In the last episode, we challenged a deeply ingrained assumption—that the Christian hope is ultimately about going to heaven.
In this episode, we widen the lens.
Because once you see the full biblical story, from Eden to Revelation, something remarkable becomes clear:
God’s plan was never escape from the world.
It was always about God dwelling with his people in that world.
To see that, we have to go back—not to Revelation—but to Genesis.
Eden Was Never Just a Garden
When many people picture Eden, they imagine a peaceful garden—pastoral, quiet, almost fragile.
But Scripture presents Eden as something far more charged.
Eden is not merely a garden.
It is the first sanctuary—the first place where heaven and earth overlap.
In the Ancient Near East people reading this Genesis 1 & 2 story or hearing this story recited would automatically think of a sanctuary, a temple. A temple in the Ancient Near East (ANE) was where heaven and earth come together, it’s where the gods hang out—usually at the top of mountains in what’s typically described as a fertile garden. The building of the temple was frequently described as a 7 day project and the last element of that temple construction was the placement of the image, in the inner sanctum of the temple, of the god being worshiped.
That’s what we find in Genesis 1 & 2. And any Ancient Near Eastern reader, or listener, would have recognized what was being reported here.
Eden is not merely a garden.
It is the first sanctuary—the first place where heaven and earth overlap.
Some other things that the Genesis story tells us is that humanity is placed in a world already filled with God’s presence. Adam is not simply a gardener. He is a priest-king.
Genesis 2:15 says that Adam is placed in the garden “to work it and keep it.” Those two verbs—to work and to keep—are later used almost exclusively in Scripture for priestly service in the tabernacle.
The picture is clear: humanity was created to live in God’s presence and to extend that presence outward. Because Eden was not the whole planet. Eden was a garden planted ‘in the East.’ Also, you’ll notice there were 4 rivers that flowed out of Eden to the planet beyond….
But Eden was never meant to remain small.
It was the starting point.
We get an important understanding of the full unfolding purpose of this creation story in the following passage of the first chapter:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:26-31)
We need to highlight a few things from that passage. Let’s start with the positive, the first commandment in scripture. I love this: “Fill the earth with image bearers”. In other words, make babies! The first commandment in scripture is for humans to have sex. And make more image bearers.
But now, here is the negative element of that mandate and it is summed up in the word “subdue”.
The Hebrew letters transliterated are kbs (because ancient Hebrew does not have vowels, it’s hard to know how that word was pronounce, but we think it’s pronounced kabash)
If you do a word study of kabash/subdue, this is what you find: There are thirteen verses in the OT. The word means subjugate; violate, bring into bondage. I’ve included a graph below with every translation of that word in the OT.
What does this tell us?
Now you might assume that this early in the creation story being told, that things would be ‘pristine perfect’. So why the need for such a word like ‘subdue’? Outside of Eden there were forces to be brought into subjection to the Creator God by his image bearers.
Now, if Adam and Eve were the first human image bearers created, what do you think this mandate and this word indicates? Could it have something to do with the non-human rebel that would soon enter the story. Was the serpent the only rebel to ‘subdue.’?
We won’t try to answer that today….but just note this, God’s unfolding purpose was to expand Eden, to expand his rule, to expand his sanctuary, his temple.
But, then we come to the next chapter. And the human rebellion.
The Expansion That Failed
Sin, in Genesis 3, does not cancel God’s plan for the cosmos.
But it does interrupt it.
Humanity is exiled from Eden—not because God abandons creation, but because God’s holy presence in His temple is dangerous to corrupted image-bearers.
What follows in Genesis 4 through 11 is not random chaos. It is a series of failed expansions.
Cain builds a city, but not for God.
Babel reaches upward, but on human terms.
Instead of God’s gracious presence filling the earth, violence and pride spread. You know the story if you’ve read these early chapters of the Bible.
Sin doesn’t erase God’s purpose.
It fractures humanity’s ability to fulfill it.
God’s plan pauses—but it does not disappear.
Tabernacle and Temple: Eden Remixed
The next part of the story we look at today is not the temple/sanctuary crafted by God, but by humans. When God redeems Israel from Egypt, he does something extraordinary.
He does not simply give laws. Those Laws were a means to an end.
Here is the purpose: He says in Exodus 25:8:
“Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”
The tabernacle, with all of its meticulous instructions to Moses at the end of Exodus, is Eden reintroduced—this time inside a fallen world.
The tabernacle imagery—based on how it was crafted—is unmistakable:
- garden symbolism
- cherubim
- tree-like lampstands
In a future episode I will drill down into the details of how Eden-like the tabernacle was.
Also, its structure mirrors the cosmos, all of Creation:
- the Holy of Holies symbolizes heaven
- the Holy Place represents the visible heavens
- the outer court corresponds to the earth
But we don’t have time to look at all of those details today. I’m just letting you know that this is what bible scholars, both modern and ancient, will teach you if you dive deep into those details.
