What Dispensationalists Get Wrong About Ezekiel | Theocast U

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This is going to be theology, more of like a theological conversation. And this one is definitely related to an important subject of how we interact with the

Bible. I am not trying to create clickbait. So if you've watched any of my critiques in the past, things

I've done about Doug Wilson or dispensationalism or lordship, if we cannot be charitable and speak the truth in love, then can we really say we're reflecting the hope and the joy of Christ?

That is my hope here. So I'm going to start off by saying I am not here to create some kind of a battle, poke people in the eye.

We want to sharpen, iron sharpening iron, we want to encourage each other. So feel free to respond to this, feel free to interact.

That's our hope, that's our joy. I want to share with you some clarity I have received while preaching through the book of Ezekiel.

You can go through my website, we'll put the link down low. I preached a sermon last week on this particular section on Ezekiel 40 through 48, and those are going to be a couple more sermons.

So there's my introduction to this. I do want to challenge my brothers who are of the dispensational camp in a particular area of their theology.

So I'm not asking you to abandon the whole thing. I just want to challenge you and say, maybe think through this and offer me a response of how you would reply to an important theological issue.

There's a lot of things in the Bible that are not important, you know, whether you believe Adam and Eve had a belly button, all that kind of stuff.

I don't want to debate that. But when it comes down to theology and interpreting the Bible, particularly around justification, this is where I think we need to have some helpful conversations.

So we're going to be dealing with two ways in which you can interpret the book of Ezekiel, specifically chapters 36 through 48, which deal with the reinstitution of the temple, according to dispensationalists.

From a covenantal standpoint, we are talking about the new covenant and the promises and the hope of restoration of God's people with God.

And so there's two different ways of understanding the interpretation. One would say, we need to take it literal and take it verse by verse literal.

The other one would say, we're obviously going to read it literally as it was intended. And I want to get out of the debate of one group, dispensationalists, or even covenantalists, they take the

Bible serious, the other one doesn't. We place our own thoughts, our own ideologies, our own history on the text, the other one doesn't.

Those aren't helpful, because all you're doing is just throwing straw man, you're gaslighting. I don't want to be a part of that.

I don't think it's helpful. The other thing I don't think is helpful, we don't listen to the other side, and we don't pay attention to what they're saying and offer genuine critiques to what they're saying.

Or we get into echo chambers, right? We just keep listening to our own people. One of the things

I'm frustrated with, even in the covenantal world, I'll just throw this out there, where you have the

Baptists and Presbyterians talking with each other, and at times we're not reading each other, we're reading about each other from people we agree with, instead of listening to what they're saying.

And I didn't want to do that here. I tried my best to listen to all the different arguments that are available from dispensationalists as it relates to how to interpret the

Bible to the future of Israel. If you're new to this debate, maybe even new to dispensationalism, you like dispensational preachers like John MacArthur, this might be new for you if you haven't done a lot of research on eschatology, the hermeneutics behind dispensationalism, what is a grammatical historical hermeneutic when we're looking at the author's intentions of the text.

If this is all new, we're going to do a little bit of an intro to that, then deal with the text. Ezekiel, if you don't know, it's a prophetic book.

It's talking about what's happening currently within the narrative, what's happening currently with Israel, and then it's dealing also with the future, not only of Israel, but of the world and God's promises to save sinners.

So there's a back and forth that's going to happen. The first 24 chapters is about the failure of Israel. So I'm going to give you an overview of the book.

It's going to help us in interpreting the Bible. The first 24 chapters is about the failure of Israel.

They have failed to keep the law. They're now a divided nation. Half of the nation is now in captivity in Babylon, and Ezekiel is now supposed to be a priest, but he's not.

He is taken away 500 miles away from the temple, away from Jerusalem, in captivity, and he is there to serve those people.

That's what the first 24 chapters is, and it's bad. It's really bad. The illustrations that God is having

Ezekiel give, these people have embraced paganism.

