Piotrowski / Ortlund Return from Exile and the Renewal of God's People

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-4335-8770-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Reihe: Short Studies in Biblical Theology

Accessible Guide Explores Humanity's Exile and the Hope of Atonement God's people, once resting in his divine presence, now toil in exile. The theme of humanity's expulsion and wandering begins with Adam and Eve, but echoes in events throughout the Bible. Emphasizing the pain of separation from God, exile stories also highlight the hope of resurrection and creation's imminent restoration back to the Edenic state. In this addition to the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series, Nicholas G. Piotrowski traces the theme of exile throughout Scripture, giving readers a renewed appreciation for redemptive history and atonement in Christ. Sharing from his 15 years of study, Piotrowski connects the journeys of Abraham, Joseph, and Jesus with tabernacle imagery and other types to illustrate recurring themes of exile from Genesis until the new creation. This accessible volume helps believers understand their own exile and rejoice with the hope that they will one day worship in God's holy presence. - Brief and Easy to Understand: Piotrowski's clear style makes this theologically rich guide accessible for students and teachers as well as new Christians - Comprehensive: Asserting that the return from exile is the Bible's principle drama, Piotrowski examines stories from the Garden of Eden to Mount Sinai, the Land of Canaan, and the new creation - Part of the Short Studies in Biblical Theology Series: Other volumes include Resurrection Hope and the Death of Death; The Sabbath as Rest and Hope for the People of God; and Sanctification as Set Apart and Growing in Christ

Nicholas G. Piotrowski (PhD, Wheaton College) is the president of Indianapolis Theological Seminary where he also teaches hermeneutics and New Testament courses. His other books include In All the Scriptures and Matthew's New David at the End of Exile.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Piotrowski, Nicholas G.

Ortlund, Dane

Leseproben

1

Adam and Eve out of the Garden

At the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and?a flaming sword.

Genesis 3:24

I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness!

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy is renowned for its imaginative depictions of the afterlife. Yet it is also layered with autobiographical allegories. Dante was expelled from his beloved Florence, and from his exile he wrote this epic poem. He begins by portraying himself “astray from the straight road,” having “wandered there from the True Way” and now “alone in a dark wood.”1 He is surrounded by leopards, lions, and wolves “at the far end of that valley of evil whose maze had sapped [his] very heart with fear.”2 Certain of his imminent demise, Dante is lost and beset with “fright whose agony had wracked the lake of [his] heart through all the terrors of that piteous night.”3

Such was the feeling of his life in exile. But in Dante’s subsequent journeys, his personal anguish is transposed to describe the condition of every man. All humanity is in this state of exile. The very first line of his Divine Comedy thus begins, “Midway in our life’s journey. . . .”4 He is expressing the condition of us all. Closer to our own day, Oliver Sacks wrote,

All of us have a basic intuitive feeling that once we were whole and well; at ease, at peace, at home in this world; totally united with the grounds of our being; and that then we lost this primal, happy, innocent state, and fell into our present sickness and suffering. We had something of infinite beauty and preciousness—and we lost it; we spend the rest of our lives searching for what we have lost.5

Where do these impulses come from? Why is this sense of homelessness so common? Is this just a psychological malaise? Or are these feelings grounded in something concrete, something historical?

It turns out that, indeed, there is an actual historic ground to human sentiments of lostness and wandering. There are of course many immediate causes of this, and for each person and in each case those immediate causes differ. But all those causes are themselves symptoms of the ultimate human dilemma: we were fashioned for a particular environment, a specific home, and we have been expelled.

Life inside the “Garden of the Lord”

As I mentioned in the introduction, Genesis 1:1 sets the context for the rest of the biblical narrative. It not only tells us that it was God who created the heavens and the earth “in the beginning” but also gives us a larger framework to interpret the rest of the Bible. The Scriptures are, therefore, the drama of heaven and earth—how they were once connected but have been torn asunder and what God is doing through history to reconnect them. This may seem like an overstatement, but the rest of this study will bear it out.

