the Kingdom: what it is -part 6

Part 6 prophecies of the Kingdom: God’s sanctuary in a reunited Kingdom

We have been discussing the Kingdom for the past several weeks.  Our simplified definition of the kingdom is the community or territory over which Christ reigns as king.

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at the prophecies of the kingdom to generate some understanding of what Israel anticipated in the coming Kingdom.  So far we have added to our initial definition that the kingdom would be:

·         Under the reign of a descendent of David

o   A righteous branch from David’s line

o   Aka Jehovah our righteousness

o   Jesus

o   Kingdom of David

·         Restored Kingdom of Israel – Israel restored to her former glory

o   why the historical backdrop is so important

o   Kingdom belongs to Israel

Also saw that the kingdom would be a time when God would:

·         Gather Israel from the nations (36:24)

·         Sprinkle them w/clean water (36:25)

·         Regenerated Israel: New heart, new spirit (36:26)

·         God’s spirit in his people, moving them to obedience (36:27)

·         Israel will be his people, Jehovah will be their God (36:28)

·         Saved from uncleanness (36:29)

·         Cleansed from sins (36:33)

·         Brought back to life & restored to his presence (37:1-14)

This morning we will see some of those elements emerge again, but we won’t comment much on those.  We will direct our attention to a few new contour lines that we will be sketching to add to our understanding of the Kingdom.

We will find those in Ezekiel 37, where we will pick up where we left off last week.  Go ahead and turn there in your Bibles. 

Last week we discussed that Babylon had taken God’s people into exile.  They saw themselves as hopeless, cut off, dead.  They saw exile as death.  They were not able to stand in God’s presence.  So In Ez 37:1-14 we see a vision that God gives Ezekiel of dry bones that come together and stand up as a vast army.  Then breath/SPIRIT enters them and they live.  This is a picture of what God would do with Israel.  He would restore them to glory – bring them back from the death of exile and restore them to his presence.  He would regenerate them and essentially create a new Israel – an Israel of the Spirit.  This resurrected Israel is the new Israel, the spiritual Israel, true Israel, the Church, the Kingdom.

Ezekiel was known for being a prophet who acted out his prophecies.  He dramatized his messages from God to give God’s people a visual representation of things to come.  Here we have one of those:

Ezekiel 37:15ff ¹⁵ The word of the Lord came to me: ¹⁶ “Son of man, take a stick of wood and write on it, ‘Belonging to Judah and the Israelites associated with him. ’ Then take another stick of wood, and write on it, ‘Ephraim’s stick, belonging to Joseph and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ ¹⁷ Join them together into one stick so that they will become one in your hand.

Recall in our survey of Israel’s kingdom history.  At one point they had no king but asked to have one.  Samuel was frustrated but God said that it was a rejection not of Samuel but of God as their king.  God warned them but gave them one anyway.  So Saul was made king, followed by David and Solomon.  Under the reign of these 3 kings, the kingdom was united.  All 12 tribes were united as one kingdom.  Then under Solomon’s son Rehoboam the kingdom divided into the northern kingdom made up of the territories of the 10 northern tribes who retained the name Israel (also Ephraim) and the southern kingdom made up of the territories of the 2 southern tribes Judah and Benjamin – who became known as Judah.

God tells Ezekiel to take a stick and write on one of them Judah and those associated with him (southern kingdom) and take another stick and write on that one Ephraim and those associated with him (northern kingdom).  Then, Ezekiel, join those sticks together in your hand so they will become one stick.  Again Ezekiel portrayed his prophecies through activities to illustrate with a visual representation of what God would do.

¹⁸ “When your countrymen ask you, ‘Won’t you tell us what you mean by this?’ ¹⁹ say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am going to take the stick of Joseph—which is in Ephraim’s hand—and of the Israelite tribes associated with him, and join it to Judah’s stick, making them a single stick of wood, and they will become one in my hand.’ ²⁰ Hold before their eyes the sticks you have written on ²¹ and say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land.

