We Are The Temple Series

OPEN: In the heart of Kentucky is a facility dedicated to housing hundreds of bars of pure gold --- weighing more than 4,600 tons. Does anybody know what that facility is called? (Fort Knox) When we think of Fort Knox we often visualize it as being nothing more than the vault that holds that gold, and yet the place where the gold is held is only a small part of a military base covering 109,000 acres spread across 3 counties which houses 23,000 soldiers (you need lots of guns to guard that much gold).

The vault itself is built to be inpenetrable - its constructed of granite, steel, and concrete. The vault door alone weighs more than 20 tons. In fact, there might be more steel than gold at Ft. Knox. The vault is made of steel plates, steel beams, and steel cylinders. To open the door, several staffers at the depository must individually dial in separate combinations known only to them. And EVEN the president of the United States doesn't have the combination to the vault.

Over the years - in addition to gold - the Vault at Ft. Knox has also protected the gold reserves of several other countries; the English crown jewels; the Magna Carta; the Gutenberg Bible. And back in the early 1940’s it also held the original U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence (Uncle John Salutes the Armed Forces, pp 363-366)

APPLY: Ft. Knox captures our imagination because just hearing the name “Ft. Knox” brings to our mind images of huge stacks of gold. We know of Ft. Knox as a place that holds items of great value. And that’s the kind of imagery that God uses to describe YOU – “you are God’s temple and… God’s Spirit dwells in you” I Corinthians 3:16

You have become a place that holds an item of great value. You hold the Spirit of God inside of you. YOU ARE GOD’S TEMPLE!

Now why would God use the imagery of the “Temple” to describe us? Well, just like Ft. Knox captures our imagination, the Temple in Jerusalem captured the imagination of the people of that day. The Jewish historian Josephus reported that the Temple was “covered on all sides with massive plates of gold,” and when the sun struck it, “it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from solar rays.”

The Temple of God was a wondrous thing and, in the Old Testament, the Temple was where God dwelt. But when Jesus came --- that all changed. I Corinthians 3:16 declared “…you are (now) God’s temple… God’s Spirit dwells in you.” God doesn’t need a physical Temple anymore because you and I are it! He dwells inside of US now.

But now, there are people who struggle with that. There are people who feel the need to have their Building be the NEW TEMPLE.

For example, in Old Testament the Temple was divided into two rooms. The first room was called the “HOLY PLACE” (that’s where the table of shewbread, the candlestick and altar of incense were housed). And the back room (where the Ark Covenant was) was called the HOLY OF HOLIES. In the Catholic church, there’s spot in back of their priest that’s called the HOLY OF HOLIES. and only the priest can go there. Why? Because, apparently they are trying to make their buildings to be reenactments of the Old Testament Temple, and they regard their building as a holy sanctuary like that Temple! And their reenactment is a place where you have to go through the Priest to get to God. That’s not Biblical… but that’s what they do.

Now, other churches aren’t quite so brazen. Most churches don’t have priests wearing special garments and standing between us and God, and they don’t have a Holy of Holies, but what they do have… is AN ALTAR. Why have an altar? Because that’s what that’s what the Temple had. That’s where they made the sacrifices. And so, churches like these will call the stage the altar, and people who want to be saved - or pray a special prayer - they come down and lay it all on the ALTAR. Again, that’s not biblical, but it’s what they do.

Now WE don’t do stuff like that! We don’t have SPECIAL PRIESTS with priestly garments that you have to go through to get to God; and we don’t have a HOLY OF HOLIES hidden up here somewhere on stage; and we don’t have an ALTAR where people come to surrender to Jesus. I mean, those things are just NOT in the Bible! So we don’t do them!

We wouldn’t do dumb stuff like that would we?

Well… we might.