The Temple & the Nations: Part 1 | 1 Kings 6-8

man it is so good to be back y'all we had an incredible time but i missed you guys like crazy and uh man i'm just ready to run and uh so excited to see everybody back around at our campuses man i can't wait to get back around uh and see everybody over there so anyway we had an incredible time y'all appeal people have told me that i look rest i look five years younger which is really good because we have college students i think i'm 47 i'm 37 okay so i need to look a little younger so uh anyway man we had an incredible time uh man you guys are an incredible church that wants to see your pastoral staff um make it and last and be sharp and run hard uh a sabbatical is not a reward we don't uh we don't work real hard and then rest to recoup we rest so that we can work from rest and so man i really appreciate you guys and the generosity of the church sending us away for a little while we got out of it what we wanted to and what i feel like god had put on our heart to do man i had three things going in that i wanted to do the first one was this man i wanted to think about the why and not the what for six weeks and that's exactly what we did i wanted to be motivated by god's glory and his grandeur and his magnitude alone i didn't want to think about her staff i didn't want to think about issues within the church i didn't want to think about ways that we need to take the next hill i wanted to think about why we do all of this and man we sat for six weeks and nothing came before the word we were able to really rest be unhurried that was kind of our theme and in that man i really think i was able to again kind of catch a fresh glimpse of god and his greatness and why we do the things that we do in a church like mercy hill especially you know just for believers in our workplace with our kids just everything that we do motivated by god and his glory um man the second thing that we really wanted to try to focus on was trying to get away from the burden of ministry for just a season all right second corinthians 11 28 is an interesting passage of scripture for a pastor for this reason okay paul talks about all the things that he goes through as a missionary things that our missionaries face i mean talked about being hot and cold and out in the wilderness and worried about robbers talks about being beaten and persecuted and he goes through this whole litany of things being hungry and thirsty things that many of us know nothing about like our brothers and sisters do around the world okay but he talks about how he did all these things wrecked and all this and the very last thing he says in second corinthians 11 28 is and not to mention i've gone through all these things but not to mention my burden and anxiety for the churches and that is something that is real in a pastor's life it's something that's real uh in our pastoral staff in our elders uh man that is not to say in any way that i think what i do as a pastor is harder than what anybody else does but i'm telling you there's a weight to it when you know a lot that goes on in the church and you understand that kind of at the end of the day you're going to be held accountable for what goes on in the church and people's lives and that kind of things there's a weight to it and sometimes i think that weight can kind of bleed over into your interaction with your kids it can bleed over an interaction with friends it can bleed over an interaction at home and so what i prayed for for our second thing was just god allow us to kind of feel a little bit of a release from that burden so that we can reorient and when we come back under that yoke as all pastors are that maybe i'll even have a better relationship and a healthier relationship with some of those things by putting down things that i don't have to worry about maybe i can really focus on the things that god would have me have my hand on the lever that can really move the needle and the third and final thing was i wanted to get more flexible y'all okay so that's what happened like literally physically flexible so man we did a lot of rest and man i tried to sleep a lot honestly i know it's kind of weird but man we tried to average about nine nine and a half hours of sleep at night for six weeks i tried hard to make sure we were in a rhythm of exercise and flexibility routine and the staff wants me to touch my toes for the whole church but i'm not gonna do that okay so anyway but i can and that's the most important thing so uh man no hey i wanna just tell you guys that right on the front end we're about to dive into the sermon but you guys are an incredible church campuses you guys are an incredible church uh our family was so blessed um maybe some of you guys were praying for us i know that many of you are we had a kind of a prayer team praying listen this was a miracle of god faith and hopper was healthy the entire time we were gone praise god and she slept every night we were gone okay uh she slept all the way through the night and it was just if you know our story uh my wife's superhuman and she's been waking up with faith and for four years like you would with an infant but for four years we've been going through that and faith and slept she's been doing that now for a couple of months so man god was just so gracious to us we were in florida for a couple weeks we were in the mountains of north carolina for a couple weeks we were here doing some things so anyway man i appreciate you guys so much and we're ready to run if you have a copy of scripture you can take it out and turn with me to first kings chapter six uh where we're gonna be today before i get into that i gotta say one thing uh i know listen i get back from sabbatical and i'm like run and like the first thing i'm asked is what are we doing about masks i was like you got to be kidding me what happened okay uh but anyway i just want you guys to hear from me okay man i know guilford county is putting some