Two weeks ago we started looking at biblical theology: what it is, why it’s important, and a brush-stroke look at how the Bible story unfolds. We said that biblical theology is the study of God’s plans and purposes as they are revealed progressively in his dealings with humanity. Last week we took that a step further and thought together about some of the tools we use in biblical theology: progressive revelation, tropes and types, fulfilment of promise and prophecy, and how the themes we trace are ultimately fulfilled in Christ, and how we participate in that fulfilment insofar as we are united with Christ.
That last point is really important. We said that in Christ God is doing what he’s always been doing, in a much fuller way. All the themes that we’re tracing in biblical theology—the themes we see progressively unfolding as we look at them over the whole Bible story—reach their fulfilment in Christ in some or other way. It’s a bit like that picture with the pyramid with the lights of various colours all shining on it, and it all gets reflected through into white light.
But, while all major biblical themes find their fulfilment in Christ, they don’t all do so in the same way. Themes can develop in the Bible in at least three ways.
The first is that we can see various snapshots that, when we see how they’re interconnected, give us a fuller picture. With each new picture we see something we didn’t see in the others.
Another way themes can develop is in a more cyclic way. An example of this is how we’re introduced to God’s representative who is tasked with spreading God’s blessing throughout the world. The first is Adam, and that doesn’t go so well, and over the course of Genesis 1–11 there’s a bad spiralling down in sin, which ends in Babylon (or Babel, as it’s usually called). Then we’re introduced to Abraham: God’s representative through whom he will spread his blessing to the ends of the earth. His family ultimately becomes the nation of Israel, but again, sin gets in the way, and the books of Kings tells us about the spiral downwards, ending in Babylon. This cycle happens one more time with Jesus as God’s representative—the one who doesn’t sin, but ushers in a new age, ending at a different city: the New Jerusalem. But before the story ends, Babylon gets one more mention: towards the end of Revelation Babylon is destroyed, along with all who identify with her. So the end of Revelation sets us up with a choice: will you align yourself with Jesus and enjoy eternity as the New Jerusalem, or with the world standing in opposition to God, and go down into destruction as Babylon? This example shows us the cycles—this is another way of approaching biblical theology.
The third way is where we have two distinct-looking themes, which over time get closer and closer together, meet in the person of Jesus, and ultimately weave together to describe the age to come that he ushers in.
So we have the snapshot approach; the cyclic approach; and the convergence approach. Over the next three weeks we’ll be looking at an example of each of these three approaches. This week we’re using the snapshot approach and looking at the temple: the place where God dwelled in the midst of his people.
The Proto-Temple: Exodus
We begin with Exodus, not because it’s the first temple we see in the Bible, but because it’s the first clear one. In Exodus, God tells the Israelites to build the tabernacle. By starting here, we’re establishing a category with which to understand what’s going on in other parts of Scripture just beneath the surface.
One commentator explains the tabernacle this way: “The tabernacle was a fancy rectangular tent in which God lived symbolically in the presence of his people.” The Israelite camp was then arranged such that the tabernacle was in the middle and the people’s tents surrounding the tabernacle in concentric circles. “[Yahweh’s] home was in their very midst, and they gathered their homes around his.”
The tabernacle was divided into sections. There was the Holy Place, which was bigger and rectangular, thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide; and there was the Most Holy Place (or the Holy of Holies), which was smaller and cube-shaped, fifteen feet by fifteen by fifteen, and in here lay the ark of the covenant—“an ornate box with a special platform that symbolized God’s presence.” And between the Holy Place and the Most Holy was a “veil of blue and purple and scarlett yarns and fine twined linen … made with cherubim skillfully worked into it” (Ex. 26:31). We’ll come back to the cherubim just now, so keep that in the back of your mind. The same colour scheme and patterns were also true of the inner layers for the Holy Place—“inner layers” because there were another two outer layers of material, presumably to make it somewhat weather-proof. Only the priests were allowed into the Holy Place, and only the High Priest in the Most Holy, and this only once a year on the Day of Atonement; the rest of the Israelites were only allowed as far as the third section outside the Holy Place, the courtyard.
Before the construction of the tabernacle, Moses would meet with God alone in the tent of meeting, situated outside the camp.
7 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. 8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. 9 When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. 10 And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. 11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent (Ex. 33:7–11).
But in Exodus 40 they completed the tabernacle, and when it was finished, “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (vv. 34–35). With the completion of the tabernacle, the Israelites had God dwelling in their midst.
