It was the place where God lived and where he desired humans to live.
The design of the golden lampstand in the holy place of the tabernacle
was a reminder of the Tree of Life, God’s throne room, the Holy of Holies,
where the Ark of the Covenant was marked off by a veil.
The Ark’s lid functioned as a throne for God.
This echoes God’s presence in Eden.
Over the Ark sat two cherubim, just as cherubim guarded the entrance to Eden.
Lush decorations of vegetation, flowers, palm trees, lions, and palm granites
filled the tabernacle.
They reminded the Israelites of God’s first abode on earth, the Garden of Eden.
You might wonder how cosmic geography worked before Israel got into the land.
The Israelite camp was holy ground.
Outside the camp was the domain of the lesser gods from Babel.
Think about it.
While Israel was traveling to the Promised Land,
they were not yet in Yahweh’s portion of the earth.
Laws about sacred space taught Israelites that Yahweh’s people were sacred.
Their home was sacred, and that other nations were estranged from God.
If the Israelite camp in the wilderness was considered holy,
outside the camp was unholy ground.
The annual Day of Atonement ceremony illustrated this point.
Two goats were involved in the ceremony.
One goat was sacrificed, but one was not.
The one sacrificed was for the Lord.
The one left alive was for Azazel.
Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for Yahweh and one for Azazel.
But he must present alive both of them to Yahweh.
But he must present alive before Yahweh the goat on which the lot for Azazel fell
to make atonement for himself, to send it away into the desert to Azazel.
The crucifixion of Jesus paralleled the Day of Atonement ceremony.
His cross was placed outside the city, away from the temple area, which was holy ground.
Jesus bore the sins of the world outside holy ground.
Why didn’t the powers of darkness understand what would happen at the cross?
Well, Paul gives us some insight into the way God shrouded His plan for redemption in mystery.
We speak the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery,
which God predestined before the ages for our glory,
which none of the rulers of this age knew.
For if they had known it, they would not have crucified Him.
For if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Do you realize what Paul is saying here?
If the forces of spiritual darkness had understood Jesus was coming to give His life as a sacrifice for sin,
they never would have had Him killed.
Even the disciples didn’t understand why Jesus had come.
Consider how they responded to Jesus when He told them He was going to Jerusalem to die.
They were shocked. Peter even rebuked Jesus.
And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying,
God forbid, Lord, this will never happen to you.
But He turned around and said to Peter,
Get behind me, Satan.
Jesus would have none of it. Jesus was on a divine secret mission.
The Old Testament leaves clues scattered throughout dozens of places about God’s plan.
But it doesn’t spell it all out in one place.
God didn’t want the powers of darkness to know the plan.
The intelligent supernatural evil beings knew that the prophesied Son of David had arrived.
Matthew records an encounter.
Two demon-possessed men coming from among the tombs met Him.
They cried out, saying,
What do you have to do with us, Son of God?
Have you come here to torment us before the time?
They recognized Jesus, but their words never indicate that they understood what Jesus was up to.
The forces of darkness were duped into conspiring to kill Jesus.
It was a divinely designed misdirection.
Intelligent evil, Satan, demons, the lesser gods, do not know everything.
Only God is all-knowing, and He is on our side.
Why did Jesus have to die?
Why would God plan such a thing?
So that His children would have eternal life.
That’s what Eden was supposed to be.
The first supernatural rebellion in Eden brought death into God’s world.
Everyone was destined to end up in the realm of the dead, where the serpent was cast down.
Death had to be overcome.
That means resurrection.
But you can’t have a resurrection without a death.
Jesus knew what had to be done.
He volunteered for that role.
He would die in our place, rise again, and overcome death.
God wants us to believe in His plan.
He never gave up on including humans in His family.
That’s why Jesus came.
There was no plan B.
But as many as received Him, to those who believe in His name,
He gave to them authority to become children of God.
How did the world end?
It’s easy to get the impression that Jesus’ ministry leading up to the cross was somewhat random.
But there’s an important subtext to what Jesus was doing.
He was outwitting the evil one.
Jesus drew the battle lines when He declared,
Now is the judgment of this world.
Now the ruler of this world will be thrown out,
and I, when I’m lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
Satan is the ruler of this world.
He’s also very clever.
Satan knew that Jesus wanted as many people as possible to be part of God’s family and kingdom.
So he offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world.
There was just one catch.
The devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.
And he said to Him, I will give to you all these things.
If you will fall down and worship me.
There’s no clearer example of cosmic conflict.
Satan’s offer to Jesus was real.
The thought of Jesus, Yahweh in the flesh, prostrate, worshiping at his feet is his dream.
He’s the ultimate megalomaniac.
Jesus told Satan to get lost.
He knew something Satan didn’t.
