How Clean Is Your Temple Series

Last Sunday night we looked at the condition of the Temple and discovered the doors and been broken down according to 2 Chronicles 29:3. Relating this to our lives, we are the temple of the living God if we are believers. It is a real possibility for us, through disrepair, to allow a thief to break in and steal from us physically, spiritually and or emotionally if we do not guard our heart, eyes and ears. And when the doors have been broken, the enemy can come in during his leisure killings, stealing and destroying.

Say this with me…My Body is the Temple of the Living God…I am going to maintain my doors for Him.

Tonight I want to continue to look at the next problem which can come up and cause havoc in and through our lives. In 2 Chronicles 29:5 it reads, Listen to me, Levites! Consecrate yourselves and consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of your fathers. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary.

I. Filth accumulates when left unattained.

The writer points out that rubbish, defilement, had filled the Temple as a result of neglect. How many of you have notice there is no such thing as a self cleaning house? How many wish there was? For a house to stay clean, you have to work, put effort, elbow grease into it. You also need a desire to keep it clean or things will get out of control. A house filled wit garbage gets that was as a result of neglect.

In the King James, they use the word filthiness. The Hebrew word used here means rejection. How many of you want to live in rejection? Rejection has plagued our society. Where there is rejection you will always reach out to meet a need. Rejection is the main cause of immorality. When you have an area where you feel rejected, you will always reach out to something or someone else to fill that area of rejection, and in so many cases this is done through immorality. You might feel rejected in your acceptance by others, so you reach out to fill that area through someone who seems to say they accept you though it ends up in immorality. Are you with me? When you do this, it opens up a wrong door in your life.

In Chronicles, the Temple has been filled with rubbish, it has been defiled, and the rubbish has to go, the Temple needs to be cleaned out. Look at verse 6, Our fathers were unfaithful, they did evil in the eyes of the Lord our God and forsook him. They turned their faces away from the Lord’s dwelling place and turned their backs on him.

II. Not every Model is a good role model.

The writer points out our Fathers had trespassed, they had been unfaithful. In the modern English it means they have gone somewhere they were not allowed, that they have covered up. In another area we lived, the hospital would ask pregnant mothers if the father was a relative because incest was far too common. There are too many people who carry the scars of a father who has gone somewhere he should not have gone. Every 2 seconds in America a child is sexually abused. Over 3 million teenagers every year are sexually abused. The number one killer of children under 5 according to a medical book on pediatrics is not some disease, it is parents. Those five children killed by their mother this past week speaks to the horrors some children might face going home after school. It is tragic.

Here we read of fathers who have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of God. They have gone where they should not have and as a result brought corruption into the temple. Now it is not just the father who has brought wrong things into the temple, he has also brought them into the temple of the child. Studies have shown the sins of the father are carried out in the lives of their children. Many adults who do wrong today were victimized as children. Something happened in their childhood years that birthed a seed of corruption in their lives bearing rotten fruit when they attain adulthood.

Look at verse 7 They also shut the doors of the portico and put out the lamps. They did not burn incense or present any burnt offerings in the sanctuary to the God of Israel.

III. An unclean Temple will close out God.

They had shut the doors, they had closed out God. The Hebrew for shut means surrendered and the word door means tongue. They had surrendered their tongue to an alien language. If the devil can get you talking wrong he will. There is a pervasive language out there alien to God. A lot of the music out there seems to swim in the sewer. You walk down the street and people use as a regular part of their vocabulary, almost every sentence, a word which describes a sexual act. Would it be great to institute some good old fashion soap washing? How many of you know if they did, owning stock in Dove or Ivory Soap would make you rich. They would not be able to produce enough soap just for the people who use this type of language in the movies.