The Temple of God

You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.   1 Corinthians 3:16-17  MSG

A call has gone out world wide for the Body of Christ to pray 2 Chronicles 7:14, this wasn’t given by God just to be prayed, it is a directive that requires action. God spoke it to Solomon one night after he had completed the Temple, the complete directive is found in verses 12-16 “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this Temple as the place for making sacrifices. ¹³ At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you. ¹⁴ Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. ¹⁵ My eyes will be open and my ears attentive to every prayer made in this place. ¹⁶ For I have chosen this Temple and set it apart to be holy—a place where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart. In order to carry out the directive, we need to better understand it and who is being directed to pray it and what action we then need to take.

First we need to remember we are under the New Covenant of Grace, God no longer leads us with a cause and effect hand because Jesus has paid for our sins with His precious blood and we are redeemed, forgiven and restored. However, we still live in a fallen world that still experiences the consequences of the fall and sin. So there are times when we forget Him and who He is, God allows us to experience the consequences of the fall and sin, so that we will once again turn back to Him. It’s not to punish us, because Jesus took all our punishment. But rather to see how destructive we’re being to ourselves and return to His ways which bring abundant life Jesus died to give us.

That being said, the pivotal point in this passage is found in verse 16 that the Temple is no longer a building. It is the people who have received Jesus’ forgiveness and sacrifice and now has the Holy Spirit living in them! Today’s verse reminds us that WE ARE NOW THE TEMPLE! And it says that like the building was, we have been set apart, a holy place. Holy doesn’t mean perfect, it means to be uncommon, in this case different from the ways of the world. It goes on to say we are to be a place where God’s name will be honored forever. Are we as Believers living lives that honor God’s name? But I love the last sentence, even if we aren’t, He is always watching over us, because we’re dear to His heart.

I don’t know about you, but how can we not want to honor Him? Even in our wanderings, He is watching over us to direct us back to Him so we can know His healing and restoration and be a reflection of His glory to the world.

This week we will be taking this passage apart and looking at each step we need to take to once again return to the Glory of God so that He can restore His temple.