The
Millennial Temple – From Ichabad to Chabod
“How can a young man
cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word,” Psalm 119:9.
“Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee,” Psalm
119:11. “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path,” Psalm
119:105. “Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them in truth, Thy Word is
truth,” John 17:17. “For the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word
of our God shall stand forever,” Isaiah 40:8.
Before we get started
we’ll have a few moments of silent prayer so that you can make sure that you
are in fellowship and ready to focus on the Word so that God the Holy Spirit
can empower you in your spiritual life and spiritual growth and understanding
of the Word. Let’s bow our heads together and go to the Lord in prayer.
Our Father, we’re
also very grateful for Your grace in our lives; that You have given us
everything that we need for life and godliness. You have given us a salvation
that is complete that is not dependent in any way upon our owe efforts but is
dependent solely upon the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The only issue is
what do we think about Jesus? Believing in Him for eternal life. Now Father, as
we study Your Word and continue our study in terms of Your plan for our lives,
Your plan for history, we pray that You might continue to enlighten us as we
come toward the end of this study. We pray this in Christ’s Name, Amen.
If you want to open
your Bibles you can open them to Ezekiel 43, but we’re really not going to look
specifically at one text this evening. However, just as a word of sort of
warning and encouragement. What we are covering tonight fits and builds upon
what we studied last Tuesday night dealing with the spiritual life in the
Millennium and getting into the Millennial temple, but it also fits and builds
on what we studied on sacrifice on Thursday night. So since that sacrifice
lesson on Thursday night is a sort of a stand-alone message for those who are
listening and this is just out as part of the series and they can go listen to
that as well to get more insight into this topic related to sacrifice. I am
calling this lesson Millennial Temple from Ichabod to Chabod. The word chabod in
Hebrew is the word for “glory”, and when the ark of the covenant was captured
by the Philistines it was said to be ichabod. The “I” prefix in Hebrew means “no
glory.” When the glory of the LORD departed from the temple in 586 B.C. it has yet to return and does not
return until we’re in the Millennium with the millennial temple. We will at
that point go from ichabod, no glory of God on the earth, to chabod.
This is an artist
depiction of the size of the temple during the millennial kingdom. The temple
plus the New Jerusalem will encompass about a 2,500 square mile area. That is
an enormous area. The temple precinct itself measures about 50 miles square,
which is much larger than the old city of Jerusalem. At the center of that is
the temple court itself, which measures a mile square. When we come to a study
of the Scripture this is a controversial area related to how to understand this
section of Ezekiel 40–48. We have nine chapters that describe a future
temple and the operations of that future temple. It talks about the necessity
of the future temple and the reality of that future temple. It also talks about
the priesthood that will serve in that future temple. There is actually a
restoration of an active Levitical priesthood and the restoration of animal
sacrifices. That is really the most important, the most controversial area as
we will see. The Scriptures make it clear that there is going to be a future
temple. I talked about this last week. There are four temples:
1. The first is
Solomon’s temple, which was destroyed in 586 B.C.
2. The second temple
was much more modest and was built by Zerubbabel when you had the early return
under Zerubbabel from Babylon in 538 B.C. They built the temple and dedicated the temple in 516 B.C.
That was the temple
that was modified and rebuilt to a much grander level by Herod the Great. In
fact, it was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world because of what
he had done. One of the facts that I haven’t covered is that we often hear the
fact that we read in Scriptures that they had not finished the temple in John
1. It indicates that it’s not completed yet in John 2. But the temple itself,
the inner sanctum, the main sanctuary was completed by 16–17 B.C. That part had been completed. Some of
the additional buildings, the courtyard, additional aspects was not completed
until somewhere around A.D. 42–43. The centerpiece was completed much earlier,
long before the birth of Christ. It is called the second temple throughout that
whole period from 516 B.C. all the way until its destruction in A.D. 70 because the sacrifices never
stopped. There was a continual daily sacrifice through that period. Herod’s
temple is simply a renovation and expansion of the temple of Zerubbabel.
3. There will be a
third temple, the Tribulation temple, which will be an apostate temple. That is
described in passages like Daniel 9:26–27; 2 Thessalonians 2:4.
4. There will be a
fourth temple which is the greatest temple. That’s the one that is built by the
Lord Jesus Christ at the beginning of the millennial kingdom. That is the one
we are talking about. Passages like Isaiah 11:9 talk about this future temple.
In Isaiah 11:9 the LORD says, “They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all My holy mountain” and that is a reference to the location of the temple.
In the Tribulation period there are going to be an enormous number of
geological upheavals. There are going to be these massive earthquakes that take
place not only in the Middle East, but all around the world. There are going to
be earthquakes in Jerusalem. As a result of this, the topography is going to be
radically changed from what we see today. There’ll be a massive uplift that
takes place at the end of the Tribulation period and this will raise an area
plateau, which will be the location for the millennial temple.
We looked at
passages like Isaiah 2:2, “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the
mountain of the LORD’S house” this emphasizes again that this
is the temple. The LORD’S house references the temple. In Isaiah
2:3 we read that many people shall say come and let us go up to the mountain of
the LORD’s to the house of the God of Jacob.
