In the visions of God He brought me into the land of Israel and set me down upon a very high mountain, and on it to the south there was a structure like a city… And the man said to me, Son of man, look with your eyes, and hear with your ears, and set your heart on all that I show you, because for this purpose you have been brought here, that it may be shown to you. Tell all that you see to the house of Israel. (Ezek. 40:2; 4)
Ezekiel was a priest in exile, far from Jerusalem and its temple, when God lifted him up in a vision and showed him a temple measured out in every detail. This blueprint reveals a building, a picture of the church (1 Pet. 2:5), but how do we enter it? According to Ezekiel’s vision in chapters 40-46, the temple is full of kitchens, dining chambers, offerings, and a table—we enter this temple and ascend into its depths by eating. In other words, what the vision presents to us is the temple of God as the highest, most excellent restaurant!
In coming to the temple, we first experience the outer court. Here are “thirty chambers” and at the four corners are “boiling houses” for boiling the sacrifices. (40:17, 46:21, 24) This is a picture of our experience of the church life today. All of this signifies the initial experience of enjoying Christ, served by priests in His realm. Just as in this vision, our initial eating when entering the church is rich indeed. It is active with offerings every year, month, week, and day, and with appointed feasts throughout the year (45:21, 25; 46:4, 6, 13).
Saints serve us as soon as we enter into the church life to enjoy Christ by eating and drinking Him, just like restaurant staff and waiters serving a patron. Behind the service is the chef: Christ! The mind and intention of this chef come into us to mingle and reconstitute us from within: what we think, what we like, what we decide, what we feel. Thus, in the church life, we go through a transformation process. We come in as one person and transform into another person. Restful, brought into His courts, we have indeed been served and satisfied by the true Chef through eating!
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But ascending toward the Holy Place, there is yet a further enjoyment of Christ that is deeper, higher, and richer. God does not wish for us to stay outside as nominal believers, but to enter into a deeper service and knowing of Him within the Holy Place. The outer court is where we are fed; the Holy Place is where we begin to feed God.
And the chamber that faces toward the north is for the priests, the keepers of the charge of the altar. These are the sons of Zadok, who come near to Jehovah to minister to Him from among the sons of Levi. (40:46)
But the Levitical priests, 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 present to Me the fat and the blood, declares the Lord Jehovah… (44:15)
The “sons of Zadok” don’t just keep the house; they have the deeper privilege to “come near to My table to minister to Me” (44:15-16). In the inner court, the priests eat in the holy chambers, serve the offerings on the altar, and wear garments reserved for this holy place only (v. 19). In this divine sphere, there is a more intimate and deeper eating and drinking of Christ.
Today, we, too, must also daily enjoy—perhaps even more richly—what we will dispense to others. Indeed, to be able to serve Christ to others in the outer court’s four boiling places and thirty chambers, these priests surely must know how to enjoy Christ themselves in the holy chambers. Only those who are absolutely faithful to God—like the sons of Zadok, who kept His charge when others went astray—can approach Him in the innermost chamber. Approaching the table inside the sanctuary, they offer up the choicest part of Christ, the fat and the blood, as the ultimate service for His enjoyment. We should all enjoy this privilege, not to serve tasks and details yet completely miss the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We should not be so caught up in all the cutting, boiling, plating, and outward serving of the ministry that we miss ministering to God as the Person behind it all. He wants us, not what we do!
From eating to serving, from common to holy, God’s plan is a blueprint of dynamic elevation. While we came in as wretched sinners, brought by mercy through the gates of the church, our destiny does not end there: God has a blueprint for something more “according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself” (Eph. 1:9). We are called to become partners of such a divine “master chef.”
How much we enter in this divine dining experience depends on who we are! Are we a bystander, or are we in God’s blueprint of this divine restaurant? Here, we minister the Person of God as real, edible, and enjoyable food to others (ch. 41). In the church, we all need to grow and be reconstituted into a new person by a true eating. In such an enjoyment, we are metabolically changed from ourselves into the corporate, mature person as a temple of God. Together, in this intimate mingling of God and man within the inner court, this architecture of ministers and service becomes just one Person—it is me, it is you, it is the processed Triune God as food in a full experience, richly layered, living, and enterable.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 8/30/2026, not reviewed by the speaker.)