House of God (Part 4)

0:42 Ephesians chapter 2, the passage we've been looking at for several weeks. Ephesians 2, 19 to 22, and then I'm going to read you a supplementary passage that we're going to key off of tonight. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. and in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. For a number of weeks we've been looking at this idea, this metaphor, this concept, this teaching, that to be a Christian means that you are, as it says here, a dwelling place of God the Spirit.

1:51 We are being joined together and are rising to become a holy temple in the Lord. and we've seen that Paul is really teaching us quite a few things. In one week, we talked about the fact that Paul is saying that Christians are not designed to stand on their own. No human being is designed to stand on his or her own, that we need each other, and we talked about the unity, and we talked about the fact that just attending a church and getting some inspiration out of it is not the same thing as being built together at all, and that's another sermon, isn't it? Yes, so let's avoid it. Then the second week, we looked at the fact that this also teaches us that since we are a dwelling place of God the Spirit, we're His house, that means we have an access to Him. He interpenetrates us with His presence. We have access to His very face, and we looked at all of that and all that that meant, and that's also another sermon which we avoid. Last week, we said the metaphor shows us also that we are God's temple, God's house, in the sense that we need to be built on a foundation. There has to be something changeless and something solid and something unchanging that we can stand on and on which we take our stand. And that, we said, was a body of truth, a body of information. The foundation, Paul says, is the apostles and prophets. And we talked about our attitude toward the Scripture and our attitude toward truth and how different Christianity is when it comes to truth from other religions who don't see truth in the same terms and so forth. Now, I'd like you to also see tonight that we are, according to Paul, we are being built. We are rising. We are being shaped into a holy temple. Who's doing that? Who's shaping us? God, the architects.

3:42 God is building us into a holy temple. Now, Paul doesn't have to use that word holy, but he does. He should have just said a house, a temple, but he brings out the idea that because we are God's dwelling place, his teaching is we were meant to be holy. Now, I would like to get a handle on holiness. What is holiness? In modern, everyday usage, from what I can tell in modern English, the word holy, 99.9% of the time has nothing but a negative connotation.

4:17 Whoever uses the word holy, where? The only time I ever hear it used in everyday fashion is, what, holier than thou. That's it. It's never used in anything but a negative way. Of course, that's obviously not at all what Paul has in mind when he says you have to be holy. If you want to get an idea of what Paul is getting across here and what God wants for you and me, you have to read five little verses that show us Jesus' attitude toward God's temple. In John chapter 2, and by the way, every gospel writer talks about this. There's four different accounts, but I'm just reading you the shortest one. in John chapter 2, in verse 13, we're told this. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts, he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 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 he overturned their tables. To those who sold, he said, get out of here. How dare you turn my father's house into a market? And his disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house consumes me.

5:49 Now, there's a lot of bad news in here, and I'm the one to break it to you. Here is Jesus, loving Jesus, meek and mild Jesus. He comes into the temple, and immediately he gets very intense. He gets very serious. Here is Jesus Christ, gentle, meek, and lowly, who said, turn the other cheek. But in the temple, you see him terrible and wracked, literally cracking the whip, driving people everywhere, starting a riot, a big commotion. What's going on? Why is it that when Jesus gets into the temple, he suddenly gets so serious. Well, now, an aside, just an aside, but an important aside. Jesus is not explicable. He's not at all easy to understand. And that should be very reassuring. Do you know why? You see, it should be reassuring because he surprises us all the time. He contradicts our expectations all the time. He acts in ways that we cannot understand. He upsets us. He crosses our biases. That should be reassuring, because that's one of the evidences that Jesus is real, and that Christianity is real. Why? Because that's how reality is. Reality doesn't make sense all the time. Reality is full of contradictions.

7:10 If Jesus Christ was made up, if somebody had concocted him, as many people believe, by the way, many people believe, all religions were basically made up. They were concocted, the founders and the gods and the central figures of all religions have evolved over the years. They are the results of myths and legends, and therefore they have been concocted. And they are ways in which human beings, they have developed these religions as ways to help us cope with life.

