Having entered his new temple God symbolically locks himself in by declaring that the door he came through should be shut and never opened. He will never depart from his new temple. He then gives instructions about the priesthood that would serve in his new temple. Zadok, a priest in David and Solomon’s time, became the model priest due to his faithfulness to David and his descendants. That is the kind of priesthood that God is calling for in his sanctuary. Yet again, if we take the temple and the priesthood as symbols of greater things, then these instructions give us rich insight into what God has given us. The temple was always a symbol of the church and the priesthood a symbol of its members. Peter tells us that we are a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). We are the priesthood of God, whose hearts have been ‘circumcised’ by the Holy Spirit. God has not given us a mere inheritance of property but, as with the Levites in Israel, God gives himself to us and the ministry of the Spirit (see Joshua 18:7; Deuteronomy 10:9; 18:1). These prohibitions regarding the Levites owning property might seem harsh but in God’s economy it is like being denied bottles of spring water because we have been given the spring itself. Human beings find pleasure and even joy intermittently through what God has created. But when we receive the Holy Spirit the very source of all joy is deposited into our hearts. Whether we find joy in what we have been given depends on which kind of inheritance we will orient our hearts towards.
Ask God to lead you to greater joy.
Read Ezekiel 44
