Where Heaven And Earth Overlap

John 2, 13 through 22.

God bless me.

It was nearly time for the Jew gotta collect to myself.

It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.

So Jesus went to Jerusalem.

In the temple area, he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices.

He also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money.

Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the temple.

He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers' coins over the floor, and turned over their tables.

Then, going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, Get these things out of here.

Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.

Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the scriptures.

Passion for God's house will consume me.

But the Jewish leaders demanded, What are you doing?

If God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.

All right, Jesus replied, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

What?

They exclaimed, It has taken forty six years to build this temple, and you can rebuild it in three days.

But when Jesus said this temple, he meant his own body.

After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the scriptures and what Jesus had said.

This is the word of the Lord.

Welcome to Christ Community Church.

And um, well, lad, can you believe I did that?

Lordy.

Suck it, you're sorry.

That is not as easy as it looks.

No, it's not.

Um thank you to everyone that helped um present all this to us today.

I'm grateful.

I really am.

I'm grateful you're here.

Happy.

Our friend in Texas said, happy as heck to be here.

Yes, happy as heck to be.

Happy as heck to be here.

Um I said a couple of weeks ago that you know this is uh this is our last month here as far as pastoring this church.

And so that's four Sundays.

And um uh I I thought and thought and prayed and prayed about what the Lord wanted us to talk about for those four Sundays.

And um I say that just to communicate to you for me to, for us to focus on what we're gonna focus on today.

Uh I'm using one of those bullets.

And that means this is really important to me.

Um and I want us to really think about how it, how God wants it to impact our lives, okay?

Well, I'm gonna put you on the spot.

This is not something we've rehearsed.

Which always makes me just a little bit nervous.

I want to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna uh give you a little quiz kind of a thing, I guess.

I want you to we're gonna we're gonna look at some words, two words in particular, that are contrasted in the Bible.

So to get us there, uh I want you to tell me the the second word.

When you hear the word salt, salt and pepper.

Okay.

Okay.

Bride and groom.

Okay.

I'm so tempted to throw the curve ball in there, but I'm not going to.

Please don't.

Romeo and Juliet.

Okay.

Bacon and eggs.

Okay.

Willie and Wayland.

Yes.

All right.

Bad.

Bread and butter.

Okay.

Chocolate and beyond this game line church.

God for instance.

You lying dog.

Pray for my wife.

He wanted me to say one.

Red wine.

That's what she tells me.

Chocolate and red wine always go together.

Um, how about in the Bible?

Word, pairs of words that we always associate.

Um, a lot of them are names, right?

That's that's the problem.

But Cain and Adam and Eve.

Okay.

How about milk and honey?

Oh, thank you.

Good.

Uh Sodom and Gomorrah.

Bread and wine.

Okay, yeah, bread and wine.

You know, that's even better.

I put bread and fish because I was thinking about it.

But no, no, no.

That's that's even better.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's a there's a zillion of them.

Um just keep that in the back of your mind as we proceed.

Um, well, let me go on and go do this.

Uh, I'll go and just jump into it.

Um, heaven and earth.

That's because we've been talking about it.

Dang it.

Hell.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

We'd not rehearse this.

I think most people, when they hear the word heaven, the word that they associate with that in a pair, heaven and hell.

If you got a phone and you cannot and you can't, thank you, Rita.

Um, sometime Google that.

You won't find it.

The Bible never says heaven and hell.

It always says heaven and earth.

It says that hundred, not I say hundreds, a hundred times.

Different contexts, different ideas, different images, but it's heaven and earth.

It never once does the Bible say heaven and hell.

Now, it talks about heaven and it talks about hell, but it does not associate them in the same sentence, in the same phrase.

So I want you to think about that because that's what we're going to talk about today, is not heaven and hell, but we're going to talk about heaven and earth.

Um, you ever think much about heaven?

Is that something that you ponder often?

Um I didn't, to be quite honest with you.

That was not something that I spent a lot of time focused on in my life, uh, in my almost 64 years, until my dad and your dad passed away.

And then all of a sudden, it's something that I think about all the time.

What does that mean?

What does that look like?

How does that work?

Um, yeah, when when my dad and and geezer died, that that really got my thoughts on what heaven is gonna mean and look like and how's it gonna work.

Um, as I said, the Bible never, I couldn't find a verse where it associates heaven and hell.

It's always heaven and earth.

Um we say we, you know, somebody dies, they died and they went to heaven.

But that's really poor theology.

