The Sojourner

Well, we are in the third week of a series on God's heart for the needy.

About his heart for the widow, the fatherless, and the sojourner.

The sojourner, the stranger.

Have you ever felt like a stranger or an outsider?

Even just a little bit while Sonia was praying and you didn't understand some of you, what she was saying, and it made you feel a little bit separate.

It made you feel a bit like a foreigner.

Maybe you felt like an outsider in other ways, maybe because you weren't very good at the game that others were playing, or you don't know how to dance, or because of your accent.

How about middle school?

Remember starting middle school?

Middle school's the worst.

You get all these insecure kids together who then try their best to make each other feel more insecure than they are, so that maybe they won't feel like the outsider, but they all do.

A sojourner in biblical thinking is a stranger or a foreigner who came to live in Israel, who came from another country, from another culture, and put down roots in Israel.

And so the event that we're going to read about from God's Word took place in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago.

And the first temple in Jerusalem has just been built.

And King Solomon is giving a prayer of dedication to the new temple.

And we're especially going to focus our attention on verses 41 to 43, the part of Solomon's prayer that probably shocked the people in Jerusalem the most, because Solomon prays that the Jewish temple would be filled with people from other countries, non-Jews, and God would hear their prayers as well, and receive their offerings at his altar.

So let's look at God's word, and then I'm going to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten our hearts and minds with all he wants us to receive.

Reading from 1 Kings chapter 8, 22 to 34, and then 41 to 43.

1 Kings 8 · chapter mention

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord, in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands toward heaven, and said, O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart.

You have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him.

You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.

Now therefore, O Lord God of Israel, keep for your servant David, my father, what you promised him, saying, You shall not lack a man to sit before me on the throne of Israel, if only your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.

Now therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken to your servant, David, my father.

But will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Behold, heaven in highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built?

Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, My name shall be there, that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place, and listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place, and listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

If a man sins against his neighbor and is made to take an oath and comes and swears his oath before your altar in this house, then hear in heaven and act and judge your servants, condemning the guilty by bringing his conduct on his own head, and vindicating the righteous by rewarding him according to his righteousness.

When your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you, and if they turn again to you and acknowledge your name and pray and plead with you in this house, then hear in heaven and forgive the sin of your people, Israel, and bring them again to the land that you gave to their fathers.

Likewise, when a foreigner who is not of your people Israel comes from a far country for your name's sake, for they shall hear of your great name and your mighty hand and of your outstretched arm.

When he comes and prays toward this house, hear in heaven, your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, in order that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and that they may know that this house that I have built is called by your name.

Let's pray.

Holy Spirit, thank you.

Thank you that you have made it possible for anyone to come before you and to have his or her voice heard, that you exclude none except those who will not repent of their sins and embrace Jesus as Savior.

But for those who will, there is nothing stopping us.

There is nothing stopping anyone from knowing the true God and being adopted into his household.

Holy Spirit, thank you for the word that you implant in our hearts and minds and make active.

May it motivate us to love and to serve those about us for their good and for your glory.

And we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I'm going to unpack this text with these three points.

What did the temple mean for Israel?

What did the temple mean for the sojourner or the foreigner or the refugee?

And what does this mean for us?

So, what did the temple mean for Israel?

Before Jerusalem was built, before it became the capital and the location of this temple, God's people had been on the move for a very long time.

God had told Abram in Genesis 12 that he needed to leave his homeland and to become a wanderer.

And Abraham would really be an immigrant for the rest of his life, never having a permanent home.

Abraham's great-grandchildren became economic refugees, and they had to flee the land of Cana because of famine and went as foreigners to Egypt and settled down there, got their green cards printed on papyrus, and then became enslaved for 400 years in Egypt.

And so Moses led them out of Egypt, where they spent 40 years wandering the desert.

But God had them build a tabernacle there in the desert, not of stone, but it was a tent.

It was a tent where Moses and the high priest could go once they were purified of their sin by the shedding of blood, and they could meet with God and hear from God in his tabernacle.

And through Moses, God promised that he would one day bring them to a permanent home.

Deuteronomy 16, 2, to the place that the Lord will choose to make his name dwell there.

The promised land, the place where God's people finally had a home after all of their wandering.

And yet when they put down roots there, God would not be confined to that place.

Maybe you noticed Solomon said to God in verse 27 that even though he had built this house for the name of the Lord, Solomon said, Heaven and highest heaven cannot contain you.

How much less this house that I have built?

So you see, a temple was intended to be a place to meet with God, but never a cage that could contain God.

The temple was never meant to be the focus of worship.

God alone must always be the focus of our worship.

Wherever we are.

And that's important for us to remember as Alexandria Presbyterian Church, preparing to build a place of worship for the first time in our church history.

33 years as a church, we've worshiped in three locations.

This one for 22 years, and it has served us well, but it is only a building.

You do not have to go to a building to meet with God.

Instead, God comes to us.

Jesus' name, Emmanuel, means God with us.

John 14, 23, Jesus said, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him.

We will come to you and make our home within you.

