In our church we have been studying some pretty heavy stuff...
A couple Sunday nights ago I did a two hour teaching on how the Old Testament Temple is obsolete and about how the Temple of God is now made up of Jesus Christ (the chief cornerstone) and the church (the living stones). This New Covenant Temple is a spiritual temple not made by hands. It is a temple that will never be destroyed. It is a temple that God loves.
Ephesians 2:19-22
"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 prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief 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."
Prior to these verses Paul writes that Jesus is our peace who has broken down the walls of division. What walls? The physical walls that kept both Jew and Gentile from entering the places not yet prepared for them under the Old Covenant. Moreover, they are the physical walls that separated man from God and His shekinah or indwelling presence.
1 Peter 2:4-8
"As you come to him, the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says: 'See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.' Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,' and, 'A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.'"
Here paul writes that we are being built into a spiritual house that we might be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices to God. Some Christian Zionists would have you believe that the "chosen and precious" stone laid by the Lord in Zion is a literal stone on which many other literal stones will be laid in order to rebuild the physical Temple of God in Jerusalem. However, this seems inconsistent with New Testament/New Covenant teaching.
Certainly, if we only read the Old Testament scripture through the lens of the Old Covenant and without a clear understanding of the type and shadow contained within it's pages, we will never understand the true meaning of the Old Covenant and the Old Temple. The Law was given to "tutor" us to Christ. The Temple was a shadow of the New Covenant reality that God's shekinah would be inside of man not a building made of stone and built by hands.
In Romans 12:1 Paul writes that we are to daily offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. He goes on to say that this is truly our spiritual act of worship.
Some criticize this way of thinking and accuse it of "over-spiritualizing" the Bible texts. However, there is a great deal of difference between spiritualizing the Bible and reading it with spiritual eyes. To Spiritualize the biblical text is to impose things upon a verse or text that simply aren't there. To read the Bible spiritually is to see things in a verse or text that ordinary eyes would not see.
Indeed, the Bible is to be taken literally. Understanding typology, context, and genre are imperative to a genuine understanding of Scripture.
Three quick thoughts...
1. If we believe that another physical Temple must be built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, then we cannot believe that Christ's work on the cross was complete and finished; that he was not the once for all sacrifice that the Hebrew writer says he was. If daily sacrifices need to be re-instituted and the priesthood must be reestablished, then what of the spiritual Temple and the priesthood of all believers?
2. To believe that the Temple must be rebuilt before the Second Coming of Christ is to rob the return of its immanency. We cannot believe that the bride-groom will return at any moment for his bride if there are major events yet to happen that delay it from taking place. Either we can know the "day and the hour" or we cannot. Note the parable of the Ten Virgins.
3. To go back to the need for Temple sacrifice is to regress from New Covenant substance to Old Covenant shadow. Revelation 22 clearly states that in the New Jerusalem there is no Temple because Jesus is the Temple. Christian Zionists and Dispensationists alike will tell you that the Bible says that in the last days the Temple will be destroyed. This, however, in my opinion, is a gross misinterpretation of the Bible as well as human and church history. It is beyond me as to why Jesus would have to stop being the spiritual Temple for a period of time in order for a physical Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem so that it can be destroyed again at the last. However, I will refrain from explaining this in detail in this post.
Put it this way, if we would just accept that all of the Revelation (accept the prophecies concerning the final future of mankind) has been fulfilled, we could stop looking for signs and start living as the spiritual Temple our precious Savior's death made possible. The goal of apocalyptic prophecy is not to get us looking for signs, it is to encourage us that one day Jesus will come and clean up the mess. Let's move completely from Old Testament shadow into New Testament substance. Let's rejoice that God's shekinah is with us and in us and that we have direct access to God's throne-room. We are the spiritual Temple. Let's live like it and enjoy it's freedom.
Think about it...
