A few months ago we finished the process of moving house. It was a process that took us as a family very many months because of the complexities that can arise. But the process begins as you start looking on the internet for houses that you might like the idea of living in, and when you find one that you like, you phone the estate agent and you arrange to meet with them. They will give you a tour of the house; they'll take you into every room, they will open every cupboard door – to the embarrassment of the people whose cupboard it is – so that you can see every nook and cranny of this house and decide if it's where you would like to live.
You're asking yourself the question: can we imagine ourselves living here? Would the thought of living in this house be a future that we would like to become a reality? And ultimately, what sells the house is if you are able to picture yourself living there. You think, yes, we'd like that, and so you take the next steps that you have to take to make that happen. You put your offer in, or whatever it is that you have to do first.
Today we meet the prophet Ezekiel being given a tour of a house. His tour guide is going to take him around, and he'll open every cupboard door and show him into every room and walk him around the house so he can see it from every possible angle. The tour guide is a curious man.
Chapter 40, verse 3: "He took me there, and I saw a man whose appearance was like bronze. He was standing in the gateway with a linen cord and a measuring rod in his hand." So he's glowing like polished bronze.
Back in the days of Covid, we used to have – we probably still have them somewhere – a series of bamboo canes of various lengths that we would use to make sure that the rows of seats were of the required spacing for that particular week from the Department for Health. It changed every week, so we had lots of different bamboo canes. This man, this glowing man, has a three-metre bamboo cane in his hand, and in the other hand, a fabric tape measure.
And this curious man takes Ezekiel around. It's not a private tour just for Ezekiel. Here's chapter 40, verse 4: "Son of man, look carefully, listen closely and pay attention to everything I'm going to show you, for that is why you’ve been brought here. Tell the people of Israel everything you see." So he did, and it's why we have this chapter – these chapters – in our Bibles.
Let me just remind us of the history. The year is 572 BC, exactly. Chapter 40, verse 1: "In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month – in the fourteenth year after the fall of the city – on that very day..." So, the leaders of Jerusalem were taken into exile in Babylon with Ezekiel in the year 597 BC. Eleven years later, the city fell, and this is fourteen years later again – which means at least a decade has passed since the reading we had last week.
And in the first half of Ezekiel's book – his early ministry in Babylon – he's telling the exiles that there will be no reprieve. Judgement will come, and they mustn't look back and hope that things will turn out not to be as bad as they feared. But once the news reaches Babylon that the city has fallen, Ezekiel turns to the future. God is going to build something wonderful.
In the past few weeks we've already heard God tell them about the new leadership he will create, the new land he will give them, and the new life that he will breathe into his dead people. And then Ezekiel is given a tour of the future. He's shown the new living quarters, and today we start that with chapters 40 to 43, as he's shown around a temple and then shown the new altar. And over the next two weeks we will hear about the new priesthood, a special portion of the land where the sanctuary will be, a new prince, an amazing river, and then how the land will be divided up between the twelve tribes.
Not to be built
Now, we need to be clear why Ezekiel has been shown all of this. Some Christians seem to think that this was told to Ezekiel so that he or somebody else could build it. But that is not why this is here – and I don't say that just because nobody ever got round to it and now it's too late – but because, even as Ezekiel is given his tour, it is clear that he is not being shown it in order to build it. The text tells us that's not why it's here. He's never told to build anything. No materials are specified. Hardly anything is given a height. We don't know how tall anything was – nearly anything. It's a 2D model, a blueprint. We'll come back to that.
Compare all of that to the first tabernacle, where Moses, in Exodus 25:40, is told to be very careful to build everything exactly as he's been shown it. That instruction is missing here. He is shown a structure not that he will create, but that already exists. In fact, it would be nearly impossible to build it if you tried. It's supposed to be built on a mountain peak. Now, if you've ever been up Snowdon – the highest mountain in Wales – they've just about managed to perch a little cabin on the top to serve you hot chocolate and a cake before you go back down. Just about.
