Take Me Past the Outer Courts

I'm a fan of John Grisham, particularly his early works, and one of my favorite, favorite books of his is The Rainmaker. The title refers -- not to someone who makes rain -- but to a legal case that brings in a whole lot of money for both the client and the law firm who wins it all, against all odds. 

It's been a few years since I've read it and some of the details are foggy, but here's the gist.

Rudy Baylor is a freshly-minted attorney. He doesn't have a major legal firm backing him, he's really got no credentials of any kind... except that he's smart. He winds up in court with this client, the judge, jury, and the legal teams from both prosecution and defense. 

While I was reading, after the defendant's team stepped forward and delivered the defense, I was absolutely convinced. The lawyer had a great story. It made sense, and there seemed to be no refuting it. And then Rudy Baylor, the prosecutor in this case, took his turn. He began his spiel, and by the end of it, I realized that everything the defense attorney had just said... was weak. All the defense arguments were just a shadow of the magnificent case presented by this flat out amazing prosecution attorney. Rudy Baylor had routed it. He had stepped into all the arguments, turned them inside out, and delivered the case to the judge and jury on a platter. Great book, by the way (I haven't seen the movie).

This morning, I focused on one small paragraph: 1 Corinthians 3:16-17: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple."  

If you've been following my posts, you'll know that -- in the same fashion I've been doing with 1 Corinthians -- I went through Exodus and Joshua not too long ago, chapter by chapter. In those books, while we covered the larger story of the Israelites and their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their march into the Promised Land under Joshua, we got a nice, close look at the details of the Israelite temple.

To sum up, you know, the first six books of the Old Testament (heh), God gives instructions to the Israelites to build a Tabernacle -- basically a traveling tent that would serve as a temple where the Israelite people could come and worship God, offer sacrifices, and be cleansed from their sins by the blood of innocent animals. The books covered quite a few elements included in the Tabernacle: A couple of altars, a lampstand, a table for the bread of the covenant, a ceremonial basin for cleansing, a curtain that closed off the Holy of Holies, and inside the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant.

As the Israelites traveled through the desert, these items were travel-ready: they were affixed with rings at their bases, through which rails could be slid, and the Levites, the caretakers of the Tabernacle, would carry these things with them as they went from place to place.

Then the Israelites, under Joshua, began their march through the Promised Land, conquering cities as they went, and eventually set up the Tabernacle with a bit more permanence at Shiloh (the place of peace). 

As the book of Judges records, the Israelites turn away from God, and in 1 Samuel 5, the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines. As it turns out, wherever the Ark goes among the Philistine camps, disease breaks out, and so the Ark is moved and moved again... until the Philistines have enough and return it to the Israelites, who... again mistreat it, so they suffer, and consequently, move it to the home of a Levite (a caretaker of the priesthood in Israel), and there the Ark stays for a long while until King David comes to retrieve it. The Ark takes a three-month detour at the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite before finally returning to Jerusalem, to Zion, the place of the king. There's a brief hiatus as David takes the Ark from Jerusalem during his flight from his power-thirsty son Absalom, but it returns to Jerusalem to stay... until the Babylonian captivity.

Solomon, David's son, builds a magnificent temple to replace the ancient Tabernacle, and while the elements of the temple remain, they're increased in splendor and magnificence. For instance (just humor me), Solomon lines the interior of the temple with cedar from Lebanon, "The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with gourds and open flowers" (1 Kings 6:18). "[Solomon] overlaid the inside [of the inner sanctuary] with pure gold, and he also overlaid the altar of cedar" (1 Kings 6:20). 

One of my favorite parts: Remember the basin for cleansing in the Tabernacle? Solomon makes the "Sea" in its place: "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. Below the rim, figures of bulls encircled it -- ten to a cubit. The bulls were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea. The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held three thousand baths" (1 Kings 7:23-26). This thing was massive, strong (bronze), and delicate. So. Cool!

Okay, so then the Babylonians destroyed the Temple and carried off all its elements in 586 B.C., and Israel went into exile. It wasn't until King Cyrus gave the green light that the temple that appears in the Gospels is rebuilt. I'll stop there, because that's enough nerding out. 

What we've got in the Old Testament, in the Old Covenant, is a magnificent temple, a place where Israel can worship God. Paul is a Jew; as a "Hebrew of Hebrews, and in regard to the law, a Pharisee" (Philippians 3:5), he would be thoroughly knowledgeable about every detail of the saga of the tabernacle/temple/Babylonian destruction and reconstruction of the temple and its elements.

So when he writes to the church in Corinth, there's a whole lot of significance behind his statement: "Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" Don't you understand that there's a Holy of Holies inside of you? Don't you understand that in that Holy of Holies lives the very Holy Spirit of God Himself?

"If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you. are. that. temple." That's right, church. 

Paul's saying this in the context of church division. Factions, quarreling, and leadership splitting. Apollos, Paul, Cephas? Eenie meenie miney mo. 

The destruction of the church, the temple, is happening right there in Corinth, because of the disagreements and division, and Paul is saying: Stop it. The point is: God Himself, His Holy Spirit, lives in each one of you -- so there should be no emphasis on the men who are pointing to Christ anyway.

Paul, pointing to Christ. Apollos, pointing to Christ. Peter, pointing to Christ. Anyone who reveres anyone of them as equal with Christ is pulling apart the church. In 1 Corinthians 4:1, Paul emphatically states: "So then, men ought to regard us (Paul, his buddy Apollos, his other buddy Peter) as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God."

So, to recap what I've written thus far: the tabernacle and its elements turn into the temple and its fancier elements, which turns into the church as the temple, which turns into...

This. 

Turn with me to the last page in your Bible, Revelation 21:22-27: "I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life."

All that has come before THIS TEMPLE is blown out of the water before the flat out awesomeness of the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. The Israelite people brought their richest and best materials to make the tabernacle, but when Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, he erased the previous ideas of grandeur with his ornate carvings and his lining of cedar and gold, his bronze Sea to replace the cleansing basin. And then look at the final "Sea" in Revelation 4:6: "Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal."

The church becomes the temple, then, and look at how the future state of the church is described: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any Sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Revelation 21:1-4).

I don't know about you, but I think it is amazing that the tabernacle/temple of the Old Testament, the church of the New Testament, the church today -- all of these things are only a reflection of the eternal temple prepared for us in heaven. I can hardly comprehend it, but we get glimpses throughout Scripture, from first to last, from Genesis to Revelation.

At the end of the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle (and if you haven't read those books, do yourselves a favor and read them), there's a quote that touches my heart every time I consider this great story we're all a part of: 

"When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy; all of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different, as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream... Your father and mother and all of you are -- as you used to call it in the Shadowlands -- dead. The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning."

I can hardly wait to wake up in the morning, where shadows are put away, and where the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple, and where there is no sun or moon, because He is the Light.