God's Holy Temple [Part 1]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher and author of his latest book, the power to bless when you accept why you become the inhabitation of a temple of the Holy Spirit. That's faster going to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I being excited for you to hear the teaching today. In the series belonging to God as presented at renewal the church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now.

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More on that later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan Christians you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are going to look at one little verse to low versus and first Corinthians chapter 6, where Paul is addressing some of the sexual immorality that should not be tolerated in their midst and giving the deepest rationale. The most powerful theological argument for why they should avoid doing such things with their bodies and it comes to verse 19 first Corinthians chapter 6, and says or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you. You have from God, you are not your own.

You are bought with a price.

So glorify God in your body. There were two wicked brothers, both of thieves and scoundrels and one of them died and the living brother came to the pastor and said to him before the funeral. He said I I have brought $1 million check is a donation to the church capital campaign that perhaps I will thank you very much he said but there's one condition upon me giving the gift and that is at the funeral. I want you to say my brother was a saint pastor. We tell that you the same person okay and he took the check for the capital campaign.

The next day service pastors Roger my bystander got into speaking unvarnished truth.

He said the deceased was a scoundrel and a thief.

He was unfaithful to his wife.

It was wicked.

The abuse every body. There was no good, but compared to his brother. He was a saint.

Learning how to put a video a means to be set apart for God in the New Testament picture of it is not about reaching a certain level of moral purity or rising up to meet a level of ethical standards is important as those things might be, but instead to be holy means to be set apart to God.

So it means belonging to God, and we have discovered that not only are we holy and that we are God's treasured possession. But Hebrews 1010 says that we have been sanctified. We have been made holy.

But this is not something we don ourselves. One of the most important things you could understand about what holiness really means is, it is something that God has done for you in the same way that he is saved you by the gift of Christ on the cross. It is by this same gap that he is set you apart unto himself, and therefore your holy what we have realized is that further we are the ones that are called saints by Paul and throughout the New Testament, because if you are set apart unto God holy onto him, then Christians, that means you are the holy ones so you are saying and what were discovering is that you get far further in your spiritual growth and in your victory over sin and in your maturity in the Lord you will daily.

Remind yourself of who you actually are that you're actually the holy one of God. So you are saying but today we come to a tax that is even more mindbending than anything that we have seen so far about what holiness means. And this is where Paul comes to us and says that we in Christ are the very temple of the Holy Spirit is not the only place where he says in second grade. In chapter 6, he said what agreement has a temple of God with idols, we are the temple of the living God, for God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them.

I will be there gone they will be my people first rent in chapter 3.

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you and in Ephesians 2 Paul explains this that you are no longer strangers and aliens which are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together, grows into a holy temple.

It means that you, the otherwise ordinary are now by every measure extraordinary because when you accept Christ, you become the inhabitation a temple of the Holy Spirit. We have dear lady in our congregation to teach second grade at Summit school here adjacent to the village campus and she is a job I want a great teacher never want to please you guys is every spring. She has her second graders. Write a little note and then they put a generic N and put into a bottle and cork it and she takes it down to Wrightsville Beach and gives it to see Capt. that she knows and he takes about 40 miles and drops it into the Gulfstream warm waters that can travel all the way to Europe and you know that in 2014 one of a bottle showed up in Portugal so I found and then the 2016. A bottle showed up in France and last month, another bottle showed a man of her tired grandfather named Jean-Pierre was walking along the beach in Normandy and he saw a bottle that was tangled in nets and seaweed and Reese downloading saw there was messages inside the bottle that had barnacles across the top that it grown over all the many months that it traveled over there and they brought it home and opened it up and there was a generic note from Ms. Sean Botkin said that this was all activity with her second grade class and I had her email address in there and it had a note from Ben the second-grader and he had drawn a picture of Poseidon's trident and a picture of a bottle and he just put the words you found it! Lists came and interviewed little man and said you know how you feel and he's like I know is it a chance in the millions. But sometimes it happens and he said that he only thing he liked to do is he scented her neck sleazy like to add a little camera to it so that it could capture all the different see animals that it would see on the way over.

That was Ben's idea. So when Jean-Pierre found that bottle. I it's an ordinary bottle, but now it is extraordinary because there's a message inside of it.

So when you become a Christian. What happens is Jesus Christ who is the living word. He is the word of God who became flesh, and he comes mystically to take up residence in your life, and this is something that is spiritual and cannot be explained in natural terms, but when you become a Christian. What was dead and you towards God becomes alive and you are alive in the spirit and Jesus comes in the presence of the Holy Spirit, the very spirit of Jesus and is united with your spirit and you are engrafted in Christ and you become one with him. When Paul uses language yearly speaks of. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit goes God has given his spirit in you is interesting sentence and that he grammatically uses both the singular term for you and the plural term for you really, really talking not just about the corporate entity of the body of Christ we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, but he saying here. Quite frankly, that you also are the temple of the Holy Spirit. All throughout history people have always wanted to know where is it that I could meet with God where is God.

