Ezekiel 42:13
Then the man said to me, "The north and south chambers facing the temple courtyard are the holy chambers where the priests who approach the LORD will eat the most holy offerings. There they will place the most holy offerings--the grain offerings, the sin offerings, and the guilt offerings--for the place is holy.
Sermons
Separation and SocietyW. Clarkson Ezekiel 42:4-14
Sacerdotal SanctityJ.R. Thomson Ezekiel 42:13, 14














If the Jews were a peculiar, a consecrated, a holy people, it may be said that their sanctity was concentrated in the temple - the building which was "holiness unto the Lord," and in the holy priesthood, set apart for the ministrations of the sanctuary. The angel who showed Ezekiel the temple of vision laid great stress upon this characteristic of the marvelous and symmetrical building.

I. CEREMONIAL HOLINESS. This is exhibited as affecting:

1. The priests, who were set apart from the rest of the people. How should they be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord!

2. Their residences. During the period of their officiation in the temple services and sacrifices, they had their dwelling in certain chambers within the precincts, and these chambers were deemed holy places,

3. Their food. They are said to "eat the most holy things;" i.e. there were certain regulations as to food which were prescribed for them that had no reference to the people generally.

4. Their garments. The priests were provided with raiment which they were required to wear when ministering before the Lord. Holy functions necessitated holy vestments.

5. Their offerings. As the reader of this passage is reminded, it was the duty of the priests to present meal offerings, sin offering, and guilt offerings. As these were offered upon the holy altar to the holy God, they themselves were holy. It thus appears that everything connected with the position, the life, the ministrations, of the priests was marked by ceremonial sanctity.

II. THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CEREMONIAL HOLINESS. What was the purpose of all the arrangements described in this and other passages of Old Testament Scripture? Why was this artificial separation introduced into the religion and life of the Hebrew people? A complete answer to these questions is perhaps not possible. But it is evident that it was intended to convey to Israel and to mankind:

1. A conception of the holy nature of God. Very different was the character claimed for himself by Jehovah from the character attributed to the deities of the heathen nations around. Whilst these deities were disfigured by selfishness, cruelty, and lust, Jehovah's attributes were righteousness, holiness, and benevolence. Everything connected with the worship of God, as practiced in the temple at Jerusalem, was adapted to convey to men's minds the idea of God's infinite and spotless holiness.

2. A conception of the holy character of acceptable worship. Concerning idolatrous worship, we know that it was distinguished by perfunctoriness and superstition, and in some cases by impurity. Religious rites among the heathen are usually corrupt, or else mechanical and spiritually valueless. On the contrary, the worship of the true Hebrew, as is evident to the attentive reader of the Book of Psalms and of the prophets, was a sincere, holy, and spiritual worship. It was well understood that no other worship could be acceptable to the holy and heart-searching King of kings. And the arrangements described in this passage of the Book of Ezekiel were evidently adapted to produce and to deepen this impression.

3. A conception of the holy services of obedience and praise. Sacrifices were enjoined and required of the pious Hebrew; but sacrifices were not the only or the chief services to be presented by the devout worshipper. In connection with these, and beyond these, were the offerings which God ever delights to accept from his own people - spiritual offerings of devotion and of active services. And if these are distinguished by one characteristic above another, that characteristic is true holiness. - T.

And there was an enlarging, and a winding about still upward.
As the temple ascended in height, so it still was wider and wider; even from the lowest chambers to the top. And this was to show us that God's true Gospel temple, which is His Church, should have its enlargedness of heart still upward, or most for spiritual and eternal things (Isaiah 55:5; Colossians 3:1). Indeed it is the nature of grace to enlarge itself still upward, and to make the heart widest for the things that are above. The temple, therefore, was narrowest downwards, to show that a little of earth or this world should serve the Church of God. One may say of the fashion of the temple, as some say of a lively picture, "it speaks." I say, its form and fashion speaks; it says to all saints, to all the Churches of Christ, Open your hearts for heaven, be ye enlarged upward. I read not in Scripture of any house, but this that was enlarged upwards, nor is there anywhere, save only in the Church of God, that which doth answer this similitude. All others are widest downward, and have the largest heart for earthly things. The Church only has its greatest enlargements towards heaven.

( John Bunyan.)

People
Ezekiel
Places
Holy Place
Topics
Approach, Area, Cells, Cereal, Chambers, Courtyard, Eat, Error, Facing, Front, Grain, Guilt, Guilt-offering, Holy, Lay, Meal, Meal-offering, Meat, Meat-offering, North, Oblation, Offering, Offerings, Opposite, Placed, Present, Priests, Rooms, Separate, Sin, Sin-offering, South, Temple, Trespass, Trespass-offering, Yard
Outline
1. The chambers for the priests
13. The use thereof
15. The measures of the outward court

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Ezekiel 42:13

     6636   drawing near to God
     7370   guilt offering
     7444   sin offering

Ezekiel 42:1-20

     5207   architecture

Library
Mount Moriah
"Wherefore is it called mount Moriah? R. Levi Bar Chama and R. Chaninah differ about this matter. One saith, Because thence instruction should go forth to Israel. The other saith, Because thence should go forth fear to the nations of the world." "It is a tradition received by all, that the place, where David built an altar in the threshing-floor of Araunah, was the place where Abraham built his, upon which he bound Isaac; where Noah built his, when he went out of the ark: that in the same place was
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

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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