The Temple Contrast | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

I want to uh we're in a series right now called Symbols, and what we're doing is we're taking some concepts that we see in the Old Testament that you you may be familiar with them conceptually, but we're taking a deeper look at them, not only the what, but but the why, and then uh doing what we should always do anytime you discover something in the Old Testament to carry it through into the New Testament, because there are some things that kind of uh start one way and then have kind of a shift in how we ought to think about it as it relates to uh things that happen in the New Testament.

And then certainly all of that work is worth doing because then it helps us know what we're supposed to do with it, uh how it applies to our lives.

And so that's what we're gonna do today.

We're going to actually be looking at the temple.

We're gonna look at the temple.

Um, okay, so one of the things I want to give you kind of a nugget that would just sort of help you in your Bible study.

I think all of us have opened up, particularly the Old Testament before, and you're looking at it, going, hey, I don't exactly know what to do with this.

Clearly, it's written in a different time and place, and so we want to handle it right.

And it's like, so you know, what are what do I do with this thing?

And and um one of the things I found that's helped me uh quite a bit to get to what I believe to be the best interpretation of a lot of these different texts is to uh study the historical nature of not only Israel in okay, we talk about the ancient Near East, we're talking about um, you know, thousands, thousands of years BC, so two 1500, 2000 BC.

You not only have the nation of Israel, but you have surrounding nations around them.

And the more, I know that doesn't necessarily sound to some of you like the most exciting uh homework assignment to go study the ancient Near East, but the more that you do that, the more it's gonna help you to understand some of the things that you're reading uh in the Old Testament, because uh some of it are things that did not originate with the children of Israel, with the nation of Israel, or with the Bible.

So, like, for example, if I brought up the flood narrative, you'd be like, Well, yeah, I know what that is.

That's that's Noah, right?

But the the nation of Israel wasn't the first one to have a flood narrative.

We we bring up the creation narrative, Adam and Eve, and and we're like, Yeah, I know all about Adam and Eve, but the children of Israel, the nation of Israel, we're not the first ones that have a creation narrative or a cosmology.

These are things that had been around for a while.

And so, in fact, if you uh study people that talk about the Bible historically, a lot of them will bring that up.

They'll say, Well, you know, Noah wasn't unique to the Bible.

All of the ancient Near Eastern nations had theologies and beliefs around these things.

So, one of the things that's important is the claims that the Bible's making, or the point that the Old Testament authors, if we're talking about Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, we're talking about Moses, the points that he's making theologically is often in the contrast.

Like if you were to take the Mesopotamian, the ancient Mesopotamian or Egyptian or Canaanite theologies, and you were to put them next to the things that you see in the Old Testament, you would see a lot of similarities.

But often the point that Moses is making or the author is making is in the contrast.

They already know the stories, they've heard these stories, and and they attribute them to theological beliefs or beliefs about God.

And often it's in the difference between these narratives or these stories in the Old Testament that Moses is making a statement about who God really is.

And so that that's one of the things we want to continue to keep in mind that I think helps us to make sure that we're getting, you know, picking up what the author is putting down.

Um, what I want to do today is I want to do that with the temple.

I want to look at the concept not only of the temple as it appears in the Bible to the nation of Israel, but I want to look at the attitude of the surrounding nations.

And I think what we're gonna do is learn in the contrast between those temples and the temple that God ordered up, some really important lessons, all right, three in particular.

All right, let's start with the idea of temples, right?

Uh the nation of Israel ends up with a temple, they build their first temple about a thousand BC, but there had been temples long before that, like I mentioned, these other early civilizations, like the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians.

And of course, we know the children of Israel, before they went to the promised land, they had spent a few hundred years in Egypt.

So they had been exposed to temples and theologies, and so they weren't the first one to have a temple.

Uh when you look at the the beliefs of the ancient Near East and how it related to the gods, we're gonna learn uh a few things of what they believed and then what God makes sure to create a distinction in who he really is.

So let's start with uh three lessons that we learn in the temple contrast.

The first one is that they believed that the gods demanded a temple because they needed humans to sustain them.

Okay, so if if if you did take the time to look at these ancient Near Eastern theologies, their beliefs about the gods or the deities, of course, they were polytheistic, meaning that they believed in all kinds of gods.

They didn't believe in one God.

