Lately, I have been listening to podcasts from the Reformed Theological Seminary mobile app as I travel to and from work each day. Currently, I am wrapping up a course on hermeneutics - a topic I have dabbled in, but it was definitely beneficial to me to receive lectures in a more structured and formal setting. At the end of the day, I am still a layman, but I hope to mature in my abilities to approach the Scriptures with reverence and wisdom.
Anyway, this morning I was listening to Dr. Belcher discuss the idea of sensus plenior and how it is applied in a number of examples throughout the bible. One such example was the topic of the temple - the place where God's holiness dwelt. This topic is constantly touched on throughout the Old and New Testaments. In fact, I believe it to be one of the most pervasive topics throughout the entire biblical narrative. We begin with Adam and Eve in the garden temple. Many would not initially think of the Garden of Eden as a temple, but the Hebrew language would have us think otherwise. Adam is told to "work [the garden] and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). In the English, it seems as if Adam is simply playing the role of a gardener, but the original Hebrew actually reads "to serve" (abad) and "guard" (shamar), as the Levitical priests were called to do in the temple. Extending this command then to Adam allows us to see how God saw Adam's service in the garden resembling that of a priest in the temple. And this is further validated in God being pleased to walk and dwell in the midst of the garden. Genesis 3:8 shows God walking in the garden in the "wind of the day," with "wind" given by the word ruach, which in other contexts means the Spirit of judgment very similar to the anger kindled when Aaron's sons were destroyed in an instant in Leviticus 10:1-2. On a side note, we see that it was pure mercy that our original parents were not consumed by this "Spirit of the day" ready to bring judgment for their sin. Instead, they were spared and expelled from the garden temple.
To move on, the temple is then established among the people of Israel as they moved throughout the wilderness to the Promise Land. God dwelt within the camp of his people, albeit only within the Most Holy Place - a small, symmetrical, confined area which required the utmost ritualistic cleansing and reverence by the High Priest to enter just one time a year. Moving forward, Jesus then declares that in his person we can find the temple of God (Matthew 12:7; see also John 1:14) - the place in time and space where man can be reconciled to God and be forgiven of our sin. In his body is where the full ruach of God was pleased to dwell (Colossians 1:19). Upon his death and resurrection, Christ then dispenses his Spirit to his people so that we are now all temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), being built into an even greater temple structure that we might offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God (1 Peter 2:5). Looking even further towards the Eschaton, the old heavens and earth have passed away, making way for the new Jerusalem where God makes his permanent dwelling place with man (Revelation 21:3).
Seeing this progression made it even clearer to me the pervasive nature of the kingdom of Christ in this world. The temple of God has such deeply-threaded connections with the concept of Christ's kingdom. As history has progressed, the nature of the temple has continued to expand to ever-greater extents, starting first in a garden and then expanding to the entire cosmos, with humble beginnings like that of a mustard seed and reaching a grand crescendo as a towering tree. The expansive nature of the temple points us to the reality that the kingdom grows by day, so that the one God and Father of all might be over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6).
SDG
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