Scripture
Then the Spirit took me up and brought me into the inner courtyard, and the glory of the LORD filled the Temple.
~Ezekiel 43:5, NLT
Quote
We sing and speak about God’s glory but can we really define it?
~Ya’akov
If I understand correctly, both Isaiah and Ezekiel saw God’s glory fill the temple is a vision. In Exodus 40, Moses could not enter the Tabernacle because the cloud had settled down over it, and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle. What does the glory of God look like? The cloud that Moses saw {the shekinah glory cloud} was a thick, heavy cloud. The Hebrew word translated glory actually means ‘heavy.’ Think about all the virtues: truth, justice, mercy, kindness, love, etc. God is heavy in all of these to the infinite degree. In quality and quantity, God is infinitely greater than man in all virtues. To be honest, I can’t relate to Moses, Isaiah or Ezekiel but I have something even greater for you to imagine.
God gave Moses the design for the Tabernacle, the tent where he meet with God but God never instructed him to build a temple. The LORD knew the Jews would worship such a structure instead of worshiping Him and that is exactly what happened. David was intent on building the LORD a temple and God allowed it during the reign of Solomon. It was to be a place where God manifest His presence but of course the Jews turned it into a market place for making money. At best, it was a shadow of the real TEMPLE, the one not make by hands. The REAL TEMPLE is and always has been Jesus. One of the great things about holy week is that Jesus entered Jerusalem, He cleansed the Temple and He set up shop by turning the Temple into a place of healing and teaching. In other words, He filled this stone edifice with His holy presence. Of course, the Jews are slow learners and they didn’t get it. When the Jews demanded a sign Jesus said, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews went ape with that comment, “What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?” As you can see, they missed the point completely because they were focused on a man made building instead of being focused on God Himself. Jesus, the true Temple was standing right in front of them and they couldn’t see the truth.
But this is not the best part; the best part is that the disciples, the followers of Christ got to see the GLORY of God fill the TEMPLE [Christ]. Jesus, Son of David, was filled with God and as Hebrews 1:3 states, The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and He sustains everything by the mighty power of His command. Can you imagine such an experience? Living in the presence of a perfect human for three years. No wonder John said, And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. Wow, I can only imagine!
The Covid has hit Danville for sure. Every adult in our family has now tested positive except Hannah and I hope she is immune. It affected different people different ways but it appears to me that it is harder on the more mature {older folks like me}. It is having an impact of Grace Point for the first time. Mike Childers and Dewayne Bennich are both battling the virus. Pray for them along with Joe David and Momar. This thing can work on your body and your mind. You would think with all this time at home, I could have read several books and prepared several sermons: it didn’t work like that–it rendered me dysfunctional in that regard. I have struggled just to do the blog and some of them have been pretty pathetic. I had this ready to post around 8:00 and our power went off and stayed off for more than an hour.
Have a great day!