“At first sight it seems strange to find the man of poor and contrite spirit, and who trembles at God’s word, placed in the same category as God’s throne, and the house that Israel built. But when we are sufficiently enlightened by the Word, we perceive the true relation. Both the movable tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness, and the immovable temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, were more than mere places of worship of the Father, either movable or fixed. As Stephen says, ‘the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands’. These structures represented the dwelling-place of the Father in a man, who, in the language of inspiration, is called ‘the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man’ (Hebrews 8:2); and who said of his mortal body: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’ (John 2:9).

“Christ is the substance represented by the ‘temples made with hands’, whether the tabernacle or the temples of Solomon, Zerubbabel, Herod, or of Ezekiel’s visions. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself”. Much more gloriously will God be in Christ when the world is reconciled unto himself. It will be an immortal manifestation, not only in the Lord Jesus individually, but in a multitude of his brethren made ‘like him’. This is ‘the Father’s house of many mansions’, or abiding places of which he spoke in promise to his disciples (John 14), and concerning which he said that he went away to prepare for them places therein, that he might come again and receive them unto himself in his everlasting inheritance.”

(The Ministry of the Prophets: Isaiah by Robert Roberts and C.C. Walker)