7:40 Jesus doesn't work on that. Jesus was not made up. Jesus is real. That's the reason why so many times he doesn't make sense. If he was made for us, if he was concocted for us, then he would always make sense to us. He would fit in our expectations. But the Bible says Jesus was not made for you. You were made for him. And I tell you something, if we were made for him, that explains why on the one hand, he is so satisfying, and yet he is so inexplicable. Anybody who's been a Christian for a long time finds out, we were really made for him. What does that mean? It means that we were made for him. He created us. We didn't create him. Nobody created him. He created us. And therefore, we were made for him. And that's the reason why when we get near him, we start to sense a satisfaction we've never experienced before. But because he's real, we're always bumping heads with him. You don't bump heads with a fantasy. You don't bump heads with someone who was built just to meet your needs. How do you know that Jesus Christ, your God, is not just an expression of wish fulfillment. How do you know? You only know if he's constantly disrupting you, moving your agenda, rearranging things. And that's one of the great things about this.

8:58 You know, there's a certain sense in which Christianity cannot compete with the made-up religions. Christianity is not as simple as other religions. I mean, if you don't have any facts to worry about. It's easy to be simple. That's why one writer put it, anybody can be simple if you have no facts to worry about. And that's the reason why Christianity has all sorts of things that don't make sense, and Jesus is constantly acting in ways that are disturbing and inexplicable. That's the way reality is. Now, having said that, though, this is not as inexplicable, really, as you might think. Why does he act this way? Why is the loving Jesus Christ,

9:42 the meek and mild loving Jesus Christ, suddenly become intensely zealous for the holiness of God's temple? The reason why, as the John writer says, the gospel writer John says, when the disciples saw him doing this, they remembered a Bible verse. Zeal for thy house consumes me. Here's what I think it means. There is a concept we have in this verse of Ephesians 2 that combines the holiness and the love of God. People think it's a contradiction. People are always complaining to me. They said, you know, in the Old Testament, God seems to be a God of wrath. He's always talking about judgment. He's always talking about the law. He's always saying, be perfect, do all these things. But in the New Testament, there's Jesus, so sweet and mild, and he seems to be a God of love, and he's saying, I accept you just the way you are. How do you explain the contradiction? Here's how you explain the contradiction. And some of you, for some of you, this will really hit home. God is an artist. God's an architect. God is the one who is building this temple.

10:50 It is rising to become a holy temple for the Lord. God's an architect. And that means if you're a Christian, you are his artistry. You're a work of art. And my question to you is, what is the relationship of an artist to his or her work? Zeal for the purity of your art consumes you because of your love. You see, in the heart and the mind of an artist, you see this zeal for holiness, this demandingness, along with this passion and this love. Look, a background to Jesus cleansing the temple is Malachi chapter 3 in the Old Testament. Listen to this. Behold, says Malachi, the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, and who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and he shall purify his people as gold and silver. This is amazing. Look, the Lord whom you seek. Interesting. I want this God of love in my life. I seek him and all of a sudden he shows up and what? The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple and who may abide the day of his coming and who can stand when he appeareth. Oh, what does this mean? How does, he says, Malachi says, he's a refiner. He's a goldsmith. How does the goldsmith relate to the gold? Oh, he loves the gold. There is nothing more precious to him than the gold, not just economically. This is his treasure. But how does he relate to the gold? He's always beating it. He's always hitting it. He's always twisting it. He's always putting it through the fire and putting it through the fire and putting it through the fire.

12:39 zeal for the purity of the gold and his love for the gold are the same thing. If you understand an artist, in fact, if you are an artist, you'll understand this. The love and the holiness of God come together. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple and who may abide the day of his coming and who may stand when he appeareth, for he shall be like a refiner's fire, and he shall purify his people as gold and silver. You see, when he comes, he is full of cleansing intensity. The temple is his house. The temple is his work of art. The temple is his artistry. He's the architect. A refiner's fire. How do you relate? How does the artist relate to the art? Now, see, C.S. Lewis puts it, as usual, in a brilliant way, and I'll just read it to you. And think about this. Let it sink in. When Christianity says that God loves a human being, it means that God really loves us. Not that he has some detached concern for our welfare, but that in an awful and surprising truth, we are really the objects of his love.