things into effect um we are going to keep rolling with things the way that we have been so far okay there are exemptions in these things if you go and look uh for religious assembly people are making their own decision i think there is enough information now for that uh as things are right now um in our kids ministry everything that we're doing like we're doing it now we're just going to keep doing it so i want to make sure i say that so i save some of our pastoral staff and all that a bunch of questions um that's going to be the plan all right now let's dive in 1st kings chapter 6 is where we are going to be let me set this sermon up like this man people can run away from god all right people can suppress god people can worship other things as if they're god that aren't people can numb themselves to the reality of god through alcohol food abuse netflix whatever it is okay there's a lot of things you can do with god but romans chapter one is incredibly clear and i'm just going to kind of throw it out there and i know there's a little bit brazen right off the right off the you know right off the cuff here especially in kind of a post-christian moving toward very secular society that we are in romans 1 just flat out tells us there is nobody who don't know that there's a god now maybe some people have distracted themselves to the point where they kind of feel like there's not or maybe somebody has suppressed it but romans 1 tells us it is through the unrighteousness of man that we suppress a truth that is plain for all to see that's what it says so the question today that we're going to get into the first king chapter 6 is not is there or isn't there okay i think that what the bible teaches is that man this is just sort of something we know that even as a kid we wake up in the world and we look around and we go man either something came from nothing or something came from something and if something came from something and there is a real eternity then that something means that we're having a spiritual conversation and i think people got to work really hard and i don't care how many letters they got after their last name you got to work really hard to convince yourself otherwise all right i remember seeing an article a couple years ago of of a lady who was an atheist uh who said who proclaimed atheists who said uh that she was very struck when her daughter at five or six years old or whatever began to ask her questions about god the reason she was struck by that is because she knew for a fact that her daughter had never been taught anything about god and yet they're driving down the road and their daughter begins to ask her about who created the world and what does god like and all this kind of stuff and she was like kind of mortified like what do i do how does she get these categories she got those categories because little susie sees a sandcastle on the beach and realizes somebody put it together so what happens when she sees a mountain or a tree or the human eye or little brother or sister on a 3d ultrasound like they know right that's kind of what the bible tells us is that we know the question today for us is not man do we believe the question is man what do we do with the knowledge of there being something out there and i'm not talking about the christian god necessarily all right but i'm just saying that we kind of all sort of know you know the polling puts this in perspective when you realize that pew research says that 90 of americans have said yes they believe in some sort of deity and i bet you if you made a list of all the countries on the earth that 90 ranks at the bottom my point is this almost every single human being in the world would say man i know there's something out there i know there's something that's going on the question isn't do we know that something is out there here's the question okay the question is if there's something out there and if that's a reality do we choose how we interact with it or would it choose how it interacts with us and that's the question okay because here's the logical problem many people in our country and i would say man we're getting there faster than ever because yes there's 90 to believe in some kind of afterlife but you have heard that the nuns are on the rise not in you like nuns like a catholic nun the n-o-n-e-s the nuns like i don't really have a religion those things are on the rise in our country people that are are checking that box it's not really effective for my life all they're saying is yes i believe in some type of deity but i will choose how i interact with them and we see this all over you know we see this in music uh we see this in culture we see it in in movies and entertainment there's a song out right now here's what it says okay it says every sunday it's a country song now okay i'm just gonna be real about it every sunday i see people filling in those front doors gotta cross up on the steeple yeah it's time to praise the lord then it says this some watching on their tv sitting on their couch me i get in my old bronco all right now i point the headlights out when he says old bronco that's significant because the old ones are way cooler than the new ones if you've seen them the new ones look like a subaru okay now there's anything wrong with that all right i ain't got too many miles to go listen i ain't got too many miles to go to save my soul hey i go down i sink my feet in the water and i soak up the sun and i watch it set yeah i can feel the power of a salt water gospel i'm as close to god as we can get i think what happens in the christian world is like man we like to say look at that rock music how terrible it is look at that rap music how terrible it can be that's the most subversive message i may have ever heard in a song and i protested marilyn manson concert one time when i was like 13. okay seriously that was what our church did back then okay i mean like all these all these types of music and all that y'all look at