Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I am going to be getting into what I kind of consider to be the crux of the Refuge series. Not really the ultimate endpoint of it, but what I think is the major theme, the major kind of idea that spans the whole thing. Again, not in a chronological way, but kind of in a way it is the Old Testament archetype of refuge. And that is the temple as a place of protection, a place of safety, a place of refuge.
[00:00:58] And I say that the temple is the archetype of it for some particular reasons. Because I actually think that the temple is also the archetype of sacred space in general. And that is as opposed to, say, Eden being the archetype. And you might think, "Well, why is Eden not the archetype? Like the perfect prime example of sacred space." And the reason I say that is because Eden is a prototype of it, and a prototype and an archetype sometimes can be the same thing, but it's not necessarily the same thing. Because I don't think that the picture of the story of the Bible, and really that means the story of history itself, the culmination is not that we go back to Eden. Because back to Eden suggests this idea of like a return to innocence or a return to things as they were before, and I don't really think that's the arc story of what we should be seeing in Scripture. Right? Like things actually have happened in history. They're not being erased. They're not being done away with in a sense that we'll just run the tape backwards and go back to Eden.
[00:02:20] And for those similar reasons, I think that the temple is this archetypical picture of refuge. Now I'm going to kind of qualify that though, because the temple is also a building, a location, a singular piece of real estate on our actual earthly map. And so I'm not saying that it is localized in that form. That's why I kind of would like to bring in the idea of the tabernacle because the tabernacle was never really in one place. It moved around and so on. And there is even within the temple or the tabernacle, a more fundamental idea or picture. And we'll kind of talk about that. But you see, the Torah's got some internal structure to it, doesn't it? It has a beginning, it has an end, and it has a midpoint. That midpoint is, of course, the book of Leviticus.
[00:03:22] And so it is this crowning idea of the tabernacle, the sacrificial cult inside the tabernacle, the priesthood associated with all of that, the overarching ideas and thematic elements that are attached to it as well. The tabernacle is not just a location. It's not just a tent. It's not just the place that they did worship. It was the thing that they would look at and say, "This is what life is supposed to be. This is the intersection of our earthly life with the divine." The tabernacle is the main picture in the Old Testament of God's project to dwell with humanity. Now, obviously, that does have its culmination in something that is not a building in the New Testament.
[00:04:13] But today we're gonna be seated directly within the Old Testament talking about the temple or the tabernacle or sacred space, this place where God's glory dwells. And that is a refuge. But it's also a strange place to call a refuge because the temple is often introduced to Christians through the idea of sacrifice, right? And in many church contexts, when we're thinking of sacrifice, we are thinking in terms of guilty, unclean people who approach a holy God through an animal's death, and blood deals with sin and impurity. And we have priestly mediation that makes that access possible. But the way that we structure those ideas in our theology matters. So if you're coming at the idea of the temple from the context of appeasing God with bloody sacrifices, then we do have kind of an interesting question that arises from that. Why does Scripture imagine the divine dwelling as the place where threatened life is hidden or sheltered or fed or stabilized and overall protected? That seems really odd coming from a typical, usually evangelical Protestant mindset about the temple. Within such a mindset, why would the temple be a place of refuge?
[00:05:46] Let's look at Psalm 46, verses one through seven, which say, quote, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way; Though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, The holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter. He utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah." End quote.
[00:06:40] All right, so, you know, I was talking about the temple as a refuge, but suddenly I'm reading this passage that starts out with God, Yahweh, as our refuge and our strength. So this is really the obvious point, right? That it is not a building, it is not a structure, it is not an institution that is even the source of what we hope in. It is God Himself. So that is the obvious point, and I could just maybe end the episode right here and say, "Well, there you go." But there really is a lot more to see here, because Psalm 46, as well as many other places, corresponds God as our refuge with real geography. There is a city of God. There is a holy habitation of the Most High.
[00:07:31] And so the picture for the ancient Israelite would be not just sacred space, but probably Jerusalem itself as the city. But just like the tabernacle area or the temple has concentric rings of holiness, we can also picture the larger world like that because we have the outside world, then we have the nation of Israel and its plot of land, then we have Jerusalem, then within Jerusalem we have the temple, and so on. Right? So there is a zoning in on places of holiness, but there is another contrast that I want you to see in this psalm.