The Bible does not communicate that.

What the Bible communicates is that when we, if we're Christians, if we have an intimate personal relationship with Christ, what the Bible would would more accurately communicate is we die and we go to be with the Lord.

Wherever that is, whatever that means, however that works, we don't go to a place.

We go to be with a person.

It's very, if you think about that, that's a very different idea.

Going to a place versus going to be with a person.

Um in Genesis 1 and 2, going back to the very beginning, uh, what we are presented with is this idea that God created the universe, creation, and the the he left the best to last, and he creates Adam and Eve to represent all of humanity, and they live in this place called and described as the garden, and they live with God and they partner with God.

And basically they have been given the responsibility of working with God in subduing and expanding and maintaining all of creation.

That spot, that place where Adam and Eve live in relationship with God, that place is very significant in that it is the place where God's dwelling and creation overlap.

It's a place where the dwelling of God and the dwelling of mankind overlap in this garden.

Um day Adam and Eve remarkably make the decision to tell God no thanks.

We don't want to live in your presence, we don't want to partner with you.

We don't want to play the role of second fiddle, we want to be our own bosses, and God yields to their request, and at that moment, this place of overlap between the dwelling or the habitation of God and the habitation of mankind, they're separated, they're divided.

And in one sense, the rest of the story of the Bible is the story of God reconnecting, uh reuniting.

I know that might not be a word.

That's a good word.

Is that all good?

Okay.

Really, the from Genesis 4 through Revelation 22 is the story of how God fixes that division, that separation that mankind in their rebellion and pride and selfishness had created.

It's God's working of trying to reconnect those two worlds that were originally one, that originally overlapped.

Heaven and earth, now, look around, watch the news, drive through our city, uh, whatever you want to do.

Clearly, God's world and our world today are divided.

But if you look through the scriptures, you'll find, Shirley gave me this word, shadows or glimpses, or little pictures of what that overlap once looked like.

And better, more important, what that overlap one day will look like.

Again, let me give you just one example.

There are many, many, many that run through the Bible, these moments or these places where God's world and people's worlds overlap briefly, or they overlap in limited ways.

Not to the degree that Adam and Eve once experienced and enjoyed with God, but they're little touches, they're little examples of what once was, and bless the Lord, what will once again be.

By example, Exodus 3.

And actually, this place is mentioned three or four other times where you see this overlap.

And I and I was given the privilege with my daughter of going and standing on the top of Mount Sinai.

Uh numerous times in the scriptures, uh, the Bible suggests the best example would be Moses is on Mount Sinai tending to his sheep, and he looks up and he sees this burning bush.

And this is what it says.

Stop, Moses, don't come near here.

Remove your sandals, for this is a holy place.

And in that holy place, the world of Moses and the world of God overlapped.

Just briefly.

And then you see that take place again for Moses many years later, uh, or a number of years later, and then it happens a number of other times as well.

And there's other examples, but I just want to get you, I want us to see that there are places where briefly and with great limitation, this overlap between God's world and man's world, it did and does take place.

The best example, the main example in the scriptures would be the temple.

The temple, uh, the first temple was actually a mobile uh temple called the tabernacle that Moses built, if you will, and then the more permanent temple was the one that Solomon built, but it's the same exact place.

It was a place that God led his people to create, where God's world and their world would overlap.

A place where they could go and experience God.

Was it as good as what Adam and Eve had in the garden?

Of course not.

Will it was it as good as what we're gonna enjoy one day when uh Christ returns?

No, it won't.

But the temple was this place that was set aside for people to go and their world and God's world, be it ever so limited and be it ever so brief, it's where those two worlds would overlap, where they could experience God.

And if you read carefully, the construction of the tabernacle and then the construction of the temple, it was designed and created and built with all this garden imagery.

There's all these trees and vines and fruits and plants and bushes that are built into the very design of both of those structures.

Again, that was intentional to point back to that garden where Adam and Eve really enjoyed intimacy with God, where their world and God's world really did perfectly overlap.

I don't know about you, but those of you that read through the Bible with me, and I hope you do that, greatest thing you'll ever do in your life.

Um of my, I'm not gonna say least favorite books, although it is, but one of the books that's more challenging for those of us that read through the Bible is the book of Leviticus.

The very word creates uh uh just this, ah, I'm at the book of Leviticus.

It's a hard book, okay?

