This is the concluding sermon in our little series. I have to admit, this final sermon could ITSELF be three sermons, but I’ll try to pack a lot of ideas into this one message, touching on each idea at least a little bit.
In the last two sermons, we thought about the Garden of Eden as God’s holy place of fellowship with Man. The Fall interrupted what should have been a wonderful, spontaneous, natural growth in loving knowledge between God and Man. It also interrupted, I might say, threw a monkey wrench into, Man’s proper role and appointment in the sphere of creation. Man became incompetent to shepherd the created order into its God-intended perfection. But at the Fall the work of redemption was also launched, in which God labors to bring Man back to the holy place. And over the course of those labors, God gives us glimpses and reminders of the original design – a design that inheres in and informs the pattern and aim of redemption. On the mountaintop God appeared to the elders of Israel, surrounded by glory, and they were awed that they could see Him and live. For a moment the veil was lifted on the vision of ultimate holiness, and Man fellowshipped with God and ate and drank in His presence. But the veil came quickly down again, and the incredible, astounding vision became symbolized – you might say, locked up – in the ark of the covenant behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies. And the cherubs were part of the curtain and part of the ark, reminding us all of the holy place we lost long ago, when the cherubs were placed on guard in front of the Garden and the way to the Tree of Life. The whole rest of the story can be summed up with one question: how can man get back; how can Man pass again through the cherubs and the terrible sword and come to the Tree of Life in God’s holiest place?
Now please put on your running shoes as we will be racing together through many passages that trace this story and these images through history.
The prophet Isaiah says these words (read Isaiah 2:2-3).
Just as the elders of Israel met God on the mountaintop, so the whole world will one day be summoned to God’s holy mountain, to hear the word of the Lord from God Himself. The mountain speaks of excellence, of supremacy; it stands as the theological center of creation, out of which radiate God’s glory and holiness. Physical symbols like the temple or the ark of the covenant, though they are holy because they are God’s, are nevertheless only shadows of the real thing, as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews explains. Indeed, Jesus Christ sitting on the mountain teaching his followers was much more of a fulfillment of this divine design than any temple or ark could be.
Then Isaiah sings a poetic allegory for us (read Isaiah 5:1-2).
Who is this “one I love”? It is of course the Lord. And He has planted a vineyard, as He once planted a Garden, and the vineyard is Israel. God did everything possible, provided everything necessary, created the best conditions in which Israel might become a representation, a picture of the perfect design God had for Man in the beginning – even if only in miniature and approximately. The Garden was a place of fertility and fruitfulness. And here God has appointed Israel to be a place of fertility and fruitfulness, to taste something of the intimacy between God and Man that had been lost. Ideally, Israel would become a new center, like the Garden, from which would radiate out the glory and good news of God’s kingdom. But this vineyard brought only bad fruit and grief. The curse of sin continued to wreak its destruction – but notice, all the same, that the original design and desire of God persist. God does not give up.
Then in chapter six, Isaiah receives the vision from God (read Is. 6:1-3)
Perhaps we rush to conclude that the seraphs of Isaiah’s vision are entirely different creatures than the cherubs, because they have different names. But these names are simply descriptions. Just as you could say that I am a teacher and an American and a missionary. But I’m still one person. The meaning of “cherub” is not entirely clear, but the meaning of “seraph” is much clearer. It means a “fiery one”. I think it is quite possible that these seraphs, in fact, are the cherubs, and the term “fiery ones” describes what they looked like at the moment, standing before God’s throne. They glowed, they blazed in the unquenchable glory of His holiness, the same holiness that radiated in the fiery sword and the burning bush. And they proclaimed the holiness which is whole entire meaning and existence.
In all other passages, it is only the cherubs who are linked this way with God’s holy place and glory. Later in Ezekiel, when we read about God abandoning the temple in Jerusalem, there is no mention of seraphs, as such, but the cherubs are there. And they are quite similar to the seraphs – understandable if, in fact, they are one and the same thing. And if the ark of the covenant symbolizes God’s throne, with the golden cherubs molded right into it, then I think that’s even more proof that the seraphs standing next to God’s throne are cherubs glowing with a fiery glow. But even if I’m wrong and they are different kinds of beings, they still have more in common than differentiates them. They all guard and exalt the holiness of God. They all shout, “Holy! Holy! Holy!”, the seraphs here and the cherubs in the book of Revelation. They are immediately associated with God’s glory – Isaiah sees the temple filled with God’s glory and there are the seraphs; Ezekiel sees the glory of God departing the temple, and with it go the cherubs. When the cherubs-seraphs appear in the story of redemption, clearly it says something about the holiness and glory of God. They are telling us something about the real order of things in the heavenly places, about the centrality and eternality and sacredness of God’s presence. An order meant to be reflected in all the earth, and which one day will be.