Saw this more than once already…and if we’re tempted to think WE GET IT!  Let’s not.  Instead, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of these exiles.  You’re a slave, in bondage, in exile.  You’re not at home.  You are in a foreign land.  We get upset when our plans for the day get ruined.  They didn’t have the privilege of making plans.  They did whatever they were forced to do by their masters!  So these promises of being liberated and returning to the land were powerful and hopeful.  They were exciting.  They didn’t get tired of hearing that. 

When you see in the Scriptures something repeated over and over and over, that means that it is a pretty significant theme that deserves our attention.  The entire Bible is important, don’t misunderstand me, but the gathering of the elect is huge; it is something worthy of our attention and we are giving it attention in this series because it is so closely connected to the kingdom.  The kingdom is a re-gathered Israel.  The true Israel is gathered into the kingdom.

Once again, we have a reiteration that God would gather the elect and bring the exiles back into the land.  But notice what is going to happen when God gathers them:

²² I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. There will be one king over all of them and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms.

This business with the two sticks being joined represents the fact that when God gathers them back into the land he will reunite the twelve tribes as one kingdom, no longer divided.  ALL 12 TRIBES TOGETHER!

The kingdom is the community over which Christ reigns as king.  This community will be made up of both Jews and Samaritans, both those of the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom.  In the Kingdom, God is uniting together into one community the people who had long ago said, “We have nothing to do with the house of David, look after yourselves!”  From that point there was a long standing hostility between these two regions.  Those of Judah, the Jews, looked down upon those of the northern kingdom, the Samaritans because the Northern kingdom departed from the true worship of God and built a golden calf idol to worship.  Then in 722 BC the northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria and carried off into captivity where they intermingled with the gentiles and corrupted the bloodline.  They were half-breeds, no longer pure Israelites. 

But the Jews maintained the true temple worship and kept their bloodline pure.  So the Jews really looked down upon the Samaritans.  But here, through Ezekiel, God is promising that in the kingdom to come in conjunction with this gathering of elect God will reunite these two and make them one kingdom.

²³ They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, for I will save them from all their sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

Saw this in Ezekiel 36:23.

²⁴ “‘My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees.  David will be king over them?  Not literally.  By the time of this prophecy David had been dead for over 300 years.  This is a reiteration of the same prophecy we have already noted – the Davidic Covenant.  So David here refers to the son of David, the righteous branch from the line of David aka Jehovah, our righteousness, the descendent of David – namely, Jesus Christ.

²⁵ They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever.

²⁶ I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. (I believe this refers to the NC.  We looked at the idea of the NC in conjunction with the syllabus two weeks ago in our message on the regeneration so I won’t comment on that again just want to point out that these promises go hand in hand with the NC.) 

I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary (temple) among them forever. ²⁷ My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. ²⁸ Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever. ’”

Their land and their temple were everything to them.  For Babylon to come and destroy their land and their temple was for them like the end of their world; in this Babylonian siege their world had crumbled.  The place where their God dwelt, the place where they were supposed to go to worship was about to be destroyed.  After that destruction these promises became very dear to them as they were messages of hope.  Imagine if everything that you held dear was being taken from you.  You are the glorious people of God; he has given you a land flowing with milk and honey and put his sanctuary in your midst and made you his special possession.  Then it is all stripped away and that sanctuary is burned to the ground.  Talk about a reason for the Jews to lament.  So these promises of returning to the Land, returning to the presence of God and having his sanctuary in their midst forever were promises very dear to them.  One day, in conjunction with these promises of restoration, God will once again set his sanctuary among them and be their God and they will be his people.  Oh how they must have longed for that day.

In the past few weeks we looked at these prophecies using the metaphor of a syllabus, noting that God is like a well organized teacher who gives his students a syllabus so that they will have an idea of what to expect in the course.  This morning we will look at Ezekiel 37 as the syllabus and the New Testament as the transcript noting how God, the promise keeper did follow the syllabus.