That he was going to die and then rise again to liberate anyone who believes in him from death.
God and His Son already had a plan to bring people into God’s family.
One that didn’t involve worshiping Satan.
When Jesus had His confrontation with Satan, He didn’t reveal God’s plan.
That plan was to reclaim the nations of the world allotted to lesser gods at Babel.
Jesus didn’t even tell His disciples until a very specific incident.
Remember that huge rock we saw earlier?
It’s time to talk about what happened there.
Jesus brought His disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi.
Named after Caesar and Herod Philip.
That was the Roman name.
It’s in an area known in the Old Testament as Bashan.
Canaanites believed Bashan contained gateways to the underworld.
The gates of hell.
But in New Testament times, it had been the city of Pan, Panias.
One of the Decapolis cities.
And Pan’s cave was also known as a gateway to the underworld.
But why did Jesus bring them there?
Because the implicit message when Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of God, was
Jesus is the real Messiah, the Son of God.
And these statues and that emperor are so not the sons of God.
Caesarea Philippi was also located at the base of Mount Hermon.
In some of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Jesus’ day,
Mount Hermon was the place where the fallen sons of God
descended to earth before the flood.
Bashan and Hermon were ground zero for the cosmic evil powers.
Jesus was standing at Satan’s front door
when he announced the gates of hell would not withstand the church.
In this place, Jesus asked Peter,
Who do you say I am?
And Peter answered,
Jesus commended Peter and declared,
The identification of this rock has been debated for a very long time.
The area’s geography is the key to understanding this passage.
Eventually, this place became known as Pan’s grotto.
The god Pan was represented with horns, a goat’s beard,
crooked nose, pointed ears, a tail and goat’s feet.
That’s why the early church described the devil in those ways.
In a few days, Jesus would take three disciples with him up into Mount Hermon
and put the entire spiritual world on notice with the transfiguration.
Jesus took along Peter and James and John
and led them to a high mountain by themselves alone.
And he was transfigured before them.
And a cloud came, overshadowing them, and a voice came from the cloud.
This is my beloved son. Listen to him.
Right after Jesus did these things at the gates of hell and Mount Hermon,
he began to teach his disciples that he needed to go to Jerusalem to die.
The thought panicked them. They didn’t understand.
But Jesus knew it was time to fulfill God’s plan.
A week later, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for his triumphal entry.
Jesus’ provocations of the supernatural powers led to the devil striking back.
Satan entered Judas, whose betrayal in the garden led to Jesus’ trial.
He stood accused before the high priest Caiaphas,
who was a man of great power and authority.
He was a man of great power and authority.
He was a man of great power and authority.
He stood accused before the high priest Caiaphas,
who demanded that he defend himself.
The high priest said to him,
I put you under oath by the living God,
that you tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.
Jesus’ answer sounds evasive to us, even cryptic.
He replied,
You have said it, but I tell you from now on,
you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power
and coming on the clouds of heaven.
Caiaphas burst into a rage. He tore his robe, saying,
He has blasphemed.
But why did Caiaphas think the reply was blasphemy?
Jesus had quoted an Old Testament passage
that Caiaphas knew very well.
Ancient of days sat.
His clothing was like white snow,
and the hair of his head was like pure wool.
And look, with the clouds of heaven,
one like a Son of Man was coming.
And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him,
and to him was given dominion in glory and kingship.
Why was it so shocking to hear Jesus claim
that he was the one coming on the clouds?
Because everywhere else in the Old Testament,
that expression was used only of God himself.
For instance, in Psalm 104, Yahweh, the God of Israel,
makes the clouds his chariot.
But Daniel 7 is an exception.
God was already in the scene.
He’s the ancient of days seated on his throne.
That means the one coming on the clouds was a different person.
The scene has God in human form twice.
He is the seated ancient of days.
And you would also expect God to be the one coming on the clouds,
because that is a title for him.
Because of this scene, ancient Jewish theology
had a doctrine called the two powers in heaven.
They actually identified two Yahweh figures in this scene.
Jesus claimed to be one of them, the Son of Man riding on the clouds.
Why was it so shocking to hear Jesus claim that he was the one coming on the clouds?
Jesus claimed to be God was enough for the priest to declare that he should die.
And die he did.
Psalm 22 gives us a glimpse of the suffering Messiah on the cross.
All who see me mock me.
They open wide their lips.
They shake the head saying,
He trusts Yahweh.
Let him rescue him.
Many bulls have encircled me.
The mighty bulls of Bashan have surrounded me.
They open their mouth against me like a lion tearing and roaring.
I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax.
It is melted within me.
The creepy part is the description of the mighty bulls of Bashan.
Remember that Bashan was known as ground zero to demonic gods and the realm of the dead.
