The Mobile Temple

I have always been amused that churches, including the great Metropolitan Tabernacle in London once pastored by Charles Spurgeon, choose to use the term "tabernacle" in their names. While there is nothing wrong in using such a name, the term in the Bible signified a movable structure of light construction, making them very different from modern permanent church structures. Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that the tabernacle was for a time a central place for worship and the special presence of God that also has a typological connection to the coming of Christ. In those senses, the use of the term suggests important imagery.

Nearly all of the last 15 chapters of the Book of Exodus is devoted to instructions regarding the building of the temple, its furnishings, and the garb of the priests that would perform functions within it and the actual construction. That the two sections  of instructive material and the actual construction are broken up by chapters dealing with Israel's sin of worshipping a golden calf is no accident. As with other temple activity we looked at through Genesis, which was always associated with covenant making, the building of the tabernacle is associated with God's confirmation of his covenant with Israel through Moses in Exodus 24. Thus, the insertion of the golden calf story makes poignant God's determination through the tabernacle to continue to uphold his covenant with Israel in the face of their early breach. God would continue to dwell among them and lead them.

As we have discussed before, the temple theme of God's special presence among his people that works its way through all of Scripture helps explain the extraordinary amount of attention given to it. Just as many Christians struggle to find importance in the Bible's extensive genealogies, which among other things demonstrate the important point that Christianity claims to be a revealed religion based on God's dealings with man in human history (as opposed to a philosophically developed ideology apart from historical context), many also struggle to make it through these lengthy construction program descriptions. After all, the account of the building of the tabernacle takes up nearly as much space as the entire description of how the Israelites got from Egypt to Mount Sinai, and lengthy descriptions will be found again when it comes to the planning and construction of Solomon's temple, the building of the second temple, and the description of Ezekiel's end times temple. While these can be challenging sections to read for many of us, it needs to be noted that these are passages moving forward an important biblical theme that ultimately finds its way into typological fulfillment in Jesus Christ, as well as in the church found in the New Testament. Thus, as said before, these temple building episodes carry forward a story with important New Testament significance.

Without going further into all of the details of tabernacle construction -- something which I would nonetheless encourage you to look at -- I would like to illustrate how this is true. Many Christians have not seen modelled solid teaching that molds together the New and Old Testaments (what did Jesus mean when he told the Pharisees that if they really knew the Scripture that they would know it was about him?), but the things that we have been studying find their way into the New Testament understanding of the Christ event. Exodus concludes with the completion of the tabernacle, with an emphasis in the closing verses of Moses beholding the glory of God when the work is finalized. This provides a good time for us to pause and note that just as Genesis began with the building of a temple and includes stories of the building of altars. Exodus closes with the completion of the tabernacle. Thus, this is an enormous and often under appreciated theme of the first two books of the Bible.

At least that is the way the Apostle John sees it when he opens his Gospel. In John 1:1, the apostle mirrors the language of Genesis 1 (In the beginning...). Genesis 1 emphasizes God's speech by which all was created. John 1 speaks of God's Word, who is also viewed as the agent of creation, and which is seen as also both God and being with God. This is an important Trinitarian text, with the Word being the second person of the Trinity present at creation. In making this connection, John is also connecting the creation of Genesis 1 with the new creation that comes through Jesus Christ.

While John does not explicitly talk about a temple theme with his Genesis 1 language, it does not take him long to get there. In verse 18, John says that the Word "became flesh and dwelt among us." The word translated "dwelt" is not the usual one that we might have expected, and it has the idea of pitching a tent, thus suggesting a tabernacle theme associated with the coming of Jesus into the world. Just in case we would miss it otherwise, John's next phrase makes clear what he has in mind: "and we beheld his glory...." John's language intentionally conveys language from Exodus 40, where Moses finishes the work of the tabernacle and beholds the glory of God. John's message is clear: the special presence of God once associated with the tabernacle -- and later associated with the temple -- is now manifested in the personal presence of Jesus Christ. Of note, near the end of John 1, Jesus himself extends this claim in his conversation with Nathaniel, as Jesus associates himself with Jacob's dream of a ladder descending from heaven, an event that had resulted in Jacob building an altar.

