Today's chapters in Ezekiel continue the description of the new temple with incredible detail, including the priestly garments and sacrifices. At times, this seems to be the prescribed plan for the physical rebuilding of the temple (which happened a mere 70 years later in Ezra and Nehemiah's day), but at times, this is very obviously foretelling something that still hasn't happened.
Alicia did a great post on this last year, so I'll let you read her thoughts. My personal feeling is this is all yet to come. When I first read through Ezekiel the year before this Bible blog started, the sacrifices confused me. It all seemed to be foretelling Christ's millenial kingdom and yet the sacrifices had me stumped. But like Alicia points out in her post (quoting MacArthur, I believe), I discovered other Bible teachers who agree that these sacrifices will be ceremonial, not necessary for atonement. There were, after all, some prescribed sacrifices the Israelites made that had nothing to do with paying for their sins, but demonstrating their love and gratitude to God.
One point of interest from Ezekiel: just for the fun of it, I typed in "fell facedown" in Bible Gateway's search box because we see that phrase twice in these chapters. Of the 20 times it occurs in the Bible, there is only one account where it does NOT involve either the clear recognition of sin and/or fear of God's wrath in response to it, or reverence for His holiness. Nineteen times, it was God's holy presence or the fear of His judgement of sin that evoked this response. It is clear that when one recognizes he is in the physical presence of The Almighty, Most High God... he falls to his knees. Plain and simple. Even Balaam, who did not serve God, fell facedown when He realized he was in the presence of holiness.
Does this reinforce Paul's claim in Philippians that someday, at the name of Jesus EVERY knee ~ whether in heaven, on earth, or under the earth ~ will bow, and EVERY tongue will confess that He is Lord? I think so.
Moving on to the first chapter of 1 John, we find John addressing some false teaching. Apparently, some were teaching that people could claim a relationship with God despite living in obvious spiritual darkness. They also taught that people had no natural tendency toward sin and denied mankind's conduct contained any sin at all. So John argues that both of these are untrue, and points out these teachers were ignoring the basic truth that ALL people are sinners by nature AND by practice.
My Life Application Bible makes an interesting point about the Christian's need for confession here. My husband and I actually had an argument about this not that long ago and here I see we were both right, though I couldn't articulate my thoughts well enough to get my point across!
At conversion, all our sins are forgiven ~ past, present, and future. We agreed on this. But where we differed was the necessity to keep confessing sin and maintaining a posture of repentance. My husband was right in his argument that continuous confession and repentance after conversion isn't necessary. It isn't. Not for obtaining forgiveness, anyway. But had I known this passage better, I would have been able to argue that it is still necessary to maintain a vibrant, ever-growing relationship with God.
The believer's sins ~ confessed or otherwise ~ are covered once and for all by the blood of Christ, but left unconfessed, and compounded by additional unconfessed sins, they continuously widen the gap between the believer and God, deadening the relationship and gradually rendering the believer completely ineffective as a witness.
Confession isn't necessary for forgiveness,
but it's vital for fellowship.
Which is kinda like the idea of making ceremonial sacrifices in the millenial kingdom... :)
Tomorrow's readings: Ezekiel 45-46; 1 John 2
2 comments:
Great post Tammi. I noticed the exact same thing in my Life Application Bible as well!
I used to be in the camp of feeling to guilty I confessed my sins over and over and worried that I might forget something. That is so NOT what God wants for us. But when we are convicted of a sin in ours lives, the need to confess it is for our benefit! By confessing, we no longer deceive ourselves into thinking we don't have that issue to deal with, and we can come to God with a clean conscience.
star wars
Sorry... Mason wanted to type something.
I too was one to worry that I had to remember and confess each and every instance of sin. That is stressful! Understanding recently that my sins have all been forgiven already and confession of sins now is more for acknowledging and repenting on my part has been a huge relief.
Excellent post, Tammi.
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