Search
In this message we will continue to consider Christ as the Husband of the New Jerusalem.
Revelation 21:22 tells us that “the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” are the temple of the holy city. The city is the aggregate of all the saints, and in the city Christ with the Lord God the Almighty will be the temple. This means that the Triune God as the temple is in the city of the New Jerusalem. The city is the aggregate of the saints, and the temple in this city is the Triune God. In other words, the redeemed saints will be the city, and the redeeming Triune God will be the temple in this city.
The Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb refers to the redeeming Triune God. The Lamb, who is the second of the Trinity, is also the temple. Our God today is the Redeemer as well as the Triune God; hence, the redeeming Triune God is our temple. The fact that the New Jerusalem is a cube of twelve thousand stadia in three dimensions shows the absolute perfection and eternal completeness of our redeeming Triune God, who is the temple and who is the Holy of Holies. With Him there is nothing wrong, and He has no bias, obliqueness, or crookedness.
The designation the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb signifies the many attributes and accomplishments of the Triune God. The temple in Revelation 21:22 is built with the Triune God, with all His attributes plus all His accomplishments. All that He has obtained and attained are the materials for the building up of this wonderful temple that we have today. We are in such a temple built with the Lord, with God, with the Almighty, with the Lamb, and with all His attributes and accomplishments.
The first mention of the tabernacle is in Exodus. After entering the good land, the children of Israel built a temple, which replaced the tabernacle. Even before the temple was built, in 1 Samuel 3:3 the tabernacle was called the temple. This means that the tabernacle and the temple actually refer to one thing. The former could be taken down and moved from place to place in the wilderness; the latter had a settled location in the good land as a more permanent building.
At first the children of Israel had the tabernacle. Then they entered the good land, conquered the enemy, and secured the peace. Afterward they built the temple. The tabernacle was then merged with the temple (1 Kings 8:4). These two, the tabernacle and the temple, were God’s greatest blessing to His people on earth. This is because both were God’s home. As long as God’s people had the house of God, they could locate God. They could tell others where He was. The tabernacle and the temple were the center and focus of the Old Testament.
In the New Testament God’s dwelling on earth was first a single person, Jesus Christ. Jesus was God’s tabernacle, His dwelling place. Then the church as a corporate person became the temple of God, God’s dwelling (Eph. 2:21-22; 1 Cor. 3:16). When we enter into eternity, God’s dwelling will not change from living persons to a lifeless, physical city. We must believe that these living persons, built together as God’s dwelling place, will be enlarged and intensified. In the coming age there will be an enlargement of these living persons as God’s dwelling place.
In the New Testament we see God incarnated. God became flesh. John 1:14 tells us that this incarnated One “tabernacled among us.” John’s particular use of the word tabernacled indicates that when the Lord Jesus was on earth in the flesh, He was God’s tabernacle. In typology the tabernacle built in Exodus was a full type of the Lord’s incarnation; the Lord was incarnated to be the embodiment of God on earth. This embodiment was God’s dwelling. Colossians 2:9 tells us that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily, in Christ with a human, physical body. Christ is the embodiment of God, and this embodiment is the tabernacle of God.
In John 2:19 the Lord told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Lord Jesus’ physical body was a temple of God (v. 21). In John 1 there is the tabernacle, and in John 2 there is the temple. The Lord’s word in three days signifies His resurrection. Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:6 that when Christ was raised, we were resurrected together with Him. Peter says further that through the all-inclusive resurrection we have all been regenerated (1 Pet. 1:3). We have been born of God and are His sons. This implies that the temple the Lord Jesus built up in three days, that is, in His resurrection, is not a single person but a corporate entity. In the Epistles we are told that the church as the Body of Christ is God’s temple. First Corinthians 3:16 says that the saints are the temple of God. The New Jerusalem as the conclusion of the Bible is the tabernacle (Rev. 21:3) and the temple (v. 22).