Passages like Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:3 also talk about the spiritual life in
the Millennium is going to be based upon God the Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 39:29;
Joel 2:28–29). All these passages reinforce the fact that it’s going to
be a distinctive period, a distinctive spiritual life, although it is energized
and empowered by God the Holy Spirit, it is to a greater degree and a different
manifestation than what we see today. So we can’t draw analogies. I think in
the past there have been a number of dispensational theologians who have drawn
too tight a connection and I think it is going to be very, very different.
But the real
controversial area comes when we talk about the situation with the sacrifices
and the restoration of animal sacrifices. The reason is that when we look at
Hebrews 4–7 it seems like there is a very strong statement there that the
sacrificial system has ended because Christ has finally paid for sin and He
has. But what we have to come to understand as we discuss this is the issue of
this terminology that is used in the Old Testament to describe the function of
the sacrificial system in the Millennial Kingdom and that revolves around the
main word, which is “atonement. Let me just give you a glimpse of some of the
statements that are made against dispensationalism and in opposition to the
idea that there are going to be literal animal sacrifices in the kingdom:
1. The first quote is
from Floyd Hamilton who has written several books against dispensationalism. He
said, “the restoration of the whole sacrificial system seems to dishonor the
sacrifice of Christ…. According to a literal interpretation of Ezekiel
40–48 the whole ceremonial law is to be again set up in Israel.”
Notice how even
amillennialists recognize that if you’re going to hold to a literal
interpretation of Scripture that that means that there will be a restoration of
the sacrificial system in the future millennial kingdom because they’ve
developed a theological conclusion based on their study of Hebrews 4–7 as
well as their theological amillennial system and their partial allegorical
system of interpretation. When they come to a passage that doesn’t fit their system
they just, oh, we’re not going to interpret that literally. We’re going to
interpret it figuratively. That is what happens.
2. Philip Edgcumbe
Hughes who used to teach at Westminster Seminary stated, “to restore all these
today… would be apostasy.”
3. Another
well-known amillennial writer was Oswald Allis who was a professor at
Westminster Seminary back in the 1930s and 1940s wrote, “It is true that the
Old Testament predictions of the restoration of the temple and of the Mosaic
ceremonial law have occasioned them no little embarrassment…. Literally
interpreted, this means the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and of the
Mosaic ritual of sacrifices…. The author to the Hebrews warns his readers most
earnestly against returning to this system which has been done away.”
Well, it has and it
hasn’t. We have to look at what the Scripture teaches and what the Scripture
says about these particular things. Several years ago now, Tommy Ice was being
interviewed by Hank Hanegraaff on the radio show the Bible Answer Man. Right in the middle of
the interview Hanegraaff, for some reason, asked Tommy if he believed that
there would be a restoration of sacrifices in the millennial kingdom. When
Tommy said yes, Hanegraaff called him an apostate over the air and a heretic.
This is a real division between dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists.
But it comes back to, “How do you interpret Scripture?” It is very important to
work our way through this systematically.
As I pointed out
earlier, there’s this emphasis on a restored future temple. What is a temple? A
temple is a place where the Divine dwells upon the earth. In the Old Testament
you had an interesting pattern that takes place. God begins to dwell upon the
earth in the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden was planted east of Eden. Eden
is viewed as the dwelling place of God upon the earth. I believe that after the
sin, when man is kicked out of the Garden and this army of cherubs is placed
around the Garden, that God’s presence is still there. There is no system of adjudication
or law established to govern the affairs of man between the fall and the flood.
I believe that God still adjudicated the affairs of man. You have a statement
in Genesis 6 translated wrongly in the King James Version that “My Spirit will
not strive with man anymore.” It should be translated, “My Spirit will not
abide with man.” The word that is used there in the Hebrew is what’s called the
HAPAX LEGOMENON, which is a fancy Latin term for a word
that is only used one time anywhere; but it has parallel cognates in other
languages which mean “to dwell or abide.” It doesn’t have the idea in any other
language of “strive.” That was just a guess on the part of the translators of
the King James Version.
It indicates that
there is a presence of God still upon the earth. Enoch did what? Enoch, who was
the great grandfather of Noah, walked on the earth with God. God walked with
him and one day “Enoch was not, for God took him.” You clearly have this
indication that God’s presence is still on the earth. It left at the flood.
When does it come back? At the tabernacle on Mt. Sinai. When God’s presence
comes in the year after He gave the Law and they completed the building and
construction of the tabernacle. Then the Shekinah, the dwelling presence of God, came
upon the earth and took up residence in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle
and then in the first temple. Ezekiel describes the departure of that presence
in Ezekiel. It was gradual. He sees the Shekinah leaving the Holy of Holies and going
to the outer gate and then going across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of
Olives. Then going up to the top of the Mount of Olives and ascending, which is
roughly the same thing that happened with Jesus when He left. He follows that same
pattern.