[00:08:10] And that is that it begins outside in the world that is described as being uninhabitable. The earth gives way, mountains collapse into the sea, waters roar and foam. And then towards the end, we also have nations raging. We have kingdoms tottering. So it's describing instability, and that instability is both creational and political. The ordered world in every form seems to be coming apart at several levels at the same time. But inside that instability stands the city of God, which is identified as the holy habitation of the Most High. And the decisive explanation for that stability is the presence of God in its midst. There's also another contrast with the psalm's river and the roaring waters. Outside, water belongs to chaos, but inside, water sustains. The difference is that we have creation that is subjected to chaos versus creation that is ordered around divine presence.
[00:09:21] We have several other psalms that make the same connection through different images. Psalm 31 says that God hides people within the covering of his own presence. Protection is not merely an action that is dispatched from a distant location, but the presence of God itself is conceptualized as a space of hiding. Psalm 27, the desire to dwell in Yahweh's house and seek him in the temple moves directly into concealment in his shelter and under the covering of his tent during trouble. Psalm 61 gives us the idea of the fortress, dwelling in the tent, the refuge, the shelter of the divine wings.
[00:10:07] These images do not require every reference to things like wings and tents and fortresses to be technical references to Jerusalem's temple or sacred space in a technical sense. But in both areas, in these images, as well as within the tabernacle, within the temple, the whole conceptual reality is one of divine presence, God dwelling with us. There's an element of concealment, provision, and protection. So, if we're thinking of these as conceptual frames, they kind of interlock and stack together. God's presence creates protected space. The temple is the archetypical picture of that concentrated, covenantally ordered location where God dwells with the people. And that protective reality belongs fundamentally to Yahweh, not to the fact that there is a temple.
[00:11:12] There is a very strong description of protection, danger, and boundaries, and all of these ideas that kind of go along with the idea of sacred space as the Israelite would actually be thinking of it and living with it on a daily basis. But we also know that sacred space, because of the presence of the Spirit, the need for purification and so on, sacred space is also dangerous. Needs to be treated with respect. It needs to be treated in a way where people are responding to it and acting within its confines in appropriate ways. If you approach wrongly, you might end up dead. That's how dangerous it is. And yet it's still described as a protective presence. In fact, as a presence that gives rest. Exodus 33 explains how just the people getting into the land is not sufficient. They have to get into the land with Yahweh's presence. And it is Yahweh's presence that distinguishes Israel from the other nations. And in Exodus 33 verse 14, that presence is associated with giving rest to the people.
[00:12:31] Throughout the wilderness journey, the Ark travels ahead of Israel through dangerous geography to seek a resting place. But it's not just the Ark, it is also a cloud that accompanies the people. So the ark as kind of the heart or the center of the tabernacle is the moving aspect of this with the people. For the Israelite, it was like this daily reality, this sense of God being with you traveling with you even. This was, again, both a positive but also a potentially dangerous thing if you're not treating it within the restriction and boundaries that they have been given within places like Leviticus. And so just like it might be a little bit strange to have a dangerous yet protective place, it also kind of makes some sense. Because the rules that regulate sacred space and the rules that regulate the sacrifices and the priesthood and so on, those actually have a kind of logic for the ancient mind. The presence of God was not controllable by the people. It was not safe in the sense that you could just guarantee that it was there, and you could do whatever you wanted. Just say the magic words and Yahweh would show up. That's not how it was. There were parameters.
[00:13:53] A common account of Leviticus that you will hear imagines the idea of impurity and sin accumulating to the point that it endangers the divine presence and drives Yahweh away. So this is the idea that Yahweh cannot be in the presence of sin and that too much sin is going to drive him away because he just can't handle it. But there's another argument, and that argument is that Leviticus more directly presents the permanent divine presence as being dangerous to impurity and to people because people are often impure. And if you don't handle that correctly, then the danger isn't that Yahweh can't be there anymore. The danger is to the people, and Yahweh is not gonna continue dwelling with them because if he does and they are in a state where his very presence will be dangerous to them, then he will leave. Because if he stays, they're all gonna be destroyed.
[00:15:00] Purity doesn't protect God as though impurity might overpower Him, in other words. But rather, the context of keeping things pure and approaching with purity and taking care of your impurity before you approach preserves sacred order, and it regulates the proximity in an appropriate way, and it allows ways to restore access and protect the people from a wrongly ordered encounter with holiness. So within our larger conversation here, purity and refuge ask related but kind of different questions because purity asks what may approach or remain within the domain where Yahweh dwells. Refuge, on the other hand, asks what happens to threatened life when it is rightly situated within that holy domain. The point of intersection of purity and refuge is ordered access to the space of divine life.