They believed that there were a whole bunch of gods that had sort of relationships to each other, that liked and disliked each other, they had myths around clashes and conflicts that they had, which resulted in things that ended up on the earth.

But here's what they believed about the gods.

They believed that the gods needed humans to sustain them.

This is gonna sound a little comical, but it's true in terms of what they believed.

They believed that the gods slept through the night and they needed humans to wake them up.

So it was they created rituals around waking the gods up and then making food sacrifices and clothing sacrifices because the gods needed them to clothe them and to feed them.

And so their belief was hey, look, there's a cosmos out there, there's uh the sky and the heavens, and they're like, you know, we we know that uh there are natural disasters, there are droughts, there are all kinds of things that we have no control of in the cosmos.

And their belief was if we take care of the gods, if we wake them up, clothe them, and feed them, uh, then they will ultimately take care of the cosmos on our behalf.

Um, a lot of their origin stories of what they believe that the gods created people, not because they loved people, but simply because they needed people.

They needed, they had the earth and they needed somebody to do the work.

And and so, in fact, some of the gods despised people, they hated people, but they just created them because they needed someone to get the work done that they didn't want to do.

So, within their theologies, they believe that the gods ordered the temples, that the temples existed, that the gods essentially said, Hey, you make my house first, if you make a temple for me, I'll establish your nation, I'll establish your kingdom, uh, and I'll take care of the cosmos.

And so that was a big part of their belief.

Um, okay, so if you look at the nation of Israel, um they leave Egypt while they're in the wilderness.

They they establish what's called the tabernacle.

And the tabernacle was their version of a temple, and God gave them specific instructions on how to design it.

But it was not impressive to look at.

If you went to Egypt, you would see these opulent temples with all of the greatest materials, and in many ways, you would naturally assume, well, that is a picture of the magnitude and the majesty of God.

And then you have the nation of Israel who is in the wilderness wandering around, and the presence of God, their temple is a tent, it is a temporary structure, it's a tabernacle.

And they just they designed the whole thing under the order of God to design it to, with all kinds of symbolism back to the Garden of Eden.

We talked a lot about the Garden of Eden.

What's the point of the Garden of Eden?

Well, the Garden of Eden describes the world the way God intended it.

Right relationship with God, right relationship with yourself, and right relationship to the world around you.

So if we went like item by item, foot by foot, through the tabernacle, you would see that it's a call back to Eden.

It's a place that you would go to do really three main things.

One, it was a place for atonement, that you deal with your mistakes, you deal with your sin.

We we don't want to wallow in shame, and we certainly don't want to spiral out.

So this is where I go to deal with that.

Second, it's a place of gratitude, which is your highest state of mind.

You you're your highest place is not in more abundance.

It's not in having things you don't need, it's not in having more stuff or bigger and better, it's in gratitude.

If you've ever been to the place where you're just sitting there and you're looking at the people in front of you and you're looking at the view that God gave you, and you're counting your blessings, that is the best of the best of the best of the best.

It really doesn't matter where you're at, if it's beautiful to you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And anytime, especially when I start feeling like everybody's against me, and woe is me, and I can't catch a break, and I got it worse than everybody else.

I'm going into the pessimism attitude, right?

I come to God's presence, make sacrifices, not because God needs me to clothe him or wake him up or give him food.

Okay, the idea of me doing that when I make those sacrifices, it fills my heart with a state of appreciation and gratitude that takes me where I need to be.

God doesn't need me to say thank you.

I do.

God doesn't need God's not insecure without my gratitude, going, you know, when's somebody gonna thank me around here?

All right, I need to be in a state of gratitude.

God set the whole tabernacle up to get us to that place.

And then the third element is of a place of guidance.

All right, sometimes we come to the presence of God.

God, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say, I don't know which way to go, I don't know what it what to do next.

And so he guides us.

And that's why the tabernacle, all right, was a mobile structure.

In a sense, it would feel like it was a lesser temple than the Egyptians because those uh temples were uh impressive, they they demanded respect, and they were stationary.

But the tent of God was moving with the people.

In fact, when it describes Jesus in the book of John, uh John chapter 1, verse 14, it said, The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

John 1:14

When it says made his dwelling among us, it's it used the term tabernacle.

It harkens back to the tabernacle language.

So he's it's saying like Jesus was like the tabernacle who wasn't just stationary in one place, but he moved with us.

