Trevor Laurence
Part One and Part Two of this series explored twenty-two parallels between Genesis 1–3 and the subsequent dwellings of God that, taken together, depict creation as a sanctuary, a temple, a house for the Lord.
Intriguing as such connections may be in their own right, they have the potential to attune our ears to hear Scripture’s story afresh, to supply a lens for reading the Bible with a renewed sensitivity to themes we perhaps have neglected, to alert us to dimensions of God’s works in the world that we may have failed to savor sufficiently.
Tracing the Temple
The intentional and multifaceted presentation of creation at the very beginning of the Bible as a temple for God to abide with his image bearing creatures signals for us a major thematic focus that drives the plot of Scripture. Like a brilliant author, God subtly and yet unmistakably inaugurates his story by introducing the key categories, concerns, and conflict that will occupy everything that follows, looming in the background of every subsequent event, propelling the narrative toward its climactic resolution.
The world is fashioned to be the dwelling place of God with man, a world in which royal-priestly humanity serves and protects God’s sanctuary garden and progressively subdues the whole earth into a house fit for a King, and the failure of Adam and Eve to guard the place of the Lord’s holy presence from the serpentine intruder and the idolatrous lusts of their own hearts results in the corruption of creation and their exile from life before the face of God. How can creation reach its appointed end as the house of God where image bearers serve in the light of his glory if humanity has not only failed in their temple-building task but has been driven out of the Lord’s presence themselves? The rest of the Bible’s story is about God’s undying purpose to reside with his creatures, the restoration of sacred space, the journey back into the holy presence of God, the resurrection of the temple and the world.
Eden to Exile
As Scripture’s plot moves east of Eden, sin and violence fill the earth, and the created world is marred, corrupted, ruined by the corruption of its inhabitants.1 Sin and bloodshed defile the earth and render it unfit for God’s holy presence in much the same way that Israel’s sin attaches to the tabernacle (Lev 16:16–19) and their violence and idolatry pollute the land where he dwells with them (Num 35:33–34; Ps 106:38; Jer 3:1–2, 9)—both of which require cleansing—for the earth is constructed to be the house of God and the global land of his dwelling.2
The flood in Noah’s day is a baptism (1 Pet 3:20–21), a cleansing of the corrupted world, a decreation and resurrection of the created order in which God wills to dwell. The three-tiered ark that preserves Noah and his family through the waters is a microcosm of God’s three-tiered cosmic house, a floating temple that comes to rest on a mountain where Noah makes priestly offerings on an altar and is royally commissioned as a second Adam. Ararat is an Eden-esque temple mount and a foretaste of things to come, and from here the Lord will begin anew with Noah’s line his work of making creation his home. Covenanting to never destroy the earth by flood again, God will uphold his creation and graciously persevere with humanity until he brings the world to its appointed end.
Though humanity after Noah seeks to construct a false temple-tower to bring heaven to earth, God makes a promise to Abraham that he will make Abraham a great nation, be their God, and bring Abraham’s offspring into a land where they may reside together in covenant communion. Babel seeks a name in a temple-tower, but God promises Abraham a name and will make his family a priestly kingdom who bears God’s name, a temple community with whom his divine name dwells. Like the river running from Eden’s mount to the surrounding lands, Abraham’s family—blessed by God’s presence in the land—will carry blessing to the nations of the world.
In the exodus from Egypt, God once again delivers his people through the waters of judgment and brings them to a mountain. Moses sings that the aim of the exodus is ultimately to plant Israel in the presence of God (Exod 15:17), and at Sinai, God settles in theophanic glory-cloud atop the mountain, establishes Israel his son as a royal priesthood, and reveals the pattern of the tabernacle—a tented cosmos in miniature and travelling Eden in which God will reside in the midst of his people.