But if we think about the book of Exodus, this isn’t the only time God descends in a cloud on a tripartite structure set apart as where he is, and by implication where the people of Israel couldn’t be. Think back to Exodus 19:
16 On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly (Ex. 19:16–18).
They’re then given the law in chs. 20–23; and in ch. 24 they’re still at Mount Sinai, and we read:
1 Then he said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. 2 Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him” (24:1–2).
Like with the design of the tabernacle, we see the three-tiered structure for who can come how close to God: the priests can come some of the way up the mountain, the people must worship from afar, and only Moses can come near to God.
Although the tabernacle was only built towards the end of Exodus, with the tabernacle as a category in our thinking we can start to see other temple moments. What we’ve just seen is that Mount Sinai is one of them. But if we started in Exodus, we’d skip right past what is perhaps the most significant temple in the OT.
The Prefigured Temple: Genesis 1–3
Let’s turn to the garden narrative in Genesis 1–3. Here we’ll notice some parallels with the tabernacle in Exodus. But before we go there, we’re going to take a moment to look at some of the features that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious at all from just looking at the text.
In ANE culture, it would have been a given that, as John Walton writes, “Deity rests in a temple, and only in a temple. This is what temples were built for. We might even say that this is what a temple is—a place for divine rest.” That idea of rest, as I’m sure you can already guess, has major implications for how we read the opening chapters of Genesis. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:1–2). That phrase in v. 2, “without form and void” could also be translated wild and waste, desert and wasteland. John Walton explains it in terms of non-functional and uninhabitable. One of my Hebrew lecturers said that the best translation is something like, “Shmleghtrkhjsadv.” Hopefully you get the picture—it’s chaotic, unfunctional, uninhabitable. And in the six days of creation God pushes back the chaos and brings order, and inhabits, ultimately on day six with humans.
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen. 2:1–3). Walton explains: “[I]n the ancient world rest is what results when a crisis has been resolved or when stability has been achieved, when things have ‘settled down.’ Consequently normal routines can be established and enjoyed. For deity this means that the normal operations of the cosmos can be undertaken. This is more a matter of engagement without obstacles rather than disengagement without responsibilities.”
So the fact that the garden was seen as a kind of temple is clear when we see the narrative from the ANE perspective the writer of Genesis would have taken for granted (a lot like a trope, if you were with us last week). But more connections can be made by comparing it with other parts of Scripture. We’ll fly through just a few examples.
Like the tabernacle, there’s also a kind of a three-part layout to the garden. Notice the way 2:10 is worded: “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.” The water flows from Eden to the garden—implying that Eden and the garden are two distinct places. So we have the world outside the garden that resembles the outer court of the temple; “the Garden itself [as] a sacred space separate from the outer world” that resembles the holy place; and Eden, where God dwells, that resembles the Most Holy Place.
In Genesis 2:15 we read: “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it” (CSB). Another way that phrase could be translated is to “serve and to guard it”—which is how that very phrase is translated when talking about the priests in the tabernacle. It’s lost a little in the English, but in the Hebrew the job description is the same. So, just as we could talk about the garden as the first temple, we could also talk about Adam as its first priest.
In Genesis 3:8 we read that God would walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. God walking in the midst of his people comes up again in Leviticus 26: “I will place my [dwelling] among you, and I will not reject you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people” (vv. 11–12). Similarly in Deuteronomy 23:14: “Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy.”
Adam fails as God’s priest, and as a result cannot remain in God’s presence, and so Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden:
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life (Gen. 3:22–24).
Isn’t that such a pointed way to talk about what humanity lost because of their sin? Because of sin we can no longer dwell in the presence of God. But not only that: did you notice who shows up when they’re kicked out? The cherubim. Beale explains: “When Adam failed to guard the temple by sinning and letting in a foul serpent to defile the sanctuary, he lost his priestly role, and the cherubim took over the responsibility of ‘guarding’ the Garden temple.”
There’s more, but I think the point has been made. So, with that, let’s move on to talk about the temple structure as it appears in the books of Samuel and Kings.
The Permanent Temple: Samuel & Kings
In 1 Samuel 4, the people have just lost a battle against the Philistines, and they come up with a great idea: “Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies” (v. 3). Except that it doesn’t go quite as planned: “the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and they fled, every man to his home. And there was a very great slaughter, for thirty thousand foot soldiers of Israel fell. And the ark of God was captured” (vv. 10–11). The way the story flows, though, it’s pretty clear that this is no accident on God’s part. God wasn’t happy with the people, and taking the ark into battle with them wasn’t going to change that. So, as one scholar has put it, “Yahweh thus virtually withdraws himself from the promised land in what is interpreted by the writer as a reverse exodus…: Yahweh has gone into exile (4:22), leaving Israel in the promised land.” The ark is returned to Israel in ch. 6, but things don’t seem quite resolved.
