I had the occasion today to sit in on a class in one of our churches. The topic of the lesson this quarter is the sanctuary. This, as I gathered, is the second week of the study with the focus of last week occupying the “why” of studying the sanctuary.

The teacher’s presentation was pleasant enough. Well groomed, young, enthusiastic, I found his skills as a teacher and person to be winsome and looked forward to a good study. The class size was small at around 10 persons.

It did not take long, however, for the topic to sour with me. He walked through several quotes from the Psalms in order to prove the importance of the study of the Sanctuary. What I eventually found offensive and misguided was the polemic and apologetic tone: That Adventists really are right to focus on the Sanctuary and to give it preeminence in their theological constructs, and only Adventists can be right because of this focus and study.

I do find that at times one party is right while another is wrong in a particular argument. (Often both are wrong!) An in-depth understanding of a topic from as many perspectives as possible does afford an advantage to the one who does a systematic study, yet misuse of any symbol or concept is dangerous. Paul said that the Law is useful as long as one uses it properly.

The verses that the teacher introduced were nice: Psa. 77:13, (though he used a disputed translation to support his thesis): “Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?”.[1] His point was that the way to God is in the sanctuary. Unfortunately, if this translation is not to be accepted over the alternate “is holy” translations, the thesis here finds no support.

Next was offered Psa. 63:2, “So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory.” Again, he explained that this was David’s method for discovering God – in the sanctuary.

Psa. 20:2, “May He send you help from the sanctuary”. Psa. 68:24,35 was much heralded: “They have seen Your procession, O God, The procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary… O God, You are more awesome than Your holy places.”. In the verse 35 quote one must read from the NASB in order to render “from Your sanctuary”. Then there was Psa 73:17, “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; Then I understood their end.” And Psa. 96:6, “Honor and majesty are before Him; Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.”

As the teacher read and examined each of these quotes he emphasized that the quote vindicated the Seventh-day Adventist position and tradition of focusing on the sanctuary and on the study of the sanctuary in the Old Testament. Our position was defended against the objection that quotes Paul saying he wanted to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.[2]   Our teacher felt a great need to establish our correctness over and above the wrong approach of our detractors. This emphasis by the teacher prompted on of my friends, who is a new Seventh-day Adventist, to later quip that the teacher sounded very “rah, rah Adventism” and sort of “wacky”. To me, it was just more of the same polemic defensiveness we’ve heard our whole lives.

The position that he kept stressing was that the way to find God, the way to understand more about him and to see Him more clearly was to do what David did and to return to the books of Exodus and Leviticus and to study the sanctuary.

I’m reminded of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. From birth three prisoners were chained to the back of a cave that had a large rock obstructing their view to the front of the cave and of the outside world. Shadows of the guards from the sunlight were cast against the back wall of the cave, and at night in the light of the fire the guards made animal characters in the shadows to entertain the prisoners.  The prisoners would watch the shadows. To them, the shadows were reality.

One day one of the prisoners was unchained and dragged out of the cave into the real world. There he saw real people and real animals and realized that what they had been watching and interacting with on the back wall of the cave was but shadows of the real men.

What Adventists are too often guilty of is returning to the cave to examine the shadows on the wall in order to understand men and animals more clearly.

David delighted in the Law and in the sanctuary, and found that they both revealed God. God Himself gave the Law to Moses, revealed to him the pattern of the construction of the sanctuary, and dictated to the smallest detail the ceremonies of the sanctuary. Certain ceremonies were to be performed on a regular basis while other rituals were performed as a response to an action or condition.  All this was designed to teach and to pre-figure a coming reality.

All of what God did starting with Abraham and continuing through his descendants into the Children of Israel was a series of activities that began to reveal His nature and His will, and to reveal His opinion of sin, our nature, and the nature and the results of sin. Additionally, throughout history God continued to elaborate on the promise given to Adam and Eve just after the fall.  The coming Deliverer is spoken of, described and variously named. Nowhere, however, is there any other symbol or poem that lays out more beautifully the coming deliverance than the living parable of the sanctuary.

Imagine the time in which David, as the second King of Israel, lived and review for a moment what he had before him in the way of revelation from God (for would we know anything of God’s unsearchable nature were it not for His active revelation of Himself?). He had “the law” – the writings of Moses, the historical books of the minor prophets up to his time, and he had the sanctuary both from the writings and as a living parable among the people.

Described for David was how the world began, of how evil and sin was introduced, of God’s anger toward sin and rebellion, and he had the whole of history showing the outcome of sin, namely, death of the sinner. By studying and pondering the sanctuary and services he also could obtain a view of the way of salvation.

