The Lord Is There

I'll ask you to remain standing in honor of God's Word as we read it together.

Of course, I'm not going to read all nine chapters to you now. I encourage you to read them on your own if you haven't already, but for this morning's purposes, I want to just read the opening two verses of this final vision and then the very last verse of the vision. So we'll read Ezekiel chapter 40, verses 1 and 2, and then we'll skip over to the very last verse of the book, Ezekiel 48, verse 35, and these bookends will summarize the point of everything in between. In the 25th year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the 10th day of the month, in the 14th year after the city was struck down, on that very day, the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me to the city. In visions of God, he brought me to the land of Israel and set me down on a very high mountain, on which was a structure like a city to the south.

Then skipping all the way down to Ezekiel 48, verse 35, the last verse in the book, the circumference of the city shall be 18,000 cubits, and the name of the city from that time on shall be the Lord is there. Let's pray. Lord, help us and promise to be there with us where we are. It's too good for us to believe, and yet you promise us this very thing. Lord, help us to not only believe this promise, but also to allow the reality of your promised presence with us, to drive us away from sin, and to drive us toward the things that you love, towards holiness and purity and truth and beauty. Make us the people that you say we are by the power of your Holy Spirit in us, even using the word this morning to purify us. I pray this in Jesus' name, who is Emmanuel in the flesh, God with us. Amen.

You may be seated. In the cosmic battle like we looked at last week with Gog and Magog, or after an incredible miracle like the resurrection of an entire valley of dry bones back in chapter 37, a vision like this of measurements and building specs just doesn't quite seem to be a fitting climax, a captivating ending to the ministry of a prophet like Ezekiel. Yet this is how the story for now ends. The man, essentially with a tape measure and a blueprint, gives Ezekiel a tour of a building, or maybe it's a city, or maybe it's a mountain, or maybe it's a garden, or maybe it's all of the above. Whatever it is, it feels anticlimactic, if not altogether unknowable. One of the Westminster divines, William Greenhill, describes the hesitation and the trepidation with which pastors and theologians approach this final vision of Ezekiel. And he says this, that there are hard things to be understood in the sacred scriptures these nine last chapters do abundantly testify. And such difficult things are in them that they have made many men tremble at the thought of interpreting them. Some say they contain inexplicable secrets and understood by none, and therefore forbid their disciples to read them.

Jerome confesses his trepidation hereat that he did knock at a closed door. Gregory the Great, when he went about interpreting these chapters, said, we pursue a midnight journey. Still others said, it is so difficult and dark that it appears scarcely possible to be understood. Greenhill himself said of himself, I feel the weakness of my own understanding, yet silently I adore its mysteries. It is good to tremble at the word of God, both what we understand and what we understand.

Not, for all is of equal authority. And to him that trembles thereat, the Lord looketh and will let in light. The vision is dark, but God dwells in darkness. The temple and the city are dark, but the Lord is there, whom we most humbly desire to let out some beams of light, whereby we may come to understand something of the incredible sweetness of these dark and deep things. I want to go back to the interpretive principle that we mentioned last Sunday, the principle which says unclear passages of scripture ought to be interpreted in light of the clear passages of scripture. That principle is very helpful for us as we approach this last vision of Ezekiel. And so what I propose to do this morning is to run to what is clear in these nine chapters and also to lean on other passages of scripture that shed light on the meaning of these chapters. But beyond that, church, we dare not go. There are mysteries yet to be revealed, and yet there is sufficient light in what is clear to be of immense encouragement, both to Babylonian exiles and to the Christians of Grace Church this morning.

So let's dig in. And I think we have to start by pointing out what these chapters are not. Ezekiel's vision is not a vision of some physical structure that is supposed to be constructed in Jerusalem before or during some millennial reign of Jesus Christ.

The dispensationalists are wrong. Nor is Ezekiel's vision a blueprint for the temple that postexilic generations were supposed to have constructed upon their return to the promised land after the exile. That generation that Ezekiel is speaking to and their children did return to the promised land.

