Showing posts with label Divine Tabernacles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Divine Tabernacles. Show all posts

Monday, June 13, 2011

Tabernacle for the Nations

My tabernacle also shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people. The nations also will know that I, the LORD, sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forevermore. (Ezekiel 37:27-28)
This is a promise God made to Israel in one of her darkest hours, when she was divided and taken into captivity because of her idolatry. There would be a return, a restoration, a rebirth. The past would be past and God would create a new relationship with her.
David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd; they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes, and do them. Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children’s children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them; indeed I will be their God, and they shall be My people. (Ezekiel 37:24-27)
“David” would be king over them. David was long dead by this time, but the reference here is to the Son of David, that is, the “Anointed One” God promised would reign on the throne over Israel. As David was literally a shepherd, so his descendent would also be a Shepherd over them. There would be a return to the land where they would dwell forever. God would make a new covenant with them, a covenant of peace — shalom, the wholeness that comes from God — and it would be eternal. God would establish His sanctuary, His holiness, among them. His tabernacle, His divine dwelling place, would be with them and they would be His holy people, set apart for His pleasure and purpose. They would enjoy special relationship with God, fellowship with the Divine.

This promise is fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, who is called the Good Shepherd. He is the mediator of a new and better covenant, which is established on better promises (Hebrew 8:6). He is not only the High Priest of that covenant; He is the sacrifice upon which it was based. On the night before He was crucified, He blessed the bread of the Passover table and gave it to the disciples: “This is My body which is given for you.” Then He took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:19-20).

Jesus is the tabernacle of God. He is the Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word for “dwelt” (skenoo) relates linguistically to the Hebrew word for “tabernacle” (mishkan). Literally, the Word became flesh and “tabernacled” among us (see The Shekinah Dwelling).

“The nations also will know that I, the LORD, sanctify Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.” The promise was for Israel and the land God gave to Jacob, but this would be a witness to all the nations of the world that God has created a people on earth and dwells among them. Indeed, the promise was for the sake of the nations, for God created Israel to be not only a holy nation but also a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). That is, they were to bring the blessing and promise of God to all the nations.

We find this fulfilled in the New Testament. Before He ascended to His throne at the right hand of the Father, Jesus came to the disciples and said, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). It was not just for the land God gave to Jacob, for Abraham was heir to the whole world (Romans 4:13; the Greek word for “world” here is kosmos). And it was not just for ethnic Israel but all the nations were to be discipled and baptized and instructed.

However, this does not mean that the nations would receive the promise in addition to or apart from Israel — and certainly not instead of Israel. But, in Paul’s metaphor, they are grafted into the root stock of Israel, to be partakers of the blessing and promise of God as part of Israel (Romans 11:16-24).

So the tabernacle of God, Jesus the Messiah, comes to abide all over the world, in every nation. All who believe Him receive the promise and become part of the sanctuary, the holy people with whom God dwells. And all the nations will know.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Where All Divine Fullness Dwells

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell. (Colossians 1:19)
The word “for” introduces a reason or purpose. Here, Paul explains why God has done what He has in regard to the Son:

  • Why Jesus has come as the express image of the invisible God
  • Why He has been give supremacy over all creation
  • Why all things have been made by Him, through Him and for Him
  • Why all things hold together in Him
  • Why He is the head of the (the church), the beginning, and the firstborn from the dead
  • Why He has the preeminence in all things
It was because it pleased the Father that in Him all fullness should dwell!

Now, the words “the Father” are not in the Greek text, but the idea of God is certainly implied by the context. Different translations handle this in various ways. For example:
  • For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. (English Standard Version)
  • Because in him it did please all the fullness to tabernacle. (Young’s Literal Translation)
  • For God in full measure was pleased to be in him. (Bible in Basic English)
  • Because in Him [God] was well pleased that all the fullness be permanently at home. (Wuest’s Expanded Translation)
  • Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in Him. (Common English Bible)
The point is that all the fullness of the divine nature dwells in the Son. The “fullness” Paul is talking about is every power and attribute that belongs to God. The Greek word is pleroma. Paul appears to be using this word in particular in order to counter the false teachers who were trying to get into the church at Colosse. The false teaching they brought was probably an early form of Gnosticism.

Pleroma was the central term of the Gnostics, who used it to refer to God, but they believed that creation was separated from God by numerous demigods, angelic hierarchies or other intermediaries. Some intermediaries might possess this or that power while others might have various other divine attributes, but only God, who was very distant, possessed every divine power and attribute.

Paul, however, delivers a stunning blow to this doctrine. The Pleroma, the fullness of all the divine attributes and powers, is not far, far away, separated from us by layers and levels of entities and emanations. It has come very close to us — as close as human skin — in the person of Jesus the Messiah.

