Veil Of The Temple (part 5)

As part of the curse that came upon Adam, when he, as reported in the Scriptural narrative, failed in his commission to steward the perfect creation of the one that would to be known as the Lord God of Israel, to have dominion over the earth, and to bear the divine image as he was created to do, he was banished from the Garden of Eden. When Adam rebelled against his divine purpose, and in so doing allowed death and evil to enter into this world as indicated in the story, he was banished from the place where he would have his fellowship with the Creator God.  He was removed from the place of access to his Creator. 

Not only was he removed from this place of fellowship and purity and perfection and the tree of life, but the Genesis narrative informs the reader that two cherubim were stationed at the east end of the Garden.  It was insisted upon and understood that this was done in order to bar Adam’s way from returning to the place from whence he had been banished.  Those cherubim stood with whirling swords of fire, figuratively veiling mankind from the place of the Creator God’s presence.  Prior to this, the God of covenants was said to have openly walked in the midst of His creation, freely engaging in open fellowship with the creatures that had been made in His image, but this was brought to an end through Adam’s transgression and thus would happen no more.  Adam, as the representative of all of humanity, had accomplished this. 

When the covenant God took it upon Himself, based on His promise to Abraham, with whom He had entered into a covenant, to redeem a people from out of bondage of Egypt, for the purpose of separating them for Himself and for His purposes, to appoint them to be the reflectors of His glory into His world, to again steward His creation and to bear His image, to be a shining light to the nations, and to be the instruments of His service, He once again, as He had done with Adam as the divine image-bearer, chose to place Himself in the midst of His creation.  He chose to enter into fellowship.  This time, however, there would be limitations.  It was not open and it was not free.  There were boundaries.  It was both similar and dis-similar to the situation of Genesis. 

When the tabernacle was erected, with its Holy Place and its Most Holy Place, the Creator God limited Himself to appearing in the Most Holy Place.  He limited Himself to direct fellowship with Moses alone.  Furthermore, it would be decreed that only the High Priest would be able to enter into His presence, and that, only once a year, as the representative of the people of the Creator God.  Where did this entering into the presence of the Creator God take place?  It took place behind the veil.  It took place behind the veil that was decorated with angelic sentries---cherubim. 

What was the penalty for a presumptuous entrance behind the veil?  The penalty was death.  The penalty was being cut down, figuratively, by “the flame of a whirling sword.”  This was true of the tabernacle, and of Solomon’s temple, and was held to as a tradition of the second temple, which stood in Jesus’ day.  There was no entrance behind the veil.  Cherubim guarded the way.  There was to be no direct access to or fellowship with the Creator God by man.  This could be looked upon as mankind’s ongoing curse. 

In Jesus’ day, it would be reasonable to presume that when the people saw the cherubim, read about the cherubim, were verbally reminded of the cherubim, and contemplated that veil of separation, their thoughts could have quite rightly turned to Adam, to Eden, to the fall of man, to the cursing of creation (a reminder of exile), to the expulsion from Eden (another reminder of exile), and to the cherubim that were set forth as a result of that fall.  It becomes clear that the veil of the temple was so much more than something that prevented people from seeing what stood behind it.  The veil was so much more than a reminder that man had been separated from his Creator.  

Psalm Of The King (part 5 of 5)

As it is related to the first part of verse five, the deliverance that would bring the king honor can be readily understood as the deliverance from exile that the Creator God would work through His people’s messiah-king, as that which would bring that king great honor.  Indeed, in making it so all nations would submit to Israel’s king, whether it would be in the subservient way envisioned and expected by many in Israel, in which all nations would be subjected to the authority of national Israel, or in the Creator God’s kingdom plans in which Israel’s king would be a king for all peoples with the barriers between Jew and Gentile (as well as all other social barriers) torn down, His God would “give him majestic splendor” (Psalm 21:5b).   

Verse six pulls the reader back into the framework of covenant and blessings, as it reads, “For You grant him lasting blessings; You give him great joy by allowing him into your presence” (21:6).  Once again, the use of “blessings” should put the reader in mind of the Abrahamic and Deuteronomic covenants and blessings.  By being the embodiment of the covenant God’s purposes for Israel---being a light for the world for the purpose of the Creator God’s glory (which is what the New Testament insists that Jesus is through believers when they are in union with Him)---Jesus looks to the promise of being brought into His God’s presence.  This points towards the Resurrection, as when He was brought forth from the grave, Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of heaven that the Creator God had long intended to establish on earth, doing so by means of that very Resurrection, which also serves as the evidence of the overlapping of heaven and earth that now takes place whenever the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) is spoken and believed. 