They did build a temple and that temple had an important role in redemptive history. But that's not what Ezekiel is describing in his final vision. And the reason we know that this is not a literal physical temple is first of all because of the many points of correspondence between Ezekiel's vision here and John's vision of the temple at the end of the book of Revelation. I'm not going to take the time today to walk through all of those points of correspondence.

We'll see some of them through the course of the message this morning. But all you need to do is read Ezekiel 40-48 and then read Revelation 21. These similarities and overlap and shared illusions between the two visions will be very obvious. It's also obvious in Revelation 21 that the temple John describes is not a physical building but rather is a symbolic, idealized description of God living among His people, the church. And if that's what it means in Revelation, that's what it means in Ezekiel. Also we notice that Ezekiel's vision contains no command for Israel or Ezekiel or Christians in the end times to go and build this temple.

Ezekiel's vision is entirely descriptive, not prescriptive. He's describing a temple as it exists, not prescribing that a temple ought to be built according to certain specifications. When Moses was summoned to the top of Mt. Sinai and given instructions concerning the tabernacle that was very different. God was commanding him to build what he saw in his prophetic vision down to the minutest detail of size and material and aesthetic quality, even telling Moses how to go about funding this building project. But Ezekiel is given no such command. Now it is true, Ezekiel's vision of the temple contains some tediously specific measurements of size and proportion and arrangement, but never does God command Ezekiel to get to work constructing what he saw as he did for Moses. Ezekiel is simply commanded to tell Israel about the temple he sees in his vision. So we might ask, if God didn't intend Israel to actually build this temple, then why did he describe it in such detail to Ezekiel?

God actually answers that question for us in Ezekiel 43, verse 10. God says, as for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel, the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities. In other words, this temple and its every detail was a visual sermon for the purpose of producing conviction of sin in the hearts of God's people. One theologian put it this way, he said the temple vision is not a building plan or a prediction of the future, but rather a powerful symbol that addresses the people in Ezekiel's day. What specifically about the temple design is to move them to shame? They must consider, in particular, its plan, its arrangement, its exits and entrances, along with its regulations and laws. In other words, the temple vision is a pedagogical tool that speaks by its shape and size, and particularly by its permission or denial of access.

These regulations all serve a single overriding purpose, that the whole area all around the temple may be most holy. Now understand that I'm not saying the temple is not real. I'm saying it's not physical. It's very real, more real, in fact, than the temple that Solomon built or the temple that Jesus walked through during his earthly ministry. Hebrews 8 and 9 even refer to these physical structures as merely copies, shadows of the real thing. The substance, the real temple is Christ, Paul tells us in Colossians 2. So this temple, of which Ezekiel goes on and on about in his final vision, is not a physical structure that Old Testament Israel was supposed to build or that end time Israel is supposed to build. Rather, it's a detailed vision of a physical structure whose purpose, especially in the physical attributes of it, is to teach us a lesson that will lead to conviction of sin and repentance within the hearts of God's people. So let's consider some of the physical attributes of this visionary temple and think about how they drive us to be ashamed of our sins and return to the Lord. The very first feature of the temple that we encounter is a wall, a huge thick wall. Ezekiel 40 verse 5 says, And behold, there was a wall all around the outside of the temple area, and the length of the measuring reed in the man's hand.

Now this man he's referring to is the angelic tour guide who's leading Ezekiel through the temple. He has a measuring reed in his hand that was six long cubits. A cubit was an ancient unit of measurement that was roughly the distance from a person's elbow to the tip of their middle finger, a length that varied depending on the size of the person, but from around 15 inches to 20 and a half inches. Egypt brilliantly standardized that unit of measurement to 20 and a half inches, which is what verse 5 is referring to when it calls it a long cubit, each being a cubit and a hand breath in length. So cubits throughout this vision refer to a length of roughly 20 and a half inches. And the measuring reed that Ezekiel's angelic tour guide is using is six of those, six cubits long. That's a little over 10 feet long.