this and i go wait a minute you choose your terms with god that's the tenet of the saltwater gospel get in my truck and drive out in the country if there is a god wouldn't we say that he chooses how we interact with him and that's what i want you to see in the bible today listen we interact with god in the temple that's the big idea all right if we're going to interact with god we interact with god in the temple now the question is what is the temple well that's actually going to be what i'm going to talk about for not one week but two okay so we're going to talk about four temples that i want you to see we're gonna start here in first kings chapter six we're gonna talk about three of them this week we're gonna talk about one of them next week and uh that'll be kind of our time uh in this passage of scripture as we round out prophets and kings all right four temples three today the first one is this the temple that we remember first kings chapter six the temple that we remember i know from looking back over this summer man it's been incredible to see different you know guest speakers come in and young communicators and guys from all over the country coming in and speaking it was incredible to have them i know that prophets and kings has kind of gotten slice and dice a little bit we're going to round it out over the next couple of weeks we've been studying the story of solomon for solomon man he's kind of in the twilight or not twilight the highlight sort of years of his life right man there is rest for him on every front there's not wars going on he's got time to think about all the wisdom that he has and put it down and writes 3 000 proverbs all right there's peace there's uh you know there's prosperity his wealth is unrivaled his you know his wisdom is just unmatched and people are coming from all over to hear him and he decides to put into action the temple that was in his father david's heart and we see that in verse one listen i'm going to read about i'm going to read through and skip through a bunch here so if you've got a bible you're going to need to be kind of flipping through with me we're actually going to be in a few different scriptures today but here we go verse 1 in the 418th year of the people of israel came out of the land of egypt in the fourth year of solomon's reign over israel the month of ziv which is the second month he began to build the house of the lord the house that king solomon built for the lord was 60 cubits long 20 cubits wide and 30 cubits high cubit is 18 inches so you can do the math on that skip down to verse 18. now here's what i want to do i want to walk through this and show you the grandeur and majesty and beauty and thought that went into the temple for a purpose okay but it's going to take a minute so let's just kind of walk through it verse 18. the cedar within the house was carved in the form of gourds and open flowers all with cedar no stone was seen verse 22 he overlayed the whole house with gold until all the house was finished also the whole altar that belonged in the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold this is interesting we have gold in the temple we have allusions to flowers we're going to end up seeing animals we're going to end up seeing gourds and things that come from the ground you know precious metals and animals and and things that grow out of the ground we should be thinking about eden verse 29 around all the walls of the house he carved engraved figures and cherubim and palm trees and open flowers skip with me to chapter 7 verses 13 and king solomon sent and brought haram from tyre he was the son of a widow of the tribe of naphtali if you go back before the temple there was something called the tabernacle and this story mirrors the tabernacle where they went and they brought a craftsman in to do the things in the tabernacle if you go back and exodus for the story his father was a man attire a worker of bronze and he was full of wisdom understanding and skill for making in uh for making any work in bronze he came to king solomon and did all his work he cast two pillars of bronze 18 cubits was the height of one pillar and a line of 12 cubits measured its circumference it was hollow and its thickness was four fingers the second pillar was the same this is sort of a modern marvel skip down to verse 23 then he made the sea that was cast of metal it could hold two 000 baths the sea means it's a huge basin for washing skip down to verse 27 i know i'm i feels like i'm belaboring this but just kind of hang with me you're going to see the point he also made the 10 stands of bronze verse 29 and on the panels they were set in the frames were lions and oxen and cherubim gold precious stone precious metal animals things that grow from the ground all right there's an illusion here this temple is being constructed so that we would remember the first temple which was eden where god interacted with humanity and wanted them to spill the earth with his glory verse 48 so solomon made all the vessels that were in the house of the lord all right he made everything that went in the house of the lord the golden altar the golden table the bread of presents the lamp stands pure gold five on the south side five on the north before the inner sanctuary the flowers the lamps the tongs of gold solomon wisest man that ever lived he made all this stuff guys we're very impressed when we hang a shelf at our house okay i mean we're like babe look at this you know it's level it's like got it okay yeah you got it all right solomon is putting these things in the temple of god verse 51 thus all the work of king solomon did on the house of the lord was finished skip to chapter eight okay i know this is the last one we're going to read verse 10 this is the most important by far and when the priest came out of the holy place this is the dedication all right and we're going to spend time in chapter 8 next week as well a cloud filled the house of the lord