Session 2 The Temple
One of the motivations for developing these Bible Studies has been the work of the Bible Project. If you haven’t already got into them, I highly recommend them. Their approach to reading Scripture is excellent, and I love the way they see the connections in the Bible. They cover individual books, but they also look at biblical themes. Their video on the theme of temple is typically brilliant and covers so much of what I’d want to say in a short period of time. So, let’s watch it.
What are some of the things that we see in the video?
• Temple is the home of God, overlapping heaven and earth.
• All creation is God’s temple, Genesis 1.
• Temple and tabernacle built in 7 days.
• Genesis 2, Eden with a Garden.
• Temple is a replica of Garden.
• Israel to work and keep, like Adam and Eve as priests.
• Exile from Garden, Israel exiled because ruling on their own terms.
• God must create a new temple and priesthood.
• First attempt no good, still waiting for ultimate temple
• Jesus: through him God’s presence is found in him as a new priest.
• He was true temple, including all creation.
• God’s presence dwell in his followers as mini-temples, the church.
• Living stones build up as a temple.
• Renewed cosmic temple (like Genesis 1), no special temple needed.
What are the important points to note?
1. The connection between creation and the temple/tabernacle means that humanity’s first role was as priest, to serve in a holy place as a sort of soldier gardener. Our product specification was also to rule over the animals of the world (Genesis 1:28), so our primary calling is ‘royal priesthood’.
2. The Garden of Eden is different to Eden itself.
2:8, it is in the East of Eden.
2:10, a river flows out of Eden into the Garden.
This means that the garden is not the most holy place. Adam and Eve were placed in a garden because, although they were sinless, they weren’t perfect (evident by the fact that they chose to disobey God’s instruction). They were in a probationary period, and God would come walking to see them.
3. Creation and the temple are linked through design patterns.
Reading Genesis 1 and 2 through biblical eyes means we recognize that God created the world like a temple, like the place where he dwells in heaven. There’s an analogy of this when the Spirit reveals to David how to build the temple (1 Cor 28).
Heb 8:5 [Priests] serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’
Heb 9:24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence.
Creation, rather like the temple, is built upon the pattern of heaven. Creation is built like a temple, and the temple is built like heaven, which is also a bit like creation: they are all places where God is present. The temple has an outer court, a holy place, and the holy of holies. Creation has the surface of the world, the garden of Eden, and Eden itself.
The story of the Yoyo
The story of the Bible is the story of going in and out of God’s presence. The paradigm for this, not surprisingly, is creation and the fall.
The Garden of Eden Exile
There the intended plan for the responsibility for the garden of Eden would have extended over the whole world, bringing the presence of God everywhere, and making life fully accessible to everyone. The disobedience and faithlessness of Adam and Eve meant that they were barred from accessing the holy place.
• They were given coverings
• They were pushed out East
• Back to the ground where he’d come from
• Prevented from accessing God or the tree of life.
That is the pattern of exile. Life and the presence of God are bound up together. Away from the Garden is death and violence. The yearning of the human heart is to return to the place where we found life, love and fulfilment in the presence of God, back in the Garden of Eden.
The Temple in Jerusalem
The short version of the story is that the temple in Jerusalem is built to resemble the Garden of Eden. There are many points of contact with Genesis 2. It is covered in gold, first mentioned in Genesis 2 in the region of Havilah; the onyx stone is associated with the priests’ breastplace and the ephod, and is mentioned in 1 Chr 29:2. And the Jerusalem river Gihon takes its name from one of the four rivers that flowed from the Garden of Eden through the land of Cush.