And so uh that was their belief.

Um, okay, here's what's interesting.

So if you keep following the tabernacle is a mobile structure, eventually they go into the promised land and they establish a nation and a government and a king.

And when David becomes king, they still have a tabernacle.

But David now has seen other temples, and in a sense, he's like, Well, if they made this temple to this false God and that false God, we ought to have a temple for our one true God.

And he says, You know, and David had just built a palace, and he goes, This is weird that I have a nicer house than God does.

And so he says, I want to build a temple to God.

And so he declares he's gonna build a temple to God, and it's gonna be more beautiful than anything you've ever seen.

And God speaks through the prophet Nathan.

He says, Hey, go tell David this.

So look at this, 2 Samuel 7:4.

2 Samuel 7:4

It says, But that night the word of the Lord came to Nathan saying, Go and tell my servant David, this is what the Lord says.

Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in?

I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites out of Egypt to this day.

I've been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling.

Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, why have you not built me a house of cedar?

Now then, tell my servant David, this is what the Lord Almighty says.

Don't forget, my man, I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock, and appointed you ruler over my people Israel.

I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all of your enemies before you.

If you skip down to verse 11, look at this.

The Lord declares to you that the Lord Himself will establish a house for you.

You don't build me a house, I'll build you a house.

He said, When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, when you're dead and gone, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you.

Not only will I protect you, I'll protect your son.

And he said, Your own flesh and blood, I will establish his kingdom.

If you keep reading, God promises to not only to look after, but to correct David's son and to never withdraw his love from David's son.

So now what do we have here?

We have a contrast between the ancient Near Eastern uh theology that the gods were needy, that the gods needed people to clothe them, and that they demanded, they demanded a temple.

Again, anybody reading this at this time or hearing this would have absolutely caught the distinction between God who says, you know, I kind of like my primitive structure, I kind of like dwelling among my people, I kind of like being on the move and not confined to one place.

And and so David says, Well, I I want to make this opulent uh space, and God says, Well, I didn't ask for it.

Uh, if you keep uh going, you're gonna see that uh eventually, eventually that they will um they they will build a temple.

Solomon will will eventually build a temple, but God made his statement to David, and essentially what he's doing is announcing himself as self-sufficient, that God is self-sufficient, and um uh we're gonna see this actually if you fast forward into the book of Acts, chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Um, the apostle Paul is in Athens, and he he has an audience with civic leaders and philosophers, and of course, again at that time there were temples everywhere, and they have this one temple.

Most of them, the temples were identified by the God, they had an image of the God, but they're at this temple in Acts 17, the temple to the unknown God in Athens.

And and so they're they they acknowledge, okay, we have all these gods figured out, but there's this one God that we don't we can't figure out.

So we're we don't even know what to call him.

We don't know what image to put in there, but we're just gonna make a temple to the unknown God.

And Paul says, perfect.

This is perfect.

He's like, this is the best theological lesson you're ever gonna get.

He's like, I don't fully, I can't fully tell you everything about that God, but I do know a little bit about him.

And he says in Acts 17, 24, he is the God who made the world and everything in it.

Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, and human hands can't serve his needs, for he has no needs.

He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need.

So the understanding here that we have is that the temple wasn't constructed, all right, so that uh for us to meet God's needs.

The temple was constructed for God to meet ours, to meet us in our place where we need uh grace, to meet us in our place where we need to reestablish our identity, to come to a place of gratitude when I'm feeling low, to go to a place of direction when I'm feeling lost.

And so uh this is very important for us to understand.

God is self-sufficient, all right.

So let's look at the contrast.

The original belief is they believe the gods demanded a temple because they they needed humans to sustain them, all right.

But here's what we believe God is self-sufficient.

We don't worship to supply his lack, but to acknowledge his fullness.

We don't worship him to supply his lack, but to acknowledge his fullness.

Could it be that the reason that God wants you in his presence or with an awareness of him isn't just for him but for you?

For me to be reacquainted with who I am, for me to be calibrated to my purpose, for me to discover and for you to discover the gifts that God's given you and and and to have your need met and to connect with God, not because he's needy, but because he's generous.

Uh the second contrast is they believe that the temples contained an image, or I'm sorry, their temples contained an image of the gods in the center.