so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud for the glory of the lord filled the house of the lord if you remember i know not everybody has a church background and some of you guys are just coming in that's awesome man this is a place for you to begin to learn and begin to kind of catch up on bible themes but if you have some of this in your background when the cloud comes god comes right i mean think about it sinai think about you're walking through the desert following the cloud i mean when when god i mean the tabernacle the cloud the cloud is god god is saying i will dwell with the people now here's the thing that i want you to see solomon builds the temple god fills the temple but the temple was amazing did you kind of get that all right i mean just all that reading we could have done much more but all that reading is to for us to be able to see that this temple was amazing i think many of us like to you know build things or like to see things that that get built i think the tv shows that come the hgtv you know the reboot of fixer-upper uh all this kind of stuff you know people love to see things come to life and and be rehab this temple was built to never be rehabbed it was like hey man spare no expense get the smartest people in the whole world and the best craftsmen in the whole world and build it right the first time it was a modern at that time kind of a modern marvel i mean people have put it in the list of ancient uh kind of wonders of the world y'all why that's the question all right belaboring the point why the architecture and grandeur of the temple was to match the magnitude of what happened in the temple period that's it it was awesome because what happened in it is almost un unbelievable in a literal sense because you know what happened in the temple the temple is where heaven and earth meet the temple is where heaven and earth collide the temple of solomon is where people come in and god is there and there is an interaction with god and humanity even though we are sinful even though we are frail even though we have rebelled even though our heart is not clean god still desires to interact with us and that's what the temple is all about solomon knew this ain't like the other people the other gods other nations solomon knew god ain't confined to the temple okay he knew that you go on to read chapter eight you're gonna see that i mean he's like god fills the whole earth he's over heaven and earth he he doesn't come down and get in this little box in the ark of the covenant that's kind of the symbolic uh part you know god is in the temple he doesn't go in there because he's confined the symbol is not god is confined the symbol is that god wants to dwell among men that he wants to be with us despite our sin despite our wickedness despite our frailty despite our brokenness he still wants to be with us and this is the point of the temple that we remember there ain't enough gold in the world to match the magnitude of what it reflects there is not enough architectural genius in the world to match the magnitude of the truth that it reflects not that god is caught captive not that he has to be in a certain place but that he wants to dwell with people it's a beautiful thing it goes all the way back to the beginning i've said it two or three times you know this temple had allusions to eden uh why did it have illusions to eden because eden was the first temple where god does what he creates people in this environment where there is no sin separating them there is nothing between them the whole creation is this temple where god dwells with people this is the whole point if you get genesis one two and three you sort of get the rest of it all right it's like this is what he wanted and this is what he's gonna have and we're living kind of an in-between time and what he wanted was to dwell with people well that's what we see in the temple in the beginning creation itself was the temple of god now sin broke that rebellion broke that it separated a sinful humanity from a holy god but this temple is built to symbolize heaven and earth colliding and a god who desires to be with us the temple we remember is the temple that we lost the temple that we see built by solomon is a little reflection of what we had lost and what we are longing for one day so here here's what i want to say the first thing then we're going to go to the second temple all right the first thing that i want you to see at the temple that we remember is just before we get into anything else god wants to dwell with humanity even though we're sinful even though we're broken i don't know what this last year has been like for you you know i've said this a couple of times there are many people who walked into kova with a problem you're walking out with an addiction god still wants heaven and earth to collide in your life he has not given up on you there are some of you with your house is absolute chaos nobody knows it except you and the one maybe even sitting next to you here or one of our campuses and i don't say that to make you squirm i say that to just say hey man the cat's got to get out of the bag here if we're going to see healing even though there's chaos in the home god still wants heaven and earth to collide in your marriage like he wants to be present even though there are so many of us who covet has created this complacency that i have never seen in my lifetime when it comes to church man there are people that were leaning in like crazy they wanted to see their kids disciple they were leaning in to a relationship with christ had signed up for a community group for the first time and covet happened and we're a year and a half later and now it ain't coveted it's complacency and i see people all the time in the community i talk to them i push them and it's like man is it coveted it's really not it's just that we're kind of man i don't know we just don't really care that much anymore if we're honest about it you know what god