They have brought it into the temple. They've brought it into their worship, and God is very upset with them because they have broken the law, and it's coming down to their final destruction.

Let's fast forward, finally get to chapters 34 and 35, and it's over. Ezekiel gets the news.

The temple is destroyed. The presence of God is gone. The nation is divided. They're all scattered all over the place.

There is no more hope, and that is really the point of Ezekiel and all of the illustrations that he's giving is that they have lost all hope to fulfill their side of the covenant, and their side of the covenant is if they obey

God and live by the law, they will be blessed in the land, and they will be prosperous. There was never a promise of salvation through the law, only of blessings of God's promises, but through those promises, one is coming, which is the

Messiah, and that's the one they're looking for that would bring ultimate salvation. So I will not make the accusation that dispensationalists believed that one is saved by the old covenant, by the

Old Testament law. We've always been saved by faith. Now there have been dispensationalists in the past who taught that.

Thankfully, modern -day dispensationalists reject that. Praise God, love them. They preach the gospel. I'm so thankful for their evangelism and their outreach, and I stand arm -in -arm with them.

Many, many dispensationalists I would love to partner with because they do preach the gospel, so praise God for that.

Let's not throw stones. We don't need to. Let's just encourage each other to be clear on passages like Ezekiel.

So we get into this, and the traditional view of dispensationalists is that there is a future for geopolitical

Israel, meaning the actual nation of Israel will be put back in Jerusalem, and the temple will be restored, the nation will be restored, and they will be a people once again.

And specifically, they mean during this period called the millennium, millennium meaning thousand years, thousand -year reign.

So Christ comes back, you have the seven -year tribulation, and then there's this thousand -period year where Israel will be brought back together and the temple will be restored.

And that's their interpretation of Ezekiel, chapters 40 to 48, is we have to take it literal.

It's a literal promise that must be fulfilled to the people of Israel, and they believe that that fulfillment is in the millennium.

I am going to make some challenges to that, not just because I feel like challenging dispensationalists, but there is some serious ramifications to that interpretation.

But I also want to just challenge how we understand the Bible and say maybe we need to allow the context and wording to influence us, and be careful not to bring our system and make sure that our system fits.

And some people say this about covenant theology, right? There is no covenant of grace, there is no covenant of works, and we've argued for that in other videos.

We'll put those down in the descriptions. I have two different series on covenant theology where you can work through the text with me there.

The biggest issue that happens when we're talking about Ezekiel, okay?

So we're just going to get into it. What were we at? Nine minutes in, I know I took too long. So there's my introduction, now let's get into the meat of it.

If you're going to take Ezekiel 40 through 48 as literal fulfillment, it will be exactly fulfilled as Ezekiel said.

There's going to be a new temple, a new people, restoration with—most people don't know this if you're new to dispensationalism—the reinstituting

Old Testament sacrificial system, okay? The old animal sacrifices.

And I love my brothers, and many of them, the conservative ones who understand the complications of this, they say that those sacrifices are a memorial for remembering the wonderful gift of the law and the gift of Christ and what he's done for us.

So during this thousand -year reign, as a way of remembering, like we take the

Lord's Supper now, right? The bread and the water—sorry, water—bread and the wine, the sacrificial system will be instituted, and that will be as a memory.

Here is the problem, okay? If we're going to take the text literal and read it, we have to ask ourself, is there anywhere in any of the book of Ezekiel that would allude that it's a memorial sacrifice?

And there is nothing. This is the challenge I've often placed upon a lot of dispensationalists as I'm interacting with them, asking them to show me, hey, look, if we're going to let the text guide us, and you are the one saying we have to let the text guide us.

There's nothing in the text that says this is a memorial. The dangerous part of this is the text multiple times says it's not just as a memory, but it's for atonement.

The technical word is efficacious, it actually does something. We're not remembering the act.

The act in and of itself is producing atonement. Here are the verses.

