And he said to me, “Son of man, thus says the Lord GOD: These are the ordinances for the altar: On the day when it is erected for offering burnt offerings upon it and for throwing blood against it,
Christ is our altar, and these measurements show how His sacrifice sanctifies all our service. The benches where priests stood and handed offerings upward teach us a profound truth: in God's work we must assist one another, each dependent on the next, all moving toward the One who takes away sin.
AI summary
Commenting on Ezekiel 43:13-27
And he said unto me, son of man, thus saith the Lord God,.... This is the voice of the Lord continued, speaking out of the house to the prophet; see Eze 43:6, these are the ordinances of the altar: not what go before, concerning the measures of it, but what follow, concerning the sacrifices to be offered on it: in the day when they shall...
The sacrifices here are not mere commemorative, but propitiatory ones. The expressions, "blood" (Eze 43:18), and "for a sin offering (Eze 43:19, Eze 43:21-22), prove this. In the literal sense they can only apply to the second temple. Under the Christian dispensation they would directly oppose the doctrine taught in Heb. 10:1-18, namely, that Christ has by one offering for ever atoned for sin.