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This page was last modified on July 12, 2010
Week Of: June 6, 2010 Title: Temple of the Holy Spirit Series: Doctrine of the Church – Part 3 Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 1. Have you ever been in a temple? Several years ago when Sharon and I visited Eric in Thailand, we visited a temple. The temple was huge and had a statue of Buddha that filled the entire temple. Christianity has Churches and Cathedrals, but no temples. Jews have synagogues but no temples. Why do Jews and Christians not have temples?
2. Jews used to have a temple but it had been destroyed and never built back in Jerusalem. To the Jews, there is to be only one Temple and it must be built only on one spot.
3. The spot is called the Temple Mount. Let me give you some history…there have been really three Temples built in Jerusalem. The last one was built by Herod the Great and destroyed by a Roman General named Titus on August 28 in 70 A.D. The Temple Mount is what the Temple sat on. The Mount was a massive earth and rock platform, some 144,000 square meters in area, the size of 12 football fields. The Mount itself was also 32 meters high and was held in place by four huge stone retaining walls. The Western retaining wall is the only thing left of the Temple. It is called the “Wailing Wall” because Jews all over the world for over 2000 years have come there to mourn the destruction of the Temple and pray. The wall actually had no function at all during Herod’s time, other than holding the dirt in place.
4. Today however, it has become a place of deepest sanctity and profound religious feelings. As Simon Goldhill says in a book he wrote about the Temple: “The physical building may no longer exist, but both the site of the Temple and the idea of it have inspired men and women for generations—and have been fought over with matching intensity…the Temple takes shape in the minds of men…The Temple is never just a destroyed building. It has become the potent symbol of the human search for the lost ideal, an image of former greatness and greatness to come.”
5. Yet on that same spot nearly six hundred years after it was destroyed another religious group came to its site. In 638 A.D. the Muslims conquered Jerusalem and 52 years later build a beautiful building called “the Dome of the Rock.” This building houses the rock on which, it was said that “Abraham bound Isaac for sacrifice” and was the same place that is believed to be the “altar of Solomon’s temple,” and more importantly to the Muslims it was where the prophet Mohammed rose from the earth on a winged horse to meet Abraham, Moses, and Jesus in heaven, where he led them in prayers. The legend has it that “The Rock” wanted to follow Mohammed to heaven and the foot print of where he pushed it back to earth is seen on it today.
6. To Christians, the Temple Mount is important because that is where Jesus taught and worshiped. When Titus destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D. it brought to life the words of Jesus, the Gospel of Mark writes: “When Jesus came out the Temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stone and what wonderful buildings.” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
7. When Jesus was asked to explain what He meant, He started to talk about the end of the world and the day and times of His Second Coming.
8. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is in the Temple and says these words “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” The Jews that heard what Jesus said responded “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to do it in three.” Then John writes these words “But the temple he spoke of was His body.”
9. You might say we don’t have nor need a temple because of two reasons: One, Jesus is our once and for all sacrifice for our sins, therefore we don’t need a temple to make sacrifices. Two, Jesus is now our Temple. For Christians Jesus becomes the Temple. Jesus is the new temple (the true spiritual temple) which opposes the one built of stones, made by the hands of men, and destroyed by the hands of men. The destroying of the old temple does not destroy mankind’s relationship with God, as Rome might have hoped, but simply heralds the rising of Christianity. You destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again.
10. To the Jews the Temple was the place that they met God.
11. Jesus is our hope that in Him we have met and will continue to meet God. Jesus is our temple. He is the place where our Savior comes together as 100 percent man and 100 percent God. He is where we dwell and where we worship.
12. Now let’s switch gears and quickly look at two other uses of the word “temple.” In Ephesians 2:21-22 Paul describes individual believers as “a holy temple in the Lord…a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.” In 1 Corinthians, he says “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own?”
13. We cannot say too much about what that means to us. (However, we won’t say it today J)
14. But also the collective consciousness of our congregation is a dwelling place or a temple of the Holy Spirit. Look in our scripture we read this morning together. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”
15. The minds and hearts of God’s people form a Holy Temple in which the Holy Spirit lives. How? You might say! Every group of people is made up obviously of individuals, but they also form a collective consciousness. They take on a personality of their own. The personality of the group can be healthy, good, loving, and kind, or unhealthy, bad, hateful, and even evil.
16. So the Holy Spirit can and does dwell in the collective hearts of its people—called the church, which form a temple unto God.
Week Of: June 13, 2010 - Guest speaker/no notes
Week Of: June 20, 2010 Title: Father’s Day – The Love of the Father Scripture: Luke 15:11-24; Luke 11:11-12 1. When I say the word “father” what does that mean to you? To some of us the word “father” brings to mind warm fuzzy feelings or maybe tears of sorrow because their father has died. For others the word father is an anxious word because they had a bad relationship with their father, a bad father, or maybe no father at all.