Try building something this size on a mountain peak. Try building a city that is an exact, perfect square – that's if you can even work out which mountain peak to build it on. It's never named. In fact, the symbolism of at least two Old Testament mountains are in play in this one structure. The city is not named either. It's never called Jerusalem or the City of David. But how to divide the land up wouldn't fit the topography of the land of modern Israel. And the river would, at one point of its journey, have to flow uphill before miraculously getting deeper and deeper and deeper, and then turning the Dead Sea into fresh water.
Now, if you go to the sea, when a stream of fresh water flows into the sea, it doesn't change the sea into fresh water. No, this is not something that Ezekiel – or anyone – is to build. It's a description of the future, something that God has already built. Indeed, that's part of the point. In the ancient world, kings built temples. God built this one. Therefore, he alone is Israel's true king.
Now, the details here are symbolic. Ezekiel is given a vision, a guided tour, to teach the people and to change the way they live in the present. And it's here in our Bibles to teach us and to change the way we live in the present.
Now, in summary: this vision of the temple is here to tell the exiles – and to tell us – that God will live among his people. But to that we need to add two specific details.
1. God in all his perfection
The first is that God will live among his people in all his perfection. The symbolism here is designed to underline the perfection of God – his blazing holiness, his complete purity. Everything is made up of perfect squares, perfect symmetry, everything exactly in the right place. This is a temple fit for a God of utter perfection.
As I say, we're not given the height of anything. Now, that's because it wasn't something to be built – but it's all about boundaries. So, if the purpose of a wall or a dividing line on a map is to say, “This is your land and that’s your neighbour’s land,” you don't need to know the height – you just need to know where the boundary falls. And the boundaries here are all to do with holiness.
So, the vision of the temple starts with a wall around the whole temple complex. It's a huge wall, three metres high – so we do know the height of that – and three metres thick. And then, chapter 42, verse 13: "The north and the south rooms facing the temple courtyard are the priests’ rooms..." Wait – 42:20. Go there, come back to 40:30. 40:20 says this: "He measured the area on all four sides. He had a wall around it, five hundred cubits long and five hundred cubits wide..." (By the way, a cubit is about half a metre) "...to separate the holy from the common." Separate the holy from the common. To keep the commoners out and the holy in.
And then – this is where 42:13 comes in – within the temple there are layers. So the people can go to the outer court. Then there are rooms along the edge of the inner court that are only for priests, and they must keep their boundaries. So 42:13: "The priests’ rooms where the priests who approach the Lord will eat the most holy offerings. There they will put the most holy offerings – the grain offerings, the sin offerings, the guilt offerings – for the place is holy. Once the priests enter the holy precinct, they are not to go into the outer court until they leave behind the garments in which they minister, for these are holy. They are to put on other clothes before they go near the places that are for the people."
If you pay, and if you go at the right time of year, you can have a tour of Buckingham Palace, the stately home in London of King Charles the Third. But you can only see certain parts of it open to the public; large sections are roped off. The staff can go in there, but you can't.
Then, if you get right to the middle, you have the living quarters, where Charles and his immediate family actually live and sleep. Now, at that point, only he and his family, and a very small number of trusted others, could go.
We don't know how high anything is here, but we do know that there is height, because the closer you get to the middle, where the glory of God moved in, the higher you climb. So there are seven steps up to the gates into the outer court, eight steps up to the gates to the inner court, and then ten steps into the temple building itself.
And the temple building — the whole thing — was designed to keep you out. So, the temple building was 20 cubits (about 11 metres) wide. The doorway in from the fresh air was 14 cubits wide, so if you do the maths, that's three cubits of buttress either side. But then, as you go through another doorway into the chamber inside, it's 10 cubits wide, and five either side. Then, if you go through into the most holy place — the Holy of Holies — the door is just six cubits wide, with seven spare space either side. The further in you go, the narrower the doorways are becoming.
