Better than winning the Super Bowl!

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple…? (I Cor. 3:16).

Congratulations Denver Broncos, and especially Peyton Manning. All of us in Denver are happy campers today.  What could be more exciting than winning the Super Bowl?  How about being God’s temple and having God’s Spirit living in you?  That was the truth Paul had to remind the men and women in the church in Corinth about.  Maybe they got as excited about winning the Isthmian Games as we get about things like the Super Bowl.

The above text is one of three statements Paul makes about being a temple of the Holy Spirit.  It is worth reflecting on how mind-boggling this truth is.  It is at the core of why God created humanity and what his plans and purposes are for our lives.  And, it is my hunch, we often forget this incredible fact.

Why did God create people?  In Genesis we are give two big hints.  First, we are told that God created us in his image.  We were intended to be image bearers of the living God.  This is really a lot cooler than starting at linebacker for the Broncos.(You will have to trust me on that!)  An integral part of being an image bearer was the fact that when God carried out this intention, he breathed his Spirit into the man he had created.  That would enable Adam to manifest God’s presence and glory through his life.  I would suggest that this was humanity’s primary purpose; to reflect the image of God and manifest his presence and glory.  But something went wrong (not taking God by surprise, by the way).  In order to fulfill this purpose, man had to choose to let God be God.

We call the incidents of Genesis, chapter 3, the Fall.  Tempted to be like God, Adam and Eve chose to violate the one commandment they were given.  When that happened, the Spirit of God vacated the human heart.  We call it spiritual death.  The result was that the entire human race came forth from Adam and Eve alive physically, but dead spiritually.  Humanity no longer possessed the ability to manifest God’s presence and glory.  As Paul would later write, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

At this point, God already had a plan in place to fix this problem.  But in the meantime, he launched an alternative, temporary program.  In around 1,500 BC, God led the Israelites out of Egypt and brought them to Mt. Sinai.  There he gave them his law.  He also gave plans for them to construct a special tent that was called the Tabernacle.  Along with all the religious practices that were performed at the Tabernacle, the primary purpose of the “tent” was to be a place where God could manifest his presence and his glory.  That took place in a small 18-foot-by -18-foot part of the tent called the Holy of Holies.  In that small room, the Israelites were to place the Ark of the Covenant that contained the tablets of the Law, and was covered by the place of atonement (we all it the Mercy Seat) and the figures of the golden angels of the presence.  Between these angels, and over the Mercy Seat, God manifested his presence and his glory.  It was called the “shekinah”.  Unfortunately, this manifestation of his presence could only be seen by one person (the High Priest), one day a year (the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur).

Five hundred years later, around 1,000 BC, King David decided to replace the moving “tent” with a permanent structure; the Temple.  Modeled on the Tabernacle, the Temple was much larger.  But along with all the religious activities that took place at the Temple, its primary purpose was again to be the place where God manifested his presence and his glory.  Like the Tabernacle, the Temple contained a special room called the Holy of Holies.  In in this first Temple, the Ark of the Covenant again was placed, now containing Aaron’s rod, and a jar of manna, along with the tablets of the law.  And God graciously showed up and again manifested his presence over the Mercy Seat.

But all this was only a temporary “fix” on God’s real plans and purposes.  A thousand years after David, Jesus Christ came.  He was the living manifestation of the presence and glory of God.  He was the real Temple.  And it should be noted that the physical temple of Herod, referred to as the Second Temple, lacked the Ark of the Covenant, and the manifestation of the presence and glory of God.  It still functioned as a religious focal point of the nation, but it no longer fulfilled its primary purpose!

But even the coming of Jesus was not the final part of the plan to fix God’s original purposes.  With the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the stage was set to get back to the original plan.  Ten days after the ascension of Christ, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Day of Pentecost.  Suddenly, all men and women who opened their hearts to Jesus would be invaded by the Holy Spirit who left Adam and Eve at the time of the Fall.  Men and women would once again have the ability to manifest the presence and glory of God in and through their lives!  People, both individually, and corporately (what we call the church) became once again the Temple of God.  Apparently, the Corinthians had forgotten that this was their primary purpose.  Thus Paul’s reminder here in chapter three, and again in chapter six, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s Temple?”

Like the Corinthians, most of us need repeated reminders that this is our highest purpose.  With Christ in our lives via the Holy Spirit, our purpose is to manifest the presence and glory of God in and through our lives.  Our daily prayer can now be, “Lord Jesus, live your life in and through me today!”  And I would suggest, that is even cooler than winning the Super Bowl!

To hear more on this subject, check out the audio of the teaching at:http://highlinecc.org/?page_id=196.