Have you been wandering?

Have you been searching for a place for your heart to put down roots?

Have you wandered through the desert?

Have you followed the faulty compass of your sinful heart?

Chasing after things that promise security, pleasure, peace, escape, power.

Every human heart has this vacancy.

And we keep it locked away from God.

And we try to fill it with things that will never give the satisfaction, the peace, the security, the comfort, the life that He promises when we open that door to Him.

Revelation 3.20, Jesus says, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to you and eat with you.

And you with me.

Have you heard the knock?

Have you opened the door?

Have you said, Jesus, this is your dwelling place?

This is your home.

Take up residence within me.

And if you have, maybe many years ago, are there still some closed doors in there?

Are there some corners of the basement that you have not yet invited Jesus into?

Areas that you think he would not be willing to enter, or you do not want to hear what he might say if he saw that corner of your heart?

Let him in.

Open the door.

Today Jesus is knocking on the doors of our hearts and the hearts of every person in every nation, in every language, in every corner of the earth.

And so let's consider what does this temple mean for the foreigner, for the sojourner?

As I said, a sojourner was a foreigner who came to live in Israel, to settle down.

And although they were not Jews, God repeatedly told his people, the Israelites, that they were to care for the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner.

They were to leave the edges of the fields unharvested so that the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner could glean to make sure that these individuals received justice in court.

He reminded the people over and over of how they were treated as foreigners in Egypt.

And he said, make sure you don't treat foreigners in your land the way you were treated in Egypt.

And Israel forgot so very quickly.

And they mistreated the foreigners and they neglected the widow and the fatherless, and they blocked access to the temple that was meant to be a light shining on a hill.

God told Isaiah in 49:6, It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring back the preserved of Israel.

I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.

You see, Israel was supposed to impact the world with God's truth.

The influence was supposed to flow out from Israel to the world, and instead, Israel allowed the influence to flow the other way.

And pagan gods led Israel far from the Lord.

Solomon's heart, Solomon's heart so full of wisdom and faith.

I mean, just listen, that prayer of his is gorgeous, filled with this faith and trust and wisdom.

But very soon he was not content to have one God or one wife.

1 Kings 11:4, it says that as Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God.

1 Kings 11:4

As soon as Solomon dies, the nation erupts in civil war, it's divided north and south, and Israel never becomes the light on the hill for the nations that God had described.

But thankfully, God keeps the promises that we break.

God is a covenant keeper, and we are covenant breakers, but he guarantees his promises.

That's why, by the way, we pray in Jesus' name and not our own.

We pray in the name of one who can keep promises even when we break them.

God was faithful to answer Solomon's prayer, despite Solomon's faithlessness.

Just one example.

A hundred years after Solomon's prayer, a Syrian general named Naaman hears about the God of Israel.

And because he has leprosy, he comes to Israel to repent and to be healed, and he brings his offerings to the temple, and God receives this foreign general and heals him.

God said yes to Solomon's prayer.

And two hundred years after Solomon prayed, Isaiah wrote in chapter 56 The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, these I will bring to my holy mountain, to make them, foreigners, joyful in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

This vision remained alive despite Israel's blindness.

And because Israel was moving far away from the Lord, the Lord was the one who took his message far from Israel, sending Jonah to Nineveh, sending him to a pagan foreign city so that even they could be invited to worship the one true God.

So Israel failed to be a light to the nations, and therefore God sent the light out to the nations.

The light of the world came to the earth a thousand years after Solomon's prayer.

A star was shining above Jerusalem, above the location of the temple, and that star shone above Jesus of Nazareth as he was born, and foreign wise men came to bow down and worship him.

And just to make certain that we understood that this was not a new plan, God made sure that in Jesus' family tree there were four foreign women in his ancestry.

Jesus was the ultimate stranger.

John 1 says that the eternal Son of God came here to tabernacle among us, to set up a tent here among us, to live among us, but not permanently.

He came to his own people, John 1 says, but his own people did not receive him.

And then after his birth, his family had to flee as refugees, suffering political persecution, as some of you have suffered political persecution and have come to the U.S.

for asylum.

And then Jesus had to face the rejection of his own people, that in his father's temple, it was in his father's temple that they plotted and lied and schemed to have him murdered.

And yet, it was still all part of God's plan.

Part of his plan that had you and I as the objective.

So point three, what does this mean for us?

Do you remember that time when Jesus went to the temple and was super angry, started flipping tables and whipping animals out of the court of the Gentiles?

You can read about it in Matthew 21.

It was the court of Gentiles that that took place.

It was an area around the temple that was intended for non-Jews to come and learn about the one true God.

And their access to the temple was being blocked.

That's why Jesus was angry.

Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple.

He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer.

Jesus was angry because the temple was being used for profit, not prophecy.

The temple community was supposed to be an international community, united by the common worship of the one true God.

And it was being corrupted, and Jesus was angry.

Jesus came to earth to establish this church, the church of Jesus Christ, with the same vision that we read about earlier, a light on the hill.

And it begins to unfold in the book of Acts.

