November 3-7
[M] Ezekiel 31-33; John 11
[T] Ezekiel 34-36; Psalm 86; John 12
[W] Ezekiel 37-39; Psalm 87; John 13
[T] Ezekiel 40-42; John 14
[F] Ezekiel 43-45; Psalm 135; John 15
Dwell Plan Day 221-225 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Ezekiel 31 | This chapter gives us the image of Pharaoh as a towering cedar and is more than a story of one arrogant king: it’s a parable about the pride rooted in every human heart. Pharaoh’s downfall came because he mistook borrowed glory for his own, just as we so easily take the good things God gives (our talents, strength, even our moral efforts) and use them to climb higher than others, hoping to impress the very God who gave them. That’s the quiet pride of self-righteousness: thinking our goodness can earn God’s favor. But the gospel reminds us that the tree that reaches upward in pride must fall, while the one cut down in repentance will be raised. True righteousness doesn’t grow from our works up to God; it flows from his grace down to us in Christ.
Ezekiel 32:1–9 | This passage shows God giving the prophet a sobering task: to proclaim judgment over Pharaoh and Egypt, even though the message would be heavy and unpopular. Ezekiel’s role wasn’t to soften God’s words but to faithfully speak them, trusting that light sometimes comes only after the darkness is named. That same call echoes in the life of every believer. Jesus has given us a message that cuts deeper than Ezekiel’s, not one of judgment alone but of redemption—yet it still requires courage, clarity, and compassion. Like Ezekiel, we’re sent to speak into a world that’s confident in its own power and blind to its own downfall. The Great Commission calls us to do what Ezekiel did in a greater way: to carry God’s truth to the nations, warning of sin and offering hope in Christ, the One who faced judgment for us so that others might find life.
John 11:35 | Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus, but He still entered fully into the grief of that moment because His heart beats in perfect sympathy with His people. He isn’t detached or clinical; He stands among mourners, feels their pain, and weeps with them. His tears show that God’s holiness doesn’t make Him distant; it makes Him tender. Yet His sorrow runs deeper than compassion alone. He’s grieving the greater tragedy behind all funerals: sin’s intrusion into the world He made good. Death is the unnatural end of rebellion, and Jesus feels the weight of that cosmic fracture. His tears are both personal and theological—He weeps because He loves, and because sin’s curse has stolen what love was meant to preserve.
Tuesday
Ezekiel 34:11–24 | This passage gives us one of the most tender promises in the Old Testament. After condemning the false shepherds of Israel—leaders who fed themselves instead of their flock—God declares that He Himself will come to seek the lost, heal the wounded, and bring back the scattered. He will raise up one shepherd to rule over them in justice and peace. For exiles who had been failed by kings and priests, this was a staggering hope: God himself would step into the pasture and take responsibility for His sheep. The Holy One would become the caretaker, not just of a nation, but of hearts.
That promise comes to life in Jesus Christ. When He says, “I am the good shepherd,” He’s claiming to be the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s vision—the divine Shepherd who has come in person. But He doesn’t just lead from beside still waters; He walks into the valley of death for us. He lays down His life for the sheep, taking on the punishment our sin deserves, so that we might be gathered into His fold forever. Through His cross and resurrection, the scattered are brought home, the hungry are fed, and the lost are known by name. Jesus is the Shepherd God promised—and the Shepherd our souls were made for.
Ezekiel 36:24-32 | There’s so much graphic violence and darkness in Ezekiel, especially with that strident refrain “And they will know that I am the LORD” over and over again, as if Samuel L. Jackson wrote this part of the scripture. But then sunshine as radiant as heaven, filled with grace and hope, just pours out of the prophet. The proportions of gloom vs. gladness are a bit heavily weighted, but what glory shines when it does! These proportions are different with every prophet who speaks for God, but praise our God the proportions never weigh out negatively. We aren’t ever left with despair. But it makes sense that the good news is indestructible. After all, that’s the quality and power of the life of Christ and of that life in us. As you read, do you find yourself looking and hoping for a little oasis of grace as you read through the laments and judgments?
John 12 | This is a sonnet I (Chris) wrote on the first event in this chapter:
Mary at Bethany (John 12)
I know that you are Son changed in the holy
Fire, the feet and tears of the foot washed
And God washing for all you are and washed
In all He is, the heaven’s high shout is holy
In the nard her hands pour to be washed
For the murder His hands felt to be holy
For the glory of what could not be holy
Except for the gory wood as blood washed
Linen on me. Oh that we were holy
And in that death’s death and Son’s fire washed
Born of that breath’s breath by the Spirit washed
Linen for you. The perfume of the holy
Washed whose praise is her joy in her glory,
Holy to the Lord is all your story.
