Where does God live? (Wk 12 Ezekiel)

The book of Ezekiel begins with a vision from God in the Babylonian plains. It ends with a vision from God returning in his glory to dwell with his people.

Our last class Wednesday night paralleled the symbols in Ezekiel with the symbols in Revelation. Scrolls, creatures, rainbows, seals, numbers, Gog and Magog, New Jerusalem, river of life…

What do they mean?

I’m not exactly sure. I am sure, though, that no one else fully knows either. Not now anyway. Some contemporaries of Ezekiel and John surely understood. But us? Not so much.

So what’s the point? Why read something we can’t understand?

• Because it’s in the Bible for a reason
• Because we can understand part of it
• Because we learn about the wretchedness of man in it
• Because we learn about the holiness of God in it

And because it’s worth reading to get to the last verse:
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.
Ezekiel 48:35

If there’s anything I learned from Ezekiel, it’s that God goes to great lengths to be with his people. He’ll purify us at all costs so that his holiness can dwell among us.

He is with us.

And he cares.
He cares when someone makes fun of us, and he cares when we make fun of someone.
He cares about how we honor his name, and he cares about the ways we degrade it.

He is with us (Matthew 1:23). In all his holiness and justice and compassion and wrath.

With us in the new temple? Literally, no. Spiritually, yes. Now and later. The perfect new temple that Ezekiel was shown has never been built with human hands.

It’s not in Israel. It’s not in Jerusalem. It’s in “The LORD-Is-There.”

Here. With us.

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More Ezekiel notes
Class outline