The temple, as we saw in the video, has representative palm trees all around it, and it has two great bronze pillars at the entrance, called Boaz and Jachin (2 Chr 3:17). They were free-standing, about 25 feet tall and six feet wide bronze pillars with floral arrangements at the top. They represented, Apple thinks, the sun and moon. In addition they have the Menorah candelabra, something that many commentators have long associated with the tree of life. And finally, there was the paraket, or the curtain, that separated the holy place where priests would go, and the holy of holies where God dwelt over the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant. Upon that dividing curtain was embroidered cherubim, reminding the priest of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah all describe how God initially defended his holy temple from the great threat of the Assyrians from king Sennacherib. King Hezekiah humbly and faithfully prayed to God to defend the city and save his people from those attackers. Sadly, a couple of centuries later, the Jerusalem temple was full of idols and false worship. God brought the Babylonians against it, and Solomon’s temple was destroyed and the people exiled.
It is difficult to express how devastating this exile was for Israel (or Judah, as the Northern kingdom had long since been exiled). They had lost their home and their identity and their hope. They went from the mountains of Judah to the plains of Mesopotamia. God had left them, and they were bereft.
Psalm 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
God gave them hope that they were not abandoned through the prophet Ezekiel, that he would show mercy to them and bring them back. This eventually happened after the prayers of Daniel and under the leadership of Zerubbabel, Nehemiah and Ezra.
Jesus as Exiled
The third biblical exile happened at the time of Jesus. Jesus represents the people of God, and when he is put on trial he is taken outside the city, away from the temple, and put to death. Jesus embodies an exile in himself. He cries out on the cross a lament: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, and is put to death beside criminals.
The destruction of the temple by the Romans
The fourth exile is predicted by Jesus but is beyond the historical scope of the New Testament. Jesus predicts, in Mark 13, that the great stones of the temple will be knocked down, each one, and the people be exiled under the Romans just as the were under the Babylonians.
Mark 13:1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!’
2 ‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ replied Jesus. ‘Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’
This helps us to understand a bit of a puzzle about Mark 13. Jesus says that ‘this generation’ will experience all these things, but that also ‘heaven and earth’ will pass away, but his words will not.
30 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
This puzzle of time frame is resolved once we realize that ‘heaven and earth’ was a way of talking about the temple, which represented heaven (holy of holies) and earth (holy place and the outer courts). It will pass away as Jesus had predicted at the start of his talk, and it will happen within one generation (40 years?), namely AD70.
Destroy this temple and rebuild it
God has a pattern of rebuilding what he destroys.
• If we’re right to think of creation as a kind of temple, then God destroys the first creation-temple in the flood. However, true to form, he recreates it, preserving the animals in a kind of watery exile until they return to their earthly home. This present creation is reserved for fire, and a new creation will be revealed.
• Solomon’s temple is destroyed in 586BC by Nebuchadnezzar. But as we mentioned, God brought the people back from Babylon under the Persian King Cyrus, starting about 538BC and the foundation of the second temple began about 516BC. However, it was massively overhauled by Herod the Great in 20BC and had only just been completed during Jesus’ ministry.
• Jesus is where God is present (which we’ll unpack in a second), so he himself is a kind of temple. And God allowed the temple of Jesus to be destroyed, but then rebuilt it. The resurrection is the rebuilding of the temple of Jesus.
• If the church is also a temple (which we’ll unpack in a second), then that means we might well expect to be persecuted, destroyed even, and rebuilt. (Granted that Jesus says of Peter that the gates of hell will not prevail against us).
Discussion: how does the background help?
Okay, that’s the background; creation as temple, temple destruction and exile, and rebuilding the temple after it has been destroyed.
How is Jesus the temple?
Now let’s turn our focus to Jesus and see how all this helps us to understand who he is, and who we are in him. There are four early indications in the Gospel of John that we should see Jesus as the temple: he is like the tabernacle, he is filled with the spirit, he is to be destroyed and rebuilt, and he is the stone of the house of God. Let’s go through each of these one by one.
• Jesus is the creator and the tabernacle.
At the start of John’s Gospel we see this beautiful reflection on creation, with two lights appearing. John the Baptist is the reflected light of the moon, and Jesus is the true light, a bit like Boaz and Jachin.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Having established that Jesus is the creator, we then see that he is the tabernacle.
