Ezekiel saw a vision here of the glory of the Lord filing
the temple as it had done the tabernacle in Exodus 40 and the temple in 1 Kings
8 when those two structures were first dedicated, when all was new and the Lord
proved by this to be present among His people.
What Ezekiel saw was a prophetic vision of the new temple, that the Lord
would once again reside in the temple in Jerusalem that the returning exiles
would build in years to come. That
temple was built in the time of the prophet Zechariah who encouraged the work
and the workers with the promise that what they were doing was the Lord’s
work. The presence was contingent on
removing the idols from the land, returning fully to the Lord, and consecrating
not just the temple but the entire temple mount to Him. Do you see why this area is such an issue to
the people today with the Dome of the Rock occupying the space? They are unable to re-consecrate the ground
or the temple. As Christians, we have a
different understanding of the temple and presence of the Lord.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” So wrote John in the prologue to his
Gospel. Here, we see the people asking
for a sign from heaven or opining that Jesus did the work of casting out demons
by demonic power and force itself. The
sign from heaven was the power of God in Jesus.
God had “broken out” of the temple confines and was now dwelling in the
flesh among them and John continued to say, we have seen His glory, the glory
of the one and only. The glory of the
Lord was shone in the works Jesus did in overcoming the powers of darkness of
spiritual oppression, disease, imperfection and death. The power was so great that some could only
conclude that it was a demonic power since God was over at the temple. Jesus was clear and logical about this
possibility, it made no logical sense that satan was at war with satan, there
must be two opposite powers here and one clearly stronger than the other in
every way.
The author isn’t denigrating the temple worship. In fact, he has already acknowledged it to be
of God’s design and here affirms that the worship of the temple, with its
sacrifices and other rituals, are also part of God’s plan. His argument is that the ministry of the
temple was incomplete in the sense that it didn’t deal with the heart and
conscience of the worshipper, only with what they had done or not done. What we really need is that heart transplant
that leads to transformation, the renewing of the mind. To align our minds with God’s purposes
requires us to feel differently about sin, to grieve over sin and its result, separation
from God. We need to know something is unacceptable
but what we really need is to know the how it affects our relationship. Once we have drawn close, received
forgiveness, had that intimacy with God, we can know through the indwelling
Spirit, the loss of intimacy, the reality that we have not sinned against the
Law, we have sinned against a person who has loved us enough to die for
us. Sin becomes a personal matter, not a
juridical matter. If we saw the glory of
the Lord filling the temple of our body in a literal way at the time of
salvation, could we abide its either dimming or departure by sin without grief and
confession?
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