The whole structure is to highlight the perfection of God, and to highlight the need for there to be boundaries. And then, when it's all finished, God moves in to live there. Ezekiel says, chapter 43, verse 2:
"I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east" — if you want to know why it's from the east, ask the youth in Impact, they'll tell you — "his voice was like the roar of rushing waters, and the land was radiant with his glory. The vision I saw was like the vision I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and like the visions I had seen before, by the River Kebar, and I fell face down."
Now, you have to go right back to January, when we started Ezekiel — long way back — but you may remember there the amazing vision of the glory of God: God surrounded by these creatures with four faces, the wheels covered with eyes, the sound of Niagara Falls. Then in chapter 8, the same vision again — this time, as God leaves the temple — and now here, the dazzlingly glorious, awesome God comes back to live again.
The God who will live among his people is the God of utter perfection, blazing wholeness, and total purity. That's one detail to add to the main point — that God will live among his people.
2. His sinful people
Here's the second: God will live among his sinful people.
This whole thing is off the back of the exile. The people have gone so far from God that he had completely withdrawn his favour, rejected them, destroyed them. It's time to read the verses that tell us why this vision is here. When we read the Bible, we're not guessing why passages are in the Bible — the Bible tells us what we're meant to learn.
And up to this point, Ezekiel's tour guide has spoken — he hasn't said much, but he has — but now, God himself speaks. Chapter 43, verse 6:
"While the man was standing beside me, I heard someone speaking to me from inside the temple." So we know this is not the tour guide speaking. It must be God speaking, given God's just moved into the area from which the voice comes:
“Son of man, this is the place of my throne, the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The people of Israel will never again defile my holy name — neither they nor their kings — by their prostitution and their funeral offerings for their kings at their death. When they placed their threshold next to my threshold and their doorposts beside my doorpost, with only a wall between me and them, they defiled my holy name by their detestable practices. So I destroyed them in my anger.
“Now let them put away from me their prostitution, their other gods, and the funeral offerings for their kings, and I will live among them forever.
“Son of man, describe the temple to the people of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their sins. Let them consider its perfection, and if they are ashamed of all they’ve done, make known to them the design of the temple — its arrangements, its exits and entrances, its whole design and all its regulations and laws. Write these down before them, so they may be faithful to its design and follow all its regulations.”
Now, there's debate as to exactly what the sins are listed here. The language is very compressed, and you have to piece it together, but the picture’s clear. These are a people who mixed their worship of God with worshipping other gods. They lived in ways that God found detestable, and so he destroyed them in his anger.
These are the people that God wants to live amongst — not some wonderfully different group of people who’ve suddenly found some decency and turned themselves into nice people. The same sinful people that went into exile, who haven’t changed, God will live amongst.
So it’s not like a prisoner in some really grotty secret prison somewhere, where the conditions are awful, being told to take a shower and lend some decent clothes because some dignitary wants to speak to him — "scrub up and you can talk to this person." No — God wants to speak to the people who are still awfully grubby.
And the main thing God wants Ezekiel and the people to know is that God will live among his people. Or, more exactly, the perfect, holy and pure God will live among his sinful people.
How? How will a perfect, holy God live amongst the people who are so sinful and rebellious that he had to destroy them?
And the answer is: through sacrifice.
The second half of chapter 43 describes the great altar that would be used to sacrifice animals to deal with their sin. It’s a huge structure. If you read chapter 43:13–17, you discover it had several layers, but the whole thing is 10 metres by 10 metres, and five and a half metres tall. That means it’s as tall as this, and as big as this hall is square, roughly — huge — and it was right in the middle.
Now, that might surprise you if you’ve read the Old Testament before this point, because you would know — if you had — that the innermost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, where they kept the Ark of the Covenant, was the centrepiece. God wanted to live amongst his people, and he lives right in the middle of the temple.
