The Quest for Rest III

In the last two posts, we examined the rest motif in the Old Testament. First, we saw how the Sabbath Day represents the temporal dimension of God’s rest. God’s people work six days and then enter God’s rest on the seventh. Second, we investigated how the Promised Land illustrates the spatial dimension to the rest motif. God’s people defeat God’s enemies and then rest in the land which God gives them. This post will focus on the Temple, the greatest expression of the Old Testament rest motif. 

The Scriptures posit the Temple as God’s resting place in several places. First, the creation account presents the world as God’s Temple in which God rests on the seventh day. As scholar G.K. Beale remarks: “Just as God rested on the seventh day from his work of creation, so when the creation of the Tabernacle and, especially, the Temple are finished, God takes up a ‘resting-place’ therein.”*

Second, the Temple is explicitly called God’s resting place in several places. King David declares his original intention to build the Temple: “Listen to me, my fellow Israelites, my people. I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it” (1 Chronicles 28:2).  At the Temple’s dedication, King Solomon prays: “Now arise, Lord God, and come to your resting place, you and the ark of your might. May your priests, Lord God, be clothed with salvation, may your faithful people rejoice in your goodness” (2 Chronicles 6:42). Finally, God himself maintains that the Temple is His symbolic resting place when He asks rhetorically: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?” (Isaiah 66:1). Thus, in the symbolic universe of the Old Testament, the Temple is God’s place of rest. 

In the Old Testament, God calls humans, his image bearers, to enter his Temple rest through a series of animal sacrifices. The purpose of the Old Testament sacrificial system was to cleanse the people’s sins and therefore provide a resting place where God and His people can meet. As we first see in the Garden of Eden, sin excludes humanity from resting in God’s presence. God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden on account of their sin. As two cherubim guarded the entrance to the Garden (3:24), so also two Cherubim guarded God’s presence in the Temple (2 Chronicles 3:10-13). While sin excluded humanity from access to God’s rest, God’s provision of sin-cleansing animal sacrifices allowed the Old Testament priests to enter temporarily.

The symbolism of the Old Testament Temple and sacrificial system peak in the yearly Day of Atonement ritual found in Leviticus 16. On this most holy day, the high priest casts lots to choose one goat to send to the wilderness and one goat to be sacrificed before the Lord (Leviticus 16:8). Once these sacrifices are complete, the high priest enters the Holy of Holies to rest in God’s presence (Leviticus 16:12). Thus, as God rests after he creates the world and recapitulates this rest in the glory cloud, after the building of the Sanctuary, so also the priestly works bring about a Sabbath rest for humans.  Humans enter God’s rest in the Temple’s Holy of Holies through a sin-cleansing sacrifice. 

The Temple’s sacrificial system and its culmination in the yearly Day of Atonement represent the greatest expression of the Old Testament rest motif because Temple rest synthesizes the spatial and temporal aspects of God’s rest. The spatial aspect of God’s rest is emphasized in the High priests’ entrance into the Holy of Holies, God’s place of rest. The temporal dimension is highlighted when God calls sacrifices and rituals to happen at appointed times. God specifically connects the spatial and temporal aspects of entrance into His rest in the Day of Atonement’s scriptural designation as a ‘Sabbath of Sabbaths’ (Leviticus 16:31).

The Temple rest acquired at the Day of Atonement, however, was only temporary and symbolic. Only once a year, the high priest entered alone. This is because the blood of animal sacrifices could never fully deal with humanity’s sin (Hebrews 10:4). In fact, the continued sin of God’s people ultimately excluded them from God’s rest. God allowed the Babylonian armies not only to take His people into exile, but also to destroy the Temple, the place of His rest. Like Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, so also God’s people are expelled from God’s resting place as the Temple is levelled to the ground.

God, however, does not abandon his people forever. The prophets spoke of a day when God’s presence and rest would return to His people. Isaiah declares that: “And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:5). God later encourages His people in exile: “Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes” (Isaiah 52:8).  God would return and once again rest among His people.

With the return from exile came the rebuilding of the Temple and the reinstitution of the sacrificial system. Yet, unlike in the First Temple, the Second Temple’s Holy of Holies never fills with God’s glory. God never rests in the Second Temple. Instead, God’s people are encouraged to be watchful for God’s return. As the Old Testament’s final prophet declares: “suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). The faithful among God’s people waited expectantly for the return of God’s glory to His Temple, the day when God’s resting presence would return. Before long, that day would come.

 * G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT 17 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 61.