1 And the men of Kiriath-jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord and brought it to the house of Abinadab on the hill. And they consecrated his son Eleazar to have charge of the ark of the Lord. 2 From the day that the ark was lodged at Kiriath-jearim, a long time passed, some twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord (1 Sam. 7:1–2).
Skip ahead to 2 Samuel 6: the ark is brought to Jerusalem. (There’s a hiccup along the way, but we won’t worry with that now.) “The return of the ark after a virtual self-enforced exile for twenty years on the perimeters of the Israelite-controlled territory meant that Yahweh was now prepared once again to place himself at the center of Israelite life.”
In ch. 7 David desires to build a more permanent space for God: “Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, the king said to Nathan the prophet, ‘See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent’” (v. 1–2). God effectively says no; but he does promise David that he will “make for [him] a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth” (v. 9)—which should make us think of Abraham (Gen. 12:2–3)—and he will give David and the people rest (2 Sam. 7:10–11). “David’s greatness must be established, Israel’s living space determined, and the conquest completed before Yahweh will undertake to erect his sanctuary. But Yahweh himself will build it, since he will provide the circumstances in which the temple may be built. … Yahweh will not be confined in houses built with hands, nor can man build such a ‘house.’” Think again of the opening chapters of Genesis; what’s described here in 2 Samuel 7 is in terms of rest and what needs to be done to attain rest—in other words, what is called to mind is the sort of ruling and subduing expected of the humans in the garden-temple of Genesis 2.
That, incidentally, is why God prevented David from building the temple himself:
2 Solomon sent word to Hiram, 3 “You know that David my father could not build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet. 4 But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side. There is neither adversary nor misfortune.
5 And so I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord said to David my father, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, shall build the house for my name’” (1 Kgs. 5:2–5).
And that is what Solomon does: he builds the temple. And everything is overlaid with gold.
21 Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold, and he drew chains of gold across, in front of the inner sanctuary, and overlaid it with gold. 22 And he overlaid the whole house with gold, until all the house was finished. Also the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold. 23 In the inner sanctuary he made two cherubim of olivewood, each ten cubits high. … 28 And he overlaid the cherubim with gold (1 Kgs. 6:21–23, 28).
It keeps going. The point I think is made: there was a lot of gold.
This was true of the tabernacle back in Exodus too. “The ark is overlaid with gold, inside and out, and has cherubim hammered out of golf on its lid. There is a golden lampstand decorated with gold buds and gold branches. There are gold plates and dishes and pitchers and bowls. The priests wear a gold ephod and a gold breastpiece and are decorated with gold chains and gold bells. It seems there is a gold everything.”
But not only that; look at Genesis 2: “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good” (vv. 10–12).
But that’s not all that links us back to the garden. The description of the temple in 1 Kings 6–7 is full “of garden-like descriptions of the interior, much of which are descriptions of carvings, structures, or pieces of furniture covered with precious metals.” For instance: “The cedar within the house was carved in the form of gourds and open flowers” (6:18); “He covered the two doors of olivewood with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. He overlaid them with gold and spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees” (v. 32).
Also, I don’t think I need to say so, but the cherubim also got a mention again.
Now, we’ve noted all these parallels. I think it’s worth pausing for just a moment to get the order right. Was the garden narrative patterned on the temple/tabernacle, or was the tabernacle patterned after the garden? I think there’s something to be said for both. Certainly the garden narrative was told the way it was to highlight the temple connotations that were meant to come with it—remembering, of course, that, while it may not be so obvious to us on a first read (or perhaps even a second, third, fourth, or fifth), it would have been as clear as day to the first readers of Genesis, the ones living in that day and age, in that (as John Walton puts it) “cultural river.”
But I think we should see it the other way around. The temple was patterned after the garden—the place where humanity once dwelt with God in a way that can only be hinted at in the temple structure. The garden was the ideal—unhindered relationship with God, where God would walk with them (Gen. 3:8). Living, as they did, centered around the place God dwelt with them, would have been a taste of what it was like back in the garden. And that was good.
But it didn’t stay that way.