Then you have the
presence of God leaving in 586 B.C. or prior to 586 B.C. leaving Jerusalem open to judgment. Then you have the
dwelling presence of God which occurs that very first Christmas when the Second
Person of the Trinity is born upon the earth. Then you have the dwelling
presence of God in the incarnation in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ
during His time upon the earth. Then when He ascended He sent what? Another
Comforter of the same kind who indwells us and makes our body a temple for the
dwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is going to end when the Rapture occurs and
the church, the body of Christ, all the believers whose bodies are the temple
of the Holy Spirit, are taken out of the earth, and then there is no dwelling
presence of God upon the earth during the Tribulation period until the Lord
Jesus Christ returns at the Second Coming.
4. Then He is back
dwelling upon the earth and establishes this fourth temple (the millennial
temple).
It looks forward to
this. It all fits together in a pattern that God wants to dwell with His
creatures and have fellowship with His creatures. We see indications of the
prophesy for this house of the LORD in a number of different passages, Joel 3:18 looks forward
and says, “It will come to pass in that day” speaking about the millennial
kingdom, “that the mountains shall drip with new wine, the hills shall flow
with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water.” It is not
exactly the scenario that you see in Israel today even during the rainy season.
“A fountain shall flow from the house of the LORD.” That is the temple. It is interesting
that there is a spring deep below the surface of Mount Moriah, which is were
the Dome of the Rock is located, where the temple was located. At one time
there was actually a spring that could be accessed from the top of Mount
Moriah. Isaiah 60:13, “The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the
pine, and the box tree together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary.” Again
emphasizing this future dwelling place of God upon the earth.
Isaiah 56:6–7:
Isaiah 56:7, God says, “Even them I will bring to My holy mountain.” This is a
reference to the location of the temple in the millennial kingdom. “I will
bring them to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices.” Now notice, here is where we start
getting indications that when we get into the millennial kingdom there will be
sacrifices. It is not just Ezekiel 40–48 that talks about a restoration
of the Levitical priesthood and the sacrificial system, but it is indicated in
a number of other Old Testament prophecies as well. “Their burnt offerings and
their sacrifices will be accepted on My altar.” There is going to be an altar.
There is going to be burnt offerings, and that is the first type of offering
that’s described in Leviticus 1. That was the type of offering that Abraham was
supposed to give of Isaac. It’s a burnt offering. Everything is put upon the
altar once it is killed. Everything is burnt up indicating complete and total
devotion and dedication to God. Isaiah 56:6–7 indicates the function of
this temple will also include burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Haggai, another book
you probably read way too much over the course of your spiritual life. Some of
you probably wonder, wait a minute, I think I saw that in the table of contents
one time. Haggai 2:7, God says, “I will shake all nations, and they shall come
to the Desire of All Nations,” which is another title for the Lord Jesus
Christ, “and I will fill this temple with glory,” says the LORD God. That is talking about the
millennial temple. Haggai 2:9, “The glory of this latter temple shall be
greater than the former … ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the LORD of hosts.” It is clear that there is
going to be this future temple. We look forward to that future temple and that
future temple will include a unique priesthood. The next thing we want to do is
just understand the significance of this future priesthood because the Bible
talks about that this is going to be a Zadokite priesthood. A lot of people
don’t understand what’s so great about this Zadokite priesthood. Who is Zadok?
It is not the
jewelry store that you find down in the Galleria area. This is probably related
to the same family. They are descendants. That family name probably indicates
that they are in the line of Zadok and they are probably in the line of
Levitical priests. Hebrew or Jewish names like Cohen or Cowen or Levi; these
are all family names that would indicate a heritage within the tribe of Levi.
Let’s just understand how this fits together in terms of God’s plan for the
Aaronic priesthood.
Aaron is the older
brother of Moses, who went with Moses when he went to challenge the Pharaoh. I
don’t know if they have Aaron anywhere in the new Exodus: Gods, and Kings movie. Has
anybody seen that yet? Nobody has seen that yet? [Someone from congregations
says “It’s horrible!” yet has not seen it….] Do you always believe what you
read? I want somebody who is an eyewitness, not somebody who is a secondary
witness. That doesn’t carry weight. I want somebody who’s actually seen it. No,
we have got to go with eyewitness reports.
Exodus 40:13–15.
Aaron’s priesthood is established and we have his consecration and his
anointing. Exodus 40:13–15 “You shall put the holy garments on Aaron, and
anoint him and consecrate him,” that means to set him apart; “that he may
minister to Me as priest. And you shall bring his sons and clothe them….” His
sons Eleazar and other sons like Ithamar are going to be brought and clothed as
well as Korah [from the line of Levi]. “You shall anoint them, as you anointed
their father, that they may minister to Me as priests; for their anointing
shall surely” last for how long? To “be an everlasting priesthood throughout
their generations.” There is this indication in Exodus 40 that this is an
everlasting priesthood. In other places where we talk about the Abrahamic
covenant, the Davidic covenant, the New covenant, the Land covenant being
everlasting covenants, we always interpret that as being something that is
going to go on for eternity. Here we see that there is a promise being made to
Aaron that his descendants will be an everlasting priesthood. We have to
investigate that a little bit.