Um, but if you step back from 500 feet and you go up to 30,000 feet, what the book of Leviticus, and not just the book of Leviticus, the entire Old Testament, but it's it's condensed and highlighted in the book of Leviticus, what that book declares is that what caused the division between God and his place and man and their place was people's sin, people's rebellion.

That's what separated those two worlds.

And here's the here's the bad news, but there's good news that quickly follows.

And the bad news is we can't fix those two worlds.

No one of us, in the Bible times or today, can reunite those two worlds ourselves.

We don't have the skill, we don't have the knowledge, we don't have the ability.

Our sin separated those two worlds, ruined that overlap, but we can't fix it.

We can't make it right.

And in fact, the book of Leviticus would suggest that our efforts, our attempts to try to reconnect those two worlds always ends in tragedy.

Case in point was Moses, you know, he had four sons.

Two of his sons thought that they could walk from their place into God's place the way they wanted to.

How'd that work out for them?

It didn't.

And you see through the rest of the Old Testament in particular, attempts by God's people and by other people groups, attempt to try to reconnect this overlap to enter into God's space their way, the way they wanted to, and it always ended in tragedy.

And what the book of Leviticus would also suggest is there's only one solution to this division, this separation, and that is that God, and it's a heavy idea that for many of us we wrestle with, we struggle with, we don't like, and I'm with you, but it doesn't change what's true.

Just because I don't like something, that doesn't mean it's not true, right?

The book of Leviticus would declare that the only solution to this separation of worlds is for an innocent to take the guilt and the punishment of the guilty.

Hence all of the animal sacrifices.

Now they didn't fix the problem permanently, but temporarily, just briefly, an innocent animal could take the guilt and the punishment of a guilty person, and that would allow that person to enter into the presence of God.

He could enter back into that place of overlap, be it ever so briefly.

And that's the story, that's what we see really from Genesis with uh Abel all the way through the end of the Old Testament.

Malachi ends, and that's the story.

And all of a sudden we come to the New Testament, and you see in all four Gospels, I'm gonna focus on John just because John focuses on this.

More than the other three.

But you come to the four gospels, and what you have declared to you is this idea that there came a moment in time where God said, enough's enough.

I am tired of my image bearers, those that I love and long to dwell with, not just briefly for moments, and not just at not even B team X levels of quality.

I want to create a real solution, a permanent solution, a perfect solution so that I can have a relationship with my people like I once had with Adam and Eve.

And so we there came a day when God provided a new way, a better way for people and God to reconnect in this place of overlap between heaven and earth.

He created a new tabernacle, a new temple, if you would.

And here's, let me read to you a verse out of John.

First thing John says in John chapter one, he says, the word became human.

And he tabernacled, made his home with, dwelt with, but the word is tabernacled.

The word became human and tabernacled.

Wonder if that's a coincidence.

That's the word that John chose.

And he tabernacled among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.

Don't you find that ironic that when John, the beloved disciple, presents Jesus, the two things that he declares first?

When you saw Jesus, you saw God doing what?

Dwelling with people, the way he did with Adam and Eve.

And when you saw Jesus, what did you see?

We saw the glory of God.

Well, go back to the Old Testament.

Where did the glory of God dwell?

Where was the glory of God in the Old Testament?

In the temple.

In the temple.

And that's John's way of declaring that God came to dwell with us in the person of Jesus.

Jesus is this new temple, this place where God and people met.

Luke chapter 17, Jesus said this: Don't say God's kingdom is over here, nor say that it's over there.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

For God's kingdom is right in your midst.

Right in your midst.

And what Jesus was saying is, you want to see the kingdom of God?

You want to see this place where heaven and earth overlap?

Look at me.

Come to me.

I'm the place of overlap.

John chapter 14, John says, have I been with you so long, and you still don't know me.

John 14 · chapter mention

To see me is to see the Father.

What Jesus was saying to people, what the gospel writers were declaring to people, to us, is that God sent Jesus to be this place of overlap, this new temple, if you will, this new tabernacle.

Very different.

Very different place.

The old temple, the temple that Jesus' parents brought him to to be dedicated, the temple that uh Jesus went into when his mom and dad were hiking back to uh uh uh where were they going?

To uh uh they going to Bethlehem?

No, to Nazareth, thank you to Nazareth when they were hiking back to Nazareth and Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.

Um that temple, the temple that Jesus went into, August, or pester and drove people out, that that temple was not like the temple that Jesus came to be.

Number one, it was stationary.

It was a temple that stayed in one place, and if you wanted to go to it, you had to go to it, and it was a trek.

