Ezekiel 43:7
and He said to me, "Son of man, this is the place of My throne and the place for the soles of My feet, where I will dwell among the Israelites forever. The house of Israel will never again defile My holy name--neither they nor their kings--by their prostitution and by the funeral offerings for their kings at their deaths.
Sermons
The Divine IndwellingJ.R. Thomson Ezekiel 43:7
Sunshine After StormJ.D. Davies Ezekiel 43:1-9
God's Unapproachable SovereigntyW. Clarkson Ezekiel 43:7-9














There peculiar solemnity in this utterance. The prophet has beheld the return of the Lord's glory to his house, and has seen its courts filled with the mystic luster. He stands in the ironer court, the attendant angel being by his side. And the voice of the Lord, mighty as the sound of many waters, addresses him as the son of man, and assures him that the Eternal. Spirit has now takes up a perpetual abode within his consecrated temple, and that those courts shall henceforth be pure from every defilement, and shall be holy unto the Lord.

I. THE FACT OF THE DIVINE INDWELLING. It appears that this is set forth under two metaphors, both just and impressive, yet, even when taken together, inadequate to set forth the great reality.

1. The Church is God's dwelling, his home, where he reveals himself in his compassion and kindness, and where he admits men to his sacred fellowship, upon terms of delightful, though reverent, intercourse and familiarity.

2. The Church is God's throne, whence he rules by the publication of his Divine and righteous laws, and the exercise of his just, irresistible, and yet benign authority. It is as though he were at once the Father of the spiritual family and the King of the spiritual dominion. He is, indeed, all this, and more than this, to the Church he loves and has redeemed.

II. THE ACCOMPANIMENTS OF THE DIVINE INDWELLING. These, as represented in this passage, are:

1. Deliverance from past idolatries, by which humanity has been defiled, degraded, and disgraced.

2. By implication, reverence for God's holy Name, displaying itself in holiness, in obedience, in praise. It was the expulsion of evil abominations which made the return of the Lord a possibility; it is the prevalence of holy worship and affectionate service which secures the lasting residence and reign of the great and glorious Inhabitant. - T.

The glory of the Lord filled the house.
Though God may forsake His people for a small moment, He will return with everlasting loving kindness. God's glory filled the house, as it had filled the tabernacle which Moses set up and thee temple of Solomon. Now we do not find that ever the Shekinah did in that manner take possession of the second temple, and therefore this was to have its accomplishment in that glory of the Divine grace which shines so brightly in the Gospel Church, and fills it. Here is no mention of a cloud filling the house as formerly, for we now with open face behold the glory of the Lord, in the face of Christ, and not as of old through the cloud of types.

( M. Henry.)

p with God: — The Spirit took Ezekiel up and brought him into the inner court, I want you to observe that while the prophet was in the inner court he saw the glory of God and heard God speaking to him. That inner court represents to us the innermost fellowship with God.

I. IN THE INNER COURT HE SAW THE GLORY OF GOD. You stand outside some great cathedral, looking at the large stained-glass window that is said to be of such immense value and noted for its exquisite loveliness. You have heard of its beautiful design, of its rich colouring and delicate shadings. But you are disappointed. All you can see is a dim, dull easement, blotched here and there. But that is because you have been judging it from the standpoint of the exterior of the building. In that position you can see no glory. Get into the interior, — into the inner court, and your opinion will suddenly change. The scientist, if an unbeliever, cannot see the glory of God in Nature as can the man who has been brought into the inner court of fellowship with God. The man in the outer court may see a great deal of beauty in natural phenomena, and a wonderful design in "the operations and effects of natural laws"; but there are beauties in Nature to the believer that far surpass those. Jonathan Edwards, speaking of his own experience of having enjoyed a wonderful sense of God's pardoning mercy, said, "The wisdom, purity, and love of God seemed to appear in everything: in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature, which greatly fixed my mind. I beheld the sweet glory of God in all these things, and in the meantime sang with a low voice my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer." As with Nature, so with Revelation. The Bible has been called a glorious temple. "When He the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth." There our Lord indicates the faculty of spiritual perception and interpretation. How little of the glory of God we have seen! How seldom, as by a mystic hand, are we led beyond the vestibule into the inner sanctuary of the Most High! There was a time when God, maintaining strict reserve, dwelt in a peculiar way in the Holy of Holies of the ancient Temple. On the mercy seat was the Shekinah — the great symbol of His presence and unapproachable glory — which burned and glowed perpetually in bright and vivid splendour. Before this was hung the closely woven veil. There was no admission save for the High Priest, and he might pass within but once a year. But now we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say His flesh." The High Priest of old could not look at the glory without seeing the blood that was sprinkled on the mercy seat. "The same blood, the same atonement by which we draw near to God, is the same by which we must remain in communion with God." "And," says the prophet Ezekiel, "the man stood by me." Jesus Christ, the God-Man, is the glory of God. "God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The Holy Spirit is the light of God that we may see Him.

