2) God’s Relationship with His Creation
Introduction
In this post, I will emphasize the profound concept of God's dwelling within creation, specifically within the heights of the heavens. I curated this lesson using content from John Harrigan’s book, The Gospel of Christ Crucified: A Theology of Suffering before Glory. This lesson challenges the modern theological notion of God residing in a distant "great beyond," emphasizing that God's habitation is intimately within what He has made. Drawing from biblical verses, God's throne is seen as a concrete and tangible reality, symbolizing His sovereignty over the entire creation. The heavenly temple is highlighted as the command center of the universe, with the earthly tabernacle mirroring its pattern. The post concludes by asserting that Christ's sacrificial atonement, taking place within the heavenly temple, is the tangible mechanism of redemption in the biblical worldview.
God’s Dwelling within the Heights of the Heavens
God's habitation is understood to be at the height of the heavens (Job 25:2; Ps. 148:1; Isa. 14:13). The primary implication of God's governance of creation from the heights of the heavens is his dwelling within creation. Though relatively foreign to the modern mind, the Scriptures universally declare that God dwells within what he has made (e.g., 1 Kings 8:43; Ps. 102:19; Isa. 57:15; etc.). He does not dwell in the "great beyond" (as is standard language in modern theological circles). He dwells within the heavens, as Isaiah described:
Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. (Isaiah 40:21-23, ESV Bible)
God’s Dwelling within Creation and Earth
God dwells within creation as a human being dwells within a tent. But why does this matter? Emotional or empathetic responses are triggered by closeness or nearness. What would my children think if I lived in a different house or city? How would they feel? What would they think of my heart and of my leadership? Would they trust me? Probably not. They would likely grow up with a deep sense of separation and abandonment. So the modern church, under lingering Hellenistic influence, suffers from a "cosmic loneliness," so to speak, which pervades much of its theology and practice. The Scriptures reveal to us a God whose habitation is within creation because he loves what he has made, which is very good in his sight. As Isaiah says:
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57:15, ESV Bible)
God's Throne as a Concrete and Tangible Reality
Regarding his sovereignty, God also rules from an actual throne. As the heavens are concrete and tangible, so also is the throne of God:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. (Isaiah 6:1, ESV Bible)
The Bible means quite literally that God is the "great King" (Ps. 47:2; 95:3; Jer. 10:10; Mal. 1:14) and the "everlasting King" (Jer. 10:10), for his dominion includes all of creation:
For the LORD, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. (Psalm 47:2, ESV Bible)
For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. (Psalm 95:3, ESV Bible)
But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. (Jeremiah 10:10, ESV Bible)
Cursed be the cheat who has a male in his flock, and vows it, and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished. For I am a great King, says the LORD of hosts, and my name will be feared among the nations. (Malachi 1:14, ESV Bible)
God’s Dominion Over All Creation
Not only is he the "Most High," but he is also God "Almighty," that is, "the ruler over all things.":
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' (Isaiah 14:14, ESV Bible)
But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.' (Daniel 7:18, ESV Bible)
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (Luke 6:35, ESV Bible)
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" (Revelation 4:8, ESV Bible)
And I heard the altar saying, "Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!" (Revelation 16:7, ESV Bible)
God's domain is the whole of creation, the heavens and the earth, which is his "universal kingdom," so to speak:
Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. (Deuteronomy 10:14, ESV Bible)
Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chronicles 29:11, ESV Bible)
The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, (Psalms 24:1, ESV Bible)
The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. (Psalms 103:19, ESV Bible)
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. (Psalms 145:13, ESV Bible)
At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; (Daniel 4:34, ESV Bible)
God’s Heavenly Temple
God's throne in the height of the heavens is also set within a real temple:
The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD’s throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. (Psalm 11:4, ESV Bible)
In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. (Psalm 18:6, ESV Bible)
The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” (Psalm 29:9, ESV Bible)
Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! (Psalm 150:1, ESV Bible)
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. (Isaiah 6:1, ESV Bible)
When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. (Jonah 2:7, ESV Bible)
Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord GOD be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. (Micah 1:2, ESV Bible)
But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” (Habakkuk 2:20, ESV Bible)
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Revelation 11:19, ESV Bible)
And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped. Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” (Revelation 14:15-18, ESV Bible)
After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. (Revelation 15:5-8, ESV Bible)
Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.” (Revelation 16:1, ESV Bible)
From his heavenly dwelling, God rules over all of creation, administrating all things in the heavens and the earth. Thus, the heavenly temple is the locus of creation. It is the reference point for all divine, angelic, demonic, and human activity. It is the "command center," so to speak, of the universe.