The Prophesied Temple
Jeremiah 7
1 Kings begins with the establishment of Solomon as king of Israel and the construction of the temple; 2 Kings ends with how far Israel’s kings—well, Judah, since the kingdom split—had fallen, and the destruction of the temple in 2 Kings 25.
But not without warning. God did tell them that if things carry on the way they do, things will end badly. One of the people he sent to tell them that was the prophet Jeremiah. We read in Jer. 7:
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place.
4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ 5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever (vv. 1–7).
With God living in their midst, the people can’t just live any old how and expect God to be okay with it. The people were oppressive to the vulnerable—“the sojourner, the fatherless, the widow” (v. 5)—and were shedding innocent blood; they were going up to other gods, but then hiding in the temple and claiming immunity—“Nothing will happen to us here, we’re in the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.”
In Jeremiah’s view such an outlook was little more than empty superstition. The presence of a temple made with timber and stone in which ritual activities were performed could be no guarantee of the divine presence and protection when the people despised the moral demands of the covenant. Nothing less than a deep and radical repentance and a profound spiritual renewal would avail to deliver the people from inevitable judgment, that is, from the operation of the curses of the covenant.
When they behave the way they do, they make the temple out to be something far less than it is.
9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord (vv. 9–11).
Clearly they don’t show signs of repentance: we read in 12:7: “I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage; I have given the beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies.”
Ezekiel
In Ezekiel 1, God appears to Ezekiel at the Chebar canal, a river in Babylon, where Ezekiel, among others, was in exile. And there “the heavens were opened, and [he] saw visions of God” (v. 1): “As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal” (v. 4)—and what he does on to describe is the Lord appearing to him in glory.
In ch. 8 he’s taken to see what’s going on at the temple back in Jerusalem, and it’s not good—a lot like the mess we saw going on in Jeremiah. Ezekiel is taken on a tour of the temple, and what he sees is a people that has utterly rejected God. So, in ch. 11, God leaves.
22 Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. 23 And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city. 24 And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen went up from me. 25 And I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me (11:22–25).
God’s glory is no longer in the temple. God is no longer dwelling in the midst of his people. And in ch. 5 God proclaims that, because of their wickedness, Jerusalem will be destroyed—which it is, in 2 Kings 25.
But that’s not the end of the story.
1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on that very day, the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me to the city. 2 In visions of God he brought me to the land of Israel, and set me down on a very high mountain, on which was a structure like a city to the south. 3 When he brought me there, behold, there was a man whose appearance was like bronze, with a linen cord and a measuring reed in his hand. And he was standing in the gateway. 4 And the man said to me, “Son of man, look with your eyes, and hear with your ears, and set your heart upon all that I shall show you, for you were brought here in order that I might show it to you. Declare all that you see to the house of Israel” (40:1–4).
Ezekiel gets another tour of the temple—only this time it’s not with promises of judgment, but restoration.
1 Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing east. 2 And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. And the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory.
3 And the vision I saw was just like the vision that I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and just like the vision that I had seen by the Chebar canal. And I fell on my face. 4 As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, 5 the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the temple (43:1–5).
The glory of the Lord re-entered the temple. And when this happens, we start to see the restoration God will bring unfolding:
1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side (47:1–2).
The trickle became an ankle-deep stream, which then became knee-deep; then waist-deep; then deep enough to swim in, so Ezekiel couldn’t cross (vv. 3–5). And all this water touched it purified and gave life to. “And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing” (v. 12). In his description of life teeming from the river, Ezekiel takes us back to Eden. This is the sort of restoration and blessing to be expected when God dwells in the midst of his people.
Haggai
The glory of the Lord filled the temple in Ezekiel’s vision, but in reality, the temple was lying in ruins. Ezekiel was writing all this in Babylon. They were the superpower of the day—the kingdom that all the other kingdoms in the region had been conquered by. Then the Persians took over, and they became the next superpower.
Now, it’s worth mentioning very briefly one of the key differences between the Babylonian and Persian ways of doing things. Babylon took over, cherry-picked the strongest members of society, and carted them off to Babylon, where they were treated reasonably well, and integrated into society, thus making their own nation stronger.
Persia did things differently. Their persuasion (more or less) was a happy captive is a good captive. So they allowed the various nations they had under their control to go home and re-establish places of worship. To be clear, they were still under Persian rule; they didn’t have kings, they had governors, and if they caused a stir they would be efficiently stamped out. But as long as they played along, things were fine.