Because it will then be through acknowledgment of Jesus as King and Lord of all peoples (the Gospel), and of all creation as well, that the Creator God creates a renewed Israel (covenant people), the covenant blessing is extended to all people, through the Lordship of Jesus, as He comes to be recognized as the incarnation and embodiment of the Creator.  Jesus becomes the person and place in which the covenant God brings about one of His promised blessings, having told His covenant people “I will walk among you, and I will be your God and you will be My people” (Leviticus 26:12).  All that are in union with Jesus are said to be kings and priests to God, and in this promise of being with His people, so they are made to be in their God’s presence. 

Finally, it can be seen that the faithfulness of Jesus, which has its rooting in what He understood to be the faithfulness of His God, is the key to His hope.  As Jesus has possibly taken this Psalm to heart, He would have read, “For the king trusts in the Lord, and because of the Sovereign One’s faithfulness he is not upended” (21:7).  As He journeyed through His ministry, towards the encounters and confrontations that would ultimately lead to the death that He knew He must undergo on behalf of His people, Jesus would trust in the faithful covenant God to perform a resurrection.  Relying on His knowledge of Israel’s history, Jesus could trust that He would not be upended, and that He would not be permanently laid down, but that in His Resurrection, and in the proclamation of His Gospel, that the world itself would be upended---turned upside down as can be read in Acts, and that because of His faithfulness, a new age would dawn.  Truly, this is a Psalm of the King.     

Separation Ended (part 1 of 2)

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. – Ephesians 2:12  (ESV)

Separated.  Alienated.  Strangers.  No hope.  Without God.  These are quite descriptive terms that the Apostle Paul is using to paint the picture of a dire situation for those that are outside of God’s covenant of promise.  That covenant of promise had begun with Abraham, and had been extended, through Isaac and Jacob, to the sons of Jacob, or Israel.  Those that were not part of national Israel, those who were “Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision” (2:11b), did not have the hope of experiencing the fulfillment of God’s promises. 

That was the case until Christ came.  In being “separated from Christ,” that is, separated from the expected fulfillment of God’s promises through Israel’s expected Messiah, the Gentiles were not a part of God’s redemptive plan for all creation.  “But now,” Paul says, all that has changed, for “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:13).  You who were far from being a part of God’s covenant people have been brought near to God by Christ.  Prior to that, there had been enmity, not only between man and God, but between Israel and the Gentiles. 

That enmity, that hostility, was primarily directed towards the Gentiles by Israel for a couple of reasons.  The first reason had to do with the presence of the Mosaic law (and that down to which the Mosaic law had been whittled---the covenant markers of circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and food laws) which Israel held to as what it was that distinguished them from all of the rest of the peoples of the world, which became to them an unfortunate source of pride, and which the Gentiles sought to get them to violate so as to remove their marks of national identity and so make them an easier people with which to deal and over which to rule.  The second reason for the hostility stemmed from that very rule of the Gentiles, over the land and people of Israel, for even though it was the manifestation of God’s cursing on Israel for their own failure to extend God’s covenant to the whole of the world and so glorify their God, prompted Israel to naturally resent their rulers. 

Paul addresses this situation and writes, “For He Himself is our peace” (2:14a).  Jesus is the one that brings this hostility to an end, because He “has made us both one” (2:14b).  How has He done this?  Because He “has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (2:14c).  Partly by what He did on the cross, through the physical, bodily suffering and sacrifice that He endured, Jesus broke down the wall that separated God’s chosen people (national Israel), from the rest of God’s chosen people, that being the renewed Israel, that were a group that was to be gathered out by God from all of mankind.  Jesus did this “by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (2:15).  The covenant of God expressed exclusively for His chosen people (Israel) through the law was no longer necessary, for now the covenant would be expressed exclusively by His chosen people, which now included all the people of the world, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In this proclamation of the Gospel, which included that Jesus had defeated sin and death (borrowing from enhancing the gospel proclamation that Caesar Augustus had defeated darkness and dissolution), the evidence of which was His Resurrection, and that Jesus the Messiah was not only the King of the Jews, but the King of all peoples and the One for whom every knee would bow, Paul says that Jesus has served to “reconcile us both (Israel and Gentile) to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (2:16).  There was no longer a dividing line when it came to God’s covenant to Abraham.  He had promised that all families of the earth would be blessed through the seed of Abraham, who was looked to as the Messiah; and that seed, Jesus, had now done what was necessary to bring that about.  What was the greatest blessing?  It would have to be that “through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (2:18), where previously, all had been separated, by sin, from God. 

All had been “strangers and aliens,” but through Christ, Paul tells the Gentiles that “you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Israel alone had been the saints, or the “called-out-ones” of God, but now the grouping of those referred to as God’s called-out-ones, God’s chosen, would extend to all the races of man.  Now, not even the Temple in Jerusalem, from which Gentiles were barred from entering, need be a source of division, for Paul looks to a new Temple for a new people of God, that is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (2:20-21).  There is an underlying Jesus-as-Temple theology built into all of this, as Paul declares that the God of Israel has moved beyond what might be thought of as the confines of the Jerusalem Temple, through the work of Christ, and that “In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (2:22).