The area was a leading center for the worship of Baal,
symbolized by bulls and cows.
Mighty bulls of Bashan refers to demons and the powers of darkness.
C.S. Lewis captured the force of the psalm in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
No one can forget when Aslan surrenders his life to the hordes of the White Witch
and dies on the stone table.
But just as Aslan outsmarted the White Witch,
so too Jesus turned this apparent defeat into the greatest triumph of all time.
Jesus triumphed over death.
He was granted authority over all things.
Satan has no claim over God’s people.
Jesus conquered death through his resurrection.
In the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit explodes onto the scene with his arrival at Pentecost.
It’s a familiar story to Christians.
There’s more there than you first realize.
Suddenly, a sound like a violent rushing wind came from heaven
and filled the whole city.
It was the cry of the Holy Spirit.
Suddenly, a sound like a violent rushing wind came from heaven
and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And divided tongues like fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages.
The Old Testament associates the arrival of God with fire and a violent wind.
Ezekiel 1 is a good example.
The heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.
A storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud, and fire flashing back and forth.
The Spirit of God enabled the Jewish followers of Jesus to speak in the languages
of the surrounding nations enslaved by enemy gods.
God was reversing the judgment at Babel.
Part of that judgment had been the confusion of languages to divide nations.
The Spirit was supernaturally overcoming that obstacle.
But there’s more going on.
Pentecost was a slap in the face to the gods of the nations.
Their authority had been nullified.
God was going to take the nations back.
God gave the risen Jesus all the authority he had once given to them.
This is why the Great Commission begins the way it does.
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations.
The nations listed in Acts 2 cover all of the geography
associated with the disinherited nations from Babel.
Pentecost sent the message that God was reclaiming those nations.
They could once again be included in his family.
The Apostle Paul often talked about the evil entities
whose domains he violated in the wake of Pentecost.
He understood the Old Testament’s cosmic geography.
Paul lists rulers and principalities, authorities, powers, dominions, lords, and thrones.
All of these terms indicate geographical rulership.
They reflect how the Old Testament depicts the relationship
of the unseen and the seen worlds.
Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles.
He knew that he was up against the old gods of the nations,
allotted to people, excluded from God’s family back at Babel.
Paul says something in the Book of Romans that helps us see
that what happened at Babel influenced the way he thought about his mission.
Therefore, after I have accomplished this and sealed this fruit for delivery to them,
I will depart by way of you for Spain.
Why did Paul care about getting to Spain?
On the one hand, some think it’s the only disinherited nation
not mentioned in the Book of Acts, the land of Tarshish.
Clement, the early church father from the end of the first century AD,
says that Paul went to the limits of the West
in order to reach the full scope of Gentiles in the Roman Empire.
Having taught righteousness to the whole world and having come to the limits of the West.
In other words, Jonah went to Tarshish to get away from proclaiming to Gentiles in Nineveh.
Paul went to Spain to reach the Gentiles at the end of the earth called the Roman Empire.
God knew that the Great Commission was bigger than just Paul could imagine.
It falls to us to bring the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Paul had a supernatural view of his own life.
He viewed himself as set apart as an instrument for God’s use.
We have the same task of invading the demonic strongholds of this world
with the message of the love of Jesus Christ.
Remember our discussion of holy and unholy ground.
You might wonder where God’s presence is today.
And sure, the Bible teaches us God is everywhere.
But it actually marks his presence more specifically.
Paul writes that God is specifically present within each believer.
In other words, every believer is sacred space.
God was present in the temple.
Today the same is true wherever believers gather as a group.
The Bible says the people of God are collectively God’s temple.
You are fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
You also are built up together into a dwelling place of God in the spirit.
Together we are God’s temple, the special place where God’s spirit resides.
Wherever believers gather, the spiritual ground we occupy
is sanctified amid the powers of darkness.
Believe it or not, baptism is a declaration of spiritual warfare.
Peter explains that idea in a perplexing passage.
It’s odd to us, but people in Peter’s day would have known just what to do with it.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, being put to death in the flesh,
but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and proclaimed
to the spirits in prison who were formerly disobedient,
when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah.
Corresponding to this, baptism now saves you,
and appealed to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
who was at the right hand of God,
with angels and authorities and powers having been subjected to him.
At first glance, Noah, a good conscience,
spirits in prison, baptism, angels, authorities, and powers
seem to have little to do with each other,
and baptism can’t save us. Believing in Jesus saves us.
What’s going on here?
To understand what Peter wants to say here,
we have to understand that like Paul used Adam
as an analogy for Jesus in some of his teaching,
Peter uses Enoch.
And Enoch walked with God, and he was no more, for God took him.
We don’t learn much about Enoch in the Old Testament, just three verses.
