SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/23/2015
9:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Meaning of the New Temple
This SD will be a bit different as I spoke of in our last
SD on the book of Ezekiel as I desire to use this last main point from Dr.
Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of Ezekiel which he has entitled “Be Reverent”
bowing before a Holy God, as the source of this last SD on the book of Ezekiel.
“In examining all the information Ezekiel recorded for
us, we must be careful not to lose the major messages among these important
details. There is a sense in which the
messages of the entire book are wrapped up in one way or another in chapters
40-48. The spiritual lessons are as
meaningful to us today as they were to Israel in Ezekiel’s day, or as they will
be to the Jewish people in Messiah’s day.
“Separation from sin:
Ezekiel was a priest as well as a prophet, and it was the responsibility
of the priests to teach the people the difference between the holy and the
unholy and the clean and the unclean (Lev.10:10-11; Ezek. 44:23). Israel drifted into sin because they began to
erase these differences and became like the pagan nations around them. The temple in Jerusalem, with its special
courts and holy chambers, reminded the people that God put a difference between
the holy and the profane. For people to ‘call
evil, good, and good, evil [and] put darkness for light, and light for darkness’
(Isa. 5:20) is to violate the basic principle of holy living. (See Ezek. 40:5;
42:14-20; 43:7.)
“Worship: The temple was a place of worship, but the
heart of worshipers was far more important than his or her gifts. The Jews in the Southern Kingdom of Judah had
defiled the holy temple of God and dared to worship Jehovah along with the
idols of the nations around them! God’s
people don’t decide how they are going to worship the Lord; they simply obey
what He has told them in His Word.
“Fulfillment: One
of the purposes of the millennial kingdom is that God might fulfill His
promises to His people, promises He couldn’t fulfill because of their rebellion
and unbelief. In His grace and mercy,
God gave Israel a wonderful land, a perfect law, and a glorious Lord. They defiled the land by their terrible
crimes; they disobeyed the law by adopting pagan practices; and they defied
their Lord and tempted Him by resisting His calls to repentance. But during their kingdom, Israel will trust
the Lord, obey His Word, worship in His temple as they should, and bring
delight to the Lord who will rule from David’s throne.
“But there’s a further fulfillment, for the Kingdom Age
will ‘wrap up’ all the previous ages in God’s revelation of Himself and His
purposes. The land will be like the
Garden of Eden (36:35), complete with a river of life and trees of life. The promises made to Abraham will be
fulfilled and his descendants will possess and enjoy their land. The Law of Moses will be obeyed from the
heart, and the Lord will be worshiped and glorified. The Messiah that Israel rejected at His first
coming will be received and honored and will reign over them (43:6-7). God will fulfill every kingdom promise found
in the pages of the prophets.” We will
now look at Dr. Wiersbe’s last endnote that goes along with this: “12. In the promise to the ‘overcomers’ in
our Lord’s letters to the seven churches (Rev. 2-3), you see a similar
progression through the Old Testament periods, beginning with the Tree of Life
in the Garden (rev. 2:7) and concluding with reigning with Christ and His
throne (3:21).”
“God’s glory and God’s name: If the
Book of Ezekiel teaches us anything, it teaches us that we must honor God’s
name and magnify His glory. The glory of
God departed from Israel because they defiled the temple. The glory of God returned to the new temple
because it was holy and a place where God could dwell. ‘They shall know that I am the Lord’ is a
statement found at least sixty times in Ezekiel’s book. While God’s glory doesn’t dwell in our church
buildings, God can be glorified or disgraced by what we do in those buildings
we have dedicated to Him. As His people,
we must be reverent and honor His name.
“The sovereign rule of God: The first vision God gave Ezekiel was that of
His glorious throne, moving quickly here and there so that His angelic
creatures could accomplish His purposes in the world. Today, the church of Jesus Christ is left in
this world not just to pray ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ but
to help accomplish that will in the power of the Holy Spirit. God is still on the throne and Jesus Christ
has ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matt. 28:18). Need we ask for more?”
With this SD we conclude our study of the book of Ezekiel
and one of the things that seemed to run through my mind as I was thinking
about these last nine chapters of Ezekiel’s book and what Dr. Wiersbe was
writing about how those things in those last nine chapters will be fulfilled in
the Millennial Kingdom was something that happened to Abraham and Sarah in
trying to fulfill God’s promises on their own.
They had trouble in waiting on the Lord and people today who do not take
these last nine chapters in the book of Ezekiel as literal, but applying them
to the church or saying that they are Spiritual are trying to fulfill these
prophecies on their own. We as believers
must be patient in waiting for the Lord, in His own time to fulfill all of the
promises that He gave to the nation of Israel, especially those promises which
include a kingdom for them in which the time period is explained in the book of
Revelation as being 1000 years. We
cannot be like Abraham and Sarah who tried to fulfill God’s promises on their
own. One of the ways we can trust the
Lord more and more is to understand who He is, and we do that by studying His
attributes. I will recommend a wonderful
book to help understand the attributes of God, a book that is actually out of
print, but can be bought used from different places online. “The Joy of Knowing God” by Richard Strauss
is the best book I have read to explain God’s attributes, and I have read
several of them.
Next week, God willing we will begin to look at the OT
prophet Hosea as we have already looked at the book of Daniel a few years ago.
5/23/2015 10:16 AM
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