2. Fathers, I think, are the most controversial and sometimes the most misunderstood of our parents. Controversial because some fathers are fathers by blood only, and they don’t have a clue what being a father is about. At the best, they are deadbeat dads.
3. Misunderstood because sometimes being a father means having to do difficult things like disciplining your children. Proverbs 13:24 says “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.” Now disciplining your child doesn’t mean beating him. Instead, it means correcting your children when they need it. It means being fair, but firm, guiding and instructing them; and yes at times even punishing them, but not abusing them. There is no excuse for being an abusive father.
4. Most of you know that I am an only child. Any interesting theories why my parents did not want to have another child? I prefer to think that once you give birth to near perfection there is no use to trying again. J The reason that some you have so many brothers and sisters is that your parents tried and tried to get it right and finally just gave up. J
5. Anyway, how many of you believe that I was ever disciplined by my folks? I got many a spanking from my mother, because of my mouth. You cannot believe that can you? But by my dad, I got very few whippings from him, because believe me I did not want my father mad.
6. I remember one day I shot out a garage window with a bb gun, and dad got so mad he took a green stick about ½ inch thick and striped my legs with it. However, in his defense, I didn’t have a very good record with a bb or pellet gun. I was a multiple offender if you know what I mean.
7. My point is that at that moment of my whipping in one sense of the word he was perfectly understood (I better not do that again) but then another he could have been misunderstood. Because I could have just thought that dad was mean or hated me, instead he wanted me to understand that guns, even bb guns, should be treated with respect, and that someone else’s property, especially his property, should also be treated with respect. He eventually got his point across.
8. Our heavenly father is also quite controversial and a misunderstood parent as well. He is controversial because many people have different and contradictive views of what He is like. Quite frankly, I believe that most people have the wrong understanding of God, and their God is much, much too small. In fact, I believe that our God is so big that even the best human minds cannot even begin to comprehend. One reason for Jesus coming is to make sense of God and help us better understand Him. But even in Jesus Christ, God remains a mystery.
9. Have you ever thought why the Bible refers to God as our Father in Heaven? Does God have gender? Think for a moment—is He really the man upstairs? He is not a man, and He is not upstairs. Instead, Jesus tells us in John 4 that God is spirit.
10. Well, why did Jesus refer to God as our heavenly Father? Why pray, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” Because Jesus and His Jewish forefathers understood that the name father was very appropriate for their understanding of God. Because their fathers before them, and their fathers before them were loving and caring men, who greatly loved their families. Whom they (the sons and grandsons, great grandsons) respected for their love, strength, courage, wisdom, protection, and guidance. So what better way to refer to their great God as the Heavenly father whom they believed was all of these things and more?
11. But out of all these different images and descriptions in the Bible and in our experiences in life there comes two ways that I like to look at the Heavenly Father. One is His greatness and the other is His goodness.
12. His greatness is knowledge, power, and abilities. His goodness is His holiness, righteousness, justice, his grace, mercy, faithfulness, trustfulness, forgiveness, and of course His love.
13. All of these attributes and more come together to make a perfect God that sometimes we cannot always make sense of.
14. But yet out of all these attributes there comes attributes that I have to depend on more than any of the others—the love and forgiveness of God.
15. Look at our scripture in Luke 15:11-24 for a perfect picture of a loving father. I don’t know if you saw in the news of the heroism of a 57 year old father this past week in Mentor, Minn.. Wes Michaels gave his life for his daughter. According to the news, on his 57 birthday Wes rushed to his gas station to warn his daughter of the sighting of a tornado only to get there just in time and warn everyone who was in the station to run for a walk-in cooler. Realizing that his daughter wouldn’t make it to the cooler, he fell down on her giving his life for hers. According to his son-in-law, “He covered her and saved her life.”
16. Our heavenly Father has covered us and saved our lives in the death of Jesus Christ. His sacrificial love is the true spirit of a true father.
Week Of: June 27, 2010 Title: Dwelling Place of the Holy Spirit Series: Doctrine of the Church Scripture: Psalm 121:1-8 1. You’ve heard me say before that in most Baptist churches the Holy Spirit is the forgotten member of the Holy Trinity. Most Southern Baptist preachers don’t feel comfortable in spending much time talking about the Holy Spirit. I suppose less someone accuse them of promoting unknown tongues and all sorts of weird behavior unbecoming of general Baptist behavior.
2. Well rest assured I am not going to promote speaking in tongues, all though if you have that gift I am glad for you. And I am certainly not going to promote weird behavior, well any more weird behavior than mine J, but I am going to promote the Holy Spirit in the life of the church.
