I gotta have my orange juice.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows. — Psalm 23:5

David here is not remembering merely spiritual blessings and refreshment. He is recounting actual feasts at the house of God:

You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. — Exodus 34:22-24

The new covenant feast is just that — a table and cup in the house of God, who rebukes those who would trample his bride (Ps. 68:28ff).

See also Mark Horne’s recent post on spiritual metaphor versus sacrament.

There is no man who would not be pleased with eternal blessedness; and yet, without the impulse of the Spirit, no man aspires to it. Since, then, the natural desire of happiness in man no more proves the freedom of the will, than the tendency in metals and stones to attain the perfection of their nature, let us consider, in other respects, whether the will is so utterly vitiated and corrupted in every part as to produce nothing but evil, or whether it retains some portion uninjured, and productive of good desires. — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 2, chapter 2, section 26

Calvin is here arguing for man’s depravity and inability to seek God in himself. But reflecting on his analogy between men and stones, I believe there is a broader principle we can draw here about what it means to be human.

Stones and metals are typological symbols of humanity in the Bible, and precious stones and metals are pictures of mature and glorified humanity. For example, consider the stones on the high priest’s shoulders and breastpiece, which symbolized the tribes of Israel. We ourselves are living stones in the house of God (1 Pet. 2:5). Much of the furniture and structure of the tabernacle and temple were either made of, or coated in, precious metals; such utensils and vessels, as well as the tabernacle and temple themselves, are symbolic of God’s people gathered around his throne and serving him (e.g., Rom. 9:23, 2 Tim. 2:20-21). And when Jesus appears in all his glory and power, he is a metal man (Daniel 10, Rev. 1, 2).

Applying this, it seems that, even apart from sin, God intended to bring mankind from a state of nakedness and immaturity to a state of investiture, glory and maturity; and this through the potentially painful means of God’s forging us. This process of maturation is hinted at in Genesis 2:10-15. In the rivers flowing out of Eden, we see a picture of Adam’s garden-tending and keeping extending out into the whole world. (This imagery of water-life flowing out to the world is repeated in Ezekiel’s visionary temple and in Revelation 22.) In Genesis 2’s calling attention to gold and precious stones there is a hint that Adam was called to refine these and perhaps bring them back to beautify and glorify the garden; the treasure of the nations is meant to be brought into God’s house (e.g., Ps. 68:18,29; Rev. 21:24-26). But just as Adam and his offspring were called to refine and glorify creation, God would be refining and glorifying them. As Calvin observes, it is no more possible for us to attain maturity and glory by ourselves apart from God’s craftsmanship, than it is for metals and gemstones to attain beauty apart from a master craftsman. The fall did not cause gold and gems to become encrusted with earth and stone; it only caused them to resist man more intensely, as God’s curse-prosecuting agents.

We see this process reflected subtly in God’s creating Eve. On each day of creation, God brought his creation from something “good” to a newer and greater good. Yet even apart from sin, there was something “not good” (Gen. 2:18) in God’s creation, something that required Adam to be put into a deathlike sleep, to be cut open, and to have a part of himself cut away. Yet what he receives in exchange is glorious (1 Cor. 11:7), so that everything is “very good” (Gen. 1:31).

This helps us understand what is meant by saying that Jesus was made perfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10, 5:9). He progressed from glory to glory, from good to very good. He was refined, tested and proved. There was something not good in that his bride had forsaken him. He had to die and have his own side pierced in order for her to be re-created and resurrected with him.

Likewise the church, and we as individual believers, experience this process of maturation and refining. Our sin is our greatest barrier to maturity and glory. But even where sin is resisted by the power of the Spirit, God will still be using the heat of his forge and the blows of his hammer to refine and mature us, to increase our capacity for serving him. In this way we will be made more like Jesus, the glorious metal man.

In his book Heaven Misplaced, Doug Wilson writes about a common misunderstanding among contemporary Christians:

How you take the line of the story matters a great deal. Many Christians believe the cosmos has an upper and lower story, with earth as the lower story and heaven as the upper story. You live the first chapters of your life here. Then you die, and you move upstairs to live with the nice people—because only nice people are allowed on the second story. There might be some kind of sequel after that, but it is all kind of hazy. Maybe we all go live in the attic. But the basic movement in this thinking is from a Philippi “below” to a Rome “above.”

But what Paul teaches us [in Philippians 3:20-21] is quite different. We are establishing the colonies of heaven here, now. When we die, we get the privilege of visiting the heavenly motherland, which is quite different than moving there permanently. After this brief visit, the Lord will bring us all back here for the final and great transformation of the colonists (and the colonies). In short, our time in heaven is the intermediate state. It is not the case that our time here is the intermediate state. There is an old folk song that says, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” This captures the mistake almost perfectly. But as the saints gather in heaven—which is the real intermediate state—the growing question is, “When do we get to go back home?” And so this means that heaven is the place that we are just “passing through.” (23-24)

N. T. Wright writes similarly:

There is no agreement in the church today about what happens to people when they die. Yet the New Testament is crystal clear on the matter: In a classic passage, Paul speaks of “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23). There is no room for doubt as to what he means: God’s people are promised a new type of bodily existence, the fulfillment and redemption of our present bodily life. The rest of the early Christian writings, where they address the subject, are completely in tune with this.

The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage, postmortem journey represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God’s ultimate purposes.

. . .

The mission of the church is nothing more or less than the outworking, in the power of the Spirit, of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. It is the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory, transform the old heavens and earth into the new, and raise his children from the dead to populate and rule over the redeemed world he has made.

See also: The future of Jesus.