I know I told you to
open your Bibles to Ezekiel and you can hold your place there. I want you to
turn to Numbers 25. We’ve gone through an extensive study of covenants in the
OT. Those covenants begin with the Creation or Edenic covenant. The next
covenant is what? The Adamic covenant in Genesis 3. The next covenant is the
Noahic covenant in Genesis 9. The next covenant is the Abrahamic covenant in
Genesis 15 and Genesis 17 primarily; indicated or foreshadowed in Genesis 12.
That promise is three things: land, seed, and blessing. The land is expanded on
in the Land covenant in Deuteronomy 29–30. The Davidic covenant is in 2
Samuel 7. The New covenant is in Jeremiah 31–33. Those are the covenants.
Guess what? There is another eternal covenant mentioned in the Bible. One that
I don’t think I’ve ever taught. We are going to spend some time looking at
this. We are in Numbers 25.
Numbers 25 is one of
those bizarre little episodes that occur in the OT that just drives liberals
crazy. They point out what a terrible God we have and all these other things
because they don’t understand the significance of being set apart to God and
the role of Israel as a priest nation in the OT. What happens is that this is
after the situation with Balaam. Balaam is the prophet that Balak tried to
bribe to curse Israel. There were the three different visions related to the
oracles of Balaam. Finally, Balaam just couldn’t curse Israel because God
wouldn’t let him. So he came up with a scheme that would bring about the
destruction of Israel. That scheme was to get them involved in sexual sin that
was a compromise of their religious beliefs. This would then destroy the purity
of Israel and they could eventually be wiped out. Balaam told Balak what he had
in mind and this is what is described in Numbers 25.
We look at Numbers
25 and what we see is that this takes place in a location identified in Numbers
25:1 as the acacia grove, which is just below Mount Nebo. For those of you who
went to Israel recently, when we stood on Mount Nebo we were looking down. As
you look to the north, probably about 8–10 miles, that would be the
location of where Israelites crossed over the river Jordan. This is near that
location. At this point the Moabites had trotted out all of their women to
entice and seduce the Israelite men in sexual immorality; but it wasn’t just
about sex. It was about religion because the prominent cult at that time was
what we refer to as the fertility cult and it is manifested in the worship of
Baal, and there are different Baals related to different cities, and the
worship of the Asherah. All of this is involved in these various fertility
religions. They were enticed by the women of Moab to these sexual fertility
rituals, which indicates that it wasn’t just about sex. It was about completely
abandoning Yahweh
in favor of Baal of Peor.
We read in Numbers
25:2, “they invited the people to
the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.”
It was a huge sexual orgy. Numbers 25:3, “and Israel was joined to Baal of Peor
and the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel.” One of the ways this is
manifested, we infer from a few verses later, is that God brought a plague upon
them and 24,000 are killed during that plague. This is a religious act where
they have committed treason against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who
rescued them from slavery in Egypt. They are now giving their devotion to the
fertility god, Baal. This is part of this ancient practice of worshiping god
for fertility, for productivity, and it’s the ancient version of the modern
prosperity gospel heresy. God is going to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise.
This is just the ancient version of that heresy.
For those who were
involved in this in Numbers 25:4 (KJV), God demanded that all of the leaders
of the people were to be hanged. In the NKJV it states but rather the leaders of the
people were to hang all of “the offenders before the LORD, out in the sun, that the fierce anger
of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” What happens is that this is
like a cancer and God says you’ve got to go in and do radical surgery and
completely amputate these people from the body of the congregation of Israel.
That is what they did. As we read through this, Numbers 25:5, Moses says to the
judges of Israel, “Everyone of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of
Peor.” Numbers 25:6–7 “And indeed, one of the children of Israel” while
he is instructing this there is this probably a drunk Israelite with his
Midianite religious prostitute and he starts pulling her out in front of the
congregation and showing her off to everybody and bragging about it. And
immediately Phinehas or in Hebrew it is Phineas; “Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son
of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a spear in his
hand” and very graphically he goes into the tent where this man is copulating
with this religious prostitute and he drives the spear through both of them. He
just skewers them in one swoop and executes them both.
The conclusion is at
the end of Numbers 25:8–9, “So the plague was stopped among the children
of Israel. And those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand.” Because
Phineas understood his role as a priest to execute the sinners and to bring
God’s judgment upon the people, God rewards him with an everlasting covenant in
Numbers 25:12. This is the only other eternal covenant I am aware of in the
Scripture and I’ve never taught it. In Numbers 25:12–13 we read,
“Therefore say, ‘Behold I give to him My covenant of peace;' ” The I who is
speaking is God, Yahweh,
and the one He is speaking about is Phineas. “I give to him My covenant of
peace; and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an
everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement
for the children of Israel.” What did he do? There is that word kfr, which we
will look at again in just a minute. It means to bring cleansing to people. Not
this idea of paying the price for sin, but cleansing.
