5 LIFE-CHANGING “hidden truths” about Temples in the Bible.

[0:00] imagine a world where Heaven and Earth aren't universes apart but are a part of a single connected reality we have a tendency to think of Heaven and Earth as completely separated Dimensions the only problem with that is the Bible now the Bible comes to us in the shape of a story and this story starts in a garden where God walked freely Among Us and stretches to a future where he will do so again without any barriers this is what we on the channel call the overlap of Heaven and Earth and throughout history the main idea the main way of talking about this connection point of Heaven and Earth was perfectly summarized by the temple and as we trace the ideas of the temple throughout the Bible from the beginning of the story to the end we begin to notice some pretty incredible things although the theme is there on every page from beginning to

[0:49] end the emphasis sort of shifts over the course of the story in the beginning the whole world is God's Temple after the fall it really begins with the Tabernacle and then the buildings that are called the temple to Jes J himself now to us as his body the church living temples where God's spirit resides and ultimately to the whole world being his Temple again this is going to be a journey from the first pages of scripture to the last where we're not just waiting for eternity but actively participating today in the unfolding of a new creation in my last video we talked about atonement and sacrifices in the Bible and how we radically misunderstand what Jesus came to do because we didn't understand the sacrifices and now we're going to tackle another another commonly misunderstood set of themes that's just as beautiful so crack open your Bibles and let's dive in now when we talk about the phrase the

[1:39] temple you probably have something in your mind that looks a little bit like this and you're not wrong that's exactly what this is this is a depiction of the Jerusalem Temple when it was first built also known as Solomon's Temple but believe it or not the ideas for what the temple means don't really start with the temple itself it really starts all the way at the very beginning of the entire biblical story this is obviously a familiar passage to you this is the first chapter of Genesis and really Genesis 2 has a lot to say to us about this as well and if you're familiar with the story God speaks seven times and in so doing creates an entire world full of beauty and life and goodness that he calls good seven times and if we cut all the way to the seventh day when God is done speaking on the seventh day God's presence fills his whole creation as he takes up his rest and begins to rule

[2:28] over it as its king and if you pay attention to the later parts of the story where the Tabernacle comes in God speaks seven times again explaining how to make the temple in the Tabernacle so what the biblical authors are trying to say here is that the temple is a smaller version of the original heavens and original Earth overlap where it was intended when God made everything he wanted to take up his his residence and have his presence permeate the entirety of the space for all eternity that's what he wanted and when we sinned and we introduced death into the world through through our Free Will Disobedience of God's commands we sort of separated ourselves from God and our ability to be close to him because he's holy and good but God always wanted to maintain a connection point where Heaven and Earth still overlapped and so he gave Moses and then later Solomon and others the

[3:18] instructions required for creating a smaller version the point is that all of creation is where God intends to dwell not just in this little building and if we go all the way back to chapter 2 of Genesis and we're looking at kind of a different take on the creation event well what we see is God creating a garden and calling it Eden which means delight in Hebrew really it's Eden and then inside of Eden is a garden and he dwells in that garden with Adam and Eve and maybe you never noticed but when you're reading about the Tabernacle in Exodus really in chapter 25 and then later in First Kings 8 when it's talking about the temple all of the imagery is like it's it's made of wood it's golden trees and flowers and bulbs and fruit here we're looking at the the lampstand specifically the manora which is supposed to be the Tree of Life which

[4:04] was in the center of the garden it's all about being the place where God dwells with his people and of course if these are the themes and ideas that are prominent and present on the first couple of pages of scripture the first few chapters if you've been paying attention to anything we've said on this channel you'll notice that they are also really prominent on the last pages of the Bible in Revelation 21-22 so let's kind of come back together and unpack this a bit because that was a little dense the story of God and Humanity starts and ends with him wanting to be close to us from Eden's Garden where God walked with Adam and Eve to the ultimate vision of a new creation where he will dwell with us forever God's point in creating and his point in restoring is that he wants to have Heaven and Earth totally to borrow our phrase from the other video at one again totally restored totally healed completely