A lot of the things in this passage are reiterations of things we looked at in the past few weeks.  We won’t spend much time looking at those again (listen to previous messages).  What I do want you to notice is that what we are adding this morning occurs in conjunction with the previous points.  They are concurrent events that happen in the same time period, namely in the first century through the ministry of Jesus and his apostles, the time when God raised up a righteous branch from the line of David – Jesus.

The 2 main points that I’d like us to focus on this morning are:

·         The kingdom will be a reunited Kingdom (no longer a division between the north and south, Samaritans and Jews)

·         God will put his sanctuary among them.  The kingdom will be where God puts his sanctuary in the midst of his people forever.

Main point of this morning’s message: the kingdom will be a reunited Kingdom with God’s sanctuary in their midst…and this occurs in the first century in Jesus Christ.

Let’s look at the New Testament now and see how God follows the syllabus in Jesus.

Turn with me to John 4.  Before we read from the text, I’ll set up the scenario for you.  Jesus was in Judea and he decided to return to Galilee.

Judea was in the south (southern kingdom).  Galilee was way north (top of northern kingdom).  In order to get to Galilee, one would need to travel through the region of Samaria.  They didn’t like Samaria or Samaritans, so they would cross over the Jordan, go out of their way and travel along the east side of the Jordan to avoid Samaria.  Jesus decided we’re not going to go that route.  We are going through Samaria.

⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour (noon).

⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. (Jesse segue: speaking of five husbands, let’s discuss doctrine) ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Who is right?  Who are the true worshippers?  The Samaritans on Gerazim or Jews on Mt Zion?

John 4:21ff  ²¹Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

What an amazing encounter.  Here Jesus is, the righteous branch, the descendent of David who has come to reign over a united Kingdom.  He is speaking with a Samaritan woman.  This man from the southern Kingdom didn’t take the typical route of avoiding Samaria by crossing the Jordan and raveling on the east side.  He went through Samaria engaged this woman of the rival Kingdom and shared with her that the time had come when God’s true people, the true Israel, the resurrected, restored, spiritual Israel, true Israel made up of both Jews and Samaritans would worship God not in a geographic locale, but in spirit.

True worshippers not defined in terms of Jew vs Samaritan (ethnicity) or Mt Zion vs Gerazim (geography), but in terms of believer and non believer, ethnicity and geography aside!

This activity is indicative that God was in Jesus uniting these two kingdoms and it sheds light on the kind of kingdom and the kind of worship that would take place in it – a spiritual kingdom with spiritual worship.  God is doing away with ethnic & geographical boundaries and uniting the kingdom of Israel in Christ.  This encounter was evidence that the United Kingdom was surely at hand.

Jesus’ discussion with the Samaritan woman wasn’t the uniting of Jews and Samaritans.  It was subtle foreshadowing.  The true uniting of the two kingdoms as one occurs throughout the book of Acts.  If you want to turn to Acts 1 you can, but I’ll be moving quickly.  I would encourage you to read through that on your own.  But I’ll paraphrase for you what occurs.

In Acts 1 the risen lord meets with the disciples for 40 days teaching them about (bet you can’t guess).  THE KINGDOM.  The end of Luke (same author) tells us that He opened their minds to understand.  If there was confusion before, there was no more.  They were now equipped for the task of spreading the good news and gathering the elect into the body of Christ – into the Kingdom…well…almost ready.  Minds were opened - CHECK.  Forty days of teaching from Jesus on the Kingdom - CHECK.  Before he ascended to heaven hidden from their sight in the clouds, they ask, “Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel at this time?”  Why would they ask that?  Syllabus – the kingdom is a restored Israel.  Jesus said, “Wait in Jerusalem till you get the Holy Spirit.  Then you will have power to preach in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Acts 2:1ff When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. the people of God had all gathered to Jerusalem to observe the feast of Pentecost according to the Law.  ² Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Sound like Ezekiel’s prophecy coming to pass?