This is what’s going on in Ezra–Nehemiah. The Israelites in captivity were sent back in three waves; the first wave is what concerns us: Zerubbabel was sent back to rebuild the temple. This sets the scene for the book of Haggai.
1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: 2 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.” 3 Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” (Hag. 1:1–4).
There’s some debate about what’s meant by “panelled” houses. At the very least, what this meant was that their houses were complete. Panelling was the last step in the building process—the people were living in houses that were finished and functional. The temple, on the other hand, was lying in ruins—highly unfunctional. But we could go a step further. More than just complete, panelling elsewhere in the OT seems to carry connotations of adornment or luxury. In contrast, more than just incomplete, the temple is described as desolate.
So God gives them the kick in the pants they need, and they get working. In 2:9 we read: “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.” The “former glory” would have been Solomon’s temple, which we saw back in 1 Kings. This helps us understand v. 8: “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts”—remember that in Solomon’s temple, everything was covered in gold. But, God says, the latter glory will be greater—perhaps what’s in view is the temple vision of Ezekiel.
What’s strange, though, is that they finish the temple. By the end of Zerubbabel’s cycle in Ezra–Nehemiah, the temple is done. But the glory of the Lord never returns. What Ezekiel prophesied doesn’t happen. And so we enter the period of silence—the four hundred years between the Old and New Testaments. In that time a guy named Herod makes some serious renovations to the temple. But by that stage the people’s hearts are already far from God.
Christ as the Temple
John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (Jn. 1:1–5).
“The word” takes us back to Genesis, how God created all things by his word. In Psalm 33 we read: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host” (v. 6). And this Word through whom all things were created is the answer to how the promises of a new temple will be fulfilled: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory” (Jn. 1:14).
The word for “dwelt” is the verb σκηνόω, from the noun σκηνή. You don’t need to remember the Greek, but what’s significant about σκηνή is that it’s the word for “tabernacle”—so, literally, “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”
“And we have seen his glory.” The tabernacle. Glory. Never seen those together, have we? Of course we have—in Exodus. The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Greg Beale puts it this way: “Christ is the epitome of God’s presence on earth as God incarnate, thus continuing the true form of the old temple, which actually was a foreshadowing of Christ’s presence throughout the OT era.”
Mark 11
[Jesus] entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 16 And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching (Mk. 11:15–18).
Jesus explains his actions by putting together two OT references: from Isaiah 56:7 and one we’ve looked at already, Jeremiah 7:11.
The first reference finds its context in a passage calling the Israelites to “Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed (Isa. 56:1). It’s set in Isaiah’s eschatological promises—remember that word from last week? Cosmic, end-time, age to come promises—that the temple would be a house of prayer to all nations. One scholar explains: “By citing a verse that was read within the framework of Jewish restoration eschatology, … Jesus asserts that the Herodian temple is not the house of glory that the prophets anticipated”—the Herodian temple being the temple Herod had the renovations done on.
Jeremiah 7 we’ve seen already: the Israelites were living however they pleased, then hiding out in the temple, saying, “God won’t judge us here—we’re in the temple.” But just as the Solomon’s temple was not immune to judgment, nor is the Herodian Temple.
Seeing the context also helps us make sense of another part of the same section:
23 Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses (Mk. 11:23–25).
If destruction is the fate of the temple—which Jesus is clear that it is—then where are people to go for prayer and forgiveness? Like the tree Jesus makes an object lesson out of earlier in the chapter, the temple has “withered at the roots” (v. 20); the need is for a new temple. Jesus’ concern is not reform, but replacement. One commentator notes: “the temple is fundamentally—‘from the roots’—replaced by Jesus as the centre of Israel.” Whereas the Temple was the place where prayer and forgiveness took place, it is now through Jesus, by faith.
Jesus came to replace the temple. But that gave way to further fulfilment of the temple. This we start to see unfold in the book of Acts.
The Church as the Temple
Acts 2
1 When the day of Pentecost arrived, [the disciples] were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance (vv. 1–4).
We see similar language in Isaiah 30:
27 Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; his lips are full of fury, and his tongue is like a devouring fire; 28 his breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck; to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads astray. 29 You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel. 30 And the Lord will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and storm and hailstones (vv. 27–30).
