The written word of what God had said was to be the enduring legacy of the prophet of God. The prophets’ oral word no doubt came powerfully upon the people as the first arresting testimony of God’s passion for His people, just as the apostles’ Spirit tongues were indeed God’s first arresting testimony to His new covenant in Jesus Christ at Pentecost. But the power of the spoken word, just like the Sunday sermon, and with dismay, even the quiet voice of the Spirit in a time of prayer, is quickly drowned in the forgetfulness of daily life, capsized by a wave of doubt, blown away by confusing winds of circumstance, or disfigured by selfish passion.

A written word though doesn’t change, and when the written word is God’s Word, whose Word is His Word, spoken or written, and is everlasting even beyond the current heavenly spaces (Mt 24:35), it can be trusted that “not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Mt 5:18).

All God’s prophecy fulfils the Law, whether it be the Law’s promises for faithfulness to the Law, or curses for disobedience, for Christ is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10b) and the fulfilment of the Law (Mt 5:17). So, God in love gave to Ezekiel His specific word on His future temple, not only so that Israel might realise how grievous their sin was before God, but so that it might be written down to remind a repentant people to be faithful to the Law, when the impact of the spoken Word had faded from their hearts.

In all, the temple plans God gave Ezekiel to note down so carefully were to be a vivid and exquisite pictorial representation of the covenantal end of the Law, when God would live forever, undefiled among His people. The vision is no less in the Jewish mind than a picture of Heaven, and was given to be read over and over again in contemplation with what had been seen and heard, so that a picture of the glory that God had promised to those faithful to His Law, would grow richly and deeply in hearts and minds and souls, so as to be always before them as the end of God’s love which has no end.

Read, read, read then the Word of God that speaks through Moses, the prophets and the apostles so that, despite the vicissitudes of our hearts and minds, the Spirit might deepen immeasurably within us the visions of God’s love and of their call to holiness through faith expressing itself through love.