Paul will deliver this knockout punch again in Colossians 2:9: “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (we will talk about this in its own context as we continue through Paul’s letter). The material creation is not evil, nor is the physical body, as the Gnostics supposed. But God considered it quite appropriate that the divine essence, with all the attributes and powers of God, should reside in the human flesh of the Son and dwell among us in the world.



The Focus of Our Faith
The Focus of Our Faith
Paul’s Letters to the Jesus Believers at Colosse
Bite-Size Studies Through Colossians
by Jeff Doles

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Available in paperback and Kindle (Amazon), epub (Google and iTunes) and PDF.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Shekinah Dwelling (Part 2)

Read Part 1
Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27)
King Jesus the Messiah is the Word who became flesh and tabernacled among us, manifesting the divine presence, the dwelling place of the shekinah glory of God. Since then, He has ascended, in His body, to the right hand of the Father, where He now rules over heaven and earth forever. But what of the shekinah, the glory of the divine presence?

In the Old Testament, the dwelling place God chose to manifest His presence was the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, then the Tent of David, and finally, the Temple in Jerusalem. With the sacrifice of Messiah Jesus for our sins, the temple system of burnt offerings and sacrifices, which served as a type or foreshadow, was fulfilled, and the temple itself was rendered obsolete. This was one of the points the author of Hebrews emphasized:
The Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the Holiest of All was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing … But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. (Hebrews 9:8, 11)
Jesus came as the mediator of a new covenant, the one foretold by Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jeremiah 31:31-33; Ezekiel 36:25-27), in which God would write His law upon our hearts and place His Spirit within us. This required a temple not made with human hands.

But God has not left Himself without a place to manifest His presence, His shekinah, on earth. The apostles teach us that there remains yet a temple on earth, a dwelling place where God has chosen to reveal His glory. It is not a temple of wood and stone, but a temple made without hands. It is the people of God themselves. The apostle Paul says,
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
Again, Paul says, quoting Ezekiel,
For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (2 Corinthians 6:16)
Those who have received King Jesus the Messiah are now the temple of God, because He has placed His Spirit in us, just as He promised in Ezekiel. Collectively, as a people, we are the place where God dwells on earth. But even individually, we are, each one, the temple of God. He dwells in our bodies as well as our spirits:
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
The apostle Peter likewise understood his own body to be a tabernacle, or tent.
Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. (2 Peter 1:13-14)
The Greek word for “tent” here is skenoma, which is used of the divine dwelling. And indeed, that is how Peter would be thinking of it here, fully aware, as he wrote just a few verses earlier, of the “exceedingly great and precious promises” God has given us and that those who belong to Jesus the Messiah have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God’s promise of a new covenant and a new temple was not just for the Jews but also for all the nations. In his letter to the believers at Ephesus, Paul speaks to both the Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus:
Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)
Paul makes the point again in Colossians: Jesus the Messiah comes to dwell in believing Gentiles as well as believing Jews.
To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27)
Messiah — God, the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us — now dwells in us. Paul calls it “the hope of glory.” The Greek word for “hope,” speaks of a positive expectation, a joyful anticipation. Surely, the glory of God’s presence dwelling in us is the shekinah. Because King Jesus the Messiah dwells in us by His Spirit, we can expect and anticipate the shekinah glory of God to be made known in us, to us and through us.

(For more about this glory manifesting, see The Shadow of Glory.)

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Shekinah Dwelling (Part 1)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
The Greek verb for “dwell” is skenoo and means to tent or encamp. The noun form is skenos, which speaks of a tent or tabernacle. In the Septuagint (or LXX), which is an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, skenos is used to translate the Hebrew word for “tabernacle,” which is mishkan. Mishkan is from the Hebrew verb shakan, which means to dwell or inhabit.

The Hebrew root for mishkan (משכנ) and shakan (שכנ) are the three Hebrew consonants shin, kaf, nun (שכנ). Note how similar these are to the consonants in skenos (the s-k-n sound). This may be an indication that the Greeks borrowed the Hebrew word shakan and transliterated it into skenos.

Not to overburden you with too many ancient and foreign terms, but I would like to talk to you about shekinah. It is from the same root as mishkan and shakan and speaks of dwelling, resting, abiding, even nesting. In ancient Jewish writings, it is used to speak of divine presence, the manifestation of the glory of God. In the Old Testament, the Tabernacle (mishkan) was the place God chose to reveal His presence in a special way to His people. The Targums, ancient translations of the Old Testament from Hebrew into its sister language, Aramaic, speak of God’s manifest presence as the “shekinah of His glory.”

The tabernacle was the place of God’s divine presence, the place where He manifested His glory. This manifestation was the shekinah, the divine glory resting and abiding with His people.

The Gospel of John says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John is speaking of Jesus as the Word (Greek, Logos), which was consistent with the Jewish practice of referring to God by the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalents for “Word” (see The Memra Became Flesh), because God revealed Himself by His Word.