Wednesday
Ezekiel 38–39 | This is a passage that is a) tough to understand and b) has been taught in some really unhelpful ways. But when you take this passage for what it is and not as some secret code to figure out the end times timeline and where to put Gog and Magog on a chart, it's actually pretty simple.
When Ezekiel names Gog from the land of Magog, he’s not describing a single ruler in Israel’s past or a specific one in our future. In Ezekiel’s day, “Magog” referred to distant nations at the edges of the known world. “Gog” becomes a symbolic name—an archetype of every arrogant world leader who uses power to dominate and destroy, who raises himself high and pushes God low. The list of nations in the text (Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, Beth-togarmah) represents the global scope of this evil alliance. Gog is a stand-in for the kind of empire that mocks justice and refuses to honor God’s holiness. To Ezekiel’s exiled audience, beaten down by Babylon’s power, this vision was a reminder that even the strongest human kingdoms are still under the control of a higher hand. God is not passive; he turns Gog “with hooks in his jaws.”
Across these chapters, the language swells with apocalyptic images: earthquakes, hailstones, fire, the valley of mass burial. None of this is meant as a coded war map; it’s the language of divine justice. God paints judgment in colors big enough to match human evil. The battlefield becomes the stage where His holiness and sovereignty are displayed “in the sight of many nations.” And the detail that Gog’s fallen army must be buried for months to “cleanse the land” is not a grisly curiosity, it’s a picture of sin being fully dealt with, of the earth itself made clean from corruption. To exiles wondering if God’s name had been shamed by their defeat, Ezekiel proclaims that the day is coming when God’s greatness will be vindicated before the whole world.
Revelation 20 later picks up Ezekiel’s language: “Satan will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog.” The final enemy is not a geopolitical figure, it’s the ancient serpent behind them all. In Christ, the true King steps onto the field, not with armies and swords, but with His own blood already spilled. His robe is “dipped in blood” before the battle begins because He conquers through self-sacrifice. Gog’s pride meets its match in Jesus’ humility.
The message for us is what it was for the exiles: no matter how strong the Gogs of history appear, their story always ends the same way. God will make himself known. Evil will fall. And the Spirit He pours out will fill the world with life again.
Psalm 87 | What an odd little poem! It’s all about how great Jerusalem is—almost like one of the descriptions of a place you want to move and live—and how great it is to be from there. A biblical travelogue! And It is theologically grounded; after all, it tells you it’s all because God loves this place better than any other. This focus on a piece of real estate, and one that’s neither glorious nor Godly in our times, can be a bit off-putting to us. This poem could be cast as a bit of patriotic Israeli propaganda. But it isn’t. What’s going on here? Jerusalem winds up being a promise of incarnational love, a love fulfilled in Jesus’ own flesh. In a broad theological sense, you could also interpret this poem as an Old Testament preview of adoption. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit imparts a sense of our adoption in our hearts. Romans 8 describes the Spirit causing us to call God abba, a child’s word for Father. Because of our connection to Jesus and welcome into God’s family, this Psalm teaches us to claim “born there” rights when it comes to the city of God.
Thursday
Ezekiel 40–46 | This vision of the temple has been a point of interpretive tension for centuries. On the surface, it reads like architectural blueprints—precise dimensions, regulations for offerings, priestly duties, even kitchen layouts. But the interpretive challenge lies in the fact that these plans were never built, and they don’t match the Second Temple constructed under Zerubbabel. The returnees wept when they saw that temple, not because it fulfilled Ezekiel’s vision, but because it fell so short—no glory cloud, no divine fire, no visible presence of God. So what are we to make of these chapters? Are they literal instructions for a future third temple in Jerusalem? Some groups read them that way and even gather materials in anticipation. But the text itself never commands building—it only calls Ezekiel to look and tell. It’s a vision, not a construction order, and the temple is already standing when he sees it.
The key to understanding these chapters is recognizing the kind of literature Ezekiel is writing. He’s not drafting a civic plan; he’s using apocalyptic imagery. God shows him a temple because that’s the image a priest like Ezekiel would understand most deeply. The temple, in the biblical story, represents the overlap between heaven and earth—the place where God’s glory dwells among His people. From Eden to the tabernacle to Solomon’s temple, this theme of divine presence runs like a thread through Scripture. When the first temple was destroyed and God’s glory departed in Ezekiel 10–11, it symbolized humanity’s greatest loss: separation from the presence of God. In this new vision, the glory returns—but not to a literal building—to something greater that all those earlier structures pointed toward.