In the Old Testament the temple was in the city of Jerusalem, but in Revelation 21 and 22 the entire city is the tabernacle and the temple. This temple is not only God’s dwelling but also the dwelling place of all His serving ones. At that time all the saints will be priests with an eternal priesthood. We will all serve Him (v. 3). Our dwelling place then will also be the temple. The New Jerusalem is a great temple where both God and His redeemed dwell together.
We must believe that our abiding in the Lord and His abiding in us will be intensified, enlarged, and uplifted to the uttermost. This is a strong indication that the city is not a physical place. In this city the temple is a person, and this person is God and the Lamb. The Triune God will be the temple. Since the temple within the city is a divine person, the Triune God Himself, the city also must not be something lifeless but an organic entity composed of persons.
Both the Old Testament and the New Testament are focused on the tabernacle and the temple as God’s dwelling. The conclusion of the whole Bible is also the tabernacle and the temple. In the Old Testament the tabernacle typified Christ individually as God’s tabernacle, and the temple typified Christ corporately as God’s temple. What we have here is Christ and the church. Christ is the fulfillment of the type of the tabernacle, and Christ as the Head with the church as His Body together fulfill the type of the temple. This will have a consummation, and this ultimate consummation will be the New Jerusalem, which is both the tabernacle and the temple. This is the ultimate consummation of God’s dwelling, which He has been building for centuries. The New Jerusalem is a living composition of all the saints of the Old Testament, as represented by the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and all the saints of the New Testament, as represented by the names of the twelve apostles. It is a living composition of God’s redeemed people to be His eternal dwelling place.
Eventually, the New Jerusalem will be a dwelling for both God and His serving ones. In the Old Testament the tabernacle was God’s dwelling, and at the same time it was also the priests’ dwelling in which they served. Both God and His serving priests dwelt in the same tabernacle. To God the New Jerusalem is His dwelling, and to us God is our dwelling. Therefore, the tabernacle is God’s dwelling place, and this God who dwells in the tabernacle is the temple, which is the dwelling place of His serving ones.
Revelation 3:12 says, “He who overcomes, him I will make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall by no means go out anymore, and I will write upon him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which descends out of heaven from My God, and My new name.” The point in this verse is crucial — in the coming temple of God, the pillar is a person. He who overcomes will be made a pillar in the temple of God. We have already seen in 21:22 that John saw no temple in the New Jerusalem because its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. If a pillar in the temple is a person and the temple itself is a person, the New Jerusalem cannot be a physical city composed of physical stones, physical pearls, and physical gold. Since both the pillar and the temple are persons, the city must also be a person.
The Triune God is our temple, and we are His tabernacle. He dwells in us, and we dwell in Him, and this mutual dwelling is the New Jerusalem, which to God is the tabernacle and to us is the temple. We enjoy a foretaste of this today when we abide in the Lord and the Lord abides in us (John 15:5). John 14:23 says that the Father and the Son will come to the one who loves the Son and make an abode, a dwelling place, with him. This dwelling place will be a mutual abode for the Father with the Son and the Son’s lover. This mutual abode will be enlarged in eternity to be the New Jerusalem where God will be our dwelling place, and we will be His dwelling place.
The New Jerusalem as the tabernacle to God and the temple to us indicates a marvelous mingling. God dwells in us, and we dwell in Him — a mutual indwelling. In eternity future the New Jerusalem will be the tabernacle for God’s dwelling and the temple for our dwelling.
The New Jerusalem has two natures, humanity and divinity. According to its humanity, the New Jerusalem is the tabernacle of God among men, the dwelling place of God in His humanity among men on the earth (Rev. 21:3). In the Bible the tabernacle is a human dwelling place. Likewise, the New Jerusalem is a human dwelling place because it is constituted with humanity. John 1:14 says that God was incarnated in the flesh to tabernacle among men. He is God, but He has become a man. He partook of humanity as His nature; hence, He dwells in humanity.
