A Temple, A Person, and A Place of Worship
16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
17 Therefore go out from their midst,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
then I will welcome you,
18 and I will be a father to you,
and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”7 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
When the prophets said this, when Moses foresaw it, nobody expected God to walk around among His people by living and being alive inside His people! But that is exactly what Paul is getting at here. All of the greatness of the Temple: The presence of God, the availability of humans to actually interact with Him, the place where atonement for sins and a relationship with God would be built…all of that is actually IN GOD’S PEOPLE NOW!
So we wash the floors. So we keep idols out of the entryway, basement, back hallway, and the living room. We don’t want anything but God Himself in here!
The way we go about our daily business changes if we start to see that God is using us to make His appeal to the world. He is using us as His new temple to live in. The temple was a place where people knew they could come and seek after the Lord.
That’s us now.
The temple was a place where you could take your sacrifice, your offering, and give it to God. There the priests would carry your griefs and shame into God’s presence. They would come back out with good news that your offering was received and you were shown mercy.
That’s us now.
The temple was a place where people from all around, from all over the world, could look and know, visit and see, that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was reaching out to them and wanted to know them.
That’s us now.
So as we go about our days, working, playing, living…we ARE a place of worship. Not that anyone is admiring our stained-glass windows, but they are seeing and experiencing the great Yahweh God who dwells inside of us.
This isn’t something that God is stuck doing. He is pleased to do this with you. It was part of His plan from the beginning and as you worship and grow in life in Him, He’s glad to show off more and more.
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