[00:16:05] We have this whole picture show up in Eden because Eden is divine presence space, and it is for life. But then we have human rebellion and access to the tree of life is guarded. And it's guarded explicitly stated, because God did not want them to take of the tree and stay in the state that they were in. So the human problem is death, it's sin, but it's not only that. It is the loss of access to life in the presence of God that is reestablished in things like altars, the tabernacle, the temple, and so on. But importantly, none of those things encapsulates it and restricts it to a point where this is now the only way you get to experience that.
[00:16:56] Because remember, all of the examples we've gone through in this refuge series about how people really can still have some form of connection and protection with God even if they are kicked out of their household, even if they're in the wilderness, and so on. So temple, priesthood, purification, sacrifice, guarded access to some of these formal things, all of that matters. And they are all kind of about the same question about vulnerable and disordered humans living near holy sources of life without that encounter destroying them. But there are also, kind of different levels of that. Do we think that Hagar in the wilderness was in the same kind of divine presence as we would have with the high priest who enters the Holy of Holies? Of course not, but they are both forms of refuge and protection.
[00:17:55] Let's look at Isaiah 4 for this connection between purification and presence. Isaiah chapter 4 verses 2 to 6 say, quote, "In that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and honor of the survivors of Israel. And he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem. When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning, then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night. For over all the glory there will be a canopy. There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat and for refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain." End quote.
[00:18:58] This is a really clear textual sequence that connects purification, presence, and refuge. Because Zion's filth and Jerusalem's bloodstains must first be removed, the cleansing occurs through the language of judgment and burning. Then we have the cloud, the smoke, fire appearing over Zion, and that brings back to mind the imagery of Yahweh's wilderness presence. And glory is covered by a canopy, really interesting word there, and that covering provides shade, shelter, and refuge from the environment. And I think that the order of this matters. Because yes, we have some picture of covering, right? But the presence doesn't cover injustice or bloodshed, so they remain invisible or undisturbed. But there is a cleansing that is described as a burning. Then God's presence occupies, and the glory becomes a shelter. So sacred space must be guarded because it is the space in which life is guarded. And that does not tolerate injustice. It does not tolerate bloodshed. There are things that do not belong that must be removed, that must be cleansed, and so on. The thing that threatens that space isn't just ritual impurity, but ritual impurity is surely kind of the picture of that. Violence and injustice make the domain unfit for divine and human dwelling together.
[00:20:34] So there's a lot of these little pieces that we're kind of holding in our hands when we're looking at sacred space, refuge, purification, spirit, God's presence, life, and so on. But I really do think that the ethical piece matters quite a bit for us. And I won't cover it again, but I will call your mind back to our conversation about Numbers 35 and the city of refuge. And that brings all of those pictures together as well, talking about real justice, talking about restraining bloodshed, talking about bloodshed polluting the land, and so on. And all of that within the context of Yahweh dwelling among Israel in the land. That is the core of it. The city of refuge isn't just a humanitarian concession that's added to the purity system, but the city of refuge is part of how sacred order is maintained. A sanctuary that contains or even is surrounded by exploitation and bloodshed can't remain a protected place untouched by what happens to vulnerable life.
[00:21:50] We didn't get to this part last week but there's also the topic of sanctuary asylum that is another picture of this. Exodus 21 verses 12 through 14 gives us another story of refuge. Kind of a really strange one. It feels like there are some points that are left out. It does not directly tell us that a killer is fleeing to Yahweh's altar as a means of protection because, you know, you're not supposed to kill a human on Yahweh's altar. That's a problem. But it points out that even deliberate murder is not granted immunity just because somebody goes and runs to cling to the altar. The murderer can be removed from the altar for judgment. And we have actual stories about this in 1 Kings 1 and also chapter 2. This is the story of Adonijah, who takes a hold of the altar's horns and temporarily receives mercy under some stated conditions. Joab uses the same action, but the altar doesn't erase his responsibility for the bloodshed. These stories show that you can't just go over, run to Yahweh, cling to His altar, and then everything is fine. It's actually very problematic if you do that.
[00:23:08] So refuge isn't just escaping judgment because somebody did the right thing and went to the right place. I think this is a really crucial piece to actually see as well, because when we're talking about things like atonement, what does it mean to be in Christ, to be hidden in Christ? It's not just that we are hidden there and that God overlooks the things that we did wrong because, oh, well, now that you're in the right place, now that you're covered by the right thing, then somehow God doesn't see that? Well, that's not what's going on here. Refuge means being placed on the protected side of rightly ordered judgment, but it does not mean escaping judgment altogether. We've talked about passages before in the prophets in particular where God really does offer true forgiveness to people who repent and turn from their ways, and He doesn't need to then go back and punish them for their old sins.