That greater reality unfolds in Christ and the church. When the Spirit descends in Acts 2 as tongues of fire, it’s the same glory that once filled Solomon’s temple—but now it rests on people. The New Testament’s bold claim is that we are God’s temple; heaven and earth overlap not in stone courts but in redeemed hearts. Revelation then takes Ezekiel’s vision and stretches it to its completion: a world where there’s no temple at all, because “its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” The conflict over how to read Ezekiel 40–46 resolves when we see the pattern—not a return to ritual sacrifices, but a promise that one day, God’s presence will fill everything. The glory that left the temple has returned for good, and it dwells in His people until the day when heaven and earth become one.
John 14:9 | Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. | I don’t know words deeper than these. Jesus is on His way in a few hours to His betrayal and execution, and this part of John is pretty rapid-fire truth-intense. It’s one blockbuster teaching after another, with cryptic transcendent comments everywhere. It’s easy to overlook the remarkable things being said by Jesus as they fly by. He is last minute prepping all of the most important things to tell these men He loves so much. The other gospels give us more of the public part of Christ’s ministry leading up to the cross. There’s tons to tell, and it’s a gripping week leading up to the crucifixion. But John pulls back the curtain and lets us see some of the longer personal conversations that were happening. John knew the other gospels hadn’t really touched on these, so he includes a lot of details. Since the Gospel of John was written later, you can imagine Him filling in the blanks, answering the tons of questions folks must’ve asked over the years. In this conversational exchange with the disciples, which happens several times in this discourse, Jesus is speaking peace to them. He’s calming them before the coming storm, especially since at dinner He had told them about a traitor, and now just told them He was leaving. They’re a bit agitated. Then Philp, who’s usually pretty quiet in the gospels, speaks up and goes all in Old Testament style. “Show us the Father,” he says. That’s a very big biblical ask. Moses didn’t even get to see the Father. Who knows what he had in mind, but there are major problems with seeing God at all. Doesn’t go well. Period.
As heavy and loaded as that request was, Jesus’ answer is mind bending. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” So what that implies is barrier-free access directly to God in and through and because of Jesus. And what it means is brain melting and completely impossible to explain or understand. “No man sees My face and lives.” That’s what God said. “Look at Me and see God.” That’s what Jesus said and could say. It’s a claim that stupifies the mind and should not be. It’s a self description that lifts and exalts and deifies Jesus far above all other humans, while at the same time being His own personal self-description as a fully human Person. Who has ever heard of a God like this? Praise Him!
Friday
Ezekiel 43-45 | These chapters can feel a bit dry with their details, but don’t let that get to you. You and I don’t know a shekel from a cubit, and it’s hard to track it all. But step back and look at how the visions unfold. The restoration of God’s glory is a trigger, and that creates everything that follows. God is in His house, now that the glory comes back, and so there needs to be an altar so He can be approached. And voila! The altar is now restored. But if you have an altar, you need priests to offer sacrifices there. So next the priesthood is restored. And this sets up what follows: the restoration of the land.
What do we do with the details? Read them as a reminder and prompt for your imagination. They remind us, like the original hearers, that God’s work is going to be tangible and measurable. It’s the promise of incarnation that breathes in these minute details, describing God’s commitment and involvement in the details of our lives. It’s reading stuff like this that probably led Jesus to make observations like “every hair of your head is numbered.” It’s the same sort of theological claim. Our hope in reading this should always be restoration for our lives and our times and our community. These chapters map out for us hopes for our own renewal as we seek God’s glory and He seeks to display His glory in Jesus today in our church. What an invitation to marvel at the scale and extent of renewal lives in Ezekiel’s visions!
John 15:4 | Jesus’ command to abide reminds us that good works are never the root of our salvation, but the fruit of our connection to him. In John 14, he promises the Spirit who will dwell in believers—our true power for obedience and love. That means every act of faithfulness, every moment of patience or generosity flows, not from human effort, but from divine life pulsing through us. James says that faith without works is dead, not because works earn grace, but because real grace produces living fruit. We don’t labor to gain God’s favor; we bear fruit because we already have it. Abiding in Christ means resting in what He’s done, while the Spirit makes that grace visible in the way we live.