Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

Revelation 21-22 is John’s climactic vision of the new Jerusalem and new earth.

Not unexpectedly, there are deep Old Testament roots underlying his vision.

But it is often a surprise to note that John specifically informs us that his end of days vision about the new, forever presence of God on earth does not include a new temple (Rev 21:22).

What do we make of this absence give the Old Testament expectation of a new temple after the exile of Israel has been completed?

This episode focuses on the broad Old Testament context of Rev 21-22 by examining Israelite “temple consciousness” before and during the exile.

How did Israelites think about the concept of “temple”?

How does that help us see what John is trying to communicate?

No Temple

Well, there’s just a ton of stuff in these last two chapters by way of the Old Testament, which of course… If I have to remind you of what we’re doing thematically here at this point when we’re at the end of the book, well, that’s pitiful in a way.

But I’m going to do it anyway.

Our thing is the use of the Old Testament in the book of Revelation.

And there’s so much in these two chapters that we are going to split… We’re going to combine the chapters but split it into two parts.

Today, I’m going to more or less just take a general look at how the Old Testament sort of sets the table for these last two chapters.

What I mean by that is, there would be some that you either look at the chapters and you think, “Boy, this is kind of weird stuff.

Like in the new Jerusalem, there’s no temple.

Like, what happened to the temple?

Because there’s all this emphasis on building a third temple.”

And as I’ve told people before who are of the persuasion to expect that if a new temple got built in Jerusalem it’s a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, I personally don't think that.

But if you have someone who does, well then what happens to that temple?

Because the temple gets rebuilt, there’s Armageddon, and now all of a sudden in the new city, there is no temple.

I mean, Revelation 21:22 says that point-blank.

There’s no temple.

So this is one of the reasons why so many scholars have opted for a symbolic interpretation.

And there would be a lot of people in the audience who sort of think that that’s cheating, and they don’t like the idea of not looking forward to a third temple.

And by the way, just because it’s not a fulfillment of prophecy in my view doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

I mean, it very well could for political reasons or religious reasons, whatever, in the Jewish community over there.

But

I think it’s a mistake to view that as a fulfillment of any particular prophecy.

But it still could happen for other reasons.

So I’m not opposed to it.

But a lot of people who run into other believers that are not looking for this tend to think, “Well, you just want to spiritualize Revelation.

You want to make it go away.

You must be an amillennialist,” or whatever—those sorts of things.

Well, actually, what I want to do is show how, in the Old Testament… You know, that’s the three quarters (and really the 90% if we include the New Testament other than the book of Revelation)… Ninety percent of your Bible does not point to a literal temple at the end.

And the Old Testament does not either.

What do Prophet’s Say

So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to go through the Prophets in sort of broad strokes and how the Prophets will take an Old Testament/new temple expectation… Because that’s certainly true.

If you were an Israelite, especially if you’re living in the days leading up to (and, of course, after) the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, you are thinking that “God is not going to abandon us, and we’re going to have our temple back.

It’s going to be rebuilt.”

You are certainly thinking that.

But at the same time that the Old Testament lays that out there, it will conflate the idea of a new temple with (believe it or not) a new Jerusalem and a new earth.

It does exactly what Revelation 21-22 does.

So if you’re going to accuse the book of Revelation (or someone interpreting the book of Revelation) of being anti-literal or spiritualizing the temple stuff, well, I’m sorry, you’ve got to do the same thing to your Old Testament.

And we’re going to look in broad strokes at how the Prophets do this—how they combine these ideas—so that when we get to Revelation 21-22, it’s stuff we’ve already seen before.

Jewish readers would’ve been expecting this as well.

It wouldn’t have come as a shock.

“What happened to that third temple we all wanted?”

You know, if you had people who knew the Scriptures, they would say, “Well, you know, there’s this passage in Ezekiel or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Zechariah (all of them, frankly, do it) where we have this hope for a new temple cast in terms of a new city and a new creation.”

And lo and behold, that’s what we get in the end, in the book of Revelation.

So I want to go through that material.

And then next time, Part 2, we’ll be going through chapters 21-22 with an eye toward very specific items, kind of after the pattern that we’ve been wont to do up to this point.

But we’ll look at very specific items and their Old Testament connections.

So as we proceed, I think it’s going to be helpful in grasping the larger idea of “temple”—what’s… I mean, everybody knew what a temple was.

It’s a place you go to worship.

You bring sacrifice.

So on and so forth.

But there’s a larger concept in Old Testament theology of “temple.”

It’s not just a place where you bring sacrifices.

It means more than that.

And I’m going to refer here to a dissertation that has since been published.

And you can get it.

It’s not frightfully expensive.

But if you have access to the ProQuest dissertation database, you can get this for free in pdf (I think even online if you google the name and the title, the University of St. Andrews might have an archive of their own for this dissertation, that you could get it for free).

But the author’s name is Pilchan Lee.

So Pilchan Lee.

And it’s entitled “The New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation: A Study of Revelation 21-22 in Light of its Background in Jewish Tradition.”

And this is a 1999 dissertation done by Dr. Lee at the University of St. Andrews, over in the UK.

So I want to sort of track through a few specific points that he spends lots and lots of time—devotes a lot of word count and space to each one of these.

But he looks at Ezekiel.

Really the whole book gives us what I would call “temple consciousness”—the concept of a temple.

Again, it’s more than just a building or a place that you brought sacrifice.

And then Isaiah 65-66 are really important.

Jeremiah 30-31 are really important.

And then Zechariah, the whole book, but I’ll just pluck out a few chapters where the concept of a temple… what it means.

What would an Israelite have thought of if you were playing some kind of word game or Pictionary or whatever?

I mean, there are lots of images—lots of thoughts and concepts—that are wrapped up and tied to, and that accrue to, the word “temple.”

Again, it’s more than a building.

Some Highlights

So we’re not going to, obviously, be able to devote the kind of space that Lee does in his dissertation.

But we’re just going to track through here and give you some examples of what we’re thinking about, and I think you’ll see pretty quickly how this sets up Revelation 21-22.

So if we look at Ezekiel… Let’s just start with Ezekiel.

The book opens (as we know because we are doing a whole series on Ezekiel) with the throne of God descending to the earth.

This is Ezekiel’s weird “wheels” vision.

And we know it’s the throne of God because that’s what the account tells us, that there’s a divine man (God in human form) seated on a throne.

The throne has wheels.

There’s a throne platform.

I mean, it’s very clear this is the throne of God descending to earth.

And it’s a vision of global sovereignty by virtue of the four faces of the cherubim.

We’ve talked about this in Revelation 4-5 in our episodes there and also, of course, our own episodes in Ezekiel in chapter 1 back in the Ezekiel series.

The four faces of the cherubim are the cardinal points of the Babylon zodiac.

That is not a mistake.

It’s deliberate.

It’s intentional.

Ezekiel is using imagery that would be familiar not only to the captives in Babylon but to Babylonians as well.

If we have a vision here of the four cardinal faces of the cherubim (points of the zodiac), then the messaging is obvious: God rules from his temple, and his temple is descending.

The messaging is that he is still in control, even though he has allowed his people to be sent into exile for their idolatry.

That doesn’t mean he is beaten.

It doesn’t mean his program is beaten.

God’s program is not going to be thwarted even by the disobedience of his own people.