How do I meet with God.

Every culture throughout history in one way or another's been asking that question.

I got events in the story little boys always get in trouble. It is private Christian school in one of the run amended in trouble again, and he brought them into headmaster's office and the headmaster's letters and try something different with more this time. He said he want to try getting in touch with the fact that God was always with them and seeing everything he did and so had messages look to the little and said son is and where is God in order to set their client headmaster suggested software is God and a little boy got little antsy start fidgeting around of the third time when the headmaster said where is God. The boy jumped up and took out running down the hallway and another little friend to his senses where you go I was going on and he said evidently God is missing and they think I took some to Psalm 43 lay part of worship song one liturgical element in Psalm 42, the familiar words as the deer pants for the streams of water, so my soul pants for you mind are my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God is echoed in Psalm 43 where can I go when can I go this is the language of someone who is apart from the temple. This is someone who is either in exile or during a time in which the temple had been destroyed and is saying the law of my life my soul's deepest yearning is it I could go and meet God, but the understanding was to meet with God in a manifest way it would necessitate a meeting place and God in all of his mercy is established with the people of Israel that he was holy.

The people who were unholy could not just simply come into the presence of the holy and so God made provisional arrangements in Exodus chapter 19 when Moses goes up on Mount Sinai. There is fire and thunder and smoke and people are not even allowed to touch the mountain, lest they be struck down. And Moses is allowed to meet with God as a mediator, but even then, he can't look God face-to-face and God then gives instructions on building a tentative meeting or a tabernacle in which this nomadic people could have a symbolic presence of God traveling with them and they could set up the tent of meeting and have within it a holy place and then a curtain behind it, a holy of holies. And there they could keep the ark of the covenant and they can offer sacrifices on behalf of the sins of the people and the priest could me with God on behalf of of the people that was temporary provision but this mobile tabernacle was deemed insufficient by David when he came in established the monarchy and he secured the borders.

In fact, expanded Israel's borders greatly and he said is not right for me to be in this palace of Cedar beauty and glory. And God doesn't even have a house in his eye. Lord, I want to build a temple in the Lord said what you want to limit your son will and Solomon builds this temple. Solomon was so wealthy and has connections all over the known world and brings in all of these materials and builds and according to specifications of God, much like the tabernacle, but more ornate and having a holy place in a thick veil in the holy of holies, and Solomon's Temple was absolutely beautiful and majestic in every Jewish person there longing always was to be able to join the pilgrims in the festivals and come to the temple and to be assured that through the mediating work of the high priest on the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, that their sins would be temporarily covered and they could be therefore reckoned as if in right standing with God. It was viewed that temple was viewed as the holiest place on our and what happened was that Nebuchadnezzar and the kingdom of Babylon. This empire came in and invaded and sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and the people were exiled to Babylon, and so for a period of time. The temple was in ruins. The people were in exile and the lament of the nation centered around this. Not only do not have a homeland that we do not have our temple, we do not have the place where we can go and meet with God and so the great longing was when can I go and meet with God. Where can I go and meet with God.

As soon as Ezra and Zerubbabel were able to return with those it will be in restored from exile under Cyrus of Persia as soon as I began to do the work of the temple. People begin to have hope that once again we have a meeting place between God and humanity.

They rebuilt the temple. Some people remember the old temple and they wept when they saw the nuke of the didn't have the same glory of the old, but there was great rejoicing over the rebuilding of the temple and then as it came to pass a king named Herod many years later it was raining and wanted to see himself as the king of the Jews. And so for political expediency. He took on a major renovation project of that temple and made it so much more glorious. That was about 19 years before Christ. So about time of Jesus birth in the time of Jesus ministry this temple which the Jews recall the second Temple was now renovated.

You might call it Herod's Temple, but it really was still the second Temple and it was it was it was glorious talent right will have more teaching moment from today's important series just 1% of lies enough display of grace instead of locking introducing unlimited capacity for fear if I don't measure up. When my having rejected when the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church a pass somehow was outraged and read a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of Alan Wright's 12 message idea series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free, and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and asked the gospel discover the purity and power the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright ministry said I will send you pastor outlines messages in an attractive CD album with your digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

Call us at 877-544-4860 come to our website pastor at Gatwick today's teaching now continues your once again is Alan Wright this temple was considered to be the holiest place on earth as one Orthodox Orthodox rabbi wrote for 830 years from 833 to 423 BCE and again from 349 BCE to 69 CE. There stood an avid edifice upon a Jerusalem hilltop which served to the point of contact between heaven and earth, so central was is edifice.

