One primary Biblical metaphor for God is "the Rock," expressed mainly by the Hebrew word tsur, meaning "a cliff, a sharp rock, a rock of refuge." The Greek equivalents are petra, a rock, and lithos, a stone. Tsur has a feminine form, tsuwrah, which means "something formed by being pressed out, as by a rock." I want to emphasize this definition, "something formed by being pressed out, as by a rock," because it is the basis of most of what follows. The concept here is of a rock used as a stamp to impress its form on some other material.

This word, tsuwrah, occurs four times in Ezekiel 43:11 and nowhere else in Scripture; this fact alone gives it a sort of curiosity status. Its context is an extremely important one, where Ezekiel is describing his vision of the future temple of God, which in 43:7 God describes as "the place of My throne and the place for the soles of My feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever." The Lord goes on to instruct Ezekiel to describe the temple to the Israelites, and if they then are ashamed of all their sinful ways, he is to "show them the form of the house [temple], and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof, and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them." (43:11 KJV, )

If God might reasonably be charged with being repetitious here, His reason seems to be that He wants to make sure the point is hammered home. From the root meaning of tsuwrah, we can say that the form of the temple is impressed on the temple by the Rock, God Himself. And this form, with all the laws and ordinances that go with it, is something God takes very seriously.

Now then, what exactly is this visionary temple, and when will it be built? In which temple is the King's throne going to rest, where He will dwell with His people forever? I believe that Scripture gives a clear answer. Paul instructs the believers at Corinth: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1Cor.3:16) Peter likewise writes that "you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1Peter 2:5) Again, from Hebrews: "But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are His house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast." (Heb.3:6) And again from Paul, if a clincher is needed: the believers are "members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him 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 become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit." (Eph.2:19-22)

Under the New Covenant, "the Most High does not live in houses made by men." (Acts 7:48) Paul taught the same thing in Athens: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands." (Acts 17:24) In the past, under the Old Covenant, He lived in a man-made temple, but no longer, never again. The New Covenant temple is His dwelling place forever, a fact which exalts us, His unworthy servants, infinitely beyond our deserving.

The people of God who are being built into a holy temple include both Jews and Gentiles, people "from every tribe and language and people and nation." (Rev.5:9) Some have taught that the Jews have a separate destiny from Gentile Christians in the purpose of God, but I believe this is a doctrine not derived from Scripture but foisted onto it. The book of Hebrews teaches emphatically that the New Covenant has abolished and replaced the Old (see especially 8:13 and 10:9). The believing Gentiles have been grafted into the olive tree (Israel) in the New Covenant, and when the Jews repent and receive their Messiah Jesus, they will be grafted back into the same tree (Rom.11:11-24). God designed the New Covenant so that the Old Testament faithful would be saved and perfected not apart from the body of Christ but together with us (Heb.11:40). There is only one Tree of Life (Jesus), one Deliverer for Jew and Gentile alike (Jesus, see Rom.11:26), one way of salvation (Jesus). As the eminent Bible scholar George Eldon Ladd has written:

The work of God's Spirit in the formation of the Church and the future divine visitation of Israel by which the natural branches are regrafted into the olive tree ought not to be seen as two separate and unrelated purposes but as two stages of the single redemptive purpose of God through His Kingdom. There is a single olive tree, and there is one Kingdom of God.* [The Gospel of the Kingdom, Eerdmans, 1992, p.120]

With that established, I hope, we can return to Ezekiel 43. God, the Rock, presses out the form of the New Covenant temple, which is (in another metaphor) the bride of Christ; remember that tsuwrah is the feminine form of tsur, rock. We are the bride, and Christ Himself is being formed in us: "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you . . . ." (Gal.4:19)

Another word derived from tsur is tsiyr, which has several meanings, including (1) a hinge, which is pressed both in being molded and in bearing the door's weight; (2) a severe pain, from physical or mental pressure, and particularly the pangs of childbirth; (3) a messenger or ambassador, who is constrained by his master's orders. "A faithful ambassador [tsiyr] brings health" (Prov.13:17 NKJV); "Like the coolness of snow at harvest time is a trustworthy messenger [tsiyr] to those who send him." (Prov.25:13) All of these meanings are relevant in what follows.

Jesus, the living Word (John 1:1,14), is God's ultimate Messenger or Ambassador. "'See, I will send My messenger [John the Baptist; see Matt.11:10], who will prepare the way before Me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to His temple; the Messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,' says the Lord Almighty." (Mal.3:1) In all His ministry, Jesus was pressed and took His form from the Rock. He did nothing and spoke nothing on His own, but only what His Father gave Him to do and speak (see John 5:19,30, 8:28, 12:49, 14:10). He learned obedience (not that He was ever disobedient, but prior to His incarnation He never had the experience of obeying His Father as a human beset by all the temptations we face to disobey) and was completely prepared to be the Sin Bearer through what He suffered (Heb.2:10, 5:8-9).