So, okay, so if you if we could get in a time machine and go back to Egypt or go to Cain uh Canaan or go to Mesopotamia, you would see temples everywhere and a whole bunch of different gods in these different places.

Um there would be an image of that god at the center.

And sometimes the gods were had a gender, so it'd be a male or female god, or uh, for example, like in the temples to Baal, Baal was presented as a male, but he was always riding a bull, and there was like a a um basically something about the bull that represented um power, represented blessing, represented prosperity, virility, fertility.

And so um within these different places, the image of that God was contained in the imagery of the image or of the graven image.

And this is why in the book of Exodus, when God is setting them free from Egypt, look what he look what God says in Exodus 20, verse 4.

Exodus 20:4

He says, You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens and on the earth or in the sea.

Now I want to be clear about this because I I think sometimes it's a little confusing.

It almost feels like God's saying, Hey, don't make an idol to Baal or Asherah or whatever, which He does command them to not worship those other gods.

But it's more than that.

He's saying, Don't make an image of him.

Don't make an image of me, he's saying.

If you look at the story where Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai, Ten Commandments comes down, you remember they made a golden calf.

That golden calf wasn't an altar or an idol to Baal, it wasn't an idol to a false god.

What they were doing was taking what they had learned in Egypt about creating these images of these gods, and they were using all of the imagery of the bull or the calf of blessing and power and virility and fertility and all this, and they were making that calf as an image of Yahweh.

And so God says, Don't make an image of me.

Now we know in the Bible there are many, many, many pictures of God, but the point that he's making is it's a mistake.

You cannot reduce me to one image.

In this image.

And just like anything, in one image, your eye can take it all in, your understanding can take it all in, and yet what God is forbidding them to do that is even in their attempt to honor him with the graven image, it was a mistake because they were accidentally, in a misguided way, they were reducing him, and so they're setting them on the same track that Baal was on.

And he says, I don't want you to think that your eye can take me in completely.

I don't want you to think that your brain can contain me completely.

There's not one animal, there's not one concept, there's not one picture.

He is so many pictures.

So the Bible is full of pictures of God, but no one picture contains him completely.

Um look at these two verse uh two different passages.

So in Deuteronomy, which is Moses going painfully through the history of the nation of Israel and trying to drive the lessons home to the next generation, he says in uh Deuteronomy 4 15, he said, Be very careful.

You did not see the Lord's form on the day he spoke to you from the heart of the fire of Mount Sinai.

So do not corrupt yourselves by making an idol in any form, whether man or woman, animal on the ground, bird in the sky, small animal that scurries along the ground, or fish in the deepest sea.

And when you look up in the sky and see the sun, moon, and stars, all the forces of heaven, don't be seduced into worshiping them.

The Lord your God gave them to all the peoples of the earth.

All right?

Now, hold that in your mind, and then look at Romans 120.

So the Apostle Paul says this since for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

So, in a sense, okay, look at what Moses says.

Moses says, Don't look and reduce God to just the moon.

Don't reduce God to just this animal.

Don't reduce God to just this person.

But Paul says, no, we can't reduce God to a single thing, but he said, Don't lose the opportunity to look up, look down, look everywhere, north, south, east, west, everywhere you see God's creation, he has placed his image in the world all around you.

It's not wrong to see God in all kinds of areas.

What's wrong is to reduce God to a single area.

As I was thinking about this, I really I I I I think it's going better than I thought it was gonna go in this conversation, honestly, because I was a little worried because I I I feel like what I what what I can see here and here, uh, I I was gonna have a hard time getting out of here, and and and I think it's starting to go better than I thought.

But This is what I was thinking about my life, and when I was uh in you know 20 years old, I gave my life to Christ and I felt called you know to serve him with my life.

I didn't exactly know what that meant, but I had this overwhelming sense that I didn't know God well enough.

And so I take the Bible and I just dive into it and I start tearing it up.

And for 25 years, I've been in God's Word every day, and I've been trying to learn all the time, but I almost had this obsessive, compulsive fear that I didn't know enough, and that God was always a little disappointed with me that I didn't know more.

And so I start studying super hard, and what I'm looking for is I want to be able to know God, and my attempt to know God was to be able to define God.