Look then at the second half of verse 5. So he measured the thickness of the wall, one reed, and the height, one reed. So this wall that goes all the way around the temple area is 10 feet tall and 10 feet thick. That's not a picket fence. That's a military grade barrier intended to keep things out that don't belong. The vision goes on to describe a series of gates and chambers and stairs and buffer zones all conveying a sense of inaccessibility. The gates themselves are embedded in the middle of the wall, and each of them have excessive guard chambers to house those who protect the entrances. This is followed by an extensive buffer zone of several hundred feet, which Ezekiel refers to as the outer courts, followed by another barrier, a wall that surrounds the inner court. Each step toward the center of this complex is uphill with a total of 25 stairs and narrowing passages, it says, that are, quite frankly, uninviting.

It's hard to get into. The path to the center of the temple is not a hospitable one. It's a securely guarded fortress and is certainly no more welcoming than Solomon's temple, certainly not as accessible as the tabernacle of Moses. Even the Levitical priests who serve here are more strictly regulated as God imposes a new rule. In chapter 40, verse 46, it says, the chamber that faces north is for the priests who have charge of the altar. These are the sons of Zadok, who alone among the sons of Levi may come near to the Lord to minister to him. So this was a stricter rule than before.

And why was it imposed? Chapters 44 and 48 tell us why. They say it's because when all the other Levitical priests back in the day were straying from the Lord, the Zadok family did not. And so only the Zadok priests will be allowed to approach the center of the temple. So what then is the point of all this increase of strictness and decrease of access to this visionary temple?

We're told what the point is. In the very last statement of chapter 42, it is this, to make a separation between the holy and the common. To make a separation between the holy and the common. Back in Ezekiel 22, we saw that the covenant community had neglected this very central truth and had allowed all manner of idolatry and impurity and compromise to characterize their worship at the former temple. Ezekiel 22, 26 says that Jerusalem's priests had done violence to God's law and profaned holy things by making no distinction between the holy and the common and by not teaching the difference between the unclean and the clean. Holiness had been unimportant to them.

And as a result, God's presence had departed, the land had been lost, the temple had been destroyed, and they were exiled in Babylon. If any of this was to be reversed, it would only be reversed as God's people came to realize that holiness matters to God. God is holy and holiness matters to him. And so the message that the very architecture of this visionary temple was declaring was that God is holy and sinners are not welcome. Stay away, unholy people, for God is too holy to look upon sin.

That was the message of the walls and the barriers and the stairs and the strict rules of this new temple. Psalm 24 asks the question, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And the answer is only the perfectly righteous may ascend God's hill because God is holy. And who among us is perfectly righteous? No one.

Absolutely no one. The Psalm 24 doesn't end there. It goes on to say, Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory?

The Lord, strong and mighty. No one can enter the gates of this holiest of temples except the King of glory, the Lord, strong and mighty. So let's see what happens next in Ezekiel's vision. Look at Ezekiel 43 and verse 1. Then this angelic tour guide led Ezekiel to the gate, the gate facing east. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. And the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters and the earth shone with his glory. And the vision I saw was just like the vision that I had seen when he came to destroy the city and just like the vision that I had seen by the Kabar Canal. And I fell on my face as the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east.

The Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court. And behold, the glory of the Lord filled the temple. So this is a reversal of what happened at the beginning of Ezekiel's ministry years earlier when the visible presence of God left that former temple because of the corrupt and profane people that Israel had become. But now that same glory returns through the east gate of Ezekiel's visionary temple.

We'll come back to chapter 43, so keep your finger there. But jump over just briefly to Ezekiel 44, verse 1. God has just entered the temple through this east gate. And Ezekiel 44, verse 1 says, Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces east, and it was shut.

So now this east gate, the main entrance into the temple, is not even open. And the Lord said to me, This gate shall remain shut. It shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it. Therefore, it shall remain shut. Only the prince, the son of the king, may sit in it to eat bread before the Lord. He shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way. So God's presence has come to the temple, and God is so holy that the gate he entered through is permanently shut and off limits to everyone except for the king's son.

