The Presence of God: From Temple to Human Heart

You've been around this world very long, you know that language changes. Things that used to mean something have changed and mean something entirely different. If someone says you're cool, that could mean we need to change the thermostat or that you have recognized some very distinct dress or something that sets you apart as someone up to the times. Language changes. And the Bible is the same way. The words that are used in the Scripture don't always mean to other people exactly what they meant to the people in the Bible. And that causes us to have to be alert to make sure that we're thinking when we read a word what the Bible meant by this instead of what we see it today to mean to us. And to talk about a temple is one of those ways by which we see a change in the way the Bible describes this. If you talk to someone about a temple, they might think of a building, maybe a building with idols in it, maybe a building where different religions might worship. We don't think of the temple in the same way that the people in the Scriptures thought about the temple because the temple that they saw and participated in was very different than what we see on pictures about temples around the world today. For in the temple of the Old Testament, it was the residence of God. Now they knew that God didn't live in a small place like a cubicle where we would call it the Holy of Holies or the tent of meetings. They knew that God was so immense that he filled the whole universe. But what they saw in these places that were called temples in the Old Testament was a visual reminder of the constant presence of God. We want you to be aware that God is here with us right now. And that's what the temple was supposed to do. In the Old Testament, when the people of Israel were leaving Egypt, traveling through the countryside, slaves said they had been slaves all this time. But suddenly they were now free, trying to make decisions on their own and trying to find the things that God was wanting them to do. They had not worshipped God all the time, 400 years in slavery. He was sort of a stranger to them. They were trying to get to know him, trying to find out what he wanted, who he was. In this time, God gave them instructions that they were to build a tabernacle. And then the tabernacle was a part of that tabernacle, which sometimes was called a temple in the Bible, but sometimes also called the tent of meeting. It was a tent of meeting because there the high priest would go in into the presence of God, the symbol of the ark there, symbolizing the presence of God with them. This room was a special room. It wasn't very big, but it was made with specific detail by God. He told them exactly the size it was to be made with. He told them the kind of material that they were to make this room. He told them every detail about the ark of the covenant, which was the thing inside of it. Every detail was given. There was elaborate gold fixtures in this temple. I looked up at what the gold weight was, the weight of it. I think it was 30 talents or 50 talents. I calculated all that out with the price of gold now, which is far different than it was back then. And the gold amount in that simple temple was $786 million worth now. Now, we've decided we're going to spend $200,000 on our building, and you may think that's a lot of money. You build a little room or a tabernacle like they built, $786,760,000 just for the gold, just for the gold. Why would God do that? He doesn't need the gold. He wanted to say, this is a special place because it represents housing me. God wanted them to understand the significance and the importance of his presence with them. Now, as they started traveling, Moses built a separate tent, which is also called the tent of meeting. And in this tent of meeting, Moses would go to be able to communicate with God. In Exodus chapter 40, verse 34, it says, The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out. And if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, and in the sight of all the house of Israel during all of their travels. God made this tent of meeting, the tabernacle, a special place because it signified his presence and his leadership with them. Moses would go into the tent of meeting, and he would talk to God about whatever problems they had. God was communicating, not directly with the people of Israel, but communicating with Moses to talk to them. There was kind of a pattern of which there was a layer between people and God. And Moses then would take the instructions of the people, or the questions of the people, and go into the tent of meeting. Some of the passages in scripture talk about the fact that Moses, when he went into this tent of meeting, he would come out and his face would shine so that people were afraid of him because his whole skin would shine. He would put a veil over his face because people were afraid to be around him because the glory of the Lord had sort of occupied him. What God was saying to the people of Israel is, I am with you, but you cannot stand in my presence, but I'm going to guide you through this person. I'm going to be with you, and the symbol of my presence is the tent of meeting. The Jewish people all through the Old Testament thought this way. No one could simply talk to God. No one could walk up and communicate with God because God was so far and above what any ordinary human being was that people could not do that. One of the most startling things that happens in the New Testament is that Jesus presents a different vision of what has come to pass. Jesus was born and was also God and man. So in Christ was the very presence of God himself. What