album cover is a

    Ryan: Striper!

    Bryan: it looks questionable. So you get the idea here I don't see the wheels necessarily, but I am seeing what appears to be a UFO Coming down. This one is Questionable. What do you think?

    Ryan: Okay, so I see the temple in the background, I think. So this to me is not the chapter 1 vision, this is the chapters 8 to 11 vision, or yeah, yeah, so whenever God, eventually that same basic chariot, leaves Jerusalem and ends up going over the mountain, and that's the last he sees of it. So I think that's...

    You know what I think is happening here, actually, is I think that's Ezekiel in the red robe, and he's being transported to the temple to see all of this, and then transported back. The UFO, let me talk about this for a minute. Okay, so forget the UFO idea, it's not meant to be that. I think what is happening here is there's a word that is used for what's above the four wheels, and above that there is a platform, and the word for the platform is the word that's used in Genesis 1 for the sky, the firmament.

    You know, it's kind of a weird hard-to-translate word because it's using ancient cosmology and the way they thought of how the universe works, and so, it's like a hard roof on things. and so then this person who's like, looks like a person, is up above that in his glory, and I think that does represent God up above the firmament.

    And so I think that's what's happening here in this like weird translucent firmament looking thing.

    Bryan: I'm sorry. It is straight-up a UFO I'm gonna give you the third one here

    Ezekiel Imagery: #3

    Bryan: This is our third and final one and I don't need you to comment on this very much except for this looks like chat GPT went off and got a little bit sideways This is what happens when AI takes on the challenge of interpreting

    Ryan: Oh boy, yeah. I don't even know what's going on here. I think the Sistine Chapel has been teleported into a picture of something kind of trying to connect to Ezekiel.

    Bryan: Yeah, so this was I think you can see and I'm not really sure but like around the outside It looks like those could be eyes and maybe that is some kind of a wheel, but I don't think it is It does look way more like the Sistine Chapel it's pretty but I don't think it has anything any bearing on what we actually saw in that chapter So yeah be a little skeptical of AI but at the same time, maybe this is a plug for a future episode I think we're gonna talk about AI this season a little bit.

    But anyway,

    Ryan: okay.

    Bryan: okay

    Teaching the Imagery

    Bryan: So moving back to our actual conversation here I just thought that was you know When you're talking about imagery and you're talking about trying to explain these things to people I think maybe you know, you can get lost in a lot of the weird stuff But when you're when you're trying to teach a class of to a bunch of people trying to wrap their heads around all this for The first time how do you get into passages like this without totally getting lost?

    Ryan: Well I said keep the big picture in mind, but speaking of pictures, these are word pictures, so use your imagination. Try to envision it. I actually told my class to try to draw pictures just so that you're thinking carefully through it, not that anything you draw is gonna be accurate to it, but you're just trying to process what is it that Ezekiel saw.

    Ezekiel envisioned something, and a vision is kind of like a dream, but that you're having while you're awake, I guess, that it's this thing that you feel like you can touch it, you're seeing it play out. It doesn't follow the rules of reality as you would imagine it, but it is vivid, and so you want to try to see it.

    I mean, like, how do you explain things that are beyond this world, beyond human understanding? The way God sometimes does it is combining things we know with things that we don't know in these visions, so I think, yeah, try to see it, try to think about what would be the point, what would Ezekiel be feeling from this, and then a lot of times God actually interprets the vision himself, and so pay attention to whatever he says.

    This is what this means. Don't then go and say, "And also it probably means this thing that's way over here that has to do with, Israel in the news right now or something." No, God will tell you a lot of times what it means.

    Bryan: I think that's really helpful. Okay. So one last question before we move on from this segment I am really curious to know if there is one chapter that I should go read in the book of Ezekiel What is that chapter?

    Ryan: Whenever you put this question in the notes, you said, "And why is it Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones?" Yeah, it might be the Valley of Dry Bones." You know, you've just gotten through that chapter that I mentioned earlier, chapter 36 verses 26 and 27, about the new heart that God is going to give his people, and then you get into the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37 where there's this vision of skeletons piled up in the desert that God starts to, as he's prophesying over them, God breathes life into, like he breathed life into Adam, and brought flesh, and there's this sort of two-phase resurrection that happens for his people where he eventually then brings them fully to life and sets them on their feet and makes them like this army that's ready to fight for him.

    And then he goes into another prophecy in chapter 37 about taking these two staffs, these two sticks that maybe represent scepters of Israel and Judah. Israel is long gone now. It doesn't exist. 722 BC, Assyria conquered them, but these two staffs are gonna be made one, and that's a picture, I think, of God bringing all of his people into one people and healing those divisions that were once there.

    think of how in the book of Acts they go from Judea to Samaria, which is the former Israel, northern tribes, and you think of even Ephesians and how that the two are brought together, the Jews and the Gentiles, and so

    Bryan: that's a long way of saying go read chapter 37. It's a good intro to Ezekiel, full of visions and weirdness, but that has meaning for us today.

    Finding Jesus in Ezekiel

    Bryan: All right, so let's actually get into Finding Jesus here in Ezekiel and finding Jesus in the Old Testament is such a helpful thing for us to do So where is where's the gospel hiding here if it is actually hiding in the book of Ezekiel?

    Ryan: I don't think it's hiding. I think it is being declared. One of my favorite passages in Ezekiel about Jesus is Ezekiel 34, and it's this interesting place where God is calling judgment down on the shepherds of Israel, and shepherds are the kings, the priests, all of the rulers, all of the leaders, and he says you've been taking advantage of them, you've been leading them astray, you haven't been good shepherds, and so he says I am going to be the shepherd.