According to its divinity, the New Jerusalem is the temple of God as the dwelling place of His redeemed elect (Rev. 21:22). The holy city is the temple of God because it is divine. It is the temple of God, yet it is the dwelling place of His redeemed. Because this is God’s temple, the dweller must be divine. According to its humanity, the New Jerusalem is the tabernacle; God dwells in the tabernacle. God can dwell in a human dwelling place because He has become a man. According to the divinity of the New Jerusalem, it is a temple for God’s dwelling. If we are only human and not divine, we cannot dwell in the temple. As believers in Christ and children of God, we human beings can dwell in a divine temple because, having the divine life and nature through regeneration, we have been made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. The New Jerusalem is therefore a mutual abode. According to its humanity, it is a human tabernacle, and according to its divinity, it is a divine temple. It is a human dwelling place, but the Dweller is God. God can dwell in a human place because He became a man. In the same way, we human beings can dwell in God’s temple because we have been made God. This is the mutual abiding of God and man.
The tabernacle is built mostly with the humanity of God’s people to be God’s dwelling place, whereas the temple is built mostly of divinity to be the dwelling place of God’s redeemed. This indicates that God takes us as His dwelling place and gives Himself to us to be our dwelling place. The divine God lives in a human tabernacle, and redeemed man lives in a divine dwelling place. This indicates the mingling of divinity with humanity, in which both humanity and divinity became a mutual abode. Concerning God and His redeemed in the New Jerusalem, a new hymn says, “As man yet God they coinhere, / A mutual dwelling place to be.” The New Jerusalem as the tabernacle of God indicates that the redeemed of God are the dwelling place of God, and the redeeming God as the temple indicates that God is the dwelling place for His serving ones.
For eternity the New Jerusalem will be the fulfillment of the Lord’s brief word in John 15:4: “Abide in Me and I in you.” To abide in the Lord means to take Him as our dwelling, our habitation. When we take the Lord as our dwelling, He abides in us. This abiding is mutual, for we abide in the Lord, and He abides in us. There is no need to wait until the coming New Jerusalem to abide in the Lord and to have Him abide in us. We can testify strongly that many times we know that we are truly in the Lord and that He is actually abiding in us. When we abide in Him, we immediately sense that He is abiding in us. If we say, “Lord Jesus, how I thank You that right now I am abiding in You,” we will have the deep sense that He is abiding in us. Wherever we are — at home, at work, or at school — we can say, “O Lord Jesus, I am abiding in You right now,” and something within us will say, “And I am abiding in you.” This is a miniature of the coming New Jerusalem, which will simply be a mutual abiding place for us and for God and the Lamb.
The temple is the house (palace) of God the Father, who is the King of kings, and of His household, His many sons, His royal family, who are the co-kings with the Father to be its reign (Rev. 22:5b). These co-kings are also the priests who serve God (v. 3b). Hence, they are the royal priesthood, the kingly priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9).
Because the Dweller and His children will be kings, this temple becomes a palace. Solomon built a temple for God and also a palace for himself separately. These two buildings were separate and divided, but now in the New Jerusalem our temple and our palace are one. God’s temple is our palace. All the members of the same divine family live in that temple where they worship God and live as kings, making that living place a palace. The Father is the Father-King, and the children are the children-kings. This is the reigning and ruling royal family. Their dwelling place is not only the place for them to serve God but also a palace for them to live as kings.
There has never been such a family on earth. The Japanese have their emperors, and the British have their kings, but there has never been a situation where every member of a family is a king. We believers in Christ who are washed by the blood and regenerated by the Spirit are the children of God who will eventually become kings (Rev. 22:5). Our Father-King is the unique Father, but He will have millions of co-rulers, or co-regents, because we will all be His co-kings. Romans 5:17 says that by the abundance of grace we can reign in life as a king today. The entire Bible tells us that we, the children of God, eventually will be the children-kings in the King’s house. The reign in the holy city will be not only God Himself as the Father-King but also His children as the co-kings with their Father.