13:55 You ask for a loving God? Well, you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked is present, not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire himself, the love that forged the world's, persistent as an artist's love for her work, as venerable as a father's love for his child, as inexorable, as exacting, as love between the sexes. Do you see that?

14:33 That's love. Because God created. That's God's love. God's love is creative. God's love is artistic. You want the love of God? This is the love that forged the worlds. You see? The great spirit you so lightly invoke. This is a perfect explanation of what Malachi says. The Lord that you so sought, the Lord you seek, will come to his temple, and he will relate to you as an artist to the work. He will relate to you as a goldsmith to the gold. His love is the consuming fire, persistent as an artist's love for her work, as venerable as a father's love for his child, as inexorable, as exacting, as love between the sexes. There you got it. God,

15:20 the artist, the architect, there is no contradiction between his love and his holiness. Now, friends, if you have ever actually had somebody love you who loved you more than he or she loved themselves, I mean, in other words, if you've ever had somebody who loved you and put your needs first, you'll know what I'm talking about. Most of us, we all love people, but most of us are cowardly in our love. We're cowardly. If you really love somebody, you kind of need them. And because you kind of need them, you're afraid to confront them. You can't stand the tension If you confront them, then they're going to come back They know how to pay you back You know, if somebody loves you And they start to tell you something's wrong with you You know how to get them to take it back You know how to take it back You just get mad, you get upset, you get hurt, you get grief stricken Next thing you know, they're saying, forget I said anything You know how to get it back Because we're all cowards We need each other We can't stand the tension We can't stand the lack of affirmation We need each other's affirmation and so we tend to be cowardly but if you've ever had somebody who truly truly loved you and put your needs first they tell you what's wrong when they see self-destructive behavior they call it they don't stop they come after you if you hate it and you tell them you hate it they don't let go. They do not like what you're doing to yourself because they love you. The loving Lord whom you seek will come to his temple. So, and you see, Jesus' love and his holiness don't really, they're not opposed at all because they converge on the cross. And when you see Jesus on the cross, the love and the holiness of God converge because that was the ultimate work of art. What Jesus did on the cross, you know the wisdom of it? There God's love and his holiness converged because the more he poured out and expressed his wrath, his hot wrath against sin

17:32 by pouring it out on his son. the more he was securing the salvation of his own. The more he poured out his wrath, the more he saved us. They come together. There's no contradiction between them. They only look that way.

17:52 Just like the artist whose love for his work and intensity of passion for his perfection come together in one heart. If you love somebody, zeal for their wholeness, their holiness consumes you. And that's it. So that's the reason why. If you're his temple, he is concerned for how you look.

19:50 Now, let me just apply this for a second before we move on. God, let's apply this by going back to the original point at the top of this section. Is God, the God that you worship, real? Now, if you're coming to church here, you might be coming to church, you might really like church, and you still might have an imaginary God. It's very possible. I talk to people regularly enough to realize that you can have an imaginary God, and you're just taking whatever you hear in these worship services, and you're working it through your grid. And, you know, you don't quite understand that, and that doesn't quite work, so you just sort of ignore it, you know. I don't like that part, but I like this part, you see. Here's how you can tell whether you have an imaginary God or not. If you have a real God, he comes into his temple, and he rearranges things, and he causes a commotion. Have you ever, ever, ever seen an artist who doesn't make a mess. Not me. You ever seen artists that doesn't make a mess? Impossible.