still wants heaven and earth to collide in your life even though you're neglecting him he still wants that for you it's a beautiful truth i mean you can't build a temple that is beautiful enough for us to be able to see that god still wants to be with us in the pervasiveness of our frailty rebellion apathy and neglect he still wants heaven earth to collide in your life second temple all right the temple we trust the first simple example we remember solomon's temple the second temple is the temple that we trust now we're going to take a huge leap all right so i love what pastor ryan said last week when he said good student take notes all right so if you want to take notes on this you can or whatever you can go back and look it up but i'm gonna give you a little bit of history here just so we can speed up um this uh this process of looking through these temples we've got to fast forward here's the problem solomon's temple was awesome and yet it like eden got destroyed by sin like eden the people get kicked out well like like that they get exiled because they sin they don't treat the poor a certain way they were supposed to they neglect the sabbath they start idol worship they're passing women around they're doing all these things and yet they still have this belief that no matter what happens god would never allow them to be conquered you go back and read jeremiah chapter seven you know why because what i said what well what i said actually what solomon said about god being over heaven and earth okay by the time you get to jeremiah 7 the people are using this idea that god is in that little box in the temple and what they're saying is well god's in the box in that temple and so nobody could ever conquer us so jeremiah is shouting from the rooftops your sin is going to bring exile and destruction and they say but the lord is in the temple but the lord is in the temple but the lord is in the temple well you get to ezekiel chapter 10 and you realize no he left the temple that's the vision in ezekiel 10. in ezekiel 10 he leaves the chicane the glory the cloud okay he leaves now what's the point of that the point of that is to make sure that they understand hey i'm not contained in this little box but you will see the consequences of your sin and this temple will be broken just like eden was broken and it was in 587 that temple was absolutely destroyed by about 5 15 so people got to go back to the land after their exile and they were able to rebuild it but they you know it wasn't nothing like it was before actually people stood and cried when they looked at it if they had ever seen the first one by the time they looked at the second one now that's where the temple stood alright that temple that that one that got built kind of stood for a long time by the time that jesus walks on the earth a guy named herod has gone back and tried to put the ornateness and the grandeur and all of the you know intricacies and all that back into the temple so it's a little complex but here's the problem okay after this kind of episode of exile the people miss something that happens in jeremiah chapter 31 and it's very very important see what ends up happening is that jeremiah begins to talk about something called the new covenant all right now jesus talks about the new covenant if you want to talk about a covenant you almost say the word deal okay it's kind of like what god is saying in jeremiah is you know that i gave you eden broke him you got the new temple broke if god is going to dwell with man this is kind of what jeremiah is going to say i'm going to read it in a second if god is actually going to dwell we're going to need something new you don't you don't go back and re you know you don't go back and put a bunch of gold in the temple and think that our relationship is repaired okay you're not going to go back with a bunch of works and a bunch of things following the laws and all that and think that we're fine we're going to need something new we needed a new deal with god entered into entered through a new temple a truer and better temple and that's what jeremiah says behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will make a new covenant with the house of israel and the house of judah verse 33 i will put my law within them and i will write it on their hearts and i will be their god and they will be my people there is something new that is coming the problem is by the time of jesus's day they didn't listen to jeremiah the first time they certainly didn't listen to his prophecy about what they needed in terms of a new covenant and by the time you get to jesus's day you have a bunch of people that are building an old building when they should be looking at a new covenant you know don't go build an old building when you should be looking for a new covenant and i think about it like this you know how we do this in a modern way we try to build our morality before god when we really ought to be just thinking about his grace what we do today is we say man i'm going to build my resume when we need a grant we try to posture before god we ought to lay prone before god and receive something from him this is what happens in the new covenant in the new covenant we are given a gift all right now the the new covenant we're looking for a new temple jesus christ was the new temple that reflects the new covenant now that's not me saying that or doing something cute there's a place in john chapter two where jesus christ plain as day tells us hey i am the new temple now i don't know if you remember this story or not i know again i'm borrowing on a lot of old kind of sunday school here so a lot of you may not have that background so let me try to catch you up all right jesus was walking through the temple one day and there's a bunch of guys that are selling things and changing money and cheating people and all this and it's just become a custom in the temple well jesus kind of goes nuts on these guys and he starts driving