Tag: made anew

I feel like I’m going back to the book of Exodus, plowing through these chapters.

Here, as in Exodus, we see extremely detailed information for the temple (albeit in Exodus, it was a tabernacle, not a temple).

With the current temple in ruins and stripped of all its glory, and with the Spirit of God himself departed from the temple, God here gives Ezekiel a vision of a new temple.

And in painstaking detail (and I mean painstaking) he talks about all the dimensions of this new temple, as well as a description of what it would look like.

Then in chapter 43, Ezekiel sees the glory of God return to the temple.

As God once had departed from the east (Ezekiel 10:18–19), he now returns from the east and fills the whole temple with his glory.

And God told Ezekiel,

Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever.

The house of Israel will never again defile my holy name…

Now let them put away from me their prostitution and the lifeless idols of their kings, and I will live among them forever. (Ezekiel 43:7, 9)

What can we take from this?

We were all created to have a relationship with God. We were created to be inhabited by his Spirit and to be his temple.

But by our sins we defiled this temple of our body that God built, and we were living in separation from God. As a result, this life God gave us was in ruins.

But when we turn to God, he clears away the ruins of our lives and makes us anew. He puts his Spirit in us and we become his temple as he intended from the very beginning.

And now God tells us the same thing he told the Israelites. As Paul wrote,

We are the temple of the living God.

As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

“Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

“I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:16–18)

And again,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?

You are not your own; you were bought at a price.

Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

By the blood of Jesus, we have been made anew and have become his temple.

So let us put aside our past sins, walking every day in relationship with the God who saved us.