The Greek word for temple in Revelation 21:22, naos, does not denote the whole temple in a common way. Rather, it denotes the inner temple, the Holy of Holies. This inner temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb, signifying that God and the Lamb will be the place in which we serve God.
As we have pointed out, the measurement of the New Jerusalem is the same in length, breadth, and height. In three dimensions the city measures twelve thousand stadia (v. 16). The principle revealed in the Bible is that a building with three equal dimensions indicates the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies in the tabernacle was ten cubits in three dimensions. The Holy of Holies in the temple according to 1 Kings 6:20 was also three equal dimensions of twenty cubits. Accordingly, the New Jerusalem, the holy city, must also be the Holy of Holies.
The entire city of New Jerusalem is the Holy of Holies, and God and the Lamb are the temple of this city. If we put these two points together, we will realize that this city is God and the Lamb. Because the whole city is the Holy of Holies and because the inner temple is God and the Lamb, the city itself is God and the Lamb.
Furthermore, the whole city is called the tabernacle (Rev. 21:3). Just as a boy is the precursor of a man, so also the tabernacle is the precursor of the temple. Before the temple appears, there is the tabernacle. But when the tabernacle comes into its fullness, it becomes the temple. Therefore, we need to keep three points before us: that the whole city is the Holy of Holies, that the temple is God Himself and the Lamb, and that the whole city is the tabernacle. When we put all these points together, we see that God Himself is the whole city of New Jerusalem.
The entire city of New Jerusalem is not only God Himself but also a living composition of all God’s redeemed ones. On the one hand, God is the entire city; on the other hand, the city is a living composition of the redeemed. Similarly, the church today is Christ, and it is also a composition of all the believers. On the one hand, the church is a composition of all the believers; on the other hand, Christ is both the Head and the Body. Hence, 1 Corinthians 12:12 indicates that Christ is not only the Head but also the Body: “Even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” The principle is the same in both the church and New Jerusalem.
The church is also the enlargement of Christ. Christ Himself is the individual Christ, but the church is the corporate Christ, Christ enlarged and expanded. Therefore, the church is Christ’s expansion, His enlargement. In like manner, the New Jerusalem is the enlargement and the expansion of the Triune God. We should desire to dwell in God, even in the enlargement of God. The expansion and the enlargement of God will be our eternal city in which we will dwell for eternity.
When we come to the New Jerusalem, we are told that it is the tabernacle of God. John then says that the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple. Here we can see that the city is not only the tabernacle but also the temple. As the tabernacle, the city is the wife of the Lamb. As the temple, the city is the enlargement of God Himself and the Lamb.
In Psalm 90:1 Moses says, “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place / In all generations.” While Moses was traveling in the wilderness with the children of Israel for forty years, in his deep feeling he was dwelling in God. Moses knew that God Himself is our eternal dwelling place, our eternal habitation. In Deuteronomy 33:27 he says, “The God of old is your habitation.” Later, Israel, under God’s punishment, was scattered among the Gentile nations. In Ezekiel 11:16 God said to Israel that in their dispersion He would be their sanctuary.
Many people feel that we serve God in the sanctuaries, in the chapels, and in the cathedrals. However, the Bible reveals that we serve God in God Himself. We may also say that we serve God in the Spirit. The New Testament shows us that the Spirit is the processed Triune God reaching us. When God in the Son went to the cross to die for our sins and to accomplish redemption, He was the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world (John 1:29). When God reaches us, however, He is the Spirit.
Actually, we serve God in God Himself as the Spirit reaching us. When we pray, we pray in God Himself as the Spirit reaching us. The proper prayer and the proper service that we render to God must be in God Himself. If we pray in ourselves, that prayer is not genuine.