[00:24:15] But that's not the picture of escaping judgment. Like somebody is just running away from their sins. They're not running to God. They're not going to go and be faithful and righteous and just then. They're just trying to run away from what they've done before. And that's kind of what the sanctuary asylum stories highlight. Like, you can try to run away from what you've done, but if you're not truly repentant, if you're not gonna then live righteous and just lives, then it doesn't matter how much you run away and where you choose to hide. And that does not mean, however, that there is not a refuge you can turn to that does offer true forgiveness and true restoration and so on.
[00:25:00] And the whole reason that this keeps coming up in conversations in various episodes, and even within various themes, is because we really have a hard time picturing this. Because for us, justice means that you did something wrong, you're gonna pay the price for that. And that's just all there is to it. You can be sorry that you did something wrong. You can apologize for it. You can try even to make restitution for it, but you still gotta be punished. That's our idea of justice.
[00:25:35] But the conception of justice in the Bible is a little bit different. There's a whole social landscape that we need to try to enter our minds into in this ancient world. And it really does matter that justice is actually being meted out in that social landscape. Let's go ahead and read Isaiah 32, verses one through eight, and then 14 through 18, which say, quote, "Behold, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in justice. Each will be like a hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land. Then the eyes of those who see will not be closed, and the ears of those who hear will give attention. The heart of the hasty will understand and know, and the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak distinctly. The fool will no more be called noble, nor the scoundrel said to be honorable. For the fool speaks folly, and his heart is busy with iniquity, to practice ungodliness, to utter error concerning the Lord, to leave the craving of the hungry unsatisfied, and to deprive the thirsty of drink. As for the scoundrel, his devices are evil. He plans wicked schemes to ruin the poor with lying words, even when the plea of the needy is right.
[00:27:07] But he who is noble plans noble things, and on noble things he stands. For the palace is forsaken, the populous city deserted. The hill and the watchtower will become dens forever, a joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks, until the spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field, and the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places." End quote.
[00:27:56] So here we have a chapter in Isaiah that begins with a king reigning in righteousness. We have princes who rule in justice. The rulers are compared to a hiding place from the wind, shelter from the storm, water in dry country, and shade in exhausted land. And then the chapter explains what failed governance does to vulnerable life. The fool and the scoundrel leave hungry people unsatisfied. They deprive thirsty people. They use deceit to ruin the poor. They override the legitimate claims of the needy. And injustice is like the way of life of these people. It is the way that they're treating other people as a whole. And so we have anti-refuge pictures of fruitful fields failing and thorns and houses being vacant and so on. But then there's a turning point, and that is the outpouring of the Spirit from on high, where the wilderness becomes fruitful, and justice dwells in what was once wilderness, and righteousness and the people occupying. And so it's this different picture of this is what injustice does and what it looks like. This is what justice and righteousness look like. None of this hiding is about just covering over things in a fake way. There is a reality to it. And that reality is very much ethical.
[00:29:26] And you know what's interesting? This context of the royal justice is actually not unheard of in the broader ancient Near Eastern world. This is not just a biblical reality. But the ancient Near East had kings that were supposed to rule justly. They would restore property. They were supposed to protect widows and orphans. And so this picture of justice is not one that only comes from the Bible. The ideology that is seated within the law of Hammurabi, for instance, actually says the same kinds of things. And so when we read in the Psalms and we read in the prophets about kings and God's justice and fools and people who exploit, this contrast is well attested in the ancient Near East as actually at least an ideal—maybe not something that actually happened. And we know it certainly didn't happen in Israel, so probably assume it also did not happen in the pagan nations. But nonetheless, these laws show us that there is an expectation that sounds very ethical to us, even if it doesn't quite correspond to our view of what justice is, which is often about punishment instead of helping the vulnerable.
[00:30:49] And I'm pretty sure last week I talked about Isaiah 26. This is a very crucial part of refuge and being shut in to preserve the people while the fury or the rage or the wrath or whatever is passing by. And so the chambers that the people are in, they're a kind of refuge, but nobody's meant to live forever behind their closed doors. And so the concealment or the hiddenness serves a future beyond that concealment.
[00:31:21] Let's read Deuteronomy 12 verses 8 through 12, which say, quote, "You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes. For you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you. But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all of your enemies around so that you live in safety, then to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you, your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the contribution that you present, and all of your finest vow offerings that you vow to the Lord. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns, since he has no portion or inheritance with you." End quote. Okay, so in Deuteronomy 12, Israel has not yet reached the land and the rest and the inheritance. But then we have these expressions.