It was also a place where if you wanted to see the glory of God, the presence of God, you really couldn't.

Number one, you couldn't do it no matter who you were, because it was hidden behind this wall of curtain.

But it was also a temple that was incredibly limited as to who could even go in.

People that were unclean, people that were children, people that were women, people that had problems, people that were foreigners or Gentiles.

They were not allowed in the temple.

Only a very small select group of people could even enter into this temple.

It was a temple filled with regulations and rules and requirements.

Before you can come in, let's see who you are.

And let me give you a list of things that you've got to do before you're welcome.

But all of a sudden, Jesus comes on the scene.

This new temple.

And rather than the temple being a place where people, certain people could go, what you see is this new temple, Jesus Christ.

He's not waiting on people to come to him, he's pursuing.

And who is he pursuing?

Not just a small group of elites.

He's pursuing children and women and Gentiles and the dead and the unclean and the poor and the ignorant.

He's pursuing this is a temple that pursues the very people that the old temple would not welcome.

The New Testament would declare that wherever Jesus was, that was the place of overlap.

Where Jesus was, that was the place where heaven and earth met.

I'd love to take the time, but we don't have the time today.

Thank you for reminding me.

Um, I would love to talk about Jesus was not just the place of overlap, the temple.

He was also the one who offered the sacrifice needed.

He was the high priest, and he was also the Lamb of God.

He was the provision to be offered.

But we don't have time today to get into all that.

What I would read to you is this verse in Ephesians 1.

In Christ, God revealed his mysterious plan to bring unity to all things in heaven and in earth.

One more verse.

Colossians 1.

In Christ, God reconciled all things in heaven and on earth through the blood of Christ when he died on the cross.

I want you to see this.

This is so important.

God created us to live in a world where heaven and earth overlap.

God created us to live in a place where we could experience God and know God and walk with God every day of our lives, and to settle for anything less is a tragedy.

But our independence, our selfishness, our pride, our fear, our greed ruined that intimate relationship.

So God created this model, if you will, this little mini billboard of a temple that he told Moses to build and Solomon to build, so that people could see that there would still, they would understand overlap is possible.

Relationship with God is possible.

Yes, it's a shadow.

Yes, it's something that will never satisfy us because it's so fleeting, it's so brief, it's so temporary, it's so second rate, it's such a so beating.

But at least it helps me understand what is possible.

And so God sends Jesus to be that true temple, that permanent temple, that place of overlap, that place where when I'm with him, I am with God.

I am in this place of overlap, and I can have an intimate relationship with him.

Last point.

Jesus dies, he rises from the grave, and 40 days later, he goes back to be with his father.

Right?

I was careful with my words.

I'm not saying he went back to heaven, he went to sit at the right hand of his father.

Whatever that means, wherever that is, whatever that looks like, and the book of Acts and the rest of the New Testament declares that when Jesus went to be with his father for a period of time, he sent the Holy Spirit to inhabit those that will put their faith and trust in him.

And guess what he calls those that are inhabited by the Spirit of God, the presence of God, the glory of God.

We now are that temple.

We're that place where people can come and see what God is like.

We're that place where people can come and feel what God is like.

We're that place where people can come and hear what God is saying.

And that to me is one of the most life-changing truths in all of Scripture: that the temple that Jesus was for 33 years, He has now given that role to me and to you.

We're that place of overlap.

We're a world that lives in darkness and deception and pain and on and on and on.

A world that longs to know God, to understand God, to hear God, to feel God.

God's plan is for them to be able to come to you and to me and be that place of revelation, of extension.

It's our job to reveal God.

It's our job to extend the kingdom of God.

It's our job to be that place of overlap for our children and our grandchildren and our mates and our neighbors and our coworkers and our friends.

Do we see that?

Do we own that?

Do we embrace that?

This is God's answer to Jesus' prayer, Father, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Let me read to you.

Um you read 1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

No, you read, what did you read?

Okay, let me read this other passage.

Ephesians 2, verses 19 through 22.

Ephesians 2:19–22

Now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners.

You are citizens along with all of God's holy people.

You're members of God's family, and together we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

And the cornerstone of this house is Christ Jesus Himself.

We are carefully joined together in Him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.

Through Him, you Gentiles are also being made a part of this dwelling place where God lives by His Spirit.

We are now places where heaven and earth overlap and where people can go to know and experience God.

I asked Esther to read that story of Jesus cleansing the temple.

