SKENE 15: the Incarnation

Yes, God does indeed still want to dwell among his people and have fellowship with them. This has been his desire from the very beginning, from the sixth day of creation. In Eden, before the fall, man and woman could stand before a holy God naked and unashamed in unhindered fellowship, as God in person “walked in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3.8). But after the fall God came to them not in fellowship but in judgement, and the relationship was changed for ever. Nevertheless, God was still calling and seeking a people to be his own. Abraham was obedient to that call, and lived much of his life, as we have seen, as a tent-dweller in a foreign land, sustained by God’s promise of a future inheritance, so that he is truly the father of all who have faith in God’s word. The Israelites in the wilderness were sustained by God’s presence among them, but, as the Tabernacle has shown us, he was present but unapproachable. The Temple merely represented the same truth more splendidly and more permanently; but both were still just temporary measures until the unfolding of God’s perfect plan. This had been foreshadowed throughout the OT, but was finally announced by the Archangel Gabriel, not to kings or prophets or priests in Jerusalem, but to a teenage girl in a country village: “Behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus” (Luke 1.31). The angel also brings this message to Mary’s husband-to-be, the village carpenter, with the same instruction to “call his name ‘Jesus’”. This is recorded by Matthew, who sees this miracle of the virgin birth as the fulfilment of a prophecy by Isaiah: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name ‘Emmanuel’”. This name Matthew helpfully translates for those whose Hebrew is not up to it: “God with us” (Matt 1. 21-3, Isaiah 7.14). So once again, as in the garden of Eden, God comes among his people in person, though now in the person of his incarnate Son. It is John who, as it were, coins the term ‘incarnation’. He begins his gospel by describing Jesus as the co-eternal Word, and then, in verse 14, he writes: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory” (AV – what else ?). But it is the verb John uses here, translated ‘dwelt’, that is our main concern: the verb ‘skeno’. This word is used only by John in the NT (its 4 other uses are in Revelation), and means, literally, to ‘pitch a tent’, or to ‘live in a tent’ – or a tabernacle. What a wealth of Jewish history and OT scripture John evokes by his use of this one word ! It reminds us of Abraham “living in tents” (Heb 11.9) in the land promised to him as though it were a foreign land; John has just said of Jesus that “he came to his own home, and his own people did not receive him” (v.11). It reminds us, too, of the Tabernacle, which, in a sense, embodied the presence of Emmanuel with his people in the wilderness; but they could only see his glory in a cloud which kept them at a distance, while for us, “God made his light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4.6). The God whose “eyes are too pure to look on evil” is incarnate in Jesus who was known as “the friend of sinners” (Hab 1.13, Matt 12.19). And it reminds us, thirdly, of the metaphorical use of ‘skene’ that we looked at a little earlier: the ‘flesh’ that Jesus ‘became’ was a human body which, like a tent, is only a temporary dwelling, and all too vulnerable to the ‘slings and arrows’ which life hurls against it – not to mention whips and nails. When God wanted to be with his people in the wilderness when they were literally living in tents, he too became a tent-dweller, and dwelt among them in the Tabernacle pitched at the crossroads of their encampment. But in the fullness of time, at the crossroads of history, God wanted all mankind, and not just the Jews, to be part of his family; all mankind live in tents, the tent of the human body, and so God, too, lived among us in such a tent – a tent which was torn apart and taken down long before it was worn out by the normal wear and tear of life.

SKENE 24: Tents in Revelation (13.6, 7.15)

This paradox also prepares us for the uses of ‘skene’ and ‘skeno’ in Revelation – seven altogether, as we might expect ! Two verses contain both noun and verb together; we will start with the first of these, and leave the second for our grand finale. At the beginning of chapter 13, John sees a beast “coming up from the sea”; the dragon gives him power and great authority, so that, in verse 6, “he opened his mouth for blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle (‘skene’), those dwelling (‘skeno’) in heaven”. The tent which, on earth, was a symbol of transience is now ‘an everlasting tent’. On earth, the relentless ticking of the clock is a constant reminder that our tents are wearing away, and will one day collapse – but in heaven there are no clocks! In the same way, the Tabernacle, which in the wilderness represented both God’s presence with his people and his separateness from them, has now become his permanent dwelling-place: the ‘antitype’, we might say, has become the ‘type’ which God showed to Moses on Mount Sinai. But perhaps the most important, and wonderful, feature of this verse (6) is the word that isn’t there, and the comma that is there instead: “to blaspheme --- his tabernacle, those dwelling in heaven”, not “his tabernacle AND those dwelling in heaven”. On earth, God’s Tabernacle kept him apart from his people; in heaven, God’s tabernacle IS his people. A building made-by-human-hands cannot contain the God who made everything, yet God is pleased to regard the hearts of his faithful saints as his heavenly tabernacle. This same truth is expressed by the converse of the ‘tent’ image in another wonderful verse, earlier in the book, 7.15. At the beginning of this passage (v.9), John has seen a much more encouraging vision: “a great multitude that no man could number”, arrayed in white robes and gathered before the throne. In verse 14 John is told by one of the elders that these “are those that came from the great tribulation, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”. In the next verse he continues “he who sits on the throne will pitch his tent (the verb ‘skeno’) with them – beautifully translated by NIV as “spread his tent over them”. If it is true that the tabernacle that God dwells in is his people, it is also true that the “everlasting tent” that we look forward to is God himself: he is our tabernacle. This paradox, or dual perspective, can be seen throughout the NT. If we hear Jesus knocking at the door of our lives and ask him into our ‘tent’ (Rev 3.20), we find the even greater truth that we are now ‘in Christ’, the phrase which, for Paul, seems to be the definition of a Christian. The most succinct and direct statement of this truth is found on the lips of Jesus himself: “On that day” (the Day of Pentecost ?) “you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I in you” (John 14.20).

