Why Should God Care Less? part 2

This carries on from the post below.

... So, according to Revelation, the new Jerusalem is coming down out of heaven. There’s also some interesting things that happen: notice, God’s home is ...? Among mortals. It doesn’t say we’re going to dwell with God. So the one who is making the move here is God, not us. His dwelling is going to be with human beings. If I was going to be with Him, that’s the kind of language I would use. ‘One day I’m going to be with Jesus,’ that’s not what Revelation says. One day God is going to be with us. A few other things about this particular story that are interesting: notice that there’s no temple. Now when I was a young lad there was all this talk about rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem and I don’t know if that’s maybe part of some of your heritage, it would certainly be part of mine. It’s a bit of a shock to realize that God apparently could care less about a temple because there isn’t one in this new Jerusalem. That’s rather striking, it’s hard to imagine. Jerusalem apart from a temple, and yet, finally there will be no temple. There’s also some other things about this picture that are strange and that is, this city is quite extraordinary. 1,500 miles a side or 12 thousand stadia John tells us. That number 12, 000 is significant; reminds you of the 144,000 doesn’t it? That’s kind of alluding to the complete fullness of God’s people, namely Israel, or the new Israel. But it’s huge! And it’s shaped like a cube! I always think of the Borg [laughter]. Imagine living in the inner city. ‘Wanna go to the suburbs? Yeah, pack several cut lunches ‘cause it’s a 750 mile trip’. Well, what’s intriguing about this is if you know something about the 1st century you’ll realize that this is about the size of the known world. They believed the known world was about 1,500 miles square. So here’s John’s picture – you’ve got a new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven, there’s no temple in it, it’s cube shaped and it’s the size of the known world. Now what’s he trying to tell us?
Surely you know how to read Revelation; a lot of it is symbolism. So you have to ask yourself: ‘O.K., there’s something I don’t understand in Revelation. Where do I go?’ And usually the answer is back to the Old Testament. So the question is, what do you know that’s shaped like a cube in the old testament? And most people go for the Ark of the Covenant, which is pretty close. It’s as hot as you can get in one of those ‘you’re getting warmer’ games without actually being boiling. Where do you find the Ark of the Covenant? You find it in the Holy of Holies. And you can see from these texts here: 20 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, 20 cubits high – it’s the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple and probably based on the pattern of the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle.
So what’s John telling us? He’s telling us the entire cosmos is going to become the Holy of Holies. So I was quite moved when you had that fabulous piece of video work there with that ... how did you get that synchronization there ... all those images of creation. Their destiny is to become the Holy of Holies. I was brought up thinking that my destiny was that I was going to leave this place, that it was all going to get burnt up, and I was going to be on these clouds playing a harp (hopefully electric), and getting to look like some high church Anglican for the rest of my life. Which as a Pentecostal is a little troubling, huh. [Laughter] But now my Dean is an Anglican who once was a Pentecostal and he apparently likes these kind of things so you probably can survive. He’s a pretty nice bloke by the way, and still into that stuff, so, it’s ok. The whole cosmos is going to become the Holy of Holies. God is going to dwell with us in this restored creation. That’s the destiny; that was not my eschatology. And I think that’s why my sense of evangelism and my sense of Christian life were so dislocated. I didn’t really quite understand, at a profound level, why I was here.