From: dzeigler@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Daniel R Zeigler)
Subject: What is the Church?  Answers from God's Sketchbook (1)
Summary: The Church as Lampstand, Mountain, and Temple
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 17:00:09 GMT


                              God's Sketchbook

     God has drawn many vivid pictures of his work with and in the church.  
He has represented her as a Bride, a Warrior, a Field, and a dozen other 
things.  These descriptions are more than mere symbols or metaphors.  They 
exist in our realm.  People marry and are given in marriage.  They engage in 
warfare.  They sow seed and harvest crops.  These very real facets of our 
lives are the physical counterpart to a spiritual reality.  It is as if God
has sketched out rough likenesses of His finished masterpiece.  It is not 
that He needed the practice!  It is rather that we need the sketches to get 
any sense of what the finished work will be.  God has created marriage and 
warfare and harvesting in part so that we might understand His eternal pur-
pose.
     Let us take a few moments to leaf through His sketchbook.

                                  Lampstand

     "When I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands 
was someone 'like a son of man,' dressed in a robe reaching down to His feet 
and with a golden sash around His chest.   His head and hair were white like 
wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like blazing fire.  His feet were 
like bronze glowing in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound or rush-
ing waters.  In His right hand He held seven stars and out of His mouth came 
a sharp double-edged sword.  His face was like the sun shining in all its 
brilliance.  When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead."  (Rev 1:12-
16)
     The church is a Lampstand.  She radiates a light not her own.  She has 
a testimony, a bold proclamation of the One who is the Light.  He radiates 
from her.
     How often we have interpreted the command to be light as an in-
dividualistic affair.  True, each Christian has an individual responsibility 
to be light (see Eph 5:8 and following), but it is an individual respon-
sibility within a corporate endeavor.  Remember:  Jesus gathered His dis-
ciples together on the mountainside (Mt 5:1).  He taught them, "You (plural) 
are the light (singular) of the world ... People do not light a lamp and put 
it under a bowl.  Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to
everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your (collective) light shine 
before men, that they may see you good works and praise your Father in 
Heaven." (Mt 5:14-16)  Fragments of metal cannot contain and send out light.  
A lampstand, however, can radiate light to an entire house.  The temple 
lampstands were beaten out of a single, seamless sheet of gold (Ex 25:31-
40).  So it is with the church.
     Notice, too, that the focus in Revelation is on the local church.  Each 
lampstand is a corporate being made up of all the Christians in a particular 
city.  It is the local church that must function as a unit to radiate the 
light of Christ.  God's ultimate purpose--to demonstrate His wisdom and to 
crush Satan, to unite all reality under Him, to become the All in All--must 
translate into reality in a local setting.  Believers living in the same 
place at the same time must allow Him to join them supernaturally to each 
other and give them a corporate testimony.
     Dominating the scene in Revelation is the one "like a son of man."  The 
gold sash, the thundering voice, and the sword proceeding from His mouth 
tell of His sovereign authority.  The radiant face, hair, eyes, and feet 
speak of His glory.  John was a man of apostolic stature.  He had seen and 
touched Jesus of Nazareth (1 Jn 1:1-2).  He had lived in continual fellow-
ship with the living Christ ever since (1 Jn 1:3).  But when confronted with 
this vision of the exalted Son of Man, even John "fell at His feet as though 
dead."  It is this Awesome One who walks among the lampstands.  He alone has 
authority to set a lampstand in place, and He alone can remove it (Rev 2:5).  
As He examines His lampstands He tests their love, commands their faithful-
ness, rebukes their sin and lukewarmness, exposes their false teachers, 
destroys their undeserved reputations, and opens for them doors of oppor-
tunity no one can shut.
     This image of the lampstands emphasizes--perhaps more clearly than any
of the other sketches--the sovereignty of God as He creates His masterpiece.  
It is utterly impossible that anyone could see the Son of Man walking among 
the lampstands and at the same time pretend to any ownership of the church.  
Such a vision would devastate every ambitious plan to go out and "do great 
things for God."  How could anyone see Jesus setting up, tending, and remov-
ing the lampstands and yet believe that he himself, of his own initiative, 
could "go start his own church"?  Behold Jesus, and give yourself fully to 
His sovereign work.

                                  Mountain

     Anyone who has ever really looked at a mountain knows something of the 
church, whether he realizes it or not.  For God says: "In the last days the 
mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the moun-
tains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.  
Many peoples will come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the 
Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.  He will teach us His ways, so that 
we may walk in His paths." (Is 2:2-3)  Mountains invite worship.  Even 
pagans instinctively place their temples on high places.  But God has 
promised that in these last days His mountain would be chief.
     God has established only one mountain in these days.  It is neither 
"here" nor "there."  As Jesus said, "A time is coming when you will worship 
the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." (Jn 4:21-24)  Again, 
"You have not come to a mountain that can be touched" but "to Mount Zion, to 
the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.  You have come to 
thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the 
firstborn, whose names are written in heaven." (Heb 12:22-23)
     God's mountain, which He is "raising above the hills," is the church.
This is God's work: to draw "all nations" and "many peoples" to Himself on 
His mountain.

                                   Temple

     "In Christ the whole building is joined together and rises to become a 
holy temple in the Lord.  And in Him you too are being built together to be-
come a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit." (Eph 2:21-22)  "You also, 
like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house." (1 Pet 2:5)
     Observe this likeness of God's creative masterpiece:  He is erecting 
for Himself a temple.  While it is a precious truth that our bodies are in-
dividually temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20), it is more wonderful 
still that God can build His people collectively into a dwelling place (1 
Cor 3:16-17).
     God's work celebrates individuality.  He builds with living stones.  
When Solomon's temple was built, "only blocks dressed at the quarry were 
used, and no hammer, chisel or any iron tool was heard at the temple site 
while it was being built." (1 Kings 6:7).  Any intervention by man to stan-
dardize the stones further by human effort would have defiled the temple 
site.  So it is with God's work today.  Each living stone comes out His 
quarry.  He is not interested standardization.  He joins the stones as a 
skilled stonemason, so that the individuality of the stones in no way 
detracts from the unity of the building, but rather enhances its beauty.
     Yet at the same time, God's work demolishes individualism.  An in-
dividual stone, as long as it remains alone, is useless.  A huge pile of 
stones is worse than useless.  The larger the pile grows, the more of a 
nuisance it becomes.  Only as the stones are joined into a temple do they 
take on beauty and meaning.  In the same way the church consists not so much
of people, but of the relationships among them.
     The temple, however beautifully it is built, is not the focus of these 
passages.  God's purpose is to have a place, a people, where He may dwell by 
His Spirit.  He will become the All in All.  His means of accomplishing His 
ultimate purpose is to create a new living temple out of many living stones, 
and to indwell this temple fully just as it fully dwells in Him.  Jesus has 
declared, "I will build my church."  And He will.
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