SKENE 25 (Rev 12.12)

The next example of ‘skeno’ occurs 5 chapters later. Like the verse we have just been looking at, it comes shortly after a great hymn of praise to God for his “salvation uccinct and direct statement of this truth is found on the lips of Jesus hiimself:r lives and ask him into our 'vis” (7.10 and 12.10), this time celebrating the victory in the ‘war in heaven’ achieved by Michael and his angels, as a result of which Satan and all his angels are thrown out of heaven. This is, indeed, good news for those living in heaven, so that later in this same hymn we read “rejoice, you heavens, and those who dwell (‘skeno’) in them”; but, in view of the previous verse, and with acknowledgements to NIV, we might translate this “rejoice, you heavens, and all you saints over whom God spreads his tabernacle” (v.12). But if the downfall (literally) of Satan is good news for those living in heaven, it is very bad news for those still living on earth: the same verse continues: “Woe to the earth and the sea, because the Devil (‘diabolos’) has come down to you with great wrath”. The stark dichotomy of this verse is an uncomfortable reminder, after so many references to the graciousness of God in this study, of the essential divisiveness of the gospel. Politicians may find it expedient to have a ‘big tent’ in which they ‘graciously’ invite even their opponents to join them ‘for the greater good’. But the greatest good is God, and his ‘big tent’, though very big indeed, has no room for his enemies. ‘Inclusiveness’ is one of the great idols of our age; the heavenly host is gloriously inclusive, as we have seen (Rev 7.9), “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, and tribe, and people, and tongue” – but NOT from every creed: those who deny Christ are not included. Verse 12 contains the first mention of ‘wrath’ in Revelation; there are 9 others, but they all refer to God’s righteous anger against a sinful and rebellious world, while here we are simply, if terrifyingly, confronted by the frustrated fury of a defeated Devil.

SKENE 27: the New Jerusalem

And so to our final verse, our grand finale, which contains both the noun ‘skene’ and its related verb, ‘skeno’. Of all the paradoxes associated with these words that we have looked at, this is, perhaps, the most surprising: it is the apotheosis of the ‘skene’ paradox. In our last passage, the war in heaven was won, but the war on earth raged on, and God’s judgements rained down. The heavenly tabernacle was more reminiscent of the Mosaic ‘Tabernacle of the Testimony’, and was so “charged with the grandeur of God” (to quote G.M. Hopkins’s superb image) that it was inaccessible to all others. By chapter 21, however, all has changed. In chapter 18 great news is proclaimed: “Fallen ! Fallen is Babylon the great !” (v.12) In chapter 19 comes the Rider on the white horse, on whose robe his name is written, “King of kings and Lord of lords”; in a great battle with “the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies” Christ is triumphant: all his enemies are slain, and the beast and his false prophet are cast into a lake of sulphur. In chapter 20 the Devil is locked in the abyss for a thousand years; on his release, he once more gathers his forces to attack God’s people, but “fire came down from heaven and devoured them”, and Satan is finally and eternally thrown into the lake of sulphur. The name ‘Satan’ means ‘opponent’ or ‘antagonist’, but his rebellious opposition is now at an end. Its futility is superbly expressed in a line in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ (X. 386-7), where he proudly boasts “I glory in the name Antagonist of heaven’s almighty King”, seemingly oblivious of the absurdity of trying to oppose the Almighty. And so we come to chapter 21, where we need to look at the first three verses: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had gone away, and the sea is no more. (2) And I saw the holy city, Jerusalem, new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. (3) And I heard a great voice from the throne saying, ‘Look ! The dwelling-place (‘skene’) of God is with men, and he will dwell (‘skeno’) with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them.’”