While there is much more that could be said about the building of the tabernacle and other matters in the Pentateuch, with the next post I intend to move the study forward. We will begin to look at the work of David and Solomon in building the temple at Jerusalem.

Babel's Temple

In the last post, we looked at the small scale temples, or altars, built by Noah and the patriarchs, describing them for purposes of this study as structures representing a transitional phase of temple building connecting the garden temple of Eden and the future construction of the tabernacle and Jerusalem temple by national Israel. Of course, the children of Abraham were not the only temple builders in the ancient world. During the history of Israel, the Bible will describe numerous pagan shrines, some built by non-Israelites and others constructed by apostate Jews. Genesis describes prominently one such false temple, that created on the plains of Shinar in Genesis 11.

While the confusion of languages at Babel is widely known both among Christians and non-Christians, it can be argued that the church does not give sufficient attention to this story. Of note, the attempt at temple building at Babel and the resulting divine judgment is the only event elaborated on during the extended period of time between the end of Noah's life and the call of Abram. That might indicate its importance to the overall progression of the biblical narrative.

The account, Scripture's first mention of Babel, opens a theme that will continue over the course of the rest of Scripture -- the rivalry between God's people and the city of man, represented either literally as Babylon or using the Babylonian metaphor. Of  course, it would be the Babylonians that would one day overthrow Jerusalem and destroy Solomon's temple. During the time of Jewish exile, a young Jew named Daniel would declare to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar that the Babylonian empire was in fact great -- represented in a vision by a head of gold -- but that it was also time limited, in contrast to the kingdom of God that would come and be established forever. Babylon did in fact cease to exist as an empire, but the metaphor continues in the New Testament, ultimately with the book of Revelation describing a contest pitting Babylon against God, with Christ the ultimate and final victor.

Returning to the Genesis 11 text, the story at Babel describes a gathered humanity in rebellion against God. God had given Noah a commission consistent with the prior one to Adam to fill the earth, but the people at Babel engaged in construction for the purpose of avoiding dispersal. Rather, they determined to build a tower into heaven that would provide a location from which they would summon God down to their temple to meet them. Note that in all of this, there is a determination to follow man made, man centered religion, in opposition to revealed religion and divine purposes. Human beings often imagine that we can worship God any way that we want, but the repudiation of the temple builders at Babel, as well as the meticulous instructions that God gives with regard to the tabernacle and the temple, reminds us that God is the Lord of worship. The God who is worshipped in spirit is also worshipped in truth, and that means that he determines the means and the manner of worship that is acceptable to him.

In Sumerian, the name "Babel" means "gateway of God," but in Genesis 11 we find God coming down not in response to a summons, but in mockery of their effort. God arrives in judgment, stopping the construction, confusing their language, and dispersing them. The further result of God's judgment on these people in Genesis 11 leads next to God's starting again with the call of Abram and the announcement of a covenant with him in Genesis 12.

Of note, in calling Abram, God promises freely by his grace what man by his rebellion against God failed to achieve by his temple building at Babel. Note the parallels in the text of Genesis 11 and 12 – they wanted to build for themselves a city, but God promised to give to Abram a country; they wanted to make a name for themselves, but God would make Abram’s name great; they feared dispersal, but God promised to bless the whole earth through Abram. What man could not do in rebellion against God, God gave to his people out of his grace.

Finally, one should not talk about the confusion of languages at Babel without also pondering the reversal ultimately promised for the age to come, which will be characterized by the completion of God's temple, the New Jerusalem, but also was prefigured at the dawn of the new covenant period during Pentecost immediately following the ascension of Christ. At Pentecost, God descended to the temple area in Jerusalem in power bringing salvation. The parallels and contrasts with the Babel event are interesting:

a.       At Babel, the people gathered at a temple under construction in rebellion and God came down in judgment; In Acts chapter 2, the people had gathered at the temple, and God came down in salvation.

b.       At Babel God confused their language in an announcement of judgment; at Pentecost God united their language in order to announce the Gospel.

c.      At Babel, the judgment resulted in confusion that led to disharmony; at Pentecost, the union of languages also caused confusion, but it led to the receipt of the promise.

d.       At Babel the people were scattered in judgment; at Pentecost, the people were scattered to fulfill the Great Commission and to fill the earth with the presence of God by spreading the Gospel.