If you're going to go to chapter 45, it's verse 15, 17, and 20, dealing with the sacrificial system—I'll just read them to you—45, 15, and one sheep from every flock of two hundred from the watering places of Israel for grain offering, burnt offering, and peace offerings to make atonement for them, declares the

Lord. You will not put that word atonement, meaning payment for, if it's a memorial.

Same thing, Ezekiel 45, 17. It shall be the prince's duty to furnish the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings at the feast, the new moons, and Sabbaths, all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel.

He shall provide the sin offerings, grain offerings, burnt offerings, and peace offerings, so we've got sin, grain, burnt, to make atonement on the behalf of the house of Israel.

So we're seeing multiple times that these sacrifices, according to the reinstitution of the temple, they are actually efficacious.

They're creating for atonement. Last verse, verse 20, you shall do the same on the seventh day of the month of anyone who has sinned through error or ignorance, so you shall make atonement for the temple.

So there are dispensationalists who reject the memorial view, saying that during the millennium there will be a temporal atonement for sins.

Even though Christ has paid for all of our sins, we're still going to need to make atonement for sins. Really uncomfortable with that position, and here's why.

We're going to explain what I think those passages mean, and I think all of chapters 36 through 48, the whole section is a wonderful application and a purpose behind it.

But I want to jump to the New Testament. It's very helpful to see how does the New Testament understand the Old? If there's a part of it that might be confusing, it's really encouraging to see how did other inspired writers by the

Holy Spirit conclude the New Testament? This is a great example of Hebrews chapter 10.

So if you turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10, we're going to read several verses there of how they would understand the point of the

Old Testament sacrifices and then the application of it. So this is Hebrews 10 .1. For since the law has but a shadow of good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never be the same sacrifice that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near.

A couple of key factors. One, for since the law has but a shadow of good things to come.

Well, what do we know the law is a shadow of? The law is a shadow of Jesus and the new covenant promises of new life in Christ.

That means we are looking at the shadow, but that's not what we're embracing and believing in.

We are looking for the substance. So once you have the substance, you no longer need the shadow.

The shadow introduced the concept. We knew it was coming. It's like if you're on one side of the wall and the light is shining and a person is walking around the corner, the first thing you're going to see is the light hitting back behind them and you're going to begin to see the image and as it gets closer, depending on what they're wearing, you'll be able to tell how tall they are, what are they wearing, and then when they turn the corner, the substance there, you don't need the shadow anymore.

That's the point of the law. So to say we're reinstituting the sacraments, the ceremonial sacrifices of the law,

Hebrews is saying, we don't need to do that. They're only temporary.

Look at verse two, otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers having once been cleansed would no longer have any conscience of sin.

But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Now this is important. There was a temporal cleansing outwardly that would make one ceremonially right.

This is part of the Old Testament law. It cleansed the outside of the person because they were now unclean.

So every year they would go and there would be a temporal cleansing, not a permanent, not a full washing, that would allow them to remain in covenant with God, remain in the promised land, remain under the blessings.

But according to final cleansing, really of our sins and our conscience, he says it's impossible for animal blood to accomplish this.

Verse five, consequently when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.

In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will,

O God, as it is written of me in the scrolls of the book. So he's referencing the

Old Testament. This is prophesied that I would come. When he said above, you have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.

These are offered according to the law. And then he added, behold, I have come to do your will.

He does away with the first in order to establish the second. So why would he do away with the first but yet bring it back?

That's his point. He's telling these Israelite readers who would want to go back to the law, it's done away with.

I am here to replace it. So you cannot go back to the old law, the old covenant, for it is now fulfilled in me.

Look at verse 10. And by that will he have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ.

Here's the key, once for all. No more needing of sacrifices.

Jesus is the final sacrifice. To reinstitute them for atonement is to go back to the old covenant, and that is not what we are called to do.

So there is nothing else needed, not only for cleansing. And to say that the memorial, again, my argument is nowhere in the text.

Even if they are, it doesn't make sense. We've been given a memorial, and that is the Lord's table. We've already been given a memorial.