Our lives is use the nearly 2/3 of the commandments of the Torah contingent upon its existence and the rabbi continued by saying his destruction is regarded as the greatest tragedy in our history of extraordinary statement. It is considered to be the centerpiece of all creation. The Jewish rabbis would ride another older Jewish tradition and the midrash puts rabbi motion environment and he said the location of the altar and the holy Temple is very exactly defined. It is commonly held tradition at the place were David and Solomon built altar on the threshing floor of Verona is a very place where Abraham built an altar and bound Isaac upon.

This is where Noah built an altar when he came out from the ark.

This is where Cain and Abel brought their offerings and this is where Adam, the first man offered Corbin sacrifice when he was created and it is from the earth of this place the dust of this place that he was created to the rabbinical tradition said that the holy of holies in the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. So holy traditions that this is the place where God reached out and took Dustin formed Adam. It was a divine connecting place of heaven and earth is not to say that the Jewish people had a primitive belief that all that God was limited to that one location because surely as the psalmist said in Psalm 139, he understood the God was everywhere.

If I were to rise on the wings of the dawn travel to the uttermost parts of the sea you are there. Solomon said, so they understood something about the omnipresence of God, but the manifest presence of God the place of the Shekinah glory of God the place where people could meet miraculously with God the place in which God would meet intimately with his people. This was the temple and when this temple was one day in Jesus ministry will one day he was there and this temple was obviously being misused because people were there selling turtle send and in animals for sacrifice, and that was not the scandal because pilgrims would commonly want to have something to offer and is very hard to have an unblemished lamb is very hard to have the proper sacrifice and so they sell it to see come to the temple to get the proper sacrifice that was of the scandal. The scandal was pilgrims in come from many different regions and in different currencies and whenever you would come when your currency and have to exchange it for temple currency in order to buy the turtle, but the exchange rate that they were charging was exorbitant so they were making tons of money off the fact that people had come from far away foreign places. The pilgrims of come to worship by these animals for sacrifice were losing so much money in the exchange to get the temple currency and Jesus all this whole thing and he had a serious and longevity get a whipping drive them out of their turns over these tables and people are the religious leaders are just dumbfounded by this shot combines and angered by and they come to Jesus and they say to him by what authority do you do this you need to show us a sigh, give us a miracle right now that proves that you got authority to come in and do that and it was in that context that Jesus answered them, and John chapter 2 destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up the Jews. The Texans then said it's taken 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days, but he was speaking about the temple of his body, when therefore he is raise from his bed from the dead. The disciples remembered that he said this and they believe the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken, you know that in this moment when Jesus said destroy this temple. What I'm trying to get you to see is this was probably one of the most shocking statements that any spiritual leader of any type has ever made in the history of the world destroy this temple, the very meeting place between God and humanity. The holiest place on or the very longing of our lives was to have it rebuilt and wanted admin rebuilt and never see it torn down in your goodness. I destroy this temple, and you're gonna rebuild it in three days. As long as it takes to rebuild the temple, they were furious and this saying of Jesus was used to mock him the rest of his life, even to the point that he was on the cross. The Texas people came and wagged her head at him and said, look at him. He said this is the one who said he destroy the temple and rebuild it. He can't even save his own life.

Even the thieves next on the process joined into the modern destroy the today's teaching God's holy temple in our series belonging to God.

Stick around with his Alan is back in a moment the health impacts more. This additional insight on this for your life and our final work today and knocking for 99 days in a row.

Someone tells you, I love you my letter for site when you feel cherished. The what would happen if I'm hundreds day that same person. Sad that sugar get enough for me to measure on the Colletti anymore. When that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days when 1% of conditional love poison. The other 99% will just 1% of lies enough to spoil grace instead of locking introducing unlimited capacity for fear if I don't measure up. When my having rejected when the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church a possible policy outraged and read a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of Alan Wright's 12 message idea series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free, and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and asked the gospel discover the purity and power the grace of God. When you make your get to Alan Wright ministry said I will send you pastor's message is an attractive CD album with your digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Call us at 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor and dialect. While we often within the Christian circles will totally hear and will talk about being temple of the Lord. Her our bodies are temples of the Lord. What is the teaching that I conclude with to get to the next edition was extraordinary thing is that not only have we been called holy.

But we have been called the actual temple of the Holy Spirit, which is to say, not only does God regards this holy but the holiest thing on earth his own presence, abides within us and just think about that if God is willing to take up residence in your life Christian, then, doesn't this prove that he regards you as holy and we have to get past the idea that what we had so much sand we have some problems or life that were not the more you see yourself as the holy temple of God that that'll change a lot of your behaviors and chains on the way that you think about what were seeing. It is just how profound this is a goes back to Jesus controversy were steered on the sandlot rebuild it. And speaking of his own body. Then we the body of Christ on earth has become the temple it's absolutely today's good news message is a listener supported production Alan White ministries