And so, in my attempt to define God, now I'm I'm studying dogma and I'm looking into principles and I'm I'm I'm looking at doctrines and I'm trying to find constructs, theological constructs, and and so with all of that, with probably all the best intentions, at least the best I knew how to have, I went in and tore into the Bible as deeply as I could to try to learn everything.

And I didn't want to be able to have somebody ask a question I couldn't answer.

I didn't want someone to make an argument I couldn't re-but.

And I wanted to have this sense uh that humans have a sense of certainty that I know God and I know what's true and what's not true.

And I think what I did on accident was I tried to take God like they would try to take and and and place him as an image to be able to look at him and see everything and to know everything and to contain him in my brain.

It's like I was trying to contain God to the temple.

I was trying to contain God's and and so what when God says, look, I don't make an image of me, don't reduce me to one thing, okay.

What what is he doing?

He's saying, You you cannot reduce me.

It's not that you can't see me everywhere, but you can't see all of me any one place.

And I'm on the move.

I'm I'm I am a tabernacle, I am on the move.

And over time, it's like I've spent all this time trying to fit God into my framework only to realize that that was a reduction of God.

And so while I hold on to my framework with one hand and the other hand, I blow the lid off and go, God, you're so much bigger than my theology.

God, you're so much bigger than my doctrine.

And that's okay.

That's okay.

That doesn't mean doctrine doesn't matter.

That doesn't mean Bible study doesn't matter.

That doesn't mean theological constructs don't matter.

Just don't think you can reduce God to your construct.

I've listened to people, I've listened to people that probably couldn't hang with me in a debate on the Bible who have found God in a walk uh through nature.

I I've talked to people, I have a friend who's a businessman, and he goes, Greg, I gotta tell you, he goes, There's something about when I'm like doing deals and I'm putting stuff together and I can see stuff, other people, I really feel like God's showing me stuff to bring things together for everyone's good in this whole thing.

He goes, I never feel closer to God than when I'm doing that.

It just feels like why he put me here.

I watch people who write songs, whether or not they go platinum, there's something that they're learning and they're discovering and they're seeing about God.

It's like it's like Romans 1.20.

It's it's like all throughout creation we find layers of God.

There are some of you who have been able to articulate and debate theologically, but you saw something in God the first time you held that child, or when you held your grandchild, or or or something, right?

Like I remember the movie Chariots of Fire, this guy who is a runner, he's a gifted runner.

And he said, When I run, when I just physically run, I feel his pleasure.

God made me to do this.

And so just be careful that throughout your constructs and your learning, that we don't create idols, not just physical idols, mental idols, theological idols.

Anything that tries to reduce God to a single thing, right, is a construct.

Sorry, I got going, lost my notes.

So we see God everywhere, all throughout the world.

And then also, of course, there's some of these beautiful passages about the image of God that start all the way in the first page of your Bible.

Genesis 1.27 says, God created human beings in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female.

In 1 Corinthians 3, 16 and 17, Paul says, Don't you know?

By the way, he's talking to a group of people who were tearing each other apart and not thinking twice about it.

And he said, Don't you know that you are yourselves the temple?

Okay, so they they they thought the temple was a place they went to, and they had this us versus them mentality, and they were squaring off.

And he says, Don't you know that you yourselves are the temple of God, God's temple, and God's spirit dwells in your midst?

If anyone destroys God's temple, so he's giving them imagery of somebody destroying the temple, God will destroy that person, for God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

You are sacred.

So the contrast is that their temples contained in an image of the gods in the center.

And the contrast in our belief is we believe God can't be reduced to a single image or picture.

We see his image in all of creation, but especially in ourselves and each other.

Uh the third contrast is they believe that the temples and images localize the presence of the deity.

So, in other words, they believe that these celestial beings that were controlling the cosmos, if we make them a temple that they like and we put their image in the temple, then they will be localized.

In other words, that that will be where they are.

So, of course, the closer I am to the temple, the closer I am to that God.

And if I wake them up and clothe them and feed them and meet their needs, um, then they will they'll be happy with me.

And I'll be able to not only protect myself from their wrath, but I'll be able to wield their power.

Um, okay, so this is this is pretty cool.

I'm gonna give you kind of a crash course in the last few minutes here of the history of the temple.

So you have the tabernacle, David wants to build a temple.

God said, Uh you don't build me a house, I'll build you a house.

And then his son Solomon is the one that eventually built a temple in like 959 BC.