used to be only in the Holy of Holies now was residing in a human being. This was so shocking and astonishing to the people who were listening to Jesus that it made them see him as an enemy of God to ever think that the very presence of Almighty God could reside in a human being. Jesus wanted them to understand that something had changed. In John chapter 2, Jesus was explaining to them the different category or different way by which his ministry was going to impact them. In chapter 2 verse 19, Jesus was talking to them about they were wanting to have some kind of sign that God would provide for them. Jesus pointed to the temple, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. The Jews replied, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and you are going to raise it in three days? But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead his disciples recalled what he had said and then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. What Jesus said that made the people think that he was such a heretic was that the temple built 46 years, physical temple, a symbol of the presence of God was going to be torn down and he would reconstruct this symbol of God's presence in three days. But that wasn't what he was saying. I have come and I am God. Inside of me is the very presence of God himself. You don't have to go into this building and look at that room and think how special that is. You have my presence with you. You see in the temple, in the holy place, the ten of tents there, the ten of meeting, the high priest was the only one that could go in there. And he couldn't just walk in at any time he wanted to. There was a time of the year, the day of atonement, when all the people of Israel would gather. All the men were required to go to three of these special occasions and the day of atonement was one of them. On this day everyone would come. They would look back over their life of the last year and any kind of violation of God's instructions that they had committed, brought to their mind, they would know they need forgiveness from God. On this day the high priest could get to go into this tent of meeting or the holy of holies. The ritual was very carefully spelled out. He was to go on the day or week of fasts. He was to confess his own sins to God. He was to make sacrifice for his sins. He couldn't live in his house. He had to live in a room in the temple in preparation for this one day that he was going to go into the holy of holies. He would stand out in the courtyard where the men could stay. The tabernacle had a big place, a courtyard out there and then a place where women and Gentiles could go. And then there was another section of the tabernacle where only men could go. And the men would be in that part and the high priest would have to come out stripped naked and someone would wash him. The humiliation of being exposed to all the people around him and to God was a powerful message. You are standing before God exposed. He knows your sin. He knows what's wrong with you. He knows everything about you. So the priest had to come exposed before everybody. Then he had to be washed, a symbol of the forgiveness that was going to come. And then he had to put on special clothes, linen clothes that were washed, linen underwear and a linen overcoat or linen clothes. And then over the top of that there was a piece on the front of his clothes where a stone for every one of the twelve tribes was placed with an engraving on it, the name of the tribe. He was not going in there for himself. He was going in there for all the people of Israel. And then he would kill an animal and take the blood of that animal and go into the tabernacle and was told what to do. He would sprinkle some on the curtain and some on the altar on the Ark of Covenant. And in this sprinkling he would pray for the people of Israel that God would forgive them for their sins. Every person of the whole nation of Israel for all the past year. Going into the Holy of Holies was a very dangerous thing for someone to do. If they had not done exactly as they ought to, they would die. It's what God required of someone to be completely obedient to him when they came into his presence. In the Bible, after the priest was dressed, a coat was put over him, like a long gown. And on the bottom of it were bells. And the people would gather around outside and they would listen. As the priest moved around inside, they could hear him moving. They knew he was alive. He would have a rope around him too. So in case something happened and he had not done what he was supposed to do and would die inside, no one would go in to get him. But they would pull him out. It was an awesome, fearsome, majestic and powerful event for all the nation of Israel. Now Jesus says, I am here standing before you and I am God. The people of Israel had such a fear of God because standing in the presence of God was an awesome and overwhelming thing. For a human being that they looked at to say he was God was part of the great anger that they had towards him that caused him to be crucified. He was telling them that God has changed the ground rules for the presence of God in your life. He has now come to reside in a human being. He was telling us that this monumental shift in what God was doing, instead of going on the outside and looking and hoping that something is done in that tent to benefit you and forgive you, now you have the opportunity to talk face to face with God with someone who can say you are forgiven. But what Jesus was doing was a preparation for what was yet to come. An even more amazing event beyond anything that the scripture has ever presented to us. The power of Jesus' work and ministry not only pointed to the reality that God was living in him, but in Acts chapter 17 as the disciples were trying to learn how to live this life of obedience and following Christ, they picked up on the idea of what Jesus was doing. He had come to say to us that ordinary human nature can become a housing for Almighty God. How can a tent that had to be cleaned and special and treasured to be able to hold God? How can an ordinary sinful human being be a residence for God? This was astonishing to the people of Israel and it was a powerful transformation of what God intended to do. 17th chapter of Acts verse 24. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. Even the people of Israel when they thought about it knew that God wasn't simply living in that holy of holies. Solomon when he dedicated the temple said we know that God is so big that the universe can't contain him. But this is simply a reminder that he is with us. Now the passage moves another step forward. It is the Lord of heaven and earth and he does not live in temples built by hand. He is not served by human hands. That is you go into the temple and you make a sacrifice or offering to him as if he needed anything. He doesn't need our offerings or sacrifices because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything. From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth and he determined the times and set for them the exact places they should live. God now resides in human flesh. In Corinthians Paul was writing about this. Describing for the people what it is that God was doing. The powerful message to us is that God comes to live in human flesh. Now how can this be? If you had a special place isolated where God could live and no one could even enter that how can he come inside of a human being? Well he came inside of Jesus because Jesus was sinless and perfect. So when he came to live in the body of Jesus Christ, God living in the body of Jesus Christ, he was in a place of purity, moral and spiritual purity. But what about you? Me? How can he live in us? Paul is describing for us this miraculous thing. Chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians. How can this be? We see what Paul is talking to these people about is to say to these who have become followers of Christ. Here's what you have to do to become a follower of Christ. You have to believe that he is the Lord of the universe. You have to believe that everything you've done that is contrary to what the Bible says you should do has built a wall between you and God. We call that sin. Rebellion against God. You have to come to God like they did the day of atonement and say I come to you acknowledging that I'm a sinner. My life is naked and needs to be cleaned. Needs to be washed. So that all the dirt is removed from it. That symbol of what the priest, the high priest went through. I come to you as a wicked person in rebellion against you and I openly acknowledge it. But I believe that it is your blood shed on the cross for me that enables me to receive forgiveness. The blood of Christ shed on the cross for the sins of all mankind. There is no one who can sin so great that the power of Christ's death and sacrifice cannot give them forgiveness. I've met people who say God can't save me because I've sinned too much. They have a very low estimate of the power of Christ's sacrifice. You cannot out sin God's forgiveness. You cannot out sin his sacrifice. So what he does when the person comes and says I give my life to you. Take my life with all of its sin. Forgive me and change me. What he does is he forgives us of all of our sins. So the moment you say to God I'm ready to give my life to you. My sinful life. Forgive me for what I've done. He cleanses you. Forgives you of everything in this world you've done in your past up to that date is forgiven. You stand before God as righteous and holy as Jesus Christ himself. God could live in the human body of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ had no sin. God can live in your human body when you are forgiven by God because you then have no sin charged against you. What God has done through Christ on the cross eliminates the sin in your own life. So the moment you say to God I pledge my life to you. And I pledge from this moment on to live as best I can in submission and obedience to you. I want to let you control the way I think. I want to let you teach me how to be able to make the right choices. I want to be able to do the things that you tell me I should do. I want to learn what you want me to do and follow that. Then God forgives you of every single thing you've ever done contrary to his will. Now he doesn't promise you that Satan won't remind you of all those things. A lot of people who have been forgiven have a lot of guilt about things that don't exist anymore. They remember the bad things they've done but they can't accept the idea that God's erased all those. It's like you have on your computer I have this thing where they put things in a different folder and you want to delete it. And you push that delete and boy they just disappear like that. But you can get some wise guy to come in and find those things even though you've deleted them. When God deletes your sins no one can find them. They're gone. Now the devil reminds you of them but they don't exist anymore. And he can control you by making you feel guilty about things that have already been removed from your life. But the reality is that you're pure as Jesus Christ because you've been forgiven. In that way then the very presence of God can be placed in your body so that you become the temple of God. The temple of the Holy Spirit so that God's