3. In our scripture this morning we have what is called a “song of ascent.” It is one of the Psalms from 120 to 134 that scholars believe Jewish pilgrims sang on the way to worship at Jerusalem. In fact the Psalter, the book of Psalms, is thought to be the song book of Israel and really of the early church. So we have the words of the songs of the early church, we just don’t have the tunes.
4. Anyway, Psalm 121 is song of confidence that early Jewish and Christian worshipers would sing as they journeyed to Jerusalem. Jerusalem sits on a hill and the Temple sat on a Temple Mount, and I can imagine these Jewish pilgrims walking to Jerusalem and the Temple singing “I lift up my eyes to hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
5. One of the most sacred teachings of the Bible is that God is our helper. We could not and we cannot ever hope to make it in life unless God helps us. You’ve heard me say this many times but as easy as my life has been I would not be able to make it without God’s help. I am assuming that you believe the same way about yourself as well. He carries and helps us even when we don’t realize it.
6. But how does this apply to the Holy Spirit? In the Gospel of John (John 14, 15), Jesus tells us that with His death the Father would send a “paraclete” to His followers. Notice that I am not saying “parakeet” like a bird but “paraclete” as in the Greek word for the Holy Spirit. I have heard it translated literally as “one who come along side us.” English translations translate it “counselor, advocate, helper, and comforter.” His purpose is to “strengthen and guide the church into all truth.”
7. In other words, Christ tells us that the Father has sent someone to help, counsel, comfort, and guide the church—the Holy Spirit. It is the ultimate expression of the Psalmist’s words where he declares “I lift up my eyes the hills, where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord.”
8. Now let’s get something straight, does it really matter what jobs and functions the Bible assigns to the members of the Trinity? I think it does to a degree. The Father is the Creator, and according to church tradition both the Son and Holy Spirit proceeds out of the Father. The Son is the Word that becomes flesh in Jesus Christ who is our Savior, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love that proceeds from both the Father and the Son. But when you talk about one you talk about the other two, because the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one. They are distinctive persons, but yet they are One as one can be.
9. Let’s review terms just a minute: The Church is the assembly of the people of God who have been called out of the darkness of the world. But we are also called the body of Christ of which Christ Jesus is the head and are members of His body. We are the body of Christ that is functioning under the direction of Christ. The question becomes “how healthy a body are we, and do we follow the direction of the Head?” Imagine someone who is disabled with a spinal cord injury they tell their hands and feet to move but they don’t move. Is that what happens with the body of Christ in our community?
10. Another term for the Church is the Temple of God. The Temple is the dwelling place of God, and the Bible wants us to know that it is the Holy Spirit of God dwells here.
11. The Spirit is the third person of the Trinity and He guides, helps, and comforts all who are a part of the Body of Christ. The Spirit dwells in the Temple and makes known the will and intent of the Savior who is the Head. The Spirit keeps us connected to the head and reminds us of everything that the Head wants us to know and do.
12. The Spirit is the life force of Love that proceeds from the Head who is Christ and the Father who has sent the Christ into our lives.
13. The Holy Spirit is the life giving energy of Christ who is the Head of the Body. The Holy Spirit is spiritual energy. The Holy Spirit is spiritual fire. The Holy Spirit is spiritual electricity that runs through the body of Christ.
14. Now this is very important by using the terms energy, fire, and electricity I tell you we are not necessarily talking about emotional energy. I am not necessarily talking about speaking in tongues, but I am talking about the energy that produces right thinking and right actions. The energy that produces good deeds, good works, and good ministry. The energy that produces love, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5: 22-23)
15. The Holy Spirit is the Spiritual Energy that fills us but at the same time leaves us wanting and desiring more. It is the reason you feel compelled to be here. To pick up a hymnal and sing with joy in your hearts to the God who is both your Creator and your Savior.
16. The Holy Spirit is also both the Spirit of consistency and the Spirit of change. The Spirit of consistency is what keeps you grounded in the doctrine and teaching of the Bible and the Lord. The Spirit keeps us from being blown by every false doctrine and teaching that comes along in the name of Christ.
17. But the Holy Spirit is also the spirit of change that softens up the heart and soul to the will of God. Look, I know easy it is to be set in your ways. The older I get the more I get like day old concrete that has set up and hardened like stone. But the Holy Spirit is a jack hammer and if necessary the dynamite that keeps us moving in the direction of God’s will. If you are a Christian you can turn your heart hard to me and my preaching but you cannot turn you heart hard to the Holy Spirit for very long. If you are a Christian, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit you can run but you cannot hide.
18. And just as important, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love and Peace that goes with you when you leave this place. | |
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