    There is gonna be one shepherd now for Israel, and it's gonna be Yahweh, but then he like changes it up, and he says, "And my servant David will be my shepherd," and so it's like, well, which is it? Are you the shepherd, or is it David? But of course, in Christ is both. Jesus is Yahweh, Jesus is the Son of David, and Jesus grabs a hold of Ezekiel 34 in so many of his parables about being the good shepherd, about going after the sheep, but even when he states his purpose statement for why he came, he says he came to seek and save the lost, which is what God says he's going to do.

    He's gonna heal, he's gonna bind up the sick, he's gonna find the lost and bring them back, and so I think Ezekiel 34 becomes this sort of rubric, this sort of clear mission statement that tells us what Jesus comes to do.

    Bryan: you alluded to it. I think this was one of the many times you said I'm teaching through Ezekiel right now as you brought us back to this passage in a previous episode I think that's really good. You know seeing seeing Jesus in that way I was I was latching on to hear the idea of God's glory How his glory left and how then it came back and the idea of his returning glory Just I cannot help but think about John 1 verse 14 where John in his great introduction is talking about how the word became flesh and dwelt among us And we have seen his glory

    Ryan: He tabernacled among us.

    Bryan: tabernacled among us.

    That's the dwelling word that he's using there Yeah pitching a tent in our midst and that is absolutely what Jesus did But that idea that his glory has returned and dwelt among us and that that I think is such a helpful way of seeing Jesus as the glory of God in our presence like as disappointed and as frustrated and angry as you might be that God's glory would leave for his glory to return in the way that it did in the in the person and Tabernacle of Jesus is such a powerful way of thinking about that and I love that word by the way kibbode It there's a lot you could talk about with that this word is a a word that is sometimes Referencing people's size not to get too graphic about it But like if somebody was heavy or a large person they had a kibbode that was you know That was just it was a reference of how big they were and that in a weird way That's kind of fitting to think about God in that way.

    He has a certain presence in his glory And that is that is definitely helpful to see Jesus in that way, too.

    Ryan: Yeah, we sing this song with the kids sometimes, "My God is so big,so strong, and so mighty," God is vast, but more than that, his glory is weighty. It is heavy, just like the word "kabod" points to. And building on what you said with the glory of Jesus coming, taking that a step further, then we have within us, as God's temple on earth now tabernacling here, we are his body in this world, and we are the temple vision.

    I think chapters 40 to 48 of Ezekiel and this final temple vision is, of course, ultimately that gets fulfilled in the new heavens and new earth when we're all with God in heaven, but it's being fulfilled right now. And what happens in this vision is he sees this amazing temple and the architecture actually tells a story, but then after God's glory comes, the gate to the east starts having this living water flow out of it, and it turns the Dead Sea where nothing could live into this living sea with all of these creatures, and the desert all around it becomes the Garden of Eden.

    It actually uses the term, it becomes the Garden of Eden, and it makes you think of what Jesus said in John 7, "Those who believe in me, out of their hearts will flow streams of living water." Yeah, and he said this about the Holy Spirit who would dwell in those who would be given to those who would believe in him, and so yeah, we are here as the Church to bring transformation to the desert in this world, to bring living water as God worked in us and as Jesus dwells in us.

    Bryan: a super good way of wrapping up this conversation.

    The Challenge

    Bryan: Let us move into a challenge And yes, we can actually pull a challenge from this lesson believe it or not

    All right So this week your workshop assignment is to open up this super weird book eat the scroll and read the one chapter Here that Ryan has talked about chapter 37 here And you know if you really do like chapter 36 dive back and read that as well But don't worry about understanding every detail just ask this question What does this story show me about the glory and power of God?

    I think that's a helpful way of just biting off a small piece of this to start immersing ourselves In a book that I think what you're Ryan you called the flyover book

    Ryan: It's one of the flyover books for sure. So it's worthy of landing the plane and exploring, you know? The flyover states have some interesting stuff to go take some tours of, and Ezekiel has a lot to teach us.

    All right, so as we wrap this up, I

    just want to thank you for letting me geek out, true to the title of the show, about Ezekiel.

    I've been holding all of this in and we haven't gotten a chance to talk about it much, even though I got a chance to teach it for three months,

    I just love this book so much. I

    Bryan: think it's helpful to listen to -somebody working through how to unlock a book like this You know it really is not a book We often tackle so hopefully people are getting out of it what I'm getting out of it Which isthat a book even in its difficulty Even in the challenge as the book you know the little scroll that Ezekiel ate was full of some very difficult things It can be it can be a pretty sweet time to think through these things together and center ourselves in on God's amazing

    Ryan: you know, having a conversation like this, now six months after I taught this book, helps me to appreciate the journey of teaching a book like this and how it sort of becomes a part of you, and again, really appreciate you going on this little journey through the book to unlock

    Bryan: well This has been a whole conversation on Ezekiel We're gonna deal with another character that we know a lot more about on the upcoming episode next episode We're talking about Elijah who is you know really relatable in terms of some of the things he had been through We're gonna talk about burnout and how God extends amazing grace to us in our own times of burnout Maybe this will be a relatable topic on the heels of some of the things we've been discussing thanks so much everyone for tuning in you can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or on our Website at Bible geeks FM.

    Please go check out some of these super weird pictures that I showed Ryan They'll also be as chapter art if your podcast player supports that you can get in touch with us on our website Leave us a message. We'd love to hear from you and until next episode everyone may the Lord bless you and keep you

 
Ryan Joy & Bryan Schiele
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