We don't need another one. And when we're in the presence of Christ, we won't be utilizing that, let alone whether what your view on the thousand -year reign is.

We're not going to get into that today. But many have said this is a heretical view because you are re -sacrificing

Christ once again, or you're trusting in the sacrifices of the Old Testament to make one not only pure and right before God, but is a reflection of saying

Christ's sacrifice wasn't sufficient. Hebrews 10 .11. Every priest stands daily in his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting for that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

For a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the

Holy Spirit has also bared witness to us. For after saying, this is the covenant, he's quoting

Jeremiah here, okay, the prophecy of the new covenant of Jeremiah 33. This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the

Lord. I will put my laws on their hearts and write them in their minds. Then he adds,

I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Remember, go back to Ezekiel, sin offerings for atonement, temporary cleansing, saying it's no longer needed because I am the final atonement for sin.

The picture of it, the demonstration of it, the shadow of it is no longer necessary.

So to state that we will bring back the sacrificial system would directly go against the writer's interpretations of the law and of Ezekiel and really of Christ's coming.

So then how should we understand Ezekiel? I don't want you to just say, there, it's done. I want to offer an alternative that I think is helpful and it's faithful to the writer and I think it's faithful to all of scripture.

It doesn't violate Hebrews 10. It gives us a clear understanding of how the text flows all the way into the

New Testament and this fulfillment of Christ being the yes and amen of all the promises and that he is the final promise.

I'll give you one that's a famous one where we understand the literal words, but we don't take them literal.

Psalm 119 and 105, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light into my path. Now we're not walking around quoting the

Bible, trying to use it as a flashlight or holding up scrolls or holding up portions of the Bible, trying to light our path, are we?

If you're going to take it literal as he's writing there, then that's what would be the application. But that, is that what he was intending?

No, that's not what he was intending. How do we know that? Because the Bible uses this type of literature to help explain what it means, right?

So I think we have to allow that structure. I'll give you some examples of the entire book of Ezekiel. This has been happening.

God tells Israel to basically be a live theater for Israel to see their sins so they will repent and turn back to God, which never happens, and this is why the whole temple and everything is destroyed.

He tells them to chop off his hair and in using it, he says, chop some of it up with a sword or burn some of it, chop some of it up with a sword and throw some of it into the wind.

All of this, he was using physical, real elements to picture different aspects of Israel.

He tells them to play the scapegoat, lay down on his side, tied up for a year. Again, a physical reality trying to make an illustration.

Eat bread cooked over human feces to talking about how the children of Israel have embraced the grossness of the world.

So the whole book is filled of imagery and photos, I mean, photos of pictures, photos, trying to help explain what

God sees and wanting Israel to see. Now let's look to the latter part of this section, right?

So if you're going to interpret anything, you should look at it in its entire context, entire flow. So the temple is destroyed.

The people are distraught. What are we going to do? There is no hope. That's where the promise, the covenant of Jesus comes in in chapter 36.

And just for the sake of time, you can go back and read those chapters, highly encourage you to do so. Very encouraging. I preached on them.

If you want to go listen. But chapter 36, what's the first image we get? He says, I will.

He starts all the promises of things that he's going to do. I'm going to gather the nations together. I'm going to cleanse them. I'm going to pour pure water upon them.

He doesn't pour little water on them. That's the first image. I'm going to cleanse them with water. Well, that's the ceremonial that we understand, but we understand that to be the blood of Christ that washes away our sins.

He says he pulls out a heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh. Do you want to take that literal?

Because you've got a lot of explaining to do if you do, right? No, we can't take that literal. So water, not literal.

Hearts of stone, not literal. Then he goes to chapter 37. Oh, here's another one. He says,

I'll put my word, the law, put it into your hearts and in your minds and it'll cause you to walk in my way.

I mean, do we literally have a database of a book sitting within our minds and our heart? No, right? We understand what he means by that.

There's a spiritual application to the physical illustration, right?