[4:51] overlapping and you need to know that first because that not everything that happens in the middle of the story that is what makes sense of the tabern Le and the temple and Jesus and us as Jesus's body it's the fact that God wants to dwell with his Creation in fullness that makes sense of everything that happens in between because the reason we don't have that now is because of sin and death and the reason we will have it again is because God deals with sin and death and evil completely and that's what everything in between was all about every step of history from the Tabernacle wandering in the desert to the temple in Jerusalem tells this story of closeness and today he's closer than ever dwelling within us but we'll impact that as we go along so we have to start with the Tabernacle as the Prototype the word Tabernacle literally just means tent or Dwelling Place God gives his people these very specific instructions

[5:41] instructions for how to create a little mobile home for himself a tent for himself to travel through the Wilderness with the Israelites but it wasn't just a tent it was the Prototype of God's dwelling place with his own people with every sacrifice every prayer every act of worship Heaven and Earth were touching it's a moving Temple really that was a GL glimpse of God's plan not just to visit us but to live among us and of course this is really just the beginning Solomon's Temple stood as really a beacon of God's presence in Jerusalem magnificent awe inspiring but still somehow just a shadow of the things that were to come now in contrast with the Wilderness wandering tent the temple Was Made of Stone as God's way of showing that he wanted a permanent home among his people but of course Solomon himself said that the temple couldn't

[6:28] hold the fullness of God's GL Glory the whole earth is his foot stool but you can see the thread that's that's being woven in here right you can see kind of the connection points and the direction that this is taking the story of the Bible starts with a perfect and complete overlap of Heaven and Earth and it ends with a complete and perfect overlap of Heaven and Earth sin is what separates those things sin death and evil which follow sin come in and break that unity and separate God's space from our space but God's plan is always to get them to overlap again and he starts with the Tabernacle he chooses the Israelites as the people to whom he will relate in his mission to try to bring the full overlap of Heaven and Earth again temporarily in the Tabernacle and then in a more permanent basis in the temple but of course that doesn't really go the way that people wanted more importantly it doesn't go the way God wanted human beings continued to sin Adam and Eve who were supposed to be the priests of the first temple literally the phrase to

[7:17] work and keep is used to describe what Adam and Eve did to the garden and in numbers on three separate occasions it was described the same exact phrase to work and keep is used to describe what the levite priests were supposed to do with a tabernacle where they're ruling with God working with God advancing his purposes in the world but rather than doing that they sort of seized autonomy for themselves they wanted to rule on their own terms against God's purposes and so they were exiled Adam and Eve started this of course the Wilderness Wanderers did this too during The Exodus and then of course the priests that worked in the temple did the same thing so God's presence even leaves the temple he's saying this isn't working but he promised never to give up on his people and he promised never to give up on his plan so you get to the prophets sorry cuz we're skipping over a lot of stuff here to get to this point but you get to

[8:04] the prophets and what they're doing is they're anticipating a day when God's going to create really a new Temple and a new priesthood they have this vision of what we really need is a new Dwelling Place With God because the old ones didn't work and they the way that they talk about this is really interesting they really are anticipating it filling all of creation so all these passages that talk about the final Temple or the universal Temple I'm thinking about Isaiah 2 you can go and read some of these yourself the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established again house tent Temple Dwelling Place all of these are similar terms all the nations will stream to it many peoples will come and say come let's go up to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the god of Jacob for the law will go out from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem Zechariah 2 Zechariah 4 talking about God being the lord of the whole earth I

[8:51] would say chiefly Ezekiel 47 which is literally explicitly quoted several times in Revelation 21-22 talking about God's ultimate plan so the prophets are looking forward to this eternal Temple and they're still they're still casting it in terms of a building but you get what they're discussing it's all about it being a worldwide ultimate final Temple where what God wanted in the beginning is completely realized and they'll still Envision a building as the central part but they were just working with what they had in terms of their imagination and what was revealed to them at the time and this is when we come to the story of Jesus right he said that through himself God's presence and his Reign were coming into the world in a different way no longer through buildings as the place that they

