The Bible is a Story About a Special People and a Supernal Place
By Steve Weaver
The Bible is a story about a special people. From the Garden of Eden where the first two human beings lived in constant communion with God, to the Tabernacle in the wilderness where God dwelt in the midst of the Children of Israel in veiled fashion because of the problem of sin, to the incarnation of Christ, all the way to the New Heaven and Earth where God will once again dwell unveiled in the midst of His people, God has always desired to live among His people. And ever since the beginning of creation, God has been at work to create a people for fellowship. This is clear in Scripture. It is not that God needs mankind in any way. No, God does not create His people out of a sense of deficiency in Him, but as a means of overflowing in His love and glory to others. In other words, it wasn’t as if God became lonely and created man, but rather that God’s love and glory overflowed and people are the result. It was not emptiness in God that caused Him to create His people, but a super over-abundance in God that caused Him to create people in order that He might lavish them with Himself.
In Genesis 1 and 2 God created humanity by forming Adam out of the dust of the ground and Eve from his rib. He created a nation in Genesis 12 with the call of Abram out of the Ur of the Chaldees. He created a covenant community in Exodus 19-24 after delivering the Children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. But He created a New Covenant community by the death of His Son on the cross of Calvary.
The very night before Christ was crucified, He transformed the celebration of the formation of the Old Covenant community (the Passover) into a celebration of the formation of the New Covenant community (the Lord’s Supper). When He held up the cup, he said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Christ was declaring that the work that He was about to accomplish the next day by the shedding of His blood was the work that would guarantee the blessings of the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31:31-34 where the Lord declares that one day He would make a new covenant. In this new covenant, God promises, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
This is what Christ died to accomplish! He created a special people!
But not only did Christ purchase a special people but his people are to live in a supernal place with Him forever. It was this idea of the special place in which God desires to live with His people that first caused me to start thinking about the theme of this series of blog posts. I was talking to my children one night after reading their Bible story about the fall of man in the Garden of Eden when I began thinking about this idea of God’s apparent desire to dwell with His people. This desire was evident in the Garden of Eden where God used to walk and talk with Adam. It was also evident in the fact that God had a Tabernacle built so that He could dwell veiled in the midst of His people without sinful humans being consumed by the radiance of His holiness. This desire is also gloriously apparent in John 1:14 which says that, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The word “dwelt” in this verse literally means “to tabernacle or to pitch one’s tent.” God has always desired to live among His people, but sin keeps God from dwelling among His people as He desires, as He truly is.
But one day our sin will be removed forever and we will have glorified bodies that will allow Him to live with us as He has always desired. We read about the fruition of this desire after redeemed humanity has been restored in Revelation 21:1-3. There John writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, …. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
In the end, Satan is defeated, sin is destroyed and God is victorious over all! This is how the story of the Bible ends. It ends with God’s special people in God’s supernal place, all because of a God who kept His spectacular promise about a supernatural Person!
Read the previous posts by Steve Weaver:
The Bible is a Story About God
The Bible is a Story About a Promise
The Bible is a Story About Jesus
Steve Weaver is the pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. He is married to Gretta and they have been blessed by God with six children (Haddon, 12; Hannah, 10; Isaac, 7; Jonathan, 5; Lydia, 4; and Katherine, 0). Steve holds an M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Church History at The Southern Seminary. His area of research is 17th century British Particular Baptist pastor, Hercules Collins. He also is a Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Michael A.G. Haykin. He blogs at pastorsteveweaver.wordpress.com.
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