The Mosaic law leads Israel in the holiness that is fitting and necessary for the son with whom God makes his home—the holiness by which Israel is to shine as a light to the nations, a living lampstand, a burning bush ablaze with but not consumed by the glory of God. The law of the Lord stipulates what must be done to expel idolatry and wickedness from the sacred space of his temple-people (“So you shall purge the evil from your midst”)3 even as it details how unholy-yet-repentant people may approach and find restoration from God and orchestrates an immersive ritual pedagogy that teaches Israel through their bodies that God must act to make them clean and usher them into his presence. The high priest is an Adam journeying back into Eden, and once a year he moves past cherubic guardians into God’s enthroned presence, carrying all of Israel on his shoulders (Exod 28:6–12), and makes atonement to cleanse God’s dwelling and the people with whom he dwells. Even here, God makes known his intention that “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Num 14:21): the tabernacle is a promise in fabric and gold, and the glory-presence that filled the microcosmic tent will fill the earth when creation is consummated as the cosmic house of God.
Reversing the exile to the east of Eden, Israel enters Canaan from the east—led, rather than barred, by a sword-bearing angel—to receive the land where God will abide with them. The priestly guardian of sacred space, Adam should have driven out the unclean serpent that encroached into God’s dwelling, and now Israel must live into his royal-priestly calling as the Adamic son of God by reestablishing sacred space, subduing the land, and driving out the unholy serpentine nations from this new Eden.
In his covenant with David, the Lord promises to plant his people in their own land (2 Sam 7:10; cf. Exod 15:17), give them rest from their enemies to abide in peace, raise up a Davidic son to build a house for God, and establish the throne of his kingdom forever. This son will exercise the Adamic calling to participate in fashioning a temple for the Lord in the land God has chosen. When Solomon finishes the temple upon Mount Zion and God’s glory-cloud fills his house, the Edenic hope breaks for a moment into history: God’s kingdom of priests lives in peace and holiness in the presence of their King as the Lord reigns in glory from his garden-temple on high, from which blessing flows outward to the nations as the nations are drawn in bearing gifts.
The psalms fittingly pray in the grammar and imagery of the temple. The righteous are fruitful trees rooted by streams of water, verdant plants in the garden of God, an Edenic humanity that is blessed rather than driven away by the presence of the Lord (Pss 1; 52; 92; cf. Num 24:6). Enthroned in the sanctuary at Zion, the Lord receives his people’s praises and rises to answer their pleas (Pss 9; 20; 48; 68), and God’s anointed king mediates the divine kingship from Zion’s holy hill (Ps 2). The highest aspiration, the fullest joy, is to be near to God, to behold his beauty, to serve and live in the Lord’s house (Ps 84). The psalms delight in God’s presence (Ps 16:11), guard sacred space by pleading for the expulsion of the wicked from God’s land (Ps 10), mourn the defiling of God’s house (Pss 74; 79), and beg for the day when a faithful priest-king from the line of David crushes rebellion underfoot (Ps 110; cf. Gen 3:15) and prepares the way for God’s glory to fill up the earth like the Holy of Holies (Ps 72).
Israel’s prophets announce what God’s people ought to have already known, what God had been saying from the beginning: the Holy One of Israel will not live in a corrupted land, in a sullied house, with an unholy people. The nation will retrace their first parents’ journey, driven out of God’s presence. Yet the prophets also proclaim the indefatigable faithfulness of God to his promises.
Exiled among the nations, Israel will experience a new exodus into the land of God’s dwelling. The Lord will rebuild his house, restore Zion’s wilderness to be like Eden (Isa 51:3), and pour his Spirit into the hearts of his people—making them the dwelling of the Lord. Ezekiel envisions a glorious mountain-top temple from which a streaming river brings life to the world (Ezek 47:1–12). God’s glory will light up the whole earth (Ezek 43:2), and the knowledge of his glory will fill the earth as the waters fill the sea (Hab 2:14). When, in the last lines of the Hebrew canon, Cyrus calls God’s people to go up to Jerusalem to build a house for the Lord and invokes the blessing of God’s presence (2 Chron 36:23), it is clear that God has not forsaken his purpose to live among his people, to make creation his home.
