Temple

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Source of life for the world

Adam called to care for the temple, the first priest!

Genesis 2:15 ESV

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

“Keep it” doesn’t just mean “maintain it”, it means guard it and protect it. From who or what? Well we would find out soon that one of God's creations, a Serpent later called Satan was rebelling against God.

Failed to “keep” the temple

Sin divided - they were driven out - Cherubim guarded the way.

Genesis 3:23–24 ESV

therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Covered by God in animal skins - the beginning of a pattern where humans would need to have a covering if they could ever hope to meet with God.

2. Tabernacle: Mobile Temple

God would once again dwell with his people and go with them! But sin and purity was now a problem.

Mobile Temple complex (latter half of Exodus)

Tent with the Ark, God’s glory cloud would enter in

adorned with garden imagery, in the middle of the desert, pomegranates on clothes,

Cherubim covered the glory over the arc.

Big basins of water to cleanse the Priests

Exodus 30:18–21 ESV

“You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, with which Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet. When they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn a food offering to the Lord, they shall wash with water, so that they may not die. They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.”

Came near through Sacrifice - covering their sin.

Then they could worship God meet and eat with him.

Tribes lived around the tabernacle (see Numbers)

They could meet with God, but on certain terms - Ceremonially clean. You could be made impure from living in this corrupted world - it would rub off on you!

The Levites, were the priests, they both guarded the holiness of God, tended to the temple, and went as mediators between the people and God.

Levites had earned this privileged role by executing idol worshipers within the nation. This was not just a matter of rituals and fancy costumes - this was a deadly game, one demonstrated by Nadab & Abihu who made up their own worship.

We don’t get to make up worship services that make us feel good or entertain us. We only do what God has told us to do, or clearly implied. (Direct: God tells us to sing in worship, so we do! Implied: God tells us to gather, so we need to pick a time).

Israel struggled to live with God in their midst, because of their sin.

3. Solomon’sTemple: “First” House

Now that the people were settled in the land it seemed appropriate that God should have a permanent house too. After all it felt weird building their own lovely homes while God still lived in a tent.

Solomon appointed to build it! He knew that God could never really be contained to a home on earth, but this was a place where God & his people could meet.

Levites administered as priests

Imagery of garden - leaves and pomegranates on pillars.

Imagery of Cherubim guarding the way, such covering the glory.

Water for cleansing:

1 Kings 7:23 ESV

Then he made the sea of cast metal. It was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference.

God came and dwelt there!

1 Kings 8:10–11 ESV

And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.

Came near through Sacrifice - covering their sin.

Then they could worship God meet and eat with him. even though he was hidden from them in the temple behind a veil and guarded by the cherubim.

Yet, this would not last. Because of the sin of the people God would eventually drive them out and allow his temple to be razed to the ground.

4. Ezekiel’s Temple Prophesied

When the Judah was carried off into exile and fellow called Ezekiel went with them

He was a priest, when he should have been beginning his career as a priest, he was living in Babylon. God showed his visions of the glory leaving. God showed him visions of the destruction of the temple, and that would take place while Ezekiel was in exile.

Now there was lost hope. His identity was undermined, what priest had no temple to minster?

Sin kept getting in the way of dwelling with God, how could they ever sort that out?

Yet God showed him grand visions of a future temple. A temple of extravagant proportions!

God’s glory returned to this temple!

A Temple with priests, and river that flowed out from the temple and brought life to the world!

Ezekiel 47:1 ESV

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.

Ezekiel 47:9 ESV

And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.

Ezekiel 47:12 ESV

And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”

Ezekiel also saw visions of God’s spirit entering into people and making them alive - regenerating them, giving them New Birth. God was going to put his own spirit within the people and cleanse them from the sin that was getting in the way!

Ezekiel gave a message of hope in the wake of the destruction, that God would restore his people, that he would cleanse them, and that they would dwell with the Lord in the best temple ever!

5. Nehemiahs’ Temple: “Second” House

Rebuilding after exile

A place where they could meet with God and worship, through the covering of an atoning sacrifice.

Pitiful, nothing like Ezekiel’s vision

Ezra 3:11–13 (ESV)

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away.

Left hoping for a better temple, worthy of God’s glory.

They would refurbish and improve it, but it would never be the Ezekiel temple.

Yet God gave words of encouragement and hope to those people:

Haggai 2:5–9 (ESV)

My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. … The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.’ ”

Despite their troubles and the continual losses - there would one day be peace.

6. Jesus & His Church: BodilyTemples

Jesus - God incarnate! God “tabernacled” among us!

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus was a better priest.

Ceremonially clean. Jesus would touch the unclean! Yet instead of them “rubbing off” on him and making him unclean, now he went around making people clean! He was the cleaning agent needed by God’s people!

He died as a sacrifice to cleanse the people of all their sin. And when he did, the veil in the Temple (with cherubim on it) was torn. Now the way was open once again!

The last sacrifice.

Jesus is the Living Water! Jesus Send the HS as water of life to revive people!

Send Holy Spirit to indwell his people! Now the church is a temple!

We don’t need one central location to meet with God, because he has promised to dwell in His church as we do the mission to makes disciples all over the world.

We are the temple. Yes individuals, but collectively.

Guard the temple! Keep it clean! You are contributing to the holiness of the whole.

Drive out sin!

Don’t commit sexual immorality, this is why sexual ethics is so important for God’s people,

1 Corinthians 6:18–20 (ESV)

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Your sexual sin is not just something hidden in the confines of a hotel room or a one-night stand or behind a screen, it is

If it is within your power, don’t marry a non-believer.

The unpardonable sin is blasphemy against the Spirit (Mt 12:31) - and this makes sense when you consider that we’re all temples

We are now all priests of God, seeking his purity in our midst, and proclaiming his Word to the world.

1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

7. New Jerusalem:Eternal Temple

Looking forward to a future when we can full dwell with God, face to face.

We have no need for an Ezekiel temple, it points us to Jesus.

The other temples were foretastes, copies, shadows, this future will be the full reality.

Where is this future temple? Well it is described in pictures tied in with the New Heavens and the New Earth

Revelation 21:22–27 ESV

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

The way is open to God for all, as he dwells with us.

There will be do dividing sin or uncleanness, Jesus sacrifice opened the way.

But there is still the picture of a garden, and the water of life:

Revelation 22:1–5 ESV

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.