We’ll see in later chapters that the temple is in a strip at the centre of the land, and it’s in a little square at the centre of that strip, so that God and his temple are right at the centre of his people’s life. So you would expect the centre of the temple to be God’s throne room — the Holy of Holies, the most holy place — but it isn’t.
If you look at the diagram I’ve given you, the centre is the altar. That’s the focal point. It’s also really tall — as I say, it’s basically a perfect square, a bit like a pyramid with its top cut off. So this is the point where heaven and earth meet. This is the point where sin is dealt with. Animals would die to pay for the sins of the people, so that this perfect, blazing, holy, completely pure God can live amongst his sinful people.
And if you look at the end of chapter 43, we see the effect that the altar has. Verse 27:
"At the end of these days, from the eighth day on, the priests are to present your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings on the altar. Then I will accept you, declares the Sovereign Lord."
What wonderful words for the exiles to hear. These are people that God had rejected — and from this time on, he would accept them, because of burnt offerings on the altar.
Now, as I say, this temple never got built. That was never the plan — Ezekiel himself could see that. But here’s what did happen: Jesus happened. He is the new temple.
We had John chapter 2 read. Jesus says he will raise a new temple in three days, which John says is his resurrection body — which means if we want to meet God today, we don’t go to a place. We go to a person. We go to Jesus. Jesus is the new altar.
Hebrews 13 verse 10 says that we have an altar at which the Old Testament priests had no access to it. We don't need an altar 18 feet high. Jesus sacrificed himself to deal with our sin. Heaven and earth meet at the cross of Jesus, where he was lifted up from the earth as the centrepiece of God's plans. And when a person turns to Christ and follows him, God takes up residence in their hearts by his Spirit, so that our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit. One Corinthians chapter 6 verse 90.
But as good as that is, there is more to come, because Revelation 21 and 22 pick up on the language of these chapters and speak of what it will be like when Jesus returns, when God will really live amongst his people. And curiously, for all that the temple is central here in Revelation 21, we're told there will be no temple. And that's because there will be no need for boundaries, for separation, or for sacrifice — no need to keep out the common or stop the holy from sanctifying the ordinary — because we will be like God, and he will live with us forever. No boundaries now, more on those links to Revelation in the next two weeks, when they become even more into focus.
But there's a wonderful future these chapters hold out for us, hold out to the exiles in Babylon, hold out to us today — the day when God will live with his people in all his burning holiness and his utter perfection. The day when sinful people like us can know God living amongst us. And as this glowing estate agent with his tape measure and covered bamboo canes shows Ezekiel round, ask yourself: is this the house you would like to live in? Is this a future you would like to have as your future?
When you're shown around a house by an estate agent, if you like what you see, if you picture yourself there, it moves you, it affects what you do next, and you take the steps you need to take to make that future a reality.
So how does this vision of Ezekiel move us and affect us in the here and now today?
This vision strengthens our hope
And the answer is in two ways. The first is that it strengthens our hope. The people of God have been given this vision at the low point of their lives. God has rejected them, he's destroyed them, he's exiled them, and he wants to show them a future — that things will be good again and God will live among his people. And there are lots of clues in these chapters that God's plan and purpose is to strengthen their hope, to restore their confidence that he will indeed come to their aid. He wants to build their trust.
So note again the date God gave Ezekiel this vision — chapter 40 verse 1 — the 25th year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the 10th of the month.
So note the year. They've been in exile for 25 years. In the Old Testament, there was a Jubilee every 49 years when the land would be returned to its rightful owner. They've just passed the halfway point to the next Jubilee. Is God hinting that the land the Babylonians stole is about to be returned to its rightful owner?
Notice too the date on the calendar — it's the tenth day of the first month. Now if I said to you this said on the 25th day of December, you'd all get the point, wouldn't you? Tenth day of the first month — Passover. The day every year when they remembered how God miraculously rescued them from slavery in Egypt. On that very day, God gives a vision about how he'll rescue them in the future. He's rescued them before. He's lived among them before. He's given them the land before. He'll do it again. The good times will return.
