“Restoration from Corruption” – FBC Morning Light (9/9/2024)

Well, good Monday morning to you. I hope you had a good weekend and that your first week of September ended well.

And here we are. We're getting right into the months of the fall season, aren't we?

Well, today in our Bible reading plan, we are in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 44 through 48.

And like the calendar year in our Bible reading schedule, we're getting to the end of the

Old Testament. Won't be long before we'll be launching into the new. And looking forward to that, we're reading through chronologically in the

Bible this year. So all this year so far, we've been in the Old Testament. Well, today in chapters 44 through 48 of Ezekiel, what's going on here is the

Lord is giving instructions about the functioning of the priests and the

Levites in the restored temple, various laws about the executing of justice that the prince is supposed to do, and the calling for the demand for just weights and balances, the proper way of preparing and providing the different offerings and sacrifices that need to be need to be given in this restored temple and so forth.

And I'm not going to get into an interpretation of, you know, what temple is this?

You know, there's a dispensationalism views this as the millennial temple.

There's some challenges about that view with the offering of burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin and so forth.

I don't want to get into all that. But what I do want to get into is the indication that, or the sense that, the

Lord had to spend so much time through the prophet

Ezekiel in clarifying this is what you are to do as priests and Levites, and this is how the offerings are to be prepared, and these are the offerings that are to be given, and this is how the prince among the people is supposed to behave, and so on and so forth.

And you would think, is that really all necessary? I mean, you know, there was a whole mosaic law.

You had the, you know, Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Numbers too, and you had plenty of instructions in the

Pentateuch about how this was all to be done. Well, I think what is, one thing that's indicated in this is just how bad things had gotten prior to the exile.

So, for example, listen in chapter 44, verses 12 and following, so the

Lord is giving instructions to the Levites when he said, and he says in verse 10, he says, the

Levites, who went far from me when Israel went astray, who strayed from me after their idols, they, the

Levites, shall bear their iniquity. And in verse 12, he says, because the Levites ministered to them before their idols and caused the house of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore

I have raised my hand in an oath against them, says the Lord God, that they shall bear their iniquity.

So this is, again, prior to the exile, the fall of Jerusalem, Judah, Israel, and so the

Lord goes on to say, they shall not come near to me, near me to minister to me as priest, nor come near any of my holy things, nor into the most holy place, but they shall bear their shame and their abominations what they have committed.

Nevertheless, he says, I will make them keep charge of the temple for all its work and for all that has to be done in it.

But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister to me and they shall stand before me to offer the fat and the blood.

Now here's the thing. I want us to see that prior to the exile, even the priests and the

Levites had strayed so far from the proper, right worship and service of God.

They were offering sacrifices to idols. These are supposed to be the spiritual leaders! And then came the catastrophe of the exile, okay?

So now, when there's to be a restoration of the temple and a restoration of the priesthood and the

Levites to their positions, the Lord is going to kind of chase and rebuke the

Levites and limit their service, even though they're going to be involved in service, and then give these further instructions and so forth.

So here's the point I'm wanting to get today, that when you think about all the instructions regarding the restoring of the

Levites to their tasks, the priests to their service, the charges to the prince to execute justice that's going to come in chapter 45, the keeping of the feasts at the end of 45, the manner of worship and the offerings in chapter 46, when you see all of this, all of it indicates just how corrupt the nation had been before the exile and how desperately they needed to get back to basics, to get back to what

God had said to do in the first place, and how they were to function, the priests and Levites, in their role, and what the princes were supposed to do, and how the sacrifices were to be offered.

All of this had been given, and they got so far from it, now they need to return to those basic principles and practices.

Now, I think about that in relationship to our own world, and our church world.

You know, I heard a, I was just listening to a message recently from another, a nationally known pastor, and he was talking about how he gets letters all the time from people who'd gone out from his ministry, who write back to him and say how difficult it is for them to find a decent church.

He read one letter on the air, and he said, this person wrote in and said, we have visited,

I think they said half a dozen different churches, and we have yet to find one that started the service, opening the

Word of God, appealing to the Word of God, standing on the authority of the Word of God, and so forth.

And I thought, yeah, you know what? In terms of the state of Christianity in America, we are, as the church, where the

Old Testament Israel was before the exile, where the worship was corrupted, distorted, and desperately they needed to get back to the basics.

Oh, I think we do too, as a church as a whole in our country.

Pray that we will. Our Father, we got, and God, we do pray that you would send a revival to your church, and we ask this in Jesus' name, and for His sake.

Amen. All right, well listen, have a good Monday. I hope your week gets off to a good start.