[00:32:34] Israel crosses the Jordan, the people inhabit the land that Yahweh gives as inheritance. Surrounding enemies are restrained, and Israel dwells securely. And it is within that condition. Then they can choose a place that becomes the stable center of Israel's worship. Okay, so now we're bringing this all back into temple context. We have rest, we have spatial locations, we have social aspects to all of this. And so there is a goal that they are to go in the land, they are to live within their inheritance. And it is that condition that allows the stable place of God's presence.
[00:33:17] We see the same sequence happening in 2 Samuel chapter 7, where Yahweh gives David rest from his surrounding enemies. David notices a contrast between his settled royal house and the tent and the ark. So then that's when we get the question of a settled divine house or a temple within the condition of political and geographical rest. So the context of protection, safety, rest, refuge, all of those things really is securely attached to what the temple image was. And that is not to say that before they get into the land that they don't have God's presence or they don't have His protection or any of that kind of a thing, right? But the goal is to get to a point where they don't have to wander around, they're no longer surrounded by enemies, and they can rest and enjoy their inheritance and live well within the land. It's kind of the picture we're supposed to have here.
[00:34:22] Then of course, we have Yahweh as being described as having a resting place. So it's not just the people who enter the land who get their inheritance, who are supposed to not have to worry about their enemies anymore. It's also they get rest, but Yahweh also gets rest. And we know that Yahweh's rest is deeply entwined with and connected to sacred space, temple, and all of those ideas, right? So there's kind of this hierarchy of temple being even better than the tabernacle. But that doesn't mean that the tabernacle, there's something wrong with it. It just indicates that we aren't yet at the full place of rest. Okay? So human and divine rest converge in this picture of Zion, the holy city where people dwell, but where Yahweh also dwells in his temple. So Yahweh's settled presence corresponds with the place where people are also settled. They can be fed, they can be governed, they can be sanctified within the holy space and protected, and that is the picture of the fullest life.
[00:35:37] I won't read all of this, but I would point you to Leviticus chapter 26 to provide a image of what that looks like. Leviticus 26 starts out with a prohibition against idols. It talks about keeping Sabbath, and revering God's sanctuary, and keeping the commandments and the statutes. And when people do all of that, then God gives them rain. The land gives its fruit. They'll have peace in the land. All of their enemies will run away from them. And the whole core of that is God dwelling amongst them and walking among them, being their God, and they will be God's people.
[00:36:20] So this is really a picture of normal life. It's not a picture of, okay, you get into the land, you conquer the enemies, you get all of that done, then you guys are all good. You can go home. You can sit in front of your TVs. No, there's a picture of life as it's actually lived by people. They still have to plant crops. They still have to harvest the crops. They still have to rely on God for the rain and the harvest and all of that. But this is basically the picture of ideal creation and life and society. This is the habitable order. And it's connected to Israel and their relationship to God. And that is lived out through the way they use the land, through the way they labor, through the way they actually worship and interact with each other. So the picture of justice is never divorced from that. The picture of refuge and God's presence includes the need for people to actually act righteously towards one another.
[00:37:27] We can also map that onto the concept of shalom, often translated as peace. You know, we tend to think of that as peace and quiet, we're not fighting, and so on. But notice in Leviticus 26, it doesn't say there aren't any enemies. It says the enemies are gonna run away from you, and that you'll conquer them easily, and so on. So I think it's easy for us to kind of, again, we love to collapse the ideas into something really easy for us to hold in our heads. But it's not necessarily really simplistic. It doesn't mean we just get to rest as in we're not working. We still have to work. And the danger comes in. We see it in the prophets. We see it warned in the Torah quite often, that when that collapses, it's going to collapse because of ethical considerations, because the rulers are not ruling justly and really the entire society is going to be doing things wrongly.
[00:38:29] I'm just gonna go ahead and read a fairly large section of Ezekiel 34. I think I'm gonna read from verse one through 16, and then verses 23 through 31. So bear with me, but look, we all know we don't read Ezekiel enough, so I'm gonna read this whole section. Ezekiel chapter 34 starting in verse one.
[00:38:53] Quote, "The word of the Lord came to me. Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds. Thus says the Lord God, 'Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves, should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat. You clothe yourselves with the wool. You slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened. The sick you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up.' The strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill.
[00:39:45] My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search or seek for them. Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves and have not fed my sheep.
