Temple Cleansing Part 2: Cleansing The Home Series

Text: Deuteronomy 11 : 13 – 21 13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. 16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. 17 Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. 18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

Theme: Temple Cleansing – Cleansing your home

Introduction

- This week we go on to sermon 2 of a three part series on Temple Cleansing.

- Last week we dealt with the Temple of the Holy Spirit [e]

- This week we are going to deal with cleansing our homes [e]

- Let remind ourselves of the difference between cleaning and cleansing….you can go through last week’s notes to do that. [e]

- Our homes…..whether we live in a 20 roomed mansion or a 1 room informal house, our homes are our castles [e]

- However, we need to come back to the Bible and we must realise that our home is a place of importance [e]

- What do many people see their homes as?:

• A place to live in [e]

• A place to bath, eat and sleep in [e]

• A refuge away from the world [e]

• A place for family [e]

• The list could go on…[e]

- What does God view our homes as?:

• According to the text we read, God sees our home as a place of spirituality

• A place where spiritual activity and instruction is to take place.

- Church history teaches us that the modern church did not confine themselves to the Jewish temple, but in peoples homes

- Acts 2:46 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

- Acts 5:42 42 Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

- Allow me to remind you this morning that your home is your first church [e]

- Why?:

• Because you cannot pray in church if you first don’t pray at home [e]

• You cannot understand the Scriptures preached about in church if you don’t read the Word at home [e]

• You cannot worship God in church if have not been worshipping Him at home [e]

- Hence, we deduce this morning that the home of a Christian is a spiritual entity, just as the church is a spiritual entity [e]

- As we dig deeper into God’s Word this morning, let us acknowledge that many of our homes are not what God wants it to be [e]

- Over the years we have fallen into error in believing that the church and the home are separate and distinct from each other [e]

- Over the years we have been taught about proper spiritual activity in the church and the lack of teaching of the home has led us to believe that this sort of spiritual activity is limited to the church building and does not extend into the home [e]

- Allow me to say this morning that we have got it wrong [e]

- And that has led to our homes falling into a state of spiritual neglect and disrepair [e]

- Which brings me to my first point this morning:

1. The state of our homes

- Our esteemed and little loved state president, Jacob Zuma, after performing a number of dances and revolutionary songs of battle against an absent and non-existant enemy also speaks of the state of our nation under the governance of the so-called beloved ANC [e]