them out of the temple all right this happens a couple of different places in the scripture you can read the account he starts driving them out of the temple well what the scribes and the pharisees understand is wait a minute if you have the power to reform the temple you are kind of claiming that you are something very important the messiah some kind of new teacher whatever you have to have some kind of authority if you're going to reform the temple so they go to him and they say to him by what authority are you reforming the temple not understanding that he was not reforming anything what he was telling them is i'm not here to reform the temple i am the temple what this represents i actually am there has always been a placeholder there has always been a place through faith that we say god i know one day you are actually going to repair the relationship between god and humanity and jesus christ comes and he ends up telling them hey i'm actually that thing and that's what he says look what he says in verse 19 jesus answered them destroy this temple and in three days i will raise it up the jews said it has taken 46 years to build this temple they're laughing at them and you will raise it up by the end of the book of matthew what do they yell at him when he's on the cross you said you could destroy the temple and build it right back why don't you get off the cross as they're mocking him and beating him not understanding this next part but he was speaking to them about the temple of his own body when therefore he was raised from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the word that jesus had spoken y'all this is an essential truth of christianity jesus is the temple jesus is the place ultimately where god and man meet there have always been place holders but jesus is the true temple jesus supersedes the old sanctuary r.c sproul said it like this christ is the temple and all men are commanded to come through him to worship the one true god jesus christ said i am the way you know the way that jesus spoke about himself was even this temple kind of language when you think about you come to god through christ like if you're gonna go through him it's almost like you're walking through right a door or a gate you're walking into something and that's the idea the idea in romans chapter 5 for example is therefore since we have been justified by faith we have peace with god what through the lord jesus christ we have it through him we have obtained into his grace which which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of god through jesus christ see in the old testament in these temples what would they do they would sacrifice animals actually go back to solomon you know what happens at the end of first kings chapter eight they sacrifice 22 000 cows and a hundred thousand sheep when they dedicate the temple what do they what are they saying these things are place holders the temple temple's a placeholder the sacrifice of placeholder what they're saying is god we trust that one day you will repair well the bible is very clear i mean we cannot be brought into god's presence by the blood of bulls and rams they were placeholders they were types they showed us something about the one that we should be looking for they were symbols of what we deserve man we deserve the wrath of god because of our sin our frailty our weakness our rebellion the ways that we have messed up these animals are going to stand in our place we put faith that one day god is going to do something greater than those animals that he's going to supersede this sacrifice what the sacrifice of the old testament symbolized the blood of jesus christ actually satisfied it it actually took away the wrath of god when we put our faith in it when we admit that we're sinners when we believe and what he has done on the cross and his resurrection when we confess that he is the lord of our life then his sacrifice is applied to us and we come through him through this true temple we end up interacting with god a man it's a great sacrifice you know in 1914 when teddy roosevelt joined the famous explorer ron dawn in uh you know right and maybe some of you guys have read about or heard about it when they descended the river of doubt all right it was kind of a crazy uh uh it was kind of a crazy exploratory venture where i mean it was crazy many people got they faced many dangers and man you know teddy roosevelt's health actually was never the same after it and all this kind of stuff but here's one thing that happened uh in in that story is that when they would come traversing the amazon when they would come up upon tributaries of the amazon river that was filled with piranhas what they would do is the guides knew which rivers you had to do this and which ones you didn't but the ones that were filled with piranhas they would pick out the weakest ox or the weakest pony or the weakest animal that they had and they would goad that animal to get into the water many times they would even cut the animal to get it to start bleeding and when they got it into the water all of a sudden what would happen i know it's kind of graphic feeding frenzy right the piranhas would jump all over this poor animal and just strip it all the way down to nothing while the rest of the caravan walked right by not 10 feet away they would walk right by one goes down so that the rest goes free this is what christ has done for us jesus on the cross so that we don't face the cross and we come to god through this his wrath passes over us his wrath is taken out on jesus christ instead of us that's why it says you come through jesus christ and for some of us in just a minute i'm going to get into this maybe you will admit and believe and confess even today third temple all right hey you guys are hanging with me i know it's deep this week but it's about to get deeper the temple we are okay all right we gotta we gotta wait i mean if we weren't in the deep waters yet we're about to be right