[00:40:13] Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among the sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered.
[00:40:47] And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.
[00:41:28] I will feed them in justice. I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey, and I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them. He shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord. I have spoken. I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. And I will make them, and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season.
[00:42:09] They shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase. And they shall be secure in the land. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I break the bars of their yoke and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them. They shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid. And I will provide for them a renowned place for planting so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land and no longer suffer the reproach of the nations. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Lord God. And you are my sheep, human sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Lord God.” End quote.
[00:43:03] Okay, that was a long passage, but like I said, we all need to read more Ezekiel. We have a really strong contrast here with the shepherds who are currently over the sheep. They're not good shepherds. And God being pictured very directly, very vividly as their rescuer, as their new shepherd, but who also appoints new servants, new shepherds over the sheep. And the promised Davidic shepherd is followed by a covenant of peace where dangerous animals are restrained and everybody is dwelling securely. And so what we have here in this chapter, I just want you to see how it runs through pretty much the entire refuge frame. We have some danger of failed governance, we have vulnerable life that is being mistreated by the people who are over them. This is injustice in a nutshell. And while they are removed, and we could say there is some punishment going on, the crux of the storyline is deliverance. Yes, the failed shepherds are judged, but they are removed. And the justice is about restraining the predation that is within the flock. The rule is replaced. And by replacing the rule with new rulers that is how we then have good life happening after that.
[00:44:28] Another passage I will read is Micah chapter four, starting in verse one, says, quote, "It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and peoples shall flow to it. And many nations shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore, but they shall sit every man under his vine and under the fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken." End quote. Okay, so here we have the mountain of God, Mount Zion, as the center of an outward moving order.
[00:45:42] But it's a place where the nations will stream, and yet it is also a place where things flow from it. Proper law keeping and justice will come out of this. The image of the vine and the fig tree are all about stable possession of the land, agricultural productivity. A time to cultivate rather than to fight. An ordinary life that is conducted without fear. It's a very powerful image precisely because of its ordinariness. This is of course very geographical. Even though this is talking about Zion, the temple is the center of that. It's not just part of it, but it stands at the very middle of the divine order. And This is where ordinary life flows from. So the sanctuary is kind of the archetypical example of this. That's why I'm saying it is the archetype. It is not Eden that's the archetype. It is the city center where God dwells amongst many people, and there are nations, and there is law, and so on.
[00:46:50] All right, so let's go back to our previous idea where, you know, a lot of people reduce the temple or the tabernacle or Leviticus or, you know, all of those ideas. They reduce it to sacrifice as appeasement. And that just severely obscures the actual protective character and nature of it. When we come to these ideas with the narrow frame of guilty people, an angry God, a victim, penalty, appeasement, that's a very different picture of God dwelling with His people, providing for them, giving justice, communal order, rest, and protection. And so, you know, again, it seems like it's really strange to see the temple as a refuge if we're letting appeasement be the main center of it. It's just not. Now, that does not mean that the temple is always a place of refuge, that it just stays that way forever, because it certainly doesn't do that. The temple can quite easily become anti-refuge because of the things that are going on there. Just having the temple is not a guarantee.
[00:48:04] Jeremiah chapter seven shows this very strongly. Let me go ahead and read this section. Jeremiah seven says, quote, "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 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.’ 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. Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.' For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 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. Then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
[00:49:07] Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known? 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 of these abominations. Has this house, which was called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it, because of the evil of my people Israel. And now because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer. Therefore, I will do to the house that is called by my name and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all of your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim." End quote.
[00:50:17] Okay, so here we have the context of this is Judah and Israel, northern Israel has already gone into exile first, and then here is the story of Judah. You apparently didn't understand what happened to Israel because they went after other gods. They acted unjustly, and now look what happened to them. And that is now happening to you guys down here in the South as well. And here we have repeated imagery of the temple as Yahweh's temple, but it contradicts the rule of Yahweh himself. They oppress the foreigner, the orphan, the widow. They shed innocent blood. Of course, they worship other gods. They commit theft and murder, adultery and deception, but they enter the temple and treat that as evidence that they're safe. But that confidence turns the sanctuary into a false refuge, and they are judged. And, you know, we have all of the fallout of that. It's not that the temple wasn't a safe place. But it's not gonna be a safe place just because.