This is one of the
important words for understanding this whole debate. It is that for a long time
we have misunderstood the significance of the Hebrew word kfr. Often it’s been translated as “to
cover.” It is actually two words. They are homonyms or homophones and one word
does mean “to cover.” That is used in Genesis 6 when Noah covered the ark with
pitch. But this word doesn’t mean cover. I will show you why in just a little
bit. It has the idea of cleansing or purification. He has “cleansed” the people
from their sin because of the way he fulfilled the command of God. What is
significant about this is that Aaron had several sons. The two that this chart
focuses on are Eleazar and Ithamar. Ithamar is serves as high priest and his
line goes down through Eli. We are going to go over this again when we get into
our study on 1 Samuel, but Eli is the high priest at the time of Samuel, at the
beginning of the book of 1 Samuel. Eli has two extremely rebellious apostate
sons, Hophni and Phineas. It is at that time that Eli is high priest that the
Israelites are going to lose the ark in battle to the Philistines. This is why
Phineas’ wife gives birth, and because the ark is taken that child is called
Ichabod, “no glory.”
That line, going
from Ithamar down through Eli, goes down through Ahimelech and Abiathar.
Abiathar is removed from the priesthood at the time when Solomon ascends to the
throne. On the other side, as a descent from Eleazar through Phinehas I, the
covenant that I just spoke about, at the time Abiathar had also violated
David’s trust and that is why Solomon removes him from the high priesthood.
Abiathar had disobeyed David and had gone with Absalom. The high priesthood is
given to Zadok. Zadok is in the direct line of Eleazar. It is the descendants
of Zadok, the Zadokites, that are the ones who represent the purity of the
priesthood. Zadokite priests dominated the high priesthood until 586 B.C. when the temple was destroyed. Then when
the Israelites returned from the captivity in 538 B.C. the new high priest was still a
Zadokite until you get to the time of the Hasmoneans. After the Maccabean
revolt with the rise of the Hasmonean rulers, they would appoint high priests
on the basis of their political agenda. They were no longer concerned about
their purity or their Zadokite descent. That gives you this background.
There will be a
restoration of that Zadokite priesthood in the millennial kingdom, emphasizing
the purity of that future priesthood. Ezekiel clearly states that the restored
priesthood in the future is going to be that of the Zadokite priesthood.
Ezekiel 40:46 and Ezekiel 44:15. We’re told in Ezekiel 40:46, “The chamber
which faces north is for the priests who have charge of the altar; these are
the sons of Zadok, from the sons of Levi.” This is a fulfillment of that
everlasting covenant with Phineas. In Ezekiel 44:15 they are the ones who
“shall stand before Me.” The verse begins, “But the priests, the Levites, the
sons of Zadok, who kept charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went
astray form Me, they shall come near Me to minister to Me; and they shall
stand” Where? “before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood.” This is talking
about the millennial kingdom. There is definitely going to be the animal
sacrifices again affirmed by the role of the priesthood.
What do we see as we
go into our study? We see a restoration of the Levitical priesthood, but there
are these various prophecies related to a millennial temple, as well as
prophecies of future sacrifices outside of Ezekiel. This doesn’t stand or fall
with Ezekiel 40–48. There are references to a restoration of the temple
and a restoration of animal sacrifices in other places. The four passages on the
slide in terms of prophecies of a restored Millennial temple are Joel 3:18;
Isaiah 2:3; Isaiah 60:13; Haggai 2:7; Haggai 2:9. Some of those we have looked
at already; some of them we haven’t. Then there are prophecies of future
sacrifices in Isaiah 56:6–7; Isaiah 60:7; Jeremiah 33:17–18 is a
crucial central passage; and Zechariah 14:16–21.
What we should
understand as we talk about this is the central role that sacrifices play
within what I’ll call for lack of a better term right now, biblical Judaism, as
opposed to rabbinical Judaism or post-second temple Judaism. In biblical
Judaism, sacrifices were integral to the Mosaic Law. Some of you know this. How
many commandments are there in the Mosaic Law? 613 commandments. What portion,
what percentage of those laws relate to the temple service and sacrifices? A
third of them; 30%. So roughly 200 of those 613 commandments are related to
temple service and sacrifice. Here is the question, pay attention! If you are
Jewish and you can’t get forgiveness of sin unless there’s a sacrifice and the
temple is destroyed, how are you going to feel about that when you can’t take a
sacrifice to the temple anymore?
A couple of Jewish
writers wrote the following: “How can we possibly sense the terror that must
have gripped a person who had to atone for his sins, but was unable to do so?”
They aren’t believers. They are not accepting that Jesus died on the cross for
their sins, but within their framework of thinking they still have to atone for
their sins. There is no forgiveness anywhere else. That is why last week when I
was talking on sacrifice on Thursday night, and I talked about the film that
Joel Kramer did on a sacrifice. What is so revealing in that is that he goes to
the Samaritan community up on Mount Gerizim and every year on Passover they
still sacrifice lambs; one for every family. There are about 700 of them; so
they sacrifice right now about 54 lambs. They kill them all simultaneously.