Chapter 37. He takes them in a vision out into this valley of dry bones, and I love how he says this.

They're very, very dry, no life in them, meaning that there was no involvement with Israel in the restoration of his people, and what does he do?

All of a sudden, the bones click together, the joints come on, and there's a mighty army. You're beginning to see the reconstruction of creation, the restoration that he promised in Genesis.

You're hearing how God's going to restore it. What's the first thing that was lost from them? They have dead hearts and dead stones, right?

The nation is scattered. So he's gathering the nation, he's bringing birth back to the people of God.

That's chapter 37. So so far, we haven't seen anything that would be literal that we could see.

This is all literal illustrations for spiritual application. Chapters 38 and 39, it's the

Battle of Gog and Magog. Well, when you read that, you understand he's talking about the spiritual powers of the universe, of the world, and here's what's hard about taking that whole section literal.

He kills that army five different ways, right? Earthquake swallows them, burns them, kills them, and leaves them in a field.

It didn't give the indication he killed a portion of it. It was all of the army died five times.

You have to step back and look at that and say, what is he communicating? I will deal with the injustice.

I am the divine warrior. I will deal with the evil that has enslaved you, that has caused you, who has enticed you, who has pulled you away from my relationship.

I will deal with evil. So he is slowly walking back and restoring and showing in ways they would understand, in language and pictures they would understand, that he was walking them back into this relationship.

Now you get to chapters 40 through 48. What's the final restoration that's needed? The relationship and the presence of God.

The temple's gone. The promises of God's blessing is gone. And what does he do? He promises them he's going to fix what caused the issue of their heart.

He's going to restore them as a people. He's going to destroy that which has caused this problem, and now he's going to restore the land, right?

Now here is what's fascinating, why I don't think you can take this to be a millennial restoration of the temple in Jerusalem.

And I've got a list of reasons here. I want us to walk through these real quickly. The city and buildings itself, we never are given a height.

When you read, when you compare the two, the original temple and this one, there's instructions that are missing.

And some of it might be because he's just kind of given us a general idea of, hey, this is what's happening. You're not given the height of the building.

You're not given the building materials. Now you could say, well, they already had those. Well, I don't know about that. Because you know what else is not given to us?

We're not given the actual name of where the temple was built. He never says that it's in Jerusalem. You go through the whole book, it's never there.

He gives us a name of the actual city of where that temple will be. It's the last sentence of the last verse in chapters 48, verse 35.

And the name of the city from that time on shall be the Lord is there. So we can't say this is a rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem because that detail was left out.

Now you could say, John, that's an argument from silence. Fair enough. That's an argument from silence. Maybe we should look at other portions of it.

Well, so far up to this point, it's one thought, one communication, hearts of stone, bones, five times the army's dead.

He's still continuing on to this moment of restoration. And in that moment of restoration, he is promising them that they will be in the presence of God forever in this perfect...

Listen, they're never going to sin again. I'm going to cause you to walk in my ways. They'll never be scattered people again.

There will always be one people of God. They won't be tempted. They won't be attacked. They won't be enslaved. And the last thing he's dealing with is the presence of God.

Now, there is a section... I love to ask this question when I'm asking dispensationalists about the literalness of this particular passage.

This is Ezekiel 47 verses 1 through 12. If you want to read this, we're just going to look at a couple of verses.

There's a fascinating aspect to this. I don't know how you missed this going into the New Testament.

I think it's a beautiful picture. The temple is built. It's finished. And this bronze person that's walking

Ezekiel around looking at all the temple points out something that's very fascinating.

Look at chapter 47 verse 1. Then he brought me to the back door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the temple was faced east.

The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple south of the altar.

Then he brought me out by the way of the north gate and led me around the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east, and behold, the water was trickling out the south side.

So you have to say, wow, this is really going to happen, right? We're just being told that there's like this endless water that's gushing out.