Of course, during the present age, the availability of more widespread translation notwithstanding, multiplicity of human languages continues to create difficulties for the human race. Christians share in those difficulties, and for now we sing our Redeemer's praise in a many tongues. Nonetheless, the day will come when in one tongue and one voice all of God's people will  join as one in a nobler, sweeter song, rejoicing in Christ's power to save. In that day, Christ's temple will have been made holy and complete.

Transitional Temples: the Patriarchal Altars

In my last two posts, we looked at the first three chapters of Genesis, where God is depicted as creating a cosmic temple and then placing Adam and Eve in a miniature version of that temple. In the remaining 47 chapters of Genesis, we find Noah and the patriarchs engaged in altar building. These altars should be regarded as transitional structures connecting the earlier Edenic temple with the tabernacle and the Jewish temple that would come later. Ultimately, we find further connections with the New Testament.

When I say that this is a period of transition, that should not lead one to regard either the persons involved or the structures themselves as unimportant. Certainly, Noah's place at the head of a new creation emerging out of the waters of the flood must be regarded as critical, and the patriarchs are featured prominently two millenia later in the pages of the New Testament, with, among other references, Jesus making use of the popular designation of the Lord as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nonetheless, Noah built an altar at a time and place where it was only him and his family, and the patriarchs lived at a point in time when God's covenant people consisted of an extended nomadic family. In that regard, it is perhaps suggestive of their priorities that they are described on occasion of living in tents while building more permanent sanctuary structures in what was then a pagan land inhabited by Canaanites.

So, what is it about these structures that would lead one to see them as transitional temples between Eden and the tabernacle and temple. Generally, it can be noted that these were places of worship and fellowship with God, which is consistent with activities at those other places. Sometimes, though not always, offerings to God are described as being presented.

More specifically and poignantly, the connection between the Edenic temple and these altars can be seen in that the commission delivered to Adam and Eve to fill the earth at the end of Genesis 1 is reaffirmed in connection with each depiction of altar construction. Thus, Noah's building of an altar at the end of Genesis 8 is connected with the command of God at the start of Genesis 9 repeating the command to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, thus expanding the boundaries in which God's people dwell and worship. This is followed by God's covenant with Noah that the world will not again be destroyed by water, with a self-declaratory curse (the bow is pointed heavenward) if that promise is broken.

Of interest, following Noah, the repetition of the commission as delivered to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob takes the form not of a command, but of a promise. Thus, Abraham is not commanded to multiply and fill the earth, but rather he is promised a great host of descendants and that through his seed all of the earth will be blessed, a promise ultimately fulfilled with the coming of Christ. In response, Abraham builds two altars in Genesis 12, and he and his son and grandson each build additional altars when God's covenant promise is reiterated at later points.

In this way, the  altars look back to Edenic activity prior to the Fall, as well as forward to the building of the tabernacle and temple, as well as to New Testament depictions of the fulfillment of Old Testament temple typology.

In the next post, we will take a brief side trip to contrast this temple building to an example of sanctuary construction condemned by God. Between the time of Noah and Abraham, there was an attempt to build a temple on the plains of Shinar. It didn't go well.

The Garden Temple

In my previous post, I argued that Genesis 1 describes God creating a cosmic temple, with the visible and invisible creation being a temple designed and built by God ex nihilo (out of nothing). In this post I will make the point that God placed the first humans, Adam and Eve, into a miniaturized version of that temple.

It is common knowledge among both religious and nonreligious people that the Bible presents the first human habitat as being a paradise named the Garden of Eden; however, not many would think of this abode as a temple. Nonetheless, both obvious and more complex data from the text tells us that is exactly where God had placed them -- and what they ultimately forfeited. Understanding this opens up many windows to comprehending the rest of the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New.