So it was a round up to a thousand, about a thousand BC, he builds the temple.

And when he's dedicating the temple in 1 Kings 8, 22, it says, Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in front of the whole assembly of Israel, and he spread out his hands toward heaven, and he said, Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below, you who keep your covenant of love with your servants, who can who continue wholeheartedly in your way.

Skip down to verse 27.

He says, But will God really dwell on earth?

The heavens, even the highest heaven, and he's talking about the skies, right?

He's looking up at the stars, the heavens, even the highest heaven, outer space, cannot contain you.

How much less this temple I have built.

So Solomon nails it, right?

If you look in 1 Kings 8, you're gonna see in 1 Kings all of just the beautiful.

I mean, they they basically make the most beautiful temple you can build at the time.

Cedar from Lebanon, they have gold, silver, all these precious stones.

It is unbelievable.

This is at the pinnacle of the nation of Israel.

They are prosperous, they have all these international alliances, they have wealth, they have military power, and now they have a temple that looks like it fits.

And so this is this amazing temple.

And Solomon says, guys, don't forget, as beautiful as this temple is, this temple cannot contain God.

Well, if you go 500 years after that, so about 586 BC, the nation has gone through civil war.

They've divided in two, and because they're fractured, they're vulnerable, and so now the other empires come and essentially drag them away into exile.

And when they do that, they destroy Solomon's temple.

So this beautiful temple now has been destroyed, people are crushed.

And when they return 70 years later in the southern kingdom, they return 70 years later to build a new temple.

They are no longer an independent nation, they are nowhere near their prime, they're a province of the Persian Empire, and so they come back and they build a new temple, but it's like a shell of the first Solomon's temple.

In fact, because it was 70 years later, some of the older folks that remember the original temple are sick about it.

They're grieved, they're crying, they're like, oh, when our temple was destroyed, we longed for the day to rebuild it.

And this is our temple, this is awful.

And and only the young people were excited because they're like they didn't know any better, but the older people knew better, and they're like, okay, so now you have 500 years, what we call the second temple period.

The second temple period.

Um, at the second temple, by the way, when that happens in Isaiah, Isaiah 66 is dated around the time that the second temple was being dedicated, and this is what Isaiah says in Isaiah 66, 1 and 2.

This is what the Lord says.

Heaven is my home and the earth is my footstool.

Where is the house you would build for me?

Where will my resting place be?

Has not my hand made all these things?

And so they came, and so they came into being, declares the Lord.

These are the ones I look on with favor, those who are humble and contrite in spirit and who tremble at my word.

This is really profound because I think we can all relate to sometimes there's something in our lives that was our pinnacle.

And then you lose it, and there's something built, and it feels like it doesn't add up.

And so here they are, they're so caught up in the optics, they're so caught up in the temple, and they've made the temple into something it was never supposed to be.

And so you have Isaiah essentially reaching back to the words of Solomon and going, Hey, that beautiful temple that that you used to worship in, okay, that was never contained the presence of God.

He said, The earth is his footstool, the heavens are his throne.

So, regardless of whether it's at the pinnacle or feel like it's just a shell, he said, God's not contained, the magnitude of God's presence, the magnitude of God's power is not contained in how nice the structure is that we make.

And so if you fast forward, and I'll bring it in for a landing here, if you fast forward, you have now 500 years of the second temple period, and Herod becomes the king of the Jews in 20 BC.

So imagine you're part of the nation, you know historically Solomon's temple was our pinnacle, and now we have this temple, it's not very nice for 500 years.

Herod shows up and sees an opportunity to essentially gain the polit political allegiance of the the Jews and to become king of the Jews.

He says, Here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna do a building project, and I'm gonna expand the temple and I'm gonna make it more beautiful than it's ever been.

And he starts in 20 BC and does a building project that literally goes to like 60 AD.

Well, do the math from 20 BC to 60 AD.

Do you know anybody that lived during that time?

Jesus.

All right.

So when Jesus shows up, he shows up in the middle of their temple expansion.

And of course, think about this.

This is more than just a building project to these people, this is a return to glory.

This is Solomon's temple.

We're not only can we get past this little primitive structure we have here, we're gonna go bigger and better than ever.

And so you can see why Jesus upset some folks when he said, tear it down, I'll rebuild it in three days.

They're like, We've been working on this for 40 plus years and we're not done.