Earthly Tabernacle Mirrors the Heavenly Pattern
The earthly tabernacle was "patterned" after the heavenly one. It was designed to inherently witness and testify to God's governance over all of creation.:
And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain. (Exodus 25:40, ESV Bible)
“Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen. (Acts 7:44, ESV Bible)
They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” (Hebrews 8:5, ESV Bible)
For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. (Hebrews 9:24, ESV Bible)
The earthly temple is a footstool for God:
Then King David rose to his feet and said: “Hear me, my brothers and my people. I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD and for the footstool of our God, and I made preparations for building. (1 Chronicles 28:2, ESV Bible)
Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he! (Psalm 99:5, ESV Bible)
“Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!” (Psalm 132:7, ESV Bible)
How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. (Lamentations 2:1, ESV Bible)
From protological creation to eschatological consummation, the heavenly temple is the reference point for all divine redemptive activity. So when someone saw the earthly tabernacle/temple, it was meant to point them to the throne above and subsequently to the execution of that sovereignty in the judgment yet to come. This would have seemed intuitive to a believer living in the ancient world.
The most explicit demonstration of this belief in an actual heavenly temple is found in Hebrews 8-10. The "throne of the Majesty" (8:1) is within "the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not man" (8:2). The "earthly sanctuary" (9:1) that Moses erected was "according to the pattern" (8:5) of the heavenly tabernacle. It was "a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one" (9:24).
God’s Temple in Relationship to Christ’s Atonement - A Brief Introduction
Moreover, not only was the structure itself "a copy and shadow of the heavenly things" (8:5), but the ministry of the priests (8:3-5; 9:6-7, 21-22; 10:1-2, 11) was also a "shadow of the good things to come" (10:1) found in the ministry of Christ. As the earthly sanctuary and its "copies of the heavenly things" were purified with the blood of sacrifices, so also were "the heavenly things themselves" cleansed by the blood of Christ (9:23). He entered the heavenly sanctuary "to offer himself" (9:25) and "to bear the sins of many" (9:28). And after he had "offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God" (10:12). Since that time "he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool" (10:13) on the day of God.
Within a biblical worldview, this is all relatively straightforward. There is no "mystical" language or "spiritual" rhetoric. It is simply an interpretive narration of historical events that have taken place within the biblical cosmos. What is more, Christ's ascension into substantial heavens and into an actual temple, offering his own blood on a literal altar on behalf of depraved humanity, is the actual substitutionary mechanism of atonement in the sight of God. Without a tangible sacrificial offering in an actual heavenly temple, the messianic atonement breaks down into figurative abstraction, which, unfortunately, has been the norm throughout much of the history of atonement theory. In later modules, we will look at this heavenly altar and the concept of atonement in more detail.
Summary
In this lesson, we have seen that the celestial realms, the heights of the heavens, become more than a symbolic abode for the divine. We have challenged conventional theological perspectives, insisting that God's dwelling is not in a distant cosmic realm but intricately woven within His creation. With verses from Isaiah, Psalms, and more, it unveils a tangible throne, a heavenly temple functioning as the universe's command center. This transcendent realm, mirrored by the earthly tabernacle, underscores God's intimate connection with creation. We briefly introduced a revolutionary view of Christ's atonement, rejecting figurative abstraction and firmly establishing it as a substantive act within a literal heavenly temple. The next lesson will explore how God's creation, Eden, is similar to a heavenly garden.