Then what happens? It is so weird to us. They immediately erupt into shouts of
joy and they dance around and they rub the blood on their foreheads.
The purpose of that
film is not to say this is something that is good or legitimate or we can
practice it, but it gives us a window into the kind of thinking that
characterized a pre-Christian era Jew. They understood that when that lamb is
sacrificed at Passover it reminds them that they were given freedom from
slavery in Egypt. That is like the 4th of July. When that lamb is
slaughtered they are reminded. Now they are free from slavery. When the
sacrifices are slaughtered at Yom Kippur they have forgiveness of sin for
another year. We’ve lost sight of that dimension. That is one of the reasons I
think that film The Sacrifice is
significant, because it puts us in touch with something that we’re not so
mindful of. How many people when they get saved are really excited! I think a
lot of Christians are. But it is not long before that excitement sort of wears
off. What these guys are pointing out is the fact that if you can’t atone for
your sins and you have a biblical understanding of sin, as something that
separates you from God, what are you going to do?
This is one of the
problems that you’ve got with Judaism, post-second temple Judaism, is there’s
no temple; there’s no sacrifice; there is no way to get forgiveness of sin.
That’s why you get these movements right now of some of the more orthodox Jews
that want to have the privilege to have sacrifices on the Temple Mount. About
two weeks before we went to Israel this last November, about mid-October, a
rabbi by the name of Yehuda Glick, who is known, from what I have read about
him, he is a very gentle, quiet, soft-spoken guy, but he is very firm in his
conviction that the Jews need to be able to offer sacrifices on the Temple
Mount. He was leaving a synagogue service, I believe, one night and a
Palestinian pulled up and called his name and he turned around and he was shot
several times. He managed to survive his wounds. But he is also, interestingly
enough, pictured in that film, The Sacrifice, that Joel Kramer made. He has heard that there were
some Jews that were going to sacrifice a lamb and he managed to find out where
they were going to do it and got permission and went there to see it. Yehuda
Glick was a rabbi who was involved with that.
These two Jewish
writers bring this point out. They say, “How can we possibly sense the terror
that must have gripped a person who had to atone for his sins, but was unable
to do so? The Jew who lived at the time of the temple’s destruction did not
have other methods of atonement developed by generations of halakhic legislation….”
That’s rabbinic laws, oral laws, developed over the years. “That generation of
Jews had to grapple with a new reality which appeared to deny any possibility
of religious wholeness. An individual who sinned would have to continue to live
with his sin. This factor contributed to the doubts which assailed many Jews of
this period as to whether there was any point – or indeed any possibility
– of maintaining a religious way of life.” As far as they were concerned
there’s no way to have your sins atoned for, no way to be purified.
The point is:
sacrifice is inherent in the age of Israel. The age of Israel ended prematurely
with the death of the Messiah, Daniel 9:24–27 talks about the time period
of the 490 years for Israel. We’ve studied that many times. The last seven
years are cut off. That is restored at the end in the later days. That refers
to the seven years of the Tribulation period. But the millennial kingdom then
comes in and how does a millennial kingdom fit? The millennial kingdom has a
Davidic king ruling from Jerusalem with a restored Levitical priesthood and a
restored temple. Is this like the church age? No. One of the distinctives that
we see here is in the church age Gentiles become one with Jews in the body of
Christ. Jew and Gentiles are united and that distinction is no longer
spiritually significant in the church age. But is that the case in the
millennial kingdom? No. In the millennial kingdom there is a role and a place
for Gentiles, but the Gentiles are included within the kingdom. They do not
become united with the Jews in one new body. They are included within. So we go
back to a period in the millennial kingdom that is more of an extension of the
age of Israel than one that is related to the church age. You have a temple and
you have this restoration of sacrifice.
Here is a slide I
developed some more from the other night on sacrifice. What does this word
mean? The English word “sacrifice” comes from the Latin word sacer, which
means “holy” and “holy” means “to be set apart”
for something. So sacer means “holy” and facere means
“to make.” Sacrifice means what? It means “to make something 'holy' or to make it
'set apart' to God.” That’s the meaning. The Hebrew word is hekdesh; kdesh
is the root; kdosh
or kdesh, is the word in Hebrew “to make holy,” so hekdesh is a form of that word, which
means “to make” something “holy” or “set it apart” to the service of God.
1. It is the act of
killing an animal as an offering to God. That’s the English concept.
2. The second
meaning is an act of giving up something of value for the sake of something
that is of greater value.
That’s the basic
idea of sacrifice. The biblical sense is to make something holy. There are two
things that are emphasized in sacrifice:
1. The first idea is
of substitution. Something is killed instead of the person who is offering the
sacrifice. Instead of me having to die, something dies in my place.
Substitution is there.
2. The second idea
is purification.
In the Old Testament
the English translators didn’t really know how to translate that word kfr so they
translated it with the word “atonement.” Atonement was a made-up English word.