[00:51:24] But this is pretty crucial. So I'm going to read some sections of Ezekiel 8 and 10 and 11. Starting in Ezekiel 8 verse 5. It says, quote, "Then he said to me, 'Son of man, lift up your eyes now toward the north.' So I lifted up my eyes toward the north, and behold, north of the altar gate, in the entrance, was this image of jealousy. And he said to me, 'Son of man, do you see what they are doing? The great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here to drive me far from my sanctuary.' He brought me to the entrance of the court. And when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, 'Son of man, dig in the wall.' So I dug in the wall, and behold, there was an entrance. And he said to me, 'Go in and see the vile abominations that they are committing here.'
[00:52:18] So I went in and I saw, and there, engraved on the wall all around was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel. And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah, the son of Shaphan, standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up. Then he said to me, 'Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, The Lord does not see us. The Lord has forsaken the land. You will see still greater abominations that they commit.'
[00:52:59] Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord. And behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, 'Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these.' And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord. And behold, at the entrance of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east. Then he said to me, 'Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger?'
[00:53:45] Behold, they put the branch to their nose. Therefore I will act in wrath. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. And though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them." End quote. Ezekiel chapter ten, starting in verse one, quote, "Then I looked, and behold, on the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim there appeared above them something like a sapphire, in appearance like a throne. And he said to the man clothed in linen, 'Go in among the whirling wheels underneath the cherubim. Fill your hands with burning coals from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city.' And he went in before my eyes. Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the house when the man went in and a cloud filled the inner court. And the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub to the threshold of the house, and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was filled with the brightness of the glory of the Lord. And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard as far as the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty when he speaks." End quote. Then down to verse eighteen, quote, "Then the glory of the Lord went out from the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth before my eyes as they went out, with the wheels beside them.
[00:55:10] And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of the house of the Lord, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them." End quote. Ezekiel eleven, verse twenty-two, quote, "Then the cherubim lifted up their wings with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. 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. And the Spirit lifted me 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. And I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me." End quote. Again, that's a long passage, but I really want to highlight how much that Ezekiel is being shown here about what's going on.
[00:56:02] We have idolatry. We have abominations. We have things that are problematic, quite obviously, within the house of the Lord. So Ezekiel is physically among the exiles when the Spirit transports him in vision to see this in Jerusalem. And the Spirit's activity in the vision is also very important, because one of the questions we can have here is this is the image that we have of the people that are practicing idolatry, they're doing abominations, they're treating the people poorly and all of these things, and the glory of the Lord is seen to leave here, right? This is where we have the glory leaving the temple. The presence of God is no longer with them in the temple. But that does not mean that the activity of the Spirit has ceased, because the Spirit is literally talking to Ezekiel and interacting with him, right? We have the escalating abominations that are associated with the temple. Idolatry, hidden images, illicit worship, ritual mourning for Tammuz. And we could talk about that another time, but, you know, all of these pictures of people turning away from God. Worship is directed toward the sun. People aren't even toward Yahweh's sanctuary. Corruption penetrating the leadership, the worship, the covenant loyalty, and all of it.
[00:57:31] And so the judgment is described, and I didn't read this part in Ezekiel 9, but it begins in the sanctuary. The proximity to the building doesn't protect anybody, even though the temple is supposed to be a protective space, right? And the movement of Yahweh's glory, this is why I read it kind of closely, it is gradual. The glory moves from its accustomed location above the cherubim, goes into the temple threshold. It moves with the cherubic throne to the eastern gate, and it finally rises from the city and stands over the mountain east of Jerusalem. All of that geography has meaning to it. The building isn't destroyed, by the way. It continues to exist, but the glory departs. And so, what is this about the glory leaving the temple? If the temple is the archetypical kind of orientation that people have towards God's presence, if that presence leaves, what happens? Is that the failure of Yahweh's protective power? Certainly not. The Spirit is still active. It is the failure of people trusting in the location and thinking that they can do idolatry and also still worship Yahweh and say, "Hey, we still have His protection." And no, you don't. So if it's the divine presence that makes the sanctuary protective and active, and that glory has departed the sanctuary, but also Jerusalem, then, it's fair to ask, what preserves the remnant in this time when the temple and the land have been lost?
[00:59:21] Well, once again, let's read Ezekiel eleven, starting in verse fourteen. Quote, "And the word of the Lord came to me, 'Son of man, your brothers, even your brothers, your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, all of them are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, 'Go far from the Lord. To us, this land is given for a possession.' Therefore, say, thus says the Lord God, 'Though I removed them far off among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a while in the countries where they have gone.' Thus says the Lord God, 'I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them.
[01:00:23] I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads,' declares the Lord God."