He walked with God after living 365 years, and God took him to heaven.
That makes it hard to see much of an analogy,
but we have to remember that New Testament writers
read other books besides the Old Testament,
and one of those books is called First Enoch.
First Enoch isn’t inspired,
but biblical writers quote from some uninspired books
that their readers were familiar with.
Those familiar books helped them make their points.
That’s what Peter is doing in 1 Peter 3.
The book of First Enoch says the fallen sons of God
were imprisoned after they rebelled.
Peter’s second epistle mentions those rebels
being held in chains of gloomy darkness.
In First Enoch, the fallen sons of God ask Enoch
to see if God would forgive them.
Since Enoch had God’s favor, they thought it was worth a try.
In First Enoch, God rejects the plea of the fallen angels
after Enoch reports to him.
He sends Enoch down into the abyss.
He descends to the spirits in prison to announce their doom.
That’s the point of analogy for Peter.
Just as Enoch descended to the fallen spirits,
so Jesus descended into the same realm to proclaim something to them.
What did he proclaim?
They thought that since Jesus was in the realm of the dead, they had won.
Jesus told them they were wrong.
And he rose on the third day to prove it.
They were still doomed.
But how does this connect to baptism and a good conscience?
An appeal to God for a good conscience in First Peter 3
means a sincere pledge.
In essence, baptism was a loyalty oath.
And repeated the message Enoch and then Jesus
gave to the demonic powers and anyone present
of just whose side of the spiritual war you were on.
That’s why baptism is an instrument of spiritual warfare.
Whether we realize it or not,
we’re being watched by both sides of this supernatural war.
That through these, you may become sharers of the divine nature
after escaping from the corruption that is in the world.
Being partakers of the divine nature means we will be like God.
We will have a body like Jesus did after the resurrection.
We will have eternal life.
And with the loyal members of the heavenly host,
we will be in God’s family and worship him forever.
God will succeed in uniting his divine and human family for eternity.
But the most amazing part of being in God’s family is how Jesus,
the unique son of God, sees us.
When Jesus became a man, he was made for a short time,
a little lower than the angels.
Listen to the writer to the Hebrews.
Because God became man in Jesus,
his mortal followers will become like him and members of God’s family.
We are Jesus’ siblings and the fruit of his ministry.
It’s stunning that Jesus is not ashamed to call mere mortals his brothers and sisters.
In fact, in the presence of the divine counsel,
he revels in introducing God to us and us to God.
Consider the reason that Paul gives for our glorification.
The exaltation of Jesus is the reason for our glorification.
He is the firstborn or the head,
the one who receives the inheritance among many brothers.
John puts this even more succinctly.
That’s our future. But what about now?
Sometimes when we hear that we’ll be like Jesus,
we process it only in terms of being less bad.
But our eternal destiny doesn’t hinge on merit.
That turns grace into duty.
That’s just bad theology.
The Bible teaches salvation is not of works but of grace.
God loves us and wants to give us everlasting life if we will only believe in it.
Until that day, God wants us to tell the epic story of his war against supernatural rebellion
to help him release those still held captive by unseen powers of darkness.
The Revelation of Jesus
Well, it’s pretty obvious we’re not living in Eden today.
The world is full of darkness.
But supernatural evil has no claim on us.
Jesus is ruling at the right hand of God.
We are sacred space since God’s Spirit dwells in us.
But we await the Lord’s return to transform the earth.
As theologians like to say, the kingdom is here already but not yet.
The already but not yet paradox is an important biblical idea.
On the already side of things, God gives us a new identity as his children.
We belong with him as he intended.
He also gives us a mission.
We’re here to grow God’s family.
The not yet part of our mission is what we often miss.
The Bible says we will one day replace the rebellious sons of God in his divine counsel.
Consider what Paul says.
The book of Revelation promises believers a future where we will rule with Christ over the nations.
Think about it.
Believers will be granted authority over the nations.
Who rules the nations now?
The fallen sons of God.
We’re going to replace them and rule with our Father in a new world.
But what do we make of the gift of the morning star?
In the ancient world, stars were associated with divine beings.
The morning star is symbolic of the reign of the Messiah.
Jesus is the morning star.
That’s a title for the ruling Messiah.
I, Jesus, am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.
Incredibly, we share the morning star.
We share the Messiah’s rule in the new earth.
Elsewhere in the book of Revelation, Jesus shares his throne with us.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, indeed I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me.
The one who conquers, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne,
as I also have conquered and have sat down with my Father on his throne.
God and man will be reunited in fellowship.
The dominion of the world will return to its proper sovereign.
Heaven will return to earth.
Eden will be restored.
God created us to be in his family and to enjoy his world with him.
Despite all the darkness in the world, we still can.
We need only to turn to him and believe his plan.