The most obvious reason for thinking of the Garden of Eden as a temple is that it is the place that Adam and Eve met with God for fellowship and worship. At the end of Genesis 1, we are told that God made the first pair of humans in the divine image. Whatever else is implied by that phrase, which appears majestically in what is the first poem in the Bible, it signifies that Adam and Eve were created for covenant fellowship with their maker. God gives to this first couple a covenant command that enunciates the first statement of the Great Commission -- they are to be fruitful and multiply and "fill the earth." This signifies that while they would be placed in their initial home, their responsibility is not only to keep it, but to expand its borders to fill the earth. Of course, they failed in this responsibility, but I will later contend that the massive temple structures of Ezekiel 40-48 and Revelation 21 demonstrate that Jesus Christ would ultimately succeed where Adam had failed.

As a further note, I would point out that while some refer to the command of Genesis 1 as being a "cultural mandate," a phrase that has led to far reaching triumphalistic misinterpretations of Christian duty, I find it more accurate and helpful to think of it as a pre-Fall statement of the Great Commission.

Turning back to the temple theme, there are numerous additional reasons for thinking of the Garden of Eden as a miniaturized temple. Of course, everything that I said about the cosmic temple of Genesis 1 mirroring the threefold structure of the Jerusalem temple would also apply to the observational knowledge of Adam and Eve. There are numerous other associations with later temples:

1. The Garden of Eden opens to the east (that is where an angel was stationed to guard it from re-entry after the Fall). The Jerusalem temple also opened to the East.

2. Genesis 2 describes at length four rivers that water the Garden, and the association of rivers with temples is a common biblical theme. Psalm 46:4 declares, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High" (ESV). The Ezekiel temple includes a description of a river that flows from underneath it toward the east, flowing as a life giving river into the Dead Sea, and Jesus made reference to that imagery with regard to himself on two occasions in John's Gospel. Revelation 22 describes the Garden temple of the future age as having a "river of life" flowing through it

3. Along with the rivers, the Garden of Eden is described as having an array of extravagant and expensive minerals. The New Jerusalem, the temple described in Revelation 21, also is described in this way.

4. Adam is instructed to "work and keep" the Garden  words that have an agricultural tone. However, it is significant that everywhere else in the Pentateuch that the Hebrew words translated here are used in close proximinity (within 15 words), they always describe the duties of priests. Thus, Adam as keeper of the garden is also being commissioned as priest of this early temple.

Adam and Eve were given a probationary covenant of works not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The curse for eating would be death; by implication, the reward for obeying the covenant would be eternal life for Adam and his posterity. Adam, having failed his duty to keep the Garden cleansed, joined with his wife in succumbing to the temptations of the serpent, was evicted  from the garden temple, and brought death and ruin to himself and to his posterity.

God could have left Adam and Eve in that state, but along with curses God provided a gracious covenant to the fallen couple. God would not allow the seeds of the woman and the serpent to remain friends in opposition to God; rather, he would put enmity between Eve's seed and the serpent's. Ultimately, the seed of the serpent would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman; but, the woman's seed would deal a crushing blow to the head of the serpent. Here, the pronoun switches to the singular and is a vague but discernable reference to the ultimate seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, the remainder of the Bible would be about God's gracious dealings with his people in order to redeem and reclaim that which Adam had lost in this garden temple. One day, the true temple would come, and much of the future temple imagery we find in the Old Testament will point to the true temple, the Word that would become flesh and pitch his tent among us.

The Cosmic Temple

Nearly everyone I know that has attended American schools has learned to write a five paragraph essay with the following instruction from a teacher: in the introduction you tell them what you are going to tell them, then in the body you tell them, and in the conclusion you tell them what you told them.

In broad outline, this can be used to think about what we find in the Bible, which begins in the opening chapters of Genesis with a temple and concludes in the final chapters of Revelation with the same. In between, Scripture relates the story of God's special, temple presence among his people. In the Old Testament, this takes the form of the Garden of Eden, altars built by the patriarchs in commemoration of special encounters with God, the tabernacle, and the building and rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. In the New Testament, it takes the form of Jesus, the temple that would be rebuilt in three days, and the church, which is also described as a temple filled with the Spirit and built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone.

Thus, the Bible can be read as a book about God's temple, by which he is present among his people. This is the story as it starts "in the beginning."