Let me just give one example here from N.T. Wright:
“The detailed echoes between Genesis and Exodus, creation and Tabernacle, have been laid out in various ways (by many scholars), with obvious points such as the Menorah in the Tabernacle reflecting both the Tree of Life in Genesis 2 and the seven heavenly bodies in Genesis 1.” [N. T. Wright – History and Eschatology]
A lot of biblical scholarship has born this out: The Tabernacle and later the Temple was a microcosm of the entire Creation.
Here is a crucial point in this story. The temple is not about Israel ascending to God. That was the tower of Babel approach.
It is about God choosing to come down and dwell with Israel.
Later in the story even Solomon, the great king, recognizes the tension, when he says:
“The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you.” (Yahweh)
Which tells us, the temple built by the Hebrews and, yes, sanctified by God’s presence, is a temporal signpost—not the destination. God’s ultimate temple will be built by God, like Eden.
Jesus as the True Temple
I told you this was going to be a brief overview, so we are going to fast forward to the Gospels. When we reach the Gospels, everything intensifies.
John tells us:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”1John 1:14 The word “dwelt” skenoo / eskenosen.
The word John uses literally means “tabernacled.”
Jesus does not merely visit sacred space.
He is sacred space.
When Jesus says to the Jewish authorities, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” John explains (because the original hearers didn’t know what he was talking about) that:
“He was speaking about the temple of his body.”2John 2:19-21
A temple, a body, that God created and would recreate.
Resurrection is not simply personal vindication. (Certainly it was that for Jesus.)
But equally, it is a New-Creation event.
The blueprint has become a living building.
The Church as the Expanding Temple
Now we move further out, to where we are. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the story accelerates.
Paul tells believers that they are:
“being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”3see Ephesians 2:19-22
Peter calls Christians “living stones.”4you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house…(1 Peter 2:5)
The point is not that the church replaces the temple.
The point is that the temple is expanding. (The original mandate, remember?)
God’s dwelling presence is no longer localized.
It spreads—through witness, suffering, obedience, and love.
Revelation 21–22: Eden Finally Expanded
And now let’s talk about the future. At the end of Scripture, John sees:
“a new heaven and a new earth.”
Then he sees the New Jerusalem (a garden city) read the text carefully, because just like Eden, the Tree of Life is there. The River of Life is there And that city is “coming down out of heaven from God.”
(Rev 21:2) And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
(Rev 21:10) And [one of the seven angels] carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God,
The next chapter continues the vision.
(Rev 22:1) Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.
Crucially, John says:
“I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.”
This does not mean there is no temple.
It means everything has become the temple.
Eden is no longer a just a garden.
It is a garden-city.
And the city fills the world.
God’s presence, once localized, now saturates all creation. Just as the prophets Isaiah5Isa 11:9 and Habbakuk said it would:
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.6Habakkuk 2:14
This is what was promised in Psalm 72.18-19 as well…
Blessed by YHWH, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name for ever; may his glory fill the whole earth. Amen and Amen.
Psalm 72:18-19
The first Adam failed in that task. The ‘last Adam’ got the project back on track and now here in the final book of the Bible, we see the unfolding purpose fulfilled.
Why This Matters
Now, all of this is not abstract theology.
Because, if God intends to dwell with humanity in a renewed creation, then:
- bodies matter
- work matters
- creation, all of it, matters
Christian hope is not about abandonment.
It is about restoration.
How Should We Then Live
In the final episode, we turn to the question this raises for daily life.
If resurrection and new creation are the destination, how should Christians live now?
Because once you understand where the story is going, it changes how you live in the present.
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Quotables
Eden as the First Temple — G. K. Beale
“The Garden of Eden was the first temple in which God dwelt and where humanity served as priestly guardians of sacred space.”
— The Temple and the Church’s Mission
Eden Meant to Expand — Beale
“Adam’s commission in Eden was not merely to preserve the garden, but to extend its boundaries until the whole earth was filled with God’s glorious presence.”
— The Temple and the Church’s Mission
Sin as Exile — Beale
“Human sin resulted in exile from God’s dwelling place, a pattern that later repeats itself in Israel’s exile from the temple and the land.”
— God Dwells Among Us
Temple as Cosmic Model — Beale
“Israel’s temple was designed to symbolize the entire cosmos, with God’s throne room at its center.”
— The Temple and the Church’s Mission
Jesus as the True Temple — Beale
“Jesus Christ is the true temple in whom God’s presence dwells fully and permanently.”
— The Temple and the Church’s Mission
The Church as the Expanding Temple — Beale
“The church is not a replacement for the temple but the means by which the temple expands throughout the world.”
— God Dwells Among Us
New Creation as the Final Temple — Beale
“In Revelation 21–22, the entire new creation becomes the Holy of Holies, filled with God’s immediate presence.”
— The Temple and the Church’s Mission
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
Revelation 21:3
He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.”
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