It was coined to translate that word. You can look until you are dead and you
will never find the word “atonement” in the New Testament. It is an Old Testament
concept but the English word really didn’t capture it. They coined this word
“at-one-ment” and it had a more theological concept of reconciliation and
theologically it came to refer to the whole work of Christ on the cross. They
related it to the meaning of kfr as covering, but they missed the boat on that. Numerous studies
have come out in the last number of years indicating that kfr doesn’t mean to cover. It means to
purify or to cleanse. I will show you some verses on that in a minute.
But as we look at
sacrifice in the future temple:
· All but one chapter of the nine chapters
in Ezekiel that deal with the future temple, all but one chapter, Ezekiel 47,
mentions the sacrificial system. So this isn’t something that is just sort of a
secondary or tertiary feature within those chapters. It is central to
understanding the function of the temple.
· New moons, Sabbaths, and the appointed
feasts are mentioned in Ezekiel 44:24; Ezekiel 45:17; Ezekiel 46:3; Ezekiel
11–12.
· Daily offerings are mentioned in Ezekiel
46:13–14.
· Burnt offerings, grain offerings, and libations,
those are drink offerings, are mentioned in Ezekiel 45:17; Ezekiel
46:2–3; Ezekiel 46:11–15.
· Blood sacrifices are mentioned in Ezekiel
43:20.
· An altar for the burnt offerings is
mentioned in Ezekiel 40:47; Ezekiel 43:13–27.
There are many other
things that are related to the sacrificial system that are mentioned, but that
gets you the main idea. This is a central feature in these nine chapters of
Ezekiel.
One of the key
verses that indicates this outside of Ezekiel is Jeremiah 33:17–18. There
we read, “For thus says the LORD: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the
house of Israel'.” What covenant is that? Davidic, that’s the Davidic covenant.
“Nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man.” Not only will there be a
Davidic king on the throne, but Jeremiah 33:18 indicates that the priesthood is
going to be activated during his reign. “Nor will the priests, the Levites lack
a man to offer burnt offerings before Me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice
continually.” That is a pretty strong statement that there is going to be a
restoration of a sacrificial system with burnt offerings, grain offerings at
least in the millennial kingdom.
In Ezekiel
43:20–26 God instructs in relation to these future sacrifices, “You shall
take some of” the blood from the sacrifice “and put it on the four horns of the
altar, on the four corners of the ledge, and on the rim around it; thus you
shall cleanse it and make atonement for it. The word “cleanse” there is used in
parallelism with making atonement. This is one of the reasons we understand
that atonement has to do with cleansing and purification. It is ritual
cleansing and purification as opposed to real cleansing and purification. When
God dwells in a sinful world where there are sinful people, then there has to
be a ritual purification and cleansing of the temple. Not only the people but
also the utensils and the temple. In Ezekiel 43:26 “seven days they shall make
atonement.” That’s the word kfr, which means also “to purify, cleanse, or to make atonement.”
That’s how it is translated. “For the altar and purify it, and so set it apart
(consecrate it).”
You see this
reference to different sacrifices that are made in the millennial kingdom. In
Ezekiel 45:15 we read, “And one lamb shall be given from a flock of two
hundred, from the rich pastures of Israel. These shall be for grain offerings,
burnt offerings, and peace offerings, to make atonement for them.” And then in
Ezekiel 45:17, “Then it shall be the prince’s part to give burnt offerings,
grain offerings, and drink offerings, at the feasts, the New Moons, the
Sabbaths, and at all the appointed seasons of the house of Israel.” So there is
clearly a restoration of something that is similar to the Levitical ritual
calendar and ritual sacrifices. “He shall prepare the sin offering, the grain
offering, the burnt offering, and the peace offerings to make atonement for the
house of Israel.”
Notice that language
because one of the things that you were probably taught and I was taught and I
heard and was very common and is a fairly workable solution for this problem
was the idea that these sacrifices were going to be literal, but they were
memorial sacrifices similar to the Lord’s table. The problem with that view is
that the language doesn’t reflect that. You don’t have memorial language. When
we celebrate the Lord’s table what did Jesus say? He said, “Do this in
remembrance of Me.” You don’t have that terminology anywhere in Ezekiel
40–48. You don’t have memorial or remembrance terminology at all; but the
language that is used, the instructions that are given, are syntactically the
same as what you have in Leviticus. In terms of vocabulary, these are the same
as you have in Leviticus. Look at how we read this in Ezekiel 45:15, these
offerings are “to make atonement for them.” When we come down to Ezekiel 45:17,
these offerings are “to make atonement for the house of Israel.”
Look at what
Leviticus 1:4 says in describing the burnt offering, the olah offering, “He shall lay his hand on
the head of the burnt offering, that it may be accepted for him to make
atonement on his behalf.” It is the same language. You can’t allegorize this or
spiritualize it in some way to make it fit a memorial sense of the purpose of
these sacrifices. Here is an important verse in Ezekiel 43:20 and Ezekiel
43:26, which I was just talking about a minute ago. The word, “you shall
cleanse it and make atonement for it.” The first word, “cleanse it” is this
word hata.
