In a book arguing that Jesus, in light of his virginal conception, is the temple, David H. Wenkel (Reformed Protestant) wrote the following about Amos 9:11-12 and Acts 15:16-18:
Cohesion with the Temple
Like the theophanies that attended the primitive altars
of the patriarchs and the special presence of Yahweh in the tent of meeting,
the raison d’etre of the Jerusalem temple was the presence of God among
his people. When the concept of “temple” is defined as God’s personal and
covenantal presence among his presence among his people in a cultic setting,
then it is evident that the temple was not an invasion of Canaanite culture but
a reflection of authentic Yahweh worship and obedience. . . .
The narrative scene of the Jerusalem council is at the
literary center of the book of Acts and functions as its denouement. During
this scene at the Jerusalem council, James presented a speech to the assembly
to summarize the recognition that God was at work among the Gentiles. Here,
James utilized the concept of cohesion when he stated, “And with this the words
of the prophets agree, just as it is written” (Acts 14:15). James then quotes LXX
Amos 9:11-12:
After this I will rebuild the tent of David that has
fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of
mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says
the Lord, who makes these things known from of old. (Acts 15:16-18).
The point of this passage is that it is through the
restoration of David’s dynasty that the Gentiles are included. For the purpose
of the argument, it is important that the arrival of Jesus is an act of divine rebuilding
and restoration of the ruins of the Davidic dynasty. For James, Jesus is
nothing less than the fulfillment of the divine promises according to the
Davidic Covenant (2 Sam. 7.). The inclusion of the Gentiles reflects the
expansion of God’s kingdom as he conquers the nations through “inclusion, not
domination.”
At this point, the theological literary, and authorial
unity of Luke-Acts offers more evidence as to when this act of divine
rebuilding of David’s fallen tent took place. The introduction of Luke’s Gospel
points to the conclusion that the divine construction may include the resurrection
but began at Jesus’s conception. This origination point is apparent as Luke stresses
that Joseph was “of the house of David” (Luke 1:27). Luke makes the
implications of Jesus’ genealogy clear when he states:
And the Lord God will give to him [Jesus] the throne of
his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom
there will be no end. (Luke 1:31-32).
It is noteworthy that these words were spoken to Mary by
the angel Gabriel while the baby Jesus was still in her womb (Luke 1:31). This
timeline rules out any notion that Jesus’ David identity was based on his birth
or any other event. For the reader of the Christian canon, or even of the
two-volume set of Luke-Acts, Jesus is the Davidic king, and the restoration of
the Davidic dynasty took place at his divine conception in Mary’s womb by the
direct power of the Spirit. In other words, the fulfillment of the prophet Amos,
as quoted in Acts 15:16-18 to explain what God is doing among the Gentiles. God
is expanding the Davidic “house” or kingdom-temple of God through the gospel.
The divine work of expanding the kingdom of David through the gospel is an
extension of the restoration that began with the virginal conception.
These texts in Luke-Acts draw attention to the way that
Jesus fulfills the covenantal promise to King David that God would build him a “house.”
The temple building in Jerusalem was in some sense a “house” for the Most High,
but it was not the house for the Most High because it was made by human
hands. This promise was progressively fulfilled through events and institutions
such as Solomon’s temple, but these were always partial, temporary, and
contingent in nature. They pointed forward in salvation-history to the moment
when God would directly build a house for his name to eternally dwell among his
covenant people.
It is also important to observe how the language of
construction was important to Amos as well as for James’s interpretation of
Jesus and the nature of his kingdom. The fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel
is directly tied to the divine act of building a house, drawing together the language
of a divine person and construction. This reflects the way that the Davidic
covenant intentionally uses wordplay based on David’s desire to build Yahweh an
architectural temple. The climax of the book of Acts focuses on the way the
promised Messiah of Israel is the Messiah-temple or Messiah-tent who is from
the line of David. Jesus’ arrival has built the house of God so that God can dwell
among his people forever, whether they are Jew or Gentile.
The act of reading the canon of scripture forward and
backward draws attention to the centrality of the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel
and the promise of a Davidic king who would sit on the throne forever. There are
three summary points. First, temples, tents, or places of Yahweh worship that
were built by human hands anticipated a future fulfillment characterized by the
merging of building a “house” and a person. Second, the divine discourse in
Nathan’s vision enables the reader of the Christian canon to retrospectively
understand the trajectory of places of Yahweh worship. Third, the establishment
of the Davidic covenant legitimizes the typological relationship between the
tent of meeting, the Jerusalem, temple, and Jesus-the-temple. The theological concept
of Jesus’s temple-conception as defined above is not only cohesive with the
canonical data but also required by it. (David H. Wenkel, The Virgin
Birth According to Temple Theology [Langham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2024], 156-58)
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