⁵ Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. ⁶ When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. ⁷ Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? ⁹ Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” ¹² Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

What does it mean???  It means that God was fulfilling his promises in the restoration, regeneration and resurrection of Israel.  There, with the people of God gathered together from many nations in Jerusalem, we have the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Sound like a violent wind came (kind of like that vision in Ezekiel with the dry bones receiving the breath of life).  God put His spirit in His people just as the syllabus had foretold.  We have here the beginning of the regenerating work of Spirit as God was in the process of taking Israel from death, putting His spirit in her, raising her to new life – the beginning of the rebirth of Israel. 

This regenerating work began in Jerusalem.  Recall what Jesus said in Acts 1:8.  Begin in Jerusalem, then go through all Judea and then Samaria. 

Flip over to Acts 8:1ff On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. (where were they scattered?) ² Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. ³ But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.

⁴ Those who had been scattered (where were they scattered?)preached the word wherever they went. Where did they go?  Judea and Samaria (southern and northern kingdom) ⁵ Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Christ there.

 Phillip takes the kingdom message and the Spirit to SAMARIA.  God was reuniting the north and the south into one Kingdom under David-Christ.  The regenerating work of the Holy Spirit had begun in Judea and now look where it extends.  Skip down to verse 14:

¹⁴ When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. ¹⁵ When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, ¹⁶ because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. ¹⁷ Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

As God foretold in the syllabus, we have here God putting His spirit in his people beginning in Judea and then in Samaria creating ONE UNITED KINGDOM UNDER DAVID - CHRIST no longer two kingdoms divided.

Acts 9:31  Then the church (KINGDOM) throughout Judea (south), Galilee and Samaria (north) enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord.

The kingdom, which would be a united kingdom under a descendant of David was coming into existence in the first century.  Jews and Samaritans were uniting as one kingdom under Christ.

Flip back with me to John 2.

We see how God is uniting the Jews and Samaritans together in the kingdom – the kingdom is a united kingdom no longer divided into north and south, but what about this temple?  God promised through Ezekiel that God would put his sanctuary in their midst forever. 

Some background on the temple:  The temple was originally built by Solomon on Mt Zion in the city of David.  That temple was eventually destroyed by Babylon in 586 BC – within 10 years of Ezekiel’s prophecy.  If God was going to put his sanctuary in their midst forever, that would necessitate the rebuilding of the temple at some point.  Under the reign of Cyrus, King of Persia, after 70 years of captivity the Jews returned to the Land and Cyrus financed the rebuilding of the temple.

Fast forward to the first century – when Rome was the rule of the day the Romans placed a puppet king over Israel, King Herod.  In about 19-20 BC Herod began reconstruction of the temple.  This was an exciting time for Israel.  This was a glorious new temple.  Surely, many thought, this is the temple – the sanctuary that God is putting in our midst forever.  This was indeed a glimmer of hope – many probably thought here is the temple in which God will dwell forever.  But then we have this situation with Jesus where he says something crazy… AGAIN.

John2:13ff  ¹³ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”

¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

²⁰ The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”

He was in the temple that was still under construction at the time.  He said destroy this temple and I will raise it again in 3 days.  This is crazy talk!  They had been working on the temple for 46 years by that point and it wouldn’t be complete until 64 AD, around 37 years later.  So this new temple took around 83 years to build.  Here Jesus is saying destroy it and I will raise it in 3 days.  That sounds preposterous. Besides syllabus says God will put his sanctuary in their midst forever!

²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

This is huge insight from the Scriptures.  This points to the fact that the temple – the sanctuary that God would put in their midst forever was not this physical structure, but the Body of Christ.  God was in the process of regenerating Israel, changing her from the natural to the spiritual.  The temple that would abide forever in the spiritual Kingdom would be a spiritual temple; it was not the physical structure, but the Body of Christ.