You might think, well, what did that have to do with the price of tea in China?

As I read the Gospels, I find it very significant.

And as far as I can tell, Jesus only got really angry one time.

And that's when the temple was allowed to become a place where people were hindered from coming and experiencing Him.

Rather than be in this place that revealed God and welcomed people to know God, a place where people could come and feel God's love and God's wisdom and God's healing and God's joy and God's acceptance.

The temple had become a place where people literally were hindered and blocked and turned away.

And being confronted with that reality, it made Jesus mad.

Loving sweet, sweet little Jesus.

He got mad at the idea that the temple that was designed for one purpose wound up serving another terrible purpose.

And I just want to challenge us today.

You're the temple of God.

I'm the temple of God.

Like it or not, Jesus didn't ask for a vote.

He didn't ask what I felt good about.

He just declares, Larry, Dale, Nancy, Greg, we're the temple of God.

We're that place of overlap.

Like God originally designed the garden to be, where people could walk in his presence on a daily basis and listen to him and talk to him and feel him and experience him and receive from him.

We've now been given that role.

And every place I go, every relationship I engage in, every conversation I have, every decision that I make on how I use my day is going to impact that role, that calling of being the temple of God, that place of overlap.

It's going to impact that positively or negatively.

And I just want us to think.

How are we doing?

How are we doing?

How do people feel about God after being around me?

We're not going to do it perfectly.

Not yet.

But are we trying?

Do we even see that that's the goal?

My um I was gonna get you to share this, but we don't have time.

I just I don't know very many people, starting with me, who get this.

We don't get this.

Free ticket out of hell into heaven?

Thanks.

Sign up, dunk them, put them on the church roll, come to church when you can.

Don't do bad stuff.

Do try to do some good stuff, sir.

Yes, sir.

I'm good.

I'm good.

But that's not the calling of God upon his elect.

That's not what we were created for.

That's not what we were called to do.

We were called to be the literally the habitation of God.

Do we see that and do we own that?

And to be honest with you, I don't leave the presence of very many people and go, dang, I know God better.

Dang, I feel God when I'm, I don't, don't leave.

Don't leave because when I'm with you, I feel God.

I hear God, I receive grace from God.

Don't leave.

I'm ready for most of y'all to leave.

Glad to see you, happy you came.

Bye.

And you feel that way about me.

My bride for most of my life.

She couldn't have written this down like that.

Probably, I don't know, maybe you could.

I don't know that, but I don't.

But my wife, I've seen my wife live this.

She gets up in the morning and I make her some breakfast, and she complains and gets mad and argues with the mirror about her hair and all that.

And I make her some breakfast and I send her out to her school.

And she gets this like most don't.

She goes into this place filled with girls, many of which don't know God.

They've never been around God.

They don't understand God.

But there's something, because they're image-bearers, there's something down in them deep that wants to know God, that wants to experience God, wants to hear God, wants to feel God, wants to receive from God.

And she takes that role of being a temple, a place of overlap.

She takes that very seriously.

And because she does she do it perfectly?

No.

But she owns it and takes it seriously.

And that's a good thing.

I want to be more like that.

I want to be more like that.

And I want us to be more like that.

And by God's grace, we can.

Okay?

We're gonna take the Lord's Supper.

Um Kevin, would you and Lisa come up here on this side for me, please?

Ogan and Laura, would y'all come up here on this side?

We believe, according to the scripture, that Jesus Christ not only was the priest that offered the sacrifice that allowed this overlap to take place as it was originally designed, but he offered his own body as the sacrifice.

He was the place, he was the person, and he was the provision.

All three in one.

He gave his life on that cross.

The innocent for the guilty, the one willing to suffer death so that others could experience life.

We believe that he gave his body and shed his blood to make that possible.

That's what the scriptures teach.

And that's changed our lives.

If that is your testimony, if that is your belief, then I don't invite you to come.

Jesus does.

This is his supper.

And he invites you to come and take that which represents his body and that which symbolizes his blood and eat and drink, and just remember the cost that he paid to recreate that overlap.

And to give you and give me some encouragement when the creation of that overlap for us is costly too.

Dang, I gotta be nice to him.

I gotta keep my mouth closed around her.

I've got to do this, I've gotta not do this, I've gotta forgive him.

Those are costly.

They are.

But your Savior paid a cost so that we could experience that overlap.

And he asks us to be willing to pay a cost too, when necessary.

If that's your hope and desire, I invite you to come.