20:58 If you're a goldsmith, it's hot in there. Jesus Christ comes into the temple, and he puts together a whip, and he says, my temple will be a house of prayer. You have turned it into a market. And he creates a commotion, and he rearranges the furniture in a fairly drastic way. How do you know if God, the God that you're worshiping, is real or imaginary? I'll tell you. In imaginary religions, imaginary religions only add. It's very easy to tell, I mean, imaginary religions, you can always get them on cable. At least, you know, I find it's not that hard. You turn around, you can get imaginary religions, and all they're ever talking to you about is how you can realize your potential, and how if you come into their religion, they can clean you out, and they can deal with your problems, and they can, oh, they expect commitment in a sense. You need to give, and you need to do other things like that. But ultimately, they're adding, and they're adding. The real God subtracts.

21:56 the real God rearranges the furniture of your life. The real God is somebody who's always knocking things out. That's the only way you can be sure that your God is not wish fulfillment. In reality, you bump heads with reality all the time. So let me just ask you, think about a couple of areas. For example, your intellectual life.

22:21 You've got pet views. You've got political views. You've got philosophical views. You've got ethical views. You've got pet views. Everybody does, especially in New York. People have lots of ideas. Is your God the real God? Then you're constantly having head-on collisions with things that the Bible says, and you say, oh my gosh. And you don't rearrange the Bible when you have one of these head-on collisions. The Bible rearranges you. I mean, you're living in a fantasy world if you think you can rearrange the Bible. I mean, when a cat has a head-on collision with a Mack truck. I mean, the cat is rearranged, not the Mack truck. and when people say well here's the bible it's been around for thousands of years and millions of people have tried it out and used it and found that it has revolutionized their life i don't like that chapter out you've got an imaginary god you're creating a religion that you want come on you know what a physicist say here are the laws you just can't do that you can't do that well i want to do that you can't do that well i would like to do it that way i'm going to create my own physics. What would the physicists say? That's not how reality works. You've got to submit to it.

23:28 You know, you're driving along on a highway, and it's very tiring because it's very curvy, and you have to curve, and you have to turn, you have to turn. It's very late at night. So why don't you say, you know what, I've decided that I want to be on a straight highway, and I am going to stop turning the car. I'm going to just believe that this is a straight highway. It won't be long before your car is wrapped around some reality.

23:55 That's the way reality is. Now, how do you know your God is real? He rearranges your life. He looks at your intellectual life, and he sits through it, and he says, You thought that? You're wrong. And you find that things that you've believed for years, that you thought were expert opinion, things about politics, things about biology, things about science, all sorts of things, are constantly being rearranged. Is that happening to you? A Christian is somebody, if you have the real God, you're continually going through intellectual revolutions. It's amazing. Secondly, take a look at the other areas of your life. Look at the way you use your money. Have there been, you have habits, you have biases, you have practices. Are they constantly running into reality? Are you constantly finding that God's rearranging the way in which you spend your money, the way in which you spend your money on yourself? Is God constantly rearranging your sex life, your thought life, your imagination life, the way in which you do your work, your general relationships? If not, your God is not a holy God, and therefore your God isn't a real God. A God who's only loving and not holy isn't real. That love is just, it's not love anyway, it's sentiment. And a God like that will never turn you into a work of art.

25:14 A God like that will never turn you into something beautiful and brilliant. The real God is a jeweler and you are the diamond in the rough. The real God is the goldsmith and you are just a piece of ore full of impurities. And the real God rearranges things, even though he puts you through some terrible things in order to do that. Is that happening? the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple and he will love you like a refiner loves his gold and silver and who can abide his appearing and who can stand on that day nobody that's the real God now one more point for sure the other point is we've just seen that God's holiness and his concern for your holiness is completely consistent with his love. It's a wonderful thing. It's an immense thing. It's an incredible thing. You are the work of art. He is the architect. But one more thing. What is the nature of this holiness? What is the definition?

26:22 And I want to give you a working definition and a practical one. When people think of the word holiness, they think almost too broadly. They think of a holy person as being a kind of a perfect person. I guess that's all right. But that's not really the meaning of the word, especially in the Old Testament, especially when it relates to the temple.