But there’s one more part of the vision we really cannot let slip by: (Isaiah 6:8) “Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here I am, send me!’”
You remember that we observed in Genesis how God spoke in the plural, “We”, two times, and both times were involved with a fundamental issue of Man’s nature and God’s relationship with him? God spoke this way when He created Man and again when He expelled Man from the Garden. Now, again, God says “We”, and once again it involves a fundamental aspect of God’s timeless design for Man. God is doing His missionary work, the pursuit of Man that started as soon as He sent Man away from the Garden. Isaiah sees the vision of glory and hears the seraphs cry “Holy! Holy! Holy!” and the first question, the only question, to be decided is, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God is not content to remain a prisoner behind His own veil of holiness. He is not content to hear only the seraphs cry “Holy!” He is not content to leave Man outside the Garden wall, exiled, estranged and lonely. Ultimately, God is not content to have only a temple as His holy place. God’s true holy place must finally be the heart of Man, a place of holy intimacy. Glory, holiness and mission; these three realities are inextricably bound up with each other.
But this story takes many turns, often tragically. We have spoken about Man’s exile from the Garden, but how often do we think of God’s exile from the temple? Let’s read from Ezekiel 10 (read vv. 9-15, then 18-19).
Those “whirling wheels” strongly remind me of the flashing, twirling sword that appeared with the cherubs in front of the Tree of Life. I can’t say for sure that it’s the same thing, but I know at least they have this much in common: they appeared together with the cherubs precisely at the landmarks of history when God withdrew His holy presence from Man. The appearance of the cherubs and the mysterious fiery symbol, which itself didn’t fit any human definitions, speaks, I believe, of the incomprehensible, un-graspable holiness and glory of God, as well as the tragically fallen state of Man that makes him incapable of understanding what he sees. It reminds us of what we lost in the Fall. Here in this vision we meet the cherubs again, and they are engaged in a tragic task. They are accompanying the glory of God out of the temple. God is abandoning His house; the dream is dead, the glory has departed. Most heartbreakingly, just as the cherubs reach the entrance, the last step before utterly deserting the temple for good, they stop. The glory of God stops there, above them, as if pausing to take one last look, in grief, before the final goodbye. And then they go. The house is empty. The day when the shekinah glory inhabits the temple of Solomon is over, and will never come again. Because God never does exactly the same thing twice.
The good news, though, is that God will do something even better. His glory is too great – He will not allow anything to defeat Him.
When Christ appears on the earth, he tells his disciples: (Jn. 15:1) “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener” and (15:5) “I am the vine; you are the branches”, and he tells the Samaritan woman at the well, (Jn. 4:14) “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” And again he says to his disciples, (Jn. 15:8) “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” And yet again (Jn. 10:10) “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
That is, Jesus comes to the world, to the lost children of Adam and Eve, speaking again the language of fertility, fruitfulness and abundance, the language of the Garden.
Desiring the knowledge of good and evil more than the knowledge of God, man became incompetent and ignorant, but Jesus speaks of true knowledge, the knowledge that man needed most from the very beginning:
(Jn 10:14-15) “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father”, and, (Jn. 15:15) “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
Jesus speaks also the language of holiness and intimacy: (Mt. 5:8) “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”, and (Jn. 15:3-4) “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I will remain in you”, and (Jn. 14:23) “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
The heart of man finally will be God’s home. God has accomplished His holy desire. And the good news is that God’s holy desire is also our blessedness.
Like the Garden, and like Israel, which were centers of divine action and purpose, centers which were supposed to grow and radiate the glory and holiness of God to the whole world, now Jesus uniquely, perfectly fulfills it all in himself. Now there are no walls, no borders, no veils! Jesus says, “Mt. 5:14) “You are the light of the world”, and, (Mt. 28:18-19) “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations....”
As no one else could, Jesus passes through the cherubs and sword, tearing apart the veil of holiness and pouring his own life’s blood on the ark of the covenant, exchanging his death for ours. The glory has come home again to the Temple, not like before but even greater. The heavenly creatures that Isaiah saw as they cried “Holy! Holy! Holy!” now cry out again, as we read in Revelation 4 (read Rev. 4:2-8) and they sing a new song to the Lamb (read Rev. 5: 9-10).
And God will have his holy people, in a new creation, in perfect love and never-ending joy: (Read Rev. 22:1-5).
