Together As One Series

We don’t GO to a temple to worship God. We ARE the temple where God resides.

In Bible days, Gentiles were barred from entering the Temple in Jerusalem. There was actually a wall which separated the court of the Gentiles from the temple itself, and on that wall there was a sign: “No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surrounds the sanctuary and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”

At one time, Gentiles would not dare to step one foot into God’s temple. Now, we find out that we ARE God’s temple, along with our Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ.

Every month, before attending her Bible study at church, Karen Ketzler of Fort Wayne, Indiana, would tell her 3-year-old son, Chad, they were going to God's house. Each time they walked through the quiet sanctuary on their way to the nursery, Chad looked around in awe. Then one particular day, he stopped abruptly and asked, “Mommy, if this is God's house, how come He's never home?” (Karen Ketzler, Fort Wayne, IN, “Heart to Heart,” Today's Christian Woman)

We laugh at that, but it’s a great question: If the church sanctuary is God’s house, how come He’s never home? That’s because God doesn’t live in buildings. He lives in people, HIS people, both individually and corporately.

1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Your body (singular) is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” i.e., your body as an individual. But 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, “You yourselves (plural) are God’s temple,” i.e., you yourselves as a corporate entity. 1 Peter 1:5 says, “Like living stones, [we] are being built into a spiritual house.”

Like I said, we don’t GO to a temple to worship God; we ARE the temple where God resides. So each of us is a part of some grand and glorious building designed to honor the God who lives within.

Many of you are familiar with the true story of five missionaries who gave their lives trying to reach the violent Waodoni tribe in the jungles of Ecuador. Nate Saint led the missionaries who were eager to reach the Waodoni people before their vicious revenge killings wiped out the entire population. The missionaries landed their plane on a river sandbar and made contact with the Waodoni. The initial contacts were positive; but later, the Waodoni speared the five men to death.

After her brother’s murder, Nate Saint's sister, Rachel, went to live with the Waodoni, ministering to them until her death in 1994. When Nate's son, Steve, went to Ecuador for her funeral, he was caught up again in the old feelings of bitterness and loss.

The film, The End of the Spear, captures that moment. In it, one of the Waodoni leaders, Mincayani, takes Steve by canoe to the sandbar where the wreckage of the missionary plane still lies. There, in an emotional conversation, Mincayani tells Steve that he was the one who speared his father.

Look at what happens next (show video clip from End of the Spear). Mincayani then picks up his own spear and points it at himself, inviting Steve to avenge his father. Enraged and grieving anew, Steve grabs the spear and holds it to Mincayani's chest, about to run him through. But after a moment of weeping, he says, “No one took my father's life—he gave it,” and he throws down the spear. In the very next scene, Steve and Mincayani are flying over the jungle in a small plane at sunset. That’s when we hear Steve’s voice capturing the essence of what just happened.