The temple account begins in Genesis 1, where God is described as the wise and powerful designer and builder of a cosmic temple. He is so wise and so powerful that he constructs this temple universe ex nihilo -- out of nothing. Nonetheless, like a builder, God clears space and then fills it. There is an apparent literary structure in the text that magnifies God's wisdom in accomplishing this. On day 1, he creates the heavens and the earth, which he fills with the sun and the moon on day 4. On day 2, he divides the firmament, then fills the sky with birds and the water with sea creatures on day 5. On day 3, he called forth dry land, which he fills with land animals and mankind on day 6. Having constructed and filled his temple, he rests on the 7th day.

The reader might wonder why I have described creation as a temple. Its description as a place of God's rest, a theme captured in other Old Testament passages about the Jerusalem temple (see, as one example, Psalm 132:7-8), is one clue. However, there is much more evidence than that. I will want to hold some of this material for later, but much of the best information to help us understand God's intention in creation, as outlined in Genesis 1, comes from looking at the design for the Jerusalem temple itself.

The temple in Jerusalem was built with a three section design that was intended to provide a miniature replication of the cosmos. The outer court, with great basins representing the seas and other figures representing oxen and vegetation, represented the physical earth. The holy place, an enclosed dark area with lampstands providing points of light, represented the visible heavens. The holy of holies contained the great cherubim standing guard over the altar and represented the invisible heavens where God dwelt.

That the temple was created as a depiction of the cosmos in miniature tells us that the cosmos itself was created as a temple of God. Nonetheless, the Jerusalem temple was not the first microcosm of the cosmic temple. The first is described in Genesis 2 and named the Garden of Eden. I will talk about that next time.

The Temple of Hope

I want to spend some time writing a series of posts on a subject that I came across a few years ago and that thoroughly reoriented my way of reading and understanding Scripture. I am writing in the hope that this study will have similar value for others.

Much of the writing of the prophet Ezekiel is dark, with the writer expounding and demonstrating in various ways the judgment that was descending upon Judah and other nations. That is not to say that Ezekiel's prophecies are without hope. In fact, the final nine chapters of the book are full of hope, though the long passage has been difficult to understand for both Jewish and Christian readers. Chapters 40 through 48 describe a vision of a massive end times temple.

The enormous scale of the temple structure that Ezekiel describes makes it impossible to recreate in the geographical confines of Jerusalem. The Temple Institute, a Jewish organization committed to and making preparations to rebuild the ancient temple, acknowledges the difficulty:

"Many aspects of the Temple described by Ezekiel are difficult to comprehend, since that vision contains elements of prophetic insight which, in our generation, we do not have the spiritual or intellectual capacity to understand. For example, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, the structure of the Third Temple will necessitate vast topographical changes in the environs of the Jerusalem. This Temple will differ drastically in size from its predecessors. According to Ezekiel's measurements, the new Temple will be so large that it will occupy the entire area of the city of Jerusalem."

In spite of these difficulties, many Christians look toward a future literal building of this temple. They typically place the construction of it in a future millennium following the return of Christ, presumably accompanied by an altered geography of Israel that will make the structure possible. This interpretation is problematic for a number of reasons that I will outline in a future post, and I will also offer in the future an explanation as to why I believe that Ezekiel's temple vision is to be understood symbolically.

For now, though, I want to respond to one important objection to a spiritual or symbolic understanding of Ezekiel's vision, for this response provides a key to the study that I am about to commence. That objection is this:

If Ezekiel is not envisioning something that God will literally bring to pass, why does the Bible provide so much detail (nine chapters worth!) of this future temple?

The answer: Ezekiel's lengthy exposition is appropriate and a valuable gift to us from God because it illuminates a theme that dominates the Bible from the first page to the last. That is to say, the entire Bible is about God's temple presence among his people. It is the subject of Genesis 1 (I realize that I will need to explain that), and it is the subject of Revelation 22. What God uses to introduce and conclude the Bible is also a key subject of the entire body of Scripture, both Old Testament and New.

Once you understand that, it opens the door to understanding the progress of scriptural revelation in exciting ways. Understanding this theme will reorient the way that the Bible is read.

My next post will address the first chapter of Genesis, which describes God building his cosmological temple.