We know that it's endless because it gets real big, and there's a lot of it. We don't hear about it ending. So there's this new feature to the temple, this water that's washing out.

Now here's where things get fascinating. Look at verse 12. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food.

Their leaves will not wither, their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month because the water of them flows from the sanctuary.

Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing. Ah, literal?

Is that literal? Should we expect that to be what is there? Because you can't say that's a re -institution.

That's something new. I'll just say this now. What does Jesus say standing in the temple after he has cleansed it?

Tear this temple down in what? In three days, I will raise it up again. Now they were livid. What did

Jesus just do? He spiritualized it. He says, they looked at it and took it literal. How it took us 40 years to build that temple.

Jesus is like, you missed it. I'm not talking about this temple. I'm talking about, I am the embodiment of the presence of God.

You are going to destroy me and I'm coming back. And in three days, I will be here. Who describes himself to the woman at the well as living water that produces this life, this living water that's inside of you?

Jesus does, right? You can begin to see that this is a picture pointing to something greater than itself.

The temple was a part of the law, which was also a part of the shadow of things to come, right?

So the heart of stone, you have the bones, you have the Gog and Magog, you've got the temple.

All of this is the language they would understand. All of this would be familiar to them. They would understand this.

And Jesus then points back and says, I'm the temple. I'm the living water. I'm the one who will restore.

The Holy Spirit will come and restore the heart of stone. It's a beautiful picture. So yes, he's talking to a real people about real events that will really happen to them.

They will be regenerated, right? They will have the Holy Spirit living within them, producing within them these good works, and they will live with God, right?

In the final eschaton, when everything is all done, they will live in the presence of God in his city forever.

By the way, the dimensions of that city, I mean, you just go back and read that. Or the temple. That's very different from what we know of the original temple.

So my challenge would be, if you're going to take it literal, you've got to take all of it literal, and that will lead you to heresy because you're going to have to reinstitute animal sacrifices because it says it's for atonement.

Or we could say he is trying to paint a picture, starting in chapter 36, working all the way to chapter 48, of something that they are using as a physical illustration for a spiritual application.

Now, should we do this with every part of Scripture? Absolutely not. And that's what ends up frustrating me about this conversation.

We're like, well, then you can just spiritualize everything. That's not fair. That is not fair at all.

I'm not spiritualizing this. I'm looking at the word pictures that are being used. How do the New Testament then utilize this picture and make a full application of it?

And I think it's safe to say this is how we should interpret it. I think Ezekiel 36 -48 is extremely encouraging to be reminded that he says,

I will restore your sins. I will forgive your sins. I will give you righteousness. I will restore you as a people.

I'm going to take care of your enemies. I'm going to provide a place for you to live, and you'll be safe there forever. And from there will be this—what is it?

It's the reinstitution of the garden. It's a new, better garden because it cannot fail, right?

There is no sin there. There is no—so he is giving them the hope of eternal life. A new heavens and a new earth, that's the point of it, not the reinstitution of the sacrificial system.

That's my interpretation and understanding of it. There are many in the Reformed world who would hold that understanding of it, and I just want to challenge us to think about that.

Let's take the text literal. Let's interpret it literal as it was intended, right? Don't take the heart of stone to be not literal, but yet then move onto the temple and say that it is.

That's my challenge. I hope this is helpful. Love to hear your engagement on it. I'm sure we'll provide some more videos in the future.

Hear my tone. If I came across condescending or mean, I apologize. I ask for forgiveness now.

I do not want that. My brothers, my sisters in Christ, I love you. I'm so thankful that you're in good, godly churches preaching the gospel week in and week out.

I am not here to belittle you or put you down or say that we can't be co -heirs in Christ.

We can't encourage each other. Let's do that. Let's sharpen each other. Let's get clarity. Let's be clear on what we're doing.

And I look forward to worshiping with you and our Father, feasting on the fruits of the labor of the water coming out of Christ.

And in the meantime, while we wait, I look forward to hearing from you and to fellowship with you. We'll see you next time.