Spirit now can reside in you. What you will find as you live your life and you do make choices that are contrary to what you know is the right thing. You will find the convicting power of God saying there's dirt in your life. You'll feel shame. You'll feel disappointment. You sometimes will even think well maybe I'm not even a Christian. But you stop and say to God here's what I did wrong. Forgive me. And you will feel the cleansing presence of God's forgiveness again in your life. Because his Spirit is inside of you and he wants to cleanse you. He's saying to you you've stepped over the line. You acknowledge that just like you did in the beginning. Forgive me of that. Help me learn how to live in a different way. Help me learn how to think in a different way. And God begins to transform your nature and your character. Now what was the purpose of Christ coming with God the Spirit inside of him? He wanted to live before us so we would see what a life is like when someone human being is controlled by God. He lived a spectacular life. All over the world people look at Christ and see here the example of what we all should be. It wasn't because Jesus was a good man. It was because the Spirit of God directed him. He gave us the clue. I only do the things the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I only say the things that the Holy Spirit tells me to say. And when people saw the life of Jesus they saw God living in human flesh. And they could say here's the way I live but Jesus lives differently. I want to live like that. He was a walking testimony as to what God wanted for all of us to do and how he wanted us to live. That was his purpose. Now when God comes into our lives and places his Holy Spirit in us it is the very same purpose he has for you that he had for Christ. So you look back at your life and you say man I tell you I've made some stupid decisions in my life. I've made some things that are so embarrassing I'd be ashamed to tell anybody in this crowd what it is. Don't worry about that. People may know what you've done. But that's just preparation for what God wants to do. He wants to be able to show the difference. Have you ever seen a commercial where they have a stove sitting on the tile, linoleum tile? And then they talk about how clean their stuff gets. They pull the stove out and that tile has never been walked on. It's just perfect compared to that that's been walked on. And you see the contrast between what one thing does over another. Our lives are stained and they're broken. But when God cleans us we're just like new. No sin like you're born over again. That's what that means. That means you get to start your life over at whatever age you are. With no past in God's mind to hold over you. Now you may hold it over yourself and the friends may hold it over you and Satan may hold it over you. But that's just a figment of their imagination. In reality you have been forgiven. And Christ comes to live in you. From that moment on you ask God show me how I should live and think. And so you'll begin to learn the Bible and what God's principles and rules are. You'll begin to learn how you can get a relationship with God in which you listen to him and you follow him. And how you keep forgiveness ongoing in your life. And the people around you notice that difference between what's happened to you. Some years back a lady came to our church and she filled out a visitor's card. And I went to see her and ask her what her interest was in coming and why she came. She said well a lady works with me. And she comes to your church and I just wanted to see the kind of church that would make a woman as good as she is. That's what God's trying to do. And if you've been a pretty bad person you have a head start. You have to have many changes before people notice it. But no matter how good you've been when God comes into your life you're going to be a different kind of person. And the more you read the Bible the more you listen to the teaching and preaching. And the more you try to put it in practice the more transformation that comes. What God wants us to do is to be the kind of people around whom other people in the world see this tremendous change that's taken place. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6 Paul is saying to this church in Corinth. Now the church there was in a town where the main tourist business was a house of prostitution. It was actually a temple to worship the God of sexuality. And it was considered a very important city event. If you were put a tourist advertisement that temple of Diana would be on the first page. Because people from all over the world came there to be able to celebrate with sexual behavior and worship of Diana. And I'm sure that these people in the Corinthian church had participated in that. That had been their worship. It had been their lifestyle. Paul wrote to them in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 18. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside of his body but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have received from God. You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. The price that we were bought with is the death and the blood of Jesus Christ. He says to them the sexual behavior you've had before you must shut that out of your life. It can no longer be a part of your life. Because when God is controlling your life you will act differently than all the other people in Corinth. It was considered a very special thing to have a daughter who would participate at this temple of Diana. It was sort of like a queen. But for you now that you're followers of Christ you must say no. Because he's going to change the way you live. Now the neighbors around them would notice this. They would see that this family suddenly has different values in their life. And they would be able to explain God has changed us and now we see everything different than we did before. When Christ comes into your life a transformation takes place. Two ways. First you may grow up in church and commit your life to Christ as a child. You may be not old enough to have had a very wicked life. But you're in church and you're reading the Bible, listening to God. And then your life begins to be shaped by God. And if you look back and see the friends that you had in elementary school who were not in church and didn't live that way. When you get out there 30 years you discover a great difference between your life and theirs. That's the way God does some people. Others start living just doing what they want to do. And then discover later in life that this life is just not worth having. They turn to God and ask for forgiveness. And he transforms them and begins to shape them again to be like himself. The difference between you and other people around you is God's control of your life. Living inside of you. And when you live that way, people will tell that you live one way and they live another. You are bearing witness to who God is, how he acts, and what he demands of people. That is our witness. If no one can tell the difference between your life and theirs, then something is drastically wrong. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit. You are the Holy of Holies. You are the special place that God wants to live. And he wants to live there that he might show to the world his power both to forgive sin and to transform the lives of people. That's what our purpose is. You may notice that in our church, a lot of us who have been raised in Baptist churches, it's called the auditorium where we go to church. Some denominations have in front of it a Lord's Supper and they pray and this becomes the body and blood of Christ so that this is the place where Christ is and they call their building a sanctuary. They may call it a tabernacle. But for us, everywhere you go is the temple of God. You get in your car, Christ is with you. It's the temple of God. When we leave this building, Christ is no more here than he is in the house across the street empty. He is wherever you go. Your house is the temple of God. Your car is the temple of God. Your workplace is the temple of God if God is in you. His means is not to live in a building but to live in flesh and blood that the people of the world will be able to see who God is face to face. How does God handle conflict? How does God handle money? How does God handle lifestyles? You are teaching the world. When you say, Jesus Christ is my Lord, every person who knows you've said that knows what God is like because of the way you live. The burden of being the temple of God is not easy nor simple. In fact, it's really impossible except that God himself living in you, the creator of the universe, has both the power and ability to make it come to pass. What he needs is for you to say, take my life, forgive me for who I have been and make me into somebody you want me to be and that I want to be. Would you bow your head, please, for a moment? You may know what this passage is really all about because you've experienced this transformation or you've experienced all of your life God helping you to make the choices that he wants you to make and you've seen how your life has become different than other people's lives. Then you know what that means. If you've never come to the place in your own life where you've said to God, I want you to take control of my life, I'm inviting you today to do that under God's authority. He came into this world to make you a residence of his own. So would you say to him, Lord, I want something different than my life has been. I ask you to forgive me for all the things I've done in ignoring you and rebelling against you. I ask you to come and take control of my mind, my will, my emotions, that I might live a different life. In your own mind, if you say these words, you will feel the relief of God and the forgiveness he brings. If you've started this life with Christ, sometimes we get distorted. We let our past overwhelm us. We start thinking that we're not really the child of God. Go back and revisit your promise. And maybe you're thinking as a result of the fact that you haven't been true to the promise you've made to him. Maybe you're reading the Bible regularly, making sure you're in church listening to God. Maybe you let sin accumulate in your life and not be confessed. I don't mean just admitting you do it, saying, God, this is my sin, change me. When God cleans you out again, then that relationship is restored. God wants you to be the temple of God. If you know that God wants some changes to be made in your life, we encourage you to do that this morning. You may need to go home and simply kneel somewhere in your quietness and make that kind of promise to God. Or you may know what God wants you to do, and you want to come and say, today I know a promise God wants me to make, and I'm making it. And I'm asking all you to pray for me, that I will yield to God day by day. Maybe you know this is a church God wants you to be a part of. And you know that that's what he's telling you. You may want to come and say, I want to join this body of believers whose lives are filled with God's Spirit as God has filled mine. The pianist is going to play, and if there's a commitment you want to make, or you want us to pray with you, just come forward simply in this time. And Ros will be here, I'll be here, and we can pray for you.