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The word for ‘made his dwelling’ is the term skenoo, to pitch a tent or tabernacle. The creator became the tent where God met with his people. Unlike Moses who only saw the back of God on the mountain (and everyone else was prevented from seeing the presence of God behind the curtain), we have seen God face to face in Christ.
• The Spirit descends upon Jesus
In John’s Gospel there are other indicators that we’re to understand Jesus as the temple of God. The testimony of John the Baptist is that the Spirit has descended upon Jesus.
John 1:32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”
We will see in future sessions that the Spirit comes down and anoints a few people (Kings and Priests and Prophets) but in this case I think the main idea here is that the Spirit has come down and filled the Lord like he filled the temple. This is what happened when Solomon dedicated the temple to God.
1 Kings 8:10 When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. 11 And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple.
• Destroy this temple and I’ll rebuild it.
As we’ve seen, there is a pattern of destroying temples and rebuilding them. Jesus challenges the Jewish authorities to what seems like an impossible challenge, but turns out to be a prophetic interpretation of what will happen to him.
Jesus clears the temple of the money traders, and naturally enough the authorities don’t like having their income stream challenged. They confront Jesus to make him stop this ethical nonsense.
John 2: 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
This saying confirms our hunch that Jesus is deliberately portrayed in temple language, and that his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead should be interpreted as a fulfilment of the Old Testament pattern of the temple being destroyed and being rebuilt. This is different (obviously) from seeing his death as a sacrifice, because here it is the very sacrificial institution that is destroyed and rebuilt. Here, Jesus dies as a fulfilment of a pattern; the old has gone, the new has come.
There is another implication of this temple language. How many temples can there be? Rather like Highlander, ‘there can be only one’. Herod the Great’s temple (one of the ancient wonders of the world), so beautiful and so revered by Israelites such as Anna and Simeon (and the place of worship for the early disciples, and the place where Jesus hung out for a while when he was 13), this temple is now an imposter. There can be only one true temple of God, and any other is a false temple. Herod the Great’s temple is an anti-Christ, because it stands instead of Christ. That’s why it had to be destroyed and not rebuilt, because the true and better temple is here.
• Heaven open and angels of God ascending and descending
The fourth temple theme in the introduction of John’s Gospel is this rather weird reflection on Genesis 28 by Jesus in John 1:51
John 1:48 “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”
50 Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 51 He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
This is a strange passage that alludes to an interesting reference to a temple in the Old Testament. We have the first reference to a temple in the Bible, the house of God.
Gen 28:10 Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. 11And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. 12And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
It turns out this place was called Luz, but Jacob renames it Bethel: Beth is house, and El is God, so Bethel is ‘the house of God’, which is a clear reference to a temple. The fact that the top (or head) of the ladder that Jacob sees (probably more like a portal) reaches the heaven should remind us of the tower of Babel that had its head in the sky. This vision is the antidote to Babel. The promises given to Abraham are transferred to the worried Jacob. When he wakes, he says:
Gen 28:16 “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
The ‘gate of heaven’ phrase is the reason that some think it is more likely to be a portal, rather than a ladder. Either way, Jacob finds himself in the presence of God, in his house.
Now, when Jesus refers back to this passage, how does he understand it? He takes Nathanael’s confession of faith that Jesus is the king of Israel and riffs off it.
• The tower of Babel made of many man-made bricks reached its head up to heaven
• The house of God, made of one stone, also reached its head up to heaven.
• The angels will ascend and descend on the Son of Man.
• The Son of Man (as the king of Israel) is unmistakably the figure who defeats all the opposing kings and is seated at the right hand of the ancient of days.
So, what we have is a single stone, that Jacob anoints, that is associated with reigning with God as king.
Gen 28:18 So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He called the name of that place Bethel
That single stone that Jacob used as a night time pillow turned out to be the temple of God, so Jacob anointed it. Jesus rereads that story and says that single stone with its head reaching to the heavens is the Son of Man in Daniel’s night time vision in chapter 7 who is seated at the right hand of the father and who defeats all the enemies of Israel.
