CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST
November 22, 2009
25424 Aldine-Westfield, Spring, TX. 77373
www.blakehart.com/cypresswoodbulletin.htm
PRAYERS AND THANKSGIVINGS:
God’s
will for our congregation Various
friends, relatives and co-workers
Our
nation, leaders, and military Thanks
for all of God’s blessings
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
THE TEMPLES OF GOD
“We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the
throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true
tabernacle set up by the Lord…” (Hebrews 8:1-2).
When
we read through scripture, we find several temples, or ideas of temples, in
which God is involved. They are familiar
to us. The first was the Tabernacle in the
wilderness. It was designed and built at
God’s direction by Moses and expert craftsmen.
The three divisions of the tribe of Levi were responsible for the
setting up and taking down of the tabernacle, and moving it. Included in the tabernacle were a number of
articles such as an altar for sacrifices offered to God, but the most famous
item was the Ark of the Covenant. When
it moved Israel moved and when it stopped so did Israel. When the Tabernacle was finished, God came
down in a cloud and entered it, thus showing that He would be right in the
middle of His holy people.
When
Moses entered the Tabernacle to speak to God, then came out, his face glowed
with the glory of the Lord. After
speaking to the people, he would wear a veil until the glory faded. The Ark led Israel across the Jordan River
into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land.
It was kept by the Levites throughout the days of Joshua and the Judges. Early in Samuel’s life, it was captured by
the Philistines but because of the plagues sent among them by God, it was
returned on an ox cart to Israel. During
David’s reign, he decided that he wanted the Ark closer to him. First he moved it on an ox cart similar to the
Philistines, but when the oxen stumbled and the Ark began to tip, Uzzah reached
out and touched the Ark, and died.
Fearful, David left it at the house of Obed-Edom. After a few months, David moves the Ark
again, only the way it was intended to be moved, worshipping and celebrating as
it moved along.
David,
being a man after God’s own heart, decided that he wanted to build a temple for
the Lord in Jerusalem. God said that
while He did not need a temple built by humankind, David could not build a
temple for His name because he was a warrior who had shed blood, but his son
Solomon would be allowed to build it.
Solomon undertook to build the Temple in Jerusalem after a number of
years he finished what had to be a magnificent structure. Solomon had the Ark of the Covenant placed
into the Holy of holies and God came down again and entered the Temple, thus
coming again among His people.
The
Temple became the center of Jewish worship and life for the next nine hundred
years. At times however, the Temple and
God were ignored. We find the Temple in
need of repair in the days of Hezekiah and Josiah. In Josiah’s day, the book of the Law was
found, implying that it had been ignored for years. The Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians
around 600 B.C. When Haggai and
Zechariah returned to Jerusalem, they led the way in rebuilding the Temple in
what is now known as the Second Temple Period.
Herod the Great added to the Temple in what appears to have been about a
fifty year project. The Temple was
destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. and again in 135 A.D.
Jesus
entered the scene during this Second Temple Period. John uses an interesting word in describes
His coming. “The Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The word for “dwelling” means to tabernacle
among us. He came to live among us, His
creation. When Jesus told His opponents
that He would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, John informs us
that He was speaking of His body (John 2:19-22). This idea would carry over into the church in
a similar way.
We
find several texts that speak of the church as the temple of God (1 Corinthians
3:16-17; 2 Corinthians 6:16-7:1; Ephesians 2:21). As God’s people, we now have God living among
us just like He did in the days of Moses and Solomon. There certainly are strong implications in
this. When we come together as God’s
people, how are we seen? Do we
understand that God is among us when we come together and participates with us
around the table of the Lord? Beyond
this is the idea that as individuals we are the temple of God (1 Corinthians
6:19-20). How do we live holy lives
before our Father in heaven?
Understanding the holiness of the Tabernacle and Temple might help us
understand our own holiness.
There
is yet one more aspect to God’s temples as seen in scripture. It’s there in scripture though, because we
have not really put this idea together, have not considered it. The idea is that creation itself is God’s
temple. John Mark Hicks connects this
temple idea with His rest in Genesis 2 (1).
Be that as it may, here are some scriptures to consider.
“Where were you when I laid
the earth’s foundation?…Who marked off its
dimensions?…Who
stretched a measuring line across it? On
what were its
footings set, or
who laid its cornerstone…and set its doors and bars in place”
(Job 38:4-10).
Notice
in the above the language of construction.
God was building His temple and He would dwell in it with His
people. Remember that we find God
walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day.
“He built his sanctuary like
the heights, like the earth that he established forever”
(Psalm 78:69).
“Heaven is my throne, and the
earth is my footstool. Where is the
house you will
build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these
things and so they
came into beings?, declares the Lord” (Isaiah 66:1-2).
“The Lord sits enthroned over
the flood; the Lord is enthroned as King forever”
(Psalm 29:10).
“May the glory of the Lord
endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his work…”
(Psalm 104:31).
In
each of the temples mentioned in scripture, redemptive activity is
involved. God wants to redeem His people
and dwell among them as our God. But in
the new heaven and the new earth, there will be no temple because God will
dwell there. He will be the light and we
will all be a part of the temple where we dwell together with God (see
Revelation 21). The picture in Hebrews 8
and 9 suggests a heavenly temple, and put together with Revelation 21, we will
return to the true temple God created, where the new Jerusalem will be as we
live together with God. This is
something to think about and consider.
George
B. Mearns
(1)
Some thoughts for this part of the article come from John Mark Hicks, God’s
Rest, copied 9/1/2009 from http://johnmarkhicks.wordpress.com