The blessings of Christ on the land are really typical of His blessings on His people. It will be fully realized in His dwelling with His people in the new heavens and new earth—a completely renovated habitation in which only righteousness dwells. It is image bearers with which God is most concerned. The environment of God’s dwelling with redeemed mankind is the totality and comprehensiveness of His riches in Christ Jesus.

By the time I turned forty, I had lived in twenty-five different houses in seven different states. Relocating became standard fare for me during what many call “the formative years.” By way of contrast, my wife lived in the same house until she left for college. For the past nine years, I have pastored a church in a military town that has 400 percent turnover. I suppose that my upbringing helped prepare me for weathering the unique dynamics that come with pastoring a church in such a town. Nevertheless, where Christians live is not something incidental or unimportant. The Scriptures actually have a great deal to say about the significance of where we live. Jesus went to the cross to prepare a final home for believers in the new heavens and new earth.

As He approached Jerusalem and the sufferings that He was about to endure there, Jesus told His disciples: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1–3). The imagery of “the Father’s house” is drawn from the language about the temple in the Old Testament. Solomon’s temple was the place of God’s dwelling with His people. In the temple, there were rooms for the priests to live in and from which they served. Jesus was eternalizing what the temple had typified and speaking about the implications of it for the believer in the hereafter. He had come into this world to “prepare a place” for believers. He was going to the cross to make room for those He came to redeem by shedding His blood for their sins. By shedding His blood, Jesus made room for His people in the everlasting temple—the new heavens and new earth in which He would dwell with His own for all eternity.
In turn, Jesus’ teaching about securing a dwelling place for His people in the eternal temple is built on the biblical teaching regarding the various dwelling places of God with His people throughout redemptive history. The biblical metanarrative carries us from the garden of Eden (the place of man’s original dwelling) to the new heavens and the new earth. As it does, it moves us from the garden of Eden to the land of Israel, from the land of Israel to the incarnate Christ, from the incarnate Christ to His dwelling in and with the church by His Spirit, and from His dwelling in and with the church to His dwelling with His bride in the new heaven and earth. The Scriptures carry us along the stepping stones of these various “dwelling places” until we finally arrive at the garden-city bride (Rev. 21–22). The Apostle John envisioned the church—the redeemed bride of the Lamb—coming down out of heaven to dwell with Him in the new heaven and earth. The connection between the garden of Eden and the new heaven and earth is the theological significance of “the ground” out of which God made man.
Eden was a special dwelling place—a unique land—in which God placed man at creation. God had created man from “the ground” outside of the garden and then, by His grace, placed His image bearer in this paradisiacal sacred space. It was a precursor to the promised land. God formed man out of the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7). The ground (Hebrew adamah) was man’s original environment. In fact, there seems to be an intentional play on words in Genesis 2:7, where we are told that the Lord formed adam (man) out of the adamah (the ground). There is a clear connection between the ground and the man who was formed out of the ground. The name Adam means “red.” Since he was made out of the reddish clay of the ground, the name is a play on the word “ground” (adamah).
The ground was the sphere of blessing and fruitfulness for mankind at creation. Eden was the sphere of God’s richest blessing. God intended to create an image bearer who would work the ground and who would turn the world into the temple, extending the borders of the garden-temple out into the far reaches of the earth.
Read More

Related Posts:

Written by Steven J. Carter |
Friday, May 5, 2023
When you are disappointed in ministry, don’t look with longing to the past. Set your hope on heaven, where Jesus reigns and actively intercedes for us, every day and constantly until he returns to judge the world. Be confident that his Mediatorial reign is perfect and wise. He has his purposes in the new mysteries of evil that cause us to question whether we are up to it. 