now okay because i understand that when you get into the bible and you seriously begin to study it metaphors can get mixed and man what is the temple and you've already talked about the temple being eden and then the temple was actually the temple now the temple is jesus okay well jesus is is raised from the dead so what is the temple now well this stuff is not as simple as a roku television okay sometimes it's a little got a little bit of a more nuanced and complexity to it and that's what we're going to see today here's what happens especially in the american south what we think is like okay eden temple temple temple jesus temple and then we go well we must be back to buildings being a temple the church building is a temple now wrong what we end up seeing in the new testament is this that you and i when we become little followers of christ little christians when jesus wakes us up from our spiritual death okay and we begin to follow him when we place our faith in christ and we are reborn all of a sudden like him we become one who is like him all of a sudden the bible begins to use language where it says no no the the temple is not a building it's not a place it's a people that's what the temple is now you want to see where god and humanity meet it is in the church not the building okay we need to make that distinction i'm guilty of that as well it's like where are you going babe i'm going up to the church no you can't go up to the church all right the church is a people the church is a movement it's not it's not it's not a place it's not a building i'm going up to the church building maybe but i'm not going to the church you can't go to the church the church is a people the church is a movement in all places that will go all the way to the ends of the earth god has promised it this is what the church is and the bible says that that's what the temple is now church the temple of god in the world is you that's what ephesians 2 tells us you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of god built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets jesus christ himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy what temple right y'all can say it okay it's okay you can say the campuses all right a holy temple of the lord in him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for god by the spirit when someone places faith in jesus christ and are filled with the spirit of god they become part of the temple that houses the spirit of god now first peter 2 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up into a spiritual house i know what some of y'all thought okay when i started talking about when i started talking about the temple and the gold and everything y'all started looking around and being like man half of our church meets in a metal tin can box okay i mean you know clifton you guys have a church you know like a church building and the northeast campus does you know high point uh you know regional man we meet in a business park you're looking around and you're like man you know like where's the gold like where is all the you know the big ornate kind of grandiose majestic like where is all this stuff y'all the beauty of the temple is the new humanity that's what the beauty of the temple is now it is us it is us functioning as the church functions i know and listen some of you some of you are coming in and a church our size at every single campus i bet you in every single service there are people here that have been burned by the church then there are people here right now where you're like man the church don't seem very beautiful to me i understand that all i can say for that is this when the church has not seemed beautiful to you or has not been actually not seen but has been not beautiful to you it stepped outside of its mission to do that that's not what god intended what god intended is that the church the people of god would shine in a way that gold can't touch that there would be nothing that the temple of solomon could have in terms of majesty and grandeur that when people look in and they actually see what the church is and what it's about it would be a beautiful beautiful thing that's what we are supposed to be you know i think about when notre dame burn you guys remember a couple of years ago i mean just within weeks a billion dollars was raised to re-put to you know to re uh to rebuild this building because of how ornate and grand and majestic it was and it don't move the mission of god an inch and you think about a billion dollars do you realize putting the gospel into a language that has never been translated before cost about 175 000 with that same amount of money we could have put a bible in the hands of every single unreached people group that is left on earth and instead we're looking for a place it's not a place it's a people it is us it is the church of jesus christ we are the temple now i wonder if some of us are blown away over this like we should be the fact that we can interact and the fact that we can see the beauty i mean i had this thought the other day i thought to myself man you know what if i could raise the money and build solomon's temple right out here would some of us be like man that's really awesome be more blown away over a building than we are what the church is supposed to be doing in its mission would we be like man that's beautiful that that temple has gold you know what solomon's temple had gold let me tell you what the church is supposed to have the church is supposed to have works and generosity and community and love things that a a church building things that a temple things that gold can never touch yes solomon's temple had gold but you know what when my little baby girl was in the nicu for uh 35 days or whatever it was and i got the flu so our whole family was quarantined and my wife couldn't make the trip to raleigh it was the people in our community group here and it was the people from our community group before we