We'll come back to this in just a moment and see the relevance. But go back now to chapter 43. Look with me at verse 7. God says to Ezekiel, Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever. And the house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they nor their kings, by their whoring and by the dead bodies of their kings at their high places, by setting their threshold by my threshold, and their doorposts by my doorposts, with only a wall between me and them. In other words, Israel was just casually waltzing into God's presence, worshiping their idols as if it didn't matter, and God said, no more. They have defiled my holy name by their abominations that they have committed, so I have consumed them in my anger. But then verse 9, the tide begins to turn. God says, now let them put away their whoring and the dead bodies of their kings far from me, and I will dwell in their midst forever.

Israel hasn't changed. God is still perfectly holy. He has just revealed a temple that is shut up so tight that no sinner even has a chance of gaining access to God. So how can God say that he will dwell in the midst of these sinful people forever?

How can that be? And this is where we need to zoom out and let Scripture interpret Scripture, because the Gospels shed light on what is happening in Ezekiel. All four Gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, record the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem, and they each record slightly different details of that event, but when we compile all those details together, we discover a glorious connection to Ezekiel's vision of the temple. The Gospels tell us that Jesus, on that first Palm Sunday, entered Jerusalem through the east gate, that he was being lauded as the son of a king, the son of David, and that he went straight to the temple to cleanse it.

He's seeing the connection. We should have Ezekiel bells going off in our head as we read these things. Entering of the temple and cleansing it. After that, Jesus makes this incredible claim. He says, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days, I'll build another one not made with hands. So in light of what God said to Ezekiel about his own holiness and how the east gate was reserved only for the prince, the son of a king, and how God's presence would come and dwell forever with his people, how can we not see that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of these things? Jesus Christ is God if he is entering temples from the east gate and cleansing them of idolatry.

Jesus Christ is holy if he is ensuring the destruction of fake, man-made temple imitations and claiming to be the temple himself. And Jesus Christ, whose name is Immanuel, which means God with us, is the presence of God with man forever. Unbeknownst to Ezekiel and the exiles, this vision of a temple is a setup for the most perfect, eternal, and holy demonstration of God's presence with sinful man. Jesus Christ did what Ezekiel saw. Jesus Christ is what Ezekiel saw. Jesus Christ is the substance of every tabernacle or temple or piece of sacred furniture or priest or sacrificial animal ever represented in the Old Testament. And Jesus Christ alone was holy enough to enter the holiest of places, the heavenly temple of God, where Hebrews 9 tells us that Christ entered once for all by the means of his own blood. If the walls and barriers of Ezekiel's visionary temple are saying, sinners, keep out, only holy ones may enter, then the actions of Jesus Christ in the gospels are saying, I am holy, I'm coming in.

When Ezekiel's tour leads him to the interior of this visionary temple, he discovers that inside there's only one piece of furniture. An assuming, simple altar. And I think we know what this altar is.

I think we know what it does. But by way of clear, straightforward explanation, let me simply read Hebrews 9, verses 11 through 14. It says, but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Church, that is how a holy God can promise to dwell with sinful, idolatrous people and not profane his own holiness. Jesus Christ became sin for us and put himself on this holiest of altars and said, God, punish me for their sin and give them my righteousness. And Jesus laid on that altar and died. Scripture tells us that as he did this, the barriers intended to keep sinners out of God's presence came crashing down. Yes, the veil that hung in the temple, which those returning exiles built, was torn from top to bottom. But more impressively, the layers and layers of 10-foot walls which surrounded Ezekiel's visionary temple, the real temple in heaven were blasted away as Jesus by his death and resurrection says to sinners like us, you are now holy forever.

Come into the presence of God with boldness, with joy and feast. This brings us then to the last word of Ezekiel. That tightly guarded high walled temple has now become an entire city by the time we get to chapter 48. Instead of two tightly guarded gates and one locked gate, there are now 12 gates around the city. The wall, it seems, has become more gate than wall.

Accessibility has quadrupled. And best of all, listen to this, the last sentence in the book of Ezekiel. And the name of the city from that time on shall be the Lord is there.

