My reading this morning took me to 2 Samuel 7… and a little insight into God’s attitude to the Temple. Of course you are about to get my reflections on what I read – that is the power of Scripture and the danger of it too. Down to how do I read it… and that might be different to how you read it. That’s why I am looking forward to the day of assessment, looking forward to it with a little nervousness. Did I really live out my life authentically? Here is the bit that stood out for me,
Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’ (2 Sam. 7:5-7).
There are those who hope and believe for a third Temple to be built in Jerusalem as some sort of fulfilment of prophecy. I do not read prophecy that way and the chapters in Ezekiel that are taken that way do not describe a temple location, just the Lord will be there (then we can jump over to Revelation in a short while). I loved the phrase that I have emboldened above, ‘I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle’. Mobility. Where the people go God goes; where God goes the people are to go. Hence the people who are born of the Spirit are like the wind – movement. Yes we can use the ‘wind’ as a description of the Spirit but Jesus applied that description to those who have been born from above. (That would make ‘evangelism’ interesting… not ‘who is going to raise their hand and pray this prayer’ but who will make a commitment to the God of the universe and live unpredictably from this time on in the power of the Spirit!!!)
Tabernacled – the same verb used of Jesus who ‘tabernacled among us’. The same thought at the end of Matthew’s account of the great commission to go into all the world and (here I reflect the OT parallel in 2 Chronicles) and establish a temple there. The same imagery as in Revelation – a city with no distinct, separate temple.
We get another insight to God in this passage. The compromising God. OK then ‘let him (Solomon) build a temple’. I am 100% convinced that this was not what God would have chosen, any more than he chose a king. But this is the God who walks and moves about with us. Jesus became of no reputation, not simply because he was human but because he was God in the flesh. I think we could add ‘and God has become of no reputation’ or at least ‘God’s reputation has been greatly tarnished’ because he has always moved about and not centred him-(her-, their-) self in some impressive way.
Here we are the other side of the resurrection. I totally believe in a historic resurrection of Jesus but what is vital is that there is a follow on to be part of the God who has never requested a building but to move in a tent and tabernacle in and through the whole ‘city’. That city that was the size of the then known world and the shape of the holy of holies.
Individual and corporate tabernacle(s).
Once we go down the route of ‘give us a king’ Temple building seems to follow. So I guess we need to make sure we do not go in the king making direction. Pentecost is to follow in our ‘calendar’ – the democratisation of the Spirit. We have probably gone down the route of domesticating the Spirit… and yet God, the Spirit, also becomes of no reputation.
In this time of global disruption could we who believe that heaven has touched us break out of some constraints and ‘move about’?
I was surprised at my reaction to a phrase in your last post. (Sorry for delay – I have been trying to analyse my reaction) The phrase was ‘Judeo-Christian’ in terms of values – a phrase in common use which has maybe past its relevance. I began to think of whether Judeo values are indeed Christian. Looking at OT history and present day Judaism, I think it might better to confine ourselves to speaking of Chrstian values (even if it is Chrisendom people are referring to). After all, there is a reason we have an Old Testament and a New one.
Love the reaction!!! Had never thought of what you have pushed into. Thanks.