The Temple Fulfilled
In the temple of Mary’s womb—overshadowed by the Spirit, filled with the Son called holy (Luke 1:35; cf. Exod 40:34)—all the threads of God’s promises are knit together in Jesus. Jesus is Moses come to lead an exodus out of exile, Joshua come to usher God’s people from the wilderness into the land where God resides, the son of David come to reign forever and rebuild the temple of God. He is the fruit-bearing vine in whom sinners become a flourishing garden for the Lord. He is the Adamic priest who drives out the serpent and his seed from God’s temple and God’s land. He is the temple itself,4 Immanuel tabernacling in humanity, and when atop another mountain the curtain of his flesh is pierced (Heb 10:20), the living Holy of Holies releases the Spirit out into the world (Matt 27:50),5 the temple’s veil is torn (Matt 27:51), and water flows like a river from the temple-man (John 19:34).
Christ’s crucifixion is the destruction of the temple who—like God’s earlier dwelling places—bears on his body the sins of the people, the rending of the veil that lets out God’s holy presence and lets in God’s children. His resurrection is the re-creation of the world through the waters of judgment, the re-erection of the Lord’s house in glory (John 2:19) as an enduring place of refuge, the site of communion with God, the source of the river of life in the Spirit for the nations. In his ascension, Jesus purifies the heavenly sanctuary with a sacrifice better than the atoning blood that cleansed the earthly tent (Heb 9:23–24). And at Pentecost, he pours out the Spirit who filled up tabernacle and temple to fill up his people—to make them a temple of flesh and blood. The fire and cloud that settled on Sinai has rested upon the church, and every believer is an emblem of Eden, a walking Sinai, a living Zion, a mountain garden from whose heart flow rivers of living water (John 7:37–39), a new creation that has risen through baptism’s cleansing flood as a holy house for God. Commissioned by a king greater than Cyrus (Matt 28:18; cf. 2 Chron 36:23), this temple marches with the means of grace to all nations, blessing the world and building the temple of God through the entire earth.
The ecclesial temple moves graciously through the earth in the hope of Christ’s return to finish the world as the temple of God. Where Adam failed to drive out the serpent, Jesus the Adamic royal priest will drive out the serpent and his seed, expelling every unholiness from his holy presence (2 Thess 1:9), judging the world in righteousness as the awaited king who ushers in an earth filled with God’s glory (Acts 17:31; Ps 72:2, 18).
The new heavens and new earth is the consummation of creation as the house of God, the dwelling place of God with man (Rev 21:3) where nothing unclean will ever enter or corrupt again (Rev 21:27). The new Jerusalem—God’s city and bride—descends upon a mountain (Rev 21:10), adorned with precious stones (Rev 21:19–20) and ablaze like the Holy of Holies with the glory of God’s presence (Rev 21:11, 16), and the river of the water of life flows from the throne as the tree of life yields healing for the nations (Rev 22:1–2). Eden’s verdant temple mountain is here writ large upon the cosmos, and God’s resurrected image bearers serve him as priests and reign with him as kings, lit up by neither the tabernacle’s lampstand nor the sun in the tent of the heavens but by the true light to which both always pointed—the light of the face of God (Rev 22:3–5).
God’s purpose to make creation the sanctuary-house where he resides with his people, signaled so carefully at the Bible’s beginning, is carried on throughout the Scriptures’ story and realized in full at the Bible’s end. Praise be to God.
To be continued…
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute and the author of Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor University Press, 2022).
Image: John Martin, The Plains of Heaven
- See Matthew J. Lynch, “An Ecological Grammar of Violence,” https://cateclesia.com/2020/08/05/an-ecological-grammar-of-violence/.[↩]
- Which is to suggest that the ecological ramifications of sin and violence in Scripture are wrapped up in a cultic vision of the cosmos.[↩]
- Cf. Deut 13:5; 17:7, 12; 19:13, 19; 21:9, 21; 22:21, 22, 24; 24:7.[↩]
- Nicholas Perrin, Jesus the Temple (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010) offers intriguing and insightful readings of several passages in the Gospels where the theme of Jesus as the temple has been underappreciated but is nonetheless powerfully present.[↩]
- See the suggestion of Patrick Schreiner, “If By the Spirit: The Spirit, Exorcisms, Space, and the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew,” https://cateclesia.com/2020/02/28/if-by-the-spirit/ that Matthew’s language refers to the release of the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of Ezek 37:1–14, a text in which the new exodus from exile involves raising Israel from the grave, bringing her into the land, and putting the Spirit within the people such that they live as temples of God’s holy presence.[↩]