J Philip Bible Readings

44 Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east. And it was shut. ² And the Lord said to me, “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it. Therefore it shall remain shut. ³ Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before the Lord. He shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.”

⁴ Then he brought me by way of the north gate to the front of the temple, and I looked, and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord. And I fell on my face. ⁵ And the Lord said to me, “Son of man, mark well, see with your eyes, and hear with your ears all that I shall tell you concerning all the statutes of the temple of the Lord and all its laws. And mark well the entrance to the temple and all the exits from the sanctuary. ⁶ And say to the rebellious house, to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: O house of Israel, enough of all your abominations, ⁷ in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple, when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood. You have broken my covenant, in addition to all your abominations. ⁸ And you have not kept charge of my holy things, but you have set others to keep my charge for you in my sanctuary.

⁹ “Thus says the Lord God: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary. ¹⁰ But the Levites who went far from me, going astray from me after their idols when Israel went astray, shall bear their punishment. ¹¹ They shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the temple and ministering in the temple. They shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before the people, to minister to them. ¹² Because they ministered to them before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel, therefore I have sworn concerning them, declares the Lord God, and they shall bear their punishment. ¹³ They shall not come near to me, to serve me as priest, nor come near any of my holy things and the things that are most holy, but they shall bear their shame and the abominations that they have committed. ¹⁴ Yet I will appoint them to keep charge of the temple, to do all its service and all that is to be done in it.

¹⁵ “But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, shall come near to me to minister to me. And they shall stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the Lord God. ¹⁶ They shall enter my sanctuary, and they shall approach my table, to minister to me, and they shall keep my charge. 

The gate referred to in 3 was that by which the glory of the Lord had returned to Jerusalem and the Temple (43:4), and was therefore to be sacrosanct from human profanation, and only the prince was to be allowed to enter it. It is hardly surprising that Jewish commentators have referred this to the Messiah, and that tradition has associated it with the present golden gate in the East Wall of Old Jerusalem, which is thought to stand on the site of the closed gate of the first temple. In 4-9 the note of separation that sounds out very clearly can hardly be taken literally, for this would contradict the message of the New Testament. The real message here is the idea of the pollution of the house of God by profane things and people. It is when the Church of God today introduces alien things into its worship and service that the principle and heart of this word is violated. In our Lord's own day religious life had become so adulterated by such profanities that Jesus made a scourge of small cords and drove them out of the Temple. In 10-16, what is described is the downgrading and demotion of the Levites, brought about because of their unfaithfulness and idolatrous behaviour in the past. In the reconstituted temple their place is given to others, who are more worthy of it, the sons of Zadok. This is the principle echoed in more than one place in the New Testament, where disqualification is solemnly warned about (e.g. 1 Corinthians 3:12-15, 9:25-27; Matthew 21:43). It is a solemn warning that it is not all the same in the end whether or not we live faithfully to God and His service.