16 “Thus says the Lord God: If the prince makes a gift to any of his sons as his inheritance, it shall belong to his sons. It is their property by inheritance. 17 But if he makes a gift out of his inheritance to one of his servants, it shall be his to the year of liberty. Then it shall revert to the prince; surely it is his inheritance—it shall belong to his sons. 18 The prince shall not take any of the inheritance of the people, thrusting them out of their property. He shall give his sons their inheritance out of his own property, so that none of my people shall be scattered from his property.”
Boiling Places for Offerings
19 Then he brought me through the entrance, which was at the side of the gate, to the north row of the holy chambers for the priests, and behold, a place was there at the extreme western end of them. 20 And he said to me, “This is the place where the priests shall boil the guilt offering and the sin offering, and where they shall bake the grain offering, in order not to bring them out into the outer court and so transmit holiness to the people.”
21 Then he brought me out to the outer court and led me round to the four corners of the court. And behold, in each corner of the court there was another court— 22 in the four corners of the court were small[c] courts, forty cubits[d] long and thirty broad; the four were of the same size. 23 On the inside, round each of the four courts was a row of masonry, with hearths made at the bottom of the rows all round. 24 Then he said to me, “These are the kitchens where those who minister at the temple shall boil the sacrifices of the people.”
There is a good deal in these past four chapters that is in a sense almost alien to our thinking, belonging to a world that has passed away, and as such not very applicable to us; but the point of it all is surely clear and certainly valid, namely that in the true worship of God, everything must be 'just right'; anything will not do, for it is the spirit of worship that is important. It is all too easy, in a Christian fellowship and in Christian service, to be tempted into the assumption that, so long as we are doing something, in some way it will do. And God says to us, through Ezekiel, 'Not so'. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 14:40, 'All things are to be done decently and in order', and the counterpart of these elaborate and somewhat unfamiliar instructions about the new Temple in these chapters is to be found in the Pauline instructions about proper behaviour in the house of God which we find particularly in the pastoral epistles (e.g. 1 Timothy 3:15). There can often be so much that is not 'in order' in a Christian fellowship, and we need to be constantly concerned to bring our attitudes to the judgment of the divine Word. As we see from these chapters, everything begins with the centrality of the altar - not any literal altar, but that on which we offer spiritual sacrifices to God as a chosen, peculiar people. When that is central, our worship will be spiritual and well-pleasing in His sight.