We see Jesus telling the apostles before he returns to heaven that they would be his witnesses in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

And right there, then in Acts 8, we see Philip, one of the deacons, sharing the gospel with the Samaritans.

And then he meets a court official from Ethiopia and shares the gospel with him and baptizes him.

And that Ethiopian goes off and carries the gospel, the news of Jesus' death and resurrection to Africa.

Paul takes the gospel to Turkey and to Greece and to Rome, and he has plans to go to Spain.

We believe Thomas took the gospel to India.

And all of this happens within the first generation after Jesus' death and resurrection.

The gospel spread to foreign lands.

People are reborn by trusting in Jesus' name.

And it all happened without a temple.

There was no temple where people were meeting with God.

The temple that Solomon dedicated was never meant to be a permanent meeting place.

That's why Jesus said in John 2, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it.

And the Jews said, it took 46 years to build this temple.

How will you raise it in three days?

But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body.

Jesus was saying, if you want to meet with God, don't go to the temple.

Come to me.

When Jesus died, the curtain blocking access to God's presence, the curtain that blocked the entrance was torn in two.

The doorway to the presence of God was open to anyone and everyone who came trusting in the name of Jesus.

No matter who you are from, no matter the color of your skin, the color of your eyes, your language, your accent, no matter what you have done, no matter what has been done to you, no matter what you have failed to do, nothing can keep you from God's promises.

Nothing can keep him from dwelling within you when you're united to Christ through repentance and faith.

And when we come to him, confessing our sins and receiving him as Savior and Lord of our life, he builds us into a new temple.

We are God's dwelling place.

Paul told the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3, do you not know that you, and this is a plural you, so do you not know that y'all are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells in you all.

God's temple is holy, and you all are that temple.

So I think the best possible place for us to look as I close is in Ephesians 2, which just wraps this up beautifully.

And I'm gonna just kind of go through some of these verses.

So if you have your Bible and you want to look at Ephesians 2, I'm gonna unpack this a bit, beginning in Ephesians 2, verse 13.

Ephesians 2:13

Paul told the church in Ephesus, now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

And then Ephesians 2, 17.

He, Jesus, he came and preached peace to you.

You who were far off, meaning the Gentiles, which means almost everyone in this room, unless you're of Jewish descent, we are mostly Gentiles, he came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near, meaning the Jews.

For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father.

You see, everyone can have access to the same God, the same access, not because of who you were born to, where you were born, but because of rebirth in Christ.

And when you enter the kingdom through Christ alone, knowing that it is a free gift and you did not deserve it, then it changes the way you view those who are outside of the family of God.

Because if you didn't deserve it, then you can't hold them to some higher standard.

It begins to give you this security and courage in your father's love and your identity as his child that makes you more courageous and bold in talking to others and loving others, to love strangers because we remember where we came from, that we were lost sheep.

Jesus came to find lost sheep, spiritual refugees, rebel sons, widows, orphans, strangers, and to make us the children of God.

So continuing in Ephesians 2, verse 19.

Ephesians 2:19

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, the cornerstone of God's household.

Brothers and sisters, we are related to one another spiritually, so we live in the same house.

But it's not the temple in Jerusalem.

Temple in Jerusalem is gone, and it's not this building, and it's not going to be our new building on Braddock Road.

There is no longer a geographic focus for the worship of God.

So it's not St.

Peter's Basilica in Rome, it's not Notre Dame.

The most beautiful building on earth cannot contain the household of God.

The shocking thing is that God chooses to dwell in you and me.

Ephesians 2, 21.

Christ Jesus Himself is the cornerstone in whom the whole structure is being joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

You see, we are being built together into a dwelling place for God.

God lives in us individually and then joins us together in Christ.

But to be a complete household, we need other people.

We're not a bunch of bricks scattered around a field.

We are a household.

And to be a complete household, we need people that represent the fullness of the image of God.

People of different backgrounds, cultures, languages, skin colors, accents, different abilities.

We need the diversity of the image of God to be a complete body of Christ.

And so united as the family of God, we worship together in his house, we pray together, and we feast together.

We're going to gather around his table and let our elder brother Jesus feed us at the Lord's table in a few minutes, as the family of God that eats dinner together.

So before we feast, before we worship him again, let's pray.

Jesus, our good shepherd.

Jesus, our high priest, Jesus, you are the word of God.

You are the gate.

You are the door.

You are the way, the truth, and the light.

You laid down your life in order to open access to your father's household, to anyone.

And we, each one of us, were among the lost peoples of this world.

But you moved toward us.

You came to us with a salvation that only you could bring, and that we simply receive.

And so thank you, good shepherd, that you came and found us, and now that we are sons and daughters with full access to the King, our Father.

Help us remember that nonetheless we are strangers in this world, and this is not our home.

So help us welcome others as we were welcomed by you, to seek out the lost, the stranger, the one who is different than us, yet made in your image.

Holy Spirit, help us carry the gospel to the end of our block, to the end of our county, to the ends of the earth.

For our good and for your glory.

Amen.