But the disciples didn’t get it at that point.  Nobody got it at that point.  John indicates that when he says it wasn’t until after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (physical resurrection was the sign they asked for) then they remembered this statement that they filed away in the folder labeled “Jesus’ crazy sayings.”  Then they connected the dots.  Oh…he wasn’t talking about that physical temple, but His Body!!!  The body of Christ is the temple that will abide forever.

We have this made even more clear in 2 Cor 6.  Turn there if you’d like.  As you do, I’m going to re-read to you from the syllabus of Ezekiel’s prophecy so it’s fresh on our minds and so that you can see exactly what Paul is saying here in this letter.  Paul connects the dots back to Ezekiel 37 showing how God is following the syllabus.

Ezekiel said: ²⁶ I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. ²⁷ My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. ²⁸ Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever. ’”

Ezekiel puts the promise of the sanctuary in their midst forever in the context of “I will be their God and they will be my people.”  Look what Paul says:

2 cor 6:14ff ¹⁴ Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ¹⁵ What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Look at what Paul quotes here.  He quotes Ezekiel 37.  By saying we are the temple and then quoting as God said “I will be their God, and they will be my people” Paul is telling them that they were THAT sanctuary that God was putting in their midst forever; it was happening in their day. 

That physical temple being constructed in Jerusalem on Mt Zion by King Herod in their day was not the temple that would abide forever.  That temple was about to be destroyed sadly, 6 years after its completion by the Romans.  Matt 24  God was in the process of building a heavenly temple to reside in the heavenly Jerusalem in his heavenly kingdom.  That temple, that sanctuary, is believers, “for we are the temple of God.” -Paul

Remember what we ascertained from John 2: Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days…the temple he had spoken of was his body. The body of Christ is the temple.  The body of Christ is the church.  That is who Paul writes to and it is this body of Christ (the church) who is the temple of God.

Note the nature of this temple.  It is spiritual.  Where is the temple supposed to go?  On Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, in THE LAND.  God would gather his elect into the Land and put his sanctuary there in their midst forever.  If the temple is spiritual and thus the stones that make up the temple are the people and are not limited to a geographical location, then does that not mean that the Land is also spiritual and not limited to a geographical location?

The prophecies – the syllabus – indicated that elect are gathered into the land where the temple will reside forever.  Where was the temple being built?  Not in Palestine.  It was a spiritual temple made for spiritual worship by true worshippers who will worship in spirit and in truth – those are the kind of worshippers sought by the father.

Thus, the gathering of the elect that corresponds with the ever-abiding sanctuary is also a spiritual gathering into the kingdom, into Christ, into a heavenly habitation, a spiritual dwelling, a spiritual kingdom.

God puts his sanctuary-temple in the Land.  The people are the temple.  Thus, the people are in the land – the new people of God, the church – the new Israel is in the Land – in the Kingdom.

RECAP

We began by looking at Ezekiel as the syllabus.  Saw that the Kingdom would be reunited north and south under David and that God would place His sanctuary there.  Looked at NT as transcript and saw that in Acts 1-8 God put his spirit in the believers in the Southern Kingdom capital Jerusalem then the Northern capital Samaria and was bringing those kingdoms together under the reign of David – Christ.  Then we saw from John 2 & 2 Cor 6 that the temple that God was putting in the midst of His people forever was the body of Christ, the church, the people.

APPLICATION

Isn’t it amazing for us as citizens in the Kingdom that God’s sanctuary is among us?  We don’t have to travel to Jerusalem.  We don’t have to face Jerusalem to pray.  He is here with us.  We are in his midst.  Always!

When I was in youth ministry I had young men who would wear provocative, and in some ways inappropriate, t-shirts.  So, I would give them a hard time and ask them about their shirts.  One day one of these young men came in beaming; he told me, “David you will be so proud of me.  I got a new shirt with ____ on it.  But I decided I wouldn’t wear it to church.”  I said “Why wouldn’t you wear it to church?”  He said, “Because you know, it’s church.”  By that he meant that the church building is a sacred place. 