II. WHILE EZEKIEL WAS IN THE INNER COURT, GOD SPAKE TO HIM. Few live in the higher condition of perpetual fellowship with the Father and the Son; but it is in that higher condition that the noblest faculties of the soul are brought into use, Habakkuk said, "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me" (Habakkuk 2:1). He would get above the crush and clamour of worldly things. As he who stands upon some eminence of cliff is not disturbed by the murmuring wavelets channelling the sands beneath, so the "lifted up" spirit, liberated from a narrow, mundane view, is unaffected by the carking cares which annoy and the anxieties which absorb the many, — the frettings which disturb serenity and scare away peace. We want to live above the corroding, cloying, flippant, superficial pleasures of time. We must get into a calm atmosphere, — the "sphere of silence," — the unbroken solitudes of "the heavenlies," if we are to hear His voice. Professor Smythe was engaged for some weeks in making astronomical observations on the Rock of Teneriffe. When he and his party descended from the height, they were surprised to find that a storm had been raging of which they had heard and seen nothing.

(A. W. Welch.)

People
Ezekiel, Israelites, Levites, Zadok
Places
Chebar, Holy Place
Topics
Age, Bodies, Carcases, Carcasses, Corpses, Dead, Deeds, Defile, Die, Dwell, Forever, Fornication, Harlotry, Holy, Idols, Israelites, Kings, Lewd, Lifeless, Longer, Loose, Midst, Places, Power, Prostitution, Resting-place, Seat, Soles, Sons, Throne, Unclean, Whoredom
Outline
1. The returning of the glory of God into the temple
7. The sin of Israel hindered God's presence
10. The prophet exhorts them to repentance and observation of the law of the house
13. The measures
18. and ordinances of the altar

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Ezekiel 43:7

     1210   God, human descriptions
     1513   Trinity, mission of
     2233   Son of Man
     7374   high places

Ezekiel 43:4-7

     7922   fellowship, with God

Ezekiel 43:6-9

     8807   profanity

Ezekiel 43:7-8

     5042   name of God, significance
     7348   defilement

Library
Solomon's Temple Spiritualized
or, Gospel Light Fetched out of the Temple at Jerusalem, to Let us More Easily into the Glory of New Testament Truths. 'Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Isreal;--shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out hereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof.'--Ezekiel 43:10, 11 London: Printed for, and sold by George Larkin, at the Two Swans without Bishopgate,
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

How the Impatient and the Patient are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 10.) Differently to be admonished are the impatient and the patient. For the impatient are to be told that, while they neglect to bridle their spirit, they are hurried through many steep places of iniquity which they seek not after, inasmuch as fury drives the mind whither desire draws it not, and, when perturbed, it does, not knowing, what it afterwards grieves for when it knows. The impatient are also to be told that, when carried headlong by the impulse of emotion, they act in some
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Ezekiel
To a modern taste, Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance; it was very largely from him that Judaism received the ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it was powerfully
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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