The context is Judah’s redemption (30:19–33) and the destruction of Assyria (30:27–33). God will act to rescue his people by bringing judgment on their enemies. Then God’s people will go to “the mountain of the Lord” (v. 29), which elsewhere in Isaiah refers to the temple. This calls to mind another temple-mountain scene: Sinai—where God appeared to his people in fire, and established them as a “kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6). This temple language serves as a backdrop for what’s going on in Acts 2.
The reference to God’s tongue as a devouring fire is symbolic of judgment. On a first glance this doesn’t fit too well with Acts 2; but, as Greg Beale explains:
… that the same flaming image even in Acts may also allude to both blessing and judgment is apparent from the Sinai backdrop, where the fiery theophany [a big word for God visibly appearing to people] was associated with both blessing (the giving of the law) and judgment (for those entering too close to the theophany or rebelling).
In Acts 2, “there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house” (v. 2); cast your mind back to Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 8: And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord” (vv. 10–11).
Further on in Acts 2, reference is made to Joel 2, which talks about the Spirit being poured out on all flesh (v. 17). In v. 20 we read: “the sun and moon shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.” That phrase, “the sun and moon shall be turned to darkness,” is from Joel 2:31. It comes up again in Joel 3:15—now in connection with God σκηνόω-ing—tabernacling—among his people (vv. 17, 21). This shows further that what is going on in Acts too is concerned with the establishment of the eschatological temple.
But the temple in the new age looks different. This time it’s not a building: in Acts 2 the disciples are filled with the HS. The eschatological temple is not a building; it’s people. God no longer dwells in a building among the people; he dwells by his Spirit in the people.
In the epistles
Paul pushes this a bit further:
19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph. 2:19–22).
This isn’t the only time Paul speaks this way; he also talks about God’s people as a temple of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 3 and 6; in 2 Corinthians 6 he speaks about the church as “the temple of the living God” (v. 16). Usually what comes with this identification with the temple is an imperative to godliness—since God is living in you, live accordingly.
The Culmination of the Temple
All of this points forward to the final realisation of the temple that we will one day enjoy in the new creation.
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:1–3).
We could reword v. 3: “Behold, the σκηνη—tabernacle—of God is with man. He will σκηνοω—dwell, or tabernacle—with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
John is “carried away in the Spirit” to a “great high mountain” (v. 10)—which should make us think again of Ezekiel. But, of course, mountain language isn’t just from Ezekiel—we’ve seen more than once how mountains and temples often go together.
The streets and the walls of the New Jerusalem are “pure gold” (vv. 18, 21)—which should make us think again of Solomon’s temple, how that was decked with gold.
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (22:1–2).
The imagery changes from a city to a garden—calling to mind the garden of Eden, the ideal temple in which God dwelt with his people in perfect harmony. But it also calls to mind the river from Ezekiel—the river that flowed from the temple, giving life to all it touched. This, no doubt, is also what John has in mind in 21:6 when he says: “To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.” The tree of life also makes an appearance, with “leaves … for the healing of the nations” (v. 2), calling to mind Ezekiel 47, but once again linking further back to the garden of Eden—“an escalated form of the original Eden, since it will be eternally incorruptible.”
But perhaps what is most interesting is what isn’t there. Something we’ve seen crop up in other instances of the temple is that tripartite layout—the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place. But, interestingly, it’s missing from the new creation. Adam and Eve were told to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28); the borders of the garden—the place where God dwelt with his people—were to expand, that the whole world would be filled and subdued under God’s rule. There’s no outer court because in Revelation 21, that job is done. “God’s special presence, formerly limited to the holy of holies, has now extended out to encompass the entire visible heavens and the whole earth, which the holy place and the court respectively symbolized.”
And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (v. 22). Greg Beale writes: “In the new creation, God’s presence will not be limited to a temple structure with the people outside the structure, but the people themselves will be both the city and the temple in which God’s presence resides.”
Conclusion
This evening we’ve looked at a biblical theology of the temple by looking at a series of snapshots: the proto-temple from Exodus; the prefigured temple in Genesis; the permanent temple in Samuel and Kings; the prophesied temple in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Haggai; that Christ fulfils the temple from John and Mark, and that the church, through Christ, further fulfils the temple as those built onto him, and we looked specifically at Acts and Ephesians to see that; and finally, we saw the culmination of the temple in the new creation—where there is no longer any temple, because what the temple was purposed for is fulfilled in the new creation.
But it wasn’t just a linear sequence. At each step we saw how it’s all interconnected. All of it joins up to give us a fuller picture of God’s plans and purposes as they are revealed progressively in his dealings with humanity. And that’s the job of biblical theology.