26:44 In the Old Testament, you find pots and pans being called holy, animals being called holy. Now, that can't mean that they were sinless. What in the world does it mean? You know, this is a sinful tin pan, but now it's a holy tin pan. What happened? Well, I don't know. Was it born again? Was it full of lustful thoughts, but now it's full of pure thoughts? What does it mean it's holy? And the answer is, when something was put into the temple so it wasn't used for anything but God's worship, it was called holy. The word holy means, and even in English, holy, W-H-O-L-L-Y. To be holy means to be wholly his. A lot of people have looked at Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple, and they've tried, I've read commentators and I've read people who've tried very hard to say that the money changers were crooked, that they weren't really giving people an honest exchange rate.

27:45 Now, the fact is that the money changers were doing nothing wrong. Jews came from all over the world to come to the temple. And because they were coming from all over the world, they couldn't bring their own ammo with them. You know, you don't come from Greece and bring your ox with you. You can't do that. So you have to buy the animal there. And because they were using foreign currency, they had to have it changed. There was nothing wrong with what the money changes were doing. There was nothing wrong with the animal sellers. The real problem was it was in the temple. The real problem was it was a distraction. It wasn't wrong in itself. It had come too close to the center. And when Jesus made the temple holy, he got rid of anything that was peripheral that had become central. He turned the peripheral back into the peripheral. Anything that was distracting from the preeminence of God, anything that was distracting from the supremacy of worship of God was removed. Now, we should understand this. Here's a woman that she wants to be an Olympic gold medalist. Well, what does she do. Before she decides to be an Olympic gold medalist, she eats. She drinks. She goes to school.

28:56 She exercises and she sleeps. After she decides to be a gold medalist, after she goes into training, she eats. She drinks. She exercises. She goes to school and she sleeps, but in a completely different orientation. She does the same things, but now it's done all toward the goal. She eats only certain things and other things she doesn't eat. She sleeps in certain ways. She exercises in certain ways. She studies in different ways. She arranges her schooling in different ways. You do all the same things, but she is wholly committed to one supreme goal.

29:31 And now, you see, every part of her life is wholly dedicated to that. What does it mean to be holy? It doesn't simply mean to be pure and perfect, though it ends up meaning that. It's much more basic. It means for you to set your priorities straight. A holy person is someone who puts God first. You still work. You still fall in love. You still make money. You still spend money. You still eat, and you still drink, and you still sleep, and you still take classes, but you do it in a completely different way. Everything is done not only for his glory, but everything is done toward the end of becoming like him and for to please him. Everything's reoriented. To be holy means to be holy his. A perfect example of this is Caleb. In the book of Numbers, you go to Numbers 14, and God comes and says to Israel, who's come out of Egypt, and they're right on the borders of Canaan, and he says, now go up there and take the land.

30:38 I know there's a lot of wicked, mean, terrible, violent people, but go ahead up and fight against them and I'll be with you. And what do they say? They say it's impractical. They say it's impossible. They say if we do it, at worst we'll be killed and at best we'll be enslaved. At worst we'll be destroyed and at best we'll be enslaved. Your commandments, God, are impractical and impossible. And what does Caleb say, though? He says, let's go. Now, God punishes Israel by sending them out in the wilderness for 40 years to wander, and he says, you're all going to die in the wilderness. Only your children will get in now. But he says, Caleb, my servant Caleb, because he had a different spirit and has followed me wholly,

31:20 him will I bring into the land where he went and his seed will possess it. Let me put it as practically as possible. Are you like Caleb? Do you follow him wholly? To be wholly means to decide that there's one high priority in everything else you ditch. You ditch all competing concerns. Let me ask you this. The Bible says, God says in the Bible, you must love others selflessly. You must give your money and your time away generously. You must forgive everyone who wrongs you. You must give yourself sexually only in permanent and exclusive marriage relationships. You must always tell the truth. You must never repay evil for evil. You must trust and obey God even when everything looks like it's going wrong. What's your reaction?

