DAY 337
KEEPING
THE BIG PICTURE
Ezekiel 45 & 46 and 1 John 2
I pray you are wrestling through Ezekiel. Most of
my commentaries are lengthy on these chapters as they try and unpack the
layered meaning of each of the details. You can even “google” Ezekiel’s Temple
and see how it is different from the Solomon’s and the actual second Temple…here
is a link:
I do hesitate to post some of these links because people
look for all sorts of hidden meaning and codes with this sort of thing, and
they can get a little carried away…at least in my way of thinking. This link
does have a pretty good pictorial presentation of Ezekiel’s Temple…which by the
way was never built. What I have been reminding myself of is that Ezekiel is
seeing a vision…and there is a big picture message. That message is that God is
going to once again dwell with His people and His people will worship him. Much
of chapters 45 and 46 are about Ezekiel’s vision of the temple and the act of
worship…but we must not miss the big picture.
Which brings me to 1 John 2: there is a big picture
message in this short little letter. Yesterday I highlighted that the letter
was combating Gnosticism. It does so without some long theological treatise,
rather it simply points out the big picture. That Jesus was the propitiation
for our sin…the offering…the sacrifice for our sin…and if we accept Christ into
our hearts then we will love him and seek to follow him. It is really that
simple. If we accept Jesus into our hearts, then we will be God’s people and He
will dwell with us in the New Temple…the Temple of our hearts (1 Corinthians
3:16).
We do read later in the chapter not to love the
world. Think back to the Gnostics. They do not love the world…in fact they hate
it…it is bad. Here we see a balanced teaching. Christians are not to hate the
world…God made it and we are the stewards of it. We simply are not to let it
own us and we have all about what happens when “it owns us.”
So I pray that as you and I have been pouring into
the Bible over the last 336 days, we all have a greater understanding of how
God’s plan is so intricately linked, but…and this is an important “but”…we do
not lose the big picture.
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