Then he measured the temple; it was a hundred cubits long, and the temple courtyard and the building with its walls were also a hundred cubits long. The width of the temple courtyard on the east, including the front of the temple, was a hundred cubits. Then he measured the length of the building facing the courtyard at the rear of the temple, including its galleries on each side; it was a hundred cubits.
Ezekiel 41:13-15 (NIV)

For the recently freed Hebrew slaves, everything about life had changed. All they knew about the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was what Moses had told them. But they’d witnessed what God could do in the ten plagues that had been inflicted on Pharaoh and Egypt. They’d seen God part the waters of the Red Sea so they could cross and then bring the same waters crashing down on the Egyptian army.

But they still know relatively little about God. But in Exodus 19, they are about to learn a whole lot more. Moses goes up on a mountain by himself. From below they watch as lightning strikes, then smoke starts billowing, and the whole mountain trembles. When Moses descends, he not only has the Ten Commandments, but he has the blueprints and instruction manual for a Temple, a priesthood, rituals, and sacrifices that prescribe an entirely new way of living with God and with one another in community.

One of the things that became quickly clear to the ancient Hebrews when God, through Moses, gave them instructions for a temple and its rituals is that God made distinctions. Again, this parallels the Creation poem in Genesis 1 and 2 where God made a distinction between “this” and “that” parts of creation. There are consistent structural designs from the tent tabernacle, to Solomon’s Temple, and to the Temple Ezekiel sees in his vision. With each, there were distinctions of space. There were spaces between the common and the sacred, the space that was everyday people, and the “most holy” space where God’s presence resided.

The Most Holy Place, sometimes called the “Holy of Holies” was a perfect square. The only person who could enter was the high priest.

Fast forward to Jesus, some 400 years after Ezekiel. In Luke 9, Jesus takes his three inner-circle disciples and goes up a mountain. Suddenly, Jesus is transformed into blinding, bright light. There is lightning and then there’s smoke everywhere and then Moses shows up in his glorified, heavenly body along with Elijah. Does this sound familiar?! Jesus would descend that mountain and consequently usher a completely new blueprint and new distinctions that build on the old.

Jesus subsequently told His disciples that the Temple would soon be reduced to rubble, and 40 years later it was. After His death and resurrection, Jesus sent His Holy Spirit. This is an important new distinction. God’s presence was in Jesus’ people. The human soul became the “Most Holy Place” where God’s Spirit dwells and the body is its Temple.

But wait, we’re not done. The night before Jesus’ was executed, He told His followers, “I’m going to prepare a place for you.” When John is given a vision in Revelation this place is revealed as a new Jerusalem. Just like with Ezekiel, John had to watch as it was measured and wouldn’t you know it, this heavenly city is perfectly square just like the Most Holy Place. The distinctions from beginning to end have been transformed and flipped inside out. What began as a small (about 15 feet square) Sacred Space with the distinction that only God’s Presence is holy enough to be there, becomes at the end of the Great Story a “Most Holy Place” that is 1200 miles square where all of God’s people dwell together with God because, through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, they have been made holy, as well.

In the quiet this morning, I am reminded that the tremendously precise and ordered details that Ezekiel describes are a part of how God metaphorically reveals Himself to us. He is a God of detail and distinctions who transforms chaos into order, death into life, and the common into that which is holy. Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth that if anyone is joined with Christ, that person is a new creation, old things pass away and new things come. In other words, I am a microcosm of the very thing that God is doing throughout the entire Great Story, transforming that which wasn’t holy into that which is eternally holy.

I am in process, and as my local gathering of Jesus’ followers continues to remind everyone, this journey is about progress, not perfection.

And so, I progress into another day of the journey.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.