[9:38] overlapped but through himself in fact John in the first chapter of his gospel is very clear about this again he uses the word dwelt that word dwelt is the same exact root word you'd use for Tabernacle so Jesus came to Tabernacle with us he couldn't be any more clear about this and if you know anything about oh this is so good if you know anything about the story of Jesus he viewed himself as a new priest that is a mediator between God and man a new Temple The Dwelling Place of God the place where Heaven and Earth overlap and a new sacrifice which we talked about in the last video the once and for all ultimate sacrifice when Jesus said destroy this Temple and in 3 days I will raise it up he wasn't talking about bricks and mortar he was revealing himself as God's true Dwelling Place Among Us get this his body crucified and resurrected became the ultimate meeting

[10:27] place Between Heaven and Earth in Jesus God's presence was fully accessible showing us the way that he was going to redefine the meeting place of Heaven and Earth forever and ever and what happens from there again sorry because this is a little complicated but what happens from there is that Jesus himself is the temple and then all of those who find themselves in him having placed their faith in Christ this is Paul's language are themselves the temple Jesus said that God's presence after his resurrection would come to dwell in and among his followers so that they would become temples themselves by the spirit this is what the Bible's vision is when it's describing the church little communities of people where God rests takes up residence and rules remarkably not in a building but in and among his

[11:18] people Paul and Peter are actually both really really clear about this 1 Peter 2:5 says you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ yeah and you can see it right here so that you can see exactly what I'm looking at this is what I'm talking about the church is not a building it's a community of Believers you and me brought together to be the dwelling place of God's spirit we're talking thousands of years of history of the development of this idea and this change in particular was really revolutionary through Jesus we've become Living Stones each of us a small part of a huge Cosmic Temple that spans not just the globe but all of the created order starting from Jesus proceeding through us out into our circle of influence and

[12:06] then beyond into the uttermost ends of the Earth at the end of the story which was the beginning of Eternity in our gathering in our serving one another in our living whenever we make choices that show that God is the one that's in charge here we are embodying the presence of God as his Temple and his dwelling place in the world today until that day when it will all be his dwelling place just as he envisioned in the beginning and that really takes us to kind of the last couple of chapters of the entire Bible Revelation 21-22 in which we get this vision of a New Jerusalem now this isn't security camera footage when you read Revelation hopefully you recognize that it's not all supposed to be taken exactly literally there are giant women riding giant bulls and all kinds of crazy you know Kaiju Godzilla type monsters rising

[12:54] out of the ocean that are explicitly said to be representations of certain things right A lot of people try to read Revelation literally until you have to interpret it symbolically I think that the book presents itself to be read in pretty much the opposite way where you're reading it symbolically because all these symbols come from the Old Testament until you have to interpret it literally so anyway in some sense Jerusalem and the temple and the mountain and the garden all of these things are imagery talking about this idea of God's ruling reigning presence existing in fullness within an overlap of Heaven and Earth just like it was in the beginning and this is the end to which all of these different themes and ideas are pointing and the vision of this New Jerusalem in Revelation is breath taking a city descending from heaven where God lives among his people

[13:41] no need for a temple there literally here you know verse 22 I saw no temple in it but the Lord God the almighty and the lamb are its Temple this is our future it's a world restored where the barriers Between Heaven and Earth are gone forever and the most amazing part is that we're being invited to participate in that reality now with how we live and love one another and those within our sphere of influence as God's people now several times I've been asked in the past whenever I talk about the temple what about the view that says that there's going to be another temple in which the Jews will offer sacrifices during perhaps the millennial Reign or different ways you can kind of parse this and to be totally fair there are some passages that if you interpret them with a certain set of presuppositions will sort of lead you down the path of assuming that there will be another lit