At one point in His ministry Jesus cried out, "But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!" (Luke 12:50) "Distressed" here is sunecho, meaning "pressed in, compelled, constrained, afflicted." He laid aside His infinite glory and squeezed His majesty into the form of a man (Php.2:6-8) in order to accomplish the divine purpose of human salvation (see John 12:27, Eph.3:11, 1John 3:8), and He felt the pressure of that purpose until it was achieved, at Gethsemane and Calvary.

"Gethsemane" comes from two Hebrew words, gath, meaning a press for grapes or olives, and shemen, meaning oil, anointing, richness. It was not by accident that Jesus went to a place where olive oil was pressed out in order to undergo the ultimate pressing out of His own soul.

The experience began with a profound shaking. As He began to pray, "He began to be deeply distressed and troubled." (Mark 14:33) This time "distressed" is ekthambeo, which actually means astonished, astounded, even terrified. Our Lord was not a physical coward; therefore what astounded and terrified Him, even though He had long known it was His mission, can only have been the unimaginable agony of bearing the totality of our sin and its condemnation: the experience of vile, vicious moral pollution in His innermost being, utter rejection by His Father and complete alienation from the wondrous love which for all eternity had never even wavered.

Then He said, "My soul [psuche] is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." (Mark 14:34) Psuche is our soul-life or self-life, our self-awareness, "me" as a separate being. Jesus' soul was sinless but still, like ours, a self-life; it was the inward part of the humanity He took on in Mary's womb. His psuche was what He gave as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45); it is what He laid down for His sheep (John 10:11-18). He laid it down in order to take it up again (John 10:17-18), but what He took up again was not psuche but zoe: resurrection life, eternal life (see John 1:4, 3:16,36, 5:26,40, 6:47,48,63, etc.). John 12:25 clearly expresses the relationship between psuche and zoe: "The man who loves his life [psuche] will lose it, while the man who hates his life [psuche] in this world will keep it for eternal life [zoe]."

"And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground." (Luke 22:44) We are told in Leviticus that "the life of a creature is in the blood," (17:11) where "life" is the Hebrew nephesh, equivalent to Greek psuche. Thus was Jesus crushed in Gethsemane until His self-life was entirely pressed out of Him and the anointing oil (shemen, typifying the Holy Spirit) released. Only thus was He able to say without reservation, "Not my will [my self-will] but Yours be done." The earthen vessel, whether a noble one of alabaster (Christ) or a common clay one (us), must be broken before the anointing perfume can come forth.

That is what it took for the Messenger of the covenant to fulfill God's covenant purpose. That, and Calvary.

What is in this for us as His followers?

At one point the apostle Paul asked for prayer "so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains." (Eph.6:19-20) In 2Cor.5:14-21 Paul explains what it means to be an ambassador for Christ. Writing as one who is himself a foremost messenger or ambassador of the gospel, he states that "Christ's love compels us," where "compels" is sunecho as in Luke 12:50. Just as Jesus was pressured by His redemptive mission, so those who represent Him are pressured and compelled by that same mission.

Paul continues, ". . . we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again." (v.14-15) Just as Jesus had His self-life pressed out of Him in Gethsemane, so His ambassadors must have their self-life pressed out so that the zoe life of Jesus can be revealed in them (see Rom.14:7-8, Gal.1:16, 2:19-20, Col.3:1-4). No doubt the best thing is for us to surrender our self-life voluntarily; since this often proves to be too challenging for us, though, the Lord brings the pressure of His loving discipline to squeeze it out of us. This is for our benefit, because insofar as our thoughts, words, and actions express our self-life, Jesus cannot be revealed in us. I represent Him, or I represent me. Whoever does not gather with Him, scatters (Matt.12:30).

"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view." (v.16) Christ's ambassador has a new way of seeing: by faith and the light of God's word and the illumination of the Spirit, not by human wisdom and reasoning. "For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2Cor.5:7, emphasis added)

His ambassadors have the ministry of reconciliation (v.18-20). Not every Christian is an ambassador in this sense; indeed, in these verses it is Christians whom Paul is urging to be reconciled to God. Christ's ambassador has been pressed and formed to the point where he or she is able to serve as a hinge (tsiyr) which bears the weight and movement of the Door (John 10:9) without squeaking or breaking. The Greek word for ambassador is presbeuo, meaning "one who is senior (in age, maturity, experience), a representative." A newborn or immature Christian certainly can and should testify to his or her experience of Christ, but the forming of an ambassador, one who hears His voice, speaks His words, represents Him faithfully, takes time, tribulation, suffering, patience, and testing.

We know this is so because Scripture tells us. God has been forming His children from the womb (see Ps.139:13, Isa.44:2,24, Gal.1:15). He is the potter and we are the clay that He forms (Isa.29:16, Rom.9:20). The process begun in the womb reaches our spirit at regeneration and extends throughout our lifetime. "My dear children," Paul writes, "for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you . . . ." (Gal.4:19)

Not long after Paul was stoned to death (or almost) at Lystra and miraculously healed, he was going about that region "strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, 'We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.'" (Acts 14:22 NKJV, emphasis added) The process of becoming an ambassador for Christ is the process of discipleship. Jesus Himself laid down the basic "musts" for being His disciple. In Luke 14:25-33 we learn that His disciple must "hate" his nearest and dearest, that is, love and obey Jesus first above all. He must hate his own life (psuche). He must bear his cross, meaning not so much the pains and frustrations of life, but the attitude that my life is already forfeited to Jesus to do with as He will (see Rom.14:8, 1Cor.6:19-20). The disciple must count the cost of this commitment and hand over to Jesus the title to all his possessions in this world. These things must be done, lived out, not just affirmed as correct doctrine. Jesus was always hard on hypocrites.