That is the point John makes: God has now revealed Himself in human flesh as Jesus, the Word who was with Him from the beginning and, indeed, is God (John 1:1-2). He is that Word by which God created the heavens and the earth, the Word by whom all things were spoken into existence.

This same Word became flesh — incarnation is the theological term — and dwelt among us, tabernacled among us, manifesting the presence of God among us. “And we beheld His glory,” John says, and the Jews of his day would have understood this as the Shekinah. The divine glory was revealed uniquely in Him, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.”

This shekinah glory, John says, was “full of grace and truth.” In the Old Testament, the combination of “grace” and “truth”, or rather, the Hebrew equivalents, hesed and emeth, spoke of God Himself. Hesed is the word by which God was revealed in His mercy and kindness; emeth revealed Him in His faithfulness and truth. The word “full” speaks of completeness, leaving nothing lacking. As Paul says, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

Jesus is the Living Tabernacle, where the presence of God is fully manifested among His people. His glory, the shekinah glory, fully reveals the faithful love and mercy of God.

Part 2

Friday, June 11, 2010

What Do You Seek? Where Do You Dwell? (3)

Part 1 | Part 2
They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?” (John 1:38).
The Greek word for “stay” in this verse is meno and means to abide, to continue, to dwell.

“Where do you dwell?” the disciples asked.

“Come and see,” Jesus answered.

They came and saw and became His disciples. They dwelt with Him for over three years, the length of His ministry. On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus told His disciples, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3). The word for “mansions” here is mone, which is derived from meno. It is the place of abiding, a dwelling place.

Many people believe Jesus was talking about the Second Coming, that is, when He returns at the end. They imagine He is spending all of this time between now and then preparing a big house for us. But I don’t think that is what He is talking about here. I believe the place He went to prepare for us has already been prepared for us long ago.
  • It happened at the Cross, where Jesus prepared the way for us.
  • It happened at the Resurrection, when Jesus came again to the disciples.
  • It happened at the Ascension, when Jesus ascended to the throne in His Father’s house.
There is a place for us with Jesus on that throne at the right hand of the Father, far above all principality, power, might and dominion. Paul tells us,
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-6)
God has made us alive with Jesus, raised us up with Jesus and seated us in the heavenlies, where Jesus is seated — the place of ruling and reigning. Notice carefully the tense. It is not future, a promise of what will be. It is past tense, more precisely, the Greek aorist tense, which signifies completed action. In other words, it is a “done deal.” Jesus has prepared a place for us in His Father’s house and He has received us there, on His throne at the right hand of the Father (see Ascension: Receiving Us Unto Himself). It is our dwelling place, our mone with Him.

There is only one other place where this noun, mone, is found in the New Testament, and that is just a few verses later, in John 14:23, where Jesus says:
If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home [mone] with him.
Not only has Jesus prepared a dwelling place for us with Him, He has also prepared us as a dwelling place for the Father and Himself. If we love Him and keep His word — that is, believe what He says — He and the Father come and make their home with us (see The Abodes of God).

“Where do you dwell?” the disciples.

“Come and see,” Jesus answered.

He comes to dwell with us and invites us to dwell with Him.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

What Do You Seek? Where Do You Dwell? (2)

Part 1 | Part 3
They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?” (John 1:38).
Two disciples of John the Baptist began to follow Jesus. They were seeking a place to dwell, an abode with God (see Part 1).

David said, “I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Psalm 21:6). And now here was the Son of David dwelling among men. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” John’s Gospel says (John 1:14). This is the same Word that was with God in the beginning, and indeed, is God (John 1:1).

The Greek word translated “dwelt” here is the verb form of a noun that literally means “tent” or “tabernacle.” In the Old Testament, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness was the place where God manifested His presence and met with His people. And when David recovered the Ark of the Covenant, he brought it into Jerusalem and set up a tabernacle, a tent for it, and he danced before the Lord, whirling and leaping with great joy (2 Samuel 6:16-17). It was the “House of the Lord,” God’s dwelling place on earth, and the only place David wanted to be in all the world.
One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
(Psalm 27:4)
This is echoed by another psalm writer:
How lovely is Your tabernacle,
O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, even faints
For the courts of the Lord;
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
(Psalm 84:1-2)
Now Jesus, the Word that was in the beginning with God, and is God, came to tabernacle among men, and the disciples of John the Baptist wanted to meet with Him in His dwelling place.

“Where do you dwell,” they asked.

“Come and see,” Jesus answered.

It was an invitation from God.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

What Do You Seek? Where Do You Dwell? (1)

Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following said to them, “What do you seek?” (John 1:38)
One day, two disciples of John the Baptist heard him say, as Jesus passed by, “Behold the Lamb of God!” So they followed after Jesus. Realizing this, Jesus turned and spoke the first “red letter” words that show up in the Gospel of John.

