bookends

The Word for today:
Ezekiel 40:48-41:26

The Bible often displays a balanced symmetry, which serves to focus our attention on the center.

The Temple described in Ezekiel is a bookend on the other side of the cross.

When you read the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, you will read all about the construction of the Tabernacle.

At the very heart of the Mosaic law is the sacrificial system, which was enacted in the Tabernacle. At the very heart of the sacrificail system was a lamb.

If you lived at the time, your Dad would purchase a lamb, a healthy, bounding fluffy lamb. For four days, the Lamb would live in your house, just long enough for you to get to know and love the lamb. Then, your Dad would take the lamb to the door of the Tabernacle and confess your family's sins over it. Then he would slit its throat.

The lamb would then be roasted on the altar of burnt offering.

That was a prophecy, looking ahead to when Jesus would save our souls.

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The final chapters of Ezekiel reveal that sacrifices will again be offered at the Temple during a time known as the Millennium, when Israel will reside here on the earth while the church will reside in New Jerusalem. These sacrifices are going to look back on the cross in the same way that the church looks back during the ritual of Communion.

The sacrifices will be a commemoration, looking back to when Jesus died to save the souls of Israel.

Then the picture will be complete, with the Tabernacle and Temple as bookends on either side of the Word made flesh.

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