The Lord is there. We've already discovered that Revelation 21 is a parallel passage to the final vision in Ezekiel. So let's turn to Revelation 21 and get John's perspective of this visionary temple turned city. Revelation 21, verse 1, John says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This city is the church, the bride of Christ, the people of God. John says, And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. But even within this city, there is a boundary. There is a wall, an inside and outside of the city. Revelation 21, verse 8 says, But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. There are those who will be left out of this city temple for all eternity, because they were never washed by the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, but instead remained in their sins. Verse 10, John says, And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

Having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. He goes on to describe the 12 gates that Ezekiel spoke about in his vision, each one representing one of the tribes of Israel. But John also includes a detail that wouldn't have made sense to Ezekiel. The fact that this city also had 12 foundations on which were the 12 names of the apostles of Jesus. So in this city, which is the bride of Christ, is conjoined the old covenant community and the new covenant community, one people of God cleansed and made new through the blood of Jesus Christ. The temple complex in Ezekiel's vision was big, but nothing like the city temple in John's vision.

The proportions are the same. Both visions describe a perfect square. But what was only several hundred feet in Ezekiel's vision has now grown to encompass several hundred miles in John's vision. But then we come to the most glorious detail of all. Revelation 21, verse 22, And I saw no temple in the city. What was for Ezekiel the most important feature of the vision, the elevated, isolated, holy temple is not even a part of John's temple.

But then he tells us why. For its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the name of the city from that time on shall be the Lord is there.

The Lord is there. When I was in elementary school, the school cafeteria was separated from the hallway by a very thick, frosted glass wall. And as our class stood in line waiting for our turn to eat lunch, we would be standing in the hallway at this glass wall. We could smell the pizza or the vegetable soup or the peanut butter sandwiches, whatever was on tap for the day as we waited in line. And we could just make out the shapes and sounds of the other classes who were already enjoying their lunches. Ezekiel's final vision of this glorious temple and of the presence of God with his bride was accurate inasmuch as he could comprehend what he was seeing.

It was accurate, but it was incomplete. He was looking through a glass wall, seeing and hearing and smelling the feast, but was unable to take it all in in its breathtaking splendor. A few centuries after the exile sat at Ezekiel's feet and listened to his visions of wonderful, mysterious things, Jesus would come and he would knock down that glass wall. He would tear the veil in two and reveal even more of the wonder and splendor and delight that awaits the people of God. And because of Christ's coming, we, the privileged generation of Christians who have seen the image of the invisible God in the person of Jesus Christ, we who are eagerly awaiting his second coming, we are closer than Ezekiel and the exiles were to that great city that awaits us. But we're not there yet.

The glass wall has been torn down, but we're still in the hallway, peering into the cafeteria, awaiting the feast. So we might say, in light of the glorious incarnation of Christ, that God is more there from our vantage point than he was for the exiles. But brothers and sisters, we can also say that there is coming a day when our holy and awesome God will be even more there than he is right now, when we will be like him because we'll see him as he is. It'll be a day when we actually sit down with our God at his table and feast with him forever and ever, even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come. But until that day, beloved, we fight sin.

We resist the devil. We bear witness to the world of the excellencies of our God and of his glorious city, but we do so with the sure and certain hope that our God is with us. He has washed away our sin on the heavenly altar that stands at the very footstool of his throne, and he will not leave his children or forsake them. Do you belong to him? If not, you can cry out to God right now for mercy, and he will give it. Scripture says, whoever comes to me, to Christ, I will never cast out. So stop excusing your sin, acknowledge your need for mercy, and receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation.

If you do belong to him, Christian, could you have a more gracious God? Ours is a God who has gone to hell and back for the souls of his children. How then should we live? We should live as joyful slaves, serving God with all of our strength, worshiping God with every breath.

Anything less would be treasonous. If God is holy, and he would have a holy people, he will make his church holy so that he can be with his church, with the people he loves forever and ever and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we strain to see you in the beauty of holiness. We strain because of our sin, but you've given us a glimpse of that beauty today, and you've given us a promise that you will remove every impediment to our seeing you and knowing you and being with you. So, Lord, enable us to say in full sincerity that a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, that to be a doorkeeper in the house of our God is more desirable than dwelling in the tents of wickedness. And then bring us to that house, that city on the last day that we might be with you for all eternity. We pray in the name of Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.