That kind of thinking indicates to me a failure to grasp the idea that God’s sanctuary, His sacred place, where we gather to worship is not limited to a physical location.  The body of Christ – the people – are that location.  We are that sacred place.  I explained to him that the church building is no more sacred a place than his school or his bedroom.  If he wouldn’t wear his shirt to church then perhaps he shouldn’t wear it at all since he is the church.

Jesus didn’t say to the Samaritan woman that the time has come when you Samaritans and us Jews aren’t going to worship on this or that mountain, but the place where God’s people must go to worship will be several buildings in a place yet to be discovered called America.  These buildings will be called churches and those are going to be the new limited locus for worship.  He didn’t say that.  He said the true worshippers aren’t going to be limited to a geographic location, but true worshippers will worship him in spirit and in truth.  True worship in the Kingdom in the new covenant will be a spiritual worship, not a physical worship.  You won’t have to go to a place to worship.  You are the place of worship.

At another church I went to in my early days of life in Christ had a pastor who called the church building the house of God.  His rule was that we could not have food or drink in the “sanctuary” because it was God’s house and it should remain pure, clean, free of spills and stains.  I think this notion reflects the same kind of misunderstanding.  The church building is not the house of God.  You and I are the house of God.  I understand a rule for not having food and drink inside a beautiful building.  But make the rule based on the fact that this is a nice building and we don’t want a mess in here, not based on the erroneous idea that it’s God’s house.  That’s OC!

Understanding that God’s sanctuary is among us and we are that sanctuary has amazing application for us.  God’s people under the OC would have to go to Jerusalem in order to go to the sanctuary and bring sacrifices.  Not everyone lived in the capital city of Jerusalem.  Some people lived far away and had to travel a great distance.  We can relate…sorta…our capital city is Austin and you and I who live in Georgetown might get frustrated at having to sit in a cozy seat in an air-conditioned car for 25 minutes as we travel at 70 mph.  In the old kingdom of Israel, they had to travel in the heat or the cold on foot or on an animal for miles and miles just to come to the sanctuary.  In the kingdom of God, we don’t have to go anywhere to go to the sanctuary.  We are the sanctuary in the Kingdom of God.

Now after hearing such wonderful and liberating news it may be tempting to say, “Well, since this right here isn’t God’s house and we don’t have to go anywhere to worship, why go to church at all?  We don’t have to gather at the Page House on Sunday mornings to worship.”  And those statements are true.  We don’t have to go to the Page House or anywhere to worship.  We can worship all day every day everywhere.  We are in God’s sanctuary at work, at school, in the shower, on I-35.

That is a wonderful and liberating reality.  However, as citizens in the Kingdom of God, I think it is extremely beneficial to gather for worship with others in the Body of Christ on a regular basis for spiritual growth, teaching, time in the word, song, prayer, accountability.  The new covenant community has been designed for community.  We need each other and we need to have regularly scheduled times to come together to worship God with one voice and to sing praises to him.  Worshipping together draws us together spiritually and helps us to grow.

The key is to set our hearts and minds in the right place when we do so.  We have to remind ourselves that when we come together to worship that we are indeed gathered for the purpose of worship.  It can be easy to go through the motions and just utter empty words.  As we gather and sing to the Lord let us set our hearts and minds on Him and His glory and His magnificence. 

We are indeed in his presence.  Just as promised in the syllabus, God has set His sanctuary among His people.  We are THAT sanctuary.  He is our God and we are His people.  Let’s celebrate His presence among us and let’s worship him in spirit and in truth.

www.ncfgeorgetown.com  Church in Georgetown, Texas. Reformed church Georgetown, Texas Preterist church Georgetown Texas. Pastor David Boone. Sermon audio mp3 sermon download Full Preterism. Covenant Eschatology. New Covenant Fellowship Georgetown. Page House 10:00 am Loving God. Loving Others. Realized eschatology fulfilled eschatology  Preterist church Austin Texas.  Bible church Austin Texas Second coming of Jesus Christ churches in Austin area. Non denominational Churches in Georgetown TX

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