It is illuminating to also note what David did not have. David did not have the wisdom of His son Solomon.  He did not have the benefit of the lessons of Israel through the ups and downs of the kingdom over time, and a view of God’s long striving and reproof through His prophets. He did not have Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel to study, in whose prophecies and writings are more pictures of the coming Messiah.  He did not have the draft of history and nations as outlined variously in Daniel and Revelation.

He had an enormous wealth of prior revelation and he gives extensive evidence of his comprehension of God and salvation in the wealth of revelation God has given us through David’s life and writings. Paul reminds us that the scriptures were written for us; what was written before David was for him as well.

Most importantly, David did not have the revelation of the Son of David of which all of the forms pre-shadowed.  The Law was a tutor, Paul said, to drive us to Christ. The sanctuary was the greatest living parable in all of history, teaching of the salvation that God has so gently and lovingly prepared, and of the Savior to come.

I like the title of Haskell’s book: “The Cross and its Shadow”. The sanctuary prefigured Christ. What did the Psalmist not have? He did not have a view of the fulfillment of the prophecies as we have, and as we see in the Gospels, hear expounded and explained by Paul, shown in the tremendous growth of the Church, and he did not see the impact that the fulfillment of the promise would have on Israel and on the whole world. He did not have the delight of clearly seeing “God with us” and did not have a view of that which the sanctuary foreshadowed.

The nation of Israel was given a great treasure in the Law, Writings, and in the Sanctuary. Yet though David understood the significance and grew in his appreciation of the truths, the nation lost sight of the truth and meaning behind the parable. Instead of teaching of higher and noble truths the people saw meaning and significance in the performance of the rituals themselves, and saw themselves in elevated importance because God had chosen to reveal Himself through them, and to entrust them with the Oracles of God.

Their vision had grown dim and they had lost sight of the message and Savior of the Sanctuary.

Paul understood this as no one else of his day did.  He said of himself, “Circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee”.[3]  This Hebrew of Hebrews, though, had been blind as had most of his people. He had studied the law and had from his youth a zeal for it. He studied under the most significant teachers of his day and no doubt knew more about the sanctuary in their midst and the ceremonies of it than any of us today. So zealous was he for the Law that he actually endorsed killing those who went against it.

Paul declared, “Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.”[4] His hearts desire was for his people that they would come to know the truth as it was in Christ Jesus.

In the book of Hebrews Paul pleads with them to come out of the cave and to see the better promises, the better High Priest, namely, Jesus Christ. Paul does not direct us to the sanctuary in the book of Hebrews, but rather he was preaching Christ to the Hebrews from the frame of reference that they had – using the language, imagery, and symbols that they would have been so familiar with. By the structure and logic of the book, Paul was no doubt making an effort to reach the educated upper crust of the Jewish nation.

In the sanctuary is Christ and Him crucified, the only hope for a lost and estranged world. The sanctuary announced the coming of the Savior of the whole world[5], and it is no surprise that David found in the sanctuary such joy and delight. He, for one, understood what the Israelites in Paul’s day failed to comprehend.

May we not return to the captivity of the cave to view shadows on the wall, but rather focus on the reality – Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Is there a value in understanding the sanctuary? Is there profit to knowing the yearly schedule of festivals and of understanding the Jewish economy? Yes. However, now that we have seen the much better promises fulfilled and have seen the better and clearer picture in the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of David, the Son of God, let us not think that the symbols are more valuable than the fulfillment of the symbols.

The study of prophecy builds great confidence in God’s plan and shows His sovereignty and wisdom.  In reviewing prophecy and fulfillment we see God’s hand in history.  The sanctuary is prophecy; Christ is fulfillment. We see in various forms the prediction of a coming sacrifice; that the result of sin necessitated a death. In Christ we find that very death for the salvation of the world. The study of prophecy – or in this case of a foreshadowing – is indeed beneficial. However, it can never provide substantial substitution for a revelation of the Man who was God, and who came in order to fully reveal the character of God, the sinister nature of Sin, and the nature of the Salvation that God was so freely offering a dying and deranged planet.

Yet, prophecy is but the shadow of the real. As such the real must of necessity always occupy the foreground while the shadows take their natural place in the background. In this arrangement the two can be examined and the facts placed into their proper role.

Let us not misuse or misunderstand the role of the shadow.

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Topics

• Adventism
• Theology
• Gardening

Snapshot

“Adventist theologians and teachers often attempt to interpret the New Covenant in light of the old. They examine the Old Testament and use it to understand the New. This is like viewing shadows on the wall to describe the reality.”

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