[01:00:46] End quote. All right, so the context matters here. Jerusalem's remaining inhabitants regard the exiles as people sent far away from Yahweh, and they claim the land for themselves. Their reasoning treats proximity to Jerusalem as proof of covenantal privilege and exile as proof of exclusion, but Yahweh reverses that judgment. Ezekiel 11 verse 16 acknowledges the severity of the exile because Yahweh has scattered the people, they are among the foreign lands, they're outside Jerusalem, away from the temple, unable to inhabit their inheritance. But Yahweh declares that he himself has been or will be a sanctuary for them in those lands. The exiles don't possess Jerusalem's temple. Yahweh remains capable of being sanctuary to them outside of Jerusalem nonetheless. So the protective reality that constitutes temple refuge isn't destroyed, and it's not actually lost. That does not mean that the Jerusalem temple never mattered, because Ezekiel continues to anticipate gathering, return, cleansing, restored land, governance, sanctuary, all of the things, right? And so there is a displacement, and geography still matters within the context of the story. Yahweh as sanctuary preserves the displaced people, but that idea doesn't pretend that they've regained their inheritance, regained the rest that is promised.
[01:02:22] And there's also a distinction here that we could have between the glory that inhabits the temple and the Spirit, the Spirit as something that is more than just what goes in the temple, because the Spirit remains active in Ezekiel's prophetic transport, in his speech, in his whole experience. And so there is zero sequence in which the Spirit leaves Jerusalem and becomes unavailable in general. And then, of course, we have later chapters in Ezekiel that make the Spirit central to the recovering from the exile.
[01:02:55] Haggai chapter two brings forth this as well, and I won't read this whole thing. But a question in verse three: "Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?" And yet God declares that He is still with them. His Spirit remains in their midst. Skip down to verse nine, "The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former." So the reconstructed temple appears inadequate beside memories of the former structure. That's kind of the context here in this book. Yahweh's reassurance rests on his covenant fidelity and his presence with the people. His spirit remains among them even if the architecture is incomplete, unimpressive, whatever. But there's still temple restoration that matters, but the continuity is the God who remains present. So there is a sense in which we have a reality that we have to take very seriously, that there's geography, there's inheritance, there's a sanctuary. But that doesn't contain God. It doesn't contain God's promises and so on.
[01:04:11] And that also becomes clear. There is a theme in the Old Testament throughout where people are oriented toward Jerusalem, and this is where they are to point their prayers to. This is where they are to call for protection from. In the very dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8, we have this context there, where Solomon explicitly denies that the temple contains Yahweh though, and yet the temple remains a real covenantal focus point. It is associated with Yahweh's name, and Solomon asks Yahweh to attend to prayers that are directed toward that place. Israelites can pray from anywhere in the land, even outside the land, and in every case, Yahweh will hear from heaven. And so the temple is seen then as an axis mundi, the orientation of the center of the earth, the place where heaven and earth meet. Daniel praying in Daniel six is a really good example of this. We also get it in the Book of Jonah and a whole bunch of other places. But this does not mean that God is localized in a way that if you're faced any other direction that He won't hear your prayers or any other idea like that.
[01:05:32] But there is something to be said because we are embodied creatures for having a focus, a place where we can orient ourselves in the world. That doesn't mean that that place becomes the only place that God can be, or, you know, any of those kinds of ideas. But all of these concrete images of the sanctuary, the geography, the glory, the clouds, the fire, all of these are pieces of reality that we're able to understand on our embodied human level. The temple is a concentrated covenantal place in which divine presence and holiness and guarded access and justice, provision, worship, rest, all of these things converge in one place. And what we see in the Old Testament in these patterned stories is when that center, the people there, become corrupt, then it's not the building that preserves the people, but God Himself. And so it matters what we're doing. It matters how we are approaching God. And we can't just live however we want, even if we are in what we might think is good orientation towards Him.
[01:06:52] All right. So I hope that this episode has kind of seated the conversation of sacred space in the Old Testament and the idea of refuge, protection, rest, and inheritance, and all of these ideas kind of wrapped up together. I hope this is a good orientation for when we talk about the New Testament and being hidden in Christ. And what is the connection between Christ, the temple, and the Spirit? Not that that is necessarily a particularly simple picture itself, because like we saw today, even the Old Testament sanctuary was not a simple image. But lots of stuff for us to meditate on. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. And as always, I really appreciate you listening. I appreciate your sharing the episodes in various places so that other people can find the content as well. And a big shout out to those of you who support me financially as well, and who pray for me and my family. I deeply appreciate all of you. But that is it for this week, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.