Then there's the shape of these whole chapters. They're like a rerun of the first six books of the Bible — the references are all on your sheet — but in brief, here is Ezekiel 33 to 48.
God commissions Ezekiel to be his spokesman, announces he will save his people from a foreign power that has enslaved them. There is then described a battle in which their mightiest enemies will be decisively destroyed, never to be seen again. God then summons his spokesman to the top of a mountain, gives them plans for a sanctuary so he can live amongst his people. His glory enters the sanctuary before there are a series of rules to commission priests and sacrifices. God then describes the land and gives rules for the future king. And then the land is to be divided up between the 12 tribes — in the north first and then the south — and then the spokesman comes down off the mountain, having seen the future from afar but never actually lived to see it happen.
Now, am I describing Ezekiel 33–48, or am I describing the books of Exodus to Joshua? Yes — both. What God has done before, he will do again. All his promised blessings will come true.
So lift up your hearts, people of God. You may be discouraged by tough times, by your own sin and compromise, by the way God's people are attacked by their enemies, by how far away God's promises can seem. But God sent his estate agent to show Ezekiel round, to write this down and share with us. These chapters are your spiritual Rightmove — they're there to lift your hearts, to show you your future home, to boost your hope, to build your trust. This home will be yours. All that God has promised, all he has done to foreshadow God living amongst his people, will be done again.
Jesus Christ has died. Jesus Christ is risen. Jesus Christ will come again. Alleluia.
This vision transforms our lives
The second way we are to be moved and affected by this vision is to transform our lives.
Chapter 43 verse 10: Son of man, describe the temple to the people of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their sins. Let them consider its perfection. And if they are ashamed of all they've done, make known to them the design of the temple.
God tells us the effect these words are meant to have — they are meant to make Israel ashamed of their sins. That's not them hanging their heads, embarrassed. It's not them making token apologies for something that was done some years ago, even though it was nothing to do with them. No — they're to consider the perfection of the temple and then look at their own lives and to say, "My past life would exclude me from this wonderful future God has planned. Something wonderful — so it's time for a complete break from how I used to live, and time to get ready for what's coming."
And so for us, whenever you think of your life before you became a Christian, don't look back fondly. You don't want to go back to a day when you could spend your time, your money, your relationships however you wanted. Don't long for what you thought was freedom. Look back and say: never again. Not now I've seen what God is going to do.
And whenever the old ways start to creep in — when we start to mix our worship of God with the small-g gods that others worship — we're ashamed, and we turn from it. When we start to love our careers, our families, our comfort, our homes, our retirement, our holidays, our nation as rivals to our love for the Lord Jesus Christ — we're ashamed, and we turn from it. God and his purposes are too wonderful to mix like that.
Conclusion
So this is a wonderful vision — it's a tour of your new home by an angelic estate agent. And what a home. One in which God himself lives. The God of blazing beauty, dazzling holiness, does what needs to be done to live with sinful people like us.
And there are more details that come in the next two weeks. Come back, as we go out into the garden as well, as it were, and then look at the countryside round about.
This, brothers and sisters, is the gospel. This is the good news of Jesus Christ in these chapters. Sin was paid for on the altar of heaven. God will live with us and bless us in every way. Jesus will return and transform us totally and live with us physically.
So if you were here this morning as somebody who's not yet a Christian — you're still looking into this — this passage, this chapter, is calling for the same response as the gospel: repent and believe. Put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, pin your hopes on this house, and then let him start the process of transforming your life, ready for what's to come.
For those of us who do love and follow the Lord Jesus, this passage is designed — this vision is designed — to lift our hearts, to lift our spirits, to build our hope, to set our gaze on the future, on our future home. To make us long for home, knowing that God will do it.
But it's not just here to make us feel better — it's also to make us ashamed. Ashamed of our past. Ashamed of false gods that creep back into our lives. So that we start to live like those who are going home — and who are going home to this.