The Bible generally speaks well of old men. Think of the disaster it was when Solomon’s son Rehoboam, ascending to the throne, listened to the foolish advice of the young men surrounding him and rejected the wise counsel of the old men who had advised his father. It only cost him the unity of the nation and the end of any chance for a successful reign before he even got started. Or consider one of the names for the pastoral office: “Elder.” That name assumes the maturity and wisdom that generally comes only with age.
And yet, old men have their special challenges. The title of a movie by the Coen brothers signals this: No Country for Old Men. Tommy Lee Jones plays a sheriff at the end of a long career in law enforcement in the barren country of west Texas. He is an old man. He is starting to see criminal activity that he never saw before. So fearsome are these new criminals that he doubts he can cope with it. This is not just a case of nostalgia—the old sheriff longing for the good old days—which in reality were never very good after all. What Sheriff Ed Bell sees is a real decline of the moral order that is frightening and overwhelming. He begins to think he needs to retire; he can’t deal with what is coming at him anymore.
Even more important than the Coen brothers’ vision, Ezra includes an insightful detail about the old men returning with the exiles to Judah. It’s the story of a great revival, as the prophet Jeremiah had promised. When the exiles got back to the promised land, and the work on rebuilding the ruined temple began, it turned out to be a place where the old men had trouble:
‍But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ households, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid (Ezra 3:12).
‍The text of Ezra tells us that while the old men were weeping, everyone else was experiencing something wonderful:
The priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the sons Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David king of Israel (Ezra 3:10).
If you know anything about Old Testament history, you know that praising God at the direction of the priests, guided by the words of David, is at the very heart of what Israel was meant to be. This was a glorious event, especially coming after the dark days of the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people of Judah to Babylon. Why couldn’t the old men appreciate it?
‍Old Age’s Downside
You could argue that the old men were simply guided by their wisdom, gained from long experience, so they wouldn’t get too carried away by the rebuilding of the temple. They had been there when the original built by Solomon was still standing; they had seen how great it was. They had a standard from their own experience to measure and evaluate the new temple. They knew what real glory was, and so they were not so simple as to be swept up in the enthusiasm for what was starting to rise again in Jerusalem. Their wisdom, gained by long experience, tempered their response to what the returned exiles were experiencing.
And it is true that people usually grow more conservative as they age. You know the proverb: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart; and, if you’re not a conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.” The old men in Ezra’s record had become conservatives. They knew the old was worth preserving; they knew what a loss it was that something old was no more. They were inoculated against the naïve assumption that whatever was new had to be better than what had gone before.
It’s one thing not to be carried away by temporary and shallow enthusiasm for the latest new thing. It is surely a blessing of wisdom to be even-keeled when everybody else is being whipped up with excitement they’ll likely be embarrassed about in a very short time. But Ezra is pointing out a real downside to the perspective of the old: These old men could not enter into the joy of fulfilled prophecy. They could not see right in front of them an astounding work of God.
‍Read More
Related Posts:

Theology levels the playing field; it puts us in our proper perspective and grounds our mission in this world. Because all human begins are made in the image of God, the theological implication is we must treat all human beings with the dignity and respect that is their due in light of this reality. It doesn’t matter their nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preference, or political affiliation—a person is a person is a person.

Human beings are a fascinating bunch. Without a doubt, we have some pretty… interesting ideas about ourselves, either seeing ourselves as beings of supreme importance or try to convince ourselves of our own insignificance. Some of us broadcast every thought and life event, no matter how insignificant (and when that doesn’t work, we selectively edit to make ourselves look better). We downplay our abilities in exchange for compliments. Some of us arrogantly act at though we are better than every other human being because of socioeconomic status, nationality, ethnicity, or even denominational traditions. And others still spend inordinate amounts of time trying to convince us all that we are all, essentially, cosmic accidents of no greater value than any other organism on this planet. Indeed we might even be the worst once you factor in overpopulation, pollution, and The Bachelor.
(Okay, that last one might be a stronger one.)
But theology challenges all of these attitudes and beliefs. Theology shapes how we see the world. It shows us that God is intimately involved with his creation. It tells us we are under his authority. But it does more than that. Theology puts humanity in its proper perspective. Although there are many—many—passages worthy of consideration, two will suffice for giving us a starting point.
The Theological Foundation for Understanding Humanity
The creation account gives us our starting point for understanding God, but also ourselves. And it’s profound. According to this passage, humanity is unique among all creation not because of our destructive capability. It is something else entirely. We are, according to Genesis 1:26, made in the image of God, in his likeness. In some mysterious way that we cannot fully comprehend—in a way that doesn’t fit neatly into utilitarian categories—we are like God. Moral agents who think, feel, and act. We have a will and desires. We are relational creatures, made to steward and nurture creation (or have “dominion” depending on your translation), acting as God’s representatives within the created world. (I’ve written about this a great deal, including in this article.)
Humanity doesn’t really make sense without a grasp of this truth. It’s what makes compassion and justice and love and marriage make sense. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Bible doesn’t stop there, and neither can we.
The Theological Road to Romans
The first two chapters of Genesis offer a breathtaking picture of perfection and the potential for human flourishing. But by Genesis 3, that potential had been squandered as the first humans were deceived and sinned against their Creator. They made a theological choice: they believed something false about God.
Read More
Related Posts: