Living Temples
From the sermon passage, Haggai 2:1-9: “‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. … ”
I have tried to imagine what the temple looked like in its glory days.
The sounds: of singing; of the reading of the Torah; of the altar fire burning; of sacrificial lambs bleating…
The smells: the spicy incense burning; meat growing tender as it roasts; wood becoming ash in the altar fire; the metallic scent of fresh-spilled blood…
The sights: the glittering of pure gold; the richness of scarlet and violet cloth; the intricacy, intentionality, and beauty in every detail: from the supporting pillars down to the smallest oil lamp.
Reading through the Old Testament books of the Law has often felt like slogging through wet snow. It can tend to sound boring, lifeless, and depressing. That is until I get to the part where the specifications of the temple are laid out. It is easy to get lost in the details and dimensions, but if I read the temple description from an imaginative perspective, it suddenly comes to life. How gloriously beautiful the temple must have been! And all the more because God’s presence dwelt there.
But there was a separation between God and those who worshiped Him. They needed the mediation of a priest to make sacrifices to God for payment for their sin. They could worship God and serve Him and love Him with all their hearts, but there was a lack of intimacy and closeness.
The most incredible happened when Jesus- God incarnate- died on the cross: the curtain in the temple separating the Holy of Holies was torn in two, signifying full access to God was now possible through Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:5-6: “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has Allison Fawley 11.17.23 shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Jesus is both our High Priest and the Sacrificial Lamb offered to God in payment for our debt of sin and disobedience, once and for all eternity. More than that, the temple became something different. Something truly unbelievable: God made His Spirit to dwell in the hearts of human beings! All those who call on Jesus as Lord are now the Temples of The Living God (1 Corinthians 6:19). Can you imagine? Us?! Messy, capricious, rebellious humans.
It seems such a vast contrast for God to move from a house that seems so breathtakingly beautiful as the Jerusalem temple, to our human hearts… And yet this is what He did. He made us to be the dwelling place for His Spirit. The realization of this should bring us to our knees in awe and worship of our Creator and King!
2 Corinthians 4:7-11 “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
Let us live every day in awe and reverence that God has made our hearts His temple! The call to holiness is not to be taken lightly- but to be understood and embraced fully with joy and trembling. The temple was a holy place- and now we are the holy place. God has made us part of that mystery, one that we can see pieces of here and now on earth, but of which the fullness we may not see until eternity.
Revelation 21:22-26 “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.”