What are you talking about?

You can see why it seemed like blasphemy, you can see why it seemed like he was degrading or or speaking against God.

He goes, he says in Matthew, that there's one here who's greater than the temple.

And what he's leading them into is an understanding that the temple has taken over, it's taken on a personality in your mind.

It's actually become this human construct has become something it's not supposed to be.

And what Jesus is showing is that what he came to do is the ultimate fulfillment.

This is why in Hebrews, when it talks about the high priest who would go on the day of atonement once a year to bring the sins of the people with the sacrifice of blood, he says, Jesus, who is our high priest, goes in our atonement, and it's his own blood that he takes.

So all of the things that the tabernacle and the temple and the first temple and the second temple and and Herod's temple and everything was supposed to deliver, Jesus himself delivered.

He said, There's one here.

The temple can't deliver this for you, only I can.

And friend, may we never forget it is really all about Jesus and we are his temple.

Amen.

I end with this two things.

One is for the folks that I know some of you are visiting and uh you may uh never come back, especially after this long sermon.

Uh but for those of you that this is your church, I just want to calibrate it.

So you probably already have connected the dot, but I want to connect this dot.

We're in the middle of a building project right now.

May we never forget that that why we do what we do.

May we always remember that it's all about Jesus.

May we never forget that this isn't about square footage.

This isn't about the materials that we build it with.

It's not about how many seats it has.

It's about ultimately reaching people for Jesus.

It's about making space for people uh to find Jesus.

This is a place where people find atonement and forgiveness.

This is a place where people find guidance.

This is a place where people restore gratitude and are able to make sacrifices of praise.

This is what we do.

May we not lose sight and think it's about a building.

And may we never forget we are the body of Christ.

What a waste it would be for us to go and build square footage and think that it's all about what happens, only happens here.

What happens here is we meet God and He ignites something that goes out there.

And so everywhere you go, the temple goes.

You are the temple.

And so let's keep all of this in mind why we're doing what we're doing.

But the the second thing is this in light of this reminder or this belief that you are the temple, is there anywhere that that belief, when you have the discipline to think about and calibrate to that, would make you rethink or redo some things in your life?

I have to think a consistent reminder that I'm the temple would deal with some of my selfishness, would deal with some of my self-loathing, would deal with some of my insecurities.

Some of you have thought so lowly of yourself that you've started to allow certain thoughts and behaviors to overtake you.

It's caused an insecurity where you've allowed people to treat you any kind of way.

You've thought that you're you're you're not worthy of anything good, of any blessing.

And when you start to be reminded, don't you know you are the temple?

You are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And I think if I start to calibrate myself to that, and you do, it'll probably start to make me think differently about myself.

And then also to think about what I am doing with my body.

Well, what I am doing with my internal environments, the things that are going into my eyes, the things that are floating around in my brain, the behaviors that I'm doing, whether they're seen or unseen, right?

Is there anything in light of this idea that you and I are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so is the person next to you?

Maybe there are some conflicts that could be resolved if I go work it out seeing the image of God in them as well as in myself.

So let's take a moment and bring this to the Lord.

God, we come to you in Jesus' name.

We thank you how through the contrast of the ancient Near Eastern temples and your temple and your tabernacle, we don't just see the difference in facilities, we see the difference in theology of who you really are.

That you're a self-sufficient God who wants a relationship with us, not because you need us, because you want us.

Not simply for what we can give to you, but Lord, that you can meet our needs, whatever those may be.

So I pray for my brothers and sisters today, maybe some who are in need of your grace and atonement, maybe for some that are in need of your guidance.

Lord, I pray that your word would be a lamp to their feet, a light to their path.

Lord, for those maybe who have become so overwhelmed by what's going wrong in their lives, Lord, that you would meet them in their sacrifice of praise, to establish a heart of gratitude, to lift them to their best place.

And so, Lord, we we thank you, God, that you are so much bigger than our human constructs, both physical and mental.

Lord, I pray that you would give us a sense of peace around the fact that we cannot contain you, but everywhere we look we see you.

And so, Lord, we uh pray that you would help us as the body of Christ and as the temple of God to be aware of that and to see, Lord, what things we need to rethink and redo and to change.

Help us to be that, Lord, for such a time as this in the community that you've put us in for your glory and honor in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.