Ezekiel 44:15. "'But the Levitical priests ... who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, shall come near to me and minister to me; and they shall attend on me to offer me the fat and the blood, says the Lord God."

Even though God will rebuild the temple and bring His people home, there will be restrictions on them. The priests who were unfaithful to God and fell into idolatry will have their duties limited, and will bear the punishment of the people who went astray (Ezekiel 44:10) only the priests who remained faithful will be allowed to minister to God in his temple. Essentially, those are the only ones He can trust.

Some friends and I were talking this morning about the need for repentance and apologies. There are people who have hurt us badly but who still refuse to acknowledge what they have done and instead continue to justify themselves, even to the point of lying about us or our motives. They were, or possibly still are, in the grips of idolatry - to politics, or fear, or whatever - and they sacrificed us to their idols. Now that they are beginning to come out of it, they want to forget that it ever happened and go back to "normal," but normal doesn't exist anymore, we are all in a different place. The relationships can be rebuilt, and forgiveness extended, but only after apologies and a period of repentance.

This is exactly what God is pointing out with these rules for His temple. His unfaithful priests and people are welcome home, but their relationship with God has been deeply harmed by their idolatry, so they cannot go right back to "normal." They have to bear the punishment for their false worship. The only priests who can minister to God rightly are the ones who never turned from Him. Their proper worship will hopefully help the others to see the error of their ways and repent, but getting back to a semblance of normalcy will take time, even after the repentance. This period of waiting and atonement is the temporal punishment for our sins, we all go through it to some extent, and it is much preferable to eternal punishment for them! It is painful, but that is kind of the point, that is how we bear our punishment.

(I blogged about this same passage not too long ago in Who Is A Foreigner to God? It’s interesting how different thoughts come to me from the same passage on different days! The Bible is so rich!)