A Living Temple

What does it mean to be a temple of God? Why is it so important to understand that we are temples of God? These are some of the questions we will answer today as we explore the scriptures together and allow God’s Spirit to lead us into a more impactful and fulfilled faith. Today we will be in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 10 through 21. In these scriptures we will see 3 aspects of being the Temple of God. First you will see that the Foundation of being the Temple of God must start with Christ. Second you will see that being an effective Temple is determined by what you are putting into it. and Lastly you will see that the Temple will be used or destroyed by God. The Temple of God in the Old Testament was a vital part of the every day lives of the Jews. The temple was the center piece of their worship and the crowning jewel of their Kingdom when God gave them the Holy Land. Prior to the Temple being built the Tabernacle was with them throughout the desert and was the place of meeting for God and His people. Today we no longer worship God in the Temple but instead we are His Temple. Unfortunately just like the evil Kings in the book of Chronicles many of us treat our bodies as though they are places where we can claim to worship God yet we fill the Temple that we are will idols and false gods and we wonder why we are dealing with illnesses, death, and problems in our lives. We wonder why God is not moving in ways that we believe He should and why we are so often overcome by evil. Today will be both a day where we explore what God says about us being His Temple but it will also be a day where you are offered the opportunity at the alter this morning to lay those Idols down and to take a stand that you are God’s Temple. When the Israelites found themselves in the clinches of their enemies and being held captive, they turned back to God and every time God healed their land and restored them. For the church to become effective again and to thrive we must empty our temple of the false gods and the idols that we have stored in them. Lets look into the Word this morning and see exactly how we are to do this.

The Foundation is Christ.

1 Corinthians 3:10–11 ESV

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

The beginning of being an effective Christian and seeing God move in your life is to understand that Jesus is the foundation. It begins with taking seriously that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that He died on the Cross and that Three days later returned with victory over hell and death. Paul states that there is no other foundation other than Christ. What is the big deal about the foundation? The big deal is that without a proper foundation a building will collapse.

A great example of this is the leaning tower of Pisa. One thing I learned is that it is not the leaning tower of pizza it is pisa. The tower began to lean during construction. In the 1990s the tower was closed to the public and many believed the tower would collapse. The government called in help to prevent the tower from collapsing and it was decided that the only way to stabilize the tower was to remove dirt from the higher end of the tower and bring the lean out of the tower. In all 77 tons of soil had to be removed to bring the tower to a stable position so it could be reopened to the public. As it stands now engineers believe the tower can only last another 200 years before its inevitable collapse.

In order for you to live a powerful life in Christ it must start on the foundation that Jesus is the cornerstone and the one who paid it all for us. The Bible is clear about the importance of the foundation.

1 Peter 2:6 ESV

6 For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

2 Timothy 1:9 ESV

9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,

Ephesians 2:20 ESV

20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,

Some in here do not have a temple for God because you have not even started with a solid foundation. You are building on everything you can think of other than Christ. You build on your works, you build on your wealth, you build on your family, friends, or millions of other things that the world tells you is the most important. Until Jesus is the most important aspect of your life and the cornerstone and foundation that you begin building from then you will never experience the fullness of God and what He has for your life. For some of you in here Jesus is your foundation and He is the one that you have decided to build your life on. For those who have not lets speak after this, lets get that fixed and get you on the road to an effective Christian life. Many of us though are stuck on this next step in being the Temple of God and that is the Temple is only as effective as what you are filling it with.

An effective Temple has to be void of false gods.

1 Corinthians 3:12–15 ESV

12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

What you build your temple with is up to you, what you put inside that temple is up to you. You can choose to build it out of things that last and things that are of God. You can also choose to fill it with things that will be burned up in the last days, false gods, and things that you believe you need. During the time in Chronicles when Manasseh was King the Bible says that he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and filled the temple with false idols and built places of worship to false gods, used necromancers and sorcerers. As a result of this God allowed them to be taken captive by their enemies. After being taken captive the King prayed to God and begged God to restore them and repented of his evil ways. The Lord heard this prayer and allowed them to be freed to go back home. Once they got there the King emptied the temple of the false gods and put them all outside of the city. God blessed the Israelites during this time and allowed them to prosperous and successful. You may say that you are not worshiping false gods and giving them place in your life.

My children are amazing kids and I love them with everything in my. They however are horrible at planning things. If my kids planned a camping trip we would starve and dehydrate in a matter of hours but we would have plenty of stuffed animals and toys to last a life time. We bought a little tent like a real little tent, one that fits in our living room and we were letting the kids have a camping night where they slept in the tent. We told them to get everything they needed to make it through the night and to put it in the tent. They filled the tent with some of the most meaningless things and stuff that would not help them at all. As a dad I wanted to teach them but at the same time I knew that I was right down the hall and that I could help them. This was not a matter of life or death and after all the fridge was only 3 feet away.

How many of us are filling our temple with meaningless things that are going to do no good for us and only serve to separate us from God. You see in the Old testament the Israelites had to prepare the temple and it was important to do it exactly as God commanded. As a matter of fact some of Aarons sons tried to change things up and God consumed them with fire. There was more written about the tabernacle and entering Gods presence than any other topic in the bible from the standpoint of the number of chapters being 50 in all. Thats right 2 chapters on how God created the universe but 50 on how to enter his presence through the tabernacle. The entire New testament is written to help you understand how to prepare yourself as the Temple of God. To empty yourself of all of your vain ambitions and worldly things that do no good but to separate you from God. In many ways we are just like my kids. We have filled our temples with the most useless things and we wonder why we are powerless in the world and why the church has lost the ability to see people healed, see God move, and to hear His voice. As a matter of fact I am convinced that God has given us over to the desires of our flesh. After Jesus breathed his last breath the veal of the temple was torn in two and God made a point that He would no longer reside in the Temple built by man but would dwell in man the living temple. From that day forward the devil has done everything he can do to get us to fill these temples with false gods and to leave no room for God to dwell in us. The Bible is clear that God will not dwell in the same place as false gods.

Isaiah 42:8 ESV

8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

Jeremiah 16:11 ESV

11 then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law,

Judges 2:12 ESV

12 And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.

Romans 1:24 ESV

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

Now you may be saying to yourself that you don’t have any false gods living in you. You might be a health nut and you may be eating only vegetables and a clean diet. You certainly are not putting bad stuff inside your body. The Scripture makes it clear that it is not food that makes us clean or unclean.

Matthew 15:11 ESV

11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.”

This scripture gives us the factual lenses to look through that we must put Godly things in our hearts because it is what is in our hearts that will come out of us. So lets have a test this morning. When someone cuts you off in traffic what is your first thought about that person? You want to yell and scream at them for cutting you off? Do you want them to run off the road and wreck their car? Or are you praying for them to get to where they are going safely? If you are doing the first two where did those thoughts from? thats right from inside you and how did it get there? Is it possible that the tv shows you watch, the music you listen to, the people you listen to and associate with all helped to put that garbage in the temple that God is supposed to dwell in? How about when someone uses you? Do you look to how you can bless them or do you look to how you can cut them off out of your life? Which one of the two does the Scripture say God would desire from His children? At this moment if you are being honest most of you are right were I am at and you are saying how did I get to this spot? How did I get to the spot where my temple is filled with false Gods? Your temple will be filled with whatever you give more time too. Facebook, Tv, radio, podcasts, being liked by everyone, fitting in, and the many many other ways that the devil slowly puts his idols in our temples. How many of us are devoting ourselves to meeting daily with believers, reading the word daily, praying daily and continuously? What do we really care about? Is it God and being close to Him or is it simply knowing Him enough to make it out of Hell? Matthew 7:22-23

Matthew 7:22–23 ESV

22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

There are so many Christians sitting in church this morning void of the power of God in their lives. They are weak and sick and failing at loving others because they care far too much for the things of this world and have filled their hearts and lives with false gods. Today is the day for us all to lay these down and to rid our lives of these idols. God is bringing a movement in this world and He is going to do powerful things if His people who are called by His name will turn back to Him.

2 Chronicles 7:14 ESV

14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Highlands, today is the day. I am standing here as a man who has idols that I must lay down today. I am standing here as a man who must make a conscientious choice to worship God every day and to give no room for the devil to move his idols into my life. I must turn off the radio, the tv, the computer and remove all things that are not drawing me into a closer relationship with God. To seek God’s face every hour of every day. If you are like me in this area of life today is the day to fix this. This morning after the message the altar is being open and we need to humble ourselves before the Lord and to lay those idols down this morning. If you are in a place where you have this under control then stand with us and pray for those of us who need to empty our hearts of these things. Some of you in here do have this understanding of God and are seeking God every day and you have almost the complete picture of God in your life. The last part of being the living Temple of God is that either God will dwell in you or He will destroy you. There is no other option.

Your Temple is either filled with God or destroyed by God

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 ESV

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

When you give your heart to the Lord and you begin to build the Temple of God in yourself if you decide that you will fill it with false gods then you must accept the consequences of that life. Allowing false gods into your life will lead to your destruction. God will either capivate and fill every aspect of your life or He will destroy what is there and you will enter Heaven as one who barely escaped the flames. At no point do I enjoy bringing a message that feels damning and fearful, I however cannot stand in a place of following God’s will and not deliver His message. The fact is that there are prophets with their mouths shut because they have filled their Temple with false gods. There are people who God has given the gift of healing to who cant even find their own health because their hearts are full of false idols. There are people in here that have the gift of interpreting tongues and speaking in tongues but they are shut up and ears are blocked off because they are filling their hearts with false idols. It is time for the church to live in the Spirit and to stop being the children and infants that Paul spoke of the church in Corinth. Church this morning is the morning where Highlands Baptist Church decides that we are going to live in the spirit of God or we are going to be a community group that does decent things. Church today is the day for each of us to reignite our passion for Christ. To find our love for those around us and to commit to dying to our flesh. At this moment I am going to ask Ken to come up and to play softly. The Altar is open. I am going to be the first to bow down at this Altar today as a man who has idols in my life and who has given far too much room in my heart for the enemy do keep God out. I am emptying myself of that this morning. If you are watching online stop where you are and fall on your face before God. Ask Him to forgive you. If you are in here this morning then do it with me up here. Let us find God as our central purpose and theme and let God use us to change this neighborhood and our families and our workplaces. Let us be filled with His spirit so that the enemy has no place to put his idols in.