This is the same word that translated means “sin.” It means “to miss or miss
the mark, sin, incur guilt;” but it is also used in ritual passages to indicate
“purification from uncleanness.” That comes from the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Then
that is used in a synonymous parallelism with “atonement” here. To “cleanse it and make atonement for it.” That is the word kfr. Then in
Ezekiel 43:26, “They shall make atonement for the altar and purify it.” That is
the word taher,
which also has that idea of purification.
This word taher, as
well as the word kfr,
are translated into the Greek Septuagint by guess what word? You’ve heard some
of this so much even though you don’t know Greek you ought to know this. KATHARIZO, where we get the translation, “If we
confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and” to what? “cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.” So atonement isn’t talking about a phase one payment for
sin sacrifice. It is talking about phase two spiritual life, on-going
cleansing, and ritual cleansing for the ritual worship of God in the temple or
the tabernacle.
As I pointed out
last Thursday night, one of the primary words for sacrifice in the Hebrew is
the word qorban,
which means “to draw near.” What does sin do? Sin separates us from God. We’re
spiritually dead. We’re separated from God. What does a sacrifice do? It’s
called a qorban.
Often it is translated “offering.” It is designed to bring us “near to God.”
The only way to restore that broken fellowship with God because of sin is
through an offering or through sacrifice that brings us back together. So that
is a great picture.
The other night we
looked at the different sacrifices that we have in Leviticus. The burnt
offering, the grain offering, the thanksgiving offering, the peace offering,
the guilt offering, the trespass offering, so what do we have in Ezekiel?
I am running through
those verses quickly. You don’t really need to look at them because you can
look it up in a concordance and find those if you are interested. I want you to
recognize how many times these different sacrifices and offerings are mentioned
in Ezekiel 40–48. This isn’t something that is just a minor idea
mentioned in this text. It is essential to the whole understanding of that
future temple. These passages, I’ve mentioned some of these already, a lot of
them are the same passages that just list these various offerings and
sacrifices and they are all designed to make atonement.
As I have thought
about this, why are we doing this?
1. Well, for one
thing, we have a restoration to ritual when God dwells among sinful people. In
a sinful world there has to be cleansing from sin ritually, ritually.
There is a
difference between ritual and real. A person is saved by trusting in Jesus as
the Messiah and His complete payment on the cross. That’s as true in the
millennial kingdom as it is true now. But we’re going to have a physical temple
with a physical Shekinah
dwelling of God in the temple in the millennial kingdom, and so there has to be
a ritual cleansing because the priests who serve in the temple are going to sin
and they are going to need to have ritual cleansing for serving in the temple.
2. But I think there
is another reason, and that is that, as I pointed out the other night when we
were talking about sacrifice, that we’ve become pretty distant in the church
age from the reality of animal death and what happens in an animal sacrifice.
Some of you are here
and you’ve got a background in hunting or you grew up on a farm, and the idea
of an animal dying is not foreign to you. Some of you have never seen an animal
die and it would be a real shock to your system to watch an animal sacrifice,
which was a daily thing in the Old Testament. The realization that every time
you sinned there were consequences and you had to sacrifice an animal because
of your selfish nature. That is a real learning point. Today we’ve gotten so
distanced from it that most people go to the grocery store and they buy
chickens, and they buy roast, and they buy hamburgers, and they never think
about where the meat came from and what was involved in getting it from the
farm into their hamburger or onto their grill.
But think about what
it is going to be in the millennial kingdom. How many things are going to be
dying in the millennial kingdom? Not very many. So when the Bible talks about
death, and remember, physical death is a consequence of sin, but it’s not the
penalty for sin. Spiritual death was the penalty of sin. Physical death was the
consequence, but physical death is used again and again in the Old Testament as
a training aid, as a visual aid to teach about the horrors of spiritual death.
But if you are living in the millennial kingdom in perfect environment and you
hear the word “death” how are you going to relate to that? In the church age it
is bad enough. Nobody sees their parents or grandparents die hardly anymore. It
used to be that everybody was born in the house and died in the house, and
everybody was fairly familiar with death, animal death or human death; but not
anymore.
But in the
millennial kingdom it is going to be much, much worse. The word death is almost
going to have no meaning for most people. So you go to the millennial temple
and you have to bring a sacrifice. It is a training aid to understand the
penalty and consequences of sin; that it brings death. So this then becomes a
training tool to communicate the gospel and the need for faith in Jesus Christ
as your Messiah in order to have eternal life.
Let’s bow our heads
and close in prayer. Father, we thank You for this opportunity to teach through
this material and to study and to come to an understanding of Your plan and
purpose as the history that culminated in this almost perfect dispensation. And
even at that time there is going to be a need to emphasize that the penalty for
sin, the reality of sin, and the need for a substitute; so that people will
recognize that they have to trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.
Help us to assimilate these doctrines and relate them to our own spiritual
life; and we pray this in Christ’s Name. Amen.