If this begins to sound uncomfortably similar to the demands many cults place on their members, keep in mind that Jesus is the one and only Leader who can be completely trusted with the governance of your life and mine. All the others will exploit and ravage you, but Jesus will cherish and nourish and fulfill and perfect you. What a difference!

When Paul said that we enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations (Acts 14:22), the word he used is thlipsis, meaning "pressure, tribulation, affliction." He taught the Thessalonians that Christ's disciples are appointed and destined to suffer such tribulation (1Thess.3:2-5), it is no accident or aberration, nor is it merely a work of the devil. Jesus assured His disciples in a key verse: "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NKJV) We will get bruised and bloodied in the battle, emotionally and spiritually if not physically, but we get to fight on the winning side.

A disciple must be patient in tribulation (Rom.12:12), and indeed tribulation produces patience in the person fully submitted to God (Rom.5:3, James 1:3). "Patience" is hupomone, meaning "cheerful endurance and constancy", as opposed to "gloomy endurance constantly." Paul commended the Thessalonian believers for "your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure." (2Thess.1:4 NKJV) And God "comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble . . . ." (2Cor.1:4 NKJV)

Even beyond comfort there is rejoicing in tribulation, rejoicing in the knowledge that God is using it to accomplish His purpose in us (forming Christ in us) and through us. Paul told the Corinthians, "I am filled with comfort. I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation." (2Cor.7:4 NKJV) James agrees: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance [hupomone]. Perseverence must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2-4)

This matter of rejoicing amid tribulation is one of those things that can't really be understood theoretically. When you've experienced it as a disciple of Jesus, even a first taste of it, then you understand. But until then, it remains a dubious and troublesome doctrine. Remember the third meaning of tsiyr: a severe pain such as the pangs of childbirth. One aspect of tribulation for the gospel's sake is that we are undergoing labor pains as the Lord brings forth new life within us and through us. Although the labor is painful, the whole process, from conception to birth and afterward, is full of joy. Sometimes, however, it's only during the "afterward" that we realize this truth.

Jesus is "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being." (Heb.1:3) "Representation" is charakter, meaning the figure stamped in an engraving. Just so is the character of Jesus stamped into His ambassadors. No wonder tribulation cannot separate us from His love (Rom.8:35); God uses it to make our union with Him indelible, inseparable. We become tsuwrah (Ezek.43:11), formed into the holy dwelling place of God by the impress of the Rock Himself.

What kinds of tribulation are in view here? In 2 Corinthians, Paul specifies beatings, stoning, imprisonment, riots, sleeplessness, shipwreck, and all the other perils that come with travelling and ministering in the world, plus the constant burden of his "deep concern for all the churches." (See 2Cor.6:4-10, 11:23-28.) These are not just the common hardships of life. What gives them their redemptive power is that they occur as the disciple is representing Christ within a fallen, Satan-infected world.

Jesus told His disciples, "No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also." (John 15:20) Any suffering we may undergo for the gospel's sake is intimately wrapped in with the suffering of our Master. Paul told the Colossians, "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church." (1:24 NKJV) Because we are members of His body, our suffering for the gospel is a continuation of His suffering. Ambassador and King literally suffer as one, since "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." (Gal.2:20a) For the true disciple there is no genuine joy or sorrow that is not shared with Jesus. The great longing of Paul's heart was "to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings . . . ." (Php.3:10) In shared suffering we come to experience our union with Him, for that is when His image (charakter) is most deeply pressed upon our spirit, and that is the time of our soul's refining: "See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction." (Isa.48:10)

Scripture makes it clear that, for the disciple himself, the main purpose of suffering for the gospel's sake is to test his faith and purify his soul. ("Pressing out" and "purifying" the soul are different ways of describing the same thing.) God used the Israelites' wilderness experience for this same purpose: "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands." (Deut.8:2) We are encouraged to rejoice in our testing, since we already know the outcome: "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." (1Peter 1:6-7)

Are you an ambassador for Christ? Am I? Do we rejoice in all our circumstances, even trials and testing, even when the going gets agonizing and bewildering? Is worshipping Jesus and rejoicing in Him the hallmark of our lives, like an open book that people are drawn to read? Can we identify with these words of Paul: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us . . . ." (2Cor.1:8-10)

To be honest ( a good idea), I haven't suffered much for the gospel's sake. Not so far, anyway. But I believe I am willing, when the occasion arises. I hope so; I sure want to be willing and ready. I am very far from a masochist, but I want nothing so much as to have Jesus Christ formed in me. The Lord is gracious, though, and He takes us and works with us where we are at, if we will just say (to paraphrase Isaiah), "Here I am, take me."

That is very good news indeed.

Jeff Treder treder@televar.com

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