[14:29] physical temple building in which the people will offer sacrifices but the New Testament is so so so clear that Jesus is the temple and his people are now the temple and as individuals as places individual places where God as the spirit comes to dwell and as a community of living stones being fit together into another house for God and Jesus as the Fulfillment of Temple and sacrifice and priest really ought to give us pause when we say yeah we need to have another Temple why what what they were pointing to has already arrived in seed form in Jesus and it's growing and spreading through all of the influence of the Gospel those who make up God's Community are his body on Earth which is growing to fill this place until the end where his goal is to bring it all together

[15:16] again and have his his presence permeate not just his people but the entire created order to say there's going to be a parenthesis where there's going to be the physical Temple and sacrifices again I think does violence to the entire story of what God's doing through the temple and has to take a hyper literal outof context view of the passages that talk about there being a temple building in at the second coming or sometime in the future these are images and symbols to begin with for God's plan to restore all things in heaven and on Earth through Christ and set up the entire created order as his dwelling place so my view is that this growing of the organic Temple which is all of God's people forming a body together being Dwelling Places for the spirit and conduits of his Rule and Reign Over The World continues to grow and grow and grow organically until it takes over the

[16:05] entire created order but what does this mean for us today this is what's most exciting I think in Christ The Divide between what we would usually consider sacred and secular vanishes it was easy to think of it this way when you had an actual Temple which was supposed to be God's dwelling place and when you were outside of that you were outside of the Holy place and you were in non holy land or however you made sense of it because I don't really think that that's the way that the Old Testament presents itself to be understood anyway but now especially like if we think of our church buildings which is not the temple it's explicitly not the temple if we think of our church buildings as the holy place that we go to to worship God and then when we leave we're going back into secular land we've misunderstood the development in the story we don't know where we are in the story where we are the temple so in Christ this divide

[16:54] I don't think it ever existed but this supposed divide between sacred and secular just vanishes every aspect of our lives our work our rest and our relationships are now infused with this sort of Divine Purpose because we are where God is dwelling we are the effective borders of his Reign and Rule and we expand those borders with every decision that we make as living temples carrying the presence of God into every situation Bridging the Gap Between Heaven and Earth with every action and interaction I believe Paul would call this the ministry of reconciliation that we've been called to making the kingdom of God visible here and now and broadening advancing furthering God's mission to make Heaven and Earth one again until the day when it's completed in fullness and we live in anticipation of the new heavens and the new Earth

[17:41] where God's presence permeates everything but we're not just waiting passively we're called to live as forerunners of this new creation by embodying God's love and his Justice we're offering the world a glimpse of what's to come our lives are signposts pointing to a future future where God and Humanity dwell together again in Perfect Harmony so don't get it twisted this is extremely important in past centuries God did explicitly choose a physical place in which he was going to dwell with his presence this is the Tabernacle and this was the temple but his plan from the beginning was for all creation to be his Temple his dwelling place and when he abandoned the plan of buildings he didn't choose another building that's the holy place he came to dwell in us and made us the holy Place individual ually and corporately

[18:29] in Christ so there is no sacred and secular divide thinking at all everything you do in your life is done as a representative of God now it's up to you whether you're a good representation or a bad representation whether you're an accurate picture of who God is or an inaccurate one but living as temples today means recognizing God's spirit within us and reflecting his presence to those around us we need to see every moment as an opportunity to both experience together and then extend outward God's love whether we're at work whatever work looks like for you with our families in our communities or even among Outsiders we are where Heaven meets Earth and it's up to us to embrace this identity and live out our calling as God's living temples now so the story of the temple from the Garden of Eden all the way to

[19:18] the New Jerusalem it's ultimately about the union of Heaven and Earth a future where God's presence is all in all but this Future Hope Has present implications it calls us to live now as citizens of God's kingdom actively participating in God's work of renewing all things so don't get caught up in thinking that you're not holy and that the temple is that building you go to to worship on Sundays it's not you are and so are all the other believers around you let's work together toward ultimate Union in Christ where every tear is wiped away and God dwells with his people forever