ever left here in raleigh that said oh no no that little baby is part of our faith family she's not going a day without being held for three hours and they drove out there you know that ain't gold it's so much more beautiful than gold that's what the church is supposed to be man when the church comes together and they receive with joy the preaching of the word which you guys do every single week week in and week out and somebody stands and proclaims when we worship together when we sing our songs to god when we're generous with the community when we have an ice storm and we have a family in our church that has moved intentionally into a refugee community and the refugee community that these particular folks come from a muslim background and they said you know when things like this happen it's the christians who come knocking on our door to see if we need anything this is the beauty of the church and that is what is grand now i i'm out of time listen let me let me move to a conclusion here i get uh three temples this week one next week okay the temple we long for we're going to talk about that next week but let me close like this all right and we'll pick it back up next week hey for some of you guys you need to take a first step you know for some of you guys it's like it's like a pre-evangelism that needs to happen i know that's a crazy word if you're not a churchy person okay all that means is is hard for you to decide if you want to make a decision for christ if you haven't even decided that there's a god who you will let dictate the terms of how you meet him so you got to make that decision first like are you going to let him decide that or are you going to decide that and if you're deciding that my only question is which one is god in the equation okay so you got to make that decision first hey for some of you it's like man do you see that jesus was the new temple for you do you want to interact with god it's a million-dollar question not is there a god 90 of americans most almost every single person in the world understands there's something going on this ain't just like chaos and all that like we get that the question is do you want to interact he wants to interact with you man the fact that he wants to dwell with you does that awaken your heart to want him to dwell with you i pray that it does and if it does like i said would you admit that you were a sinner when you believe that jesus christ came to this earth died in your place was raised from the dead sent the spirit of god to light of fire in the church would you confess him to be the lord of your life and if you would do that today i mean you don't have to have you know we don't have to always do hands raised and all that kind of stuff like pray to receive christ right now as i'm talking just i surrender i believe you know and then come talk to somebody on our prayer team after this and finally the last thing i'll say is this how are you expressing the beauty and taking in the beauty of what god is doing in the temple now all right the church not the building right the the temple the church how are you taking that in and how are you contributing to that you know i've said it before it's like going to the beach right it's only really fun if you're willing to get all the way in it's like a pool it's like you go to the party you're like i don't really want to get wet well you're boring okay it's like you need you need to you know it's like if you're going you got to get all the way in the church is the same way like some of us are kind of taking in the beauty and we're kind of we're kind of sort of expressing what it means you know to be part of the new humanity in the new temple and it's like man i just want to call you to get all the way in all right man let's express it fully let's take the beauty in fully i mean there's so many things i could say right i don't want to go through all of them but you got to be kidding me next week man back to school weekend commissioning these kindergartners not one of us would allow our kids to miss the first day of school or the first practice of a new season how in the world could we miss next week i'm talking in person with the kids in the kids ministry like man that needs to happen man let's fully express and fully take in the beauty hey some of you guys need to go to the weekender you'll be coming around this summer it's incredible we love that you're here all right i haven't seen any of you because i've been gone but i know you're here okay and i and i pray that like you know if the lord's kind of leading the weekender is the spot let's fully express and let's fully take in the beauty we can talk about a thousand other things but i'll end it there and uh man we'll pick it up next week all right let's pray father god we come before you and lord we are man we're just blown away the theology of the temple i mean we could preach on it for months father i pray that we would fully express and fully take in the beauty of what it means to be part of the temple of god on earth lord i pray right now for those who may be accepting christ god i pray that they will get baptized on september 12th lord as we open the waters and father i pray for that day lord i pray for back to school god i pray that we would express and take in the beauty in that day god our students are coming back many many of them college students father i pray there's many freshmen right now that will get saved here be discipled here and go to the nations from here and go on church plants from here lord let us fully dive in express and take in the beauty of god thank you for the church in christ's name amen

Channel: Mercy Hill Church

Views: 454

Rating: 4.1999998 out of 5

Keywords: Jesus, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, Scriptures, Mercy Hill, Mercy Hill Church, Andrew Hopper, 1 Kings, 1 Kings 6, 1 Kings 7, 1 Kings 8

Id: 64drPdL0Cbw

Length: 43min 10sec (2590 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021