32:03 Impractical. Impossible. If I do it, at worst I'll be killed and at best I'll be enslaved. Or do you say, let's go? You see, it's in that let's go that you have the essence of holiness. there's an awful lot of you that are very interested in christianity you like christianity you can't get inspired and you like the idea you're starting to it's starting to make sense to you but are you willing like caleb to say let's go whatever you say god everything else is oriented around that are you going to be able to be like this guy will god ever say of you Ah, but my servant, because he had a different spirit and has followed me wholly, him will I bring into the land where he went and his seed will possess it.

32:57 I tell you something, if you take that Christian ethic I just gave you, about forgiveness, about sexuality, about generosity, about time, about all those things, if you instead of saying it's impractical, it's impossible, I'll be destroyed if I do that, or at the very best I'll be enslaved. Instead, if you say, let's go, people will mock just like they mock Caleb but you will possess the land.

33:25 Lastly, If you're his work of art, if you're his house, you're his holy possession. In 1 Peter 2, verse 9, it says, we are his purchased possession. You are a royal priesthood, the purchased possession. I know a child who, in spite of the fact that he had all sorts of other toys and all sorts of other possessions, got attached to a doll. Got attached to a doll. And this doll was his treasure. This doll was his precious, which meant that there was nothing more important than this doll. He would, you know, if he couldn't take a doll or if he forgot his doll, he'd go back, he'd miss a trip. He'd sing over it at night.

34:15 It was his precious. It was his treasure. Nothing was more important to him than that. and he lavished himself on it. Well, when you're five years old, there's not a lot to lavish. I mean, there's not a lot you have, but he lavished his whole five-year-old set of resources on the doll. That's what happens when something is your treasure.

34:39 If something is your treasure, you can't stand apart with it. If something is your treasure, you can't stand to see anything go wrong with it. If something is your treasure, you protect it. If something is your treasure, you lavish your resources on it. The Bible says that we are his purchased possession. We are his special treasure. We're his house. We're his work of art. Zephaniah 3, 17 says he sings over us. Hebrews 13, 5 and 6 says, I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever leave or forsake you. if we are holy, that means we are his treasure. And if that's true, imagine what God is going to lavish on us. If you have a treasure, you can't wait to pour yourself out on it. Nothing is too good for your treasure. All of God's omnipotence is coiled to spring upon us on the last day to blast us with his wealth, to blast us with love and joy, to blast us with a fulfillment we cannot imagine.

35:49 because we're holy. We're holy because Jesus died on the cross. We're holy in his sight. Now, if we're holy in his sight, we need to be holy in our life because zeal for your holiness consumes Jesus Christ tonight. Zeal for the holiness of your life eats him up. Zeal for the holiness of his life absolutely consumes him. it should at least bother you. It should at least interest you. See what he's done for you. See how he loves you. See how he treasures you. See why he's so demanding with you because he's an artist. See how important it is. He became holy for you. There's a place in John 17, before he goes to the cross, he says, for their sake I sanctify myself.

36:45 What does that mean? I became holy. So don't you see what the word holy means? It doesn't mean that Jesus lost his sin. It means he was completely committed to them. Everything he did, everything he does now is for their sake, for our sake. You see, how can you come to grips with someone who's given himself utterly for you without you giving yourself utterly to him? God wants you holy. He wants you completely. He wants you totally. He doesn't want half of you. He doesn't want a foot in. He doesn't just want your interest. He wants you lock, stock, and barrel. and if you give yourself to him, he will give himself to you, lock, stock, and barrel. What will that be like?

37:25 How can you come to grips with someone who has given himself utterly to you without giving yourself utterly to him? To not do so is not only a crucifixion of the intelligence, it's an offense to the moral sense. It is stupid as it is wicked. Don't do such a wicked thing. Give yourself to him and he will treasure you forever. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you have made us a holy temple. We thank you that you have given yourself to us in this way. We thank you that your love and your holiness come together on the cross, and they converge as you work on us and turn us into holy people, people that can reflect your image. We thank you that you are the architect, and we are rising to be a holy temple for you. Oh, Lord. we give ourselves to you make us holy thine in Jesus name we pray