When we enter into eternity, we will dwell, serve, worship, and pray in the processed Triune God as the Spirit reaching us. The entire New Jerusalem is a great reaching of God to us. We all need to ask ourselves regarding where we pray and where we are staying while we are worshipping God. When we pray and worship God, we must be in our redeeming, processed God who is reaching us as the Spirit. This means that we must be in the Spirit, praying, worshipping, and enjoying Him.
We should pray in the triune, processed, redeeming God reaching us as the Spirit. Whenever we pray, we should have the deep thought that we are in the Triune God, the processed God, the redeeming God, the God who is now the all-inclusive Spirit reaching us. We should pray to God in God Himself. Whether He answers our prayers or not is secondary. When we pray in this way, we enjoy Him in an excellent way. This kind of prayer makes us ecstatic.
Today we do not have a physical temple, for our temple is our triune, processed, redeeming God reaching us as the Spirit. Such a Spirit is our temple, our “floating home” that is always with us. We worship and serve God in this temple, and day and night God is our dwelling place.
Even today our God is our temple. It is not reasonable to think that when we enter into eternity we will have another temple. We will not get out of God and enter into another temple. When we enter into eternity, God will be our temple, and this should not be a surprise to us. We should be able to say that while we were living on the earth, we remained in this temple all the time, in our God who is triune, processed, redeeming, and reaching us as the Spirit. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of the entire divine revelation, and this is a practical application of God being our temple.
Today we are dwelling in this temple. This is our habitation, this is the place where we serve and worship God, and this is the place where we meet. In the church meetings we need to have the realization that we are actually meeting in the triune, processed, redeeming, and reaching God. In eternity the New Jerusalem will be a consummation of today’s reality.
In John 4 the Lord told us that God is seeking the proper worshippers who worship Him in spirit (v. 23). In Revelation, however, John tells us that the temple in which we worship is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. John 4:24 also tells us that God, whom we worship, is Spirit. This is the Triune God reaching us as the Spirit, and this is our temple. Here in this temple, we worship and dwell with God in our spirit. In our human spirit He dwells in us as His tabernacle, and in the divine Spirit we dwell in Him as our temple. In our spirit we enjoy our triune, processed, redeeming, and reaching God as our habitation. What an enjoyment! We all need to exercise our spirit in order to be accustomed to enjoying God as our temple.
In the past there was a temple in the ancient city of Jerusalem, but in the New Jerusalem there is no temple (Rev. 21:22), for God Himself and Christ are the temple. We may ask, then, since God and Christ are the temple, are They the Dwellers within the city or are They the dwelling place? The answer is that They are both. They are the temple where the serving ones will dwell and serve. A temple is a place where those who serve God dwell. The dwellers are the dwelling place, and the dwelling place consists of the dwellers. If we would dwell in the church today, we must be built into it; that is, we must become a part of it. This is very subjective and experiential. If we are not built into the New Jerusalem, we will never enter into that city. God is the God whom we serve, but He is also the temple where we serve. This means that we serve God in God, a thought that is exceedingly deep. God and Christ are our temple. We must serve God in God; we must serve Christ in Christ.
The New Jerusalem is a mutual habitation. God dwells in us, and we dwell in God. The church today is a habitation where God may dwell (Eph. 2:22), and God is the home where we may dwell. We have the presence of God and Christ as the temple. We are not simply before God’s presence, but we are in His presence. The presence of God and Christ becomes a dwelling place for us. If we would serve God and Christ in the church, we must be surrounded and covered by God and Christ. This is intensely personal, subjective, and experiential. Here we need to consider that the air is within us and that the air is also outside of us. If the air were not in us, we would soon expire, and if we were not in the air, we could not breathe. Likewise, God and Christ are in us, and we are in God and Christ. We may experience this as a reality in our life. One day, in the new heaven and new earth, we will realize this in the fullest way. We will see how much God and Christ are to us. He dwells in us, and we dwell in Him; hence, we will enjoy His presence to the uttermost.