“What do you seek?” It is a significant question. John didn’t waste any words on chit-chat in his gospel, and certainly, every word Jesus spoke had import. Here were two disciples who formerly followed the Baptist; now they were following Jesus. Did they even know what it was they were seeking?
They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?” (John 1:38).
The Greek word for “stay” is meno. It means to abide, to remain, to dwell. “Where do you dwell?” they asked Jesus. They were seeking a dwelling place, a habitation. Not a physical abode — they were not homeless — but a dwelling place in God.

They had heard John say, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), and it was full of prophetic significance. Some people thought John himself might be the Messiah, or Elijah, or “the Prophet.”

“No,” he said.

“Then, who are you? What do you say about yourself,” they asked.

“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.” He identified himself as the one spoken of in Isaiah 40:3.

“Then why do you baptize, if you are not the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?” His ministry of baptism had prophetic significance. God had promised, through the prophet Ezekiel,
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. (Ezekiel 36:25-27)
Now here was John, with a baptism of repentance, of purification. Surely, he must be the Messiah. But no, he is a forerunner. He can only baptize with water, not with the Holy Spirit. So he answered them, “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose” (John 1:26-27). Later, when he finally recognizes who Jesus really is, he says,
“I did not know Him; but that He should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water.”And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:31-35)
John could only baptize with water, but he understood that Jesus is the Lamb of God who can cleanse us from all filthiness and shame, and baptize us with the Holy Spirit. John identifies Him as the Son of God, which, according to the expectation of the Old Testament, identified Him as the Messiah.

These things were not lost on John’s disciples, so when they heard him say, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” as Jesus walked by, they recognized that He was the One. They called Him, Rabbi, Teacher. They were ready to be His disciples now, to learn of Him and find their dwelling in God with Messiah.

“Where do You dwell?” they asked — and were they not saying, “We want to dwell there, too”?

“Come and see,” Jesus answered.

Part 2 | Part 3

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Walking Tabernacles

So they brought the ark of God, and set it in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. (1 Chronicles 16:1)
The Ark of the Covenant was the sign of God’s presence among His people. Wherever it went, it brought blessing to those who honored it. But it also brought judgment on the enemies of God. When the Ark fell into the hands of the Philistines, they set it in the temple of Dagon, their own little god. They actually thought they had the God of Israel captured in a box and that, once in their possession, He would have to protect them. But God can never be held in a box, and the Ark merely symbolized the presence of His rule and reign. Since the Philistines had no respect for God Himself, the box did them no good. To their chagrin, they discovered that it brought only judgment upon them. They set it their temple, but the next morning they found the idol of Dagon had fallen over, its face to the ground before the Ark of God and its arms broken off. After seven months, the Philistines decided that it would be better for them to return the Ark to Israel (you can read the whole story 1 Samuel 4:1-7:2).

Unfortunately, the people of Israel had developed the same “God in the box” mentality themselves and had become quite fearful of the Ark. So they settled it in Kirjath Jearim, where it remained for twenty years. When David finally became king of Israel, he went and defeated the Philistines, then turned his attention to the Ark of God. After a false start, he finally led the Ark into Jerusalem, dancing before the Lord with all his might (2 Samuel 6). Then he established a place for it and erected a tabernacle. According to the literal meaning of the words, he “pitched” a “tent” over it. In this simple way, the presence of God was once again made manifest in Israel.

But that is the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant, cut with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the people of God now have God Himself dwelling within. That which was only typified in the Old Testament tabernacle is now fulfilled in the Church. Paul said, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). We are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Himself as the cornerstone “in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21). Peter said, “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Not only are we collectively the temple of God, but we are even so individually. “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

We are living, breathing tabernacles walking around with the Ark of God — which is the Lord Jesus Christ — inside us. It is a blessing to all who are willing to receive Him, but also a judgment on every work that stands against the will of God. The book of Acts presents a very interesting example of this.
And believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, so that they brought the sick out into the streets and laid them on beds and couches, that at least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them. Also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed. (Acts 5:14-16)
Peter walked with a great awareness of this divine, powerful presence — the life of Jesus — dwelling within. As a result, he “cast a shadow” that released the judgment of God on sickness and brought healing to many. Because Jesus was on the inside, the power and blessing of God manifested on the outside as people laid hold of it by faith. He was a walking tabernacle.

If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, He dwells within you by the Holy Spirit. He is the Ark of God living inside you. The power to heal and to bless with he blessing of God is present within you, just as Jesus Himself healed and blessed in His earthly ministry two thousand years ago. You are a walking tabernacle of the glory of God in Jesus Christ.

(See also The Shadow of Glory)