Daniel 7:13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
Can you think of another stone that defeats kingly representatives in the book of Daniel?
Daniel 2:31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a stone was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Jesus the Living Stone
This reflection on the significance of the anointed stone that Jesus directs us to think about opens up a whole load of biblical ideas. Similar idea are found in Isaiah 8 and 28 (and Psalm 118) and picked up in 1 Peter 2.
1 Peter 2:4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says:
“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”
7 Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”
8 and,
“A stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.
Discuss what you see in 1 Peter 2 here.
How are we the temple of God?: individually and collectively
1 Cor 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
In this text, Paul sees each of our own bodies individually as temples of the Spirit: we have a responsibility to live a holy life fit for the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
2 Cor 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will live with them
and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they will be my people.”
In this passage Paul sees us as collectively being the one temple of God. Again, holiness is the key to allow God to walk amongst us just like he did back in creation with Adam and Eve.
Jesus the Temple Builder
Not only is Jesus the living stone, the stone that Israel rejected as the corner stone for their temple, but he is also the temple builder that is building us up together into a holy temple.
We’ve all see these bumper stickers growing up: it turns out there is something really profound about them. In order to get there, we need to return to Solomon’s temple. Why was it Solomon and not David that build the temple? It was because God told him ‘you’re not the one’ because he was a man of war with blood on his hands. This is what God told David through Nathan the prophet, one of the most important passages of the whole Old Testament. It is in 2 Sam 7 or 1 Chron 17.
1 Chron 17:10b “‘I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you: 11 When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. 12 He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. 13 I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessor. 14 I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.’”
15 Nathan reported to David all the words of this entire revelation.
The people of Israel, then were looking for someone to build a temple for God, that that person was to be the Son of David. Notice that this means not ‘someone like David’, but actually it means ‘someone like Solomon’. When the blind man calls out ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’, he is calling out to someone like Solomon who will build the temple of God for Israel. The Son of David who builds the temple is the same one who God will set over his temple and kingdom forever and will establish his throne forever. What this means is, the messiah had to be the temple builder. That is why it is not coincidental that Jesus was a carpenter, or better just a builder. He wasn’t a shepherd like David, but a builder like Solomon.
Important biblical verses:
That is why Jesus says in John’s Gospel, destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in 3 days. He’s a builder of the temple.
John 2:19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
Matt 16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
John 14:2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
These verses help us to realize how important building the temple is for Jesus. He sees the purpose of his mission as building the temple through uniting us with his body, which is the stone the builders rejected.
Pentecost as the filling of the Temple
The second last passage to consider on this them of the temple is what happened at Pentecost. I mentioned earlier that when Solomon dedicated the temple the cloud descended and filled the temple. The same thing happens at Pentecost.
Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Together, all the disciples formed the temple and were filled with the Holy Spirit. No wonder the temple authorities in Jerusalem were furious because they would have been hoping for that to have happened to their temple. The Holy Spirit in us is proof that we are the temple of God, and that we’ve united with Christ.
Everything ends in Revelation
You should be used to the idea by now that everything ends in Revelation. There the new creation of the new temple that the Son of Man has gone before us to prepare all comes about. The key thing to observe is that there is no distinction between a small temple with a holy of holies: now that cubic holy of holies is expanded to include the cubic city structure as a whole. We’re all in the temple city.
Rev 21:22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it.
The hope of the nations coming to Christ is fulfilled here with the nations coming to the temple to pour out their praise to our God.
Summary
• From the start, we’ve been created with royal holiness in mind, a royal priesthood, to emulate our God.
• The experience of being exiled from the presence of God is part of our normal human experience.
• Jesus embodies that experience of the temple being destroyed
• Jesus fulfils expectations of being the temple filled with the spirit
• Jesus challenges the existence of the physical temple
• Jesus combines promises of being the messiah with being the temple (Gen 28, Dan 2)
• Jesus is the living stone
• Jesus builds the temple, and we’re the raw material
• Pentecost is where the church became the temple
• New Creation is going to be one large temple (holy of holies)