For now, we start with this: Adam and Eve were originally created, and always intended, to live with God. Once creation is complete, God “plant[s] a garden in Eden” and places Adam in it (Gen. 2:8, 15). This is where God wants Adam to live together with Eve, his wife. And it is where God lives too, for Eden has all the markings of a temple. While it has no walls or doors or altars, it nonetheless serves the same function and is described like the tabernacle and temple in Israel’s subsequent history.6 The Lord “walk[s]” there (3:8; cf. Lev. 26:11–12). It is located on a mountaintop (Gen. 2:10–14; cf. Ezek. 28:13–14).7 It is surrounded by gold and onyx (Gen. 2:12), the stones associated with Israel’s tabernacle and priesthood (Ex. 25:3, 7; 39:6, 13; 1 Chron. 29:2). And Adam is told to work and serve, keep and guard it (Gen. 2:15)—all verbs used for Israel’s worship (Ex. 20:5–6; Deut. 10:12–13), specifically that of priests in the tabernacle (Num. 3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6).8 We can say, therefore, Eden is an arboreal temple designed for worship.9 And a temple is the house of God, the place where he lives within the created order (1 Kings 8:10, 27). Thus, the garden is the dwelling place of God even more than the dwelling place of humanity.10 This is clear from the fact that when Adam and Eve sin, they are the ones who have to leave, not God.

This has huge ramifications for understanding the purpose of humanity. It means we were designed and intended to live with God. There is no sense in Genesis 2 that Adam and Eve are meant to live anywhere else but in God’s arboreal temple. This is humanity’s true home, the place where we were born and where we belong.

This also means that Eden is the nexus between heaven and earth. If God lives in heaven and in the garden of Eden on earth, then Eden is both in heaven and on earth. It is the cosmic crossroads, the place for humanity and God to cohabitate. Thus, God created the heavens (his abode) and earth (our abode) together. And the point of contact is Eden.

The result is that in this place, Adam and Eve are happy. In Genesis 1:28, it says God “blessed” them. In the same verse God gives them meaningful work to do. In 1:29, God gives them everything they need for food. In 2:18–23, God gives them each other, specifically in the bonds of marriage. They have all this and, just as significantly, they have no shame (2:25). It bears repeating that, most importantly, they have God himself with them in the garden (3:8). God’s assessment of all this is that it is “very good” (1:31).

Let us look specifically at Genesis 1:28 and the work God has for his image bearers. They are told, “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.” In essence, Adam and Eve are told to do the same things God himself had just finished doing! In Genesis 1:2, the earth is “without form and void.” It has no shape and nothing in it. The subsequent verses describe God redressing exactly that: he shapes and fills the earth. After achieving this, God rests on the seventh day.11 This, of course, in no way implies that God is exhausted. Rather, “rest” in this context means that God is now enthroned in his temple because the created order is now formed and filled.12 Thus, in Genesis 1:28, when God tells Adam and Eve to “fill the earth and subdue it,” he is commissioning them to act like him. In so doing, as Adam and Eve are themselves fruitful and multiply, they will increase the image and glory of God all over the earth, thereby expanding the borders of the garden of Eden and making the entire earth God’s glorious dwelling place.13 The space that intersects heaven and earth will grow to cover more and more of the created order until God’s holy presence is everywhere. In this way, the entire planet will become God’s sacred abode, a global temple.14

Since this command was given to our first parents on the sixth day, there is thus an invitation and promise that they too will enter into God’s rest when they finish their work.15 God completed his work and rested. Adam and Eve will enjoy the permanent experience of resting with God when they too complete their work. If, as mentioned above, “rest” means enthronement in his temple, then, by extension, Adam and Eve are kings and queens over the earth and on their way to eternal coronation. There is, therefore, in Genesis 1–2 a promise of glorified permanency, an exalted experience in the presence of God after all the work of multiplying, filling, and subduing—expanding God’s garden—is done.16 That is humanity’s calling—our role and purpose in the world.

This, however, is only the positive command and promise. There is also a negative command and a threat. Adam is not to eat of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (2:17). In exercising all the dominion God has just bestowed on him, there is one domain that is left exclusively to God: the authority to decide what is right and what is wrong.17 In short, ethics remain solely God’s prerogative, “a decision God has not delegated to the earthling.”18 If, however, Adam reaches out and takes what is not his, the opposite of rest will result: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (2:17). Adam will not obtain a permanent coronation in the temple-presence of God but will perish.

Pulling all this together, we see how the garden of Eden was the nexus between heaven and earth, the dwelling place of God and humanity. What other than life, blessing, and happiness could possibly pervade such a divine setting? And in this place Adam and Eve had work to do: expand the garden’s borders so that all creation would someday...